The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture I referred to two legends, that of Paradise and that of the Holy Grail. I tried to show that these two legends represent occult imaginations which may really be experienced at a certain moment. When the pupil is independent of his physical body and etheric body—as he is unconsciously during deep sleep, and with clairvoyance consciously perceives his physical body, he experiences the legend of Paradise; when his perceptions are aroused by his etheric body, the legend of the Grail presents itself. We must now point out that such legends were given as stories or as religious legends, and so popularised in a definite period. The original source of these legends, which meet us in the form of romance or of religious writings in the external history of the development of mankind, is in the Mysteries, where their contents were established only by means of clairvoyant observations. In the composition of such legends it is especially necessary that the very greatest care should be taken that both subject matter and tone should suit the period and the people to which the legends are given.

In the previous lectures of this course we have explained how through his theosophical occult development the student undergoes certain changes in his physical and etheric body. We shall have now to consider the astral body and the self more closely, and then return briefly to the physical and etheric body. We have seen that when, in order to progress further through receiving the possessions of spiritual wisdom and truth, the student undertakes this self-development, he produces by this means changes in the various part;, of his spiritual and physical organisation. Now, from the information that has been given from the akashic records of various periods of evolution, we know that in the course of the ordinary historical evolution of man these various parts of human nature also undergo a change, naturally, as it were; we know that in the ancient Indian age, the first age of civilisation after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the processes of the human etheric body were conspicuous; we know that afterwards, during the ancient Persian age of civilisation, the change in the human astral body came into prominence, and during the Egyptian-Chaldean age changes took place in the human sentient-soul, and during the Graeco-Latin age there were changes in the human intellectual- or mind-soul. In our times the changes in the human consciousness-soul are more conspicuous. Now, when a legend is given in some particular age—let us say, in the age in which the intellectual-soul undergoes a special change, when the facts in this soul are of special importance—it is important that it should be given in such a way that special attention should be paid to that particular age, and that in the Mysteries from which the legend proceeds it should be agreed that the legend must be so presented that the changes which are going on in the human intellectual- or mind-soul during that age should be protected against any harmful influences incidental to the legend, and specially adapted to its favourable influences.

Thus there can be no question of following his own inner impulse alone, when a person belonging to a Mystery school has the duty laid upon him of imparting such a legend to the world, for he must follow the dictates of the age in which he lives. If we turn our observations in this direction, we shall better understand the changes that take place, more particularly in the human astral body, when a person undergoes an esoteric development.

In the case of an esotericist, or one who seriously undertakes a theosophical development, who makes Theosophy part of his life, his astral body lives a separate life; in the case of an ordinary human being it is not so free, not so independent. The astral body of a student going through development becomes detached and independent to some extent. It does not pass unconsciously into a sort of sleep, but becomes independent, and detached, going through in a different way what a human being usually does in sleep. It thereby enters the condition suited to it. In an ordinary man who lives in the exoteric world, this astral body is connected with the other bodies, and each exercises its special influence upon it. The individually pronounced quality of this human principle does not then come into notice. But when this astral body is torn out its special peculiarities assert themselves. And what are the peculiarities of the astral body? Now, my dear friends, I have often referred to this quality—perhaps, to the disgust of many who are sitting here. The quality peculiar to the human astral body on earth is egotism. When the astral body, apart from the influences which come from the other principles of human nature, asserts, its own peculiar quality, this is seen to be egotism, or the effort to live exclusively in itself and for itself. This belongs to the astral body. It would be wrong, it would be an imperfection in the astral body as such, if it could not permeate itself with the force of egotism, if it could not say to itself, ‘Fundamentally I will attain everything through myself alone, I will do all that I do for myself, I will devote every care to myself alone.’ That is the correct feeling for the astral body. If we bear this in mind we shall understand that esoteric training may produce certain dangers in this direction. Through esoteric development, for instance, because this esoteric development must necessarily make the astral body somewhat free, those persons who take up a kind of Theosophy that is not very serious, without paying attention to all that true Theosophy wishes to give, will in the course of it specially call forth this quality of the astral body, which is egotism. It can be observed in many theosophical and occult societies that while selflessness, universal human love, is preached as a moral principle and repeated again and again, yet through the natural separation of the astral body egotism flourishes. Moreover, to an observer of souls it seems quite justifiable, and yet at the same time suspicious, when universal human love is made into a much-talked of axiom—observe that I do not say it becomes a principle, but that it is always being spoken of; for under certain conditions of the soul-life a person prefers most frequently to speak of what he least possesses, of what he notices that he most lacks, and we can often observe that fundamental truths are most emphasised by those who are most in want of them.

Universal human love ought without this to become something in the development of humanity which completely rules the soul, something which lives in the soul as self-evident, and concerning which the feeling arises: ‘I ought not to mention it so often in vain, I ought not to have it so often on my lips in a superfluous manner.’ Just as a well-known commandment says: Thou shalt not take the Name of God in vain ... so might the following be a commandment to a true and noble humanity: you ought not to utter so often in vain the requirement of the universal human love which is to become the fundamental feature of your souls, for if silence is in many cases a much better means of developing a quality than speech, it is particularly the case in this matter; quietly cultivating it in the heart, and not talking about it, is a far, far better means of developing universal brotherly love than continually speaking about it. Now the advocacy of this exoteric principle has primarily nothing to do with what has been described as the fundamental quality of the astral body: egotism; the endeavour to exist in itself, of itself and through itself.

The question now is: How, then, is it possible to see this in a right light, this quality—let us calmly use the expression—of the astral body which seems so horrible to us, viz., that it wishes to be an absolute egotist? Let us set to work, beginning from the simple facts of life. There are cases even in ordinary life in which egotism expands, and where we must, to a certain degree, look upon this expansion of egotism as a necessary adaptation in life. For example, consider the characteristic of much mother-love, and try to understand how in this case egotism extends from the mother to the child. We may say that the further we penetrate among less developed peoples, and observe what we might call the lion-like way in which the mothers stand up for their children, the more we notice that the mother considers any attack upon her child as an attack upon herself. Her self is extended to the child; and it is a fact that the mother would not feel an attack upon a part of herself more than upon her child. For what she feels in herself she carries over to her child and we cannot find anything better for the regulation of the world than that egotism should be extended in this way from one being to others, and that one being should reckon itself as forming part of another, as it were, and on this account should extend its egotism over this other. Thus we see that egotism ceases to have a dark side when a being expands itself, when the being transfers its feeling and thinking into another, and considers it as belonging to itself. Through extending her egotism to her child, a mother also claims it as her possession: she counts it as part of herself; she does just as the astral body does, saying: All that is connected with me lives through me, to me, with me, etc.

We may see something similar even in more trivial cases than mother-love. Let us suppose that a man has a house, a farm, and land which he cultivates; let us suppose this man loves his house, his farm, his land and his work-people as his own body; he looks upon the matter in such a way that they are to him an extension of his own body, and loves his house, farm, land and people—as a woman may, under certain circumstances, love her gown, as forming part of her own body. In this case the being of the man expands in a certain sense to what is around him. Now, if his care expands in this way to his possessions and his servants, so that he watches over them and resists any attack upon them as he would an attack on his own body, we must then say that the fact of this environment being permeated with his egotism is extremely beneficial. Under certain circumstances, what is called love may, however, be very self-seeking. Observation of life will show how often what is called love is self-seeking. But an egotism extended beyond the person may also be very selfless, that is, it may protect, cherish and take care of what belongs to it.

By such examples as these, my dear friends, we ought to learn that life cannot be parcelled out according to ideas. We talk of egotism and altruism, and we can make very beautiful systems with such ideas as egotism and altruism. But facts tear such systems to pieces; for when egotism so extends its interests to what is around it that it considers this as part of itself, and thus cherishes and takes care of it, it then becomes selflessness; and when altruism becomes such that it only wishes to make the whole world happy according to its own ideas, when it wishes to impress its thoughts and feelings on the whole world with all its might, and wishes to adopt the axiom, ‘If you will not be my brother, I will break your head,’ then even altruism may become very self-seeking. The reality which lives in forces and in facts cannot be enclosed in ideas, and a great part of that which runs counter to human progress lies in the fact that in immature heads and immature minds there arises again and again the belief that the reality can in some way be bottled up in ideas.

The astral body may be described as an egotist. The consequence of this is that the development which liberates the astral body must reckon with the fact that the interests of man must expand, become wider and wider. Indeed, if our astral body is to liberate itself from the other principles of human nature in the right manner, its interest must include the whole of the earth and earth-humanity. In fact, the interests of humanity upon the earth must become our interests; our interests must cease to be connected in any way with what is merely personal; all that concerns mankind, not only in our own times, but all that has concerned mankind at any time in the whole of its earthly development, must arouse our deepest interests; we much reach the point of considering as an extension of what belongs to us, not only what belongs to our family by blood, not only what is connected with us such as house and farm and land, but we must make everything connected with the development of the earth our own affair.

When in our astral body we are interested in all the affairs of the earth, when all the affairs of the earth become our own, we may give way to the sense of selfhood in our astral body. This, however, is necessary, that the interests of mankind on earth should be our interests. Consider from this point of view the two legends I spoke of in the last lecture. When they were given to humanity at a certain stage, they were given from the point of view that the human being should be raised from any individual interest to the universal interests of the earth. The legend of Paradise leads the pupil directly to the starting point of our earthly evolution, when man had not yet entered upon his first incarnation, or when he is just beginning it, where Lucifer approaches him, when he still stands at the beginning of his whole development and can actually take all human interests into his own breast. The very deepest problem of education and training is contained in the story of Paradise, that story which uplifts one to the standpoint of all humanity, and imprints in every human breast an interest which can also speak in each. When the pictures of the legend of Paradise, as we have tried to comprehend them, press into the human soul, they act in such a way that the astral body is penetrated through and through by them; and under the influence of this human being whose horizon is expanded over the whole earth, the astral body may also make its own interest all that now enters its sphere. It has now arrived at being able to consider the interests of the earth as its own. Try, my dear friends, to consider seriously and earnestly what a universal, educative force is contained in such a legend, and what a spiritual impulse lies there.

It is the same with the legend of the Grail. While the Paradise legend is given to the humanity of the earth, inasmuch as it directs this humanity to the origin, the starting-point of its earthly development, while the Paradise legend, as given, uplifts us to the horizon of the whole development of humanity, the legend of the Grail is given that it may sink into the innermost depths of the astral body, into its most vital interests, just because, if only left to itself, this astral body becomes an egotist which only considers the interests that are its very own.

As regards the interests of the astral body, we can really only err in two directions. One is the direction towards Amfortas, and the other, before Amfortas is fully redeemed, leads towards Perceval. Between these two lies the true development of man, in so far as his astral body is concerned. This astral body strives to develop the forces of egotism within itself. But if it brings personal interests into this egotism it becomes corroded, and while it ought to extend over the whole earth, it will shrivel up into the individual personality. This may not be. For if it occurs, then through the activity of the personality, which expresses its ego in the blood, the whole human personality is wounded—one errs on the Amfortas side. The fundamental error of Amfortas consists in his carrying into the sphere in which the astral body ought to have gained the right to be an egotist, that which still remains in him as personal desires and wishes. The moment we take personal interests into the sphere where the astral body ought to separate itself from personal interest it is harmful, we become like the wounded Amfortas.

But the other error can also lead to harm, and only fails to do so when the being who suffers this harm is filled with the innocence of Perceval. Perceval repeatedly sees the Holy Grail pass. To a certain extent he commits a wrong. Each time the Holy Grail is carried past it is on his lips to ask for whom this food is really intended; but he does not ask; and at length the meal is over without his having asked. And so, after this meal he has to withdraw, without having the opportunity of making good what he had omitted to do. It is really just as though a man, not yet fully mature, were to become clairvoyant for a moment during the night, when he would be separated as if by an abyss from what is contained in the castle of his body, and were then to glance for a moment into it; and as if then without having obtained the appropriate knowledge, that is, without having asked the question, everything were again to be closed to him; for then, even though he wakened, he would not be able to enter this castle again. What did Perceval really neglect to do?

We have heard what the Holy Grail contains. It contains that by which the physical instrument of man on earth must be nourished: the extract, the pure mineral extract, which is obtained from all foods and which unites in the purest part of the human brain with the purest sense-impressions, impressions which come into us through our senses. Now, to whom is this food to be handed? It is really to be handed—as appears to us when from the exoteric poetic story we enter into the esoteric presentation of it in the Mysteries—it is really to be handed to the human being who has obtained the understanding of what makes man mature enough gradually to raise Himself consciously to that which this Holy Grail is. Through what do we gain the faculty to raise ourselves consciously to that which is the Holy Grail?

In the story it is very clearly indicated for whom the Holy Grail is really intended. And when we go into the Mystery presentation of the legend of the Grail we find in addition something very special. In the original legend of the Grail the ruler of the castle is a Fisher King, a king ruling over fisher folk. There was Another Who also walked among fisher folk, but He did not wish to be the king of these fishermen, rather something else; He scorned to rule over them as a king, but He brought them something more than did the king who ruled over them—this One was Christ Jesus.

Thus we are shown that the error of the Fisher King, who in the original legend is Amfortas, was a turning aside. He is not altogether worthy to receive health really through the Grail; because he wishes to rule his fisher folk by means of power. He does not allow the spirit alone to rule among this fisher folk.

At first Perceval is not sufficiently awake inwardly to ask in a self-conscious way: What is the purpose of the Grail? What does it demand? In the case of the Fisher King it required him to kill out his personal interest and cause it to expand to the interest in all humanity shown by Christ Jesus. In the case of Perceval it was necessary that he should raise his interest above the mere innocent vision to the inner understanding of what in every man is the same, what comes to the whole of humanity, the gift of the Holy Grail. Thus in a wonderful way between Perceval and Amfortas, the original Fisher King, floats the ideal of the Mystery of Golgotha, and at an important part of the legend it is delicately indicated that on the one hand the Fisher King has taken too much personality into the sphere of the astral body, and on the other stands Perceval, who has carried thither too little general interest in the world, who is still too [unsophisticated, who does not feel sufficient interest in the world. It is the immense educative value of the Grail legend that it could so work into the souls of the students of the Holy Grail that they had before them something like a balance: in the one scale that which was in Amfortas, and in the other that which was in Perceval; and they then knew that the balance was to be established. If the astral body follows its own innate interests, it will uplift itself to that horizon of universal humanity which is gained when the statement becomes a truth: ‘Where two are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them, no matter where in the development of the earth these two may be found.’ (Matthew 18, 20.)

At this point, my dear friends, I beg you not to take a part for the whole, but to take this lecture and the next together; for they may cause misunderstanding. But it is absolutely necessary that the human astral body should in its development be uplifted to the horizon of humanity in a very special way, so that the interest, common to all humanity, becomes its own, so that it feels wronged, hurt, sad within itself, when humanity is harmed in any way. To this end it is necessary that when, through his esoteric development, the student gradually succeeds in making his astral body free and independent from the other principles of his human nature, he should then arm and protect himself against any influences of other astral bodies; for when the astral body is free it is no longer protected by the physical body and etheric body, which are a strong castle, as it were, for the astral. It is free, it becomes permeable, and the forces in other astral bodies can very easily work into it. Astral bodies stronger than itself can influence it, should it be unarmed with its own forces. It would be fatal if someone were to attain the free management of his astral body, and yet were as innocent as regards its conditions as Perceval was at the beginning. That will not do; for then all sorts of influences proceeding from other astral bodies would be able to have a corresponding effect on his.

Now, what we have just mentioned also applies to a certain extent to the external exoteric world. Humanity upon the earth lives under certain religious systems. These religious systems have their cults and rituals. These rituals surround a member of a cult with imaginations obtained from the higher worlds by the help of the astral body. The moment such a religious community admits a man to its membership he is in the midst of imaginations which, while he is influenced by the ritual, liberate his astral body. In any religious ritual the astral body becomes, to a certain extent, free, at any rate for brief moments. The more powerful the ritual, the more does it suppress the influence of the etheric body and the physical body; the more it works by means of methods that liberate the astral body, the more is the astral body, during the ceremony, enticed out of the etheric body and physical body. For this reason also—though it might seem as if I am speaking in ridicule, which I am not—for this reason there is no place so dangerous to sleep in as a church, because in sleep the astral body separates from the etheric body and physical body, and because what goes on in the ritual insinuates itself into the astral body; for it is brought down from the higher worlds by the help of astral bodies. Thus to go to sleep in church, which in some places is strongly attractive to people, is something that really should be avoided. This applies more to churches which have a ritual; it does not apply so much to those religious communities which, through the ideas of modern times, have relinquished a certain ritual or limit themselves to a minimum of ritual. We are not now speaking of these things from any preference or otherwise for one creed or another, but purely according to the standard of objective facts. When, therefore, a person has emancipated his astral body from the other principles of his human nature, the impulses and forces obtained by the help of astral bodies may easily influence him. In this respect it is also possible that a person who has arrived at the free use of his astral body, if he is stronger than another whose astral body is to some extent emancipated, may obtain a very great influence over the latter. It is then absolutely like a transference of the forces of the astral body of the stronger personality to that of the weaker. And if we then clairvoyantly observe the weaker personality, he is really seen to bear within his astral body the pictures and imaginations of the stronger astral personality. You see how necessary it is that ethics should be in the ascendant where occultism is to be cultivated; for naturally egotism cannot be cultivated without really striving to emancipate the astral body from the other principles of human nature; but the most destructive thing in the field of occultism is for the stronger personalities to strive in any way for power to further their personal interests and personal intentions. Only those personalities who absolutely renounce all personal influence are really entitled to work in the domain of occultism, and the greatest ideal of the occultist who is to attain anything legitimate is not to wish to attain anything whatever by means of his own personality, but to put aside as far as possible all consideration of personal sympathy or antipathy. Therefore, whoever possesses sympathy or antipathy for one thing or another, and yet wishes to work as an occultist, must carefully relegate these sympathies and antipathies to his own private sphere, and only allow them to prevail there; in any case he may not cultivate and cherish any of these personal sympathies and antipathies in the domain in which an occult movement is to flourish. And, paradoxical as it may sound, we may say: To the occult teacher his own teaching is a matter of no concern; in fact, the matter of least concern of all to him is the teaching which he can really only give by means of his own talents and temperament. Teaching will only have a meaning when as such it contains nothing in any way really personal, but simply what can be of help to souls. Therefore, no occult teacher will at any time give any of his knowledge to his own age if he is aware that this part of his knowledge is useless to it, and could only be useful to a different age. All this comes into consideration when we are speaking of the peculiar nature of the astral body under the influence of occult development. During the preparation for our age and its progressive development a further complication arises. For what is our own age? It is the age of the development of the consciousness-soul. Nothing is so closely connected with the egotism which accentuates the narrow, personal interests as the consciousness-soul. Hence, in no other age is there such a temptation to confuse the most personal interests with those that belong to mankind in general. This age has gradually to gather the interests of humanity into the human ego, as it were; into that very part of the human ego which is the consciousness-soul. Towards the dawn of our age we see human interests being concentrated into the ego, the acme of the sense of selfhood. In this respect it is extremely instructive seriously to consider whether, for example, what Saint Augustine wrote in his ‘Confessions’ would ever have been possible in ancient Greece. It would have been absolutely out of the question.

The whole nature of the Greek was such that his inner being was in a certain harmony with his outer nature, so that external interests were at the same time inner interests, and inner interests extended into outer ones. Consider the whole Greek culture. It was of such a nature that everywhere a certain harmony between the human inner being and the outer must be taken for granted. We can only understand Greek art and tragedy, Greek historians and philosophers, when we know that among the Greeks that which pertained to the soul was poured into the outer culture, and as a matter of course showed its union with the inner. Let us compare this with the Confessions of Saint Augustine. Everything lives for himself; he searches, digs and investigates into his own being. If we look for the entirely personal, individual note in the writings of Saint Augustine we can find it in them all. Although Augustine lived long before our age, yet he prepared for it; his was the spirit in whose records we find the first dawn, long before the rising of the sun, the first dawn of the age apportioned to the consciousness-soul. This can be perceived in every line written by him, and every line of his can be distinguished by a delicate perception from all that was possible in ancient Greece.

Now, when we know that Augustine was advancing to meet the age when the sense of selfhood—the occupation of man with his own inner being even within the physical body—is as a sort of character of this age, we can understand that one who, like Augustine, has more extended interests as well, and observes the whole of the development of mankind, will truly shudder when a human being comes to him who gives him the idea that, on attaining a certain height, the astral body must naturally develop a sort of selfishness. Purely, nobly and grandly Augustine attacks self-centredness.

We might say that he attacks it selflessly. But he came into the age when humanity had separated itself from the general interests of the outer world. Recollect that in the third post-Atlantean age every Egyptian directed his gaze to the stars, where he read human destiny, how the soul was connected with interests common to humanity. Naturally this could only be attained when the human being was still capable, in the ancient elementary clairvoyance, of keeping his astral body separate from the physical body; therefore, Augustine could not but shudder when in contact with a person who reminded him, as it were, that with higher development comes selfishness. He can comprehend this, he feels it, his instinct tells him that he is living towards the age of egoism. When, therefore, a person confronts him who represents the higher development beyond that in the physical body, he feels: we are moving in the direction of egotism. At the same time he cannot comprehend that this person is bringing with him an interest common to the whole of humanity. Try to obtain a perception of how Augustine, according to his own confession, confronts the Manichaean Bishop, Faustinus—for it is he whom I have described. When he met with Faustinus, Augustine had the experience of a man facing the age of egoism in a noble way, wishing to protect it against egotism by the inner power alone, and who must turn away from such a man as the Manichaean Bishop, Faustinus. He turned away from him because, to him, Faustinus represented something in which he ought not to take part; for he conceals something within him which could not be understood at all in exoteric life in such an age. Thus the Manichaean Bishop, Faustinus, confronts the Church Father, Augustine; Augustine, who is facing the age of the consciousness-soul, meets with a human being who preserves his connection with the spiritual world as it can be preserved in an occult movement, and who thereby also preserves the fundamental quality of the astral body, at which Augustine shudders and, from his standpoint, justly.

Let us pass on a few centuries. We then meet at the University of Paris with a man who is but little known in literature; for what he has written gives no idea of his personality; what he has written seems pedantic. But personally he must have worked in a magnificent way; personally he seems to have worked principally in such a way that he brought into his circle something like a renewal of the Greek conception of the world. He was the personification of the Renaissance. He died in 1518, working until the time of his death at the Paris University. This personality was related to the Greek world—though much more on the exoteric side—in the same way as the Manichaean Bishop Faustinus was related to the Manichees, who above all else had received, among many other things in their traditions, all the great and good aspects of the third post-Atlantean, the Egyptian-Chaldean age. Thus there was this Manichaean Bishop Faustinus, who came in touch with Augustine, and who, through what he was, had preserved the occult foundations of the third post-Atlantean age. In 1518 there died in Paris a man who had carried over, though exoterically, certain aspects of the foundation of the fourth post-Atlantean age. This caused him to impress those who worked around him in traditional Christianity as weird, sinister. The monks looked upon him as their deadly enemy; yet he made a great impression upon Erasmus of Rotterdam when the latter was in Paris. But it seemed to Erasmus as if his external environment were ill-suited to the individuality which really lived within this remarkable soul; and when Erasmus had departed and gone to England, he wrote to this man, who in the meantime had become his friend, that he wished his friend could free himself from his gouty physical body and fly through the air to England, for there he would find in the external environment a much better soil for what he felt in his soul. The fact that the personality who worked at that time could give rise to Greek feeling and sensation in such an evident manner, we see with special clearness if we bear in mind the relationship between the refined and sensitive Erasmus and this personality. Thus, just at the very beginning of the age of selfhood, one might say, lived this personality who died in Paris in 1518. He lived as an enemy of those who wished to adapt the life of human souls to the age of selfhood, and who shuddered, as it were, at a soul who could work in such a way because he wished to conjure up another age, when man was, so to say, closer to the selfhood of the astral body—the Greek age. This personality who was called Faustus Andrelinus affected Erasmus very sympathetically.

In the sixteenth century, in central Europe, we meet with another personality, who is represented as being a sort of travelling minstrel, regarding whom we are told that he deviated from the traditional theology. This personality no longer wished to call himself a theologian, calling himself a man of the world and a doctor; he placed his Bible on the shelf for a time, and engaged in the study of nature. Now the study of nature, in the age when the transition took place from all that was ancient to all that is modern, was also such that it brought to man the astral selfhood, just as did Manichaeism and the ancient thought of Greece. Thus what stood at that time on the border between ancient alchemy and modern chemistry, between ancient astrology and modern astronomy, etc., brought the astral selfhood home to man. This peculiar flickering and shimmering of natural science between the ancient and modern standpoints brought home to man—when he laid his Bible for a time on the shelf—such an astral activity that it necessitated coming to an understanding with egotism. No wonder that those shuddered at it, who with their traditions wished to adjust themselves to the age of selfhood in which the consciousness-soul had already fully dawned; and there arose in Central Europe the legend of the third Faust, John Faust, also called George Faust, an actual historical personality. And the sixteenth century welded together all the horror of the egotism of the astral body by combining the three Fausts, the Faust of Augustine, that of Erasmus, and the Faust of Central Europe, into one—into that figure depicted in popular books in Central Europe, which also became the Faust of Marlowe. Out of a complete reversal of this character Goethe created his Faust, clearly showing us that it is possible not to shudder at the bearer of that which brings home to us the essence of the astral, but to understand him better, so that to us he may be evidence of a development which will call forth from us the words, ‘We can redeem him.’ Whole ages have occupied themselves with the question of the egoistic nature of the astral body, and in legendary stories and, indeed, even in history echoes the horror of man at its nature, and the human longing to solve the problem of this astral body in the right manner, in a manner corresponding to the wise guidance of the world, and to the esoteric development of the individual human soul.

As we approach the processes in the astral body and in the Self of man as experienced in occult development, it becomes more and more difficult to describe them. For the experience in these parts of human nature is far removed from the experience of everyday life. In the ordinary life of the soul we usually experience life in the astral body as the flowing and ebbing of desires, emotions, impulses, passions, etc.; and we also feel as our inward life that which is expressed collectively in the ego. But what is thus experienced is really nothing but the reflection, the mirroring of the self and the astral body in the etheric body and the physical body; it is no conscious experience of the astral body and the self. We cannot through what we experience in the ordinary life of the soul obtain a true idea of the actual experience in the higher worlds in our astral body and self; therefore, when we describe these things, we must have recourse to a kind of representation suited to these higher worlds, we must have recourse to imaginations: and these imaginations are really actually experienced. But one must not imagine that the beholding of the clairvoyant imaginations is the only thing that we experience; in a sense it is not even the principal thing; the principal thing is what we then experience inwardly through it; the processes and inward tests which the soul goes through when it confronts these imaginations.

And this is particularly the case with such an important and powerful imagination as that which has been described as the Paradise-Imagination. One who really experiences this Paradise-Imagination, who can have it before him as a conquest in higher experience, feels himself standing in the middle of an inner surging of the soul, he feels himself laid hold of by an inner soul-wave, and he feels that he himself might err in the two different directions described in the last lecture; he feels himself attracted, vividly attracted by all the passions and emotions which continue to work from the personal life he had previously led on the physical plane; for the personal interests which we have gradually acquired on the physical plane work with ever-increasing strength as numberless magnetic forces of attraction. But, on the other hand, he feels something else. The nearer he comes, the more clearly he sees this Paradise-Imagination, the more power have these forces which draw him down to personal interests. What they bring about in him is that they blot out the Paradise-Imagination more and more, or perhaps it would be better to say that they prevent it from appearing properly; he is as though benumbed: the personal interests, emotions, feelings, sensations, etc., which we drag about with us, are so many hundreds and hundreds of magnetic forces which are so many causes of stupefaction. When the student tries to progress so far in his self-training that he observes his astral body more and more truthfully (for the Paradise-Imagination is experienced outside the physical body and etheric body, that is, in the astral body and Ego), when he has grasped the true nature and character of the astral body, he knows that it is the Egotist. And he alone is in the right position at this point, which he has reached through self-training, if he does not allow his egotistical interests to become personal to his nature and to draw him with numberless forces, but can make the interests of the whole of humanity and the world more and more his own. At this stage of occult development a counter-balance against the egotism of the astral body is felt, something which is the more evident, the more the egotistic forces bestir themselves in the now liberated astral body. There is an ever-increasing feeling of solitude, icy solitude. This icy solitude is also part of what is experienced in the inward surging of the soul. It is this icy solitude which cures one of allowing egotism to have the upper hand, and the student has trained himself correctly if at this point in his occult development he can feel the impulse to be everything through himself and for himself, and can at the same time also feel the frosty solitude approaching him.

It is just as important to have this feeling as to approach gradually to the Paradise-Imagination. And when these two forces, that of the egotism which expands to world-interests and the frosty solitude, work together, the student then draws nearer and nearer to the Paradise-Imagination. And when this latter appears in all its vividness, when it is actually there, the time has also arrived for experiencing the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold in the entirely right way. It is difficult to give a single description of the Guardian of the Threshold—I have done so on different occasions in our theosophical considerations. It is not so much our task to-day to describe the Guardian of the Threshold as to describe the inward experiences in the sheaths of man and in the human self. If the student draws closer to the Paradise-Imagination; that is to say, if it becomes more and more vivid, and he meets the Guardian of the Threshold, he then feels the full force of the magnetic forces just described, and as he confronts the Guardian of the Threshold he feels—and this is a dreadful sensation—he feels as though chained or rooted to the spot. For all the magnetic forces which draw him down to what is personal now exercise their strongest influence; and only if he progressed to the point at which the frosty solitude has become so instructive that he is really able to make the world's interests his own, does he pass the Guardian of the Threshold; and then only does he feel himself united with the Paradise-Imagination, and become one with it. He then feels himself within it. The experience is like a coming into a right relationship with the world-interests, so that he can confess: ‘Now only may I allow my own interests to assert themselves, for they have become the interests of the world.’

But if he does not pass, if he has not yet acquired sufficient universal interests, his personal interests then draw him back and there comes about what in Occultism is described as: not passing the Guardian of the Threshold. These personal interests obscure the Paradise-Imagination; he may obtain separate parts of it, as it were, indistinct impressions, but not perfect ones, and one is dragged back, as it were, into the personal life. It may then happen that he has thereby received the power to have a certain degree of clairvoyant experience; but these are then really maya-experiences; they may be quite misleading, for they are entirely permeated and clouded by personal interests.

Only through such an experience is the student able fully to comprehend—for it now becomes a serious matter to him, as it were—that personal interests must pass into world-interests if he really wishes to see accurately in the Spiritual world. It is actually the case that before attaining this stage he cannot thoroughly believe this, for the personal interests are against it; but now having reached this point he sees it.

We have now reached a very hazardous place in the description of occult conditions; yet the endeavour shall be made to describe the next steps also, as they appear from the experience of occultists, and in the way in which they must be given, reckoning with the fact that our hearers are trying, in a sense, to make these things a possession of their own souls, and to work upon them further; for things such as these cannot be expressed in dry abstract ideas; we must try to portray what appears to clairvoyant vision. Now, this clairvoyant vision should by no means be understood as something that can be rigidly and diagrammatically depicted; but what I shall describe is again a typical experience, like that of the Paradise-experience, and we must really have this experience in order to recognise afterwards what knowledge and occult vision really are. Until this experience comes we can have no real idea, I mean no experienced idea, of occult vision; but still, when such a thing is described, we can understand it, if we bring sound human understanding to bear upon it. It must now be described, as far as is possible, from vision itself.

I will suppose that the student has passed the Guardian of the Threshold and the union with the Paradise-Imagination is accomplished; that he feels within it, as if this Paradise-Imagination had now become his own greater astral sheath. He still distinctly feels his own astral body about him, and knows that it is connected with his Self, but at the same time he knows that this astral body extends its interests to all that concerns the objects and beings of the Paradise-Imagination. When the student knows his union with the Paradise-Imagination is accomplished, he may then have somewhat the following impression: he will perceive his own astral body as belonging to him, and when he has felt sufficiently what has just been described as icy solitude, this feeling becomes a power within him, and it will preserve him from gazing at nothing but himself after his accomplishment of his union with the Paradise-Imagination. He will thereby create for himself, as it were, the organ by which he may behold other beings. His occult vision will first fall on another being, a being who will make a special impression upon him, because it will appear just like himself. He himself feels that he is in his Self and astral body; the other being also at first appears to him with a Self and an astral body. This is because the qualities and powers which the pupil brings with him to such a moment enables him to see just such a being, which presents itself as if in a self and an astral body. The student will now have the following experience—produced by the frosty solitude which he has learned to bear.

The forces of his astral body will be seen endeavouring to flow outwards. If I were to represent this in diagram, I should have to draw it in this manner; but, as I have said, it is only very diagrammatically expressed. I draw the Self something like the nucleus of a comet, and the astral body like the comet's tail spreading out above.

But that is only a diagram; for the student really sees a being, he sees himself as a being, and this vision is much more complex than the vision of one's own being as physical man. He also sees within his own self the other being to which he looks across. As already said, this is a typical experience. His vision simply falls upon such a being, but he feels that this being is not in such a sphere of frosty solitude as he is himself, and therefore its astral body is seen as though directed downwards. It is extremely important to experience this, to feel oneself as if in an astral body which opens upwards, develops its rays of force upwards, wishes to stream upwards, and yet to see the other being as a Self whose astral body develops its forces downwards.

With this typical experience there now comes into the self-consciousness something like the following: ‘I am of lower degree, of less value than this other being. What is valuable in the other being is that it can open its astral body downwards, it can, as it were, pour its forces downwards.’ And the student's impression is that of having left the physical world. The forces which proceed downwards from the astral body of the other go to the physical world, and work there as forces of blessing; in short, he has the impression that he is confronting a being that may send down to the earth, as a Spiritual rain of blessing, that which it has acquired in the Spiritual world; whereas he himself cannot direct his astral body downwards, it insists on going upwards. He has a feeling that he is of less value, because he cannot direct his astral body downwards. Further, he has a feeling that this consciousness arising thus within him must lead to a Spiritual act. A Spiritual decision matures. This Spiritual decision is to take his loneliness to this second being and warm his coldness with his warmth; he unites himself with this other being. Now, for a moment he has the impression that his own consciousness is being blotted out, as though he had brought about a sort of killing of his own being, a sort of consuming of his own being as though by fire. Then flashes into the self-consciousness, which had previously felt itself blotted out, something which he now first learns to know: Inspiration. He feels himself inspired. It is like a conversation, a typical conversation, now held with a being whom he has only learned to know because it allows him to share in its inspiration. If a student is really capable of understanding what this being sends in as his inspiring voice, he might translate what it says in somewhat the following words: ‘Because thou hast found the way to the other and hast united thyself with his beneficial rain of sacrifice, thou may'st return to the earth with him, within him, and I will make thee his guardian on the earth.’ And the student has the feeling that something of infinite importance has been taken into his soul through being able to hear these words of inspiration. In the Spiritual there is a being that is more precious than oneself, and that is .allowed to pour its astral being downwards in blessing. Through the impression of being able to unite with this being, and being its guardian when he descends, the student first learns to understand how, as physical human beings who tread the earth, we are really related through our physical and etheric coverings to that which is impregnated as higher powers in the Self and the astral body. In our physical and etheric coverings we are guardians of that which is to develop further and further to higher spheres. Only in this inner experience, when he feels his external being as the guardian of the inner being, does a man really have a true understanding of the relation of the external being to the inner being of man.

Now, when the student has passed the Guardian of the Threshold, the experience which I have just described does not stand alone, but is followed by another. I have described the purely clairvoyant and inspired experience the student may have when, outside the physical body and etheric body, he arrives at union with the Paradise-Imagination, and then obtains the inspiration which first gives an idea of the inter-relationship between the sheaths. But when he has passed the Guardian of the Threshold a second impression is added to the first one; the vision opens past the Guardian of the Threshold down into the physical world. I draw a line to represent the boundary between the higher Spiritual worlds and the physical world; above it is the realm of the Spiritual worlds and below that of the physical.

He now sees down into the physical world, as it were, and there appears another picture, a picture of himself standing below as man. The student observes his own astral body; but this astral body which now appears as a reflection is directed downwards, it does not try to develop the force to stream towards the Spiritual world; it clings closely, as it were, to the physical plane, it does not raise itself to the heights. He also sees the reflection of the other being, whose astral body streams upwards. He has the feeling that this astral body is streaming into the Spiritual world. He sees himself and he sees the other, and he has the feeling: ‘Thou standest there below once more; in the place of the other being there stands there below a quite different man; he is a better man than thou; his astral body strives upward, it rises upward like smoke. Thy astral body strives towards the earth, it goes like smoke downward.’ He has a feeling of the Self which dwells within him as he thus looks down, and the following dreadful impression comes to him: Within thee a resolve is being formed, a dreadful resolve, the resolution to kill the other whom thou feelest to be better than thou. The student knows that this decision does not come entirely from the Self, for his Self is there above. It is another being that speaks out of the one there below; but this being suggests the decision to kill the other. And he again hears the voice which previously inspired him, but now it sounds as a dreadful, avenging voice: ‘Where is thy brother?’ And from this self bursts forth a voice hostile to the former. Previously the inspiration was as follows: ‘Through having united thyself with the beneficent powers of the other being, thou desirest to pour thyself downwards with them, and I will make thee the guardian of the other being.’ There now bursts forth from this being that one recognises as oneself the words: ‘I will not be my brother's keeper.’ First comes the resolve to kill the other, then the protest against the inspiring voice which said: ‘Because thou hast wished to unite thy coldness with that warmth I appoint thee to be the guardian of that other;’ the protest: ‘I will not be his guardian.’

When we have had this imaginative experience, we then know all of which the human soul is capable, and above all we know one thing: that, if perverted, the noblest things in the Spiritual world may become the most dreadful things in the physical world. We know that in the depths of the human soul, through the perversion of the noblest readiness to sacrifice, may arise the wish to kill our companion. From this moment we know what is meant in the Bible by the story of Cain and Abel—but only from this moment—for the story of Cain and Abel is none other than the reproduction of an occult experience, which has just been described. If the writer of the story of Cain and Abel had been able to describe what took place with man before the time of the story of Paradise from other reasons than those displayed in the course of the development of humanity, he would have described the first experience, the upper one (on the diagram). Thus he begins with the story of Paradise, and describes its reflection; for Cain felt in this manner towards Abel before that period in the development of the earth indicated by the story of Paradise, he felt towards him as it has been shown here above. And after the temptation, and after the loss of the vision which is regained in occult vision through the Paradise-Imagination, Cain's readiness to sacrifice had passed into what appears here below; his readiness to sacrifice had really changed into the wish to kill the other. The cry we read of in the Bible: ‘Am I to be my brother's keeper?’ is the reverse reflection of the other inspiration: ‘I will make thee the guardian of the other here below on the earth.’ From this you will be able to see that these typical experiences are certainly important; for they bring about a certain union between what we may be to-day and the interests common to all humanity. But at the same time they show us very clearly by what we experience in them in our pulsing soul-life, that the principal thing is to feel the colossal leap the development of humanity has made from what I described to you as the first, the pre-earthly imagination, as it were, to that which is presented in the story of Cain and Abel as an event in humanity after the expulsion from Paradise, after the expulsion through which the Guardian of the Threshold has become invisible for man. The knowledge of this leap in the development of humanity really first shows us what this earthly man is; for when we really feel through and through what has just been described, we gradually experience that this earthly man, as he now is here upon the earth, is the perversion of what he once was. And we then know with great certainty what we should have become if nothing else had intervened. If we had simply developed in this earthly evolution without anything further, we should have become aware of what this is the reflection on the earth. We were not to know this to begin with. It is really only in our present age that man is allowed to know of what the story of Cain and Abel is the reflection, that it is the reflection of a lofty sacrifice. All that was above, everything before Paradise was concealed, for the Guardian himself hid it from us, when, in other words, man was driven out of Paradise. This could only come about through the physical body and etheric body of man being now so permeated with forces that he does not carry out what appears as the reflection—for he certainly would carry it out if he were to feel all that is in the astral body. The physical body and etheric body so stupefy the human being that his wish to kill his fellow is not actualised. Consider what is said in this simple sentence: In that the good, progressive, divine Spiritual Powers gave man a physical and an etheric body, so that he cannot look back, something like a sort of stupefaction was at the same time poured over the wish for the war of each against all. The desire for this is not roused in the soul, because the physical body and etheric body of man were prepared in such a way that this desire is benumbed. A person cannot see his astral body; therefore this wish, too, remains unknown to him; he does not carry it out.

If we wish really to describe the interaction of the astral body and the self, we must describe things which not only actually remain hidden to human nature, but which must so remain. But what has been brought about through the stunning of this and similar wishes—wishes connected with the annihilation and destruction of human and other communal life on the physical plane? They have become debilitated; the human soul only perceives them in a weakened form; it only feels them to a slight extent. And the dim feeling of those wishes that would be something so terrible if man were to allow them free expression, as they really are—this is really our human earthly knowledge.

I am now giving you for the first time a definition of the nature of human earthly knowledge. It consists of the dim and dulled impulses of destruction. Shiva in his most terrible form, so far stupefied that he cannot freely find expression but is, as it were, made threadbare, compressed into the human world of ideas—this is the maya of the human being, this is the knowledge of man. Thus knowledge had to be so weakened—that is to say, the impulses and inner forces had to be so weakened—that the original terrible impulse—ruled by Ahriman, that Ahriman's power (for originally it is Ahriman who gives rise to this wish) should be so far weakened that he could not express himself through man, who would have thereby made himself permanently a servant of Shiva. The sum total of these forces had to be so weakened that its expression in man only enables him to transpose himself into the being of another with his conceptions and ideas. When we try to force an idea of our own into the being of another, when we try to imbue another with a conception of our own, this conception impressed into the nature of the other is the blunted weapon of Cain which was thrust into Abel. And because this weapon was thus blunted it was made possible for that which was at a bound reversed into its opposite, to pass over into evolution. And thus by a slower evolution, through ever-increasing strengthening of his knowledge, man reaches at last the experience of something he was not permitted to express in the physical world because it there became a destructive impulse; stage by stage he develops first ordinary knowledge, then imaginative knowledge, which enters more into the being of another, then inspirational knowledge, which penetrates still more into the being of another, till in intuitive knowledge he enters it entirely and lives on spiritually in the other being.

Thus we gradually struggle up to the comprehension of what this self really is. As to its innermost nature, the astral body is seen to be the great egotist; the self is more than that—it not only lives for itself, but wishes to pass over into others as well. And knowledge, such as is acquired on earth, is this dulled passion to enter into another, not merely to expand oneself and all that one is, but further to pass beyond oneself into another. It is egotism intensified and extended beyond itself.

If you bear in mind what the origin of knowledge is, you will then understand that there is always the possibility of misusing it, for if this is a true knowledge in the Self, the moment it goes astray it is misused. Only by progressing, and making this penetration into another more and more spiritual, and the renunciation by the astral body which has expanded to world-interests, of this penetration into another's being, only by leaving his constitution quite untouched and placing his interests higher than our own, can we make ourselves ready for higher knowledge. Moreover, we cannot recognise a being of the hierarchy of the angels, for instance, if we have not reached the stage when the inner being of the angels interests us more than does our own. As long as we have more interest in our own being than in the being of the angels, we cannot recognise them. Thus we must first educate ourselves up to world-interests, and then to interests that go even further, so that another can be more important and of more consequence than oneself. The moment we try to develop further in occult experiences, while yet remaining more precious to ourselves than the other beings we wish to know, that same moment we go astray. At this point, if you follow out this train of thought, you really come to a true conception of black magic; for black magic begins where occult activity is carried into the world without our first being in the position to expand our own interests into world-interests, without being able to value other interests more than our own.

Such things can really only be touched upon, so as to arouse conceptions concerning them; they are too important for more than this. I wished to show how we may gradually come to recognise in its true form, not in its maya, that which dwells within us as astral body and self; for what a man experiences inwardly as his astral body is not the true astral body, but merely the reflection of that in the etheric body. And what a man calls his self is not the true Ego, but a reflection of the Ego in his physical body. A man only experiences reflections of his inner being. If he were to experience the forms of his own inner astral body and Ego before he was sufficiently mature, impulses of destruction would be enkindled within him; he would become an aggressive being; the desire to injure would arise within him. And such things underlie all black magic. Although the paths followed by black magic are many, the effect they aim at is always something like a covenant with Ahriman or Shiva. We can only learn to recognise the astral body and Ego in their true form if at the same time we acknowledge the necessity of developing them and making them worthy of being what they ought to be. The innermost nature of the astral body is egotism; but it should become our ideal to be permitted to be an egotist because the interests of the world have become our own. It must be our ideal to be allowed to enter into another being because we do not intend to seek our own interests, but we find the other being more important than ourselves. Self-education must go so far that we feel this upper picture in all its occult-moral significance; that we so gradually transform this picture which is our self, that we can no longer be warmed by our own emotions, impulses, desires and passions, but that with living our life in the astral body we enter the frosty solitude; we then thereby open ourselves to the warmth, to the warm interest which streams forth from the other worlds, and wish to unite ourselves with the beneficent forces proceeding from this other being. This is at the same time the starting-point for a gradual raising of our self to the higher Hierarchies in their true form. We do not attain to the Beings of the higher Hierarchies if we are not in a position worthily to confront the Imagination and Inspiration which has been described, and to bear seeing its opposite picture; that is, the possibilities in the depths of human nature when it was cast down from the Spiritual into the physical world. If we refuse to look upon the twofold picture of Cain and Abel below—our own self, and the representative of our Higher Self—the mediator between our self and the higher Hierarchies—we cannot ascend. But when we are able to cultivate within our self the feeling indicated here, we then experience our Self, and this provides the entrance to the higher orders of the Hierarchies.

From a poet who died some years ago. On one occasion, in the second half of the '80s of last century, he said to me that he was very anxious about the future of humanity. I admit that his expression of anxiety was somewhat of a paradox, but he was very much in earnest in his anxiety as to the tendency he wished to point out by his paradox; indeed, this anxiety inclined him to a certain pessimism. It seemed to him that the development of humanity in the future would be such that man would principally develop his head more and more, and that, compared with his head, all the other parts of a man would be stunted. He was very much in earnest over this idea, and he expressed this in paradox by saying that he was afraid the reasoning intellectual nature of man would get the upper hand to such an extent that the head would become like a great globe, and that men would then roll on earth as balls. The anxiety was very real to the man, for he reflected that we are living in the age of intellectualism, of the development of the intellectual powers which are expressed in the head, and that these reasoning powers would increase more and more, and that mankind was moving towards an unenviable future. Now that, of course, is a very paradoxical statement, and we might say also, in a certain sense, that even the anxiety which gave rise to his pessimism is also paradoxical. But the human intellect has a tendency to deteriorate, to draw conclusions when some or other observation has been made, and this is a case in point. This may be amply noticed in the realm of the theosophical movement as well as in the external, exoteric life. In external, exoteric life we do not have to look very far before we notice that the observations made by man at various times have always given rise to a great number of theories. How many hypotheses have been abandoned as worthless in the course of the evolution of humanity! In the theosophical-occult field it can also be observed that someone who has undergone occult training, and has thus acquired some clairvoyant power, may recount something from true clairvoyant observation, and then come the theorists who invent all sorts of schemes and theories, and so the matter develops. Very often the observation is quite an insignificant one, but the schemes and theories built upon it include whole worlds. That is always the danger; the intellect has this tendency. We have this tendency in a fairly passable sense in the well-known book, ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ by Sinnett. This book is based upon a number of genuine occult facts; these are in the middle of the book, and relate to the middle of the development of the earth. But upon these facts he built up a scheme of Rounds and Races, and this only rolls and turns, as it were, upon itself, always more or less in the same way. They are inferences, theories, made from the few genuine data to be found in the book. And this was the case also with my poet. In the background he had a sort of unconscious, instinctive imagination which told him something true; we might say, there is half an ounce of truth, and from this he made a hundred-weight, or many hundred-weight. We often find cases such as this in the world. Now, what is the truth of the matter? The truth is this, that in our age man's head is undergoing a certain evolution, the formation of the head, the whole structure of the head will undergo change in the future. If we direct our attention to a very far-distant period in the earth's evolution, we have to imagine that, for example, the formation of the human forehead, nose, and jaws will have undergone essential changes, and that, in a certain sense, all the rest which the human being bears as his earthly organism will have retrograded; but, of course, never, during the earth period, will the relation of the developing head to the rest of the body be that of a rolling globe. This must only be taken literally to a very, very limited extent. On the other hand, in ancient epochs of development on the earth, before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the rest of the human organism was capable of change; it was engaged in a sort of development. Apart from the head, the human organism has changed comparatively little—and again I say comparatively little—since the middle of the Atlantean epoch; on the other hand, prior to that time the remainder of the human organism underwent great changes. From this you will be able to draw the inference—which will now be correct, because it is nothing but an actual observation clothed in words—that the further we go back into the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs the more essentially different man looked, even to his own observation. In the ancient Lemurian epoch, man looked quite different from what he now recognises as himself at the present day.

The appearance man would have presented to himself in the latter portion of the Lemurian epoch is apparent to him again, in a certain way, when he gradually approaches the clairvoyant impression leading to what we have described as the Paradise-Imagination. I have, indeed, told you—and it is true—that this Paradise-Imagination corresponds to a complete delineation of the human being, the physical human body, so to say, as the Paradise itself. Man separated—as it were—he divided; the present corporeal nature appeared outspread in the manner described; but at that time, the actual time to which we look back clairvoyantly, and we have the Paradise Legend before us, a mighty leap forward was made. And through this movement—which may also be observed by means of clairvoyance—what might be called the outspread human being was drawn together relatively rapidly into that which then became the starting-point of man for the development which followed. Directly after the time corresponding to the Paradise-Imagination, the form of man was, however, quite unlike what has developed out of it to-day. And, fundamentally, all that surrounded man in the kingdoms of nature was also quite unlike his present surroundings.

I have already mentioned in the previous lectures of this course that the pupil might attain to this Paradise-Imagination if he were suddenly to become clairvoyant for a moment during sleep, and to look back, as it were, at his physical body and etheric body, stimulated to this Imagination by these. On the whole, it may be said that a great deal of esoteric development is necessary before attaining to this Paradise-Imagination. The student must have gained many victories in order to transform his own personal interests into those common to humanity and the world. There then comes, when from the very deepest sleep—for there are degrees of sleep—he passes to a less deep sleep, and in this less deep sleep becomes clairvoyant—there comes what later in earthly evolution became reality: The condition of man in the ancient Lemurian epoch after he had made the great leap forward.

Thus we say that it is possible to see this primeval period of the earth through separation in the self and astral body from the physical body and etheric body, looking back at them. Now, as the order of nature comes to our aid—for in the night we are outside our physical body—we can make use of this arrangement of nature, and so regulate the training that, as if awaking out of sleep, but not returning to the physical body—as if awaking in a different state of consciousness—we see the physical body. From this you will be able to gather that the vision we have just spoken of provides the only true possibility of learning to know how man was formed in the primeval past.

In the far-distant future will come a time when we shall be able to say: How extraordinary were those people of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries! They believed themselves able to discover the origin of man by means of the external investigation of nature; they thought they could draw conclusions regarding the ancestry of man from the observation of the animals surrounding them on the physical plane. However, through the true development of human knowledge, it becomes evident that we can only arrive at a true idea of the origin of man upon the earth, and of his ancient form, by means of clairvoyant observation, and that we can never obtain insight into what man was like in the Lemurian epoch, for example, except through clairvoyant observation, through the retrospective vision stimulated by the impressions of one's own physical body and etheric body. But then it will be seen—this will be admitted in that future time—that man was never like any of the animal forms about him in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; for the forms which man had in that time, and which manifest themselves to his clairvoyant consciousness in the way we have described, are different from all the animal forms around man in the nineteenth century. And even the expressions we have made use of—bull, lion, etc.—are only used comparatively. The men of the future will say how very grotesque it is to see the way people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries traced back their ancestry to ape-like beings; for in the Lemurian epoch there were no apes at all in the form in which they later appeared upon earth; they only originated at a much later period, from degraded and degenerated human forms. Animal beings which may be compared to our present apes can only be found by clairvoyant vision about the middle of the Atlantean epoch of the earth's evolution. The further we go back in the development of humanity, the more we see that to the clairvoyant view, in the vision of our self during sleep in the night, our shape, our form in ancient times is to some extent preserved. And so it comes about that, when a student thus looks at himself, he learns to recognise his physical corporeality in an infinitely more delicate etheric body, one might say, though not in the sense of our present ether. Thus does man appear. His form appears more as a vivid dream-picture than as the form of flesh and blood he now bears. We have to become acquainted with the idea that when the self and astral body are outside the human being they can scarcely see the head; it is quite shadowy; not completely blotted out, but quite shadowy. On the other hand, the rest of the organisation of man is distinct. That is shadowy, too, but its condition is such that the human being does not appear as made of flesh and blood, but one has the distinct impression that he possesses a more powerful organisation. It may appear paradoxical, yet it is true that when a man looks at himself clairvoyantly in sleep he has at certain moments such an appearance—that is, to the self and astral body, his physical body and etheric body present such an appearance—that he is reminded of the form of the Centaur! The upper part, which appears in the Centaur as the human part, bears the human face, but in a very shadowy form; the other part, which is not exactly like any of our present animal forms, but which is reminiscent of them in certain respects, is more powerful, and the seer says to himself: ‘To the spiritual view this is stronger, even denser, than our present form of flesh and blood.’ I have already touched upon these matters in a previous course of lectures; but you must understand that all these Imaginations, except the Paradise-Imagination, are fugitive, and can be presented from different aspects. I might also present a somewhat different aspect—and you would see that this only corresponds to a different period of development—and then we should arrive at the form of the Sphinx. The consecutive order of the evolution of man is presented in various aspects, in different views. The mythological pictures, the so-called mythological symbols, contain much more truth than the fantastic intellectual combinations made by present-day science.

Thus, at night the human figure becomes very peculiar. Something else now becomes clear. When we consider with clairvoyant eye this lower part which reminds us of an animal, we become acquainted with something which makes a very definite impression upon us; as I observed in the last lecture, these impressions, these inner experiences, are really the essential thing. The pictures are important, but the inner experiences are still more so. We reach an impression so that we know afterwards: That which really drives me during the day to my personal interests alone, that which inoculates my soul with merely personal interests, is the outcome of what I observe at night as my lower animal part. During the day I do not see it; but it is within me as forces, and these are the forces which draw me down to a certain extent, and lead me astray into personal interests.

Developing this impression more and more brings us to the recognition of the place Lucifer really fills in our evolution. The further we direct our clairvoyant vision back towards the time that corresponds to the Paradise-Imagination, the more beautiful becomes the structure, which is really only reminiscent in a later time of what belongs to the animal—kingdom. And if we go back altogether into what belongs to Paradise, where the animal continuation of man appears as though separated from man himself, and multiplied into—bull, lion, and eagle, we may then say that these forms—which we know in those ancient times by these names—may also in a certain sense be for us symbols of beauty. More and more beautiful become these forms, and, going still further back, to the time of which we spoke in the last lecture, when we represented the impression of the sacrifice, we arrive at the period when Lucifer's true form appears to us in sublime beauty, just as he wished to preserve himself unchanged in the evolution from the ancient Moon to the earth.

From the account I have given in ‘Occult Science,’ you know that on ancient Moon the astral body was given to man. What we bear within us in our astral body played a great part on the ancient Moon. We have described it as personal selfhood, as egotism. This egotism had to be implanted in man on the ancient Moon, and, as man received his astral body on the ancient Moon, egotism has its seat in the astral body; and, as Lucifer has preserved his Moon-nature, he has brought egotism to the earth as the inner soul-quality of his beauty. Therefore, on the one hand he is the Spirit of Beauty, and on the other the Spirit of Egotism. And what we may call his error is only this: that he has transplanted to the earth something which, as far as man is concerned, if I may use the expression, belonged to the ancient Moon; that is, the permeating and impregnating of himself with egotism. But thereby, as has often been said, was given to man the possibility of becoming a self-contained, free being, which he never would have become if Lucifer had not carried over egotism from the Moon to the Earth.

Thus inner experience teaches us to know Lucifer as the Night Spirit, as it were. And it is part of the change that goes on in our self and our astral body that at night we feel—ourselves in the company of Lucifer.

You may perhaps at first think—if you only think superficially—that it must be disagreeable to a person, when he goes to sleep and becomes clairvoyant, to become aware that—during the night he comes into Lucifer's company. But if you reflect more deeply, you will soon come to the conclusion that it is wiser for us to learn to recognise Lucifer; it is better to know that we are in his company than to think that he is not there, and yet have him invisibly active with his forces within us, as, indeed, is the case during the day. The evil does not consist in Lucifer's being by our side, for we gradually learn to recognise him as the Spirit who brings—us freedom; the evil consists in our not recognising him. But after men had caught sight of him, as it were, when he misled them in the Lemurian epoch, they were not permitted to see him any more; for then, in addition to that original misleading in the Lemurian epoch, there would have been innumerable other smaller misleadings. Therefore, the divine-Spiritual Being who was watching over the progress of mankind had to draw a veil over the vision of the night. Thereby man lost as well all else that he would have seen during sleep. Sleep covers from man with darkness the world in which he is from the time of his going to sleep until he awakens. At the withdrawal of the veil which covers the night with darkness, we should instantly perceive Lucifer by our side. If man were strong enough, this would do no harm; but as at first he could not be strong in the sense required by our earthly development, this veil had to be drawn during his sleep at night. After the first great misleading, which left in its train the possibility of human freedom, no other misleadings, through the direct vision of Lucifer from the time of his going to sleep until reawakening, were to come to man.

Now, there is an equivalent. We cannot see Lucifer at night if during the day we do not see his comrade, Ahriman. Thus to the student who has progressed as far as this in the development of his self and his astral body, the daily experience which allows him to have the vision of outer objects becomes different from what it is to the ordinary man. He learns to recognise that he sees things in a different light from before the development of his self and his astral body. He first learns to look upon certain impressions, which ordinarily he considered in an abstract manner, as the activities of the Ahrimanic beings. Thus that which comes from outside, which awakens desire in him from outside—not that which comes from within, for that is Luciferic—but that which attracts him in the objects and beings around him, so that he follows this attraction from personal interests; in short, all that entices him to enjoyment from outside he learns to recognise as bearing the impress of Ahriman. We also learn to recognise this in all that rouses fear within us from outside. They are the two poles—enjoyment and fear. Around us are the so-called material world and the so-called Spiritual world; both these in our ordinary waking life are enveloped in illusion. The external world of the senses appears as maya, or illusion, for people do not see that whenever they are stimulated to enjoyment by outer objects and beings Ahriman peeps out and calls forth the enjoyment in the soul. But the fact that there is a true Spiritual nature everywhere in matter—which the materialists deny—that produces fear, and when the materialists notice that fear is beginning to appear from the astral depths of their soul, they then stupefy themselves, and think out materialistic theories; for what the poet says is profoundly true, ‘People never notice the devil (that is Ahriman), even when he has them by the collar.’ To what end are materialistic meetings held? In order to swear allegiance to the devil. This is literally true, only they do not know it. Whenever materialists gather together to-day, to explain in beautiful theories that nothing exists but matter, Ahriman then has them by the collar; and there is no more favourable opportunity for studying the devil to-day than by going to a gathering of materialists or monists. Thus, when a man has undergone a certain development in his astral body and self, Ahriman accompanies him at every step. When we begin to see him, then we can protect ourselves from him; we can see Ahriman spying out in the allurements of enjoyment and in the impressions of fear.

Again, on account of the immaturity of man, it was necessary that Ahriman should be hidden; that is, a veil was drawn over his nature. This was done somewhat differently from in the case of Lucifer; the outer world was plunged into maya for man, giving him the illusion that outside in the world, instead of Ahriman peeping out, there was matter everywhere. Wherever man dreams there is matter, there is, in reality, Ahriman; and the greatest illusion is the materialistic theory of physics about the material atoms, for in reality these are nothing but the forces of Ahriman.

Now, humanity as a whole is developing, evolving, and this evolution advances so that towards our future man will actually develop the powers of pure intellect more and more. This will cause his head to assume a different shape externally. In a certain respect the beginning of this development towards intellectuality was made with the dawn of modern natural science, about the sixteenth century. When intensified, this intellectual development will exercise great influence upon the self and the astral body of man. A time set in when there still remained traditions of the old clairvoyance. These came in contact with one another exactly at the dawn of our modern natural science. It was precisely in the sixteenth century; it was then known that a future would come when, through the higher development of the self and astral body, man would be able really to see Ahriman more and more clearly. Then, because in the early period of intellectual development it struggled against the perception of the Spiritual with all its might, a darkening set in; but in the figure of Mephistopheles, who is none other than Ahriman, at the side of Faust, the sixteenth century was able to point out that, fundamentally, Ahriman will become more and more dangerous in a conscious manner to the future development of humanity; that Mephistopheles will become more and more a sort of tempter of the human race. At that time this could only be demonstrated because man still had a remembrance of the ancient Spiritual figures. But this has now been forgotten by the general body of humanity, though in the future the knowledge will be forced on man that through all his waking life he is accompanied by Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Naturally, this corresponds to the complementary picture that man is living towards a future when, each time he awakes, he will have—at first like a fleeting dream, but later more clearly—the impression: ‘Thy companion during the night was Lucifer.’ You see from this that through the theosophical-occult development of the self and astral body we may have the fore-knowledge of what will come to humanity in the future, we can dimly sense the companionship of Ahriman and Lucifer. Through a definite law of evolution, Lucifer first came to man during the Lemurian epoch, then later, as the consequences of the Luciferic influence, came the Ahrimanic. In the future this will be reversed: The Ahrimanic will first be strong, and subsequently the Luciferic influence will be added. In the ever-developing clairvoyant conditions of the human soul, the Ahrimanic influence will work principally in the waking condition, the Luciferic influence principally during sleep, or in all the conditions which are indeed similar to sleep, but in which there is consciousness.

Thus, as Ahriman entered our external sensible life in our waking condition, man first needed a protection against Ahriman during this waking condition. These protective impulses are given in the development of humanity many, many centuries before the danger appears. Although the general body of humanity has not yet developed the full consciousness of Ahriman-Mephistopheles, the protective impulse came at the beginning of our era in the physical appearance of Christ in the earth-development. Christ once appeared in the physical body in the earth-development to make provision that man might be armed, through receiving the Christ-impulse, against the necessary influence which will come from Ahriman-Mephistopheles. The power through which man will be armed later on when the Luciferic influence is there, is an influence which will affect a different consciousness; man will be armed against this by the appearance of Christ in the etheric body, regarding which we have often said that it is drawing near. Just as Christ appeared once in a physical body and thence his impulse has proceeded further, so from this twentieth century onward Christ will be seen in an etheric form, at first by a small number, and then by an ever-increasing number of human beings. Thus we see that the progressive development of man is brought about by a kind of equilibrium; a kind of balancing of the different impulses. What is related in the Gospels as the story of the Temptation, the confronting of Lucifer and Ahriman by Christ, portrayed in different ways in the different Gospels—I have spoken of this on a previous occasion—is a sign that through the Christ-Impulse, through the Mystery of Golgotha, man will be able to find the right way of development in the future. It forms part of a true development of the self and the astral body of man that in this transformed self and astral body he can receive the impressions of the positions occupied by Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ in the development of humanity, and a correct development of the self and astral body leads to this knowledge of the three impulses which condition the evolution of mankind.

A correct development, however, includes the extension of the sense of self in the astral body to interests common to humanity and the world. And it acts like poison when a man carries his personal aspirations into those regions of his clairvoyant observation which he ought only to observe when filled with interests common to humanity and the world. He cannot then perceive the truth, but has imaginations which are incorrect, untrue, which are only the reflections of his own personal interests and aspirations. It may sometimes happen that a clairvoyant who is still filled with personal aspirations and interests experiences something like the following. I received a letter in which someone wrote that he had to communicate something that I ought to know. He said that Christ was reborn in a physical body, and his address is somewhere in London, W.; that Mary is reborn in a physical body; her address is that of his niece, in such-and-such a street. Paul is reborn, and was his brother-in-law, and his address was also given. And all those mentioned in the Gospels were reborn among the relatives, and in this letter all their various addresses were given. I could show this letter to anyone: it is a document—grotesque as it may appear—which shows the effect of carrying personal interests into those heights where there should only be the interests of the world and of humanity.

But now we must clearly understand that when someone makes a mistake in abstract intellectual knowledge in general, this kind of error can easily be controlled, it is something that can be done away with comparatively quickly, although, indeed, human knowledge has the frightful origin, which was referred to in the last lecture. As the knowledge of man, which is expressed in our waking daily life, receives such diluted impulses that everyone may develop perfect freedom with respect to them, hence no one need be dazzled by the foolish things thought out by human intellect, and those who allow themselves to be dazzled by these foolish imaginings can be cured in a comparatively short time. But suppose that in this clairvoyant observation a person arrives at incorrect imaginations in the manner we have described; these incorrect imaginings then act as a poison in the soul in a certain way; they poison it by obliterating the healthy human reason and intellectual grasp. Thus they injure one much more deeply than do merely intellectual follies. If, therefore, we try to permeate everything obtained in the fields of occultism with the forms of sound human intellect, we do well. If an Imagination is simply given out, without any attempt to justify it, as we have tried to justify such in this course of lectures (and incorrect imaginations would only be cited as mere imaginations), then this will impose upon the very faculty in others which should bestir itself to reject such imaginations. And it might very well be that, while one who spreads intellectual follies may easily provoke criticism, one who spreads false imaginations by this means takes away from those who believe in him the power to criticise; that is, he blinds them to the challenge that ought to be given to the imaginations in question.

From this we may gather, my dear friends, how very necessary it is that the moment the knowledge goes beyond what is intended for man in the natural course of evolution, the moment a man uplifts himself to clairvoyant knowledge, how unconditionally necessary it is that his development should move unswervingly towards interests common to humanity and the world. This will always be recognised in true occultism. And to assert the opposite, that there can be sound entry into the Spiritual world, that is, a sound development of the astral body and the self apart from the extension of the human interests to selfless world-interests and interests common to humanity; that is, to make the opposite affirmation to the one made here, could only spring from a disposition that permeates occultism with frivolity. We must bear in mind the serious importance of these things in speaking of the changes which take place in the astral body and the Self of man during his higher Spiritual development.

We have seen that as the result of serious theosophical training, or esoteric occult development, changes come about in the four principal parts of the human being; and you may have observed that in the descriptions we have given the principal stress has been laid upon the inward change in these four parts of human nature, or the changes which are, to a certain extent, experienced inwardly. But we have to distinguish clearly between this change to be experienced inwardly, and the description of the outer changes manifest to the vision of the seer, which is, of course, quite different. In true esoteric development it is very important to know what takes place within man, and what is in front of him, when he goes through occult development. Interesting, also, although perhaps not so important, is the change outwardly visible to the seer. To sum up in a few words, we might say: that which is perceived inwardly as a sort of ‘becoming more mobile’ and ‘becoming more independent’ of the various parts of the physical body, manifests itself to the clairvoyant vision, which does not experience the changes in the physical body from within, but looks upon them from without, in such a manner that the physical body of a person undergoing occult development is seen to split up, to divide, in a certain sense; and because of this splitting-up, clairvoyant-vision feels it to be separating. To clairvoyant vision the physical body of a person who is steadily advancing in occult development is actually seen to grow. And we may say that if at one time we meet a person who is undergoing a true occult development, that which the clairvoyant vision sees at a definite time as the physical body has a definite size; if we meet him again a few years later his physical body has grown; it has become decidedly larger. Thus there is such a thing as the growth of the physical body beyond the normal physical size, but with this is connected the fact that it becomes more shadowy. Thus we notice that as the person develops, his physical body is seen to become larger and larger. It consists, however, of various parts, as it were, and these manifest themselves in what in occult life is called ‘Imagination.’ The physical body of a person undergoing occult development manifests more and more as a number of imaginations, of pictures which are in a sense inwardly alive and active, and are, or rather become, more and more interesting; for they are not just anything we please. When the person is beginning his development the pictures are not specially significant; and they are least so when the clairvoyant vision observes the body of a person who has not yet developed in occultism. In this latter case a number of pictures, a number of imaginations are perceived. To clairvoyant vision the physical substance disappears, and in its place appear imaginations: but these are so pressed together that instead of the pleasing inwardly shining aspect of a person engaged in occult development, they manifest as in an opaque substance. Even, however, in the case of a person who is not yet developed they are to be seen, and indeed as parts and each part signifies something in the macrocosm. Essentially one can distinguish twelve parts, each of which is really a picture—a painting of one part of the great cosmos. When all twelve are assembled together, the impression is given that some unknown painter has produced miniature pictures of the macrocosm, twelve in number, and from these has formed the physical human body. Now, when the individual is engaged in occult development, this picture grows larger and larger, and also appears inwardly more and more pleasing, radiant from within. This is because, in the case of an individual not engaged in occult development, the macrocosm is only reflected in its physical aspect; but in the case of one undergoing an occult development the spiritual content more and more manifests itself; the pictures of the spiritual essence of the macrocosm are to be seen. Thus occult development also shows us that a person engaged in an occult development, from being merely a physical microcosm, becomes more and more a spiritual one, that is, he manifests within himself more and more, not merely the pictures of planets and suns, but of entities belonging to the Higher Hierarchies. That is the difference between persons engaged and others not engaged in occult development. The more a person presses forward in occult development the more exalted are the Hierarchies manifesting within him. And thus we learn the structure of the world, as it were, by clairvoyantly observing the physical human body.

The human etheric body of one who is not undergoing occult development manifests the progressive course of the world, that which follows consecutively in time; it shows how planets and suns, even the human civilisations on earth, and the individual human beings alter in the course of their incarnations, and how they appear in consecutive stages of growth. Thus the etheric body may truly be called a narrator; it recounts the story of the growth of the world. While the physical body of man is like a sum-total of pictures painted by an unknown artist, the etheric body proves to be a kind of story-teller who narrates in its own inner happenings the story of the world itself. And the more deeply a person is engaged in occult development, the wider the range of the stories. The etheric body of a person who has undergone comparatively little occult development manifests to the clairvoyant vision perhaps only a few generations which have preceded him in physical ancestry—for this development is still also shown in the etheric body of man. But the further a person carries his occult development, the more possible it becomes to see in his etheric body the various civilisations of humanity, the various incarnations of this or that individuality; yea, even to ascend to cosmic development and see the share of the Spirits of the Higher Hierarchies in it.

The astral body of man—which to ordinary observation can only be seen, as it were, through its inner reflection, through experiences of thought, will and feeling—becomes more and more an expression of the value of man, with respect to his essential entity in the cosmos. I want you to consider this description, this presentation, as being of very special significance. The astral body of a human being undergoing an occult development becomes more and more the expression of his value in the cosmos. In a previous lecture we showed how we discover that the astral body, in its original nature, is a sort of egotist, and that this has to be overcome in occult development, raising the personal interests to those of the world. Observing the astral body of a person engaged in higher development one can see from it, according to whether it appears dark and dull or has an inner illumination, according to its revelation of itself in shrill dissonances or in harmonious melodious tones, whether the person in question has so conducted his development that he is still entangled in his personal interests, of which we have spoken, or whether he has really made the interests of the world his own. This is what can be seen from the astral body of a human personality engaged in higher development: when the development goes on in a true, occult, ethical manner, we see in him how wonderful man becomes through extending the horizon of his interests from those that are personal to those that are universally human, and into the common aims of the world. The astral body becomes more radiant, shines more and more like a radiant sun, as the human being learns to make the affairs of all humanity and the world his own.

The further the human being progresses in his development, the more the Self manifests the tendency to split up, to divide. It sends out, as it were, the contents of its consciousness, and these make ‘messenger paths’ in the world. If, for example, a human being wishes to learn to know a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, it is not sufficient for him to exercise the ordinary forces of perception; if he really wishes to know this being he must be able to transfer his consciousness; that is, he must be able to separate the forces of his Self and transpose a part of his self-consciousness into the being of the Angel. Whatever sort of being we wish to know, we can only do it by transposing our self-consciousness into this being. It is the impulse of the Self to go out of itself, to transpose itself into the other being and allow that which at first lived only in oneself to enter the life of the other being. At a lower stage in the development of the human being, at the stage of ordinary human existence, this manifests as a certain impulse to remove its consciousness out of itself; this can be seen in the need for sleep. And that which psychically drives man to sleep is exactly the same that in higher development directs the consciousness, not into the unconscious world of sleep, but into the consciousness of the Angels or the Spirits of Form or still Higher Hierarchies. Thus one might be paradoxical by inquiring: What does it imply when a man becomes acquainted with one of the Elohim, one of the Spirits of Form? It means that he has developed so far that he is able to sleep over into the consciousness of the Elohim and to awaken within the Elohim, possessing the consciousness of this Spirit of Form, of this spirit belonging to the Higher Hierarchies. This is recognition of a higher being: consciousness must be resigned as in sleep, but so resigned that by reason of the higher forces awakened within, it reawakens and radiates towards us as the consciousness of the higher being. Thus, an astral body under true occult development becomes like a sun which radiates its world-interests; but when the Self is more highly developed it becomes like the planets which circle round the sun of the astral body, and which, in their circling through the world, meet other beings, and by means of this bring messages from them to the perceptive nature of man. Thus the astral body and the Self of a human being undergoing occult development present the picture of a sun—which is the astral body—surrounded by its planets—that are a number of multiplications of the Self, sent out into other beings in order that the student through that which his multiplied Self rays back to him from these other beings may know their nature.

The feeling we have when becoming acquainted with the inner nature of the members of the Higher Hierarchies (we learn to recognise their external being through the physical body and the etheric body; and to recognise them inwardly through the astral body and the Self, we come into communication, as it were, with these beings who belong to the Higher Hierarchies through the astral body and Self)—the feeling we have is as though we had to make our self in our astral body into a sun and to separate from oneself, a Self capable of active participation in the nature of the Hierarchy of the Angels; another Self which has that gift as regards the Hierarchy of the Archangels; and yet another Self which has the gift with regard to the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form. A fourth Self participates in the nature of the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Motion, a fifth in that of the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Wisdom and of Will, a sixth Self or Ego in that of the Hierarchy of the Cherubim, and a seventh in that of the Hierarchy of the Seraphim. It is possible for a person, when he develops the four parts of his being and continues this development to a high stage, actually to attain to the experience we have just described. This is possible; and in addition to this development of his Self in the manner I have just indicated, he can attain to a still higher development of his Self.

For through the separation of seven selves from the eighth Self, this eighth self, which remains behind, undergoes a higher development. Consider the matter in this way: We have the original Self of man, which is given to him before he undergoes occult development. He then undergoes this, and thereby sends forth from himself seven Selves. In order that the Self originally given him may be able to send forth seven Selves he has to exercise an inner force, the result of which is that the Self rises a stage higher. But now I want you to reflect that the process which I have described in its most extreme development, as it were, only comes about gradually. A person undergoing occult development does not, of course, at once become a perfect Sun in—the astral body, surrounded by the planets of his Selves, but he first attains to an imperfect Sun existence, and imperfect developments of his planetary Selves; all this takes place gradually. And, at the same time, the development of the ordinary Self into the Higher Self takes place slowly and gradually. When this development has reached a definite stage, when the Self has reached higher and higher attainment, then gradually comes the power to look back at former incarnations. This is the stage which gives one the power to look back to previous incarnations; it is the development of the Self beyond itself, the attainment of forces beyond itself, which give it at the same time power truly to understand higher Hierarchies. We might say that, to clairvoyant vision, a person, through occult development, with respect to his Self and his astral body, becomes star-like—similar to a starry system.

In the above I have briefly described what is presented to another person who is becoming clairvoyant, whereas in the previous lectures I spoke more of the inward experiences. There is still something important which I have to lay before you, which is to amplify an indication already made. When the student develops his astral body and his Self he attains, as you have heard, to observation of a world, previously empty, now filled with the beings of the Higher Hierarchies, Angels, Archangels, Archai, etc.

The question might now be asked: Do the kingdoms of nature around man also change? Yes; the kingdoms of nature do very materially change. I have already mentioned that, to the vision of a clairvoyant, the physical body, even of an ordinary person, presents the appearance of a number of paintings, and these shine more and more within the more the person progresses. Now, how does the case stand with the animals? When with clairvoyant vision we look at an animal its physical body also changes into Imaginations, and then we know that these animals are not what they appear to be in maya, but are imaginations: that is, they are imaginations, conceived in a consciousness. Who, then, conceives the animals as imaginations? Whose imaginations are they? Animals, also plants in their outward forms—though plants less than animals, and least of all minerals—are imaginations of Ahriman. Our physicists seek for the material laws in the external kingdoms of nature; but the occultist comes more and more to the knowledge that the external kingdoms of nature, as far as they present themselves as material beings, are imaginations of Ahriman. We know, indeed, that behind the animals, for example, are the Group-Souls. The Group-Souls are not imaginations of Ahriman, but the separate individual animals in their external forms are imaginations of Ahriman. Thus, if we take the lion-tribe; the group-soul of this species belongs to the good spiritual beings, as it were, and the war of Ahriman against the good spiritual beings consists in his pressing their group-souls into the separate individual forms of the animals and imprinting upon them his own imaginations. The separate lion-forms, as they move about outwardly in the world, are forced out of the group-souls by Ahriman. Thus the external world which surrounds us also changes gradually into something quite different from its appearance in maya.

Now, in order that you may have something on which you may range as on the steps of a ladder the thoughts which have been opened to us in the course of these lectures, I will give you a sort of diagram.

Here on the left I will represent what we may call the constitution of the ordinary man: Physical body, Etheric body, Astral body, Sentient soul, Intellectual soul, Consciousness soul, Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. We know this as the constitution of man. I will represent this only by lines. The inner being would be the Sentient soul, the next, the Intellectual or Mind soul, the next, the Consciousness soul, the next would be Spirit Self. The higher parts may be left out of account, as we do not need to consider them to-day. This constitution of man so manifests itself externally that the bodily part consists of the three lower principles; that which is experienced in the soul, of the three middle ones; the Spirit Self is not present in man, except as a perspective of the future, as it were. Now, when a person undergoes occult development the first thing to be done is to suppress certain things in the soul itself. We have seen that it is particularly important for the student to be able to lay aside the external sense impressions. It is, indeed, the first requirement of true occult progress that the student should lay aside external sense impressions. Now through this laying aside of external impressions of the senses, that principle of the soul which is chiefly developed under the influence of these impressions, namely, the Consciousness Soul, changes inwardly. It must be clearly understood that the Consciousness Soul is at present undergoing its chief development, because so much value is now attached to the external impressions of the senses. You must not confuse the fact that the Consciousness Soul generally is inwardly strengthened by the impressions received through the senses, with the fact that these sense impressions are transmitted through the Sentient Soul. When we are dealing with occult development we must notice under what sort of influences the Consciousness Soul is most strengthened, and we find these to be the external sense impressions. When these are laid aside the Consciousness Soul is then suppressed, so that in the one who is undergoing occult development it is the Consciousness Soul which must first of all retire into the background. (Here, on the right, I will draw that which in the occultly developing man corresponds to the several parts of the soul.) We are speaking of that which in ordinary life leads a person to emphasise his ‘ego,’ which above all leads him to lay stress upon his ego in all sorts of directions. In our age special stress is laid upon this ego or ‘I’ in the direction of thought. One hears nothing more often said than—this is my standpoint, I think this or that—as though the opinion of this or that person had any significance compared with the truth. It is true that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, and it is immaterial how a person regards it. It is true that the Hierarchies, counting from man upwards, are divided into three times three, and it is quite immaterial how this truth is regarded. Insistence upon the ego retires into the background, and in its place the Consciousness Soul, which previously served principally for the development of the ego, is gradually filled with what we call ‘Imaginations.’ We may simply say that when a person develops his Consciousness Soul is changed into the Imaginative Soul.

We also know from what has been said in the previous lectures that thinking itself, which is developed principally in the Intellectual or Mind Soul, must also be changed. We have heard that thinking must more and more give up developing its own thoughts, that it must more and more suppress personal thinking; the human personality suppressing its own thought. When the student is able to suppress that which in his ordinary life he has made of his Intellectual or Mind Soul, then in the place of that which exists in him as ordinary thinking, as reason, and also as the ordinary mental life on the physical plane, comes Inspiration. The Intellectual or Mind Soul changes into the Inspirational or Inspired Soul. The inspired works of culture have been received in the transformed Intellectual Soul as Inspiration.

The sentient soul is chiefly laid aside by overcoming the astral body, by making the world-interests one's own, and thereby rising more and more above personal feelings; the sentient soul thereby changes; and all the inner impulses, »•;inner passions and emotions, change into Intuitions; and in the place of the Sentient Soul appears the Intuition Soul. So that here on the right (see diagram I.) we may sketch the developed human being, of whom we say: He consists of astral body, etheric body and physical body but inwardly of the Intuitional Soul, the Inspirational Soul, and the Imaginative Soul which then changes into Spirit Self. And now from this diagram, which reflects truly the facts of occult observation, you may gather from the results of these lectures how a person influences his occult development by the degree of his moral development. For what is a person who is still absolutely filled with personal emotions and passions, and who acts under the impressions of what we might call human instincts? Such a person still lives entirely in his Sentient Soul; he does not moderate his instincts by means of intellectual ideas, or by means of the development of his consciousness; he has only developed, as it were, as far as the Sentient Soul here, if I might now indicate the moral development in the middle (small arrow in diagram). Thus we may have the case of a person who has only developed as far as the Sentient Soul; that is to say, he is ruled entirely by his personal passions, impulses, etc. Now let us suppose that such a person were forced on by occult development. The consequence would be the transformation of his Sentient Soul into his Intuitional Soul, and he would have certain intuitions; these intuitions would, however, represent nothing but the transformations of his own personal impulses, passions and instincts.

A man who in his moral development has progressed to the Intellectual Soul, that is, one who has acquired pure conceptions, more general universal ideas, whose inner feelings include feelings of interest in the whole world, such a one will at least transmute his Intellectual or Mind Soul into the Inspirational Soul, and he can arrive at certain inspirations, although his clairvoyant power may not be always quite pure as yet. But it is only when a person has really penetrated with his ego as far as the Consciousness Soul that he arrives at the transformation of his Consciousness Soul into Imaginative Soul, and the rest follows as a self-evident consequence, because he has passed through the other stages. Hence in our age, in order to arrive at true clairvoyance, the student must be given the task of so working at his moral development that he shall first take away from his impulses, passions, etc., all that is personal, and raise himself to the standpoint of making the interests common to the whole world his own. Then the endeavour must be made to teach him really to comprehend himself as ‘I;’ but he must feel this in the Consciousness Soul. Then the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul may be transformed into the Souls of Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination without any danger. When we consider the ordinary consciousness on the physical plane the Sentient Soul is the richest Soul. For what a number of instincts and impulses does not such a human Soul conceal, however low its stage! Of what impulses and passions is not such a human soul capable! The human soul is somewhat poorer as regards the contents of intellect and its more cultivated feelings, poorest of all as Consciousness Soul, shrivelled up to the consciousness of the self, as though to one point. One might say that the figure which represents the human soul in its natural condition on the physical plane would be a sort of pyramid (see diagram II.). In the lower part, at the base, the sum total of impulse, desires and passions; at the top, at the summit, the point of consciousness. A reversed pyramid represents the developed soul of the true clairvoyant, a pyramid having its base above, that is, all possible kinds of imaginations which can be formed, which express all that can reflect for us the contents of the cosmos; here below as the point, that which results as the higher individual consciousness of man.

This diagram is a standard, to a certain extent, in another sense. In the new edition of my book Theosophy I have said that the Sentient Soul is, as it were, the provisionally transformed astral body, so that we may sum up thus: Below is the physical body, then the etheric body, then the astral body. The astral body on its way to transformation is the Sentient Soul on the physical plane; the etheric body so proceeding is the Intellectual or Mind Soul, and the physical body the Consciousness Soul.

Thus in our present cycle of humanity we have the Consciousness Soul localised in the physical body; that is to say, it makes use of the physical instrument. The Intellectual Soul is in the etheric body; that is, it makes use of the etheric movements. The Sentient Soul, containing the impulses, desires and passions, makes use of the forces localised in the astral body. The Soul of Intellect or Mind, which contains the forces of inner feeling, of sympathy, makes use of the etheric body; the Consciousness Soul uses the brain of the physical body.

As in this sense the Sentient Soul is transformed into the Intuitional Soul, we must also correspondingly imagine that the Intuitional Soul uses the astral body of man as its instrument. The Inspirational Soul is the transformed Intellectual or Mind Soul; its instrument is the etheric body of man. And the Imaginative Soul, the transformed Consciousness Soul, has as its instrument the physical body of man. And now, if you compare what I have presented here in diagram with what I have said previously, you will become aware that in this diagram you have a memory picture. I mentioned that to clairvoyant vision the physical body is transformed into imaginations, which are pictures of the macrocosm. In this diagram you see that the Imaginative Soul fills up the physical body. The Imaginative Soul actually enters into the physical body and permeates it, so that when a developed human being is observed by clairvoyant consciousness, the parts of the physical body are seen to be permeated with higher and higher imaginations, according to the degree of his development; these are impressed into the physical body by the inner being of this personality. In an ordinary individual there are a number of imaginations imprinted in the various principles of his body by higher spiritual beings; in a more highly developed man there appear in the various parts of his physical body, in addition to the imaginations originally there, others which he imprints into the parts of his body from his own inner being, so that the organs in the physical body of a developed human being become richer and richer.

In this diagram I wished to give you a sort of précis which sums up what I have described at length in these lectures. I specially draw your attention to this: that this diagram may always remind you that the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul are reversed, so that the Consciousness Soul does not become the Intuitional Soul but the Imaginative Soul; and the Sentient Soul does not become the Imaginative Soul but the Intuitional Soul. In this you have a sketch of what could be given in the course of these lectures under the title of: The changes in the human sheaths and the human self in the course of a seriously conducted theosophical development, or an esoteric occult development—which, indeed, fundamentally may coincide.

You will have observed that we began with the tiny, almost imperceptible, changes in the physical body, which the student who is developing at first perceives but faintly: the various parts of the physical body become more and more inwardly living, while usually only the whole physical body of man appears to us as a living thing. We then saw how certain changes take place, presenting the mighty facts of the inner life, changes in the astral body and the Self providing those mighty imaginations through which we may feel ourselves transposed to the beginning of our earthly human development; yet even further back, for they lead to the Imaginations of Paradise, and of Cain and Abel. You have seen how, in fact, there arises as a reality in the physical body a sort of force which enables it to divide, as it were—but still it holds together; it does not give way, because here, in our present cycle of humanity, occult training may not go so far as to lead to the injury of the physical body—still there is, however, a degree of occult development which leads to the possibility that the physical body and the etheric body may draw to themselves inwardly destructive forces; and this danger is always present when a person meets the Guardian of the Threshold. This meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is not possible without being confronted by the danger of implanting destructive forces in the physical and etheric bodies; but every true occult development provides the remedies at the same time, and these remedies are given in that which you find described in my book, Occult Science, as the six auxiliary occult exercises: Concentration of thought; that is, strenuous exertion of thought, the concentrated gathering together of thoughts; the development of a certain Initiative of Will; a certain Equilibrium of joy and sorrow, a certain Positivity in relation to the world, a certain Impartiality. The student who endeavours to develop these qualities in his soul parallel with his occult development, on the one hand certainly produces in himself a sort of effort to break the physical and etheric bodies to pieces, that is, under the influence of occult development to take in the seed of death; but to the same extent that this develops it is annulled, so that it is never really active when a person develops the qualities mentioned, or when through his moral development he already possesses the qualities equivalent to these six. It has been my endeavour to give you more than a mere description of what occult development is, namely, to rouse in your hearts a feeling of what it is, and what manifold changes it produces in a human being. You may have been able to divine and feel that a person has to meet much that is terrible and also much that is dangerous when he goes through occult development; but side by side with much that, even in this theoretical manner of considering the matter may have produced a certain amount of dread, we must always call to mind the thought which dispels all dread, can take away all fear of danger, simply arousing enthusiasm and strength of will within our souls—the thought that by developing ourselves further we are thus working actively at one part of the evolution willed by the Gods. A man who knows how to grasp this thought in all its greatness, and take into himself its stimulus and feel it with enthusiasm, and who forms this thought in such a manner that it presents evolution, or occult development in its most beautiful sense, as his duty, he is one who feels the beginning of that which, side by side with all danger, all fighting, all entanglements, all hindrances, is connected with all development, namely, the approach towards the beatitude of the spiritual worlds. For when he feels this thought of the enthusiasm-producing power of the ideal of development he may already begin to feel the bliss of development; but this means to recognise the development, the occult progress as a necessity. The future of such spiritual, esoteric movements as ours will be that the spiritual development of human souls will be regarded more and more as a necessity, and that the exclusion of spiritual development and the adoption of a hostile attitude towards it will signify a union with the earthly dross, which is cast out through its own weight, a union with what has fallen away from the God-willed evolution of the universe.

Automated Translation

This lecture is number 8 of 12 in the lecture series entitled The Sun Mystery ... Death, Resurrection and is also included in the lecture series Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity.

Today I should like to speak to you about a certain aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. I have spoken about this Mystery on many occasions in our more intimate Anthroposophical gatherings, yet all that can be said about it is so extensive and belongs to a sphere of such importance and richness that, in order to approach it even approximately from the most varied points of view, we are compelled to elucidate from ever new aspects this greatest of all secrets in human earth evolution.

We shall be able to value this Mystery of Golgotha in the right way only when we allow our soul perception to contemplate two evolutionary streams of human earthly existence: namely, first, that part of the entire evolution of mankind which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, and second, that other part which has already succeeded it or which will succeed it during the remainder of the earth period.

When we speak of the beginning of earth existence, of the primeval epochs of the earth evolution of humanity during which there already existed thinking of a certain kind, although dreamlike and imaginative in character, it was nevertheless a certain sort of thinking; and when we speak of this beginning we must make clear to ourselves that the human beings of that time possessed faculties which enabled them to have intercourse—if I may so express it—with beings of a higher cosmic order. You know from my Occult Science and from other descriptions something of the nature of these beings of the higher hierarchies.

At present, with our ordinary consciousness, we do not know much about these beings of the higher hierarchies. Our intercourse with them has been cut off, so to say. This was not the case in the most ancient periods of human evolution. It would, of course, be wrong to imagine that the meeting with such a being of the higher hierarchies was of a similar nature to the meeting of two modern men incarnated in physical bodies. It certainly was quite a different sort of relationship. What these beings communicated to the human entity by means of the primeval earth language could only be comprehended by spiritual organs. And these beings communicated the mighty secrets of existence to the human being of that time. Secrets of existence were poured out into the human mind of that time and they called forth in man the consciousness that in the region above us, where today we see only clouds and stars, the earthly life had intercourse with divine worlds. These dwellers in divine regions descended in a spiritual manner to the human earth beings and revealed themselves in such a way that the earth man received, through the communications of these super-earthly beings, what may be called primeval wisdom. Within these manifestations of divine wisdom, originating in these beings, an infinite amount of knowledge was contained which human beings, during their earth life, would not have been able to fathom by themselves. In the beginning of earth existence—in the sense in which I have described it here—human beings were of themselves able to know but very little. Everything that was kindled in them as perception, as perceptive knowledge, they received from their divine teachers. Their divine teachings contained much, but they did not contain one thing of special importance which, as a matter of fact, was unnecessary for humanity of that time but which does contain most essential facts of knowledge for modern mankind. The divine teachers spoke to men of the most varied aspects of truth and knowledge, yet they never spoke to them of birth and death.

Naturally, I cannot today during this short hour speak of all the things said by these divine teachers to the human race in those ancient times. Much of this, however, you know already; but I should like to emphasize the fact very strongly that in all these teachings there was nothing about birth and death. The reason for this is due to the fact that in the course of human evolution there was no need for the human beings of those ancient times—also for a long time after for those who followed—to have any knowledge of the wisdom of birth and death. The entire consciousness of mankind has changed in the course of earth evolution. And although we should not compare the animal consciousness of today, even the higher animal consciousness, with the human consciousness in ancient, primitive times, nevertheless we may consider important facts of present-day animal life. This life lies below the level of the human. In the beginning, the life of primitive man lay, in a certain sense, even above the level of the present-day human being, in spite of the fact that, when compared with modern man, he had a kind of animal shape. If we view the animal of today with unbiased perception, we shall agree that this animal is not interested in birth and death, because it is in the middle evolutionary stage of existence. If we disregard birth—although even there the matter in question is quite obvious—we need only to think of the carelessness and lack of interest with which the animal approaches death. It simply submits to death, accepting this transformation of its existence without experiencing such a deep break in life as is the case with the human being.

As we have already noted, the primeval earth man, in spite of his animal-like shape, stood above the animal; he possessed an instinctive clairvoyance, and by means of this instinctive clairvoyance he was able to have intercourse with his divine teachers. But like the present-day animal he was not concerned about the approach of death. Perhaps we might say that he did not contemplate death at all.

We may ask: Why should he? As a result of his instinctive clairvoyance he still had a memory of a clear experience of what had remained within his inner being after he had descended from the spirit world through birth into the physical world. He knew the essential nature of what had entered his physical body; and because he knew this, because he was sure—if I may say so—that an immortal being lived within him, he was therefore not interested in the transition which takes place at death. He must have had feelings somewhat similar to those of the serpent when, after slipping off its old skin, it is compelled to replace it by a new one. The impression of birth and death was something more self-evident and not so desperately important in human life as it is today, for the human being still possessed a vital perception of the soul nature.

Today we have no perception of the soul nature. Today, in dreaming, there is scarcely any perceptible transition between sleeping and waking, and the dream with its pictures belongs at present absolutely to the realm of the sleeping state, it is still half-sleep. On the other hand the dreamlike pictures of primeval man coincided with the waking state; it was a waking state not yet fully developed. The human being knew that what he received in these dream pictures was real. Thus he felt and experienced his soul nature. And it was impossible for him to raise questions about birth and death with the same vigor as is necessary for our time.

In the primeval periods of human earth evolution this state was especially vital; but it decreased continually. Perhaps I may express it in the following way: Human beings became gradually more and more aware that death means a big break in human life, likewise in the soul life, and, therefore, they had to turn their attention also to the fact of birth. Earth life, in regard to this distinction, assumed a character which became ever increasingly significant for the earthly man; for at the same time the living experience of soul existence grew paler and paler, and he felt himself more and more lifted out of a psycho-spiritual existence during his sojourn on earth. This increased more and more, especially for those who lived near the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. With the Greeks, this feeling had already become so vital that they felt the life outside the physical body as a mere human shadow-life and they looked on death with tragic feelings. But what they had received as teachings from their ancient divine preceptors did not deal with the facts of birth and death. Thus, before the Mystery of Golgotha, men ran the risk that experiences might occur in their earth-life, that the apprehension, the perception of these experiences might enter their earth consciousness—Birth and Death—which they did not understand and which were something absolutely unknown to them.

Now let us imagine that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha these ancient, divine teachers of mankind had descended. Had they really done so, they would perhaps have been able to reveal themselves to a few pupils or teachers of mankind who had been prepared through the mysteries; they would have been able to communicate, to prepared priests for the mysteries, the content and extent of ancient divine wisdom which actually had been poured out into primeval wisdom. But within the whole of these teachings nothing would have been found about birth and death. The riddle of death would not have been imparted to mankind through this revealed divine wisdom, not even in the mysteries; and outside in earthly life human beings would have observed something—the facts of birth and death—which would have been of great and fundamental interest to them. But the Gods would not have told them anything about it. What was the reason?

You should consider this matter without bias and you should put aside many of the concepts which today have simply become traditional religion. You should understand that the beings of the higher hierarchies who were the teachers of primeval men had never experienced birth and death in their own worlds. For birth and death in the form we experience them on earth, are only experienced on earth, and on earth are experienced only by human beings. Death in animal and plant is something quite different from death in a human being. And in the divine worlds in which the first great teachers of human evolution lived there is no birth, no death; there is only transformation, metamorphosis from one state of existence to another. Therefore an inward understanding of death and birth—we must characterize it in this way—did not exist in these divine teachers. This host of divine teachers includes all the beings who were connected with the Jahve-being, with the Bodhisattva-beings, with all the ancient creators of human world conceptions.

Let us realize for instance how in the Old Testament—there we can actually grasp it—the secret of death confronts us more and more with a tragic mood. And the teachings that are handed down in the Old Testament give the human being no satisfactory and no inward information about death. If at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha nothing had happened that was different from what did happen before the Mystery of Golgotha in the sphere of the earth and the super-worlds connected with it, if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, then human beings would have found themselves in a terrible plight in their earth evolution; they would have experienced on earth the transitions of birth and death which then no longer were mere metamorphoses, which then indicated an abrupt transition in the whole of human life, and they would not have been able to learn anything about the significance of death and birth in human earth-life. In order to permit the teachings of birth and death to enter gradually into the understanding of mankind, the being whom we call the Christ had to descend by degrees into earth-life. The Christ belongs to the worlds from which the ancient great teachers came; but through the decision of these divine worlds He chose a different destiny from the other beings of the divine hierarchies who are related to the earth. He submitted Himself, so to say, to the divine decision of higher worlds that He incarnate in an earthly body and pass with His own divine soul through earthly birth and earthly death.

You see, therefore, that what has happened through the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely an inner-human or inner-earthly affair, but it is at the same time an affair of the Gods. Only through the events on Golgotha did the Gods learn to know inwardly of death and the secret of birth on earth, for they had not participated in it previously. Thus we have here the significant fact that a divine being resolved to go through human existence in this region, in order to have the same earth experiences, the same destiny as the human being.

Much of the Mystery of Golgotha has become known to human beings. There is tradition, there are the Gospels, there is the entire New Testament, and people of today prefer to approach the Mystery of Golgotha by reading the New Testament and by means of the explanation of the latter as it is possible at present. But from the explanation of the New Testament as it is made in our time we acquire but little real insight into the Mystery of Golgotha. It is necessary for people of the present to acquire this knowledge in an outward manner. However, it is mere outward knowledge. Today we do not know at all how differently human beings looked back upon the Mystery of Golgotha during the first centuries A.D., how differently those who were initiated into this Mystery looked back upon it in comparison with those who came later. Although all that I have described had happened, nevertheless at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha individual human beings still possessed remnants of an old instinctive clairvoyance. And up to the 4th century A.D. these remnants enabled them to look back to the Mystery of Golgotha quite differently from later periods. And it is not without meaning that the teachers who then appeared—we can verify this, although quite insufficiently in the historical traditions of the oldest, so-called church fathers and Christian teachers—that the teachers who then appeared put the greatest emphasis not on written traditions but on the fact that they have received knowledge of the life of Christ Jesus from teachers who have seen Him face to face, or from teachers who had been pupils of the pupils of the Apostles themselves in the oldest times, or the pupils of the pupils of the Apostles' pupils, etc. This continued on up to the 4th century A.D., and the teachers of that century referred to this living connection. As already stated, the historical documents are for the most part destroyed, and only attentive study can discover, by external means, how much emphasis was laid on the following: “I have had a teacher, he has had a teacher,” etc., and at the end of the row there stands one of the Apostles who had seen the Lord Himself face to face.

A great deal of this has been lost. But even more has been lost of actual esoteric wisdom which still existed in the first four centuries A.D., thanks to the remnants of old clairvoyant perception. All knowledge of that time about the resurrected Christ has been lost for external tradition. This knowledge is that of the Christ who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, and then in a spirit body, like the ancient teachers of primeval humanity, taught some of His chosen pupils after His resurrection. The Gospels give mere indications, in a very scanty way, of the significance of the teachings which the resurrected Christ gave to His disciples when He met with them. And St. Paul's experience of Damascus is understood by Paul himself as a teaching which the resurrected Christ gave him, through which Saul became Paul. In those past times people were conscious of the fact that the resurrected Christ Jesus had to impart mysteries of a very special kind to men. The human beings themselves were the cause of not being able to receive these communications at later periods. They had to develop those soul forces which led to the use of human freedom and human intellect. This has appeared with especial force since the 15th century, but it was already in preparation from the 4th century A.D. on.

The question must now arise: What was the content of the teachings which the resurrected Christ was able to give His chosen disciples? For He appeared to them in the same manner in which the divine teachers had appeared to primitive mankind. Perhaps I may express it in the following manner: He was now able to tell them in divine language that He had experienced what His heavenly companions had not experienced. He was able to tell them, from His divine point of view, something about the secret of birth and death. He was able to impart to them the knowledge that in the future the earthly human being would possess a day-waking consciousness by means of which he would not be able to perceive the immortal soul in human life and which would be extinguished in sleep, preventing, during sleep, this immortal soul from appearing to the soul's gaze; but He was able to call attention to the fact that it is possible to include the Mystery of Golgotha in human perception. I should like to express in the following words what He explained to them. I can express it merely in weak, stammering words, for our languages do not offer greater possibilities of expression, but I shall try to put it in the following weak, stammering words: The human body has gradually become so dense, the death forces in it have become so strong that, although the human being is now able to develop his intellect and his freedom, he can do this only in a life which distinctly passes through death, a life in which death signifies an incisive break, and in which, during the waking consciousness, the perception of the immortal soul is extinguished. But ye can receive into your soul a certain wisdom, ye can receive the wisdom that through the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christ spoke thus to His initiated pupils—something has occurred in My own being with which ye can imbue your own selves, provided ye are willing to gain the knowledge that the Christ has descended to the earth from extra-earthly spheres; provided ye are willing to acquire the concept that on earth something exists which cannot be beheld by earthly means, which can only be perceived by means higher than the earthly; provided ye can behold the Mystery of Golgotha as a divine event placed in the midst of earth-life; provided ye are able to perceive that a God has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Through everything else that occurs on earth ye can acquire earthly wisdom; but this would be of no use in gaining an understanding of death in a human way. It would only be of use to you if, like ancient humanity, ye were not intensely interested in death. But since ye are compelled to be interested in it, your insight must receive an impulse much stronger than all other earthly perceptive impulses. It is so strong that ye will be able to say to yourself: With the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha something has happened that has broken all earthly natural laws. If ye are able to absorb into your faith only earthly natural law, ye will never grasp death in its significance for human life, even though ye may be able to behold it. But if ye can bring about in yourselves the understanding that the earth has acquired meaning only through the fact that in the middle of earth evolution, through the Mystery of Golgotha, something Divine has occurred which cannot be grasped by mere earthly comprehension, then will ye prepare in yourselves a special force of wisdom, and this force of wisdom is the same as the force of faith; ye will prepare a special force of pneumasophia, a force of faith and wisdom. For it is a strong force of the soul which says: “I believe, I know through faith what I shall never be able to believe and know through earthly means!” It is a far stronger force than the one which only ascribes to itself the ability to know what can be fathomed by earthly means. Even were the human being to gain all the wisdom of the earth, he would still be weak if he only knew how to sustain his wisdom by earthly means. If he is willing to acknowledge the fact that the super-earthly lives in the earthly, he must develop a much greater inner activity.

The impulse to develop such an inner activity lies in our consideration of the Mystery of Golgotha. The resurrected Christ proclaimed again and again to His original disciples the teaching that a God had experienced human destiny—for the Gods of previous epochs had not had this experience in their own spheres—and that this God had united Himself with the destiny of the earth through human destinies. And this had a tremendous effect in the world. Just strive for a moment to realize how powerful the effect of this could be; try to realize it in considering present-day conditions. Less is demanded of a human being who in his thinking is able to grasp all that he has gathered from earthly conditions, from traditional religious concepts which, in general, are accepted, than of a human being who we expect will raise his understanding to the point where it can grasp the fact that certain categories of divine beings did not possess a knowledge of death and birth before the Mystery of Golgotha but had to acquire it, at that significant moment of history, for the salvation of mankind. It requires a certain strength in order to “mingle” with divine wisdom, if we may be permitted to use this expression. Certainly no special strength is needed in order to read from any catechism that God is “all-knowing,” “all-mighty,” “all-divine,” etc. You need merely to place the little word “all” before everything, and the definition of the Divine is ready-made, but it is the most nebulous definition possible. Today human beings do not dare—if I may say so—to “mingle with divine wisdom.” But this “mingling” must take place. And a part of divine wisdom is what the Gods themselves have acquired through the fact that One of their number passed through human birth and human death. And it was of enormous importance that this secret was entrusted to the first disciples. And the further great and important fact, taught these disciples, was that it is true that the force once lived in the human being which gives him an insight into the eternal in his own soul.

This actual perception of the eternal in the human soul can never be acquired through brain knowledge, that is, through knowledge acquired through the intellect which uses the brain as an instrument. It can never be acquired in reality in the way it was possessed by ancient humanity, unless nature lends her aid through a knowledge which is gained through a special training of the human rhythmical system.

When the last instinctive seers practiced Yoga they achieved much, as long as it was assisted by an ancient instinctive clairvoyance. The present Oriental, the modern Indian, to whom many Westerners turn their attention in such a fantastic manner, does not, when performing his exercises, attain what can be called a real perception of the immortal nature of the human soul. He lives for the most part in illusions by having a temporary experience, although it is something elementary for earth-life, and, in addition, by interpreting this experience by what he finds in his holy books. Real knowledge, fundamental knowledge of the divine human soul can be gained only in a twofold way: Either it can be attained in the way of ancient humanity, or it can be attained in an infinitely more spiritual way through intuitive knowledge, that is, through a knowledge based on imaginative and inspirative wisdom which then rises to intuitive wisdom. Why is this so?

During earth-life the thinking part of the soul has streamed into the human nervous system. Thinking no longer exists for itself, it has molded this plastic structure. And it exists only partially in the rhythmic system. This offers at best some important points from which we might draw further conclusions. Only in the metabolic system, this most materialistic part of earth-life, do we find hidden the actual, immortal part of the human soul. The metabolic system is regarded as the most material on earth, and outwardly this is true; but because it is the most material, the spiritual remains separate from it. The other material parts of the body—the brain and the rhythmic system—absorb the spiritual; it is not present. It is present in the crude-material substances of the body. But the human being must be able to see, to perceive by means of this crude-material substance. This was the case with primeval humanity, and in our present age it may be found in abnormal cases, although this is not desirable. Very few people know, for instance, that the secret of the style of the Zarathustra of Nietzsche rests upon the fact that he took certain poisonous substances into his system which called forth in him the particular rhythm, the particular style of Zarathustra. In Nietzsche a quite definite substance lived as thought. This, of course, is something abnormal, a diseased condition, though it is in a certain sense something magnificent. We cannot permit ourselves to live in illusions about these things if we wish to understand them, any more than we can wish to live in illusions about the opposite pole, about intuition, etc. We must realize what it means that Nietzsche partook of certain poisons, but we must not imitate him. Thus by causing the human organism to take on an etheric mode of existence these poisons irradiate the thought system, thus calling forth what we see in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. By means of intuition we perceive the psycho-spiritual nature as such, quite separate from matter.

In the sphere of intuition nothing material is active. This is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment and in Occult Science. These two—the spiritual and material perceptions—are the two opposite poles.

In those mysteries into which the resurrected Christ sent His message there still existed the knowledge that in ancient times the human being possessed the highest knowledge of matter, “metabolic knowledge.” The way was sought to reawaken this ancient knowledge of matter—although not in the way of primeval mankind, nor in the way of the “hashish-eaters,” who wished, through the effects of certain material substances, to gain a knowledge which cannot be obtained without them. The way to reawaken this ancient knowledge of matter was striven for, but in a different manner, namely through clothing the Mystery of Golgotha in certain mantric forms, chiefly in the structural forms of the mystery of Revelation, Offering, Transubstantiation, Communion, by presenting the Holy Supper through the giving of bread and wine to the worshipper. Poison was not given, but the Holy Supper was offered him, wrapped in the mantric formulas of the Holy Mass, in the fourfold form of the Mass—Gospel, Offering, Transubstantiation, Communion. For after the Communion, after the fourth part of the Holy Mass, the actual Communion of the Faithful occurred, and an endeavor was made to give them at least an intimation of the fact that a certain wisdom must be regained which leads to the goal of ancient “metabolic knowledge.” The human beings of today can hardly imagine this “metabolic knowledge,” because they have no idea how much more, for instance, a bird knows than a man—although not in an intellectual, abstract sense; or how much more even a donkey knows than a man, a donkey, which is an animal living entirely in the metabolic system. It is, however, only a dull knowledge, dreamlike knowledge. Today there exists a degeneration of what primeval man once possessed in his metabolic system. It was out of the first Christian teachings, however, that the Sacrament of the Altar was conceived in order to lead mankind to regain a knowledge of the immortal of the human soul.

At the time when the Christ, who had passed through death, taught His initiated disciples, men were unable to attain such knowledge by themselves. He imparted it to them. And during the first four Christian centuries this knowledge continued on alive, in a certain way. Then it grew sclerotic within the Roman Catholic Church, for although the latter retained the Holy Mass, it had no longer a proper interpretation of it. The Holy Mass—thought of as a continuation of the Last Supper as it is described in the Bible—has naturally no meaning, unless a meaning is first inserted into it. The establishment of the Holy Mass with its wonderful cult, its imitation of the four mystery-degrees, is to be traced back to the fact that the resurrected Christ was the instructor of those who were able to receive these teachings in a higher esoteric sense. During the subsequent centuries only a childlike sort of teaching about the Mystery of Golgotha could remain. A faculty was developed which for the time being concealed the knowledge of this Mystery. Human beings had first to become fully acquainted with all that relates to death. This marked the first medieval civilization.

Traditions were preserved. In many occult societies of the present, people gather who, in their writings, possess formulas which remind those who understand and recognize them of the teachings of the resurrected Christ to His initiated disciples. But those who today meet in all sorts of Masonic lodges and occult societies do not understand what lives in their formulas; they actually have no idea about all that these formulas contain. But much could be gained from these formulas, because in their dead letters much wisdom still lives. Yet it is not done! But after mankind in its evolution has gone through a certain period of darkness in regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, it has come today to the point of time where human longing for a deeper knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha needs satisfaction. And this can occur only through Anthroposophy. This can occur only through the appearance of new knowledge, acquired in a purely spiritual way. When it does occur we shall then again acquire a fully human understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then we shall again learn to understand that the most significant teachings have been given to humanity, not through the Christ who lived in the physical body until the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, but through the resurrected Christ after the occurrence of this Mystery. We shall gain a new understanding of the words of an initiate like St. Paul: “And if Christ hath not been raised your faith is vain.” (I Cor. XV, 17). Since the experience of Damascus he knew that everything depended upon an understanding of the resurrected Christ, upon the union of the force of the resurrected Christ with the human soul, which enabled him to say: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”

In contrast to this, it is altogether too characteristic that in the 19th Century a theology developed which does not wish to know anything at all about the resurrected Christ. It is a significant symptom of our time that a teacher of theology in Basle, Switzerland, a friend of Nietzsche, Overbeck, as a theologian, wrote a book about the Christian character of present-day theology. In this he tried to prove that the theology of today is no longer Christian. Much that is characteristically Christian may still exist—this is also the opinion of such a personality as Overbeck, who comprehends Christianity; but theology, as taught by “Christian” theologians, is at any rate not Christian. This, in brief, is the opinion of the Christian theologian Overbeck. And his opinion is very intelligently proven in his book.

Mankind has reached a point in regard to the comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha where those who are officially appointed by the church to say something about it know the least. From this springs the longing, the human longing, to be able to learn something about what everyone can experience in his inmost being, namely, the need of Christ.

It was evident from our recent lectures [Anthroposophical-scientific Course, 6 lectures. The Hague, Holland, April 7th–12th, 1922.] that Anthroposophy has much to render in the way of service to the humanity of our time. A significant service which it can render will be that of religion. But we do not intend to inaugurate a new religion!

The event which has given the earth its meaning is of such a character that it will never be surpassed. This event consists in the passing of a God through the human destiny of birth and death. After the advent of Christianity no new religion can be founded—this is evident to anyone who knows the foundation of Christianity. We would misunderstand Christianity were we to believe that a new religion could be founded. But since humanity itself advances more and more in super-sensible knowledge, there will be an ever deeper comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha, and with it of the Christ Being. To this comprehension Anthroposophy wishes to give, at the present time, what it alone is capable of contributing; for nowhere else will there be the possibility of speaking about the estate of the divine teachers of humanity in primeval times who spoke of everything except birth and death, because they themselves had not passed through birth and death. And nowhere else will it be possible to speak of the Teacher Who had come to His initiated disciples in a form similar to the one in which the divine primeval teachers of mankind had once appeared, but Who was able to give the significant teachings of a God's experience in the human destiny of birth and death.

Out of this communication of a God to mankind we shall draw the force to behold death, in which we must be interested, in such a way that we can say: Death does exist, but it cannot harm the soul. The Mystery of Golgotha enabled us to declare this fact. St. Paul knew that, had it not taken place, had the Christ not risen, then the soul would have been enmeshed in the destiny of the body; that is, been enmeshed in the dissolution of the body into the elements of the earth. Had Christ not risen, had He not united Himself with the earth forces, the human soul would unite itself with the human body between birth and death in such a way that it would also link itself with all the molecules of the body which unite themselves with the earth after the body's destruction by fire or through putrefaction. Then in future ages, at the end of the earth evolution, it would happen that human souls would take the same road as the substance of the earth. But the Christ, by passing through the Mystery of Golgotha, is able to tear the human soul away from this destiny. The earth will continue on its path in the cosmos. But just as the human soul is able to emerge from the individual human body, so the sum total of human souls will be freed from the earth and will advance onward to a new cosmic existence.

The Christ is thus connected with the earth in a very intimate way. But the manner in which we have approached this secret alone enables us to understand it.

In the minds of many the following question might arise: How will it be, at that time, with those who do not believe in Christ? In regard to this I should like to say as a consolation that the Christ has died for us all, even for those who today are unable to unite themselves with Him. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective fact quite apart from human knowledge; but this human knowledge strengthens the inner forces of the human soul. And all the means at our command concerning human knowledge, human feeling, human will, will have to be employed in the further course of earth evolution in order to establish, through direct knowledge, the presence of Christ in the individual human soul.

This, my dear friends, is what I wished to say to you today.

Also known as The Present Crisis in Man's Development and The Science of the Spirit, Education, and the Practical Life. From: Lectures on Spiritual Essence and Its Working. Lecture 13 of 18 from the volume: Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above.

The times in which we live are so earnest that at present it is not in any way appropriate to think of personal matters. Allow me, first of all, to express briefly my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed president for her kind words and then to pass on to what I believe I must tell you, for it is a long time since we saw one another in Holland.

The times in which we live and its conditions are much more earnest than most people of the present are consciously aware of.

Here we can speak of these conditions of our times from those standpoints which result from a long study of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. We know that we live in an epoch whose characteristic peculiarity began to be evident in the 15th century. It was then that it slowly began to develop its peculiarities. Those who are initiated into the spiritual conditions of human evolution and can therefore have an insight into this course of development, know that the second half of the 19th century indicates a specially low point of human evolution in the modern and particularly in European culture. This low point may be characterised as the rise of a particular inthrust of egoism in all branches of civilised humanity, an egoism of a kind that was never there before. This wave of a special course of development then sent its ramifications into the 20th century, and now these ramifications undoubtedly continue to hold mankind under their spell.

In saying that a wave of egoism came over the whole modern civilisation, I do not speak trivially of what one generally defines as egoism, but I speak of egoism in a special sense, into which we shall penetrate a little in the course of this morning's considerations, and in a way that will be evident to those who are initiated in the true mysteries of more recent human evolution.

We already know the members constituting human nature. We know that the soul-members of human nature have been engaged for a long time in a special process of transformation, in a special course of development. We know that when we go back to very ancient times of human evolution we have to do with a particular forming of man's etheric body, during a very old time of development in India; a particular forming of the astral body then began, and a certain intermediate course of development took place during that epoch of European development which began about the year 747 in the south of Europe and which closed in the first thirty years of the 15th century. That time was the beginning of that epoch of human evolution in which we are still living. In the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, began that phase of human evolution in which the so-called intellectual and understanding soul (Verstandes und Gemütsseele) unfolded. Everything that humanity still prizes to-day as Greek culture; developed through the fact that at that very time the intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. However, while the wonderful Greek culture was unfolding, that which we call intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. It had not yet reached its climax. For such points are always in a certain way times of probation for the evolution of humanity. For the sake of their development, the Greeks had to pass through what one might call the youthful freshness of the intellectual or understanding soul. The Greek culture, so much admired by posterity, came into being out of this youthful freshness of an intellect that was not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human understanding. Of the characteristics pertaining to the intellectual soul, the Latin and Roman culture then took over something that was in a descending line of development and decadent. Those who have a deeper comprehension for that which lived in Roman culture know: There the intellect already reaches its culmination; there the intellect rises to a high point. On that account the Romans developed such abstract ideas; on that account the Romans developed something that did not as yet exist in the whole ancient East, that did not even exist, in the sense known in Europe, in the Greek culture: The Romans developed the ideas of jurisprudence, the juridical concepts.

To-day we consider the world very superficially and we translate our thoughts on “Jus”, on jurisprudence, which, in reality are the outcome only of the Roman intellectual soul, into something which we assume to have already existed in the ancient East, for instance in Hammurabi, and so forth. But that is not the case. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as well as the contents of other documents of that time, were, after all, something quite different from that which constitutes our modern juridical concepts. These are something abstract, something that is no longer so close to the human soul. Everything that thus constitutes the development of the intellectual soul reached its climax during a period in the civilisation of Europe which has really been studied very little from an external historical standpoint, although it is extraordinarily important and significant for those who wish to study human evolution in the meaning of spiritual science.

That striking year to which we can draw attention as being specially significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha is the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is that point of time when a fluctuating knowledge of the universe lived in Europe simultaneously with a fluctuating knowledge of humanity. These had nothing of the penetrating character of the knowledge of the universe that the Greeks still possessed and no proper comprehension of man's inner world.

We find instead that man sways either towards the longing for an extensive knowledge of the universe, or towards the longing for self-knowledge, knowledge of his own self. The human soul of the European peoples indeed passed through a great deal during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Roman life was then entering into its decay; it bequeathed to European humanity nothing but its language; it left behind its more or less fundamental material of culture. The life of humanity thus entered the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lasting up to the 15^th century, when our present epoch began.

From the preceding epoch, in which most of us in some way passed through one or more earthly lives, we brought over—partly through physical heredity, but particularly through the fact that we ourselves formerly were those incarnated souls—into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we took over this inheritance. This inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives in everything that constitutes our present civilisation.

We worked the intellect, the thinking, into our consciousness soul. That means a great deal. At the beginning of the fifth epoch, the consciousness soul enabling man to really permeate, really grasp his ego, first took hold of his thinking, his life of representations and his intellect. Humanity thus became intelligent and clever, but clever within the consciousness soul; within the evolution of humanity, this implies the finest possible elaboration of EGOISM.

We should not only rebuke this epoch of egoism, we should not only fall upon it with criticism, but in spite of the fact that it brings with it so many temptations and leads man into great soul-dangers and even into external danger, we should recognise this age of egoism as the one in which ego-consciousness comes to the fore with special incisiveness.

Man can thus take into himself a real feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is something that none of us possessed in our previous incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human evolution. We had to pass through egoism, that presents so many temptations, in order to reach that longing for freedom which is the prerogative of modern humanity. One of the most important things in Anthroposophy is the knowledge that we had to take in something in order to climb over an important stage in human evolution: the stage leading to the DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. For this very reason we should be aware that this crossing over is connected, with many temptations, with many dangers of humanity, both soul-spiritually and bodily. A knowledge going in the direction of Anthroposophy must enable us to take in fully the feeling of freedom, but at the same time to ennoble it, to permeate it again with a spiritual knowledge of the universe, which—in spite of the now existing mature ego-feeling, mature ego-consciousness—induces mankind to solve tasks that are not only egoistic tasks, but tasks pertaining to the whole evolution of humanity, indeed to the evolution of the whole earth, to the evolution of the whole universe.

In this connection we are now facing a great turning point in the whole civilisation of more recent times. The time of probation has indeed come! Great tasks confront mankind. But the recognition of these tasks is extremely difficult and is rendered still more difficult through the fact that we have just passed through the age of the great egoism.

We say that we sleep from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. That is right. We are then in a state of dulled consciousness. Most of you know sleep only in its negative aspect, that it dulls consciousness. Yet we do not judge the waking state in the same way. The time of being awake, the time from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, was really quite different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To-day people believe that they are awake in the same way in which, for instance, the people living about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were awake. That is not the case. Their whole soul-constitution was different. Man was then awake in a different way. He was much more strongly conscious of his body.

You see, modern man really knows very little indeed of his bodily processes. The Greeks, not the Greeks of a later time, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic and pre-Platonic times, still knew a great deal of the processes of their own body. For example, the really cultured Greek looked up to the sun. From the sun he received the light. He received at the same time a feeling that he was drawing in something etheric, that the light was being led on into his inner being. And when he was thinking, he said: The light, the sun thinks within me. The Greek of pre-Socratic times still felt this in a living way. He did not think so abstractly about thinking as we do to-day. He thought: The sun thinks within me: it allows its light to be drawn in by me. The light that shines upon the things outside, that makes the things outside visible, is active within me, by reflecting itself, as it were, within its own being, so that thoughts spring up in me. For the Greek, the thoughts within him were the light of the sun. At the same time, they were for him that element which lived in the macrocosm thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings. At the same time, they were for him that which really raised him to the Divine, above his ordinary dignity as a human being. He felt himself lifted above the earthly, when he thus experienced the sun's light within him as thinking. And when a particularly cultured Greek ate, he indeed considered his food, in which he took in something that he did not receive directly from the sun, but that came from the earth, as a necessity of life, yet at the same time he felt himself changing into the food, that became he himself, as it passed through his mouth, his oesophagus and digestive organs. He felt that he was one with the food, in the same way in which he felt that he was one with the sunlight. While he was digesting, he felt the earth's gravity. He felt, as it were, similar to the serpent, that he did not as yet highly appreciate, but that he still observed rather timidly—the serpent that twists away from the earth and digests in a particularly visible way, after having swallowed its food. That is how the Greek experienced what went on in his body: whether he experienced what was thinking within him as the sun's bright light, or whether he experienced within himself what chained him to the earth; i.e. the taking in of food. Through the intimate way in which his understanding was connected with his body the Greek felt with particular energy that which also lived within him as physical human being. You may also deduce this from the following:

When we paint human beings to-day in the ordinary way, as numerous painters of the present generation have done year after year, decade after decade in painting portraits, we really lie. We look at people outwardly and believe that then we bring forth something of what we experience. It is not true at all that we can experience something in that way! We could experience it only if we were able to conjure up within us the whole way of identifying ourselves feelingly with the whole of Nature as human beings, as it was the case with the Greeks. First of all, we must learn this anew, along an entirely different path than that of the Greeks.

Since the middle of the 15th century, we have acquired in an abstract-theoretical way a soul-constitution that no longer allows us to really penetrate livingly into our body, but that lives instead in concepts that do not stand visibly before us, because we have conquered thinking for the egoity, for the ego. We should realise this. And we should realise that we must once more take in spirituality from an anthroposophical spiritual science, so that the ego may once more be filled with something, and so that that which really lives within us may once more—but now in a different way—enter our life: that which the Greeks experienced in an immediate, elemental way; but that could not continue.

When the Greek walked, he walked as if led by a necessity of Nature, like the lightning flashing through the clouds, or the rolling thunder! He knew nothing whatever of freedom, but he knew man! Indeed, he knew more about man than we think he did. For instance, he knew how to coin words clearly indicating that man still knew something of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. The Greek words, or those derived from the Greek, indicate even to-day far more than those based on our therapeutic or pathological conceptions, that are no longer able to understand anything. Hypochondria for instance, means cartilaginosity of the abdomen. It is a name that the Greeks found through their full knowledge of the fact that in hypochondric people the activity of the soul-spiritual gives rise to cartilaginous formations in certain parts of the body. These names mean far more than modern men suppose, and more than can in any way be grasped through modern medicine, with its abstract way of thinking, even though it experiments, dissects, etc. We must first take up again everything that is real, that once more enables us to have an insight into the world! It is the task of a spiritual scientific deepening to reach once more real facts, realities.

You see, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the human beings passed through what constitutes, as it were, a physical self-knowledge, an insight into the human body, during that time—one might say approximately, during the first third of that time, occurs the greatest event of the earth's evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is the condition of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred?—The further we go back, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Persian and the ancient Indian epoch—this immediate knowledge of the whole human being. Then, this knowledge of the whole human being disappears. The last remains of that knowledge may be found at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared. Something of that instinctive, ancient knowledge of man still existed at that time. For instance, the personalities described in the Gospels as the Apostles, or the Disciples of the Lord, still possessed something of that old instinctive knowledge, which lived in their souls altogether instinctively, not clearly. Others too possessed such a knowledge. At that time it was to a great extent decadent, but at any rate it still existed. It was dying away, burning out, but enough remained of that ancient knowledge to enable a great number of men of that time to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha accordingly. This is particularly evident when the apostle Paul entered the evolution of the times, the apostle Paul who was initiated by divine powers and to whom the spiritual world became visible.

All this gave rise to conditions of time which still enabled man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain naive, instinctive way. Many people had already entered a later phase of development. Particularly the cultured Greeks and the cultured Romans had concepts that were already far too abstract in order [to] grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a really living way. Yet certain people had preserved the last remains of an old clairvoyant knowledge, particularly clairvoyant traditions, and they were still able to grasp that a super-earthly power, the Christ, had connected Himself with an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, was, as it were, the year in which last stragglers of those who were still able to have a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be found in Europe. But these stragglers could not understand it, for instance, through our anthroposophical spiritual science, for this did not, of course, exist at that time. They grasped it through an old knowledge that had remained from the Gnosis, and such like. A certain spiritual knowledge still existed. An ancient human inheritance lived in the human soul and this enabled man to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha.

What has remained of the Mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions!—The Gnosis became theology, a mere logical way of grasping the divine. Theo-Logy: a mere logical way of grasping the divine, no longer a contemplation of the divine!

Since the year 333, the capacity of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in a direct way became more and more decadent, until the fateful time of the 9th century, when, in the year 869, the Eighth General Oecumenic Council at Constantinople gave out the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but that it is instead a Christian's duty to acknowledge that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses a few spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy, as it was called, the only possible knowledge of the human being, according to which man consists of body, soul and spirit, was done away with dogmatically, and a dogma was enforced, according to which a Christian who truly believes must acknowledge that man only consists of body and soul.

Modern philosophers frequently state that their philosophy is based on an unprejudiced knowledge, and they speak on the one hand of the body, and on the other of the soul. They speak of the spirit in a very phraseological manner at the most, for they do not know the spirit. They would only know it, if they recognised the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. The “impartial philosophy” that is now being taught to such an extent—what is it, in reality?—It is the result of the dogma pronounced by the Eighth Oecumenic Council in the year 869.

We must see through this. We must be quite clear that when the modern civilisation arose, and even in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it was considered as dangerous to speak of the spirit and to draw attention to it. But at the present time it is necessary that we should draw mankind's attention to the spirit,—the spirit that has been declared to be the devil for a long, long time, within the civilisation of Europe! After the year 333, nothing but traditions remained of the old Christological knowledge—nothing but traditions!

Everything that constitutes art shows us even more clearly that it has remained tradition! Observe, for instance, Cimabue's paintings; there you will see a world that took on a completely different aspect in Giotto's paintings. In Cimabue's paintings lived something that may also be seen in Dante, something that could no longer be experienced by the human beings of a later time! Later on, this living within a spiritual world, that may still be seen in Cimabue, ceased. Later on, it was a hypocrisy to paint a golden background, but for a Cimabue this was quite natural. And now observe a Russian icon; it is not in any way painted after a model, for it is something in which the old traditions are still alive, traditions that come from a clairvoyance still existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and enabling man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time in which the traditions were maintained by using external instruments of power. And then came the 19th century, in which the ordinary soul-activity that brought forth such significant results in natural science and technology, was also applied to theology. But what became of theology through this? Christ-Jesus, the incarnation of a Being that does not belong to the earthly became “the simple man of Nazareth,” looked upon indeed as the most perfect man, but not as the bearer of a super-earthly Being. Theology became naturalistic. The more our modern theologians look upon Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, the less they feel induced to pursue Christological ideas, and the happier they are! Even in theology they do not wish to rise beyond the description of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, they do not wish to rise to an understanding of Christ as a super-earthly Being that dwelt in the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

To-day, those who have an insight into world-events from a spiritual standpoint, must see many things differently from the way in which they are judged by people who only see them outwardly. Central Europe, that is now passing through such a tragic destiny, was able—among other things which cannot be discussed here—to accept Adolf Harnack as a great scientist; the very man who reached the point of saying that God the Son should not be included in the Gospels! They should be read, he says, in such a way as to find in them only the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and this man's teachings concerning God the Father. Harnack's theology was intended to do away with our feelings of reverence for the spirituality of Christ. The theology which Harnack established in Central Europe really signifies the negation of Christianity, the denial of Christianity; it signifies the setting up of a world-conception clearly stating that we do not wish to have anything to do with the spirituality of Christ. It is significant to observe what has thus swept over modern humanity, with the result that the most distorted views now exist concerning the most important ideas of human life.

To-day we know what sleep is, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Yet we do not, as a rule, observe the other kind of sleep, in which we live from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when we walk about in our everyday life, steeped in illusions and dreams in regard to its most important facts. Indeed, in these modern times, we do not only sleep when we lie in our bed at night (this is actually the better kind of sleep), but we are also asleep in the sphere of egoism, when we lock ourselves up in our inner being, unwilling to know our human body and, at the same time, unwilling to progress to a spiritual self-knowledge. We sleep another kind of sleep during the time from falling asleep to waking up.

In order to understand this, we must indeed observe the nature of sleep from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up. What does then take place with the human being? Why does the modern intellect believe that as far as the human constitution is concerned sleep is the same for modern man as it was for the ancient Greeks?—The Greeks were not awake in the same way as we, and the Egyptians even less so, nor did they sleep as we do. This soul-constitution in particular should be studied for every epoch of time.

When, during sleep, the human soul, that is to say, the ego and the astral body, loosens itself from the physical and etheric bodies that remain lying on the bed—where does the soul, that is the ego and the astral body, really dwell while we are asleep?

Superficial explanations that a cloud may be seen hovering over the physical body (which is quite true, as far as an altogether external form of clairvoyance is concerned), do not suffice. This is not sufficient, for we must observe what takes place inwardly. We must observe what the soul really experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. In these modern times, the human soul then passes through experiences that are also lived through by the souls that are not as yet incarnated on the earth. Consider the following: Take a case that came to my notice just now, before I began my lecture: A daughter was born to an anthroposophist; one year ago, this little girl lived in the spiritual world as body and soul, and has since then made the endeavour to descend to the physical world. All those decades, that make us so much older than this little newly born girl, during all those years it lived in the spiritual world. And while we were asleep, we lived from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, in the world in which the little girl dwelt before conception, or birth. That is the world in which we dwell, when we are asleep, and there, the souls that are not yet incarnated pass through many experiences. While we are asleep, we pass with them through the fifth post-Atlantean age and through events resembling their own experiences.

From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live, on the other hand, in a world that we sleep away during our waking life; we live in everything that we inherited from our past earthly existences. We live together with what has remained behind from ancient India, Persia, or Egypt; we live with what we have experienced spiritually here on earth, and this is cramped together egoistically in our inner being. We bring it along with us into our present incarnation. During the day, we live with all these things, and sleep away the present. Indeed, the present contains many things that can only be grasped spiritually. We cramp ourselves egoistically in ideas that come from the past and adhere to them obstinately even in our language, in our speech. Languages contain a great store of ancient crystallized wisdom. Yet we rebel against any kind of influence that may be exercised upon our souls by this ancient store of wisdom. For instance, to-day we use the words “Messer”, knife, or “Schere”, scissors. When we use the word “Schere”, scissors, we do not as a rule think that it comes from a kind of “Scheren”, or shearing, that is announced in every barber's shop! And when we use the word “Messer”, knife, we do not think that it is really based on a moral idea, for it is connected with “Maass”, measure, and “Zumessen”, to mete out, or cut to measure. When a knife was used in ancient times, it was really used to “mete out” a gift for someone. A store of wisdom lies crystallized in the words we use, and this ancient spiritual life that is contained in the words now uttered so thoughtlessly, lives in the depths of our being. Whenever we speak, we really experience the life of ancient epochs.

Spiritually, we pass through ancient epochs of the earth, from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, but we pass through them in a sleeping condition. And from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we pass through events that are connected with the descent of human souls to their life on earth.

You see, these are realities, these are truths. These realities should be well impressed upon us, if we do not only wish to become acquainted with the forces of decay, but also with the forces of growth and progress. It would be so much better if, before going to sleep in the evening, a greater number of people were to do other things than those which they are accustomed to do! Consider what many people generally do, as last thing, before they go to bed! Yet a modern man should say to himself: I wish to enter the world that contains the forces of growth and progress, it is the world in which I can experience those forces that lead the human souls down to the earth, a world in which I can experience those forces spiritually.

From the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up we experience the forces pertaining to the future. For that reason, we should have a kind of craving for the teachings that speak of a spiritual world and that enable us to be conscious of the experiences of souls that are in a condition (but consciously) resembling that of souls who are asleep here on earth. The impulses for the progress of civilisation, for the healing of civilisation, must come from that world! The spiritual, political and economic impulses that should unfold as healing powers for our civilisation must come from that world! It is necessary, at the present time, that we should once more acquire the possibility of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, of grasping it in a spiritual way.

What is the essential, or let us say, one of the essential things (for there are, of course, many essential things in it), in the Mystery of Golgotha?—That a God, a super-earthly Being, took up His abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Beings of His kind have one characteristic quality: they cannot die. All those Beings of the higher Hierarchies, described in my “OCCULT SCIENCE”, the Angels, Archangels, etc. up to the highest Beings, the Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. do not die (read the description of their life's course in my books), they do not die as men die. What did Christ take upon Himself, Christ Who came from the higher Hierarchies?—He died within a human body. You see, here we have significant forces that pass over into the evolution of humanity upon the earth, Christ died in a human body; he passed through the experience of death, an experience unknown to the other gods who are connected with the earth. Up to the year 333, it was still possible to grasp this truth to a certain extent. Now we must learn to grasp it anew! We should grasp anew that a super-earthly Being shared with us the experience of death, thus passing over into the development of the earth. Yet at the same time we should have the great modesty of recognising that the experiences of this Being highly surpass what can be experienced through the soul-constitution of a human being.

The Christ descended from worlds where death is unknown. What Beings serve the Christ?—Among those who serve Him, there is not one who could make the same sacrifice, not one who could have come down to the earth, in order to pass through death. Beings that belong to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, right up to the higher Hierarchies, Beings connected with the evolution of the earth, are Christ's servants. We cannot perceive them, if we do not rise to a super-earthly knowledge of the higher Hierarchies. Through a knowledge of the spiritual worlds we should seek that which leads us to Christ. Spiritual science is needed above all in order to attain a new knowledge of Christ. For Christ is here, upon the earth, and He is surrounded by the world of the higher Hierarchies. Man's great temptation in modern times is the modern natural science with its great triumphs and its admission of purely external forces of Nature. Yet behind all these forces of Nature live the spiritual Beings! The assertions of natural science are certainly right, nevertheless the spiritual Beings that serve Christ live behind the forces of Nature, thinking and directing them. Christ lives in everything that constitutes the development of the earth. Super-earthly Beings serve Him—but these super-earthly Beings can only be recognised through spiritual science. Consequently an extremely important task evolves upon spiritual science: the renewal of Christianity.

All this shows you that to-day we cannot pursue spiritual science merely as a personal concern. To-day spiritual science concerns civilised humanity as a whole. Through an inner necessity, spiritual science was from the very beginning pursued in the circle that afterwards obtained the name of “Anthroposophical Society”, in a different way than in the Theosophical Society. The whole constitution of the Theosophical Society had, from the very outset, a sectarian character, something that reckoned with the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy therefore had the task of taking into account the consciousness of modern times, that which constitutes the external culture of humanity, and of pouring into it the results of a spiritual manner of contemplation. Little differences and strifes are of no importance whatever in the face of such a task. It was essential for me to maintain the purity of a spiritual movement that reckons with the whole science of modern times. Whether this or that person may or may not accept one or the other truth, is of no importance to me. Even though the whole world may abuse spiritual science and criticize it, I do not consider this as essential, for the essential thing is that the spiritual science that I advance should really harmonize fully, with the modern, scientific mentality, with the moral conscience of modern times. For this reason, I had to publish my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” before revealing the truths of Karma. I have often listened with great pain to theosophists who said: If this or that man suffers, if he suffers socially and belongs to a lower class or caste, it is his Karma and he has deserved it. This interpretation of the idea of Karma corresponded to the egoistical requirements of men who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Yet they did not think that we do not only live through our present life on earth, but that we shall also live through a future life. To-day we should not always look back on what we once possessed in past lives on earth, but we should also consider that in future lives on earth we shall be looking back on what we are passing through now—and this will then be an entirely new experience. Freedom fully harmonizes with the idea of Karma ... Everything that appears in the account-book of life is karmically connected.

You see, if I reckon up the debit and credit sides of destiny and strike the balance, I obtain life's balance; but this does not entail that the single items are subjected to the necessity of Nature. Just as the single items of a commercial account book do not depend on diligence, and so forth, and finally enable us to strike a balance, so freedom can very well be connected with the idea of Karma. We should not adopt an easy fatalistic idea when advancing the view of Karma as a fully justified idea. Spiritual science should therefore be in full harmony also with the conscience and the moral attitude of modern humanity. For that reason it was necessary to work more extensively with spiritual science, also during the time in which the catastrophe broke out in regard to everything that has been caused by the egoism of modern humanity, both soul-spiritually and physically.

Would it have been honest and straightforward to continue preaching that spiritual science can help mankind, and yet advance no social ideas at a time when social requirements became as urgent as they are to-day? Would human love not have progressed in the direction of a social knowledge? Shall we content ourselves with declamations on human love? Or should we not rather progress to real social impulses?

The fact that we can only see Christ's ministering spirits, clearly when we look into the spiritual world, is a result and a fundamental knowledge of spiritual science, a result of what I have told you to-day concerning waking and sleeping, concerning sleeping wakefulness and the awakening from sleep through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also enable us to grasp once more the Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with a modern mentality. And as a result, spiritual science must not restrict itself to some sectarian group, but if must be brought out into the world in the best possible way, according to our capacities and to our place in life! The centre at Dornach was not intended to be a sectarian centre, but one that renders fruitful every branch of science and life, social life and artistic life. Anthroposophy and its spiritual science must become a concern of the great masses of humanity, although its most important things and that which penetrates into the innermost depths of our heart, awakening our inner forces, are pursued within the narrower circles of our Groups. There, in those Groups, we gather forces, in order to develop a certain higher knowledge, which we must first take in there. It is a knowledge that must be developed, for to-day we live in a time in which mankind really does not know what it is seeking; it sleeps away the most important things of life. Nevertheless it is a time in which mankind seeks after a new knowledge of the spirit! Let us feel this deeply, as pioneers, I might say, of a spiritual renewal—as Anthroposophists.

For that reason I so warmly wish that also the Groups in Holland might pursue an earnest, diligent and untiring study of the knowledge that can be obtained in our movement, from out the spiritual worlds. I warmly wish that our Groups should study diligently. These studies should constitute the point of departure for bringing out Anthroposophy into the world—and each one must do this in his own way—so that mankind's longings may be satisfied through a spiritual contemplation directed towards Anthroposophy. For that reason, let us grasp the nature of the longings of modern man. Let us not think that we become materialistic, when we spiritualize matter! And let us clearly realise that mankind would face a great misfortune, if it fails to obtain the true knowledge that is able to avert that misfortune.

The Eighth Oecumenic Council of the year 869 drove away from human knowledge the contemplation of the spirit. Those who have an entirely materialistic mentality seek to prepare the next stage: they also wish to eliminate the soul and to establish the general dogmatic knowledge that man only consists of the body. Certain devilish initiates are now excogitating means of educating the human being materialistically, of preparing him materialistically as a body; they seek to attain their end not by means of psychic influences, but by means of ingredients and substances taken from Nature. They plan an experimental psychology and seek to adopt principles that are not those of the Waldorf School (for the Waldorf School principles are spiritual protests against modern materialism), and they already undertake all manner of experiments in order to test man's capacities. This is but a preliminary stage of what they really aim at. The child is no longer to be educated psychically, but with the aid of external, material means, so that its capacities may develop in a bodily way. Thus man would gradually become an automaton, unless we bear in mind at the right moment that the path that led to the elimination of the spirit must not be continued in the direction of the elimination of the soul as well. We must instead follow the opposite direction of the Eighth Oecumenic Council; we must once more follow the path enabling us to find the spirit anew, and to cultivate in human life, in every sphere of practical human life, only what we can discover through the spirit.

This is what I wish to implant into your souls, what I wish to implant into your hearts, my dear friends, after our long absence. Cultivate spiritual science first of all as a concern of the heart, in the way in which it should be cultivated individually, so that we may progress. Cultivate what you have thus taken in, and then bring it out to humanity in every sphere of life, bring out what you have thus taken in! You will then gradually find the path enabling you, in the present difficult and earnest time of probation, to do the right thing for humanity, according to your place in life.

My dear Friends,

The theme proposed for our lectures is: Supersensible Man, as he can be perceived and understood out of Anthroposophical wisdom. We shall try to give expression to this knowledge and understanding of man from many different sides; and as the number of lectures has unavoidably to be small, I will plunge at once into the heart of the subject.

To speak of man as a super-sensible being at once raises the question of the way in which man is regarded at the present day. For a long time now there has been no mention of super-sensible man, not even among persons of an idealistic turn of mind. The ordinary culture and knowledge of our age never speaks of the man who passes through births and deaths. In the course of centuries it has become quite natural to us to believe and even to teach our children in the schoolroom that the Earth is no more than a speck of dust, as it were, in the Cosmos, while upon this speck of dust, as an infinitely smaller speck of dust, man moves through the Universe with a delirious rapidity—man, who is utterly insignificant in relation to the great Universe. Because this conception of the Earth as a speck of dust has permeated every mind and heart, men have completely lost the possibility of relating the human being to what lies beyond the earthly realm. Something is, however, speaking to men to-day, even if they do not realise it, even if it remain in the realm of the unconscious—speaking to them to-day in clear and unmistakable tones, urging them to turn their attention once again to the super-sensible nature of their own being, and therewith of the universe. For in the course of the last few centuries, my dear friends, materialism has found its way into our very knowledge of man. What is this materialism, in reality?

Materialism is the kind of thought which regards man as a product of the substances and forces of the Earth. And although there are many who declare that the human being is not composed entirely of earthly substances and forces, we have, truly speaking, no science which concerns itself with whatever it is in man that does not originate from earthly substances; and when people declare to-day—in all good faith from their point of view—that the eternal in man can, none the less, be in some way apprehended, the statement is not really quite honest. It is not a matter simply of contradicting materialism. It is dilettantism to imagine that this is what we should be doing on every possible occasion. Theories based upon materialism, which either cast doubt upon or deny altogether the existence, or at any rate the possibility of knowledge, of a spiritual world, are not of first importance; what is significant is the tremendous weight and power of materialism. Of what use is it in the long run, when people say, either out of some inner perception or out of religious tradition, that the thinking, feeling and willing of man must surely have an existence independent of the brain, if then modern science comes along and by one means or another—and it is generally, as you know, in pathological cases that research into the brain is instituted—disposes of the brain bit by bit and gives the appearance of disposing at the same time bit by bit of the human soul' Or what sense is there again in allowing intuitive feelings or religious tradition to speak of the immortality of the life of soul, and then, when a man is ill in his soul, be unable to think of anything that will help him except cures for the brain or the nervous system? It is materialism that has brought us all this knowledge and research. Many of those who are ready to refute materialism to-day do not really know what they are doing. They do not appreciate the tremendous significance of the detailed knowledge which materialism has brought in its train; they have no notion of the consequence of materialism for our whole understanding of man.

Let us then take this for our starting point. We will look at the human being and study him quite honestly from the aspect of what modern science knows about him. Such a study will reveal much. From all that physiology, biology, chemistry and other sciences can contribute towards an understanding of the human being, we shall learn how the different known substances and forces of the world and the Earth come together to build up muscle, bone, nervous system, blood system, the several senses—in short, the whole human being of whom modern science speaks. Approaching modern science in this way in its most successful manifestation, we come upon a remarkable fact. Take, for instance, the knowledge comprised in what a medical student has to learn as the foundation for his work of healing. Having acquainted himself with certain preparatory sciences, he passes on to those which are fundamental to medicine. Let us imagine that we have before us, collected together in a handbook, everything he has to learn about the human organism, until he arrives at the point where he must pass on to specialised knowledge. If we now ask ourselves:—To what does all this knowledge amount? What does the student know of man?—we must answer:—He knows a great deal, he knows everything that can be known to-day. (For, when we turn to the psychologists, to those who set out to understand the life of soul, we find an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty.) In natural science we have no hesitation in recognising sound and valuable results of research,—so good indeed that the scientific lecturers are often unequal to their task. If students are apt to be bored by what they have to listen to in preparation for their medical studies, it is not the fault of the natural science but of those who expound it. We should never speak of science as “boring,” but rather of “boring” professors! Truly the fault does not lie with science, for science has undoubtedly good solid matter to offer. However God-forsaken are many of those who expound science to-day, science herself has the co-operation of good Spirits. When, however, we turn from these achievements of genuine and scholarly research and listen to what psychologists and philosophers have to say about the soul or the eternal part of man, we very soon realise that, apart from what has come from earlier traditions, it is all words, words, words, which lead nowhither. If out of the deepest needs of his soul a man turns to-day to psychology or philosophy, he will not merely be bored, he will find nothing whatever to answer his questions. In our present age it is natural science alone that has something to offer to those who are seeking knowledge.

But now what does this natural science teach us about man? It speaks of that in man which comes into existence at conception or birth and passes away at death. Nothing more! If we are honest, we must admit that science has not anything more to offer. The only course left open to one who is a genuine seeker in this domain is therefore to turn his attention to what cannot, in our day, be attained by the accustomed methods of science, namely, to the founding of a real science of the soul and spirit, based, as was ancient spiritual knowledge, upon experience in and observation of the spiritual. Such a science is to be attained only by methods indicated in my books “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science” and others,—methods which enable a man actually to perceive the spiritual, and to speak of it as he speaks of that which lies before him in the world of sense and has led to the development of a genuine and sound natural science. What the Earth has to offer to the eyes of sense, what can be made the object of experiment has not, of course, by any means been exhausted,—although it is well on the way! But this can at most yield knowledge of man as a transient, material being, living in time. To look out beyond the earthly realm is not possible, so long as we are trying to understand the human being by the methods of natural science. For if we have eyes only for the earthly we can see nothing but the transient part of man.

As we shall find, however, even this transient part of man can never be explained in and from itself. Even here we are led, perforce, to look away from the Earth to the Earth's cosmic environment. When modern science does this, it does little more than calculate the distances of the stars, describe their courses, examine them with a spectroscope and state how far the phenomena of light which reveal themselves there admit of the conclusion that the stars contain the same substances as are found on Earth. This science of the world that is beyond the Earth does not, in point of fact, get beyond the Earth at all! It is powerless to do so. To-day, therefore, I want to begin our study by placing before you certain facts for which we shall find detailed confirmation in the later lectures of the course.

If, instead of limiting our observation to the Earth, as is customary in science to-day, we direct our gaze to what lies beyond the Earth, to the world of the Stars, we have, first, the planetary system, those heavenly bodies which are manifestly connected in some way with the Earth, and which are involved both in movements which man thinks he has discovered to be movements around the Sun, similar to the movement of the Earth around the Sun, and also in movements which are performed together with the Sun in one direction or another in cosmic space. Such are the results that can be attained by observation and calculation; but they afford nothing that can be applied to the being of man himself. This kind of observation has indeed nothing to offer us for our knowledge of man.

Supersensible sight leads us at once to something new. We turn our gaze to the planetary bodies outside the Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, then the Earth herself, Venus, Mercury, Moon—regarding the Moon not merely as a satellite but as a planet. Modern science calculates that Saturn, for example, with its immense orbit, takes a long time, thirty years, to move around the Sun; Jupiter needs a much shorter time; Mars still less, and so on. Let us say, we look out into the star-strewn heavens and see a star, a planet at a particular spot in the sky; somewhere else we see a different star—Saturn, Jupiter, or whatever it may be. Now what is thus revealed to the eyes of sense—Jupiter here, Saturn there—has also an ether sphere. It is embedded in a fine, delicate ether-substance. If we can perceive the ether as well, we see that Saturn, for instance—this curiously formed planet, looking like a globe surrounded with rings—accomplishes something in the ether around it. Saturn is not inactive in relation to the ether in which the whole planetary sphere is contained and enclosed. Seen with the eye of the spirit, Saturn rays out forces. From Saturn radiates something that can be perceived as form. The physical planet Saturn is only one part of the picture—a part that gradually fades away before the eye of the spirit. One has the feeling that the Spirits of the World have placed Saturn there in this position in the heavens on our behalf as it were, in order that we may have a direction in which to focus our gaze. To the eye of the spirit, it is as if someone were to make a dot on the black-board, draw something around it and then rub the dot out again. This is actually what happens in spiritual sight. Saturn is blotted out, but what is around Saturn becomes clearer and clearer and tells a marvellous story. If we have reached the point where Saturn itself is blotted out and we behold the “form” or “figure” that has been worked into the ether, we find that this form extends as far as Jupiter, where the same process is repeated. Jupiter is blotted out and what comes into being in the ether spreads out, spreads out very far; until once again a form arises in the ether, which combines with the form from Saturn to produce a picture in the heavens. We come to Mars, and the same thing happens again. Then we come to the Sun. Whereas the outer, physical Sun blinds and dazzles, we find it is not so with the spiritual Sun. All the dazzling quickly dies away when we gaze at the spiritual Sun, and a great, majestic, living picture arises from all that is inscribed into the ether—a picture that extends also to Venus, Mercury, Moon. We have, now, a complete picture with its different parts.

Some of you may here suggest that there will be occasions when Saturn, for instance, is standing at a place in the heavens where he cannot come in contact with the picture formed by Jupiter. In a wonderful way, this too is provided for. The contact is brought about in the following manner. If you were to start from a certain point lying in the East, in Asia, and draw a line right through the centre of the Earth to the other side and then extend it out into the Cosmos, you would have drawn a line that is of the greatest significance for the whole field of spiritual sight. When Saturn lies outside this line, we must carry over the picture that arises from Saturn to the line; this fixes it. The pictures are fixed by means of this line. Wherever we may have found the Jupiter-picture or the Saturn-picture—and they have to be sought for—they are fixed for our sight by being brought to this line. We have thus, finally, one single picture. Our planetary system presents a complete picture. Do you know what this picture is? We unriddle it and discover what it is—a great cosmic picture of the human skin with the sense-organs. If you take the skin of a human being, including with it the sense-organs, and try to draw the picture which corresponds to it in the heavens, it proves to be what I have just described. The planetary system inscribes into the cosmic ether what is present in the human being—differentiated and specialised by earthly conditions—in the spatial picture of the surface of the skin including the sense-organs. That, then, is the first thing. We discover a connection between the human being, on Earth, in respect to the form given him by the skin which encloses him, and the planetary system which shapes, forms, and builds into the ether, the archetypal, heavenly picture of earthly man.

Now we make a second discovery. We look at the planets in movement. If we watch any particular planet, then the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems will give us each a different picture of its course. That can very well be; the pictures of planetary movements can be interpreted in many ways. But what is far more important is that we should now be able to behold all these movements together. Suppose we are looking at Saturn, the planet that has the longest way to go and needs the longest time in which to complete his orbit. The movement of Saturn seen in conjunction with the movement of Jupiter gives a picture. Looking now at all the planets together in this way in their several movements, we have before us once again one complete picture, arising this time from the movements of the planets. The picture does not tally with the astronomical descriptions of the planetary movements. Strange to say, spiritual sight does not find the pictures of ellipses which you can see drawn in astronomical maps. When we follow Saturn, for example, with spiritual sight, he reveals to us something which, in conjunction with other movements, forms itself into a figure of eight, a kind of lemniscate. Into this form enter manifold other planetary movements. So, once again, we have a picture. This picture arising from all the planetary movements reveals itself to us as the heavenly picture of what comes to expression in the human being in the nerves and the neighbouring glands. The archetypal picture of the human skin and sense-organs is found by spiritual sight in the order and grouping of the planets. We have now seen what happens when we pass from this to the picture of the planetary movements. If we draw an outline of the human form, we can have the feeling: This outline represents the form of the planetary system; but when we draw in the nervous system and the secreting glands, then with every stroke we are drawing a physical picture of the movements of the planetary system as they are seen with the eye of the spirit.

We can now take another step forward in our spiritual observation of the Cosmos. Having reached the point where we obtain a picture of the movements of the planets by drawing into our outline of the human form the nerves and neighbouring glands, we can go further. The several movements fade away. As we rise from Imagination to Inspiration, the movements vanish. This is of extraordinary significance. “Seeing” in the narrower sense ceases, and we begin to “hear” in the spirit. What was previously movement becomes dim and confused, until it is like a picture seen in a mist. But out of this misty picture the Music of the Cosmos begins to form—the Cosmic Rhythms become audible for us in the spirit. And we ask ourselves: What is it we must now add to our outline of the human form, to correspond with these Cosmic Rhythms?

In the sphere of Art, as you know, all manner of transformations are possible. When we have drawn our outline of man and then drawn within it the nervous system, we have the feeling that we have been literally painting or drawing. But now it is not so easy to paint what we hear in the realm of Cosmic Music, for it is all rhythm and melody. If we are to represent it in our picture, we must take a brush and, following the nervous system, quickly make here a dab of red, there a dab of blue, here again red, there again blue, and so on, all along the lines of the nervous system. Then at certain places we shall feel impelled to stop, we can go no further; we must now paint into the picture a definite “form,” to express what we have heard in the spirit. We can indeed transform it into drawing, but if we want to place it within the contour-line, we find that at certain points we are obliged to go beyond the line and paint a new and different form, because here the rhythm blue-red, blue-red, blue-red, suddenly becomes melody. We feel we must paint in this form—and the form is what the melody sings to us! Cosmic Rhythm—Cosmic Melody. When we have completed the picture, we have before us Cosmic Music made perceptible in space, the Cosmic Music which becomes audible to the ear of the spirit when the picture of the planetary movements grows dim and disappears. And what we have now drawn into our picture is none other than the path along which the blood flows. When we come to an organ—to heart or lung, or to organs which take into themselves either something from the outside world or substances from within the body itself—at these points we must paint a form which attaches itself in some way to the channels of the blood. Then we get heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach. From the Cosmic Music we learn how to draw these organs of secretion, and how to insert them into the blood system in our picture.

Now we go a stage further. We pass from Inspiration to Intuition. Something new arises out of the Cosmic Music. The tones begin to blend with one another; one tone works upon another and we begin to hear meaning in this Cosmic Music. The Cosmic Music changes into speech—Cosmic Speech that is spoken forth by the Universe. At the stage of Intuition, what was known in earlier times as the Cosmic Word becomes audible. We must now draw something else into our picture of the human being. Here we must proceed just as we proceed in ordinary everyday writing, where we express something by means of words that are formed of letters. In our picture of man, we must express the meaning of the single Cosmic Words. We find that when we give expression to these Cosmic Words and bring that expression into the drawing, we have before us a picture of the muscular and bony systems in the human being, It is just as though someone were to tell us something which we then write down. Cosmic Speech tells us something—and we draw it into the picture. In what the world beyond the Earth tells us, we have thus been able to find the human being in his totality.

But now there is another and essentially different experience that comes to us in the course of this spiritual observation. Let us return to what was said at the beginning of the lecture about the form that is inscribed in the ether by the planetary bodies. While we are engaged in this spiritual observation, knowledge of the earthly vanishes for us; it remains as a memory only. But it must be there as memory; if it were not, we should have no stability, no balance, and these are essential if we are to be knowers of the spirit. A knowledge of the spirit that excludes physical knowledge is not good. Just as in physical life we must be able to remember—for if the faculty of remembering what we do and experience is lacking, we are not in good health—so, in the realm of spiritual knowledge we must be able always to remember what is there in the physical world. In the sphere where we experience the formative activities of the planetary system, the other kind of knowledge which we had on Earth—all that is given us in the wonderful achievements of physical science—is for the moment entirely forgotten. However well and thoroughly we have known our Natural Science here on Earth, in every act of spirit-knowledge we have always again and again to remember it, we have to recall to our consciousness what we have learnt in the realm of the physical. We must say to ourselves at every turn: That is the solid ground upon which I have to stand. But it withdraws from us, it becomes no more than a memory. On the other hand, we begin now to have a new perception, which is as vivid in comparison with physical knowledge as is immediate present experience compared with remembered experience. We perceive that while we are beholding the form-giving power of the planetary sphere we are within an entirely new environment. Around us are the Beings of the Third Hierarchy: Archai, Archangels, Angels. In this form-creating activity lives the Third Hierarchy. A new world arises before us. And now we do not merely say: From the world of the planets has come the human form in its Cosmic Archetype! Now we say: Beings of the Third Hierarchy, Archai, Archangels and Angels, are working and weaving at this cosmic archetype of the form of man!

It is possible here in earthly existence to attain to perception of the world of the Hierarchies, by means of super-sensible knowledge. After death, every human being must necessarily experience such knowledge, and the better he has prepared himself—as he can prepare himself—during earthly existence, the easier it will be for him. On Earth, when a man wants to know what he is like in his form and figure, he can look at himself in a mirror, or he can have his photograph taken. After death no such means exist,—either for himself or in regard to his fellowmen. After death he has to look away to the formative working and weaving of the planets. In what the planets reveal, he beholds the building up of his form. There we recognise our own human form. And working and weaving through it all are the Beings of the Third Hierarchy,—the Angels, Archangels and Archai.

We can now progress further on our upward path. When we have recognised that the weaving life of Angels, Archangels and Archai is connected with the form of the human skin and the sense-organs that belong to it, we can advance a step further in our knowledge of man's relation with the world beyond the Earth. Only, let us first be quite clear how differently we have now to think of the human form or figure. Here on Earth we describe a man's figure, or perhaps his countenance. One man's forehead, we say, is of such and such a shape; another has a nose of a particular shape; a third has mournful eyes; a fourth laughing eyes,—and so on. But there we stop. Cosmic knowledge on the other hand reveals to us in everything that goes to make up the human form the working and weaving of the Third Hierarchy. The human form is in truth no earthly creation, The Earth merely provides the substance for the embryo. The Archai, Archangels and Angels work in from the Cosmos, building up the human form. If we now advance further and come to perceive the confluence of the planetary movements, of which confluence the nervous system and the secreting glands are an after-copy, we find, interwoven with the movements of the planets, the Beings of the Second Hierarchy: Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. Beings of the Second Hierarchy are active in the shaping of the cosmic archetype of the nervous and glandular systems in man. It is thus at a later period after death—that is to say, some time after we have learned to understand the human form from its cosmic archetype—that we ascend to the world of the Second Hierarchy, and realise that the earthly human being to whom we now look back as a memory was fashioned and created in his nervous and glandular systems by the Exusiai, Kyriotetes and Dynamis. Then we no longer regard the human being as the product of forces of electricity, magnetism and the like; we take knowledge of how he as physical man has been built up by the Beings of the Second Hierarchy.

We go still further and ascend to the sphere of Cosmic Music—Cosmic Melody and Cosmic Rhythm, where we find yet another cosmic archetype of the being of man. This time we do not move onward in the Hierarchies. It is the same Beings—the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—who are at work here too, but they are engaged in a different kind of activity. It is difficult to express in words wherein their first work—upon the nervous system—differs from their work upon the rhythmic blood-system, but we may think of it in the following way. In their work upon the nervous system, the Beings of the Second Hierarchy are looking downwards, towards Earth. In their work upon the blood system they are looking upwards. Both the nervous system, and the blood system (as well as the organs connected therewith) are created by the same Hierarchy, but their gaze is at one time turned towards the Earth and at another upwards to the spiritual world, to the heavens.

Finally, at the stage of Intuition where we behold how the muscular and bony system of man is woven into being by the world of the Cosmic Word, the Cosmic Speech, we come to the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. We have now reached the stage which corresponds approximately to the middle point of the life between death and a new birth, spoken of in my Mystery Plays as the “Midnight Hour of Existence.” Here we have to see how all those parts of man's organism which enable him to move about in the world are woven and created by the Beings of the First Hierarchy.

Thus, when we look at the human being with super-sensible knowledge, behind every part of him we see a world of spiritual, cosmic Beings. When in our present age we try to understand man, we are accustomed to study first the bony system. We begin, do we not, with the skeleton,—although even from a superficial point of view there is not much sense in that, for the skeleton has been formed and built out of the fluids in the human organism. The skeleton was not there first! It is merely a residue from the fluids, and can only be understood in that sense. But what is the usual method of procedure? We have to learn the various parts of the skeleton—arms, hands, bones of the upper arm, bones of the lower arm, bones of the hands, bones of the fingers and so on. With most of us it is a question merely of learning it all by heart. We do the same with the muscles—although this is decidedly more difficult. Then we come to the various organs and learn about them too in the same way. And all these things we have learnt go round in our minds in a most confused way,—a fact, let me say, that is not without significance! There lurks, however, in all healthy minds a longing to know more, a longing to know what is behind it all, to know something of the mystery of the world. A real study of man should begin with the skin and the sense-organs. This would lead us to the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels, Archai. We should then go on to the nerves and glandular system; this would lead us to the Second Hierarchy, to Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. And we would find these same Beings at work when we came to consider the blood system and the organs directly connected with it. Then, passing on to what enables man to move—to his muscular and bony systems, we would reach the realm of the First Hierarchy, and see in the muscles and bones of the earthly human being the deeds of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

It is possible thus to describe ascending ranks of Hierarchical Beings—from the Third to the Second to the First. As we describe all the influences that pour down upon the Earthly world from the world beyond the Earth, and behold therein the deeds of the Hierarchies, a wonderful and amazing picture rises up before us. Gazing upon the ranks of the Hierarchies we see at work, below, Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angels, Archangels, Archai; then we behold Beings of the Second Hierarchy—Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis—working and weaving together in the Cosmos; finally, Beings of the First Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Only now at last does an intelligible picture of the human body rise up before our sight. We gaze upon the ranks of the Hierarchies and upon Their deeds; and as we let the eye of the spirit dwell upon Their deeds,—lo, MAN stands there before us!

As you see, a mode of observation opens up here which begin at the very point where ordinary observation ends. Yet it is this kind of observation alone that can lead us beyond the gates of birth and death; no other can tell of what stretches beyond birth or beyond death. For, all that has now been described becomes a matter of experience. In what way it becomes actual experience the coming lectures will show. On Earth we have around us the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms and also what the physical human kingdom accomplishes in the earthly sense. We direct our gaze to all that proceeds from mineral, plant, animal and physical man. But when we have passed through the gate of death and are living between death and a new birth, we gaze upon activities of the spiritual world that are directed upon the being of man, we behold man verily as a product of the activity and deeds of the Spiritual Hierarchies. Moreover, as we shall come to see later, only in this light do the forms and structures of the other beings on Earth besides man become intelligible.

In preparation for the further lectures, let me also add the following. Think of the animal. There is something about an animal that is reminiscent of the human form—but reminiscent only to a limited extent. How is this? It is because the animal cannot be an after-copy of the planetary form that is inscribed in the ether. Man alone can become an after-copy of this form, because he follows the direction of that line which, as I told you, focuses for him the planetary form. If the human being were to remain a little child who never learns to walk but always crawls, if he were destined to this—which of course he is not—then he could not become an earthly image of the planetary forms. He must, however, become an image of them, he must grow up into the planetary forms. This the animal cannot do. The animal can only unfold its life in accordance with the movements of the planets; it can copy only their movements. You can see this revealed in every single part of the animal's body. Take the skeleton of a mammal. You have the bones of the spine with their typical vertebra form. These are a faithful copy of the planetary movements. However many vertebrae a snake has, for example, every single one is an earthly copy of planetary movements. The Moon, as the planet nearest to the Earth, exercises a particularly strong influence upon one part of the animal: the skeleton develops, forming the different limbs; then it is all drawn together, as it were, in the vertebra form. After the Moon come the other planets, Venus and Mercury, moving in spiral forms. Then comes the Sun. The Sun influence tends, as it were, to finish off and complete the structure of the skeleton. We can even indicate a definite point in the spine where the Sun is working. It is where the spine begins to show a tendency to change into head-structure. In the head-structure we have the spinal vertebrae transformed. At the point where the bones of the spine rise up, become “puffed out” as it were—this is how Goethe and Gegenbaur describe it—to become head-bones, there work Saturn and Jupiter. When, therefore, we follow the direction of the skeleton from behind forwards, we must pass from Moon right through to Saturn if we are to understand the bony structure of the animal. We cannot relate the form of an animal to the ether form of the planets; we must go to the movements of the planets if we are to understand it. That which is worked by the human being into his glandular system is, in the case of the animal, worked into its whole form and structure. Of the animal, then, we have to say: It is not possible for the animal to arrange and order its being in accordance with the form or figure radiated by the planets. The animal can copy only the movements of the planets.

In ancient times men visualised this movement of the planetary bodies by saying: The paths of the planets go through the Zodiacal constellations. The Ancients knew how to describe the courses of Saturn and the other planets as each takes its way through the constellations of the Zodiac. From their knowledge of the animal, they understood the connection between the forms of animals and the Zodiac,—which is rightly called “Zodiac” (animal circle). The essential point for us is that the animal does not copy the forms inscribed in the ether by the planets; it is man alone who does this. Man can do it because his organism is adapted to take the upright posture. Therefore does the planetary form become in him an archetype, whereas what we find in the animal is only an imitation of the planetary movements.

We have, then, before us a spiritual, super-sensible picture of man. For in everything I have described—skin, nervous system, blood system, muscles, bones—there are, to begin with, only forces. At first it is all a kind of picture of forces. At conception and birth it joins with the physical embryo provided by the Earth and receives into itself earthly forces and substances. This picture—a purely spiritual but at the same time definite picture—is then filled out with earthly substances and forces. Man comes down to Earth as a being formed and fashioned by the Heavens. He is at first wholly super-sensible, he is a super-sensible being to his very bones. Then he unites with the embryonic germ; he takes it up. At death he lets it fall again; he passes through the gate of death—once more a spirit-form.

In conclusion, let us look once again at the human being as he passes through the gate of death. The physical form he could see when he looked into a mirror or at a photograph of himself, is no longer there. Neither is it of any interest to him. The cosmic archetypal picture, inscribed in the ether,—upon that he now turns his gaze. During his earthly life this archetypal picture was present in him; it was anchored, as it were, in his ether body. He was not conscious of it, but it was there all the time within his physical being. Now, after death, he sees what his own form really is. The picture he now sees is radiant and shining. The forces streaming from this archetypal picture have the same effect as a radiant body—only, here it is to be understood in the etheric sense. The Sun shines physically. This cosmic picture of man shines spiritually; and because it is a spiritual picture it has power to illuminate quite other things. Here, in earthly life, a man who has done good or evil deeds may stand in the Sun for as long as he will, his hair and so forth will be lighted up by the rays of the Sun, but not his good and evil deeds, as qualities. The luminous picture of his own form which a man experiences after death, sends out a spiritual light which lights up his moral deeds. And so, after death, the human being discovers in the cosmic picture which is there before him something that illumines his own moral deeds. This cosmic picture is within us during earthly life, sounding faintly as conscience. After death we behold it objectively. We know that it is our own self, and that we must have it there. We are inexorable with ourselves after death. This luminous picture does not relent or react to any excuses such as we are wont to make in earthly life, where we are only too ready to make light of our sins and flaunt our good deeds. An inexorable judge shines out from man after death, shedding a brilliant light upon the worth of his actions. Conscience becomes, after death, a cosmic impulse which works outside us.

Such are the paths that lead from earthly man to super-sensible man. Earthly man—the being who comes into existence at birth and passes away at death—can be understood in the light of Anthropology. Supersensible man, who merely permeates himself with earthly substances in order to manifest in the outer world, can only be understood in the light of Anthroposophy. And this is what we have set out to do in the course of these lectures.

My dear Friends,

In our lecture yesterday, we tried to relate man to the Cosmos. Our aim was to create a foundation for a deep and full understanding of the super-sensible being of man. To-day, I want to carry a little further what was said in that lecture, inasmuch as we have also to consider the super-sensible nature of man when his physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, when, that is, he has passed through the gate of death and is traversing the path which stretches between death and a new birth.

I propose, therefore, to give to-day—dealing more externally as it were, with the super-sensible—a kind of description of what reveals itself to Imaginative perception in regard to this existence between death and rebirth. This will provide a basis for under- standing man in his soul and spirit.

We must, however, be clear from the outset that it is really quite incorrect to speak of the physical being of man apart from the soul and spirit. The physical part of man, the physical body that we perceive in the world of sense, is permeated through and through by soul and spirit. The form of the brow, the form of the features and countenance,—everything that belongs to the human form, man only has, inasmuch as it is given him by spiritual forces. We need not therefore be surprised that those who are possessed of the faculty of spiritual sight continue to speak of the “form” or “figure” of the human being even after he has passed through the gate of death. For it is indeed so; to Imaginative cognition a man who has passed through death reveals a form. In comparison with something physically observed it is, of course, no more than a kind of shadow-picture; it is, nevertheless, clear and very impressive. The first thing that strikes us about this form or figure is that it is “external”. Our idea of man in his soul and spirit must of course be moral and spiritual; we shall however find that we can unfold no genuine and sound conception of super-sensible man unless, to begin with, we speak of these Imaginations, these picture-forms, which man still “wears” as it were, even after he has passed through the gate of death.

At death the physical body is laid aside. We need not stay to consider what happens to it, for the particular way in which dissolution takes place is of far less importance than people think. The dissolution of the physical body, whether it be through burning or through decomposition, is a concern only of the other human beings. It is of no great importance for the life after death; we need, therefore, only say here that the physical body dissolves away into outer Nature, into the forces of outer Nature. The etheric body also dissolves, quite soon after death. The two outer manifestations of man's being having been thus laid aside, something releases itself from these two enveloping sheaths (the word “sheath” is not really quite accurate). Those who are sufficiently endowed with Imaginative cognition are able to perceive what it is that is thus released after death from the two sheaths. It is a figure or form—a form which, to begin with, bears some resemblance to the physical form of the human being. But this spirit-form, as I will call it, is involved in a constant process of transformation. I have spoken of the life between death and a new birth on many occasions and from many different points of view, for only so is it possible to develop an adequate idea of it. To-day I propose to speak from still another point of view. By bringing together what is given at different times, you will be able gradually to build up a complete picture.

This spirit-form of the human being is involved, as we said, in a constant process of change. More and more it approaches what can only be described by saying: The spirit-form becomes one great “physiognomy.” To the Imaginative sight possessed by the Initiate and also by one who has passed through the gate of death, a kind of physiognomy makes its appearance. But this physiognomy is the whole human being, not merely part of him. The whole human being, in his spirit-form, presents a physiognomy that is the expression of his being in its moral and spiritual inwardness. After death a bad man will not have the same appearance as a good man. A man who has made strenuous efforts during his life on Earth will not look the same as one who has lived thoughtlessly or wantonly. But we do not find this expressed merely in the “countenance.” In fact, the actual countenance loses much of the physiognomical expression that was stamped upon it in physical life, and what is retained tends to become more and more indefinite. In contrast to this, the other parts of the body become singularly expressive—particularly the region where the inner organs of breathing are situated. The physiognomical form assumed by this region reveals the permanent qualities in a man's character. The whole breast system takes on a definite physiognomical appearance within the spirit-form after death and reveals whether the man was possessed of courage or whether he was timid, whether he approached life with a certain boldness and bravery or whether he invariably shrank away from the buffets of life, and so forth.

The arms and hands also become peculiarly expressive after death. From the arms and hands one can, in effect, read the biography of the human being between birth and death—most clearly of all from the hands, which even in physical life are full of significance and divulge much to an intelligent observer. The way in which a man moves his fingers, how he holds out his hand to us, whether he only offers his finger tips or gives a warm hand-shake—all this can tell a very great deal. Much can also be learned by studying the forms assumed by the hands when a man is sitting quietly, or when he is at his work. Such things pass unnoticed, as a rule; but human beings become much more interesting, when we observe what they do with their hands and fingers, for here they divulge what they really are. After death this is true in a far higher degree; the life-history can be read from the appearance assumed by the arms and hands.

It is the same with other organs. Everything becomes expressive, everything becomes physiognomy. After death the human being wears his moral-spiritual physiognomy.

Yesterday's lecture showed us how the human being is built up and “formed” by the Cosmos and how the skin and sense-organs are an expression of the form that is inscribed into the cosmic ether. After death, the form that is given to man by the skin which encloses him becomes a physiognomical expression of his moral and spiritual being; and it remains so for a considerable time.

As human beings begin to find their way into this new kind of life, they meet there other human beings with whom, in earthly life, they have had a companionship of spirit, mind and heart. And no pretence is possible any longer between them. For what each man is, and what his feeling is toward his fellow-man, is faithfully expressed in the physiognomy I have described. During this period of the life after death—it follows the period of “trial,” of which I do not propose to speak to-day—men live together with those with whom destiny has in any way connected them in the last earthly life,—or in any other earthly life. They learn to know one another thoroughly, for they behold the physiognomical forms of which we have been speaking. Life consists, in this period, in learning to know those with whom one is connected by destiny. You must try to imagine what a close and intimate mutual scrutiny this is. The word sounds perhaps a little commonplace, but it expresses the reality. Each human being stands fully revealed before the other, with the whole meaning of their common destinies unveiled. In this way they are continually going past one another, meeting one another.

It is during this period of existence that the human being who has become such a “physiognomy” learns to know the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—the Angels, Archangels and Archai. For these Beings are themselves always, by their inherent nature, physiognomy. They have come forth from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies and let their whole nature of spirit and soul be impressed upon their spirit-form, making it thus perceptible to Imaginative vision. This contact with the Beings of the Third Hierarchy is thus an experience which is added to that of association with our fellowmen with whom we are connected by destiny. The spectacle of all the other human beings with whom we are connected by destiny is, of course, full of variety. Among them are, for example, some who on Earth would have preferred to have us at the opposite side of the globe, but are nevertheless bound to us by destiny. We know exactly what feelings they have harboured about us and what they have done to us. The spectacle is indeed one of very great variety! And among these wandering forms move the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, figures radiant and shining like the Sun. The words I use, are, of course, comparative; one has after all no other possibility than to employ earthly language. But we are speaking here of absolute reality, when we tell how during this period after death man meets the other human beings who are bound to him by destiny. Strange to say, it is only those with whom he is connected by destiny that a man can perceive and understand. Human souls to whom he is not actually bound by destiny remain to all intents invisible to him. He has no means of reading their moral-spiritual physiognomy. He does not notice them,—nor can he, for it is precisely the link of destiny which gives one the power to see. If it were the fate of human beings here on Earth to see with their physical eyes as they see in this period after death, they would not see very much; for here on Earth men like to be passive in their seeing and let the objects rise up before them. In our present epoch of civilisation people are little inclined to bestir themselves, in order to be awake to their environment. Many of those who are devoured to-day by a passion for the cinema, many of those who crave for impressions to which they can passively surrender themselves, would, if they were equipped here on Earth with the same kind of sight as after death, not see their fellowmen at all. For after death our sight of other human souls depends entirely upon our attentiveness, which has then, of course, been implanted in us by the way in which destiny binds us to them. The first period of the life after death is thus a time when we learn to know one another; and during this time we learn also to know how souls are received in the spiritual world by the Beings of the Third Hierarchy. We behold the joy with which the Angels, Archangels and Archai receive the spirit-forms of human beings,—or again, we perceive how little joy they experience in meeting them. We observe what impression human souls make upon those Beings of the Hierarchies who stand nearest to them in the invisible world.

Then comes another period. The souls who have been learning to know one another, who have been continually gazing upon one another, begin now, in a way that belongs to the life after death, to have understanding the one for the other. They begin to understand spiritually the moral-spiritual physiognomies.

The first period after death is really a life of memories pure and simple. Each single human being lives together with those to whom he belongs. It is of course an existence that is of the “present” in the sense that we live and move and act amid all that is taking place between the souls of men and the Beings of the Third Hierarchy; nevertheless we are living all the time in a kind of remembrance of earthly life. But now comes a time when we begin to have spiritual understanding, when we begin to grasp—in the manner of the spiritual world, of course—what these moral and spiritual physiognomies of our fellowmen signify. We learn to understand our fellowmen in such a way that we can say to ourselves: This physiognomy I see before me reveals such and such, it points back to certain phases of destiny which he and I shared in common—and so on. We have of course experienced this already in the first period after death, when we beheld our common destinies. But now in the second period the experience is of a kind that leads us to say: Having lived our life together in a manner that is now revealed to us through mutual understanding of our physiognomies, our future life together must take such and such a course. We begin to understand the possibility of a future for our common destiny; we begin to have a feeling for how relationships that have been begun in earthly life may develop further. We see—as it were in perspective—how the woven threads of destiny will work themselves out in the future, the threads of common destiny which are revealed in the physiognomical spirit-forms of which I have spoken. This experience becomes more and more intimate—so intimate indeed that there is a “growing together,” a veritable “growing together” in soul and spirit.

As the soul passes on further in this phase of existence, what was on Earth the most expressive part of man's being is found to be gradually disappearing. The head disappears, dissolving away in a kind of spiritual mist. In proportion as the head thus disappears from view, a change comes over the features of the physiognomical spirit-form. The features alter: something comes to view there now which points as it were from the past on to the future. At this time the human being is borne into the Spirit indwelling the planetary movements, the Spirit indwelling the forces of the planetary spheres; until the moment comes when human beings who belong together approach the spiritual Sun, The planetary forces bring them into the spiritual Sun; and now all the experiences they have undergone together in the past, and the germs too of future experience, are carried with them into the spiritual Sun. It is really childish to think of the Sun as a globe of gas out there in the universe. This is merely the aspect of the Sun that is revealed to the Earth. When we behold it with the eyes of the spirit, with the eyes of the soul, which we have after death, looking upon it from without in the great Universe, the Sun shows itself as a spiritual Being, or rather as a colony of spiritual Beings. And there, in among the spiritual Beings, move the human souls who have passed into the spiritual Sun, not merely each with his own spirit-content, but all of them carrying thither too their related destinies. And this whole “system” of human souls, together with the judgements passed upon them by the Beings of the Second and Third Hierarchies, shines out into the universe, into the Cosmos.

To form a true conception of the Sun, we must think along the following lines. If we look at the Sun from the surface of the Earth it appears to us like a shining, radiant orb. We could make a drawing of it. The usual idea is that if we were to go up in a balloon and inspect the Sun from high above the Earth, it would have exactly the same appearance as it has when we look at it from the Earth. This, however, is quite erroneous. If we wanted to make a picture, a sense-perceptible picture of how the Sun looks to spiritual vision, we should have to show spiritual radiations pouring out from the Sun into the wide spaces of the Cosmos. We see from the Earth only that aspect of the Sun which shines towards the Earth. But something now appears to spiritual sight which gradually changes until it becomes audible to spiritual hearing, becomes a note, a motif—oftentimes grand and imposing—in the Cosmic Music. It comes from what the souls of human beings have experienced on Earth and are now experiencing after death. All this is carried into the Sun existence and radiates thence into the Cosmos. When this happens, the human being—in his spirit-form, of course,—has himself already assumed the form of the Sun. The words sound strange, but facts must be described as they are, for we are telling of realities. All that was, after passage through the gate of death, physiognomy, spirit-form, is now as it were “rounded off,” and when the human being has arrived—speaking spiritually—in the Sun, he has himself become a “spirit-sphere.” Within this spirit-sphere the Cosmos is reflected. Our whole being becomes a spiritual sense-organ. But the impressions we receive are no longer impressions of Earth. We have become, as it were, all eye—eye of the spirit—and we receive in the eye of the spirit the impression of the whole Cosmos. We feel ourselves one with the whole wide Universe. And what we were before, on Earth—that we feel as something outside us. The whole Universe is reflected in us as in an eye of the spirit, and we feel ourselves one with the destinies we have experienced, both in ourselves and in connection with other human souls.

Having lived for a time in this phase of existence, we pass gradually into the sphere of the First Hierarchy—the sphere of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; and we unite ourselves with them. Thus, we are united first with the Third Hierarchy, when we move among those souls who are bound to us by destiny, going about among them in our moral and spiritual physiognomy. Then we are carried by the planetary forces into the spiritual Sun existence, where we unite with the Second Hierarchy, but are still outside the First. Finally, when our own Sun existence has made us feel one with the whole Cosmos, we unite with the First Hierarchy, with Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. And then our interest begins to awaken in souls other than those with whom destiny has already connected us, souls who only now, in the life between death and new birth, enter for the first time our sphere of destiny. We become able to perceive human souls who will in future lives be connected with us.

Meanwhile, under the influence of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, we begin to see mighty changes taking place in those with whom we were already connected by destiny. The closer the connection, the more perceptible the changes. To begin with, I will describe them more from their outer aspect.

When we look with physical eyes at someone who is walking, we see how he puts first one foot in front, then the other and so moves forward. As we watch him, we see what we might call a series of “momentary exposures.” But to those who with Imaginative perception look at a human being in this sphere of existence after death, it is as though in the form which the legs assume with every step, is contained the whole destiny of the man, the destiny he is undergoing and has himself moulded in his earthly life. Nor is destiny carried only in the legs; in the arms too we bear the content of our destiny, namely, the good and bad deeds we have done to our fellow-men. The way a human being moves reveals something that calls for a passing of judgement in the Universe, and the judgement then becomes a part of his destiny. And in the blood-stream, seen with the eye of the spirit in this sphere of existence, is revealed the inner destiny which has been created by the human being's attitude to life, by the way in which he reacted inwardly to his experiences. These revelations of destiny can be seen for a long time after one has entered upon this sphere of existence; one beholds them continually in the forms and structure of the limbs, indeed in all the forms of man with the exception of head and chest. On Earth the sight of a human being walking past one without head or chest would hardly be pleasant, but in the sphere between death and a new birth it is quite different, there everything is moral and spiritual. The spectacle is indeed infinitely grander than the spectacle of a human head on Earth can ever be. This is what human souls bound together by destiny experience during their spiritual Sun existence in the period which I have called in my Mystery Plays the “Midnight Hour of Existence.” Here, in accordance with the degree in which they belong together, souls unite in working at the transformation of what they were in the preceding earthly life. The eye of the spirit can perceive what is happening in detail. For example, what is contained in the legs is changed and worked upon, that it may form the lower jaws for the next earthly life. Arms and hands are transformed to become the upper jaws with the nerves belonging to this region. You must, of course, understand that all this is perceived spiritually. For spiritual perception, the whole of the lower man is transformed into the upper man.

This change is not brought about by the individual human being alone, but by all those human beings who belong together. The degree in which they are joined by destiny determines the extent to which they work upon each other. And through this working together, spiritual kinships are formed which later on lead human beings to find one another in earthly life, to come together in life. Thus, the spiritual kinships which bring us together with other human beings in a more or less intimate manner, originate in the life between death and birth. It is actually so that the spirit-form of the head as it will be in the next incarnation comes into being as a result of the working together of human beings who belong together by destiny. This is a work that is done in spirit-land, and it is far greater in content and in significance than any work that is done on Earth.

So you see, just as we can describe in pictures what happens to man between birth and death, just as we can draw pictures of physical earth-life, so can we describe in all definiteness and detail what happens to him between death and a new birth. The process of transformation that goes on in the limb system and in the system of metabolism of the blood is a marvellous and awe-inspiring process. You must, however, always remember that this transformation, which takes place in the phase of spiritual existence lying midway between death and a new birth, is a transformation of man's moral and spiritual qualities. Of that which emerges from the process—we must say of it now that it resounds as Cosmic Music. This form of man that is shaped in the likeness of the Sun, and is a mirror wherein the whole Universe is reflected, expresses in cosmic tone man's outer form and figure. It is not now—to use a comparison—as if one had a visual idea of man; we receive in cosmic sound the idea of the transformed being of man's lower organism.

As time goes on, man becomes a part of the Cosmic Word itself. What at first was all a blending of melodies, of harmonies, forms itself now into articulate parts of the Cosmic Word. Man “speaks forth” his own being—speaks it forth from the Cosmos. There is thus a period between death and the next birth when man's being is veritably a spiritual “word”—no paltry word consisting of few syllables, but an infinitely expressive word, comprising in its utterance the whole being of man as man, as well as the individual being of the man in question. When this point of time has been reached between death and a new birth, man is possessed of a deeply mysterious knowledge, and he sends out into the Cosmos the revelation—perceptible to divine and spiritual Beings—of what he himself is.

When one human being works in this way upon another, helping to bring it about that the lower man is transformed into what will be the upper man (for that which was formerly the upper man has by now faded right away), when there is this working together, dependent always on the degree to which, the one human being was already connected with the other and itself determining the connection there will be between them in the future, then this work of metamorphosis is verily a kind of moulding and sculpting in the spirit. Man then takes up, as it were, what is spiritually moulded in forms and works upon it, until it changes to sounding music and—finally—to speech.

Thus at the first stage after death the human being moves among the spirit-physiognomies of those who are connected with him by destiny: he beholds these physiognomies. Human beings learn to know each other in the spirit-form, they learn to know each other's moral and spiritual qualities. But at this first stage it is a beholding only, a seeing; although it means that the souls come into intimate connection, it is no more than a beholding. Then begins the period which I described as that of the growth of mutual understanding. The one begins to understand the other; he gazes deeply upon him and looks into his inner nature, knowing the while that the sure working of destiny will link the future to the past. Then the great process of transformation begins, where the one is able to work upon the other out of a profound knowledge and understanding, and the plastic moulding of the spirit is taken up and changed to music and to speech. And here we come to something more than understanding; the one human being is able to speak to the other his own warmth-filled, creative word. On Earth we speak with our organs of speech; by means of these we tell each other what we know. Our words live in the physical body as something fleeting and transient; and when we express what we want to say by means of our speech-organs, in that moment we completely shut off that which lives behind the merely material. But now imagine that what a man thus utters, what goes over into the fleeting word, were an expression of himself, were not alone a manifestation of him, but were at the same time his very being. Such is the intercourse of human beings in the middle period of the time between death and a new birth—differentiating each his own being and revealing them- selves one to another. Word meets word; articulate word meets articulate word; inwardly living word meets inwardly living word. The human souls are themselves words; their symphony is the symphony of the spoken Cosmic Word in its very being. There, men live in and with one another; there is no such thing as impenetrability. The word which is the one human being merges into the word which is the other human being. And it is there those links of destiny are formed which work on into the next incarnation and express themselves in the sympathy or antipathy which one human being feels when he encounters another. The feeling of sympathy or antipathy is a reflection of the intercourse which took place in spirit land in the middle phase of the life between death and a new birth. There we spoke with one another, we ourselves were the speech; here on Earth we have the shadowy reflection of it in the feeling we experience when we find one another again. For this is how we have to understand our life. What we experience on Earth together with other human beings—we are to hear in that an echo, in the life of feeling, of what we ourselves once were in the creative Word, when—between death and a new birth—we spoke forth our being. That is a time when in very truth men live for one another. And when we live for one another on Earth, it is, as it were, a projection from the spiritual on to the Earth of a real and true togetherness.

Having lived through this period of time, man enters upon another, when he begins gradually to depart from the Beings of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—and to come again into the realm of the Second Hierarchy, into the realm of the forces which the planets bring to bear on one another. Perceptions of the Universe now come to him—perceptions which were not previously there to the same degree, for before he could only follow them in the other beings around him. The Universe now begins to arise before him as an outer Universe. He learns also of his relation with beings whose destinies are not bound to his; he comes to know his connection with human souls who first appeared within his orbit of experience during the middle period of time between death and rebirth. This happens on the return journey, when man comes down again into the planetary spheres and therewith into connection with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. He has of course been with them before, but the connection is now of a different kind. The First Hierarchy has gradually faded away again from sight, until at last it is not there at all. The germs—spirit-germs, to begin with—for the new plastic forming of the human being, for the new breast-system and the new limb-system, begin to appear. Little by little, man forms and builds up anew his spiritual prototype. The utterance of his own being that he spoke forth in the Cosmic Word becomes once again the Music of the Spheres, and out of the Music of the Spheres is born the plastic image of his being. So he draws near to the moment when he is ready to enter into connection with an embryonic germ provided for him by a father and mother. For it is a spirit-form, a spiritual entity, coming down from the spiritual world into physical existence on Earth, which is the real essence and self of the human being. The physical embryo which, as it were, comes to meet him is only there for the purpose of enabling him to make a connection with earthly substances and permeate himself with them.

Full and rich in content is the life between death and a new birth! The work upon which the souls of human beings are engaged is none other than an interworking between them and Beings of the higher worlds. But the whole nature of the life between death and a new birth is different altogether from the manner and character of life here on Earth. And if we would progress in our study and attain to an ever clearer and clearer comprehension of the super-sensible being of man, we must understand the following.

We live in the physical world of Earth. We perceive the outer world through our senses. Of that which we perceive we must say: It is perceptible and it is physical,—for the physical is all we can perceive in this earthly life. Above this world lies another, to which our ether body belongs, that pervades and permeates the physical body. This second world is imperceptible to man's physical faculty of perception. It is also not physical; it is superphysical. Bordering therefore on our perceptible, physical world there is another that is imperceptible and superphysical. It is the world next our own, and it is the dwelling-place of the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—the Angels, Archangels and Archai. To a man living in physical incarnation on Earth who does not develop spiritual sight, this world is imperceptible; it is also not physical. True, it manifests its working in the physical world, but it is not physical.

Then there is a third world. This third world is also not physical; in this respect it is similar to the etheric world. It too is superphysical. But the strange thing is that this third world is perceptible. It is perceptible from our earthly world. Thus, we have come to a world which reaches into our world and is perceptible; but because it is superphysical, men are not able to explain it in its true nature. To this world that is superphysical but perceptible, belongs, for example, all that streams to us in the light of the Sun. The Spirit-Beings who people the Sun are superphysical, and yet perceptible to us on Earth. For it is nonsense to think that the light of the Sun is merely what the physicists believe it to be. The light of the Sun is the manifestation of the Sun-Beings. The Sun-Beings are perceptible, but they appear to man in a form which he cannot interpret. The light of the stars, the light of the Moon and other light beside that of the Sun and Moon and Stars is perceptible, but that which lies behind it as Being is not rightly understood by man. Here, then, we have a world that is perceptible, but superphysical, bordering on the world that is physically perceptible. It is very important to grasp the characteristics of the different worlds:

Our own world—perceptible and physical.

The second world, bordering on the first. In this world live the Angels, Archangels and Archai. It is imperceptible and superphysical—the dwelling place of the Third Hierarchy and also of human beings while they are living in community with the Third Hierarchy during the life between death and a new birth.

The third world is perceptible and superphysical. It is the dwelling-place of the Second Hierarchy.

And then there is still another:

An imperceptible, physical world.

We have then, when the fourth is added, a complete list of all possible worlds: perceptible and physical, imperceptible and superphysical, perceptible and superphysical, imperceptible and physical. For this fourth world is imperceptible and yet physical. How are we to envisage it? It is in our midst, it is present in a physical sense, but it is imperceptible. Think for a moment. If you lift your leg from the ground, it is heavy, the force of gravity is working upon it. The force of gravity works physically but is imperceptible to ordinary sense-perception. You have inner experience of this force of gravity, but it is physically imperceptible. It is the same with certain other things. You experience within you, albeit in feelings which you cannot explain, what was known to an earlier, more instinctive Spiritual Science as the “mercurial” tendency. You have continually within you this tendency to the drop-form—in the albumen constituents, that are perpetually trying to form themselves in you; once more, something physical, but imperceptible in its essential configuration. Then there is a living process of combustion, of burning, that takes place within you. It works physically, and lives in your will—but you are not aware of it. It is imperceptible and physical. Within this world, the world of the imperceptible and physical, dwell the Beings of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

This opens up quite a new aspect of our study. When we pass through the gate of death, we go out, first of all, into the imperceptible and superphysical. We disappear, as it were, from the world. At the second stage we enter the sphere of the Second Hierarchy; we come into the perceptible and superphysical. During this phase of existence, we learn to understand our destinies, we learn to read them in the flowing, flooding light of the Sun and the Stars. One who has learned to gaze into the essence of this light does not look up vacantly at the Sun, or out into the far distances to the spheres of the Stars; he knows that in this moving, flowing light the threads of human destiny are being woven. It is the perceptible, yet superphysical, world, and in it live the dead, the seemingly dead.

And while man is accomplishing once more this metamorphosis for the earthly, he is—on Earth. Only, the world in which he sojourns there between death and new birth is now the imperceptible and physical world; he lives in the force of gravity, in the mercurial and phosphoric tendencies. (How these forces and tendencies develop, we shall gradually learn to understand.) We are thus first withdrawn from life into the invisible, and then return again in an imperceptible manner, to be once more withdrawn, that we may prepare ourselves for the future—perceptible and physical—life on Earth. The road between death and new birth leads from the perceptible, physical life on Earth, through the other conditions, to the imperceptible, physical life on Earth. This is the Midnight Hour of Existence. Then we make our way back, and enter once again into physical existence on Earth.

So far we have been able only to give a rough sketch, but in the lectures that are to come the sketch will be amplified in all its details. You will at any rate have seen that we need not rest content with general abstract thoughts about the life of man between death and a new birth. We can show, for example, how in order to prepare for his future life in a visible world man comes to Earth between death and a new birth in an invisible manner. How much deeper will be our understanding of earthly life when we know that human spirits who are in the Midnight Hour of Existence are living within physical Earth existence; that we have around us here on Earth not only those who are incarnate in physical bodies, but also, as an integral and spiritual part of Earth existence, those who are living through the Midnight Hour—the middle, that is, of their life between death and a new birth! The reason why we are not aware of them is because they are experiencing Earth existence not at the Noontide, but at the Midnight Hour.

In the following lectures we shall go more fully into all these things.

My dear Friends,

We tried in the first lecture of this Course to form some idea of the way in which man, here on Earth, is related to Beings and forces belonging to worlds beyond the Earth. Then, in the second lecture we spoke of the life of the human being in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth. In the present lecture I want to follow this up a little further. As our study proceeds, we shall find that a complete and inwardly harmonious picture will rise up before us.

We have seen that when a human being has passed through the gate of death and come into the super-sensible world, he reveals himself there to Imaginative vision in a spirit-form. You must understand, of course, that perception of the spiritual is quite different from perception of an object in the world of sense. For instance, those who are endowed with the faculty of spiritual vision will say: “Yes, I saw the phenomenon, but I could not tell you anything about the size of it.” The phenomena of the spiritual world are not spatial in the sense that a material object presented to the eye is spatial. Nevertheless, we can only describe them in such a way that they seem to resemble a visual image seen by the physical eye—or whatever other sense-impression we make use of in our description. You must bear this in mind in connection with all the descriptions I shall now be giving of what takes place in the super-sensible.

When a human being has passed through the gate of death, the spirit-form, of his head gradually fades away. On the other hand, the whole of the rest of his form becomes “physiognomy,” a physiognomy which expresses, for instance, how far the man was, in earthly life, a good man or a bad man, a wise man or a fool. These qualities can remain hidden in the material world; an out-and-out villain can walk about with an absolutely innocent face. But when the gate of death has been passed, they can no longer be concealed. There is no doing it with the face, for the face fades right away; and the rest of the form, which grows more and more like a physiognomy, allows nothing to be hid. We have, moreover, to remember that when a human being passes into the spiritual world, his whole relation to the universe changes. The faculty of thinking, especially that abstract thinking by which men set so much store on Earth, is by no means prized yonder in the spiritual world. No value is attached in the spiritual world to the faculty of which the head is the instrument; it is quite useless there. We have to leave behind us the thinking of which we are so proud and by means of which we evolve thoughts about the phenomena of the material world. It is only on Earth that there are philosophers! The kind of philosophy that consists in abstract thinking must be left behind. The further we pass out into the spiritual, super-sensible world, the more does our life of soul become a beholding, a perceiving. The thoughts which are in the objects come to us with the very act of perception. Here on Earth we evolve the thoughts; yonder in the spiritual world the thoughts are revealed by the things themselves; the thoughts come to us. Thought is achieved by means of perception. Nor is this true only of thought. Everything man has to undergo comes to him, in the spiritual world, in perception.

We have around us in the world of sense-perception certain phenomena which help us to describe the spiritual world in which man lives between death and a new birth. We look up to the stars. What the stars and planets of our system reveal to sense-perception on Earth is merely their outward aspect. In their inner reality they are something quite different; they are hosts of Spiritual Beings who have gathered together in diverse ways at the places where the stars appear in the heavens. When we look at a star with our physical eyes—what it really means is that there, in that particular direction, is a colony of Spiritual Beings in the Cosmos. The physical star we see merely gives us the direction; it is, if you like, a kind of signpost. Descriptions of the stars as given by physical science are of quite secondary importance, for physical science is dealing with what are no more than signs to indicate direction. The fact that somewhere in the sky we see a star means that in that direction there is a colony of Spiritual Beings.

The first sphere into which the human being passes after death is the sphere of the Moon; that is to say, he enters the region of the Spiritual Beings who have their dwelling-place in the Moon. What kind of Beings are these?

From what has been said in my book Occult Science, you will know that the Moon was not always out in the heavens where it is now. As a matter of fact, there are many strange things to be observed about the Moon. It is curious, for instance, that in ordinary text-books and school-books no mention is made, as a rule, of the fact that every year the Moon is coming nearer to the Earth. Most people are not aware of this, because they do not find it in the text-books; it is true, nevertheless. The Moon was not always out there in the Cosmos; there was a time when the Moon and its substance were within the Earth. The Moon then separated from the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos. It is therefore only in the course of Earth evolution that the Moon has become a dwelling place in itself for Spiritual Beings. And for what kind of Spiritual Beings?

In my books and lectures I have often spoken of the great primeval Teachers who lived among men in very ancient times of Earth evolution. When we look back with real understanding to ancient times, we cannot but be filled with deep inner reverence for the marvellous wisdom that was given long since to men on Earth by these great, superhuman Teachers. For the first Teachers of the human race on Earth were not themselves human; they were Beings standing higher in the scale of evolution than man, and in the Mysteries they appeared not in physical but in ether bodies—which, since then, they have for the most part laid aside, for they are now in astral bodies. These primeval Teachers left the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos—to the Moon. The heavenly body we know as the Moon is therefore the colony, out in the Cosmos, of the primeval Teachers of mankind. There they have their dwelling, in the Moon. To crude perception the outer aspect of the Moon reflects merely the light of the Sun. But for a finer perception the Moon mirrors a vast number of cosmic forces. And what is reflected thence to the Earth from the forces of the Cosmos is connected with all that is sub-human in man—with what man has to-day in common with animal nature. We find, therefore, in the Moon these high Spiritual Beings who were once the primeval Teachers of mankind, and at the same time, together with them, the animal forces of man's nature.

This is the first region the human being enters when he has passed through the gate of death; here his first experiences are undergone. Try to form a living picture of how, with his moral—or immoral—physiognomy, a human being comes into the region of the physical and spiritual radiations of the Moon and how, to begin with, he sees himself and other human beings each with his physiognomy. He does not see with physical eyes; he becomes aware of the others through a kind of “feeling” perception—almost a kind of touching, but touching from a distance. Let me try to describe it to you in the following way. A human being comes into the vicinity of another being in this region. He has his physiognomy which is mobile in itself—as it were, soft and pliable. He draws near to the other being, and at once tries to give himself a physiognomy similar to that revealed by the other being. But if a man who was an out-and- out villain in earthly life and has now passed through the gate of death were to attempt to do this in the proximity of one who has been a saintly man, in order that he might perceive and feel what the saintly man is in his physiognomy, he would not find it possible. Despite all his efforts he would continue to give himself the physiognomy of a villain. He can do no otherwise. You will realise from this that for a certain period of time after death a man is only capable of seeing other human beings who in respect of their moral qualities were of like nature with himself in Earthly life. This is the first impression that is experienced by the human being, the first of many powerful impressions that are at the same time like so many judgements passed upon him. For man really feels the experience as a dispensation of strict justice. He stands there under the constant impression: As those others are, so are you yourself; you can move only among human beings who are like yourself! It is so, indeed. Man does not see those who are different from himself; to begin with, he simply cannot see them.

Now the particular forces which are contained in this Moon environment do not permit of the Angels drawing near to man. The Angels—in their lovely form—cannot, to begin with, come into the neighbourhood of the human being. For the Moon is the heavenly body of which the Earth has rid herself; she has, as it were, put it out into the Cosmos. It is true that with the Moon have gone also, as we saw, the holy Teachers and Sages; but there are present, in addition, in its vicinity Ahrimanic Beings. Ahrimanic forms are to be seen there. And so it comes about that when a man sees other human beings in physiognomies that are the reverse of good, and has the impression that he is seeing himself along with them, then he and they seem, to his despair, to resemble the Ahrimanic forms that appear in this region. The Angels are hidden from his sight because they have forms into which he cannot yet find his way again. He sees other human beings in forms that are all differing expressions of evil, and he notes the resemblance of these to the Ahrimanic forms. This, then, is the second impression which comes to man in the Moon sphere: You yourself resemble the Ahrimanic forms! Once again is a stern judgement passed upon man after death.

The third experience makes an impression which never leaves the human being. It begins with the realisation that in the first region through which he has to pass are the wise and holy primeval Teachers of early humanity. But now he cannot help feeling that a mysterious connection exists between the Ahrimanic beings with whom he comes in contact in the way described, and these primeval Teachers of mankind. From the human point of view it is of course quite understandable that men will judge such things as I am telling you in the attitude of the famous King of Spain who was once shown a map of the stars and their movements and the whole solar system and, finding it very difficult to grasp, said that if God had left him to create the Universe he would have made it much simpler, it was all far too complicated! It is not to be wondered at that numbers of people think very much the same and are for ever wanting to correct something in the Divine Plan of the Universe. Human beings have, as you know, infinite faith in their own power of insight. There was actually a philosopher who said: “Give me matter, and I will make a universe.” That philosopher was Kant. It is a good thing he was not given matter, for he would have made something perfectly horrible out of it!

So, too, when people hear about Ahrimanic beings, they cannot understand why these beings have not long ago given up all hope of gaining the victory over the Earth Spirits. Human beings know quite well that the ultimate victory will not be with the Ahrimanic beings. But Ahriman does not know it! He strives unceasingly for victory. And out of this striving for victory there arises a strange and remarkable connection between those Ahrimanic beings who belong chiefly to the Moon sphere and the wise, primeval Teachers of mankind. Let me put it in this way. The Ahrimanic beings are continually trying, in their sinister way, to flatter and cajole these primeval Teachers, they would so much like to win them over to their side! For what is it these Ahrimanic beings are trying to achieve? They would like to hold the Earth fast at a certain point in its development and not allow it to make any further progress. It is Ahriman who is constantly saying: “The evolution of human beings has reached a certain point, and now it must come to a standstill; they must not evolve any further. I have resolved that human beings shall harden at this point and continue their further journey in the Cosmos as hardened, rigidified beings—not as beings involved in a progressive evolution.” This is what is whispered every night into the ears of men by the Ahrimanic beings. And it is what the Ahrimanic beings desire in regard also to the Earth itself; they want to hold it fast at a given point in its evolution.

And now think of the great primeval Teachers of man. It was they who left behind them on Earth what we know as the ancient, primordial Wisdom. This ancient Wisdom has grown dim in the course of the ages and is no longer understood. Once upon a time, in the old Mystery-sanctuaries, it was taught to men; but that could not continue. For if human beings had gone on receiving this Wisdom, they would not have made progress. Above all, they would not have attained to freedom, to free inner spiritual activity; they would not have acquired free will. The wisdom was by its very nature able to speak only to the instincts of men, not to clear, self-conscious deliberation. It was thus for the well-being of humanity that at a certain moment these great Teachers should withdraw. If they had never lived on Earth man would have been without an initial impetus for his evolution. But when they had once given the impetus which enabled him henceforth to continue his evolution independently, they withdrew from the Earth and went to the Colony of the Moon. As long as the primeval Teachers were still upon Earth, the Ahrimanic beings did their utmost to keep them there in order that the instinctive Wisdom should remain as it was. Even to-day, when a man has passed through the gate of death and come into the Moon sphere, they think they can still do something; and so they try again and again to cajole and persuade these primeval Teachers to approach the dead. They cannot achieve their end, least of all in the case of those human beings who wear a physiognomy of evil. None the less, the Ahrimanic beings continue to draw near to the souls of human beings in the Moon sphere and goad them on by pointing to the great primeval Wisdom and saying: “That was once all there for you!” Human beings who wear features of evil have, therefore, now to pass through a third experience. The Ahrimanic beings speak to them of the primeval Teachers of mankind. But they, with their nature, cannot see these Teachers. They gaze into an empty void.

This experience makes a profound and lasting impression. Once again man feels that a judgement has been passed upon him. For the thought lies heavy on his soul: “Those who gave the human race its first impulse are hidden from me; I cannot see them, I am spurned and rejected.” Powerful and acute is the experience that comes thus to human beings who do not show a physiognomy expressive of the good.

These are the three impressions which must needs come to man when, with a physiognomy of evil, he passes over into the world that lies beyond the gate of death. And it must of course be remembered, that no human being is wholly good; in the very best of men there is, after all, a great deal that is bad. Hence it falls to the lot of a great many human beings to undergo, at any rate in part, the experiences here described. But the more a man is able to assume the physiognomy of the good after death, the more readily will he behold those whom he has through his goodness come to resemble, and the less will he respond to the Ahrimanic beings. Their influences will fall away from him; on the other hand he will have understanding for the Angel Beings who now enter the sphere in which he is living. And that will enable him to permeate his being with forces,—to begin with, forces especially of will. For it is not thought or reflection, but first and foremost the faculty of will that man possesses after death. Will becomes itself perception, becomes man's whole world of life. He has to perform an act of will whenever he wants to perceive anything. For he must form. and fashion himself in accordance with what he wants to see. That is, he must will. He must become like what he wills to perceive. It is above all the will that is developed when a man has passed through the gate of death, and upon it work, for good or ill, the impressions of which I have spoken in connection with the Moon sphere.

The next sphere into which the human being passes is that of Mercury. By this time—and often at the cost of great suffering—the human being has been able so far to adjust his physiognomy to the forces of the super-sensible world that he has laid aside the physiognomy of evil and has gradually come to resemble the forms of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The process is in many cases slow, but eventually man enters the sphere of Mercury, the dwelling-place of the beings of the Third Hierarchy, and has to live there among them and undergo what I have already described. This is the sphere in which he gradually unfolds understanding of what, previously, was more or less blank perception—although it exercised a potent influence upon the domain of his will. In the Mercury-sphere understanding for all that has been perceived begins to dawn within man. In the present age human life is such that those who investigate these matters with Imaginative perception have tragic experiences. For the state in which the souls of the dead find themselves in this Mercury sphere depends to a great extent upon whether, here on Earth, they were materialists and rejected in thought and deed everything of a super-sensible nature, or whether they had understanding for the super-sensible. A man who in earthly life rejected all that transcends the material, confronts the Beings in the Mercury sphere with comparatively little understanding. It is the same when he comes to the next sphere, where he lives among Beings who also belong to the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai but have reached a somewhat higher stage of development. If a man was a rank materialist in earthly life, he has no understanding at all of the Beings in the Venus sphere. For here the forces of cosmic love pour down upon him. If he has not acquired on Earth the capacity of love, the region he now enters is strange and foreign to him in the highest degree. The forces of cosmic love flood his being in the Venus sphere if, on Earth, he possessed the faculty of love; but if, on Earth, he consciously or unconsciously harboured hatred in his breast, these forces of the Venus sphere are changed within him into forces of wrath. This is the mystery of man's sojourn in the Venus sphere. For those who bring with them from Earth considerable remains of forces of hatred, it is as though metamorphosed forces of love—forces, that is, of wrath and fury—were to rise up within them from out of their will. Man sees himself in a manifestation that impels him to say: It must all be subdued, it must be chastened and brought into harmony with the Cosmos. It is ultimately always the will that receives, shall I say, special care and nurture in the Venus sphere—the will, which in earthly man has its seat in the limb and metabolic system in the lower part of his organism, that is to say, in the part of man that becomes after death “physiognomy.” It is therefore the will that comes to expression in this physiognomy.

All this time man is coming, by degrees, to resemble the Beings that are present in the spiritual Cosmos, and he is gradually passing on into the sphere of the Sun. In the Sun sphere the forces work chiefly on that in man which in its earthly reflection we know as feeling. What the Sun shows us, when we look up to it with our physical eyes, is its outward aspect only. In its inner aspect the Sun is the great cosmic meeting-place of all those Spiritual Beings who guide and direct the destinies of the Earth and of the men on Earth. The Sun is, above all, the colony of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. Whereas before entering the Sun sphere man lives only among human beings with whom he is linked by destiny, others now approach him. His circle of acquaintances—if one may be allowed the expression—grows wider and wider. This takes place in the sphere of the Sun. Here, too, a new and particularly vivid experience befalls man.

There below him lies another world—the Earth he has left behind but which he must tread again. In the Sun sphere, as you have heard, the metamorphosis of man's being takes place; here is wrought out the great change of which I have told you, when man's lower being is transformed into the upper being in preparation for the next earthly life. The legs are wrought into the spirit-form of the lower jaw, the arms into the spirit-form of the upper jaw and cheek-bones, and so on. This is a wonderful work which proceeds in the spiritual world, and in comparison with it any work that is done on earth in whatsoever domain is utterly insignificant. Great and majestic is the work that is accomplished by man in the spiritual world in union with higher spiritual Beings! There, in the sphere of the Sun (using the word in its wider sense) the secret of man's being is worked out. But now comes another experience.

If we are healthy in soul and spirit during our life on Earth, we are bound to realise that there is another world, a spiritual world, even if we cannot pierce through to it with actual knowledge. We take the existence of the spiritual world for granted; we say that beyond the material world there is a super-sensible world. This is how it is in earthly life. But during existence in the Sun sphere between death and a new birth, it is the other way round. In his Sun existence, an experience befalls man that teaches him to speak of a world beyond—but this “world beyond” is the Earth! It is an intensely living experience, not so much now of one's own destiny, but of the whole intrinsic character of Earth existence. And there is one feature of it which you can observe and should test for yourselves. People of to-day can hardly yet succeed in this, but you must try. When you are reading history and following it back through the centuries, it may well be that you have a curious experience. You are living now in the year 1923. You go back through history—through the world war, through still earlier events, until you come at length to the period, let us say, between the years 1500 and 1550. There you begin to feel that it is all familiar to you. Consider for a moment an intimate experience of this kind. You seem to know all about events that happened several centuries ago. You say to yourself: Surely I must have had a share in these events! A superficial student will immediately conclude that this was the period of his previous incarnation on Earth. This is, however, in most cases incorrect. As a rule it is that period between death and rebirth when, in the Sun sphere, you experienced most vividly your connection with earthly existence. Earth life presented itself to you then as a “beyond,” very much as the super-sensible life presents itself to you on Earth as a “beyond.”

Let us now pause for a moment in our study of man's path of evolution after death. We have seen that when man has gone away from the Earth he completes first the Moon existence, then enters upon the Mercury existence, then Venus and then the Sun. Of what follows we shall speak later on. But now it must be clearly understood that these events and processes are not isolated events and processes in the spiritual world but are all related to what happens on the physical Earth. And the relationship is of a distinctive character. The Moon existence is permeated through and through with the Beings of whom we have been speaking to-day—the great primeval Teachers of the human race. In a remote age of antiquity they left the Earth and went out into the Cosmos to form the cosmic colony of the Moon. But in later times we may still find here and there human beings, initiated in the Mysteries, who were possessed of quick inner sight and hearing, and could apprehend the wisdom which had once been living on Earth thanks to the presence of these primeval Initiates. Thus, in the ancient Indian period of civilisation there was still present in the Mysteries a living knowledge of the Wisdom of the Moon Initiates. There must we look, to find the source of all that can so deeply stir our wonder and admiration in the echoes we still possess of ancient Indian Wisdom. Nor is this all. Influences continue to pour down from the super-earthly world in which man lives between death and a new birth,—and the influences change with each succeeding epoch. As time goes on, their power grows continuously weaker; that is to say, human beings grow gradually less and less conscious of these influences. The Mercury influences, for example, were particularly strong during the period of ancient Persian civilisation, but human beings were already becoming less conscious of them: the myth of Ahura Mazdao is the outcome of a somewhat darkened knowledge of the influence exercised upon the Earth by Mercury. During the Egypto-Chaldean epoch the Venus influences were principally at work. Then came the wonderful epoch of Greek culture, continuing on into the Latin, when the Sun influences worked upon the Earth with greatest strength. Man was, however, in this Graeco-Latin epoch still less observant of such influences. Two factors were working together. When in his existence between death and a new birth man entered the Sun sphere, he felt an urgent desire to experience the Earth from the Sun. That is one factor. The second is that everything connected with the Sun and the nature of the Sun had a very strong influence upon the Greeks. All that the forces of the Sun give to the Earth had a deep meaning for them, especially for those generally known as the Athenians, in contrast to the Spartans. Yet everywhere in Greece the Sun, in its spiritual aspect as well, exercised a remarkably deep influence on the whole form and development of civilisation. Throughout this phase of evolution there was a strong aptitude on Earth for the perception of the spiritual, the purely spiritual, in the starry heavens. Perception of the material aspect of the heavens did not really begin until the time of our fifth Post-Atlantean period, which is, as you know, only a few hundred years old. The fact that these influences are working in our time indicates that we have passed out of the region where men feel themselves related, on Earth, to the feeling they had of being in the Sun-existence between death and a new birth. We to-day are much more susceptible to what follows. After the time spent in the Sun man comes to the domain of Mars. The strongest cosmic influence working upon humanity to-day is the impulse which comes from Mars existence. We can become acquainted with these Mars influences between death and a new birth when the Noontide hour of existence has been passed and we begin once again to approach the Earth. It must not, however, be thought that the influences connected with the Sun existence cease to work upon a man when he has passed into the Mars sphere. The Sun extends the sphere of its activity over those planetary phases of existence which follow. The Sun's influences remain; but the Mars existence begins to be a significant factor in what happens on Earth. I shall speak further of the journey of the human being through the Mars existence, but I want now to connect what we have just been learning of the spiritual world with what we find at work precisely in our own, fifth Post-Atlantean age.

In our time we are learning what cosmic battle is. We can “sense” it taking place. Most of us cannot unravel its mysteries; but we know that in cosmic existence war is being waged to-day between all manner of good and evil spirits. And here the Sun existence acquires a particular significance for our age. It is exceedingly difficult to-day for the results of spiritual insight to make any headway in face of material science! People are so proud of the fact that physics has investigated the Sun! The Sun is described for us in scientific text-books; but these descriptions, instead of stimulating in us a true conception of the Sun, really serve only to put our minds off the track. What then is actually the influence of the Sun in regard to the Earth to-day? I will indicate one only of its activities. It may seem to you that I am descending here into very material realms that are in strange contrast to the spiritual events of which we have been speaking; but what I am now going to say is of importance for the further progress of the studies upon which we are engaged.

You are, of course, familiar with the phenomenon of the Sunspots which appear with a certain regularity. Dark spots are observed on the Sun. These Sun-spots and their meaning are the cause of much dispute in material science, but a more accurate research would reveal the following. A constant impulse arises from within the Sun to throw out Sun-substance into the Universe through these dark portals. And the Sun-substance thus thrown out appears within our solar system in the form of comets, meteors and shooting stars. Now it is particularly in our age that the Beings who rule over the Universe from within the Sun are casting forth these comets, meteors and shooting stars. They did so in earlier times as well, but in our time this activity of theirs has a new significance. You will remember I said how in earlier times it was the purely spiritual impulses in the starry system that were particularly at work. In our time it is the impulses contained in the iron thrown out from the Sun that have special significance for human beings. And these impulses are used by Him whom we know as the Michael Spirit, in the service of the spiritual in the Cosmos. In our age there are thus present in the Cosmos impulses which were not working with the same strength in earlier periods of civilisation. This cosmic iron, in its spiritual nature, makes it possible for the Michael Spirit to mediate between the super-sensible and the material on Earth. We find, therefore, on the one side a spirit of warfare abroad in the world man enters, when in our time he reaches to what lies behind outer sense-existence. When a man crosses the Threshold with super-sensible sight and instead of directing his gaze to matters which concern him personally turns his attention to great affairs of the Universe which underlie our whole civilisation, then he sees warfare and battle, spiritual battle. There is strife, there is war and conflict in the spiritual, behind the veils of existence. And the iron which, even to the point of physical manifestation, is thrown out by the Sun Spirits into the Cosmos—with this iron Michael arms Himself for His task in the cosmic war. For Michael has the task of helping humanity to go forward in the right way in face of these Powers of Strife behind the veils of civilisation. On the one hand—battle and warfare. On the other hand—the labours and strivings of Michael.

Moon—Ancient Indian civilisation

Mercury—Ancient Persian civilisation

Venus—Egypto-Chaldean civilisation

Sun—Greco-Latin civilisation

Mars (Iron)—

Now all this is again connected with the development of man's freedom, man's free spiritual activity. As earthly men we have iron in our blood. If we were beings with no iron in our blood, the feeling and impulse of freedom would still be able to arise in our souls, but we should not have bodies which could be used for putting this impulse into operation. That we are able not only to conceive the idea of freedom, but also to feel in our body the power to make the body itself into a bearer of the impulse of freedom, is due to the fact that in our age we can learn how Michael takes the cosmic iron, which was cast out also in former times, into His service. And we ourselves, if we understand the Michael impulse aright, can learn how to place the iron that we have within us into the service of the impulse of spiritual freedom. Matter in any case has meaning for us only when we learn to understand it as an expression of the Spiritual in the Universe. In this age what we have to learn is to make the right use of the iron in our blood. For wherever iron is, there too is the impulse for the development of freedom. This is true in the Cosmos and true also in man. It was out of a deep instinct that the Initiates of old ascribed iron to Mars—iron which has a significance for human blood, and therewith also a cosmic significance.

These things can be known to-day through Spiritual Science, It is not a question of a revival of ancient traditions but of a re-discovery by Spiritual Science itself. If Anthroposophy is found to be in agreement with ancient lore, that does not show that Anthroposophy is merely a revival of the old. Anthroposophy investigates things by studying them in their own intrinsic nature. Their significance is then brought home to one anew when one finds that men had this same knowledge long ago under the influence of the ancient Divine Wisdom possessed by those Beings who afterwards took their departure to the Moon and to-day people the cosmic colony of the Moon.

The age in which we live is, therefore, also bound up with the experiences through which man passes between death and rebirth. Perception of what is happening on Earth is strongest during the period of existence in the Sun-sphere, but it is always there after death in greater or less degree. From the super-earthly regions in which he lives between death and a new birth, man is perpetually looking down at the earthly world. If it were not so, the earthly world would become foreign to him during the long journey between death and a new birth.

The experiences of man in the super-sensible world can be described in many ways. Yesterday I described them to you in another way; now I have been describing them to you in connection with the world of stars and with what takes place on Earth in the consecutive epochs of civilisation. All these descriptions must gradually be built up together into one whole. It would be a mistake to say: Yes, but how is it that on one occasion you describe man's life between death and rebirth in one way and on another occasion in quite a different way? If a man goes to a city once or twice or three times, he will certainly describe things differently, as his knowledge of the city grows. The details of all his descriptions have then to be put together. In the same way must the descriptions of man's experiences in the super-sensible world be brought together, be considered and pondered in all their connections. Thus alone can we gain an impression of what the super-sensible world really is and what man experiences there. This was the point I wanted to reach in the present lecture. In the lecture this evening I will speak of further experiences undergone by the human being in his existence between death and a new birth.