The Rudolf Steiner Archive

See GA 223

Words on the Inaugural Meeting of the Austrian National Society

My dear friends! At today's afternoon meeting, you have adopted a resolution for which I must be grateful to you. I express my thanks to you from the depths of my heart. But you must not be angry with me if I also say a few words about what should be linked with what has been discussed so often this afternoon, and so passionately at times: the further development, the reorganization, the coming of age of the Anthroposophical Society. All this is certainly extraordinarily good when it is backed by a strong will. But, my dear friends, I am sometimes put in the position of having to speak more concretely about what is actually necessary. Since, to my regret, I cannot be in Vienna as often as I would like, I have spoken less concretely about these things here in Vienna than, for example, in February on other occasions in Stuttgart. But some of what I said in Stuttgart or Dornach with regard to what would be necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to come of age in the twenty-first year of its life may have been leaked. Again and again I had to point out a word that is very necessary in the development of the Anthroposophical Society: This is the word waking up, being attentive to what is going on around us, having a heart for life – not just for theories about life – in the Anthroposophical Society. Please forgive me if I then also characterize small things; but to him who observes life, it often reveals itself in small things. I would like to draw attention to one such detail. It is not meant in a negative way, but the following happened a few days ago.

It is true that I care as little as possible about what is said in public about my lectures or about what I do. But there are exceptions. On the day of my second public lecture, a newspaper article appeared here that – I will now completely disregard whether it is praising or not, I do not consider praising articles more valuable than terribly scathing ones – but it does have some characteristic words that say the following. I mention it because of the coming of age of our society. About supersensible knowledge it says:

"It (anthroposophy) has not met the challenge of the time to improve our existence, so it has not yet proved itself to be the challenge of the time. And it will not become so until it comes to truly beneficial insights in its ‘exact formulation of supersensible experience’. What it offers us is only old mysticism, which fell asleep when it experienced the supersensible and, upon awakening, forgot everything it had experienced. Overcoming such forgetfulness is the challenge of the times for Rudolf Steiner.

These words are extremely characteristic. I am only, I would like to say, as if by fate, somewhat absorbed in the discussion of this demand, in that I have pointed out that there are insights, for example, about the human heart, that lead us further in education. But just think: if I had received this article when the lecture was given, instead of a day after, then I could have replied: “What you are calling for exists!” I touched on it, but perhaps I would have gone into it in more detail otherwise. The things are there – they are just not taken into account. But then people come up with such demands!

If one of our friends here had been kind enough to give me this article during the day on the twenty-ninth, it would have meant: People are paying attention, they care about the things that are happening, they are getting involved! Because I would have said something very important, even if only in five lines, in connection with the end of this article, and something could have been done as a result. It is not enough to merely talk about the fact that we are founding a new phase of society. We really have to wake up and work together. We can do this on a small and large scale. Because just as I received this article when the cow was out of the barn, I could have received it when the cow was still in the barn. That is what I once requested as the coming of age of society. I have to be unpleasant when I characterize things from my point of view, but it has happened and it is not meant to be so bad!

But these things have to be pointed out, because they can really be worked with! It would have been quite good... I know that many have read the article, but they did not consider it worth the effort to hand it over to me the day before the lecture. It is only one symptom, and I choose to make it clear that I do not mean it badly, the most venomous symptom, but it is still characteristic for that reason.

And so I would ask you to take seriously what I mean by awakening. Awakening means: focusing attention on the environment, working with the world, working for our great cause when our great cause comes into consideration. Theoretical arguments that we are “now twenty-one years old” do not do it. What does it matter if one has now turned twenty-one? If, however, it has really reached the depths of your soul, waking up is what we need. What I am saying is actually meant as a kindness.

In the afternoon I was asked if I would like to speak myself, and I would like to say the following: In general, it would be good for our dear friends in Austria, if they — since I love Austria so much — would not just go along with this awakening, but if they would even be a prime example of awakening. But then it must begin with the most everyday things, insofar as it touches the life of society. In Austria, there is really an opportunity to do a great deal for this spiritual movement to which we are devoted. For Austria has always had, I might say, a certain development of an external or bureaucratic-mechanical spirit of life, and yet always a strong inwardness in the realm where the intellectual merges into the emotional. And I would never want to fail to mention this. If we go back to the 1850s, 1860s or even the early 1970s of the last century, we see that Austria had the best schoolbooks in the world, and this excellence extended not only to the so-called humanistic schoolbooks, but also to mathematics and geometry books. And we must be fair here. One can also be fair to those who are our opponents. It is really time that people realized that anthroposophy is not anyone's opponent: the others are opponents of anthroposophy. I recently had to complain about this in connection with an unpleasant matter in Stuttgart. People say that so-and-so treats me as an 'adversary'. They have no right to do so, since I do not behave as an adversary until I feel compelled to defend myself against attacks from others; only then do they become adversaries. A fine distinction needs to be made here. Therefore, one must be fair and say: From that fine education which chiseled the spiritual life, which in Austria was the education of the Benedictines and the Cistercians right up to the secondary schools, something of the spiritual flowed into the Austrian mind from this education, which you will not find anywhere else. I really don't want to flatter you otherwise, but the older ones of you have it unconsciously within you, perhaps you don't take it into account. The introduction of those horrible geometry books that came later, in place of, for example, Fialkowski or the old Močnik, which was used as a geometry book in Austria, where all of descriptive geometry, without anyone noticing, led to the imaginative, was not done so without consequence. This could be seen from the figures alone: they had a black background with white lines instead of the black lines that are most commonly found today. All of this was infinitely closer to the soul. Much of that still lives here. It lives in the soul; only people maltreat their own soul: they suppress these things. And precisely the fact that that reformatory Protestant-evangelical intellectualism did not sweep through the Austrian soul as a wave, that is precisely what conditions a very special Austrian spiritual milieu. Germanness in Austria is different from Germanness anywhere else in the world. One need only point to those fine minds that worked in Austria in the last third of the 19th century. I will not mention names, but they can be found everywhere, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

All this could indicate that this thought also occurred to me at a decisive moment: talk about anthroposophy and the human mind, especially in Austria and especially in Vienna. And even if you in your higher souls were to grasp all this in the same way as the world otherwise grasps it, in your lower souls you cannot grasp it at all in the same way! Because there is something there of that fine vibration that emerged from the profound education that was present in Austria around the middle of the last century. And one must answer the question: What can German-Austria do for anthroposophy? with the soul. You must not speculate about the difference between this or that area of the world, but you must feel how there is really a strong inwardness here. This is expressed in the smallest details. The other Germans sometimes feel this as something quite foreign.

Do you see that you have a special task here, to work from the heart, which may emerge from the details. I was once sitting with Herman Grimm in Weimar. In the course of our conversation we happened to mention Grillparzer, and Herman Grimm said: “I once heard Scherer (who was called from Vienna to Berlin) say that Grillparzer was also a poet.” Imagine! The man who at that time was the most brilliant representative of German intellectual life spoke in this way! And he continued: “Once, during a stay in Munich, I had a free hour and sent over to the court library to have something of Grillparzer's sent to me; and when I read it, it seemed to me as if it were not actually written in German at all, but in a foreign language, it seemed to me like something quite foreign.” That was Herman Grimm saying it!

Those who embrace Austria with their hearts cannot speak in this way; for them, precisely this language, which is so strongly emphasized by Grillparzer, will reveal itself as the language of the heart. One must answer this question with one's heart: What should Austria do for anthroposophy? — It is good for the Austrian that in the word 'anthroposophy' there is only one R; for you know — you will agree with me — the Austrian never really learns to pronounce the R properly. It is precisely his peculiarity that wherever there is an R, he actually speaks an A. We vocalize the R. Just explore your vowel and consonant secrets, and you will find that you are no great genius at R! It is the case with Austrians that they never actually grasp this “rolling” of the R with their speech organ. The Austrian speaks a “cozy” R; but it is just not cozy — and so it is not a proper R. But it is the case that you have to grasp the essence where it is.

And so I thought: I would like to touch your soul with this series of lectures! That is the answer to the question that our dear friend Zeißig asked me this afternoon. That is what I wanted to say as a farewell greeting. With this, I close this lecture series, and I would just like to add that it has given me great satisfaction to be among you in Vienna once again. And I do hope that, in our spiritual movement, even when we are apart in the physical sense, we will always know that we are together in the inner sense. And since we always know and feel that we are together, we will be together spiritually even when we are physically apart!

Before the lecture begins, please allow me to reflect for a moment on the solemn ceremony that some of us had to attend to a few days ago in Basel, near the site of our building. Last Saturday [April 4th] at eleven o'clock we committed the earthly remains of our dear friend Christian Morgenstern to the elements in Basel. By a turn of fate that I might almost call miraculous, it fell to me to speak about our dear Christian Morgenstern for the third time in the circle of anthroposophical friends, but to speak in the moments before we committed his earthly remains to the elements.

I have already had the opportunity to point out twice — once in Stuttgart, once in Leipzig on the occasion of a lecture cycle — how we have seen Christian Morgenstern in our anthroposophical center for years with how much heartfelt gratitude and love. So today I would like to say a few words to you, his fellow anthroposophists, before Ms. von Sivers reads some of the wonderful final poems that are still awaiting publication and will be published soon.

It was in Koblenz a number of years ago that Christian Morgenstern first came to our anthroposophical center. We knew him at that time as the poet who had important things to unfold and reveal to the world on two sides. We knew him as the poet who was able to rise so wonderfully into the spiritual worlds, whose soul was born to live in the spiritual worlds. And on the other hand, we knew him as the important satirist who, above all, knew how to strike a spiritual note within German literature that is entirely his own. And for those who are willing to go to the poet's country, to the poet's spiritual realm, in order to achieve understanding, it is important to understand that a mind like Christian Morgenstern's needed the rhythmic transition from the lonely spiritual heights where he knew how to live so wonderfully with his soul, to the way of rising above the disharmony of existence, the weaknesses of existence, which in Christian Morgenstern's case only came to the surface in his own emotional life, and to rise satirically above this disharmony, as it came to him.

Christian Morgenstern carried within himself what he had taken from his hereditary line – his ancestors were painters –: the deepest affinity with nature, but with the spirit of nature. He was so familiar with everything that trembled in his soul, with the most delicate and secret workings of nature, that when his soul allowed what nature spoke to it to resonate, it actually told of the voices of elemental beings, of elemental spirits that wander and weave through nature. And starting from all that a deep human soul can gain from nature through an intimate, kinship-like experience with that nature, from all that, our dear Christian Morgenstern knew how to rise to those moods in relation to the universe where art not only becomes a hymn that echoes the secrets of creation, but where art becomes prayer. And few have truly understood how to transform the poetic tone into the tone of prayer as did Christian Morgenstern. He knew what the poetic, the artistic, the anthroposophical prayer is in the face of the spirituality that permeates nature. If one is able to rise to the spirit of nature in such a way that its word resounds through natural phenomena as through restrained speech, then what the soul would like to breathe out becomes: Yes, I will be among you! And when the soul is able to enliven this yes within itself in such a way that what lives in the soul itself becomes a surging, flowing world, flows out into the universe, knowing itself to be one with it, and when the soul overflows with gratitude for being allowed to live in this universe, to be pardoned, to be blessed by this universe, when all this then becomes a poet's sound, a poet's word, then art arises that sounds to us so often from Christian Morgenstern's poetry. The one who rises in this way, who has to rise through his karma to the spiritual heights of the universe, needs, like the day-awakening time of man, to alternate with the night-sleeping, the other side, which then comes to light in Christian Morgenstern's satire, in that satire, which one only understands completely if one penetrates into the tender, loving soul of Christian Morgenstern. That was his nature, the nature of the anthroposophical poet, the anthroposophical poet who felt deeply, when he joined our ranks in Koblenz.

Now we experienced his ordeal in the last years, during which he increasingly connected everything that was spiritually and emotionally valuable to him with the goals of our spiritual movement. We experienced his ordeal on the one hand and his high poetic upsurge, the wonderful revelations of a magnificent human soul, on the other. Yes, it can be counted among the favorable strokes of fate of our anthroposophical movement that it has been able to have Christian Morgenstern in its midst in recent years. That which we strive to explore, that which we strive to immerse ourselves in with regard to the spiritual worlds, it resounded to us in such magnificent tones from the poems of Christian Morgenstern! He recreated our research in poetry. Anyone who grows so close to our movement that suffering and the highest poetic inspiration become one with the most intimate goals of our anthroposophical life ennobles our movement. And Christian Morgenstern, with all that he was able to elevate within himself, but also with all that he experienced in his ailing body, which offered him so many obstacles in his last years, with all his suffering, he belonged to us because he belonged to us with the full extent of his feeling. How did he accept his suffering, that which confronted him as an obstacle in his physical body, when he felt that what is revealed to us was poetically reflected in him through our ideas, our views, our experiences? And so he was able to speak, to speak of his strength wasting away in his body, that in a sketch that appeared in the last period of his life he found the following words:

“Perhaps it was the same strength that,” he says, “after it had left him on the physical plane, henceforth accompanied his life spiritually and, what she could not give him in the physical world, she now gave him from the spiritual world with a loyalty that did not rest until she saw him not only high up in life, but also on his way up to the heights of life, where death had lost its sting and the world had regained its divine meaning.

That is how he spoke. That is how he understood his relationship to the spiritual world. It is up to us, to whom he belonged, to faithfully cultivate this memory. We do, after all, stand on this point of view: through our spiritual research, death has lost its sting for us all, if we understand it correctly. Yet last week we stood in pain before the earthly remains of Christian Morgenstern. We know that our friend has gone on a journey to a land that our research is revealing more and more to us. He has not left us, he has moved into the spiritual worlds, where he will be more and more intimately connected to us.

But there was something else very special about Christian Morgenstern in his last years. It was something so wonderful for those who were closer to him personally to know that, when he was resting in the Swiss mountains or trying to improve his health, far away from us in space but united with us in spirit. It was often such a sweet, intimate feeling for me, here or there, in this or that city, to know that he was speaking about spiritual things. To know: he dwells in the Swiss mountains, living in the same spiritual heights and traversing the soul lands with me.

Then there was his dear wife, who is with us today, often the messenger who came to the cycles, the lectures, who brought us physical messages from him, who told him what was going on between us. There was an intimate community, an intimate spiritual community between us. And he was up there. Oh, he had learned to live in the loneliness of physical life because he sought the spirit throughout his life and found it. He only needed to be connected to this external world of people through his wife, who was so infinitely understanding, only through her did he need to be connected to this external world of people, which, through the rare understanding she showed him, was able to represent the whole of humanity. It is a wonderful thing in life to be able to witness such intimate understanding between two individuals.

But we were also there in pain at his physical end. When I met him in Zurich during his stay in Switzerland, his voice was already hoarse, his body no longer had the strength to resonate the voice, hoarseness had poured over his speech. But there was another language with Christian Morgenstern, a rare language of those wonderful eyes in which the soul shone, as it can shine through eyes in only a few people; one felt how much he could say to one with his eyes. And one felt in many a moment how much one could say through the telling that was only his. We will no longer be able to speak this language with him. That was our pain, for we loved him so much. But that will also be the reason why we will love him more and more, and will be united with him faithfully, according to our spiritual capacity. He will live among us as an example, and when we ask ourselves: What should the best anthroposophists be like? we will answer with one of the first names that comes to mind: Christian Morgenstern!

In Leipzig, when I was still able to speak in his presence, I was allowed to use a word from those poems in which our world view resonates, which I speak from the bottom of my soul because I feel the truth of this word so deeply: Christian Morgenstern's poetry, of which you will hear some samples later, speaks to us truly not only through that which is expressed in thoughts and feelings - soul lives in them, that lives in them, which we often call aura. His poems have aura! And I could often feel how these poems are living beings when I tried, as Christian Morgenstern himself did, to penetrate into his soul, into his soul, which had become so dear to me that through this love I also gained intimate understanding when I tried to go with my soul to where so many of his wonderful poems lead: to this lonely island! For some of his poems are as if they led us to a lonely island, but to an island where one can feel at one with what flows through the universe. And when Christian Morgenstern, sensing the sounds of the spirit of the world within himself, let his wonderful sounds resound on the island of the soul, he could only be understood by those who knew how to follow him. It has often been said: If you want to understand the poet, you have to go to the poet's country. Christian Morgenstern is a poet of the spirit. If you want to understand this poet of the spirit, you have to go to the lands of the spirit, to the spirit lands. Some of the sounds in the poetry that you will hear later exude an aura; they are as if they had truly already been spoken from the spirit world, by a soul that is fully aware of being in the spirit world, by a soul that was allowed to say:

We had to leave Christian Morgenstern's earthly remains to the elements at that time, when we are expecting that precisely those poems that reveal his highest spiritual aspirations will go out into the world. We expect these poems to touch the innermost depths of many souls, and that many, many souls will experience these artistic creations in their deepest depths in such a way that they will lead the souls to the spiritual realm.

With this, I have told you some of what I would like to say to you from a very personal point of view. He lived in such a way that he expressed a longing in a little poem, a longing of which I would like to say from the bottom of my heart: It has been fulfilled!

He, the enigma-maker, loved the enigmatic poets of the North; he translated the poetry of Ibsen and other poets in such a profound way. And while he was in the north, he grew to love the north. This was a feeling that harmoniously combined with what of German intellectual life resonated in his soul. The great experiencer Nietzsche, one of the most German poets, Lagarde: it was their views, their impulses that his soul so gladly delved into. All this was crowded together in Christian Morgenstern's soul. And in a moment, which was probably born out of a mood that is revealed in the lines I allowed myself to read to you twice, in such a moment those lines were created:

To Niblum I want to be buried,
on the edge between marsh and geest...

I want to rest in Niblum
from all of the present.
And there on my stone house, write for me
only the name and: “Lest Lagarde!”
Yes, only the two things small and large:
this request and then just my name.
Just the name and: “Read Lagarde!”

The islet of the motherland there, no,
I will not disdain that.
Let the North Sea take me home there soon
with steep, tumbling seas –
the mother sea, the mother flood...
oh, how good it will be to rest down there, far away from German events!

Much has changed in our feelings in the last few years. But we, in spirit, we see him, abandoned to the elements, on the edge of physical being, on the shore of physical being. And we see - in a still higher way than he was able to express it in those lines - taken up by the mother flood, the highest human home, this soul, which was so much at home in the motherland of the spirit, the human soul. Yes, we may say it: he is buried where he desired to be buried. But he shall be buried, buried so that this burial will be a constant resurrection in our hearts, in our souls: in them he wants to live! And his name will be written on our souls. And those of us who do not just want to be connected to the spiritual life that we have dedicated ourselves to on the outside, but rather very deeply within, will understand when I now present each of them with a very personal request: may the souls of our friends be allowed to deepen their anthroposophical experience of what they can experience and deepen within themselves through the artistic rebirth of anthroposophy in the poetry of Christian Morgenstern.

So let us joyfully, united with his wife, who so understandingly and lovingly stood by him and continues to do so, stand by her faithfully in the cultivation of his memory. We want to be united with our friend in spirit, we want to read his name often on the memorial that is to be erected for him in our hearts, and then we know that we will never do so without the deepest spiritual gain if we follow the word, which I now change his own words as my deepest wish: When we see the name Christian Morgenstern written on the memorial stone of our hearts, then let us take this, changing his words, as an invitation: Let us read, let us read Christian Morgenstern often!

My dear Theosophical friends!

During the years in which this catastrophe that has befallen humanity has called so many of our human brothers to difficult, responsible posts, we have always turned to the protecting spirits of those fighting in the field at our meetings:

Spirits of your souls, watchers ever active,
Your wings may bear
Our souls' imploring love
To earthlings trusting in your keeping,
That, joined with your might,
Our plea may helpfully shine
On the souls it seeks in love!

My dear friends!

We have not seen each other for a long time here in Vienna, but this difficult present, this present, which makes so much of what we now have to remember so necessary, so much of the past gathering of strength for the present and the future, this present necessitates so much. And we have to accept – as so much has to be accepted today – that we will see each other less on the physical plane. On the other hand, however, at such a meeting it will be particularly important to remember those souls who have been holding us together in our spiritual movement for years. One of the main thoughts, one of the main impulses that hold us together, is that through spiritual science we must increasingly come to the conviction that whatever is to help all of humanity, to help it on , must be spiritually motivated. The more we can truly feel, sense, and understand this in our souls, that humanity needs spiritual insights to warm and illuminate our souls, the more we will

we will find the opportunity to fruitfully engage with the difficult tasks that are actually posed today to every person who does not dreamily, sleepily pass by the events of the present. And so, after such a long time of not being together, it may be good today, when we tie in with this reflection, to think about ideas that, on the one hand, are connected with the present-day insights that are necessary, but which, despite being necessary, are not present in general humanity, and which, on the other hand, are again suitable to penetrate us soulfully, to strengthen us, to permeate us with strength precisely for the task we have in the present for this present.

In particular, my dear friends, if we turn our attention to what we have been doing for years in spiritual science, one main thought, above all, will remain before our soul. The thought is that if we want to gain spiritual-scientific knowledge, we must shape many a concept, many a feeling, and many a volitional impulse differently than we have done so far. We must think differently about many things, and perhaps the time is not far distant when many more people than today will see that something else also teaches us to think differently about time, about human development, and about human tasks. And this other thing is the catastrophe itself that has befallen humanity, the whole of humanity on earth, and the goal of which can hardly be grasped at all by anything other than an understanding of the spiritual path of human development.

But let us start with seemingly very distant thoughts. We can ask: Why is it that, as soon as they are present, the majority of people actually show either irony, mockery, annoyance, or some other kind of dislike or opposition to what we call spiritual science? It can be said that this is often because this spiritual science makes demands on people that have to be met, but first a firm decision of the heart must be made. The spiritual world, as everyone says, as we gradually learn to understand it through spiritual science, looks quite different from the world that our senses must actually be the spiritual world. We only learn when real spiritual research brings us close to how fundamentally different the ideas about it are; only then do we learn to understand why people are so dismissive of spiritual science.

Let us then start from an obvious thought, or I could just as easily say: from a remote thought, to show you why humanity has so much to say against spiritual science. To help us understand this idea, let us first take those spiritual beings that are closest to most people, towards which most people long most intensely, let us take the human souls that have passed through the gate of death itself. The one who enters the spiritual world with clear vision gradually comes to an understanding, although this understanding is one of the most difficult in the realm of spiritual vision. There is also a certain correlation that draws him to the so-called deceased human souls. But it is precisely then that it becomes apparent that when one enters into this spiritual communication with the departed human souls, one must become accustomed to different concepts than those to which one is accustomed from the sense world. When we stand here in the sense world and speak to another person, it is the case that when we say something to him, we know that what we speak to him as sound comes from our own soul. We hear ourselves speak; and when he answers us, we hear him speak. We know that what he has to communicate to us is coming from him to us.

We become accustomed to such communication with the outside world as a matter of course, and therefore it can only seem quite strange, quite paradoxical to us when the spiritual researcher claims the absolute opposite about communication with the dead. When he has to say that he has struggled to make contact with the deceased, when he can tie the karmic threads that connect people even beyond death, then one has to get used to perceiving what the dead person has to communicate as coming from one's own soul. What comes from the dead person resounds from one's own soul, and what we have to communicate to him, what we have to say to him, is clothed

so that it is as if we heard it spoken to us by him. So you have to completely change your habits when you are confronted with a spiritual being, when you compare the external experience you have with it to the experiences of the sensory world, when someone who has become a spirit speaks to us in that wordless language that is spoken on the spiritual plane, that when he communicates or seems to communicate something to us, then we have to say to ourselves: that is what you yourself say to him. On the other hand, when he really communicates something to us, when something really comes from him, then it rises up from the depths of our own soul.

It is easy to say such things, but to develop this habit of our soul life, to truly change our habits, that is somewhat more difficult. Now you will understand that it is not easy for a person to cross this bridge to a completely different kind of experience, to a completely different way of experiencing. [You will understand] that he instinctively, unconsciously, withholds his soul life, which, if he did not withhold it, would lead to communication with the so-called dead. But then one would have to communicate in the way I told you. On the other hand, it cannot be said that people who live here on earth in the physical body do not do so; they actually do it all the time, only they misunderstand the whole nature of this communication. The simplest thing that happens in this area for most people is that they dream about people with whom they have been in contact. But these dreams, even if they are partly subjective experiences, can also arise from a real interaction with the dead.

If one really wants to establish a right relationship with the spiritual world, then it is necessary to see two experiences in the right light. Two experiences that man actually pays no attention to in ordinary life. And these two experiences are falling asleep and waking up. The other two states of the four states of consciousness, sleeping and waking, last, and man is generally inclined to follow attentively what lasts a long time, but what passes quickly, like waking and falling asleep, man is not accustomed to follow with the same attention. And in the times when we are awake, we do experience important things for our physical life, but in the time of actual sleep, we experience, with the exception of dreaming, which we find very difficult to interpret, not much consciousness. On the other hand, we actually experience a lot in the moments of falling asleep and waking up, but we do not pay attention to it because at the moment we wake up and fall asleep, we are at our most inattentive. The moment of waking up and falling asleep has already passed by the time we want to look at it and take notice of it; that is why we are so unaware of how infinitely important and significant these two points of falling asleep and waking up are.

We know from spiritual science, at least in theory, what falling asleep is: a stepping out of the physical body. In the present state of development of humanity, we are too weak to be conscious in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and so it happens that when we fall asleep, we pass from our conscious state to the unconscious one; we do not develop enough attention to observe the falling asleep itself; and it is the same when we wake up from the spiritual world. The physical world with its impressions of light, colors and sounds overwhelms us immediately, physical sensations overwhelm us immediately as well, and we do not have time to grasp the moment of waking up in a spiritual way; our attention cannot develop that fast, and when it does develop, we are already overwhelmed by the external influences, then our consciousness is no longer attuned to grasp the more subtle things. The spiritual researcher must learn to develop attention for these two moments, for falling asleep and waking up.

Now, for us, falling asleep is a stepping into the spiritual world. By stepping into the spiritual world, we are in the realm of existence where the so-called dead are. We are with the dead. In the world in which we then are, they live and weave. But as I said, our consciousness is too weak in the present cycle of humanity to perceive our surroundings in this state. But just because we do not perceive something, it does not mean that it is not there! It is all around us, we just cannot perceive it. So we are together with the so-called dead, but at first we are not aware of this togetherness. But sometimes it does emerge from dreams, and, as I said, these dreams can only be completely subjective experiences, reminiscences. So there are dreams that, by showing us that the dead person is saying this or that to us, bring us into a real interrelationship, into a real communication with the dead. But as a rule one interprets the communication wrongly. One has the image of the dead person before one, the dead person says this to one, one takes this for an order. It is not that. Perhaps we have thought and felt about the dead, and if we are in spiritual science, we also know that we can become more and more aware of these thoughts about the dead. We can almost reshape our thoughts about the dead in such a way that they offer a certain guarantee of the reality of our contact. We can vividly remember this or that occasion when we were together, but we do not think in general, abstract terms in such a case; rather, we think of something that we really experienced with him, we think of it with the vividness with which we experienced it, and then we make the decision to to behave in our thoughts with the dead person as we would like to behave with him if he were standing in front of us. When we do this, we address a question to him, or we communicate something to him that we believe he or we might need to tell him. What we do consciously and more and more consciously – but in a sense it is what I say, what we want to send into it during our waking life – we take that into our sleep consciousness. We will then have not a subjective but an objective, real dream. But we must interpret this dream in the right way. People do not interpret it correctly, because this “dream means the echoes of what we ourselves have addressed to the dead; even if it seems to us in the dream image that the dead person is speaking to us, it does not mean that he is speaking to us in the words he is saying to us, but only that he is hearing us, that what we are saying to him is reaching him. There you have a living application of what I have told you.

I said that when we turn to the dead, we have to get used to the fact that it seems as if it comes from him. This also occurs in dreams. The dream seems as if it brings us something from the dead. But in reality it is only proof that it has been transformed in a certain way, that it has reached him; he has heard us. When we dream of the dead, that is no more than proof that they hear us, that what we have sent to them in loyal love really reaches them.

These facts of spiritual life are often misinterpreted. When someone dreams of the dead, they believe that what the dead person tells them is directed to them. But this is only proof that what they have said to the dead has been understood by the dead. I have to say to myself: Yes, I really spoke to the dead, since he tells me so in my dream. This is proof that what I said to him has reached him. For it is only the reflection of what has reached him from me.

Through the moment of falling asleep, we carry into the spiritual world what we say to the dead. By waking up, we carry into the physical world, conversely, what the dead person says to us. And what the dead person speaks to us must resound from the depths of our soul in the state between waking up and falling asleep in the everyday state of consciousness. As in the “dream, what we speak to the dead lingers, so what the dead speak to us lingers in the waking state.

But here again, people are unaccustomed to interpreting it correctly – unaccustomed for a different reason than we stated in the previous case. People, as they are predisposed for physical life, are, firstly, not very inclined to really listen to the inspirations that come from the depths of the soul. Most people, who do not consider anything that arises from the depths of the soul to be anything other than subjective ideas, think: Yes, that just occurred to us, it comes from ourselves. But one must learn to distinguish, just as there are dreams that are subjective and others that are objectively true, there are so-called ideas that are purely subjective and others that are inspirations from the depths of our soul. We must learn – and we can learn – to listen attentively to our waking daily life, so that we become aware of how thoughts penetrate from the depths of our soul, and even when we are in conversation with others, how this or that thought, which we are not inclined to pay attention to, emerges from the depths of our soul, and then we will recognize the objective character of these inspirations, which softly sound in the midst of our daily life from the soul. Then we will experience that in such inspirations the dear, so-called dead speak to us from their realm. For what the dead person tells us must come from within ourselves.

For the spiritual researcher, it is the case that he directly experiences what he has told you: What the dead person says comes from the soul, and he has to reorganize himself. For those who have not acquired this state of mind, it takes place in such a way that what we experience in our thoughts when we address a message and question to a dead person in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and what the dead person tells us, sounds from the depths of the soul.

Human life is much more connected with the spiritual world than we usually believe. Today, we have not only become [materialistic] in our views, we have also become vain and proud, dismissive of the spiritual world, presuming to say that everything that resonates within us is our own inspiration. Materialism also makes the human soul selfish and vain, leading to a certain conceit, in which we ascribe everything to ourselves. What we consider our own ideas are actually the thoughts of those who have already passed through the gate of death, who, by addressing our souls, are working together with us in this shared human life.

It is not enough for us to develop the thought: We will not perish when we die. It is certainly true, but it has something selfish about it. Rather, it is more important to grasp it practically, vigorously for life, to grasp it in such a way that we know: Not only our life does not perish, but the dead do not perish for life either. They influence our soul, and we will only understand our dreams correctly if we see them as inspired by the realm of the dead.

This is the first thought from which I started today. It should show you that the real contemplation of the spiritual world makes demands on people, in the face of which people see, consciously see: after all, all this contradicts the world in which I have become accustomed. Man does not say to himself in his conscious mind: I do not enter the spiritual world because those who fantasize about the spiritual world describe it to me in such a way that it contradicts the physical world. But instinctively man would rather say: There are limits to human knowledge, one cannot enter it - than to admit to himself: I must grasp the strong, courageous thought [and imagine] the spiritual world quite differently. If this healthy courage to think about the spiritual world replaces much of the morbid thinking that still prevails today, our earthly life can be fertilized by spiritual thoughts in a completely different way than it is fertilized when these spiritual thoughts are merely conceived in the abstract.

Let us now take up another thought. The thought that is linked to a question: What does an understanding of the spiritual world offer people with regard to ordinary physical life on earth?

There, you see, we can already penetrate a little more into the practice of contemporary life. For how could one not admit to oneself that - after humanity was so proud of its great cultural and human progress until 1914 - that what has been happening since 1914 could befall it? How could one not admit to oneself that this must pose a difficult question? And how can we not admit to ourselves in the face of this question that perhaps something in the overall state of humanity was not quite right after all? Of course this is not meant as a criticism. But we can understand this life. So when I say that something must have been wrong, I do not want to say that I condemn what happened. For spiritual science has nothing at all to do with such thoughts about the past. These are critical thoughts from which one learns and should learn. When I say that something is not right, I mean that it could not have been otherwise in the development that has now passed, but on the other hand, the human being must pull himself together, then many things will be different. Criticism is unfruitful. Only recognition of what should be from what was is fruitful.

In humanity, from old states of consciousness, it has now become so that since the middle of the fifteenth century, mainly with regard to the consciousness soul, that on the one hand man - although he does not believe it - that man preferably hangs on to abstract concepts; and [although] precisely those who believe they are very practical. So people are theorists, often completely steeped and infected by all kinds of theories. But theories are quite barren. Theories only have value when what they contain bubbles up directly, welling up from living together with the spiritual world. But in his present cycle of development, this is precisely how the human being acts. On the other hand, there is justification: the consciousness soul must be developed. But on the other hand, countervailing forces must be developed so that it does not become one-sided. The sensing, feeling, and willing that one develops primarily through the consciousness soul is tied to the human brain. One should not ignore the fact that today man develops a consciousness that is tied to the brain. And so he believes that all consciousness is bound only to the brain. But this has a very specific consequence for the coexistence of people and for practical life, that man preferably develops a thinking that is bound to the brain. This forces him to develop thoughts that come from his interaction of the ordinary brain with the external, sensual world. He cannot free himself from what the brain can experience. The consequence of this is that a general cultural trait takes hold in the human soul. This is narrow-mindedness, narrow-mindedness. This is not to be criticized. On the other hand, I would like to point out that it is necessary. But it is the case that present-day humanity is most inclined to hold only to that which arises in the brain with the outside world; only when we reach out to the spiritual world do we expand it. This is something that today's development of humanity brings with it. Spiritual science is called upon to counteract the narrow-mindedness in the intellectual field. It has this cultural task of broadening the horizon again, of raising the horizon.

Yes, my dear friends, the matter at hand is much more serious than one might think. I think most of you have known me too long to know that I don't say this or that out of some personal sympathy or antipathy. When I observe how one of the most outstanding character traits is narrow-mindedness, I must at the same time see it in important things that go beyond the world. I may mention it, one must always remind, I may mention it because I am not saying it only now, but because I have said what I am saying before this catastrophic event befell our humanity. [In Helsingfors, that is, at a time before the war began, I have already pointed out] the fact that at such an outstanding position there is a person like Wilson, who today is associated with many catastrophic events that have befallen humanity. At the time, I drew attention to the most salient trait of Wilson's character, to the narrow-mindedness and bigotry that is encroaching on the social structure of humanity.

But what [humanity] does depends on what people think. That thoughts are realities and that realities flow out of thoughts is something that humanity must come to understand: to understand life precisely on the basis of genuine spiritual science, to come to an understanding of the spiritual world from an understanding of what underlies life. We must not only recognize that spiritual science can give us those experiences that can make us whole in our entire soul life, because they prove to us that we belong to a spiritual world, but also the thought: When what lies in the spiritual world flows into our moral and social will, then thinking does not remain limited and expands. Then it will also get better, otherwise not.

If only we could grasp this thought in all its depth! Then we would become aware of much of what is going on in the present. With regard to our feeling, with regard to our thinking, the present age makes us limited. With regard to our feeling: what does it do to us? That which arises from the consciousness soul. Feeling is that these abstract thoughts, which are at the same time the most materialistic thoughts, that these actually no longer grasp our feeling and sensing in reality.

How often do we hear people say: Oh, it's just a thought, you have to feel! That is as true as it is false. You cannot have a truly fruitful influence on life, you cannot truly lead life fruitfully if you do not want to think, but instead you let everything be absorbed into the mush of feeling. You turn life into a mess. What matters is to bring the light of thought into feeling and to elevate feeling. Thinking feeling, feeling thinking, that is what is needed. What the consciousness soul wreaks, because the abstract brain cannot grasp our /gap in transcript]

Therefore, the spiritual state of present-day people in relation to feeling, the present spiritual state will tend more and more towards narrow-mindedness the more materialistic it becomes. Narrow-minded, philistine – that is what the spiritual state is currently leaning towards.

If the light of thought, the realm of light of thought, does not penetrate feeling, it makes people narrow-minded, their interests are limited to the very immediate. Thoughts must be wide-ranging, but they can only do that if we carry the sense that the world that surrounds us sensually is something quite different [from what] expresses itself spiritually, that the dead express themselves; [then our interests, then spiritual science - just as narrow-mindedness and limitation in the field of the intellect - will have to work against narrow-mindedness in the field of feeling. It needs a view of a social structure that is imbued with broad interests, namely, interests that will arise in us when we look at the wonderful, mysterious human being himself. For today's anatomist and philosopher, this human being is only a kind of physical organism, not mysterious and wonderful enough. Such ideas must kill our ethics in particular, but also our social conception of life. We must be clear that the spiritual is reality, that thoughts are what the reality of life flows from. In theory, most people agree with what I am saying on this point. In terms of their life practice, however, they do not agree. They act contrary to it. From what people say, we can see which thoughts are unfruitful for life due to the narrow-mindedness of their emotional life.

My dear friends! To have thoughts in such a way that the thought stands vividly before us, as something we see directly, that is something that people have gradually lost in the materialistic age. In the 1980s, I attended a lecture by a professor who was extraordinarily impressive for people at the time. He kept asking the question, “What should one ask?” [gap in the transcript] And finally he said: I think I have led you into a forest of question marks. Who not only expresses the thought in the abstract, but develops views on these thoughts: It is neither beautiful nor meaningful, [so] a forest of question marks. Who is not satisfied with expressing thoughts – thoughts must be immersed in reality – does not speak of the truth.

A statesman has expressed a remarkable thought. He says: Our relationship with Austria is the point that indicates the direction of our future policy. Anyone who is out of touch with reality must say to themselves: A relationship is a point and a point is a direction.

Those who think like this are not rooted in reality with their thoughts. He separates thought from feeling. But realities can only be real thoughts. He who works with such thoughts can accomplish nothing healing. He who has a feeling for such things can hear a great deal of this kind today. Recently, for example, someone said in regard to the peace treaty with Romania: [gap in the transcript] that Romania is putting itself on an open, honest footing with us. We would like it not to be on just an “open” foot, but to be on a foot at all. In the future, the Romanians should have an “open” foot in order to enter into a proper relationship with us. Is such a thought present in reality as a thought? It is not! Speech is used because the brain is in motion.

But something beneficial for humanity can only arise for the social structure when it flows from the real. It is precisely for this reason that one must respect reality and also the spiritual life. Mere criticism does not make it. You can study the life of humanity today. It would certainly be necessary to study the life of humanity in order to develop thoughts that are in line with reality. And one should not study it in such a way that every thought becomes a matter of sympathy or antipathy, of praise or blame.

You know from my lecture cycle 191[0] in Kristiania, also with regard to the present time, that I have ascribed to the British nation that it is preferably called upon to develop the consciousness soul. On the one hand narrow-mindedness, on the other hand small-mindedness. It does not apply to the individual Englishman, but to the whole English national soul. One has only to study the language. We must really, I might say, for the sake of the spirit, hold on to the idea that language is inwardly effective; it forms feelings that are effective in language. The British language simply drops whole broad sections of the word into nothingness; it is the most abstract language.

That is it, my dear friends. What matters in the present is not to create theoretical concepts, but to draw these concepts from the depths of the soul. We need such concepts. You can be a traveler, a scientist, a political scientist, you can travel to entire countries, but if you have no sense of what lives inside people, the descriptions for practical life will not be of much use. People in the materialistic age have said many a witty and apt thing about the various European and non-European national souls. When it comes to expressing the true essence of the national soul, they fail. If one wants to be effective in practical life, because people are so reluctant to get to know each other in terms of their soul qualities, they are bound to end up in a catastrophe that is only the result of incorrect thoughts.

There are two aspects to the human soul: materialism strives towards one, and spiritual science must counteract the other. The area of will: thoughts that do not want to unite with our will, they do not attack it, they do not intervene in the whole person, they arise from the brain. The result of this is that in our lives, materialistic thoughts make people clumsy, narrow-minded, philistine. This must necessarily result. Those who observe life notice the clumsiness. What can a person do today? What he has been taught and learned with difficulty. Today you can be an excellent professor of Chinese, you can be an excellent civil servant, carpenter, and yet it can happen that you cannot sew on a trouser button, but that someone else has to sew it on for you. We are highly inept at everything we have not learned, because what we absorb in our education in feeling and thinking is suited to our body and blood and muscles.

The spirit, when it takes effect on a person and has a living effect, takes hold of the whole person, makes him skillful out of the spirit. [This is] a test for the reality [of spiritual science] that it forms people out of us who are more and more able to cope with life, that what it lets flow in out of the spirit, [people] can also carry into life.

But that is what triggers another thought. What we need, out of an understanding of the spiritual world, is to come to life at all.

Let us take a truth of spiritual science: I will list it briefly today. Today I want to elaborate on the idea that When a person passes through the portal of death, he should immerse the first third between death and rebirth mainly in the imaginative, the second third between death and rebirth mainly in the inspirational, and the third third between death and rebirth mainly in the intuitive; in the last third of our life between death and rebirth – the Viennese cycle – the person immerses himself in the life he has to live here on earth. In the continuation of this, we would have to lead an imitative life between birth and the seventh year, an immersion in childlikeness. Thus, in the imitative immersion of the child, in every action, is the continuation of the life of the last third between death and new birth. We just have to grasp life in the right way. We see the human being growing into life and we can tell from his faculty of perception that he is continuing a spiritual life in the physical one, that he is continuing an imitation of the intuition from the last third. We see the human being growing into life. — What a thought!

Imagine, my dear friends, if it becomes socially fruitful for the human being to be together: this is the continuation of spiritual life, we see it in him! Life is the proof of the immortality of man. As it is, it is the continuation. To grasp the thought of immortality, the departure from the spiritual world through birth into physical life on earth! Imagine what that must be like for life! Imagine this thought! That is also why we recognize the value of thoughts. Imagine this even more in a concrete sense. Imagine: I look at this body, which comes from spiritual life, then you will believe in the whole of human life. Do we believe in the whole of human life today? No, we do not believe in the whole of human life, we only believe up to the age of 25 or 26 at the most. Most young people no longer believe that we can be educated, that life gives us something new. We still believe that we can acquire something new well into our 20s, but after that we only believe that life goes on. That what is brought in through birth is to be developed through the whole of life must, may not be a theoretical truth, it must become a concrete truth of life. Ask how many people there are today who, when they turn 30, say: When I turn 40, life will have revealed more to me. I am waiting for what life will bring me. I have not lived in vain. I live in anticipation of life, waiting for each year to reveal new secrets.

Do we believe in life like that? No, we don't expect anything more when we turn 27. Today, when we turn 20, we consider ourselves mature enough to make decisions about the whole of human life, if we are not [even] elected to parliament, where we already decide everything. [Gap in the transcript] Greeks atavistically.

We will once again look into the developing, the expectant. We should not express such a thought, nor think it, we should feel it through and through. Imagine what would have to be different in social life if people faced each other like this. Today, one person may be 60 years old and another 17. The 17-year-old has his point of view. Today everyone has their point of view. Life experiences develop and become ever richer. How different our interactions will be if we lead a life of hope and expectation. And every new

year brings me something new, and when I am ten years older, I will be completely different. [A] different view of life then arises from the view of the world, that we grasp the concrete thought of reality from the meaning of the world and the meaning of human life, that the whole of human life, the whole of the human being has a meaning [gap in the transcript]

Historical science must change completely!

Today, anyone who looks at the life of humanity at most says to themselves: the life of humanity is developing, and the individual human being is also developing. That is only an external comparison. Spiritual observation yields something quite different. Humanity is becoming ever younger.

People who are capable of development through their natural powers alone – if I may put it this way – in body and soul until their 50s [Unclear transcript; gap in transcript].

The ancient Persians 40 years to 30 years.

Today, the human being remains [only] capable of development for 27 years. Today, people believe only in youth, not in the whole of humanity. It is an important truth that man can experience through his natural powers, without intervention, [that he] can actually only develop for 27 years. He does not become more perfect through the outer world.

If we ask the question: Who is a particularly characteristic person for the present day? - A person who grew up without the advantages that one has through the past, without inheritance; [a person] who did not go to many high schools, but is open and receptive to everything in his environment, who had to grow into and only take in what today's world offers into his education. A self-made man. [He] absorbs his environment in an elementary way. Up to the age of 27 – then he enters public life, gets himself elected to parliament, becomes a minister. Now he is engaged, he has no need to develop further. A person born of poor parents, growing up wild, but receptive to his environment /gap in the transcript]: Lloyd George. — Ministry wonders what to do with the man – just take him on. What do you give him? What he understands least: transportation.

A few aphoristic remarks about the relationship between anthroposophy and science, which are to be made because the present situation suggests that we direct our consideration in this direction. People today are extremely proud of the fact that they do not believe in authority; but they only claim this. Of course, people talk about old authorities in such a way that they are criticized externally, often in a phrase-like way.

But the newer authorities, on which one depends in the most eminent sense, are not noticed at all. One of them is what we call science today. Ask yourselves, my dear friends, how much of what people hear today as something scientifically established they are able to absorb, and in how few cases they feel that it still needs to be examined in terms of its scope, its basis and its sources.

One could talk for hours about the unrecognized yet intensely present modern belief in authority. The purpose of spiritual science is to free people from this belief in authority. Spiritual science should enable people to penetrate to such foundations of knowledge that can be grasped in a certain sense and that offer the possibility - certainly not of everything, but of much of what so-called science offers - of forming one's own independent judgment. One will not be able to study the individual specialized sciences. But one can ask oneself whether there are not comprehensive points of view that are accessible to the human being and yet allow one to form an opinion about what the sciences present. Today's reflection is based on this. A direction is to be indicated, characterized by the fact that importance is attached to showing that there are uncertainties in today's sciences, unexamined things that are not considered and escape scientific attention.

First of all, I would like to draw attention to something that applies to many exact sciences: the old opinion that in the sciences, especially those related to physics, there is as much true science as there is mathematics in them; that what can be expressed mathematically is believed to form a secure foundation.

On the other hand, however, there is the way in which mathematics develops its theories. Mathematics actually has nothing to do with external reality; for many, it is precisely this that makes it safe and necessary, that you do not need experience to do it. This results in a discrepancy: how does mathematical thinking, which is alien to reality, relate to the configuration of nature to which it is applied?

So far, nothing has been done that could lead to a solution of this question, for example with the concept of space. It is important to me to point out that a correct analysis of space leads us to the conclusion that we humans are not dealing with one space when observing the world, but with two spaces. And by imagining spatially, we always identify one space with another. Every judgment of space consists in this. It is not true that one is subjective and the other objective space.

This will only be understood when we have a proper science of the senses. In the philosophical debates about sensory activity, one sense is always referred to in the singular. In general, this is not even present in reality. We cannot summarize the eye and the ear according to today's pattern by saying that these are two senses in which the external world is given and so on. The two [senses] are too radically different to be summarized as sensory perceptions. The scope of what must be understood as abstract sensory activity is divided into twelve senses: sense of I, sense of thinking, and so on. Each one must be studied.

And what about the concept of space that intrudes on everything? Here we do not get subjective and objective space, but the result that space is conveyed to us through one half of these senses, and through the other half of these senses. We never perceive with just one sense; another sense is always involved, for example, the eye and the sense of movement. Both are brought into spatial alignment.

One must be very precise in the investigation. In today's abstract way of looking at things, everything is mixed up. Concepts are applied without realizing whether one is entitled to such application. For example, something that, although not unexamined, is always forgotten: the concept of division or division. This is only possible from two points of view. You can only divide a named number by an unnamed number; say \(12\) apples by \(3\). This distinction is not made in kinematics. Velocity \(v: s = v \times t\). Physics uses this formula in a way that is not allowed in reality: \(s/t = v\), \(s/v = t\). According to physics, this would also apply. This approach can only be one of the two possible types of division; in \(s/t\) you can only divide \(s\) by an unnamed number, time can only have the value of an unnamed number. One can ask the question: Which is more essential, \(s\) or \(v\)? Which adheres to reality? Not the path, but the speed. The path is only the result of the speed. We must consider its reality to be the primary one; it is the inner essence of the movement process.

Today, investigations are carried out by only looking at the result. These are often not decisive. Consider the comparison of the two people who stand next to each other at nine o'clock and then at three o'clock, and yet have experienced very different things in the meantime. Through these simple considerations regarding \(s\) and \(t\), the whole theory of relativity is reduced to absurdity because it only considers entities such as \(s\) and \(t.

Those who study physics today will, on the one hand, rightly encounter the law of the conservation of energy, but on the other hand they will not. This has become a dogma that has been extended far beyond physics, even to physiology. When it comes to metabolic experiments, the matter is shaky. Those who go back purely historically will have an uncomfortable feeling. Julius Robert Mayer was far removed from the modern interpretation of his theory. In “Überweg” a summary is given of Julius Robert Mayer's works, which is a lie. As a law, the law of conservation of energy must be limited to the limits of its application. It is just like a bank. A certain amount of money goes in and a certain amount comes out, just as a certain amount of energy goes in and out of an animal. But what happens to the capital in the bank, how it participates in the general circulation of capital during this passage, nothing can be said about that, of course. You can, of course, make such a law, but you have to realize that reality is not affected by such a law. One has to wonder how such laws have any effect on reality! Do they serve at all to say anything about the particular? There are laws that have a stronger reality effect in one area and none at all in another. The laws here are as applicable as a mortality table at an insurance company. On average, they are correct. But someone who insures a death in the 47th year on this basis does not act on it, does not feel obliged to die.

These things can be applied to many natural laws that are made today. However, one should never draw conclusions without being aware of the limits of validity. These laws must stop where, at some point in reality, something enters from a completely different sphere than what the application of the laws in question refers to, for example in the case of humans. In his inner activity, something comes in from a completely different sphere, which is just as little taken into account if I take the law of the conservation of energy as a basis as what the bank officials do when they put the money into circulation. The naturalists have real laws, the monists draw conclusions: that is just nonsense. The more one comes across this, the more it shows how necessary it is to respond to such an analysis of the nonsense that is made because there is no connection with reality. One must not separate oneself from reality and reason further; then one has no sense at all for the concise.

In the field of genetics, something is always disregarded that is of the greatest importance. A simple consideration says: If any being is sexually mature, then it must have all the force impulses that enable it to pass on some property to the next generation. Not the whole human or animal development may be considered, but only the time until the sexual maturity of the individual. All impulses that may have an influence after sexual maturity must be treated radically differently from the former.

The science of development achieved a great deal in the nineteenth century, but it proceeded in a much too straightforward manner. A major stumbling block for the unbiased conception of a realistic science of development is that one does not distinguish between what lies in the direct line of development and what are appendages. The main organs arise in a straight line, and only then do other organs attach themselves. If you look at the human being from the point of view of linear development, you cannot get beyond the head. Only the head can be derived in a straight line from the animal kingdom; the other organs cannot. In this case, the other organs must be developed from the head as appendages. One must come to realize this difference between the head and the other organs. The head is fully developed by the age of 28; one can only continue to live because the head is refreshed by the rest of the organism. This is related to the pedagogical question. We educate only the head; as a result, the person grows old prematurely. The development of the head is three times faster than that of the other organs. The rest of the organism is only a metamorphosis of the head. This is a physical truth that can be seen. In the case of inner qualities, speed is of the essence, even in the organic sciences. You get to the core of a person by examining the different speeds at which the structures of the organs develop. This also applies to psychology.

In the 1980s, I had a scientific dispute with Eduard von Hartmann, who at the time was drawing up his life account and wanted to prove the predominance of feelings of displeasure over feelings of pleasure. I tried to show that this calculation is not done by people themselves, but only afterwards by philosophers. It doesn't correspond to life at all. If someone were to keep a toy store's account of his own appreciation of toys, it would mean nothing for the store itself. Life itself is not based on it either, not on the difference between pleasure and displeasure. How did anyone come up with the idea of doing the math and judging the value of life by it?

This is related to the question that Kant already posed, the question of synthetic judgments. When adding \(7 + 5 = 12\), is \(12\) already included in \(7\) and \(5\) or not? This is not the right way to ask the question at all. It is not possible to ask the question at all in this way. You have to ask yourself: What is the first thing? When calculating, the result is always present first, and only to have a certain overview, one splits the result. I have \(12\) apples; the countrywoman brought me \(7\) and another brought me \(5\). All operations are based on the result being split somehow. The subject is the sum, the addends are the predicate, and so on. This is of great importance because it also appears where calculation occurs in a more complicated way: in life. Eduard von Hartmann's calculation “\(w = I - u\)” is wrong. Life attaches a value to it emotionally: most people don't care about \(w = I - u\); \(u\) can be taken as large as one wants, \(w\) remains finite and becomes only \(0\) if /=0 or \(u = \infty\).

In the recently published book “Vitalism and Mechanism”, the consequences of a purely mechanistic worldview are drawn and the connections between certain social affectations are pointed out. Why do people talk such nonsense in the social field in particular? Because they are accustomed to transferring such scientific ideas, which are unrealistic, to this field? It is different than when one starts from such concepts in natural science. In natural science, reality gives one the lie when one applies incorrect concepts. For example, a bridge built according to incorrect ideas collapses, and so on. In medicine, it is more difficult to keep track of things: patients die, but one can put that down to other reasons. In social policy, it cannot be proven at all. If you carry such incorrect concepts into politics, ethics and so on, then you create incorrect realities by embodying incorrect concepts. Today, this can be seen particularly in addiction, in the transfer of scientific concepts into social considerations.

This started back in Schäffle's time. He was the mayor of Mödling and an Austrian member of parliament in the 1880s. He wrote a book in which he dismissed socialism in an amateurish way: “The Futility of Socialism.” At the time, Herman Bahr responded with “Mr. Schäffle's Lack of Insight,” a book that Bahr now, however, disowns.

Kjellén, a very ingenious historian, compares the state to an organism. That is not correct. First of all, it is only an analogy. But quite apart from that, an analogy can lead in the right direction. You can compare social life with an organism, but not the European states. Many organisms live side by side, but in a living organism there is a medium between them, which is not the case with neighboring states. At most, the individual states can be compared to cells, and life over the whole earth to a single organism. Then we would have a fruitful theory of the state or fruitful politics. But I do not want to talk about such non-existent things. But such areas should be examined to see how important realistic thinking is. If we had remained mindful of this, humanity would have been spared the horrific social theories of the last four years.

With regard to Wilson, I pointed out at the time that in his work he characterized the application of Newton's theory of gravitation to the theory of the state in the seventeenth century as an outdated point of view and that today Darwinism should be used instead. In doing so, Wilson overlooks the fact that he is making the same mistake he criticizes: extending a current scientific theory to other areas. Similar unreality is displayed by Lujo Brentano, Schmoller in Munich and others.

A realistic social science only considers wages, capitalism and rent as factors of reality; these three must be considered. Each of these three has a different economic effect and is a different powerful factor. If these three are treated correctly, twelve new relationships will be found for economics through the correct combination of these three, not just the ones that are currently valid. Only then will a fruitful economics arise.

In particular, there is a lack of interest in our time in seeking a secure foundation for the individual sciences. If there are people who try to go through the individual sciences from the point of view that spiritual science will provide, it will be extremely fruitful. The working method must be directed in such a way that one takes a critical view of the concepts used. The above is also to be applied, for example, to the concept of force. One must start from \([v] = p/m\). The mass can be an unnamed number, \(p\) must be equivalent to the mass. This point of view alone, that mass, even in the smallest mass point, is equivalent to gravity, is something tremendously fruitful. Even in mass there is something gravity-like.

The question is never put at the forefront: What happens inside things? No unrealities may be introduced into the scientific consideration, for example a clock that moves at the speed of light. You must not necessarily draw conclusions about a property if another property is altered.

The subject of the final discussion was: The earth follows the sun in a spiral.

The correction factor, which is empirically applied in Bessel's tables, would disappear if Copernicus' third theorem were also applied.

As you may have seen in the last few days, and as can also be gathered from the public lectures, it must be clear from my current thinking that important necessities must be pointed out with regard to the transformation of certain perceptions, concepts and ideas. We are still living through a catastrophic time, a time that has been so often and repeatedly pointed out as being incomparable to anything that has happened in the past, usually in the conventional, world-historical version.

It is true that even when the significance and uniqueness of this time is discussed, unfortunately the phrase has become quite prevalent, and that what is said does not always come from the depth of the heart, but rather from the depth of understanding; but much of what comes from this direction is true. But not much is said about another thing. About how much this time should urge us to change our perceptions and concepts, our ideas and feelings.

For those of us who have been involved in this movement for years, this necessity will not be completely foreign, because I would like to remind you, my dear friends in Vienna, that I pointed out in a lecture cycle held here before the war that a kind of carcinoma – a cancerous disease – is spreading in social life and weaving across the earth. That was in view of the serious events that were imminent. One could not point out what was coming with cudgels, and when considering the times, it depends not on being a true prophet, but rather on bringing forth those things that can be used to impel the will and intentions of people. When we look back today on some of the things we have experienced in recent years, the most important impression in a certain direction is probably that we have to say to ourselves that some of the things that were very close to our souls before 1914 have become so far from our souls in many respects, like circumstances that may have occurred centuries ago. I keep thinking of one thing in this regard. In my lectures, I have often referred to a spirit with a very significant world view, Herman Grimm. When I referred to him in the years preceding 1914, it was as if he were standing beside me. At that time, his views were something present, something that could be treated as present; yes, my dear friends, that is no longer the case. Now, what seemed quite modern to us back then seems so, not if it were separated from us by decades, but by centuries. One would like to understand it as history. I don't think that anyone can say that, who has felt with all their intensity what has emerged over the years for the development of humanity. Not everything that has happened is there yet; /gap in transcription] This is a general sign that seems so sad to us, especially in these years, that the materialistic age has so dulled people's minds that even the most insistent speakers of world-historical development are asleep. By sleeping I do not just mean a dull existence, which is also the case with many people in the present, who let everything that happens come close to them – by sleeping I also mean the lack of incentive to evaluate the events of the present, to properly consider these events of the present. I could give many, many examples of this kind of sleeping. I will content myself with one, because you will see from the one what I actually want to illustrate.

You see, last fall, strange news was reported in the newspapers of all the neutral countries vis-à-vis the Central Powers, including a very strange interview that someone had - and that actually spread all over the world - that someone had in St. Petersburg with Rasputin. In this interview, not only was everything described that shed a clear light on the entire position that Rasputin had taken in the current events of the present, I would not even consider that to be the most important thing, but in this interview it was clearly predicted that it would not last long last long – of course, in the way one predicts something in an interview – it was clearly predicted that it would not last long, that Rasputin would no longer be around, and the assassination of Rasputin would be followed by events concerning much higher-ranking personalities. This news spread throughout the world, that is, from the fall onwards, a fairly large number of people throughout the world were actually quite well informed about what happened the following spring. Later on, I had the opportunity to talk to a person who, well, let's just say, is considered an authority on Russian affairs; people listen to him when it comes to finding out about Russian affairs. I tried in every possible way to tie in with this interview. The person in question didn't understand anything, didn't see through anything that was actually important.

Of course, something like this is only a symptom, but you will recognize from the lecture given yesterday that our view of history needs to adopt a symptomatic way of thinking in general. We cannot arrive at a healing development if we do not learn to consider this or that event as more or less important, in order to view the individual event in such a way that we see important developmental impulses. Symptomatology will essentially have to become a consideration of history. But to practise symptomatology, a person must have sharpened their inner soul powers, their power of knowledge, through what spiritual science can give them, because this spiritual science does not want to be taken only for what it is in terms of content, for then it would again be mere theory. It should not be that way under any circumstances. What is communicated from spiritual science in terms of content, of wording, what is written in the books, may be verified - much of it may have to be said in a completely different way. Although we already have a certain basic foundation for truth that will remain for a long time, I do believe that the examination will reveal that some things will have to be different in wording than how they are said today. But the content, the theoretical outlook, is not what matters. Man must acquire a certain way of thinking, he must free his thinking from all narrow-mindedness, limited to the immediate interests, so that he is compelled to broaden his horizons, to orient himself within a broad perspective, that he must immerse himself in reality. Today, not wanting to immerse oneself in reality has become a truly world-historical phenomenon. Today, people talk about all kinds of things that they present as ideals. Of course, one can understand that people feel a certain intellectual pleasure when they can talk about this or that ideal. But when it comes to ideals, it depends on whether one is in the real truth with the formation of these ideals. For example, someone who thinks realistically reads a message from Wilson and says to himself: What is in there and so many people admire is, after all, ancient, it can almost be called historical. These are things that go through all centuries as a phrase, that can be said and applied everywhere. What is important is not introducing such things into people's minds, but striking the right note in terms of ideas that are realistic in a particular age.

Indeed, in order to live realistically in the highest life - in this life that follows the present one - people will have to acquire many things of which they have not yet acquired much today.

Last Sunday we spoke about the fact that a world view must come to establish spiritual science, which, so to speak, enables people to grow old, to lead an expectant life. We should not take such a matter lightly; because precisely such a matter is extraordinarily important. We have — as we saw last Sunday — today really only the gift to believe in the growing, sprouting life into our twenties, then we want to be ready to continue living life in the same breath, as it were; then we have — one has gone through university, the other has learned a trade, the third has not learned anything either, but all consider themselves to be finished with everything that they have incorporated into themselves up to their twenties. We must relearn to wait for what is to come throughout our lives, we must learn to say: When I am 25 years old, then simply by the fact that I am 25 years old, I say: The 35th [year of life] will be able to reveal new secrets to me, the 45th again new ones. We must learn to live in expectation. This is not only important for the individual, it also has a social significance. These things, the establishment, the regulation of the mutual relationship of people can be turned, socialism does it and other associations – for what do you not found all kinds of associations – have done it, but my dear friends, we have to keep reminding ourselves that talking about certain things is one thing, which, as I said, can give an intellectual, voluptuous pleasure that can be proven as something necessary, but it leads to nothing. No matter how many ethical and social demands arise, that the relationship between people - whether for ethical or economic reasons - should be arranged in such or such a way, that this or that position is ideal, no matter how much is preached, it is of no more use than telling the stove: You are a stove, and as a stove you have the duty to warm the room, so warm the room! But it does not warm the room; only if they put wood in and light a fire, then it warms the room. It is often the greatest pulpit orators who are motivated by such an attitude. What matters is that we draw real strength from our world view, which gives life to our soul, emotional life, will life.

Among the many aspects of creative, real power is the fact that we learn to believe in the whole of human life through it, and learn to live in expectation. But if that is not a theory, not a teaching, if that is an inner life force, if that lives in the soul, then it is quite natural that it also means that people do not enter into an abstract relationship with one another, but see that it also plays a role here, that a variety of concrete circumstances play a role when it is important, that they play a role. What social culture is cannot be regulated; it can only be established by giving in the establishment that which gives strength and life to our soul. And take some of what I said last Sunday: We can directly follow up on an idea from last Sunday that related to the coexistence of people here in physical life with the souls of those who have passed through the gateway of death. What the idea of immortality is, has also, over time, taken on a rather selfish character to a greater or lesser extent. Actually, people are hardly more interested in immortality than in what will become of their own soul when they have passed through the gate of death. Yes, that is certainly an important and essential thing, which continues to have an effect if we see it correctly; but something else comes when we really grasp the idea that we have to recognize the meaning of this life throughout our entire life, that our development is not complete at the age of twenty, but that every year of life can reveal something new to us and that it becomes real experience for us, which it can become; then the other thought will not be far from us either, truly not far from us, that life, the event of life, which outwardly presents itself as an event of death, basically does not stop the development of our earth either. For] those who can do spiritual research, this is particularly clear for the present development cycle of humanity. When people will understand that actually spiritual is revealed through all decades, when they do not believe that life has lost its meaning when a person has passed through the gate of death. Not only that a person carries a certain content, a certain essence into the other world, but in a way he is endowed with the richest life experience when he closes his life here. Even if you are no longer able to live life to the full as you age due to memory loss, the wisdom you have gained is still there in your soul, and this is not only important for the people who have passed through the gateway of death in themselves, but also for their future lives on Earth. A person who passes through the gate of death in this present cycle of humanity has not yet lived out everything that is in him. His worldly wisdom can still come in handy, if only people look for such a way of life.

I don't like to do it, but I always like to cite a personal experience when it comes to this matter. Those who have known me longer know that in my first decades as a writer, I spent a lot of time trying to make Goethe's ideas fruitful for our age. I didn't do this in the same way as Goethe researchers; I tried to develop them further. What I have done in my field in this direction has emerged only from the impulse to confront not the dead Goethe but what Goethe had acquired in worldly wisdom in 1832 and what could continue to develop, what could become fruitful for the earth. In this real sense, I tried to write about one thing or another that Goethe would speak about in a later period. One can only take such a stand on such a matter if one is clear about the fact that what a person has worked for until his death continues to be important for the earth. In saying this, I am expressing a thought that still seems quite paradoxical to people today, but which is becoming more and more important; and I am convinced that the time must come when, for example, the following will be done, when people will say to themselves: In our time, this or that question has become important for social coexistence or something else. Let us not only ask our contemporaries about such a question, let us also ask the spirits of the past, but let us ask them in such a way that they would speak to us today, when the wisdom they have gained has been expanded.

I know that many people would not consider this a truly useful thought for humanity. If not only Mr. So-and-so were heard in the parliament of the present, but if Goethe or Schiller were also heard in the parliament, but really heard. In short, I believe that the idea of immortality can be grasped in a completely different way than in the selfish sense. It can be grasped in such a way that we not only believe in the existence of what a person has processed in his soul after death, but also in the fertility, in the effective influx of what has now been processed by him into life. Sometimes it is difficult to express such a thing in general terms, because among the thoughts that I mentioned last Sunday as emerging from the depths of the soul like our ideas, some are the thoughts of the dead. We have to realize that while we think we are having an idea, a dead person is speaking to us. Those who familiarize themselves with this idea know very well that many a dead person speaks through the heart of a living person after his death, saying things that he can only express after his “death. Until his physical death, a person may have had an obstacle in his physical organization that prevented him from seeing clearly. When his life organism has fallen away, he expresses himself about this matter in a way that corresponds to his life experience. Then one must only meet him halfway, then one must be able to free oneself from vanity, not to take some things as one's own idea, but as the saying of a dead person, which he may say after three to four years.

Believing in the effectiveness of those who have passed through the gate of death must become part of the future idea of immortality. My dear friends, it will be of no use to future humanity if it is merely convinced that there is a spiritual life. It will be of use to future humanity, of course not in a trivial sense, it will be of use to humanity only if it knows how to make fruitful for the living what the dead still achieve after their death, if it can be established that the living and the dead can live together. This will be possible if spiritual science is not treated as a theory, but is accepted as something that fertilizes our feelings and permeates our entire soul life. We will certainly have to get used to communicating with the dead!

We have already mentioned a number of things in our reflections on the relationship between the living and the dead, but I must always point out one thing. We must hold on to the fact that we remain connected to those who leave the earth and with whom we have somehow been karmically connected. The connection must not be an abstract one. The connection should become a concrete one, because the most striking thing in the life of the soul after death is that the life of the soul after death is pictorial, that what is to be established as a community between the soul of a living person here and the soul of a dead person must be clothed in imagery. Remembering does not build a bridge. Only when we remember in a concrete way, remembering life situations in which we were with the dead person, remembering them so clearly as if we had them in front of us, seeing each other, hearing the sound of his words, but the words he really spoke – what we have shaped from him in this way is an image that once existed, that once really lived on earth. We then proceed to behave within this image as we would have behaved if the “dead man were still alive; we ask him a question, we tell him this or that; he will not answer us at first, but in the way we indicated on Sunday, we may receive an answer under certain circumstances. It all depends on the image and on the fact that you really develop the images, complete them in your mind and present them to your soul. You cannot remain cold in the process; our whole soul is involved. Those who develop an image in this way will live out exactly the same love that they lived out here when the dead person was still around. If this love is not lived out, it is only because we do not make the effort to bring the image to life. If we stimulate our minds in this way to turn to the dead in a concrete way, in a pictorial way, in a way that is imbued with the soul, we gain the opportunity to build a bridge from us to that realm where the dead live and weave, then we gradually gain the opportunity to be able to bring in a living way the impulses that emanate from the dead. Our social and ethical life must become such that the dead live among us as souls, that they continue to work, but they cannot work in a ghostly way. Only by opening our souls to them can they enter into a real exchange. It is of infinite importance to acquire a sound judgment in this area, because it is precisely in this area that what I have said in general must be observed in each individual case.

People today already have the longing, the instinctive need, to come into contact with the spiritual world, they just reject the only possible ways of doing so at present. In this respect, even the most enlightened people prove to be very stubborn. I will give you an example that you may already know, but which I still want to present.

You see, a very important English naturalist is Sir Oliver Lodge. He has devoted much thought to the connection between man and the spiritual world, especially to the part where the so-called dead are. Now the war in particular led him to devote a great deal of attention to this matter. Mr. Lodge's son was called up to serve at the Franco-German front. And while Mr. Lodge's son was serving there, the father received a letter from America informing him that his son would be in a difficult situation in the near future, that is, in the west in the fall of 1915, but that after the disaster had occurred, old friend Myers, who had long since died, would protect his son.

Those who are familiar with the machinations in this area will not be surprised. This letter could be correct in two cases, among others. One could be: Mr. Lodge's son was almost killed at the front, but escaped with his life. In America, whoever made this announcement would have said that Myers had held his protective hand from beyond the grave to keep him from being shot. But if he had been shot, which is what happened, people believed that Mr. Myers would have held his hand protectively over it. But most people are very satisfied with such general things. Well. Mr. Lodge's son fell, and the waves from America followed up the matter. He received more letters that Myers held his hand over the soul and that the son's soul longed to connect with Lodge and his family. As is done in such a case, it all happens by itself, but the strings are pulled behind the scenes. Several mediums came to the Lodge home and behaved as mediums. All kinds of things were communicated that the soul of Mr. Lodge's son wanted to share with the family. Lodge wrote a thick book about it. It is exemplary in a sense because Lodge is a skilled naturalist and has mastered the scientific method. So everything is conscientiously carried out that you really have the opportunity everywhere in this book to see what was available. The book caused a tremendous stir. It was like a testimony to the existence of a world that connects to ours, in which the dead live, and that people long to know something about. But for those who read the book with the appropriate critical spirit, these things are not convincing.

The following passage caused the most sensation. The one medium reported from the son of Mr. Lodge that he had himself photographed with a group of comrades 14 days before he was killed at the front, and the medium described exactly: He sat with his comrades, the photographer took two pictures, and [in the first] picture, the son of the gentleman was holding his neighbor's hand like this, then the change that was made with the hand, with the whole gesture of the son of the gentleman Lodge - [all of that] was indicated exactly. [It] briefly [said] described the photograph in its various shots. The strange thing was that this photograph had not yet arrived in England, no one in the family could know anything about the photograph, so there could be no question of thought transfer. It was striking. It was, so to speak, an experimentum crucis. Because the photographs only arrived 14 to three weeks later, exactly as the medium had described them. This is, so to speak, the crowning glory of this thick book, which caused a tremendous stir in England and America. A conscientious naturalist, my dear friends, all kinds of things are presented to us, and one can understand that laypeople really have a hard time when a conscientious naturalist describes how to get out of the web that is spun there. However, I was a little surprised that Lodge did not know anything specific. For what was actually going on here? It was a very characteristic, beautiful school case of remote viewing. Everyone who is familiar with the spiritual scientific literature knows the cases where not only [spatial] but also [temporal] remote viewing occurs, where someone sees something today that will happen in a fortnight. The medium has done nothing more than describe the photographs that will be in front of the people 14 days or three weeks later. The whole manifestation is not the slightest proof that the soul of the son of Lord Lodge has manifested itself. A remote vision that was seen in Lodge's house in London three weeks ago, which was to happen. The vision did not go beyond the physical plane. It was a vision, but it did not go beyond the physical plane. Just such a distinction must be learned if one is to be truly spiritual. External events can deceive even those who are great practitioners in the mediumistic field.

Knowledge of nature must be experienced in such a way that one can say of these experiences: they cannot lead one into the spiritual world, even if they bring to light such facts that require forces other than those usually possessed by man. Only then will spiritual science be imbued with the right meaning it is intended to have. It must not be less critical and less exact than science. One must beware of what even a learned naturalist experiences through deception; but one will gradually become knowledgeable in such things. This will lead to the fact that spiritual-scientific methods, which are meant here, really lead to making the ideas of immortality fruitful. We must familiarize ourselves with the thought that the dead walk among us, that human social and ethical structures are pieced together with us.

Yesterday, because such thoughts must be said at most to those who are open to suggestions, I pointed to a certain basic law. While we must strive to seek the impulses in the soul itself that allow us to lead an awakening life even after the twenties, in the older times of human development after the Atlantic catastrophe, this was a natural, elementary fact of life in the older times of human development after the Atlantic catastrophe, that man lives to be old. In the first post-Atlantean period, it was really the case that he experienced his second dentition, his sexual maturity, in such a way that his spiritual life was dependent on the physical until the fifties, in the Persian period until the forties years, in the Egyptian-Chaldean time until the 25th to 32nd year; in a sense, humanity is getting younger and younger; it must be able to make itself older through inner spiritual schooling. We also spoke about this here on Sunday, insofar as [...] can be spoken in a public lecture. If you do not rely on the external historical documents, which are by no means correct, you will find in the seventh to eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha that before the period, due to the special state of mind of the soul that was present, people actually knew about repeated earthly lives because living with the physical body beyond the age of 35 gave them that knowledge naturally. In ancient times, it was a matter of course for those who were not asleep to speak of repeated lives on earth. It was only after the seventh or eighth century BC that humanity lost the ability to speak of repeated lives on earth through atavistic contemplation.

What is this based on? You see, this human life, even as we find it here on earth between birth and death, is actually a very complicated thing. We are a microcosm and the macrocosm plays into this microcosm. Anyone who believes that human life is something simple only wants to follow his or her own convenience. When we have passed the age of 35, our physical organism enters into a certain organic stage, which can be described as such. Before that, however, only in the fine structures, which anatomists do not come across, life really goes downhill, and there were previously sprouting, sprouting forces. We no longer experience this today, because we only experience up to the 27th year. But because we do not experience this, we do not actually experience in a conscious sense today what can give us certainty of repeated earthly lives. Until the seventh or eighth century, all people had this certainty beyond the age of 35. From this 35th year onwards, the forces of Ahriman begin to play a strong role in our physical life. These Ahrimanic forces have the task of bringing about the other phenomenon of decline. If we live with them and transform them into knowledge, we have pointed Ahriman in the right direction. The Egyptians experienced the phenomenon of decline, experienced Ahriman. They experienced the knowledge of repeated earthly lives through what Ahriman causes in the phenomenon of decline of life. Then Ahriman became, so to speak, untraceable, insensible; one could no longer know through inner experience the repeated lives on earth. But another time will come, approximately in the year 4000 of the Christian era, so still a fairly long span of time from now on. Around 3500, as humanity continues to move downwards – today to 27 /gap in transcription] to 15. [gap in transcription] 28. [gap in transcription] 29. [gap in transcription] 30. [gap in transcription] 31. [gap in transcription] 32. [gap in transcription] 33. [gap in transcription] 34. [gap in transcription] 35. [gap in transcription] 36. [gap in transcription] 37. [gap in transcription] 38. [gap in transcription] 39. [gap in transcription] 40. [gap in transcription] 41. [gap in transcription] 42. [gap in transcription] 43. [gap in transcription] 44. [gap in transcription] 45. [gap in transcription] 46. [gap in transcription] 47. [gap in transcription]

In the year 4000, there will be a different influence. Then people will become aware of what is strongest in this respect at the beginning of their lives, because the ability to develop will end so early.

Another real result, which, you may find [gap in the transcript], although it is an enormous and disturbing event for the spiritual researcher to learn about, when it goes further down into the seven thousandth year, where the physical body will give even less. Women will be infertile in the seven thousandth year. The kind of human reproduction that is now, will no longer be possible. Another kind of reproduction will occur. The transformations that will occur to the earth will be great. These things sound crazy to today's people who have today's ways of thinking.

A professor in London gave a very witty lecture. Dewar described the final state of the earth, which will occur after millions of years. He used completely correct physical methods, of course, from the point of view of a physicist – absolutely nothing – to show that because the earth will cool down so much, the air we breathe today will be liquefied. What is now sea will be liquid air, and it will cover the earth as a liquid. Other gases will have become denser. And now he describes very ingeniously how the other substances will have changed. Certain wires, because they are thin, can only withstand a few kilograms today, but will then support tons because of the different state of the gases. All materials will have different properties. Other materials will become luminescent, the protein, it will be able to glow at night. And now, as he says very ingeniously, one will be able to read newspapers by the light that is then created by the walls coated with protein.

Anyone who is capable of thinking will wonder how it will happen that the milk that has been solidified will be milked by the newspapers, how the newspapers will be printed – in short, you can't get to the end of it. But the calculation is correct, the method is scientific. There is nothing to be said against the physical. But how is it done? You can follow the finer anatomical and physiological structure of the stomach or another human organ as it is in its 21st, 22nd year and so on. You can calculate further and work out what the organ will be like in 300 years. You can say: After 300 years the stomach will have this structure – only after 300 years the person will no longer have the stomach. So it is with calculations based on science; they are scientific, but not realistic. It will be possible to coat the walls, it will be possible to read newspapers with luminescent protein, it will be possible for milk to solidify - but the earth will have perished.

People will have to learn to think not only scientifically but also realistically. Because only in direct spiritual vision can one grasp what is happening. But there are such laws as I have described to you now. Humanity must learn not to shrink from what seems paradoxical to it today. Even the way of thinking. The healthy-sensing human being has always revolted against something like Laplace's theory. Grimm says: Long before Goethe's youth, it was known what was later called Laplace's theory; the sun is said to have formed with the planets in a certain time, then man, the animals; nothing else has to happen but that the sun is maintained at the appropriate temperature. Grimm adds: A piece of carrion circled by a hungry dog is a more appetizing piece than this theory of Laplace.

Just the most fundamental things of the present, that in the place of the today safely believed, but just fanatical /gap in the transcript] truth. But there people will often have to learn to stick to the truth, to really take in the truth in their soul, so that it becomes the basic character of the being, no longer to stick to the excuse: I heard it this way, I couldn't have known it any other way. The obligation to tell the truth.

Perhaps one would believe that in no other field is the obligation to tell the truth more far-fetched than in the field of present-day science. There one experiences quite distressing things. I will not speak of such things, which, as it were, are close to us personally. You will find a nice example in the second chapter of “Seelenrätsel,” where I showed how a contemporary researcher reads; another example of the same kind in the second edition of the same writing by the writer in question. There the person in question says that my “Philosophy of Freedom” is my first work. No one can take it any other way than as my first work. He looked it up and tried to talk his way out of it. He did not mean that it could be easily seen that this was my first book, but that it was my first theosophical book. Those who know the facts can only laugh at that.

Perhaps I can illustrate this point with another example. I gave a public lecture in which I was obliged to illustrate something that I drew, how the human physical organism is nothing short of a miracle. How it works in such a way that you can really see: what happens inside a person, even in just one part of the organism, is infinitely more wonderful than what happens externally on a musical instrument when the most wonderful piece is played. If you observe how the cerebrospinal fluid, in which the brain is embedded, is driven up and down through the spinal canal with each breath, through places that can more or less narrow or widen, will experience something like an interaction with the meninges of the spinal canal – sometimes one meninx widens more, sometimes less – and will really come to understand [that the human organism can be seen as an image of the macrocosm]. I was obliged to speak of cerebral fluid, and in the same lecture I was obliged to refute the merely symbolic view. The reporter wrote, among other things, the following: I had indeed rejected the symbolic, but I would use the most impossible terms in the most impossible places, for example, “cerebral fluid”.

My dear friends! Brain water is something very real, otherwise the brain would crush the blood vessels that lie beneath it. Brain water makes it possible for the brain to lose so much of its weight that it does not crush the veins. But the man who writes this has no idea that brain water is something real and not something symbolic to describe something that is not true.

There are thousands, millions of examples like this. I just want to point out that it is so necessary, that we feel obliged to say what we say, to give the prerequisite [gap in the transcript]

We will truly have to become clearer about some things than we are inclined to be today. We all know, of course, the development of Christianity, but you see, my dear friends, this is also necessarily connected with the fact that we are now also pursuing the outer side of the church in its truth, that we are looking into everything that must change if it is not to turn out even more disastrously. But the connection that exists is not known to some people at all. It lives between the lines of popular literature and creeps into the human soul. Not only do people who live on the outside not know, but neither do those whose profession it is. Very strange things are happening, and we must consider it our task in the present to look into such things. You know that you will get nowhere if you divide people into body and soul. Philosophy claims that it is an unconditional science. If you examine the individual links, you come to strange things. Wundt: “Body and soul” - he has no idea how little prejudice this division is. Where does it come from? It was elevated to a dogma after the Council of Constantinople in 869: “Man consists not of three, but of two members.” From this it became the case that in the Middle Ages the Trinity was frowned upon, was hereticized, and the philosophers live off that.

Recently, a wonderful piece occurred. A professor who is actually quite average and does nothing writes a little book in the collection of “nature and the spiritual world”, in which he speaks as befits a doctor [of classical philology, astrology and astronomy]. In the final chapter, he commented on Goethe's horoscope. He talked about what it is as a whole, he just wants to show that in the course of Goethe's life these things have turned out in such a way that the matter corresponds to the horoscope. He does not say: anyone who believes in a [gap in the transcript] is a rhinoceros; but he does say quite clearly that this is his opinion. Mauthner was furious that the professor was writing about a horoscope at all, and because he was angry, he didn't notice that the professor was writing from the same point of view, and wrote an angry feature article against this book. Those who know this book and the feature article couldn't imagine why Mauthner was so terribly angry. He means exactly the same thing.

Then the professor sent in his justification, explaining that he fully agreed with Mauthner, that it was based on a misunderstanding. The relevant journal wrote: They had nothing to add; they had not been able to convince themselves that a misunderstanding had occurred. They had sent the essay to Mauthner and he had not found that he had anything to say about it either. The people agree, but then they jump each other.

But that is significant of what is happening today in all possible fields. People wage war against each other, people feud with each other, and sometimes things are like between this gentleman and Mauthner. In their hearts of hearts they don't know why, because one is far removed from having such ideas, such conceptions, that are immersed in life, that are realistic. A thing can be very logical, but not realistic.

[This includes, my dear friends, a certain inner courage that must glow in the soul, a courage that people today know nothing about. When we point out in the present how spiritual science, in contrast to a world view that believes it offers reality but is far from it, how spiritual science has to bring the soul to immerse itself in reality, to live with the real. If we teach [gap in transcript] to live with the [gap in transcript], to grasp it, then some of what humanity needs so much to get out of the [gap in transcript] can be achieved, and the sense of unreality, the unreal thinking, is not to blame for the least part. If we try to make our relationship to time our guiding principle in this way, then we will understand spiritual science not only in theory, but [...] Again, it is particularly important here that not only what is among you lives, but that the intention lives on and is realized. The most important thing about spiritual science is that it works in our souls as a living impulse, in our soul continues [...]

Address before the lecture

My dear Theosophical friends!

Before I come to the lecture itself today, I would like to address a few words to you, which only mean that this year, unfortunately, we will not, as in previous years, have the events that would otherwise have taken place in Munich in the middle of summer, because the next such event is to take place in the Johannesbau and this building is taking a little longer than originally thought. We hope that in the last two months of this year we will be ready to hold a festive opening of the Johannesbau. This building is giving us more work than one would normally imagine, and you will therefore understand that personal meetings have had to be canceled for a certain period of time.

For our dear Austrian friends, it has certainly not been easy in many respects to come to terms with the fact that the Johannesbau is so far away. However, although I am not in a position to discuss this further, because there is not enough time, it was simply the case that karma led us to build the Johannesbau where it is being built; and that will be good.

We must be aware that we see this building as a kind of central place and symbol of our spiritual movement. What is far for one person is near for another; it could not be done differently from the outset. But it is to be hoped that our Austrian friends will also find ways and means to experience this symbol of our anthroposophical movement as their own, I would like to say explicitly, by being personally present at the appropriate event in the Johannesbau. It is in fact not only a symbol because of what it will become as a monumental building, but it is in a sense a symbol because, if it really comes about, it can only come about through the great willingness to make sacrifices on the part of some of our friends, who have really made the utmost in willingness to make sacrifices in order to bring the difficult and, above all, costly construction to completion, just as it is supposed to be.

What is to be created should actually express in every respect what our spiritual movement will be. And the whole architectural style must correspond to this. Everything that flows into the building must be such that it does not enter in a symbolic or allegorical way, but must flow into this building in a truly artistic way. Above all, it was necessary to construct a building that is an embodiment of the spiritual being to which we are devoted in all its forms. The different periods and cultures of human development also had their own corresponding buildings. The building to be erected in Dornach should show in all its forms, from which it is composed and with which it is to form a shell for our spiritual work, through the way this shell opens outwards and inwards and closes and joins together, that something is expressed in its forms that has never before been conceived in architecture for such a building.

Just as the Greek temple is designed to be a dwelling for the god within, just as the Gothic cathedral is designed to form a whole together with the community gathered within it, so our building should be designed in such a way that the forms directly, I would say in a spiritual, intellectual relationship, shape the building in such a way that it is spiritually transparent. That means that when you are inside the building, you will have the feeling, through the architecture and through that which passes from the architecture into the sculpture, that these walls are not like other architectural walls that have existed up to now, closed, merely enclosing, but that they are at the same time the communicators that open up spiritual life into infinite spiritual expanses. These are walls that simultaneously transcend themselves through their forms, that at the same time are not present in their physical form. The aim is to achieve something that everyone inside can gradually get used to, to understand these forms, not allegorically or symbolically, but in a living sensation, to have something like a view of the world we are talking about, simply by experiencing the form.

Of course, this is something completely new in architecture, it is unusual, and it takes time and work. And as it is already the case in our time – forgive the harsh expression – it also needs and has needed: money! And in this respect, the willingness of some of our friends to make sacrifices was so accommodating that we can say: this willingness to make sacrifices is, in a way, a symbol of how our spiritual movement has penetrated the understanding of souls.

I just wanted to mention that you take this building into your heart, that you feel it as the center of our movement, so that you can imagine yourself united with it, and that you allow your personal presence to be there as much as the opening in the future will allow.