The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A special consideration of the lectures on “Occult Physiology”

Following the public lectures “How to Refute Theosophy?” and “How to Defend Theosophy?” and following the reflections that I have given in the lecture cycle on “Occult Physiology” over the past few days, “Occult Physiology”, a number of questions may arise, and there is a need to communicate a little with the honored audience about these questions, which have been touched upon here. The two public lectures were primarily aimed at showing how, on the basis of spiritual science or theosophy, one must be very aware of the possible objections that may arise, and how the occultist and on the other hand, it should be clear to you from the lectures how to defend the Theosophical truths in the face of the opponents' weighty objections.

However, it is precisely from the realization of the difficulties that arise for Theosophy that every Theosophist should feel the need for the greatest possible accuracy and precision in the presentation of the Theosophical truths. Those who, out of a realization of the corresponding connections, have to represent these things are well aware of this, but despite all that has been emphasized in public lectures, they inevitably come into conflict with those who stand on the ground of today's science. Therefore, as strange as it may seem, Theosophy requires, on the one hand, the most exact and precise logical formulation for clothing the truths brought down from the higher worlds, and on the other hand, no less for the mere ordinary reasonableness. And anyone who sets himself this task of formulating precisely and exactly logically, and for this purpose avoids everything that might be a mere filler in a sentence or merely rhetorical embellishment, very often feels how easily he can be misunderstood, simply because in our time there is not everywhere the same intense need to accept the truths put forward just as exactly and precisely as they are expressed. Even in its scientific endeavors, humanity in our time is not yet accustomed to taking things exactly. If one takes what is said quite exactly, then not only must one not change anything in the sentences, but one must also pay close attention to the boundaries that are included in the formulations.

We have a suitable example of this, which came up recently during a question and answer session. The question was asked: If dream consciousness is only a kind of pictorial consciousness, how is it then that certain subconscious actions, such as night wandering, can be carried out from this dream consciousness? The questioner has not taken into account, as I mentioned at the time, that the sentence that the contents of dream consciousness are pictorial does not mean that they are only pictorial, but that, of course, since only one side of the horizon of dream consciousness has been characterized from only one side, it followed from the very nature of this characterization that just as our daytime actions follow from our daytime consciousness, so too certain actions of a less conscious nature could follow from the pictorial consciousness of the dream.

It should be said without charge that not listening carefully is one of the main reasons why so many misunderstandings are brought to Theosophy and its representation today. Such misunderstandings are not only brought by the opponents of Theosophy, but also to a large extent by those who profess this Theosophical worldview. And perhaps a large part of the blame for the misunderstandings that the outside world has of spiritual science lies in the fact that even within the theosophical circles, so much is sinned in the direction just described.

If we now look around at the sciences that are recognized in our time, we might perhaps have the general feeling that Theosophy has the greatest affinity with the various branches of philosophy. Such an assertion would be absolutely correct, and one could actually assume from the nature of the matter that the closest possibility of understanding the theosophical insights would be on the side of philosophy. But precisely there, other difficulties arise.

Philosophy, as it is cultivated today, one might say everywhere, has become a kind of specialized science to a much greater extent than it was relatively recently. It has become a specialized science and, if we look at its practical work today and do not get involved in individual theories, it works essentially in abstract regions. And there is not much inclination to lead philosophy back to a concrete conception of the actual. Indeed, there are even difficulties in the way philosophy is practiced today if one wants to embrace the world of the actual with this philosophical endeavor. The epistemology that has been developed with great ingenuity in the second half of the 19th century and up to the present day in the most diverse directions has come about mainly because these difficulties in penetrating from the abstract heights of thinking, of the concept, down to the facts were felt.

Now, in lectures such as this series on “Occult Physiology”, Theosophy is needed everywhere to penetrate directly into our actual world with what it has to give as supersensible contents of consciousness. If I may speak in trivial terms, I would like to say: Theosophy is not as fortunate as today's philosophy, which dwells in abstract regions and which would not be very inclined to include in its considerations such concepts as, let us say, blood or liver or spleen, that is, contents of the actual. It would shrink from making the transition from its abstract concepts to the concrete events and things that directly and actually approach us. Theosophy is more daring in this respect and can therefore very easily be regarded as a spiritual activity that boldly and unjustifiably builds a bridge from the most spiritual to the most factual.

Now it must be interesting to ask oneself why philosophers find it so difficult to approach Theosophy. Perhaps precisely because philosophy avoids building this bridge.

For Theosophy itself, this fact is in a sense fatal, extraordinarily so. For one very often encounters resistance to the Theosophical insights, especially when one wants to work through them logically. It is precisely on the philosophical side that one encounters resistance in this regard. And it has even happened very often that one encounters less resistance when one, so to speak, gleefully tells people sensational observations from the higher worlds. They often forgive this relatively easily, because, firstly, these things are “interesting” and, secondly, people say to themselves: Well, since we cannot see into these worlds, we are not called upon to make any judgment about them.

Now, however, the aim of Theosophy is to bring everything that can be found in the higher worlds down to a rational level of understanding. The facts, if they can truly be regarded as such, are found through supersensible research in the supersensible worlds. In our time, however, the form of presentation should be such that everything is clothed in strictly logical forms and that, wherever it is already possible today, it is pointed out how the most actual external processes can already provide us with confirmations everywhere for what we can assert from spiritual research. In this whole process of bringing down the knowledge of the spiritual world, of clothing it in logical or other rational forms and presenting it in a form that meets the logical needs of our time, there now exists, one might say, a truly extraordinary source of misunderstanding. Take the complicated things that were said in these lectures on “Occult Physiology,” which can only be applied with restrictions and with precise indications of the limits. Take the very complicated things in the immensely mobile and variable world of the spiritual, and compare this world of the spiritual in all its variability, in the difficulty of encompassing something coming down to us from spiritual worlds with rough conceptual contours, compare it with the ease with which any external fact can be characterized through an experiment or through sensory observation and described in a logical style!

Now, however, throughout our philosophy today, there is a tendency to take no account whatever when defining and describing concepts other than those derived from the world that lies before us as the sensual world. This is particularly noticeable in philosophy when it is compelled, for example in the ethical field, to find a different origin for the basic concepts than those derived from the external perception of the physical world. We find – and this could easily be demonstrated, but of course only through detailed explanations from contemporary philosophical literature – that in everything that is dealt with in philosophy today, the definitions of terms are so rough because, when it comes to conceptualized content, basically the only consideration is the perceptual world that exists around us, and it is only on the basis of this that concepts are formed.

Is there any evidence that in philosophy, when the most elementary concepts arise, the content of consciousness is also obtained from a different source than from the world of sensory perception? — In short, contemporary philosophy lacks the possibility of coming to an understanding of theosophy because it cannot tie in with its theories with concepts such as we use in our theosophical discussions. In philosophical literature, the horizon of consciousness has been defined in such a way that when concepts are formed, only the external world of perception is taken into account, and not the kind of content that comes from a different source than that of sensory perception.

Theosophy, however, must arrive at its concepts in a completely different way; it must ascend to supersensible knowledge and bring its concepts down from the supersensible. But it must also delve into the realm of reality and must govern the philosophical concepts gained from observation of the sensual world. If we want to visualize this schematically, then on the one hand we have concepts in philosophy that are gained through external perception, and on the other hand we have concepts that are gained from the supersensible through spiritual perception. And if we think of the field of concepts through which we communicate, we have to say: If theosophy is to be considered justified, then our concepts must be taken from both sides, on the one hand from sensory perception, on the other hand from spiritual perception, and these two sides must meet in the field of our concepts.

Concepts gained through external perception (philosophy) + concepts gained through supersensible perception (theosophy) = conceptual field

Particularly in theosophical expositions, there is a need for the concepts brought down from the spiritual world to meet with the philosophical concepts. This means that our concepts can be connected everywhere to the concepts that are gained from the world of external sensory perception.

Our present-day epistemologies are more or less almost exclusively constructed from the point of view that the concepts are taken only from one side. I do not want to say that there are no epistemologies where something supernatural is admitted as the origin of the concepts. But wherever something is to be proved positively, the examples are characterized by the fact that the concepts are taken only from the left side (scheme), that is, from the side on which the concepts are gained from the sensual-physical world of perception. This is also quite natural because [in philosophy] spiritual facts are not recognized as such. The possibility is simply not considered that spiritual facts, which are brought down from the spiritual worlds, can be conceptualized in the same way that the facts of the physical world are conceptualized. This circumstance has led to the fact that Theosophy, when it wants to communicate with philosophy, finds almost no prepared ground on the side of philosophy and that in philosophy the way in which concepts are used in Theosophy cannot easily be understood.

One might say: When dealing with the world of outer sensory perception, it is easy to give concepts clear contours. Here, things themselves have clear contours, clear boundaries, and one is easily able to give concepts clear contours as well. If, on the other hand, one is confronted with the spiritual world, which is mobile and variable in itself, then much must often first be gathered together and restrictions or extensions made in the concepts in order to be able to characterize to some extent what is actually to be said. The theory of knowledge as it is pursued today is least of all suited to engage with such concepts as they are used in Theosophy. Because, in order to define the terms, the reasons for the definitions — consciously or unconsciously — are only taken from one side, and so, without really knowing it, something is mixed into all the terms that are formed that leads to epistemological terms that are not at all useful for explaining or elucidating anything in Theosophy. The concept, as it is supplied by the so-called non-theosophical world, is simply unsuitable as an instrument for characterizing what is brought down from the spiritual world through Theosophy.

Now there is one such concept in particular that is a terrible troublemaker in the field of epistemology. I know very well that it is not perceived as such at all, but it is a troublemaker. If we disregard all the finer nuances that have emerged so astutely in the course of the 19th century, this is where the epistemological problem is formulated that one says: How does the I, with its content of consciousness - or, if you will, without speaking of the I -, how does our content of consciousness come to be related to a reality by us? These trains of thought have more or less – with the exception of certain epistemological trends in the 19th century – led to an epistemology that repeatedly perceives it as a great difficulty to see the possibility of how the trans-subjective or transcendental, that is, that which lies outside our consciousness, can enter our consciousness. I will admit that this only roughly characterizes the problem of knowledge. But the difficulties are essentially characterized by the fact that one says: How can that which is subjective content of consciousness somehow approach being, reality? How can it be related to reality? For we must be clear about the fact that even if we presuppose a trans-subjective reality lying outside our consciousness, that which is within our consciousness cannot directly approach this reality. We therefore have – so it is said – the content of consciousness within us, and we can ask ourselves: how do we have the possibility, from this content of consciousness, to penetrate into being, into reality, which is independent of our consciousness?—

An important contemporary epistemologist has characterized this problem with a concise expression: The human ego, in so far as it encompasses the horizon of consciousness, cannot leap over itself, for it would have to leap out of itself if it were to leap into reality. But then it would be in reality and not in consciousness. — It seems clear to this epistemologist, then, that nothing can be said about the relationship between the content of consciousness and real reality.

Many years ago, in my epistemological writings, I was concerned, first of all, with establishing this problem of knowledge – which is also fundamental in Theosophy – and then with removing the difficulties that arise from such a formulation as the one just described. In doing so, however, something very strange could happen. For example, at the time when what I want to talk about took place, there were philosophers who started from the premise, very similar to Schopenhauer's, that “the world is my idea.” That is to say, that which is given in consciousness is initially only the content of our imagination. The question then arises as to how to build a bridge from the imagination to that which is outside the imagined, to trans-subjective reality. Now, for anyone who is not fascinated by statements that have supposedly been made in this field, but approaches the matter impartially, a question is immediately posed, and in the face of a large amount of epistemological literature, namely that which was written in the seventies and in the first half of the eighties, one must ask: If anything is “my idea” and if this idea itself is supposed to be more than something lying within the content of consciousness, if it is supposed to have validity for itself, then this means that something is said which, basically, must not lie before the starting point of epistemology, but something that can only be established after these much more important epistemological basic questions have been discussed. For we must first ask ourselves: Why are we at all allowed to call something that arises in us as content of consciousness “my idea”? Do we have the right to say: What appears on my horizon of consciousness is my idea? Epistemology certainly does not have the right to start from the judgment that what is given is my idea, but rather, if it really goes back to its first beginnings, it has the duty to first justify that what appears is the subjective content of consciousness.

Of course, there are several hundred objections to what has just been said, but I don't think it's possible to hold on to a single one of them for long if you approach the matter with an open mind. But I did experience that a well-known and important philosopher gave me a very peculiar answer when I pointed out this dilemma to him and wanted to explain that it should first be examined whether it is epistemologically justified to characterize the imagination as something unreal. He said: “That is self-evident, it is already in the definition of the word ‘imagination’ that we place something in front of us that is not real.” He could not understand - so ingrained were these ideas, which have grown over the centuries - that with this first definition, something completely unfounded is placed.

If we want to make any kind of statement at all within the scope of the world in which we find ourselves – whereby I ask you to understand the words “the world in which we find ourselves” as the world as we experience it in our everyday lives – , for example, that what is given as the world is an “idea”, then we must realize that it is not at all possible to make such a statement without that which we call our thinking activity, without thoughts and concepts. I do not want to say anything about the fact that such a statement is actually a “judgment” in formal logic. In the moment when we begin at all not to leave anything as it appears before us, but to make a statement about it, we intervene with our thinking in the world that is around us. And if we are to have any right to intervene in the world, to define something as “subjective,” then we must be aware that that which defines something as being called subjective must itself not be subjective.

Because if we assume that we have the sphere of subjectivity here (a circle is drawn on the board and the word “subjectivity” is written above it) and, from there, we make the statement, for example, that A is subjective, is “my idea” or whatever, then this statement itself is subjective.

Subjectivity

The conclusion from this is not that we may accept this statement, but the conclusion must be that such a conclusion must not be drawn, because such a statement would cancel itself out. If a subjectivity can only be established from within itself, then that would be a self-abrogating statement. If the statement “A is subjective” is to have any meaning, then it must not proceed from the sphere of subjectivity, but from a reality outside of subjectivity. That is to say, if the “I” is to be at all in a position to say that something has a subjective character, for example, if something is “my idea”, if the “I” is to have the right to call something subjective, then it must not be within the sphere of subjectivity itself, but must make this observation from outside the sphere of subjectivity. Thus we must not trace the statement that something is subjective back to the ego, which itself is subjective.*)

But this provides a way out of the sphere of subjectivity, in that we realize that we could not make any statement about what is subjective and what is objective, and would have to refrain from even the very first steps of thinking about it at all, if we did not stand in such a relationship to subjectivity and objectivity that both have an equal share in us. This leads us to recognize – which I cannot expand on further now – that our ego cannot be taken only subjectively, but is more comprehensive than our subjectivity. We have the right, from a given content, that is, from something objective, to distinguish that which is subjective.

We are initially confronted with the different terms “objective”, “subjective” and “transsubjective”. “Objective” is, of course, different from “transsubjective” [gap in the transcripts].

Now the question is – once we have established these prerequisites – whether we are able to remove the stumbling block that is one of the most important obstacles in epistemology, namely the question of whether or not the whole extent of our self can be found within subjectivity. For if the ego must also partake of objectivity, the question “Can something enter the sphere of subjectivity?” takes on a completely different form. As soon as one can describe the ego as participating in the sphere of objectivity, the ego must have qualities within it that are similar to those of the objective; something from the sphere of objectivity must also be found in the ego. In other words, we may now assume a relationship between the objective and the subjective that differs significantly from the view that nothing can pass from the trans-subjective to the subjective.

If one says that nothing can pass over to the subjective, then, firstly, one has defined the subjective in epistemological terms as self-contained, and, secondly, one has used a concept that is only valid for a certain sphere of reality, but cannot be valid for the whole of reality. This is the concept of the “thing in itself”. This concept plays a major role for many epistemologists; it is like a net in which philosophical thinking catches itself. However, one does not realize that this concept applies only to a certain sphere of reality and that it ceases to have validity where this sphere ceases.

In the material, for example, the concept applies. I would like to recall the example of the seal and sealing wax. If you take a seal on which the name “Miller” is engraved and press it into hot sealing wax, then you can rightly say: Nothing of the matter of the seal can come over into the sealing wax. - There you have something where the non-transferability applies. But it is different with the name “Müller”; it can flow completely into the sealing wax. And if the wax could speak and wanted to emphasize that none of the material of the seal had flowed into it, it would still have to admit that what matters, namely the name “Müller,” had come across completely. So we have gone beyond the sphere where the concept of the “thing in itself” had any justification.

How did it come about that this concept, which appears in a certain refined way in Kant, rather coarsely in Schopenhauer, but then is described astutely by the most diverse epistemologists of the 19th century, was able to gain such significance?

It is, if you look at the whole thing more closely, because what people work out in concepts depends on the whole way they think. Only in an age in which all concepts have to be characterized in such a way that they are always formed by external perception could such a concept as that of the “thing in itself” arise.

But concepts derived from outer perception alone are not suitable for characterizing the spiritual. If it were not for the fact that a disguised, one might say thoroughly masked, materialism has been introduced into the theory of knowledge — for that is the crucial point: a materialism that is really not easy to recognize has been introduced into the theory of knowledge - then one would realize that a theory of knowledge that is to apply to the spiritual realm must also have concepts that are not formulated in this crude style, such as the concept of the “thing in itself.” For the spiritual, where one cannot speak of an outside and an inside in the same sense, it must be clear that we need more subtle concepts.

I could only sketch this out, because otherwise I would have to write a whole book, which would be very thick and would also have to have several volumes because I would have to connect metaphysical areas to the history of philosophy and to epistemology. But you can see that it is quite understandable that this kind of thinking, because it arises from deeply masked prejudices, is unusable for everything that reaches into the spiritual world. I have spoken to you for an hour now only about this most abstract concept. I have tried to make the matter understandable and I am absolutely clear about the fact that the objections, which are clearly before my mind, can of course arise in many other minds as well. If it had been a different meeting, it might have required a special justification to deceive one's listeners, as it were, by speaking in the most abstract — or, as some might believe, the most complicated — terms instead of the usual factual material that is expected. Well, in the course of our theosophical work, we have seen time and again that theosophy also has the good thing that one develops the duty to recognize within the theosophical movement, and that with it, little by little, a naughty concept is overcome that exists everywhere else, a very naughty concept that says: This is something that goes beyond my horizon, that I don't want to deal with, that is not interesting to me!

For some who deal with fundamental philosophical questions and who know from experience the sometimes sparsely attended lectures on epistemology, it may be surprising that here in our movement so many people, who, according to the judgment of this or that epistemologist, are “most thorough dilettantes” in the field of epistemology, come to a meeting to listen to such a topic. In some places we have had an even larger audience, especially at philosophical lectures that were interspersed with theosophical lectures. But if you look at the situation more thoroughly, you may say that this is precisely one of the best testimonies for the theosophists. The theosophists know that they should listen to all the objections that can be raised without prejudice. They remain calm in the face of such objections, for they know full well that, although it is possible and legitimate to raise objections to research in the supersensible worlds, they also know that much of what is initially called illogical may ultimately turn out to be very logical after all. The theosophist also learns to consider it his duty to accept knowledge into his soul, even if it takes effort to deal with epistemology and logic. For in this way he will increasingly be able not only to listen to general theosophical expositions, but also to work seriously with logical concepts and conceptual classifications in theosophy. The world will have to become familiar with the idea that philosophy in its broadest sense will be reborn within the theosophical movement. Zeal for philosophical rigor, for thorough logical conceptualization, will gradually, if I may use the word, take root within the Theosophical movement. By which I do not mean to say that the results in this respect, on close inspection, are not already very satisfactory. We will still have to view this with modesty, but we are on the way to achieving this goal.

The more we acquire the good will for intellectual endeavor, for scientific conscientiousness, for philosophical thoroughness, the more we will be able to use theosophical work not only to pursue our own personal goals, but also to achieve goals for humanity. Some things are only at the stage of the very first volition today. But it is evident that in the will that is applied to knowledge, there is already something like an ethical self-education that is achieved through the interest we take in Theosophy. And soon there will be no lack of that. If there are no obstacles other than those that already exist today, the outside world will not be able to deny Theosophy the recognition that the Theosophist does not strive for easy satisfaction of his soul's longings, but that in Theosophy a serious striving for philosophical thoroughness and conscientiousness is manifested, not mere dilettantism. This striving will be particularly suited to sharpening people's philosophical conscience. If we do not accept the theosophical teachings as dogmas, but understand what Theosophy can be as a real power in our soul, then it can be the fuel for the human soul to increasingly grasp the hidden powers within it and to lead it to an awareness of its destiny. Therefore, within our Theosophical movement, we want to promote this zeal for thorough logic and epistemology, and so, by standing firmer on the ground of our physical world, we learn to look up ever more clearly and without raptures and nebulous mysticism to the spiritual worlds, whose content we want to bring down and insert into our physical world view.

Whether we want to do this depends solely on whether we can ascribe a real mission to Theosophy in the earthly existence of humanity.

It gives me great joy to be able to greet you again today on my journey through and to be able to speak with you about some theosophical matters on this day. In doing so, we may touch on a topic that is more closely related to the emotional life and yet it points us upwards and can point us upwards into perspectives that will teach us about the connection between human beings and the great starry worlds, with what we call the macrocosm.

Today I would like to start with an observation, a motto that runs through human history and which, on the one hand, expresses man's longing to come close to his higher self, but on the other hand, says how little he can reach his divine self. In Greek history we find Socrates going about teaching people, directing them to virtue by means of simple concepts, to everything that is close to the human mind. Socrates, the Greek sage, wanted to turn the gaze of his contemporaries away from the external world of nature. While his predecessors thought about the underlying principles of the great natural phenomena and sought to explain them, it is said of Socrates that he is supposed to have said: What do we care about nature, the trees, the birds? They cannot teach us how to become better human beings. — This sentence contains an error. But what matters here is not whether Socrates makes a mistake, but what he wanted. He was one of the greatest sages in the world, who even paid for what he wanted with his life.

One of his maxims has been preserved. Its content strikes every human soul that wants to know itself: he taught virtue, morality. If man could truly understand it, he would act accordingly. If man departs from morality, it is only because he does not yet fully understand it. Virtue can be taught. The human heart objects that human nature is weak, that it often fails in virtue. He who gave this saying the form in which it lives in many hearts, lives in such a way that it is an expression of the deepest regret, of apology, Paul, gave this saying the form: Strong is the spirit, the flesh is weak. Many see what virtue consists in and yet cannot follow it. This dichotomy runs through all human nature. You only need to write this saying in your soul and you have recorded the dichotomy of human nature. There is something in man that transcends him: higher human nature transcends lower human nature.

Through Theosophy we are accustomed to seeing human nature not as something simple. The soul of man appears to us as a trinity. Here we must remember the development of our planet, its earlier incarnations, which it has gone through and in which man has also been developed with it. The first incarnation of our planet was the Saturn state. Here the germ was laid for the physical body of man. After this state had lasted a long time, the planet disintegrated and reappeared as the sun, with the powers of the life ether. In this state, the etheric or life body was added to the physical body in the germ. After a long time, the planet disintegrated and reappeared in the state of the moon. In this state, the astral body was added to the human physical and etheric bodies. And after this state had also gone through dissolution, the earth embodied itself in the form it has now. As a fourth principle, the germ of the self was now added to man.

Saturn, the sun and the moon are a trinity: the past of the earth. During this time, the human trinity has developed: physical body, etheric body, astral body. These are the human past. The I is the present. Its future lies in what it works out of the lower trinity, what spiritualization is achieved in the process. By penetrating and learning to control the astral body, the I transforms it into the spirit self or Manas. By penetrating the etheric body, the I transforms it into the life spirit or Buddhi. By penetrating the physical body, the I transforms it into the spiritual man or Atman. This is the upper trinity, the future of man.

Now the I is also threefold, for the soul has three aspects, three basic powers of which it consists, which can never be separated or torn out of it. These three powers are what we have called the sentient soul, the mind soul, and the consciousness soul. They are parts of the individuality that is gradually emerging into consciousness. We can also describe them in our own words as wisdom, individuality and morality. In the sentient soul, we feel the inner soul; the astral body can be regarded as the exterior of the sentient soul. The I, which is becoming conscious, struggles out of the soul of understanding. Within the adult I-forces, the consciousness soul is experienced as the inner self, the spiritual self as the outer self.

Is there anything that can suggest to us that what has just been said is true? To answer this question, let us consider what we have become through the stages of human development. We stand in the middle of the past lower triad and the luminous spiritual-soul triad. Today, we want to describe this triad with words taken from direct life, not as in the book “Theosophy”, where it is scientifically presented. What is it that can mean so much to us, our deepest spiritual shortcomings, our spiritual longings and dissatisfaction, what is this trinity when we look at our cleverness, individuality and virtue, at all our striving that can fill us with bliss or disharmony? This is the trinity that we can describe as faith, hope and love. They are the three fundamental powers of the soul that can never be taken from it. Faith – what is faith? Faith is a power of the soul that can never be completely wrested from the human soul, and it lives in every human being. There has never been a nation that did not have it, no religion has allowed itself to be deprived of speaking of it. It is the yearning for faith that permeates the world. The soul always wants to have something to hold on to. If this yearning for faith is not satisfied, then the tormented soul is in a bad way. If it is deprived of what it can believe in – as happens through materialism – then it is as if the human body were deprived of the air it needs to breathe. Only that the process of suffocation of the body takes a very short time, that of the soul takes a very long time.

One often reads sayings like: knowledge is power – and the like. Now, at the beginning of the Bible, a peculiar word has been found that has not yet been properly appreciated to this day. There is talk of the tree of knowledge and of the fruit of the tree of knowledge that is eaten. This is to be taken quite literally. Knowledge is nourishment, knowledge is nourishment for the soul. The soul eats of that which we absorb as concepts from Theosophy. It eats of that which it believes, and it has healthy nourishment only from that which Theosophy offers it.

Faith, say the scientists and materialists, is an outdated point of view. I only believe what I know, says the modern man. This is a mistake. Belief is not a regression into the past, because belief and knowledge do not form a contradiction. But knowledge is changeable and cannot satisfy the need for faith in the human heart. When material science claims that the world is composed of atoms and came into being by chance, the human heart quite rightly says: I cannot believe that, I find no satisfaction in this hypothesis. And because man cannot believe, because he has nothing to cling to with his sense of faith, that is why the human soul is not healthy, and this unhealthy soul makes the body sick. This is how nervousness in the modern sense arises and gets worse and worse. This is how the soul affects the body and the person who has become so affects his environment, which he drags down and makes sick, and his descendants. This is why humanity is degenerating more and more, and unfortunately it will continue to get worse and worse. It is materialistic science that gives people “stones instead of bread”. The soul has no nourishment, although the intellect is overflowing with knowledge. And such a person then goes around not knowing what to do with himself, he does not know what to hold on to, and just as if one were to take away the air to breathe, the human soul suffocates from not having any nourishment, no spiritual sustenance. Theosophy has therefore come into the world to provide humanity with nourishment.

When we come together to study Theosophy, we do not do so like other associations that deal with literature, fine arts, social problems and the like. We do not practice Theosophy out of curiosity, but to satisfy the urge to believe, to nourish the soul. Therefore, we allow the theosophical concepts, feelings and sensations to affect our soul.

If we now consider this in terms of the evolution of the world and of humanity, we must remember that during the lunar state of the earth the astral body was added to the human being. What is this astral body? It consists of forces that must always grasp something, that must always attach themselves somewhere. In their effect, these forces are what we experience as faith, as the power of faith. The astral body is the source of faith itself. It must therefore receive nourishment if it is to develop, if it is to live. The desire for nourishment is the yearning of faith. If this power of faith cannot be satisfied, if the faith is deprived of one thing after another that it could hold on to, if it is not offered good spiritual nourishment, then the astral body becomes ill and through it the physical man also. But if he receives satisfaction from the concepts, ideas and feelings that Theosophy draws from the truth, from the depths of world knowledge, then he has the spiritual nourishment that appeals to him, then he has his satisfaction. He becomes strong and healthy, and the person himself becomes healthy. The views have changed a great deal over the past century, right down to the word. A hundred and thirty years ago, a man was called nervous who was a strong fellow, with strong muscles and full of strength. Today, a nervous person is a dissatisfied, weak person, a sick person, one whose soul searches unsatisfied for what it can draw nourishment from. From all this it follows that we can justifiably call the astral body the body of faith.

A second basic power is love. No one lacks it, it is always there, it cannot be eradicated. Anyone who would believe that the greatest hater, the greatest egoist, has no love, is mistaken. To think so is quite wrong. The longing for love is always present here. Whether it is sexual love, love for a child, for a friend, or love for something, for a work, it is always there. It cannot be torn out of the soul because it is a fundamental power of the soul. But just as man needs air to breathe, so he needs the work of love, the activity of love, for his soul. Its opponent, its hindrance, is egoism. But what does egoism do? It does not allow love to work outwards, it presses it into the soul, again and again. And just as air must flow out when breathing, so that man does not suffocate, so love must flow out, so that the soul does not suffocate from what is forcibly pressed into it. Better said: the soul burns from its own fire of love within itself and perishes.

Let us now remember that on the old sun, the human being was given the ether body as an inclination, that this fiery, luminous, shining part of the sun is the ether body. In it, however, there is given only another aspect of love, that which love is in the spirit: light is love. In the ether body, therefore, love and the yearning for love are given to us, and we can justifiably call the ether body the body of love: light and love.

It is a true saying: love is the greatest good. But it can also have the most disastrous consequences. We see this in everyday life, and I will give you an example that has been experienced. A mother loved her little daughter very much, and out of love she let her do everything, no matter what she did. She never punished her and fulfilled her every whim. The little daughter became a poisoner, and out of love she became so. Love must be combined with wisdom, it must become an enlightened love, only then can it truly work for good. The theosophical teaching is called upon to bring this wisdom, to give this enlightenment. And when man has absorbed in himself what is said and taught concerning the evolution of the world, concerning this apparently so far, so distant lying, what is communicated about the connection of man with the macrocosm, then man will become such that his enlightened love will face his fellow man in order to see into him, to be able to understand him, and thus become enlightened human love.

We often hear that life is dull and empty. This feeling even causes a kind of discord in the body. This is the effect of the unsatisfied power of love. When the world rejects our love, we feel pain. When we do something out of love, we must do it because the soul needs it, just as the lungs need air. Not out of scientific curiosity or to present a scientific opinion to the world – we have more than enough of that, because there are a thousand questions waiting to be solved – but to give humanity a sense of fulfillment, that is why Theosophy came into the world. We still gather in small groups, but these groups will soon grow larger and larger, and we will one day be able to solve the thousand questions of today.

Who will solve the social question? Those who theorize and debate about it? Never. The theosophical worldview and love will solve it. And truly, as paradoxical as it may sound, humanity will soon no longer even be able to grow potatoes – because the potatoes are already getting worse and worse – it will not even be able to grow potatoes without Theosophy! How can this be explained? Much of what mankind does today is instinctive, based on a certain instinct. However, this instinct must increasingly disappear. Why? Because the time has come for it to become conscious. People will therefore not be able to know agriculture without learning the truths of theosophy about the nature of the earth, the forces at work in it, and so on.

"The third basic power is hope. The human soul must hope, everyone knows that. Unsatisfied and searching, people go around in the world, and all too often one finds people to whom everything seems stale, to whom nothing gives satisfaction, to whom one thing after another slips through their fingers. It is dark around them, without prospect, without hope – so they say.

A great man once said: “Virtue without hope is the greatest crime, eternity without hope is the greatest lie!” And yet the power of hope is written into the soul; it is an ineradicable force that no power will ever be able to wrest from man. But if mankind is deprived of what it needs to climb upwards, the souls that are robbed of it will lose their security, support and stability, and so people will collapse in insecurity, they will be stupid and senseless. The theosophical principles of karma and re-embodiment satisfy the human soul's need for hope. They offer the lasting, that which leads into the future. What is an act, what is a thought, a word, that is thought by man and then torn away? Man and his deeds, man and his thoughts belong together, and it is illogical to regard an evil deed, an insult, for example, as atoned for if the perpetrator has not made amends for it himself. The law of causation speaks here: Man's life is bound to man, and he must go from embodiment to embodiment.

Lessing left behind the book “The Education of the Human Race” as the final result of his entire life. The thought that is the culmination of this work is that man returns again and again. What else have great minds, such geniuses as Lessing, thought of as the doctrine of reincarnation, namely, that the human soul develops further from stage to stage, that it continues to experience that which it has caused, on and on. It will only take a short time before the doctrine of reincarnation and the doctrine of karma will also be recognized in external science. And with that, humanity will receive something again that has been taken away from it by materialistic science: hope.

Why do we understand the essence of past cultural epochs? It is not literature or art history that gives us what the Greeks left behind. Far too little do both bring, it would not even be necessary to know about it. We have the achievements of Greek culture within us simply because we were alive at the time, because we lived through this epoch of culture, and we could not be what we are today if we had not lived through this epoch at that time. Hebbel left behind notes of a thought that he was no longer able to shape dramatically. In a school, a professor was practicing Plato with his students. The reincarnated Plato is among the students and gets one very bad grade after another, even punishments, because he - the Plato - does not understand the Plato! Again, the idea of reincarnation comes from the soul of a genius.

If the fruit of virtue did not depend on man, what would be virtue? How could evil be atoned if man himself did not have to atone for it! Eternity would remain a lie if man himself did not depend on eternity, if it did not concern him. Continuity through incarnations and reincarnations, that is what constitutes hope, and only through this can the hopeless souls, who cannot satisfy their longing for hope, become whole.

The germ of the physical human being was laid on the old Saturn. How so? Spiritually it was laid there, namely in that which should continue: hope. Therefore, the physical body can justifiably be called the body of hope. The characteristic of the physical body is its density. When the waves of the soul's life beat against the human body over and over again and penetrate it more and more, it is permeated by hope, by the certainty that something will develop out of it that lasts forever, that is imperishable. This desire for the satisfaction of hope, for a continuation of life, is a consequence of the soul's power of hope, and it is deprived of nourishment by external science.

Theosophy, its concepts, ideas and perceptions, gives it back to it, and that is the great mission of Theosophy: to make people strong in faith again, happy in love and enduring in hope.

If we take only the truths that Theosophy transmits to us and give them to the soul's power of faith for nourishment, then Manas will arise by itself, the transformation of the astral body into Manas will take place by itself. If we take only the truths and give them to love for nourishment, then buddhi will arise by itself. If we take the theosophical truths and give them to hope for nourishment, then the spirit man, atman, will arise by itself.

That is why theosophy is studied and thought about, not out of scientific curiosity. It is wrong to say out of laziness that one does not need to know all this. For the theosophical truths have been taken from the truth itself, they have been brought down from the great All, they serve the human soul as living nourishment, like bread, like air. If man, if humanity is not to suffocate, if it is to fulfill its mission, this nourishment must be brought to it, and that right now, because it is so extraordinarily necessary. That is the purpose of the theosophical study, and not a thirst for knowledge, not curiosity, or something even worse perhaps.

Notes from a lecture at the inauguration of the Heidenheim branch.

We have gathered here today to celebrate the inauguration of the Heidenheim branch. Friends from various regions have come together for this celebration to show their support for their local friends.

Over the years, a number of people have come together here in this city whose inner urge has brought them together for joint spiritual work in a spiritual scientific spirit.

Everything in life has an effect. If a person succumbs to an error or a lie, even if he is not aware of it in his ordinary consciousness, it is still present in the subconscious, where it acts as a destructive force not only for the individual person but for the whole evolution of the world. Likewise, when man unites with the forces of truth, it continues to work as a life-creating force for the whole evolution of the world and of humanity.

There are three decisive points in our seven cultural epochs for the further development of humanity. These are:

The first call that went out to humanity with a thundering voice from Mount Sinai, as the commandments of Jehovah!

The second call in the wilderness by John the Baptist, when the Baptist said to those who wanted to hear him: “Change your minds, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”!

The third call, my dear friends, is that which is proclaimed from the spiritual worlds as a new revelation through spiritual science or theosophy!

The child at conception, when the soul descends from spiritual spheres into this world of physical laws, is a memory and a symbol of the moment of the first thunderclap from Sinai in the laws.

And when the child, in the first years of his life, experiences the moment when he begins to use language but does not yet think about learning it, learning language without yet using his dormant thinking abilities, this is, in the individual human being, the time of the second call to humanity through John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness.

When, in a later period of his life, the child begins to understand language by using and developing his powers of thought, this is the reflection of the third call to humanity through spiritual science: the new revelation for understanding what is set forth in the Gospels as the Gospel of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Spiritual science brings man, as a new revelation from the spiritual worlds, an understanding of what was announced by the second call of John and was laid down in writing after the Mystery of Golgotha. Through spiritual science, the third call of our seven cultural epochs, man is brought to an understanding of what the Christ Jesus said: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the earth cycle.

Just as only a small number of people heard the second call at that time, so it will also be only a small number in our time that hears the third call. But, my dear friends, should the call pass by without being heard, the evolution of humanity could not take place in the way intended by the high spiritual beings.

In retrospect, we may consider it an infinite mercy that there were people at that time who heard the second call, and we owe thanks to these souls that the development of humanity could continue as a result. Those who understand how to read the signs of the times know what it means to hear the third call of the living new revelation or to let it pass unheard. There was a time when it was said that there were only two paths for man: if he does good, he will receive eternal bliss after death; if he does evil, he must be cast into eternal damnation. — Spiritual science proclaims something different. My dear friends, we know that the human being is a complex creature, that he consists of a physical body, an etheric or life body, an astral body and an I. When a person begins to believe in a spiritual world, to imbue themselves with powers of faith, these powers of faith are a power of the astral body. Thus the astral body is the “body of faith”.

Through faith in the body of faith, man struggles up to the powers of love. These are the powers of the etheric or life body. Thus the etheric or life body is the “body of love”. If people could not penetrate to the spiritual worlds through the power of faith, their powers of imagination and thought would become ever more barren, empty and ossified. Man would be unable to rise to any power of love. What would man be without love? — He would have to suffer loneliness, he would be unable to have any connection with his fellow human beings and fellow creatures of nature. Man must be able to develop love, that alone gives him true vitality, by renouncing selfishness and shaping himself into true, unegoistic love in the love or etheric body.

When we look at nature, we learn to recognize the truth of the reincarnation of the individual soul. Look out there. What kind of feeling would you have to have when the plant world dies in the fall, when you would have to think: Everything is dead, it will never sprout, germinate, or bloom again! — It is often said: We do not know what tomorrow will bring. Yes, but is that really so? Do we really know nothing about tomorrow when we perform our work today with zeal and the most sacred sense of duty? We know that tomorrow the sun will begin its course again and conclude it in the evening. We know that the world order continues. Indeed, how would a person feel if he never knew whether the sun would shine the next day, whether the forces of day and night, rain and sunshine, whether the regulated rhythm of the stars would cease tomorrow or take a different form every day? Man would have to go to work without courage or strength if he did not know that he would resume work the following day and continue working on what he had started.

Just as spring follows winter and what rests as the dormant germ of plants within themselves is reawakened, so the soul that leaves the physical body will revive the germ that has been left behind and resume its life on the physical plane and continue its and humanity's development. Thus the forces of love give rise to the forces of hope. The physical body is the “body of hope”. What would man be without hope for the morrow, for the completion of the work he has begun, without hope of reunion with those he has loved in life? Thus the New Revelation of the Christ-message, theosophy or spiritual science, may proclaim the teaching of reincarnation despite the enlightened science and scholarship that is spreading throughout the world and wants to deny the supersensible worlds. Even if we are ridiculed and pitied for still being so superstitious, looking at what is happening in nature can be proof for us of what spiritual science proclaims.

If the third call were to pass unheeded, my dear friends, the development of humanity would be unable to progress, and those who would later look back on this time, when we ignored the call, would have to lay the blame at our door. But just as we look gratefully to the human souls who heard the call of St. John at that time, so will later people look gratefully to the souls who heard today's, third call, so that humanity may be led forward.

Just as the first few Christians had to hold their devotional meetings with the dead in the Roman catacombs, while above in the arena the people who set the tone at the time were wallowing in sensuality and throwing these first Christians to wild beasts or torches, as they did to them, but how these tone-setting people were suddenly carried off, so today we have to gather in rooms that our friends make available to us, or in rooms that are spiritual catacombs. But today's dominant materialism will also be swept away, and spiritual science will be allowed to lead humanity forward when the third call is heard. Who can say whether one or other of those who are here among us did not hear this call of John at the time? We have all heard this second call in one way or another and must hear the third in order to give humanity the opportunity to be led further.

In order that the teachings of the new Christ-Revelation may be heard in this city, the spiritual powers have brought together a number of people through an inner urge of the heart. Those high spiritual individuals who are called to make this call to humanity through their messengers are the guides of humanity.

From our study of spiritual science we learn of the so-called “members” of man's constitution and we then speak of his physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego and so on. It may seem to many people that once they know of these members they have also, in some measure, understood man's real being; and indeed there are numbers who believe that they know the essentials if they are able to enumerate these different members of man's constitution, or even, possibly, to indicate what happens to one or another of them in the course of his incarnations. Although any study of man must necessarily begin with a knowledge of these members, we must be quite clear that this knowledge is very preliminary. For what is really important is not that the human being consists of these seven or nine members, but how they are related to one another, how each of them is connected with any one of the others. It must also be realised that the connections are by no means the same in all human beings, in every epoch. The connections and relationships change in the course of the ages of human evolution. In an epoch lying four or five thousand years behind us, the connection between the members of man's constitution was not the same as it is today, and in the future it will again be quite different. The way in which the members are interlinked, their relationship to each other—all this changes as time goes on. Indeed the continual re-appearance of the human being in his various incarnations acquires its significance from the fact that while he is passing through his individual evolution from one incarnation to another, this complex, consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, itself evolves in respect of the relationships between these members, so that at each new incarnation the human being finds an entirely new combination of them. New experiences come to him ever and again as a result of this.

In order to grasp what this means we need only compare ancient times with our own epoch in one single respect. If we were to look back into the fourth or fifth millennium of ancient Egyptian civilisation and observe the men of that epoch, we should see that the interconnections between the physical body, etheric body and astral body were far looser than they are in men today. In those times the astral body and the etheric body were far less firmly linked with the physical body. The characteristic tendency of our present phase of evolution is precisely that the astral body and etheric body try to be connected more and more firmly with the physical body. This is very significant, for as evolution advances and the astral body and the etheric body of man tend to chain themselves more closely to the physical body, man is no longer able to influence his physical body from his soul to the extent that was possible in ancient times when the astral and etheric bodies were freer and the laws of the physical body did not, therefore, work into them as forcefully as they do today. When, in those times, a feeling arose in a man, or some idea came to him, the force of this feeling or idea spread quickly into the astral and etheric bodies, and from there—because the man had mastery over these members—he was able, from his soul, to be master of his physical body. This possibility of mastering the physical body from the soul is constantly becoming less, because the astral body and the etheric body are entrenching themselves more and more firmly in the physical body. But this has still another consequence, namely, that in the course of the ages, man's natural constitution makes him less and less accessible to those forces and powers which work down upon him from the spiritual world. Hence in the man of olden times we find a kind of natural inspiration and imagination, an ancient clairvoyance, due to the greatest freedom of the etheric body and the astral body; and into these bodies with their greater freedom there streamed the forces of the superhuman Hierarchies. These forces were able to work into man's etheric and astral bodies. But in the course of the evolutionary process the physical body wrests the etheric and astral bodies away from the inmost core of man's being, claims them for itself, with the result that the direct influence from the spiritual worlds becomes constantly weaker, less and less able to penetrate into the etheric and astral bodies.

Evidence of this can be traced even in the external form of the human being. If we were to go far, far back, for example to the humanity of ancient Egypt, we should find that in accordance with a man's constitution of soul, when, let us say, he was stirred by some passion or impulse, this worked on into the astral and etheric bodies which then imprinted the passions and impulses in the physical body itself. Hence we should find that in very early epochs of Egyptian culture, for example—but actually in all such culture-epochs—the external appearance of a man was a kind of imprint of his soul. What was astir in the soul could be read from his very countenance, his physiognomy. In a certain respect there was complete analogy between the physical exterior and the life of soul. Then came the period of Greco-Latin civilisation, the period of that remarkable people who stand, as it were, at the middle point of the Post-Atlantean epoch. These men of Greece stand at the middle point in such a way that the forces of the spiritual world still stream universally to the soul and express themselves in the bodily nature. Hence that wonderful unison in the Greeks between the beauty of the external bodily structure and the beauty of the soul. Because this soul in its beauty was free from the physical body it was able to open itself to a higher world, to the Hierarchies; and the Hierarchies sent their forces into it. This came to expression in the physical body and thereby the whole physical body of the Greek became the expression of the beauty of the soul. And so a superhuman reality, an all-human reality, came to a very high degree of expression in the Greek era.

In the future there will be an altogether different state of things. The important fact to bear in mind is that man's physical body will make still greater demands in the future, will chain the astral and etheric bodies to itself, and only by consciously approaching the spiritual world, by absorbing the ideas, concepts and feelings of the spiritual world as we are now beginning to do in the spiritual Movements, will man be able himself to develop those strong forces which were formerly poured by the Hierarchies into his physical and etheric bodies. And if, as he advances into the future, man wishes to retain mastery over his physical body, he will be able to do so only by consciously drawing forces from the spiritual world wherewith to overcome the opposing force of the etheric body that is tied to the physical body. Thus we may say: In ancient, pre-Christian times, the possibility of working upon the physical body was given to men naturally; in the future, this possibility will be given to them only if they themselves do something towards it. But for this reason a difference will become more and more perceptible in humanity of the future between those who oppose spiritual teaching and knowledge and those who approach this knowledge eagerly and willingly, as if by instinct. We know that the latter are still only a tiny handful today but in the future this distinction will inevitably come about between people who out of hatred and aversion oppose spiritual knowledge with increasing hostility, and those who impelled to begin with by a certain instinct, willingly ally themselves with spiritual Movements. Those human beings who oppose spiritual knowledge will show this more and more distinctly in their very countenances; they will show that they have no power over their behaviour, over their physical nature, that their physical nature is in every respect stronger than themselves. In those who approach the spiritual teachings willingly, it will be apparent that they have the strength and the power to overcome the opposition presented by their physical nature.

This will come to expression inasmuch as traits quite different from those prevailing in ancient times will become perceptible in the external, formative development of human beings. In the men of antiquity, let us say in the Egyptians living four or five thousand years before the Christian era, we should find that in the phase of its development directly following birth, the child did not look completely human but as if an angel had entered into it, as if it had received from the spiritual world those pliable bodily forms in which the spiritual was expressing itself directly in the physical. And the older the child grew, the more human it became, developing downwards, as it were, to manhood.

In the Greeks there was great uniformity between the first and the later years of life. Even in earliest childhood the impress of the all-human was apparent, and it remained so; hence the Greeks were rightly regarded as a people with a childlike nature. In the future it will more and more be the case that as a newly-born child the human being—and precisely one who is outstandingly significant—will be ugly, really ugly according to the Greek ideal of beauty. And the more deeply he acquaints himself with spiritual ideas, the more will his form and figure acquire a certain characteristic: the features that were at first blurred and indistinct, even ugly, in the child, will change in such a way that the facial features themselves will tell us that they are the expression of ideas and concepts from the spiritual world. And this will be the case more and more.

Things that appear in the external life of humanity often present themselves, as if in concentrated form, in art. In actual fact, the material for the humanity that is to advance towards the future is drawn from the European peoples, whereas the material for the humanity which possessed the ancient mastery over the physical body, originated in the south. Thus we find that in art, Greek art, expression is given to the beautiful human being. The Greeks gave the stamp of human beauty even to the figures of his gods; and this same trait continued into the time of the Renaissance in Southern Europe. Compare one of Raphael's Madonnas with a northern Madonna and you will see that art anticipates what actually comes to pass. The echoes of Greek artistic genius gave the impression of beauty achieved without effort. In the immediate future, however, man will be dependent upon inner strength of his own, upon the vigour and activity of his own life of soul. We are approaching this age and we must connect this fact with the other, namely, that in the different epochs of the evolution of humanity, these several members of man's being are differently inter-related. In earlier times the connection between them was much looser, but the lower members are now striving all the time to be knit more and more closely together. Many things that in our time may be very obvious to an attentive observer of life are connected with a fact such as this. For example: It is simply impossible for certain people to form any adequate conceptions even of the most patent facts of the world and of life. There are large numbers of men today whose ideas and concepts have been so firmly drilled into them that it is a sheer impossibility for them to take in a single new idea or concept. Why is this? An etheric body that is less firmly knit to the physical body can always absorb new ideas, because it is elastic; an etheric body that is firmly knit to the physical body absorbs a certain number of concepts, and definite forms have thus been imprinted in the physical body which it, in turn, forces upon the etheric body. And so it comes about that many of those in cultured and learned circles today are no longer capable in later life of changing what they have imprinted into their brains, and their thinking is stiff, rigid, inelastic. Their etheric body cannot get free, can no longer emancipate itself from the physical body. In such circumstances it is only the strength and power and forcefulness of spiritual concepts and ideas that can make it possible for a man to overcome this tendency. For here, by his own efforts, he has to overcome something that is a cosmic tendency.

The mission of man consists precisely in this: through his own strength to be able to overcome a cosmic tendency. The gist of the matter can be made clear by a comparison.—Look at a plant that is permeated with moisture and is therefore fresh and green. Think of the etheric body of man as being the moisture and his physical body as the other part of the plant. I said that this physical body of man becomes powerful by drawing the etheric body and also the astral body to itself. By this means it acquires excessive strength, and the consequence is that the etheric and astral bodies become impotent, just as when the plant is deprived of moisture it dries up and lignifies, becomes woody. The human physical body gradually begins to lignify because the forces of the etheric and astral bodies are impoverished. A brain that lignifies can absorb only few new ideas and concepts, because it wants to remain static with those it has already acquired. The astral body and the etheric body must be revivified through the absorption of spiritual ideas and concepts.

And so in the spiritual Movement appropriate for the present day, it is a matter of dealing with something that is a necessity for the future, a necessity that is part of the mission of man, something that is just as essential as any of the events that have overtaken the human race without co-operation on the part of men themselves. For a long, long time, no doubt, such truths will be vehemently opposed, but none of this opposition will ultimately avail. Men will become aware from the very form and direction taken by culture in the near future that this is how things are; the facts themselves will prove it.

Now it is not only in the process of human evolution as a whole that a change takes place in this inter-relation of the several members of man's constitution; the same is also true in the life of the individual. There is by no means the same relationship between etheric body and astral body and ego in early childhood as there is in the later years of a man's life. In considering the development of the individual himself, account must be taken of the fact that the relationship between the members of his constitution changes. A very specially important period in the course of an individual human life is the one that comprises approximately the first three years. In that period, every individual is fundamentally a different being from the being he is later on. We know that these first three years are sharply demarcated from later life by two facts.—One is that it is only after this first period that the human being learns to say “I”, to grasp and understand his egohood. The other is that when, in later years, a man is looking back over his life, he can at most remember only as far back as this point of time—the point at which this three-year period is separated from the later life. In the normal state no human being knows anything of what happened before this point of time. In a certain respect man is then quite a different being. On that subject, too, modern psychologists talk the most incredible nonsense. We, however, must adhere firmly to the knowledge that in actual fact it is not until after that period that the human being becomes conscious of his egohood. There are books on psychology today in which we may read that the human being learns first to think and then to speak. Such rubbish as is written today in popular literature on psychology is only possible in an age when those who pursue psychology in official positions are automatically regarded as serious scientists. One of the most important things of all is that we should bear in mind the division between the first years of life and the later years, and regard man during those early years as a being who is quite different from the one he is later on. It is only later that the ego appears, the ego with which everything else is bound up. But let nobody believe that before this point of time the ego was inactive. Of course it was not inactive! It is not the case that until the third year of life the ego remains unborn. It was already there, but its task was not that of penetrating into the activity of consciousness. What, then, was its task? The ego is the most important spiritual factor in the development of the three sheaths of the child: astral body, etheric body, physical body. The physical sheath of the brain is constantly re-moulded and there the ego is continually at work. It cannot become conscious because it has a quite different task to fulfil: it has first to shape the instrument of consciousness. That of which we later become conscious works, to begin with, upon our physical brain during the first years of life. The task devolving upon the ego changes—that is all. It works first upon us, then within us. The ego is in reality a sculptor and the greatness of what it achieves in the actual forming of the physical brain can never be adequately described. The ego is a supreme artist! But what is the source, the giver of its power? The ego has this power because, during the first three years of life the forces of the angels, of the Hierarchy next above our own, stream into it. In very truth—and this is no figure of speech, no simile, but an actual truth—an angel, that is to say, a being of the nearest higher Hierarchy, works in man through his ego, moulding and shaping him. It is as if the man were borne by the whole current of spiritual life, as if he were floating upwards to the higher Hierarchies whose forces stream into him. And the moment he learns to say “I”, it is as if some of this force were cut off, as if he himself were called upon to do something formerly done by the angel.

In the first years of life there is actually given to us something like a last echo of what prevailed to a certain extent through the whole of human life in the first Post-Atlantean epoch. Immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe, throughout the whole of his life or at very least through the first half of it, the human being was more or less like he now is during the first years of life only. We can picture this clearly if we think of the early Indian civilisation-epoch. The most truly childlike among the men of that epoch were the great Teachers of the Indian people, the Holy Rishis. I have often spoken of them. If we were to picture the Holy Rishis according to the pattern of a modern savant, we should be very far from the truth. If a man were to encounter them today he would not regard them as of any account at all; they would seem to him to be nothing more than naïve, childlike peasants—but the childlike quality that was manifest in the Rishis is perhaps nowhere to be found today. At certain times an inflowing stream of inspiration became articulate through them and then they gave voice to secrets of the higher worlds, because throughout their whole life the word “I”, in the sense in which modern man uses it, never passed their lips. They never said “I”. They differed from a child today inasmuch as a child possesses the faculty of ideation. But the highest treasures of wisdom flowed into them in the same form of soul-life; it was as if a child today were to give utterance to the most sublime wisdom during the first three years of its life. Actually it is not the child who is speaking—but perhaps this applies now only to a part of mankind. I have so often referred to the saying: The wisest can learn most from a child. And when someone who is himself able to look into the spiritual worlds has a child before him, with the stream that rises up into the spiritual world, it is as if—forgive the homely expression—he has in the child something like a telephone-line into the spiritual worlds. The spiritual world speaks through the child, but men are not aware of it. The wisest can learn most from a child. It is not the child that is speaking, but the angel is speaking out of the child.

And now the question is: What is there to be said of man's whole constitution in later years, bearing in mind that in the earliest period of his life the ego is not merely the fourth member of his own being but at the same time the lowest member of an angel?—for we can speak of these “members” of an angel in connection with this period and of the child's ego as the lowest member of the angel. The connections between the members are quite different from those prevailing in later life. The question therefore is: What is the nature of the change? What is it that takes place in later life? It is as though the living stream had been cut off; the human being loses the living connection with the spiritual world. Hence it is in the earliest years of life that the forces a human being brings with him from his former incarnations are most perceptible. It is then that the essential, spiritual core of his being works the most strongly and deeply to elaborate the bodily organisation in such a way that it is suitable for the incarnation. How is the later normal consciousness related to this? The answer is that, today, the human being simply no longer has a bodily nature—the etheric body and its relationship to the physical body—such as was present in and at the time of the Holy Rishis. In that epoch there persisted through the whole of life the inherited relationship between etheric body and astral body that made it possible for the ego to mould the outer sheath of the human being. Today, already at birth, we inherit such a dense and demanding physical body that only a small part of the work formerly accomplished by the ego can now be carried out. Our physical body is no longer really suitable for what we ourselves are during the first three years of our life. What we inherit is a physical body that is suitable for the later years of life, and this body is not adapted for directing the eyes upwards into the spiritual worlds. The child himself has no knowledge of what is streaming down into him and those around him most certainly have none; for the physical body has altered, has become denser, drier. We are born with a soul that in the first three years of our life still stretches up into the spiritual worlds; but we are born with a body that is called upon to develop, through the whole of the rest of our life, the consciousness in which the ego lives. If we had not this dense physical body it would be possible for us in the conditions of the present cycle of human existence to remain childlike in the sense indicated; but because we have this dense physical body, communion with the spiritual world during the first three years of life cannot come to full consciousness.

What is it that must now be fulfilled in the course of the evolution of humanity? What is the one end only way in which to achieve it? This can most easily be expressed by the two concepts which in earlier times designated these two beings within us. The one is the concept of the being of spirit-and-soul in the first three years of childhood, the being who is now no longer really adapted to the external nature of man and is, moreover, unable to unfold ego-consciousness: this being of spirit-and-soul was called in olden times the Son of God. And the being whose physical body today is so constituted that ego-consciousness can awaken within it was called the Son of Man.—The Son of God within the Son of Man.—The conditions prevailing today are such that the Son of God can no longer become conscious in the Son of Man, but must first be separated if the ego-consciousness of today is to arise. It is the task of man, through conscious absorption of the realities of the spiritual world, so to transform and make himself master of his external sheaths that the Son of Man is gradually permeated by the Son of God. When the earth has reached the end of its evolution, man must have consciously achieved what he has no longer been able to achieve from childhood onwards: he must have completely permeated what he is as Son of Man with the divine part of his being. What is it that must completely permeate and flow through his human nature? What is it that must pour into every part of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, so that the whole Son of Man is permeated with the Son of God? It is that which lives in the first three years of life, but permeated with the fully conscious ego—this it is that must spread through the whole man.

Let us imagine that a being were to appear before us as an Ideal, a model of what man should be. What would have to be fulfilled in this being? The soul-nature of such a being cannot penetrate the outer sheaths of an ordinary man of present-day development, for he would not be able to realise the human Ideal of earthly evolution, would not be able to make it manifest. We should have, as it were, to tear the soul out of him and put in its place a soul such as is present in the first three years of life, but permeated with full ego-consciousness. In no other way could an Ideal of earth-evolution stand before us. And for how long would such a soul be able to endure a physical human life? The physical body is capable of bearing such a soul for three years only; then, if it is not to be shattered, it is bound to overpower that soul. The whole karma of the earth would have to be so organised that after three years the physical body is shattered. For in man as he is today, the being who lives in him for three years is overpowered; if, however, it were to remain, it would overpower and shatter the physical body. The Ideal of man's mission on the earth can therefore be fulfilled only if, while the physical body, etheric body and astral body remain, the ordinary soul-nature is ejected and the soul-nature of the first three years, plus full ego-consciousness, is inserted in its place. Then this soul would shatter the human body; but during these three years it would present a perfect example of what man can achieve.

This Ideal is the Christ-Ideal; and what took place at the Baptism in Jordan is the reality behind what has here been described. The human Ideal was once actually placed before mankind on the earth. Through the Baptism in Jordan, the soul with which we are connected during the first three years of childhood—but in this case completely permeated by the ego and in unbroken connection with the spiritual world—entered into a human body from which the earlier soul had departed. And then, after three years, this soul from the spiritual worlds shattered the bodily sheaths. Therefore we have before us in the first three years of life a faint image, an utterly inadequate image, of the Christ-Being Who lived for three years on earth in the body of Jesus. And if we try to develop in ourselves a manhood whose nature is that of the soul of childhood but fully permeated with the reality and content of the spiritual world, then we have a picture of that Egohood, that Christhood, of which St. Paul is speaking when he calls upon men to fulfil the “Not I, but Christ in me”.—This is the childlike soul, permeated with full and complete egohood. Thereby the human being is able to permeate his “Son of Man” with his “Son of God” and to fulfil his earthly Ideal, to overcome his external nature and once again to find the connection with the spiritual world.

But how can this be achieved? In sacred records every utterance has more than one meaning. If we are to look into the kingdom of Heaven we must become as children, but with the full maturity of the ego. That is the prospect before us until the earth's mission has been fulfilled.—We may well be moved when we realise on the one hand that our physical body is actually facing a withering process and takes into itself the spiritualising process by overcoming that which is tending to wither. The inner nature must be so strengthened from the spiritual worlds that the opposing outer nature is brought into conformity with it. When this is achieved, we stand, as men, in harmony with the evolutionary process of our earth.

Spiritual science tells us that the earth has evolved far beyond the point when the mineral kingdom which forms the soil still contains any forces of renewal, any upbuilding forces; this applies to granite, gneiss, schist, up to the very soil of our fields. All this is involved in unceasing process of destruction. We do not walk upon soil that has within it new, formative forces, but rather—because the earth has passed the mid-point of its evolution—we walk upon soil that is already breaking up, is already involved in a process of destruction. Our own development is completely in line with that of our planet. We have a physical body that is gradually withering, and this we can overcome. But in the soil we have something that is involved in a process of destruction. The valleys and mountains are formed by the crumbling of the earth's crust. Spiritual science tells us that we are moving about on an earth that is crumbling. When we climb a mountain we must realise that here something has crumbled, has split asunder, and that no process of onward development is in operation. Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch we have passed beyond the middle point of the earth's evolution. Since then we have lived on an earth that is crumbling and will one day fall away from us as a corpse.

In this connection we have one of the finest examples of complete accord between spiritual knowledge and modern science in its true form. It is essential that anthroposophists should learn to distinguish between true science and all that through countless popular channels poses as science, but in reality is nothing but a compendium of preconceived ideas, theories and the like. If we go to the true sources of the several sciences we realise how fully spiritual knowledge accords with science. And here is one of the very best examples.—

There is no more reliable or well-versed geologist than Eduard Suess; and what another geologist says is undoubtedly correct, namely, that Suess's work “The Face of the Earth” is a great geological epic of the earth. It bears all the traces of exceptional thoroughness and careful study. With all caution, and unprejudiced by theories, the author of this really monumental work presents what may be stated today on the foundation of actual geological facts. Suess is not guided in his investigations by ideas previously conceived, as was the case even with such men as Buch or Humboldt. Suess investigates facts, facts alone. What he has to say on the basis of meticulously observed facts about the formation of the earth's soil is particularly interesting. His conception is exactly the same as that of spiritual science, only of course Suess knew nothing of spiritual science. He draws his conclusions from the actual physical facts. He maintains that valleys have formed as the result of the working of certain forces through which rock and stone were hurled down; subsidence took place and heights remained.—All this is the result of processes of segmentation, displacement and “folding”, in which only forces of destruction are working. Let me refer you to one passage in Suess's great work and you will see that here, where we have to do with true science, there is complete accord with spiritual knowledge. The passage is as follows:

The breaking up of the terrestrial globe, this it is we witness. It doubtless began a long time ago, and the brevity of human life enables us to contemplate it without dismay. It is not only in the great mountain ranges that the traces of this process are found. Great segments of the earth's crust have sunk hundreds, in some cases even thousands of feet deep, and not the slightest inequality of the surface remains to indicate the fracture; the different nature of the rocks and the discoveries made in mining alone reveal its presence. Time has leveled all. In Bohemia, in the Palatinate, in Belgium, in Pennsylvania in many other places as well, the plough quietly traces its furrows over the mightiest fractures .....¹

I refer to this merely to show you that our earth-planet displays the same process of withering, shriveling and destruction as the physical body of man. Those who come forward with views of the world today do not base themselves upon science in its true form. Even to read intelligently through this tremendous work, “The Face of the Earth”, entails strenuous effort. But even that would be of no avail unless one were acquainted with the whole of modern geological science; for this alone teaches one how such a book should be read. When a man turns to the true sources of knowledge he finds the absolute facts.

Spiritual science tells us—for example about the progress of our earth's evolution—that at one time, before organisms existed, the earth was not in that fantastic condition when granite is alleged to have been liquid fire, but when the whole earth was pervaded by an activity similar, for example, to the activity taking place in a man when he is thinking. The process of destruction was once introduced and as a result of it we are able to say: The chemical substances which today are no longer contained in the earth's organism—for example, the substances of which granite is composed—fell away from this organism like rain. They trickled down, as it were, and in essentials it was these processes of destruction which in alliance with the chemistry of the earth made it possible for granite to come into existence as the mother-soil of the earth. But by that time a process of destruction had already set in, and what is present today is the necessary consequence of that process of destruction which continues in a straightforward line.

What does true natural science show us? That those processes which must be there are there. And in true natural science this is shown us everywhere. True natural science nowhere contradicts spiritual science; everywhere there is corroboration.

Such corroboration will also be found in connection with reincarnation and karma. Only it will be necessary some day for mankind to rise above all previously conceived theories, prejudices and the like. Facts can always be made use of whenever they are facts and not confused hypotheses such as the once generally accepted assumptions and theories of geologists about the condition of the earth in the granite-epoch—quite apart from all the philosophical theories of the present time which are practically devoid of spirituality. We must not allow ourselves to be impressed by such talk as the following,—“The evolution of the individual human being” (which we ourselves base upon reincarnation and karma) “derives from the infinities of spiritual evolution ...” It is possible for a man to become world-famous and yet say this. It is sheer rubbish, even though it is proclaimed as authentic philosophy and linked with the name of Wundt. In very truth we stand here at the dividing-line between two spheres of spiritual life, and we must be fully conscious of it. The one is that of natural science which, whenever it is based on facts, actually corroborates spiritual science. The other consists of the different philosophical theories, hypotheses and all the other high-sounding twaddle about what is supposed to underlie external processes and happenings. From all this, spiritual science should sternly dissociate itself. And then it will assuredly become more and more possible to realise that what we acquire through spiritual knowledge, namely, an understanding of man and of how his various members are related to the different epochs of the evolution of humanity, leads us deeply into the secrets of the universe. We shall also realise that true observation of the first three years of childhood is the first stage towards a recognition of the Mystery of Golgotha in all its truth and to a real understanding of the words:

Except ye ... become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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• 1. This passage is the penultimate paragraph in Vol. I of Suess's book. The work consists of four volumes and was published in English in 1904 by the Clarendon Press. The translation is by H. Sollas.

Originally published in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 21, Number 4, Winter 1976.

In a public lecture such as the one given yesterday on Spiritual Science and the Future of Man, account must always be taken of the very limited receptive capacity of the world today. In our time, data of knowledge that are essential for humanity do indeed flow down from the spiritual worlds but can be accepted open mindedly only by very few people. To most individuals who have not prepared themselves adequately for the reception of such knowledge, the deeper aspects of our Spiritual Science prove to be something of a shock, something that seems fantastic or dreamlike.

All the more it behoves us to deepen our feeling for the most significant questions that arise in the course of fairly lengthy study in a Group. And now I want to speak of the need for a closer study of the great truth of the implanting of the Ego, the ‘I’, in man and to indicate that the subject is more complicated than it is usually thought to be at the present time.

We have heard that during the period of Old Saturn man was endowed with the rudiments of the physical body, during the period of Old Sun with that of the etheric body, during the period of Old Moon with that of the astral body, and that the essential task of our Earth evolution is the incorporation of the Ego into the other members of man’s constitution. Not until the end of Earth’s evolution will the human being be completely permeated—as is possible—by the Ego. If we study the man of Earth as such, we can say that the actual centre of his being is the Ego, the ‘I’ But then it must occur to us that in each of the different periods of our present life this Ego is connected with us differently, by no means always in the same Way. We must realise above all that the different members of our being are not understood when we simply enumerate them as physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. Now let us consider in what different ways the members can be connected with each other both during the various epochs of mankind’s evolution and during the single life of the human being.

Let us think, to begin with, of a child. We know that it is not until a comparatively late period that he learns to say ‘I’ of himself. This is very indicative. Although modern psychology, in its endeavours to be a bona tide science, does not grasp the fact, it is deeply significant that the inner experience, the mental conception of the ‘I’ wakens in the child comparatively late. In the very earliest years, until the age of 3 or 3½, although now and then the child babbles the sound ‘I’, he has no real experience of Egohood. You may come across a book by Heinrich Lhotzky entitled Die Seele deines Kindes (Your Child’s Soul) which contains the curious statement that the child learns to think before he learns to speak. This is nonsense, because it is by speaking that the child learns to think. Those who strive to grasp Spiritual Science must be cautious of what purports to be Science today. It is approximately) after the third year of life that a child learns for the first time to experience and be cognisant of the ‘I’.

This is connected with another fact, namely that in normal consciousness—not in higher, clairvoyant consciousness—we have no remembrance of our life before a certain point of time. If you think back over the past, you will realise that remembrance ceases at a certain point and does not extend as far as birth. What others have told us can often be confused with what we ourselves have experienced, but the thread breaks at approximately the point when the ‘I’ is experienced for the first time. A very young child has no such experience; it arises later on and it is then that a very dim kind of remembrance begins.

We now ask ourselves: if the experience of ‘I’ was not present during the first three years of life, was the ‘I’, the Ego, itself also not there in the child? The question to put to ourselves is this. Are we cognisant of something that is actually within us or is it within us without our knowledge? The Ego is indeed within the child only he is unaware of it, just as during sleep a person is connected with the Ego but is not cognisant of it. The fact is that we know of something, but that can be no criterion for us. We must say: the ‘I’ is present in the child but the child is not conscious of it.

What, then, is there to be said about the Ego? It has its own task to perform. If you were to investigate the human brain purely physically, you would find that just after birth it looks very imperfect compared with its later structure. Many of the finer convolutions have to be elaborated and moulded later on, during the subsequent years. This is what the ‘I’ achieves in the human being and because this is its task it cannot itself become conscious of it. The Ego has to elaborate the brain into a more delicately complicated structure, in order that later on the human being will be able to think. During the first years of life the Ego is very active.

When the Ego becomes conscious of itself, we could ask in vain: how have you managed to construct this brain with such artistry?—you will admit that during the whole span of life between birth and death the Ego does not develop consciousness on a par with that by which the brain is elaborated. Nevertheless we can ask ourselves the question. And the answer is that in its activity the Ego is under the guidance of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. When we observe a child clairvoyantly, his Ego—as Ego-aura—is certainly there, but streams go out from this aura to the higher Hierarchies, to the Angels, Archangels, and so on; the forces of the Hierarchies stream in. Therefore when naive consciousness speaks of a child having a Guardian Angel, this is a very real truth. Later on this closer connection ceases; the ‘I’ experiences itself more in the nerves and can therefore become conscious of its own existence. A kind of detachment takes place. In the child a sort of ‘telephonic connection’ exists, inasmuch as the ‘I’ extends into the divine-spiritual Hierarchies. The statements of Spiritual Science must be taken seriously. I once said that the very wisest person can learn a great deal from a child. He can also learn a great deal because he need not look only at the child himself but also through him into the spiritual world, because in the child there is the ‘telephonic connection’ with the spiritual world—the connection that is ultimately severed.

Hence during the first three years of life we have before us a being quite different from the one who is there later on. Under the guidance of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies a childhood Ego works at the development of man’s instrument of thinking. This ‘I’, this Ego, then passes into the instruments themselves and can no longer work at them. Man’s instruments of thinking must then already have developed. Certainly they can develop to further stages, but the ‘I’ can no longer be working at this development.

The human being may therefore be thought of as twofold: the one we see during the first three and a half years, and the one which represents the rest of his life. In the language of esotericism, the first being is called the divine man, or the Son of God, because he is connected with the higher Hierarchies; the other is called the Son of Man. In the latter the Ego is present, moves the limbs and works—as far as it is possible to work—from within outwards. A distinction must therefore be made between the Son of God and the Son of Man.

The Son of God who is preeminently active for the first three and a half years of life embraces all the vitalising forces, stimulates the human being to pour these life giving forces in greater and ever greater measure into his organism. In comparison with those in an older person these forces are also health giving, strengthening factors. If we are not content in later life to be human beings who have to rely entirely on the senses and on the instrument of the physical body for our connection with the surrounding world but determine in our later years to strive upwards to the spiritual world, then we must contrive by some means to awaken these forces within ourselves; we must evoke the forces that are within us in earliest childhood, but with the difference that now we awaken them consciously, whereas a child awakens them unconsciously. In this respect too, therefore, it is obvious that man is a twofold being.

What is it, in reality, that is brought to light by these forces during the first three and a half years of life? In these forces—which are active under the direction of the higher Hierarchies—what is working over from earlier incarnations is asserting itself. You can easily convince yourselves of this by handling the human skull, where you find individual mounds and depressions. No skull is exactly similar to another, hence there is no universally valid Phrenology. Each case must be studied individually. The forces working in the formation of the human skull come over from earlier incarnations and their impetus ceases after the first three and a half years of life. During these years everything is still pliable and the spirit is still able to work in it. Later on, everything has become solid and the spirit can no longer come into play.

What, then, is responsible for the fact that in later life we are no longer able to work with these forces? To what is this due? It is due to the essential character of our Earth evolution. When the ‘I’ has become conscious of itself in the body, this presupposes that the body is very firmly knit and can no longer be elaborated by the forces just described. There are also forces which essentially belong to man as a generic being, which mould him in accordance with the architectural principles of the human form. Were we to work in the physical body with the forces of early childhood for more than the three and a half years which are the appropriate period, the physical body could not .survive. It would be rent asunder, shattered, for now the forces by which the physical body is attached to the line of physical heredity become operative. If the action of the other forces did not cease, the body would break up, disintegrate. The Son of Man within us brings about our destruction; the Son of God within us cannot offer resistance to the Son of Man after a period of three years. For all that, we bear this Son of God within us. These forces work within the physical body throughout life but they cannot participate directly in the up-building process. If we look within our own inmost being, however, we can nevertheless find the continuation of the Ego with the ‘telephonic connection’. It is only that the physical body has become too coarse, too solid, too wooden to enable the Son of God to mould it any further.

Thus the best forces are present in us during the first three to three and a half years of childhood. The whole of life is nourished by them but they are obscured. In an entirely different form they are nevertheless present in the later years of life. We are permeated by these forces but cannot allow them to come to direct expression. When through Spiritual Science we endeavour to acquire ideas and conceptions of the higher worlds, this will be all the easier, the more forces have remained in us of those that were within us during the first three years when our ‘I’, our Ego, was within us but without self-consciousness. The fresher, the more flexible these forces have remained, the less time-worn they have become in advanced age, the more easily we can bring about transformation in ourselves through these spiritual forces.

It is the very best part of manhood that we have within us during these early years, only the solid physical body prevents us from using these forces then to the fullest extent. Even if someone in his later years succeeds in developing them to a special extent, he cannot transform his physical body which is by no means as pliable as wax. But if through esoteric wisdom he is able to use these forces to the full, their power streams through the tips of his fingers, and he acquires the gift of healing, of health-bestowal, through the laying on of hands—if, that is to say, these spiritual forces are still active. They can no longer transform his body but when they stream out from him they bring about healing.

The goal of Earth evolution is to enable these forces—the best that are within us—to take effect. When the evolution of the Earth is at an end and we have lived through our many incarnations, we must consciously have permeated our whole being with the forces that are within us unconsciously during the first years of childhood. There is a difference between bearing these forces unconsciously and bearing them consciously. At the end of Earth evolution human beings must be completely permeated by this childhood consciousness. And then, because the process of expansion will be slow, the body will not burst asunder.

In world-evolution a prototype of penetration of the forces of childhood into mankind was necessary. Needless to say, this prototype could not be a child. It was necessary that an individual of a certain age should be permeated in full consciousness by the same forces by which all human beings are permeated unconsciously in earliest childhood. Suppose we were to remove his Ego from a human being, empty his Ego and pour into him the forces that are active in a child during the first years of life, he would become conscious of these forces with his developed brain. What had been active within him during the first years of childhood would become a conscious experience in him. For how long is a human life on Earth able to endure this? For no longer than three years, for then the body would be shattered. If there can be no transformation—in the case of man this takes place in the process of ordinary evolution—the human body can endure this state of things for no longer than three years. Were it possible for any being to bear the forces of early childhood consciously within himself, the karma of that being must be so adjusted that the physical body involved is shattered.

It is conceivable that what man attains through all the incarnations leading to the goal of Earth evolution can be brought to the notice of the world by a prototype, by an individual whose bodily nature makes it possible for his Ego to depart and be replaced by another Being. In such a case the human body would not tolerate the presence of the other Being for longer than three years. It would be the karma of the body to be shattered. And this actually happened. At the baptising by John in the Jordan we see this human body which made it possible for the Ego, the Zarathustra-Ego, to depart. A Being, the Christ Being, came down into this body, indwelt it for three years but could remain in it no longer. After three years the body broke up when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

What was able to live for three years in a human body at that time must be tended and cherished by man and gradually, in the course of incarnations, made a living reality in his soul, in order that at the end of the incarnations it may be present in full strength.

A remarkable connection is apparent between the Son of God in man and the Christ Event. Everything to be found in the domain of occultism can be illuminated from different sides. Proofs such as are demanded by conventional science cannot satisfy occultism. Proofs must convince by virtue of truths being gathered together from all sides, truths which sustain and support each other. We can study the Christ Event from still another side by deriving it, as has been done today, from the very nature of man. We realise that the best way to understand the Christ is to develop the attitude of soul arising from such a truth. We must realise too that in a fully evolved human body, there was present in Jesus of Nazareth through the Baptism in Jordan a Being who is present in every human body, but unconsciously only, during the first three years of life. And then we must contemplate the three years when this child has become conscious. That is how understanding of the Christ can best be acquired.

Ancient utterances have different meanings. One such meaning is disclosed by the words: Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter into the Kingdoms of Heaven. There we have a glimpse of the deeper meaning often contained in single sentences of the religious texts.

Let us contemplate this life of childhood especially in the period when it is actually developing. Science today does not know much about what can contribute to the study of the true nature of man. In the first place we must realise clearly that from the very beginning man differs quite radically from all other beings. Take an example near at hand, let us say, an ape. Its gait is determined from the very outset because the characteristic equilibrium is established by the arrangement of its limbs. The human being cannot, to begin with, walk at all, for he must first bring about equilibrium in his body. Through the work of his Ego his limbs must be brought into the positions which enable him to stand upright and walk. Thus in the first years of childhood the Ego must work not only at moulding the brain but must also bring about the equilibrium that is not, from the beginning, established in the human being as it is in the animal. The bones of the human being must first be arranged in the angles necessary for the main-tenance of his centre of gravity, in order that he may be able to walk and make his way about. This capacity is implanted from the beginning in every animal, up to those of the highest species, whereas in the human being it must be acquired gradually though the work of the Ego. Before then he crawls about or falls down. He would be fettered to the same spot on the ground if his Ego was not at work during the first three years of his life.

We have already heard that the Ego works at man’s brain, sculps and moulds it into a form that enables him later on to become a being possessed of intelligence. Thus it can be said that we acquire the capacity to recognise the truth in life as a result of the Ego having moulded its instrument. It must become obvious to us that there can be no further life unless we bring it about by work and activity.

What further distinguishes man so radically from all other things is his speech. That capacity too must be acquired through the work of his Ego. Man is not, from the beginning, organised for speech. Cows utter the sound ‘moo’ but that is not speech. The acquisition of speech depends upon the Ego sojourning among other human Egos. If a human being were transported to a remote island he would not learn to speak. The coming of the second teeth is due to heredity; so too is the fact that we grow. The teeth would come even if we were on a lonely island. But it is through the Ego that we acquire the faculty of speech. These differences are important. Thus in human life, speech is the third faculty acquired through the Ego.

Through the activity of these forces the human beings finds his way on Earth, he recognises the truth and lives his life in common with the surrounding world. If a child were able to express what he thus acquires, he could say: the Ego within me transforms me in such a way that I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Think of this translated into a higher, spiritual reality, and let us ask: what will be said to man by a Being who with fully conscious forces of childhood lives for three years in a human body? Such a Being will say: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” In very fact, when the forces of childhood rise to a higher, fully conscious stage, there we have the great prototype of what is revealed at a lower stage in the child. Through Christ Jesus it becomes a basic, fundamental truth. Not only is the utterance “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdoms of Heaven” incomprehensible without a knowledge of what Spiritual Science has to say about the connection with the life-giving forces of early childhood, but it is also true that we can best understand the radical utterance, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” when we recognise its prototype in what the Ego achieves by its activity in the body of early childhood.

Such truths make it possible for us to generate—if not for the body at least for the soul—some measures of the life-giving forces we need on the Earth. The man of today who does not acknowledge the reality of the spiritual world has no genuine feeling for such facts. If you go to a number of individuals in outer life and tell them something of what has been said here today: ‘Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter into the kingdoms of Heaven’—you will find that these people say: “Well, yes, these are quite clever analogies, but what use can be made of them?” They consider it more advantageous to go to some blood-curdling drama, if not anything worse! Those who have no feelings that these facts are significant will regard them as unjustifiable because it is in the feeling for such things that there lies the power to instil the gift of childhood into life. If we lack enthusiasm for the idea of Christ being compared with the activity of the human Ego during the first years of life, if we reject such a comparison as unjustifiable, then we have no faculty for kindling to life the forces of earliest childhood. Wizened scholars have so little power to awaken these forces and thereby to approach the reality of the spiritual world! But if we have the enthusiasm to concern ourselves with such truths, we can permeate our whole being with these forces.

Thereby something is given to an individual which enables him to uphold the principle of universality in his Christianity. Have I not often said that we are only at the beginning of a true conception of Christ? Until the twelfth or thirteenth century there was no possibility of hearing the Bible read. Christians were obliged to rely upon preaching and the proclamations of evangelists. Then came the Christianity which adhered strictly to the Bible, deriving its knowledge from that one source. We are not mindful of Christ’s power if we ignore His words: “I am with you until the end of the ages.” We are Christians when we realise that after Christ had once revealed Himself He will do so again, for anyone who has eyes to see Him. The content of the Gospels by no means represents all that Christ has to say. We should not constantly be quoting the words: “You could not bear it now”. Humanity must become mature enough to understand Christ’s declaration.

It also follows that we ought to be able to adopt the right attitude to what is revealed through the Baptism by John, namely, the manifestation of the health-giving, fertile forces of early childhood. That in itself would be a fruitful conception. Even if there were no human being who knew anything about the name of Christ or about the Gospels—we do not overstress the importance of names—what is all-important is the Being Himself. We leave it to others to say that an individual who does not swear allegiance to Buddha is no true adherent. What matters to us is the reality, not the name. This is the principle we follow when, for example, we recognise that during the first years of life there are within the human being forces which once streamed down into the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

Think of a remote, lonely island to which no single record of the Mystery of Golgotha has ever found its way. If human beings there through their spiritual life consciously draw the powers of earliest childhood into themselves until they reach old age, then they are Christians in the true sense of the word. In such circumstances there is no need for them to search in the Gospels, for Christianity in itself is a living power and will evolve to further and further stages.

There is a difference here that must be strictly remembered. We shall realise ever more clearly how intimately Christ’s mission is connected with the very being of the Earth. We shall be able to say that the mission of Christ is something that can be understood by contemplating man as he is today. The need to be filled with the power of Christ, to make a reality of Paul’s affirmation “Christ in me”, is confirmed when we say that the whole of our life must be dedicated to the transformation of what is present within us during the first years of childhood. Then the Christ is in us in very truth.

This realisation makes it possible to have a wide understanding of Christianity and reveals the prospect that it will take quite different forms. Times will come when Christ will be referred to in an entirely different way, when sources of an essentially different character will be in existence, when there will be no reference to the external history of the existence of such a Being, but when this fact will be revealed by the actual consciousness of mankind.

These matters are brought forward because they show how deeply Spiritual Science can influence man’s life of feeling and must become actual practice. It is only then that what we find in original sources becomes really intelligible to us. For many human beings, however, these original sources are verily a book with seven seals. At the end of the Earth’s existence, a man of today will have reached the stage where his soul is inwardly Christian in the truest sense. Today he is only at the beginning of this development. Nevertheless Christ lives within him and will do so in an ever wider sense through all the following incarnations.

What was the state of things before Christ came to the Earth, before He revealed Himself on the Earth? The Ego was then only in the preparatory stage, for it is by Christ that the Ego is given its very purpose and meaning. When the mission of a Being is in the preparatory stage, his predecessors must help him. Until the Mystery of Golgotha, man’s Ego was still at the stage of preparation. Until then it was necessary for other Beings to help man, Beings who had reached the human stage previously, namely, during the

Old Moon embodiment of the Earth. We know that these are the Beings of the Hierarchy immediately above us—the Angels. Their evolution has reached a stage higher than that reached by man. It was chiefly these Beings who took over the guidance of humanity before man was in a position to say: Christ gives my Ego purport and meaning. Man could not lead himself to Christ but had perforce to be led to Him by the Beings who are his elder Brothers.

The Bible records this with wonderful accuracy. Let us think of John, the forerunner of Christ Jesus. The true forerunner could not have been the Being who is presented in external history, for as we now know man had as yet no Ego. Therefore it cannot be strictly true to say that John the Baptist himself was Christ’s forerunner. Remarkably, the Gospel of St. Mark begins at once with the words: “I send my Angel before thee, who shall prepare thy way.” We must pay attention to something that theologians have, it is true, noticed in a very abstract form but ignored as a concrete reality. The external world is primarily maya. We must learn to see it in the right way and then it is no longer maya. The narration of the external events connected with John the Baptist on the physical plane, is maya. We do not understand them. The biblical picture of John the Baptist is maya. The truth is that an Angel lives in John, takes possession of his soul, and it is this Being who leads men to Christ. John is the sheath in which the Angel is revealed. The reborn Elijah was able and ready to receive into himself the Angel who entered into and spoke out of him, using him—John—simply as an instrument. The story given in the Bible is accurate in every detail.

It can therefore be said that it was only because the Beings who had reached the human stage on the Old Moon embodiment of the Earth became the leaders of man in the pre-Christian era that he could be prepared to receive the Ego. In point of fact, all the leaders of humanity in the pre-Christian era could be leaders because Angels were working through them. What would happen in the case of a man of the modern age? In pre-Christian times the Angel could work in a man because he had no Ego of his own. Since the Christ has come, man can turn to Him and a power enters into him instead of the Angel, as formerly. Man today must take the Christ into himself through devotion and reverence. John could still say: Not I but the Angel in me has been sent and uses me as the instrument for preparing the way. Man must say as did St. Paul: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’ Man must learn to understand Christ in the light of the teaching of Spiritual Science.

What has been said today about the first three years of childhood can, for example, usefully be emphasised. Man is ‘christianised’ when the truth is brought home to him that the forces at work during the age of earliest childhood shed their sunlike radiance over the whole of life. Modern science, on the other hand, is ultimately responsible for the onset of senility, for resistance to the sunlike forces in early childhood, for ossification of parts of the brain, and a great deal else besides.

From such truths we realise that it is possible to understand the living truth of Christianity even when original records are left out of account and we simply study the nature and being of man. If our understanding of Spiritual Science is such that we do not simply say, ‘now I know that man consists of four members—physical, etheric, astral bodies and Ego’ but realise that what matters is to know how these single members are interconnected in his constitution—then we can become aware that the Ego working in early childhood is related to another entity, that the first Ego is like a sheath and that after about three years its connection with all the members of the rest of man’s nature changes entirely.

This knowledge acquires genuine value when it becomes a power within us and when we say to ourselves that because in the future many incarnations lie ahead of us we can develop what is in us to further and further stages of consciousness, that we can enable the forces of the higher man, The Son of God within us, to be victorious over the Son of Man, thereby rising higher in each succeeding incarnation until the Earth reaches its goal. The Earth then becomes a corpse just as the individual human being becomes a physical corpse; the corpse sinks into the Earth and the soul rises into the spiritual world. This is what will also happen to the Earth as a whole.

If we think of the Earth as the body of all humanity, we can say: the Earth dies as a corpse, dissolves into the substance of the Universe, is pulverised in order to be used in a new material form. But man rises into spiritual worlds in order to pass over into the next planetary existence. It behoves us to remember that these are no abstract words.

Strange to say, there are people who believe that our Earth, together with the Sun and the other planets, was once a great nebula and nothing else, that then Sun, Earth and man himself, through the consolidation of matter, came into existence, that he will evolve to further and further stages and will eventually be entombed in the Earth the whole process being an aimless episode!

In future histories of civilization great efforts will have to be made to understand this patho-logical fantasy, to grasp how it could have been possible for man’s imagination to become sickly enough to accept this as a serious conception. To uphold the Kant-Laplace theory is exactly the same as to think that man can be explained by studying the dust produced by his cremation. Such science is pernicious, incapable of engendering living power in the soul.

The aim of Spiritual Science is to kindle the power to develop our stature as human beings to higher and higher stages, no longer connecting ourselves with the dust of the Earth but evolving towards a new planetary existence.

This is the 8th of 17 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, in 1911. The title of this series of lectures is: The Mission of the New Spiritual Revelation. This address was given following a Concert at the Berlin Group of the Anthroposophical Society, at which Mendelssohn's Overture of the Hebrides had been played).

Through the tones and harmonies of this Overture we have been led in spirit to the shores of Scotland, and in our souls, we have thus followed again a path of travel which, during the course of human evolution, has been deeply influenced by the secrets of karma. For, from entirely different parts of the western hemisphere of our earth, as if through a karmic current of migration, various peoples were once transplanted into that region, and its vicinity, to which these tones now lead us. And many strange destinies are made known to us. We are told, both by what Occultism relates as well as by outer historical documents, of what these peoples experienced in very ancient times on this particular part of the earth.

A memory of the mysterious destinies of these peoples arose again, as if newly awakened, when about 1772 the cave on the Island of Staffa belonging to the Hebrides, known as Fingal's Cave, was rediscovered. Those who beheld it were reminded of mysterious ancient destinies when they saw how Nature herself seemed to have constructed something which may be likened to a wonderful cathedral. It is constructed with great symmetry in long aisles of countless pillars towering aloft: above there arches a ceiling of the same stonework, while below the bases of the pillars are washed by the inrushing foaming waves of the sea which ceaselessly beat and resound with a music which is like thunder within this mighty temple. Dropping water drips steadily from strange stone formations upon the stalactites beneath, making melodious magical music.

A spectacle of this kind actually exists there. And those who, upon discovering it, had a sense for the mysterious things which once took place in this region, must have been reminded of the hero who once upon a time, as one of the most famous individualities of the West, guided destiny here in such a strange way, and whose fame was sung by his son, the blind Ossian, who is like a western Homer—a blind singer.

If we look back and see how deeply people were impressed by what they heard about this place, we shall be able to understand how it was that Macpherson's revival of this ancient song in the 18^th Century made such a mighty impression upon Europe. There is nothing which may be compared with the impression made by this poem. Goethe, Herder, Napoleon harkened to it—and all believed to discern in its rhythms and sounds something of the magic of primeval days. Here we must understand that a spiritual world such as still existed at that time, arose within their hearts, and felt itself drawn to what sounded forth out of this song! And what was it that thus sounded forth?

We must now turn our gaze to those times which fall together with the first impulses of Christianity and the few centuries which followed. What happened up there in the vicinity of the Hebrides, in Ireland and Scotland—in ancient Erin, which included all the neighboring islands between Ireland and Scotland, as well as the northern part of Scotland itself. Here we must seek for the kernel of those peoples, of Celtic origin, who had most of all preserved the ancient Atlantian clairvoyance in its full purity. The others who had wandered farther to the East had developed further, and so no longer remained in connection with the ancient gods. The western peoples, however, had preserved for themselves the possibility of experiencing an ancient clairvoyance now entirely immersed in the personality, in the individuality. And they were led to this particular part of the earth, as if for a special mission, where a structure confronted them which mirrored their own music's inner depths and was itself architecturally formed entirely out of the spiritual world, a structure which I have just tried to characterize with a few words—Fingal's Cave. We shall imagine these events rightly if we realize that the cave acted as a focus point, mirroring what lived in the souls of these human beings who, through their karma, were sent hither as to a temple erected by the gods themselves. Here those human beings were prepared who should later receive the Christ Impulse with their full human being and were here to undergo something extremely strange by way of preparation.

Again we shall be able to imagine all this if we realize that here particularly those ancient folk customs were preserved whereby the tribe was divided into smaller groups based upon family. Those who were related by blood felt themselves closely connected, while all others were looked upon as strangers, as belong[ing] to another Group Ego. During the migrations from Atlantis toward the East, all that the Druid priests, who remained behind here in the West, were able to give to the people poured itself out over these individual groups as a harmonizing influence. And what they were able to give still lived on in the bards. We shall only rightly understand what worked through these bards, however, if we make clear to ourselves that here the most elemental passions met together with the ancient powers of sight into the spiritual world, and that those who, with powerful life forces, sometimes with rage and passion, fought as representatives of their clan against other clans, perceived at the same time impulses working out of the spiritual world which directed them in battle.

Such an active connection between the physical and the soul realms cannot be conceived of today. When a hero raised his sword he believed that a spirit out of the air guided it, and in the spirit he beheld an ancestor who had fought upon this same battlefield in former times and who had gone up yonder to help now from over there. In their battle ranks they felt their ancestors actively aiding them, their ancestors on both sides—and they did not only feel them ... they heard them clairaudiently! It was a wonderful conception which lived in these peoples, that the heroes had to fight upon the battlefields and to shed their blood, but that after death they ascended into the spiritual world, and that their spirits then vibrated as tone—sounding through the air as a spiritual reality.

Those who had proven themselves in battle, but had trained themselves at the same time so that they could listen to what sounded out of the winds as the voice of the past, who were blind for the physical world, who could no longer see the flashing of the swords but were blind for the physical plane—these were highly honoured! And one of these was Ossian. When the heroes swung their swords, they were conscious that their deeds would resound further into the spiritual world and that bards would appear who would preserve all this in their songs. This was perceived in living reality by these peoples.

But all this creates an altogether different conception of humanity. It creates the conception that the human being is united with spiritual powers which sound forth out of the whole of Nature. For he cannot look upon a storm or a flash of lightning, he cannot hear the thunder or the surging of the sea without sensing that out of all the activities of Nature spirits work who are connected with the souls of the past, with the souls of his own ancestors. Thus the activity of Nature was at that time something altogether different than for us today. And it is for this reason that the rhythms and sounds of this song are so important, which, after being handed down for centuries through tradition only, were revived by the Scotsman Macpherson so that they create for us again a consciousness of the connection of the human being with the souls of his ancestors and with the phenomena of Nature.

We can understand how this Scotsman had in a certain sense a congenial feeling when he described how a line of battle stormed into the field, sweeping darkness before it, even as did the spirits who took part in the battle. This song is in reality something which was able to make a great impression upon spiritual Europe. The whole character of the description, even though given in a rather free poetical form, awakes in us a feeling for the kind of perception which lived in these ancient peoples. There was active in them a living knowledge, a living wisdom, concerning their connection with the spiritual world and the world of Nature in which the spiritual world works.

Out of such wisdom the finest sons from the different tribes—that is, those who had the strongest connection with the spirits of the past, who more than others allowed these spirits of the past to live in their deeds—were chosen as a picked band. And those who had the strongest clairvoyant forces were placed at its head. This band had to defend the kernel of the Celtic peoples against the peoples of the surrounding world. And one of these leaders was the clairvoyant hero, who has come down to us under the name of Fingal. How Fingal was active in the defense of the ancient gods against those who wished to endanger them—all this was handed down in ancient songs, heard out of the spiritual world—the ancient songs of the bard Ossian, Fingal's son, so that it remained alive even into the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. What Fingal achieved, what his son Ossian heard when Fingal had ascended into the spiritual realm, what their descendants heard in the rhythms and sounds of Ossian's songs with which they ever and again ensouled their deeds, this it was which worked on so mightily even into the 18^th Century. And we shall win a conception of this if we realize how Ossian allowed the voice of his father, Fingal, to sound forth in his songs.

We are told how the heroes find themselves in a difficult position. They are almost overthrown ... when new life fills the band: “The king stood by the stone of Lubar. Thrice he reared his terrible voice. The deer started from the fountains of Cromia. The rocks shook on all their hills. Like the noise of a hundred mountain streams, that burst, and roar, and foam! Like the clouds, that gather to a tempest on the blue face of the sky! So met the sons of the desert round the terrible voice of Fingal. Pleasant was the voice of the king of Morven to the warriors of his land. Often had he led them to battle; often returned with the spoils of the foe.”

“‘Come to battle,’ said the king, ‘ye children of echoing Selma! Come to the death of thousands. Comhal's son will see the fight. My sword shall wave on the hill, the defense of my people in war. But never may you need it, warriors; while the son of Morni fights, the chief of mighty men! He shall lead my battle, that his fame may rise in song! O ye ghosts of heroes dead! Ye riders of the storm of Cromia! Receive my falling people with joy, and bear them to your hills. And may the blast of Lena carry them over my seas, that they may come to my silent dreams, and delight my soul in rest’ ...”

“Now like a dark and stormy cloud, edges round with the red lightning of heaven, flying westward from the morning's beam, the king of Selma removed. Terrible is the light of his armor; two spears are in his hand. His gray hair falls on the wind. He often looks back on the war. Three bards attend the son of fame, to bear his words to the chiefs. High on Cromia's side he sat, waving the lightning of his sword, and as he waved we moved ...”

“Fingal at once arose in arms. Thrice he reared his dreadful voice. Cromia answered around. The sons of the desert stood still. They bent their blushing faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of the king. He came like a cloud of rain in the day of the sun, when slow it rolls on the hill, and fields expect the shower. Silence attends its slow progress aloft: but the tempest is soon to arise. Swaran beheld the terrible kings of Morven. He stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear, rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed, as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. It bends over the stream: the grey moss whistles in the wind: so stood the king. Then slowly he retired to the rising heath of Lena. His thousands pour around the hero. Darkness gathers on the hill!”

“Fingal, like a beam from heaven, shone in the midst of his people. His heroes gather around him. He sends forth the voice of his power: ‘Raise my standards on high, spread them on Lena's wind, like the flames of an hundred hills! Let them sound on the winds of Erin, and remind us of the fight. Ye sons of the roaring streams, that pour from a thousand hills, be near the king of Morven! Attend to the words of his power! Gaul, strongest arm of death! O! Oscar of the future fights! Connal, son of the blue shields of Sora! Dermid, of the dark brown hair! Ossian, king of many songs!—Be near your father's arm!’ We reared the sunbeam of battle; the standard of the king! Each hero exulted with joy, as, waving, it flew in the wind. It was studded with gold above, as the blue wide shell of the nightly sky. Each hero had his standard, too, and each his gloomy mien!”

Thus Fingal stormed into battle, thus he is described by his son Ossian.

No wonder that this life, this consciousness of a connection with the spiritual world which sank deep into these peoples, into the souls of the ancient Celts, is the best preparation whereby they could spread the personal divine element throughout the West in their own way and from their own soil. For what they had experienced in the form of passion and desire, what they had heard sounding forth in the melodies of the spiritual world, prepared them for a later time when they brought into the world sons who revealed these passions in their souls in a purified and milder form. And thus we may say—it seems to us as if Erin's finest sons were to hear again the voices of their ancient bards singing of what they once heard out of the spiritual world as the deeds of their forefathers, but as if in Erin's finest sons the ancient battle cries had now been formed and clarified, and had become words which could express the greatest impulse of mankind.

All this sounded forth out of olden times in the songs about the deeds of the ancient Celts who fought out many things in mighty battles in order to prepare themselves for further deeds of spiritual life in later times, as we recognize them again today in that which the finest sons of the West have achieved. These were the impulses which flowed into the souls of human beings in the 18^th Century, when these ancient songs were revived. And it is this which was remembered by those who saw again the wonderful cathedral, built as if by Nature herself, and which caused them to say to themselves—“Here is a site, a gathering place, given to man by karma, in order that what the bards were able to sing about the deeds of their ancestors, about all that the heroes did to steel their forces, might sound back to them as in an echo out of this temple which they themselves did not have to build—out of their holy temple which was built for them by the spirits of Nature and which could be an instrument of enthusiasm for all who beheld it.”

So the tones and harmonies of this Overture which we have just heard offer an opportunity which allows us to sense, in our own way at least, something of the deep and mysterious events which do indeed reign in the history of mankind, events which occurred long before our present era on almost the same soil upon which they now continue to live. As we must deepen ourselves in all that lives within us, and as all that lives within us is only a further resounding of what was there in the past, so this feeling, this sense, for what once was and now works further in mankind is of great significance for occult life.

The objection is frequently made that theosophy does not really work its way into the realm of morality. In fact it is said that through certain of its teachings it in some respects not only does not counter egotism but furthers it. Those who are of this opinion share the following thoughts. They say that theosophy demonstrates how the human being develops his existence from life to life and that the main point is that even if he suffers defeats he has the possibility of striving ever higher, employing in a subsequent life the results of what he has learned in a given life as in a kind of “school.” He who immerses himself completely in this belief in human perfectibility will strive to render his “I” ever more pure, to make it as rich as possible, so that he may ascend ever higher and higher. This, so these people say, is after all really an egotistic striving. For we theosophists, they say, seek to attract teachings and forces from the spiritual world in order to elevate our “I” to ever greater heights. This is therefore an egotistic basis for human action. These people maintain further that we theosophists are convinced that we prepare a bad karma for ourselves through imperfect actions. Thus in order not to do so the theosophist will avoid doing this or that which he would otherwise have done. He therefore refrains from the action for fear of karma. For the same reason he would probably also do this or that which he otherwise would not have done, and this too would be but one more quite egotistic motivation for an action. There are a number of people who say that the teachings of karma and reincarnation as well as the rest of the striving for perfection which originates in theosophy leads people to work spiritually for a refined form of higher egotism. It would actually be a severe reproach if one were able to maintain that theosophy prompts people to develop moral action not out of sympathy and compassion but out of fear of punishment. Let us now ask ourselves whether such a reproach is really justified. We must reach very deeply into occult research if we wish to refute such a reproach to theosophy in a really fundamental way.

Let us assume that someone were to say that if a person does not already possess this striving for perfection, theosophy will certainly never prompt him to moral actions. A deeper understanding of what theosophy has to say can teach us that the individual is related to the whole of humanity in such a way that by acting immorally he not only does something that may earn him a punishment. It is rather the case that through an immoral thought, an immoral action or attitude he brings about something really absurd, something that cannot be reconciled with truly healthy thinking.

The statement has many implications. An immoral action not only implies a subsequent karmic punishment; it is rather in the most fundamental respect an action that one definitely ought not to do. Let us assume that a person commits a theft. In so doing the person incurs a karmic punishment. If one wishes to avoid this punishment one simply does not steal. But the matter is still more complicated. Let us ask ourselves what really motivates the person who lies or steals. The liar or thief seeks personal advantage—the liar perhaps wishing to wiggle out of an unpleasant situation. Such an action is only meaningful if one actually does gain an advantage through lying or stealing. If the person were now to realize that he simply cannot have that advantage, that he is wrong, that on the contrary he will bring about a disadvantage, he would then say to himself that it is nonsense even to think about such an action. As theosophy penetrates ever deeper into human civilization, people will know that it is absurd, indeed that it is ridiculous, to believe that through lying or stealing one can acquire what one seeks to acquire. For one thing will become increasingly clear for all people as theosophy enters their consciousness: that in the sense of higher causes we have to do not at all with totally separate human individualities, but that along with the separate individualities the whole of humanity forms a unity. One will realize more and more that in the sense of a true view of the world the finger is more intelligent than the whole man, for it does not presume to be something on its own, independent of the entire human organism to which it belongs. In its dull consciousness it knows that it cannot exist without the whole organism.

But people continually embrace illusions. They fancy themselves separate by virtue of what is enclosed within their skins. This they are, however, just as little as is the finger without the whole organism. The source of the illusion is the fact that the human being can wander about and the finger cannot. We are in the same situation on earth as is the finger on our organism. The science that believes our earth is a glowing hot, fluid sphere surrounded by a hard shell upon which we humans walk about, and that this explains the earth, stands at the same level as a science that would believe that in all essential respects the human being consists of nothing more, nothing else than his skeleton, for what one perceives of the earth is the same as the skeleton in man. The rest of what belongs to the earth is of a super-sensible nature. The earth is a real organism, a real living being. When one pictures to oneself the human being as a living creature, one can think of his blood with its red and white corpuscles. These can only develop in the entire human organism and thereby be what they are. What these red and white blood corpuscles are for the human being we human beings are for the organism of the earth. We definitely belong to this earth organism. We form a part of the whole living being that is the earth, and only then do we view ourselves correctly when we say, “As single individuals we are nothing. We are only complete when we think our way into the ‘body’ of the earth, the body of which we perceive only the skeleton, the mineral shell, as long as we do not acknowledge the spiritual members of this earth organism.”

When a process of infection arises in the human organism, the entire organism is seized by fever, by illness. If we translate this into terms applicable to the earth organism we can say that what occultism maintains is true: When something immoral is done anywhere on earth it amounts to the same thing for the whole earth organism as a little festering boil on the human body, which makes the whole organism sick. So that if a theft is committed on the earth the result is that the entire earth develops a kind of fever. This is not meant merely in a metaphorical sense. It is well-founded. The whole organism of the earth suffers from everything immoral and as individuals we can do nothing immoral without affecting the whole earth.

It is really a simple thought, yet people have a difficult time grasping it. But let those people who do not want to believe it just wait. Let one try to impress such thoughts upon our culture; let one try with these thoughts to appeal to the human heart, the human conscience. Whenever people anywhere act immorally their actions are a kind of infected boil for the whole earth and make the earth organism ill, and experience would show that tremendous moral impulses inhere in such knowledge.

One can preach morality as much as one likes; it will not help people one bit. But knowledge such as we have developed here would not seize hold of people merely as knowledge. If it found its way into the developing culture, if it streamed into the soul already in childhood, it would provide a tremendous moral impulse, for in the end no moral preachments have any real power to overwhelm, to convince the human soul. Schopenhauer is quite right when he says that to preach morality is easy but to establish it is difficult. People have a certain antipathy toward moral preachments. They say, “What is being preached to me is the will of someone else and I am supposed simply to acquiesce to it.” This belief will become more and more dominant to the degree that materialistic consciousness becomes dominant.

One says today that there is a morality of class, of social standing, and what such a class morality considers to be right is then applied to the other class. Such an attitude has found its way into human souls and in the future it will become worse and worse. People will come increasingly to feel that they themselves want to find everything that is to be acknowledged as correct in this sphere. They will feel that it should originate in their own inclination toward objective knowledge. The human individuality wants to be taken ever more seriously. But at the moment in which the heart, for instance, were to realize that it too would be sick if the whole organism became sick, man would do what is necessary in order not to fall ill. At the moment in which man realizes that he is embedded within the total organism of the earth and has no business being a festering boil on the earth's body—at that moment there exists an objective basis for morality. And man will say, “If I steal I am seeking my own personal advantage. I refrain from stealing because if I do steal I shall make sick the entire organism without which I cannot live. I do the opposite and thereby bring about something advantageous not only for the organism but also for myself.”

In the future the moral awareness of human beings will form itself in this general way. He who, through theosophy, finds an impetus to moral action will say to himself that it is an illusion to seek personal advantage through an immoral action. If you do that, you are like an octopus that ejects a dark fluid: you eject a dark aura of immoral impulses. Lying and stealing are the seeds of an aura into which you place yourself and through which you make the whole world unhappy.

People say, “All that surrounds us is maya.” But such truths must become truths for life itself. Let us suppose that one can demonstrate that through theosophy humanity's moral development in the future will enable man to see how he wraps himself in an aura of illusions when he seeks his own advantage. If one can demonstrate this, it will become a practical truth to say that the world is a maya or illusion. The finger believes this in its dull, half sleeping, half dreaming consciousness. It is bright enough to know that without the hand and the rest of the body it is no longer a finger. The human being today is not yet bright enough to know that without the body of the earth he is actually nothing. But he must become bright enough to know this. The finger therefore enjoys a certain advantage over man. It does not cut itself off. It does not say, “I want to keep my blood for myself or cut off a portion of myself.” It is in harmony with the whole organism. Man must, to be sure, develop a higher consciousness in order to come into harmony with the whole organism of the earth. In his present moral consciousness man does not yet know this. He could say to himself, “I inhale the air. It was just outside, and now it is inside the human body. Something external becomes something internal. And when I exhale, something internal again becomes something external. And so it is with the whole man.” The human being is not even aware of the simple fact that separated from the surrounding air he is nothing. He must undertake to develop an awareness of how he is locked into the entire organism of the earth.

How can the human being know: “You are a member of the whole organism of the earth?” Theosophy enables him to know this. It shows man that first there existed a Saturn condition, then a Sun condition, then a Moon condition. Man was present through all these conditions, although in a quite different way from today. Then the earth proceeded from the old Moon condition. Gradually the human being arose as earthly man. He has a long development behind him and in the future he is to advance to other stages of development. Man in his present form has arisen with the earth in its present form. When through the study of theosophy one traces how man and the earth have arisen it becomes clear in what way man is a part of the whole organism of the earth. Then it becomes clear how earth and man gradually have emerged from a spiritual life, how the beings of the hierarchies have fashioned earth and man, how man belongs to the hierarchies, even though he stands at the lowest stage. Then theosophy points to the central Being of the entire earthly evolution, to the Christ as the great archetype of the human being. And from all these teachings of theosophy the awareness shall spring forth for man, “Thus ought you to act.”

The science of the spirit shows us how we can feel ourselves to be a part of the whole life of the earth. The science of the spirit shows us that Christ is the Spirit of the earth. Our fingers, our toes, our nose, all our members dream that the heart provides them with blood. They dream that without a central organ they would be nothing, for without a heart they are not possible. Theosophy shows man that in the future of earthly evolution it would be folly not to take up the idea of Christ, for what the heart is for the organism Christ is for the body of the earth. Just as through the heart the blood provides the whole organism with life and strength, so must the Being of Christ have moved through all single souls on earth, and the words of St. Paul must become truth for them: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” The Christ must have flowed into all human hearts. Whoever wanted to say, “One can continue to exist without Christ,” would be as foolish as eyes and ears if they wanted to say that they could continue to exist without the heart. In the case of the single human body the heart must of course be present from the beginning, whereas the heart entered the organism of the earth only with the Christ. For the following ages, however, this heart's blood of Christ must have entered all human hearts. He who does not unite himself with it in his soul, will wither away. The earth will not wait with its development; it will come to the point to which it must come. Human beings alone can remain behind, that is, they would balk at receiving Christ in their souls. A number of human beings would stand there in their last incarnation on earth and not have reached the goal: they have not recognized Christ, have not received Christ-feeling, Christ-knowing into their souls. They are not mature. They do not take their places in the development to higher stages. They separate themselves off.

Such people do not immediately have the opportunity to collapse completely as would the nose and ears if they detached themselves from the whole human organism. But occult research shows that the following would happen to those who do not want to permeate themselves with the Christ element, the life of Christ, as this can be attained only through theosophy. Instead of living on upwards with the earth to new levels of existence they would have assimilated substances of decay, of disintegration, and would first have to enter upon other paths. If in the sequence of incarnations human souls take up the Christ into their knowledge, their feelings, their whole soul, the earth will fall away from these human souls just as a corpse falls away at a person's death. The corpse of the earth will fall away and that which, permeated with Christ, is present in a state of spirit and soul will proceed to form itself into new existence and will reincarnate itself on Jupiter.

What will happen now with those people who have not taken the Christ into themselves? Through theosophy they will have abundant opportunities to be able to recognize the Christ, to be able to take the Christ into themselves. Today people still resist doing so. They will resist less and less. But let us assume that at the end of the development there were those who even then continued to resist. There would then exist a number of people who could not join the rest in advancing to the next planet. They would not have reached the actual goal of the earth. These people would constitute a veritable cross on that planet upon which human beings will then develop further. For while this group will be incapable of sharing in the experience of the actual and proper Jupiter condition and what develops there, they will nevertheless be present on Jupiter. Everything that is subsequently material is first present in a spiritual state. Thus everything that people now, during the period of the earth develop spiritually in the way of immorality, of a refusal to take the Christ into themselves, is first present in a soul-spiritual state. But this will become material. It will surround and penetrate Jupiter as a neighboring element. This will be made up of the successors of those persons who did not take the Christ into themselves during the earth condition. What the soul develops in the nature of immorality, of resistance to the Christ will then be present materially, in an actually physical state. While the physical part of those people who have taken the Christ into themselves will exist in a finer form on Jupiter, the physical part of these other people will be fundamentally coarser. Occult research paints before the eye of the soul an image of what will be the future of the people who will not have reached earthly maturity.

We now breathe air. On Jupiter there will in essence be no air. Instead, Jupiter will be surrounded by a substance that, in comparison to our air, will be something refined, something etheric. In this substance those human beings will live who have reached the goal of the earth. Those others who have remained behind, however, will have to breathe something like a repulsively warm, boiling, fiery air infused with a dank stuffiness full of fetid odors. Thus the people who did not attain the maturity appropriate to the earth will be a cross for the other Jupiter people, for they will have a pestilent effect in the environment, in the swamps and other land masses of Jupiter. The fluid-physical components of the bodies of these people will be comparable to a liquid which constantly seeks to solidify, freezes up, coagulates. Consequently these beings will not only have this horrendous air to breathe but also a bodily state in which the blood would seem continually to congeal, to cease to remain fluid. The actual physical body of these beings will consist of a kind of slimy substance more revolting than the bodily substance of our present snails and fully equipped to secrete something like a kind of crust surrounding them. This crust will be softer than the skin of our present snakes, like a kind of soft scaly armor. Thus will these beings live in a rather less than appealing manner in the elements of Jupiter.

Such a picture as that contemplated in advance by the occult researcher is ghastly to behold. But woe to those who, like the ostrich, do not want to look at the danger and wish to shut their eyes before the truth. For it is just this that lulls us into error and illusion, while a bold look at the truth imparts the greatest moral impulses. If human beings listen to what truth says to them they will feel, “You are lying.” Then there will arise in them an image of the effect of this lie upon human nature in the Jupiter condition, the image that shows that the lie creates a slimy, pestilent breath for the future. This image, arising again and again, will be a reason to direct the impulses of the soul to what is healthy, for no one who really knows the consequences of immorality can in truth be immoral, for one is called upon to teach the true consequences that result from the causes. One should in fact direct people's attention to them while they are still children. Immorality exists only because people have no knowledge. Only the darkness of untruth makes immoral actions possible.

To be sure, what can thus be said concerning the connection between immorality and ignorance should not be intellectual knowledge but wisdom. Knowledge by itself participates in immorality and if it turns into sophisticated cleverness it can even be roguery, while wisdom will affect the human soul in such a way that the soul rays forth truth, innermost morality.

My dear friends, it is true that to establish morality is difficult; to preach morality is easy. To establish morality means to establish it out of wisdom, and one must first have this wisdom. Here we see that it was after all a rather intelligent utterance on the part of Schopenhauer when he said that to establish morality is difficult.

Thus we see how unfounded it is when people who do not really know theosophy come and say that it contains no moral incentives. Theosophy shows us what we accomplish in the world when we do not act morally. It provides wisdom, and from this very wisdom morality streams forth. There is no greater arrogance than to say that one need only be a good person and all will be in order. The trouble is that one must first know how one goes about really being a good person. Our contemporary consciousness is very arrogant when it wishes to reject all wisdom. True knowledge of the good requires that we penetrate deeply into the mysteries of wisdom, and this is inconvenient, for it requires that we learn a great deal.

So when people come and tell us that reincarnation and karma lay the foundation for an egotistical morality we can thus reply, “No! True theosophy shows man that when he does something immoral it is roughly the same as if he were to say, ‘I'm taking a sheet of paper to write a letter,’ and then takes a match and sets fire to the sheet of paper. That would be grotesque nonsense. A person finds himself in the same situation with respect to a wrong action or an immoral attitude.”

To steal means the same thing for the real, deeper human essence as when one lies. If one steals, one plants into the essential human being the seed that will cause one to develop a slimy, repulsive substance and to surround oneself with pestilent odors in the future. Only if one lives in the illusion that the truth is in the present moment can one do such a deed. In stealing, man places into himself something that amounts to the same thing as a flaying of the human being. If man knows this he will no longer be able to do an immoral deed; he will not be able to steal. Just as the plant seed sends forth blossoms in the future so too will theosophy, if it is planted in the human soul, send forth human blossoms, human morality. Theosophy is the seed, the soul is the nourishing ground and morality is the blossom and fruit on the plant of the developing human being.

A course of lectures in Helsingfors was to have begun today, but as karma has brought us together here instead, it may be useful to speak of certain subjects belonging to Spiritual Science, and then perhaps some particular wish may be expressed in the form of a question arising from our study on this unexpected occasion.

We will concern ourselves with certain thoughts which throw light on the subject of man's evolution in connection with the evolution of the earth, and as often before, we shall try to enlarge upon many things already known to us. Many things connected with the religious life and men's view of the world may have prompted the question: How are these things related to the deeper conceptions of life and the world which arise from Spiritual Science?

To begin with, I want to speak of two important concepts which confront the soul of modern man, even though he may believe he has long outgrown them. These two concepts are usually designated by the words ‘Sin’ and ‘Grace’. Everyone knows that the concepts ‘Sin’ and ‘Grace’ are of outstanding significance in the Christian view of life. There are theosophists who—from the standpoint of karma, as they allege—give no thought to concepts such as those of Sin and Grace or to the broader concept of Sin and Original Sin. This lack of reflection can lead to no good, because it prevents such people from recognizing the deeper aspects of Christianity, for example, and of other problems connected with views of life and the world. The background of the concepts of Sin, Original Sin, and Grace, is infinitely more profound than is generally imagined. The reason why this deep background is not perceived at the present time is that the real profundities of nearly all the traditional religions—this applies, to a greater or less extent, to nearly all of them in the form in which they now exist—have been more or less obliterated. The tenets of these religions seldom contain anything even remotely comparable with what lies behind these concepts of Sin, Original Sin and Grace. For what lies behind them is actually the whole evolution of the human race.

We are accustomed to divide this evolution into two main phases: a phase of descent, from the most ancient times until the appearance of Christ on the earth, and the phase of ascent which begins with the appearance of Christ on the earth and continues into the farthest future. Thus we regard the Coming of Christ as the event of supreme importance, not in the evolution of humanity alone but in the whole of our planetary evolution.

Why must the Christ Event be given this place at the very centre of our cosmic evolution? It is for the simple reason that man has come down from spiritual heights into the depths of material existence, whence he must again ascend to the heights of spirit. We have therefore to do with a descent and an ascent of man. In respect of man's life of soul, we say: In times of remote antiquity men were able to lead a spiritual life approximating far more closely to the Divine than is possible today. They were nearer to the divine-spiritual and divine-spiritual life shone with greater strength into the human soul. It must not, however, be forgotten that this descent into the material-physical world was necessary, because when men were nearer to the divine-spiritual, their whole consciousness was dimmer, more dream-like; it was less lucid, but at the same time inwoven with divine-spiritual thoughts, feelings and will-impulses. Man was nearer to the divine-spiritual but more like a dreaming child than a fully wide-awake, conscious human being. He has descended inasmuch as he has acquired the faculty of judgment necessary in physical life, namely, reason. Therewith he has descended from the heights of divine-spiritual existence but has become more clearly conscious of himself, has found a firm centre within his own being. In order to work his way upwards again he must fill this inner kernel of his life of soul with what has been brought by the Christ Impulse. And the more his soul is filled with the Christ Impulse, the higher he will ascend again into the divine-spiritual world, reaching it not as a being with dreamy, hazy consciousness, but as a being looking into the world with alert, lucid consciousness.

Closer investigation of the process of human evolution discloses that it is the ‘I’, the ego, of man which alone has made it possible for him to acquire the faculty of clear, intelligent perception of the physical world of sense, but that the ego was the last member of his being to develop; the astral body had developed earlier, the etheric body still earlier, and again earlier, the first rudiments of the physical body. We will remind ourselves especially today that the first stage of the development of the astral body preceded that of the ego. Many things we have heard in the course of time will have made it clear to us that before man could pass through the stage of ego-development, he must have passed through a stage where he consisted of three members only: physical body, etheric body, astral body. But already then he was involved in the process of the evolution of the ego; he lived within this evolutionary process, waiting, as it were, for the later bestowal of his ego. Rightly understood, this enables us to conceive that certain things must have happened to man and to the whole process of his development before he actually received his ego. These happenings belong to an epoch preceding that of the development of the ego. This is of great significance, for if man had passed through a phase of evolution before receiving his ego, what happened during that phase cannot be attributed to him in the same sense as what has happened since the bestowal of the ego is to be attributed to him.

There are beings who obviously have no ego in the human sense, namely, the animals. They consist of physical body, etheric body and astral body only. Everyone who thinks rationally recognizes something about the animals. Whatever fury may be exhibited by a lion, for example, we shall not say of a lion as we might say of a human being: he can be evil, he can sin, he can commit immoral deeds. We shall never speak of immorality in connection with the actions of an animal. This in itself is significant because even if we give no thought to it, we are thereby recognizing that the difference between man and animal consists in the fact that the animal has physical body, etheric body and astral body only, whereas man has the ego in addition. Man passed through a phase of evolution when the astral body was the highest member of his being. Did something happen to him during that stage which must be regarded in a different light from that in which the actions of animals are to be regarded? Yes indeed! For it must be clearly understood that although man was once a being consisting of physical body, etheric body and astral body, his nature was never the same as that of the animals as we know them today. Man was never an animal, but in other epochs he passed through a stage of evolution when he had these three bodies only—epochs when there were as yet no animals in their present form and when the conditions of existence on the earth were quite different.

What was it that actually happened to man at that time? As he had not received his ego, we cannot attribute to him what we now do in distinguishing him from the animals. What arose through him cannot be judged as it is to be judged today, when he has an ego. In the last stage of transition, when man was on the point of receiving his ego, there came the Luciferic influence. In that epoch of his evolution man was not the being he is today, but neither is he to be identified with the animals. Lucifer approached him. At that time man could not—acting as it were with full moral responsibility—choose whether he would or would not follow Lucifer; nevertheless he could be drawn into Lucifer's toils in a way other than that which applies to the animals today. This temptation by Lucifer occurred at the time when man was actually at the point of receiving his ego. This temptation was a deed to which man yielded before the period of ego-development but which has cast its shadows into the whole of this development. Who then, in the real sense, was the sinner? Not man as an ego-endowed being. Through Lucifer, man became a sinner with one part of his being—the part with which, properly speaking, he can no longer be a sinner today, for now he has his ego. At that time, therefore, he sinned with his astral body. That is the radical difference between the sin we now incur as men and the sin which at that time crept into our human nature. When man succumbed to the temptation of Lucifer, he succumbed with his astral body. This, therefore, is a deed which belongs to the period prior to that of ego-development and is entirely different in character from any deed of which man has been capable since his ego entered into him—even in its very earliest rudiments. It was therefore a deed of man which preceded the entry of the ego, but it cast its shadows into all subsequent ages of time. Man's nature was such that before receiving his ego, he was able to perform the ‘deed’ of lending himself to the Luciferic temptation but through all later time he has been under the influence resulting from this deed. In what sense under its influence? The consequence of the astral body having incurred guilt before man became an ego-endowed being has been that in each successive incarnation he sank more deeply into the physical world. The impetus for this descent was this action, this deed, which was enacted then in the astral body. Man found himself on a steep downward gradient, and with his ego he now lends himself to forces in his nature deriving from the stage of his evolution preceding that of the development of his ego.

How did these forces take effect in the evolution of humanity? They took effect in the following way. We know that until approximately the seventh year of life the physical body of the human being develops, from the seventh to the fourteenth years the etheric body, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first years the astral body, and so on. When the development of the etheric body has been completed, man reaches the stage when he is able to propagate his kind. (We will not now consider what form this takes in the animal kingdom.) When the etheric body has fully developed, the human being is able to reproduce his kind. Anyone who gives a little thought to this—he need not be clairvoyant but only reflect a little—will say: when the development of the etheric body is complete it is possible for a human being to bring forth another of his kind in the fullest sense. This means that as he grows on into the twenties he can develop no new procreative powers. It cannot be said that a man of 30 adds anything to this capacity to propagate his kind; he possesses it to the full as soon as the development of his etheric body is complete. What factor is added later? Nothing that he himself subsequently acquires is added, for he already possesses the power of propagation to the full when the etheric body is completely developed. What, then, is added? As far as the full power to propagate his kind is concerned, the one and only capacity subsequently added by the human being is that of being in a position to vitiate, to weaken it. What he can still acquire after the full development of his etheric body cannot enrich the actual power to propagate his kind, but can only impoverish it. The fact is that qualities acquired after the onset of puberty contribute nothing to the improvement of the human race but only make for its deterioration. This is due to the influence of the impulse which proceeds from the guilt incurred by the astral body. After the etheric body has fully developed, that is to say, at about the fourteenth year, the astral body develops further. Yes, but the influence of Lucifer is implanted in the astral body! What works back again from there into the functioning of the etheric body can only have the effect of weakening the forces of the etheric body which enable man to propagate his kind. In other words: what the astral body has become as the result of the temptation of Lucifer is a perpetual cause of degeneration and deterioration of the human race. And this has actually happened.

There has been continuous deterioration in man through the course of the incarnations. The farther we go back towards the Atlantean epoch, the more do we find in the physical endowments of man, higher forces than were working in later times. Where, then, was the impulse activated in the astral body through the temptation of Lucifer, implanted? It was implanted in heredity, causing increasing deterioration in that process. Sin that man incurs with his ego may work back upon the astral body and can only take effect in karma; but the sin incurred by man before he had an ego, contributes to a continual degeneration and deterioration of the human race as a whole. This sin became an inheritance. And just as it is true that no human being can inherit anything from his ancestors in the higher, spiritual sense—for nobody is clever because he has a clever father but because he learns things that make for cleverness (nobody has yet inherited the principles of mathematics or other such concepts from his ancestors)—just as we cannot inherit these capacities but acquire them through education, it is equally true that what works back into the etheric body from the astral body, contributes only to the undermining of the faculties of the human race. There we have the true meaning of the concept of ‘Original Sin’. The Original Sin which still persisted in the human astral body was handed down by gradual transmission and imparted itself to the hereditary qualities—which were themselves involved in the process of physical degeneration—as a factor in man's descent from spiritual heights into physical degeneration. So the legacy of Lucifer's influence has been a continuous impulse which in the very truest sense must be designated as Original Sin; for what entered into the human astral body through Lucifer is transmitted from generation to generation. There is no more appropriate term for the real cause of man's fall into the material-physical world than the expression: Original Sin, Inherited Sin. But our conception of the Original Sin must differ from that of other sins of ordinary life which are to be attributed entirely to ourselves: we must think of Original Sin as a destiny of man, as something that had inevitably to be imposed upon us by the World Order, because this World Order was obliged to lead us downwards—not in order to worsen us but in order to awaken in us the forces wherewith again to work our way upwards. We must therefore conceive of this Fall as something that has been woven into human destiny for the sake of the freeing of mankind. We could never have become free beings had we not been thrust downwards; we should have been tied to the strings of a World Order which we should have been obliged to follow blindly. What we have to do is to work our own way upwards again.

Now there is nothing that has not its opposite pole. Just as there can be no North Pole without a South Pole, so there can be no phenomenon such as this sin of the astral body without its opposite pole. Without being able to speak in the ordinary sense of moral wrong on our part, it is our destiny as men to be permeated by Luciferic forces. In a certain respect we can do nothing about it, indeed we must rather be thankful that it happened so. We were obliged, then, to incur a burden for which we cannot in the full sense be held responsible.

In human evolution there is something that is related to this as the North Pole is related to the South Pole. This sin which, in its consequences, is inherited, which represents sin in man of which he is not guilty in the real sense, must be counterbalanced by the possibility of re-ascent, also without merit of his own. Just as without guilt of his own, man was obliged to fall, so he must be able to re-ascend without merit of his own—that is to say, without full merit of his own. We fell without being ourselves guilty and we must therefore be able to ascend without merit of our own. That is the necessary polarity. Otherwise we should be obliged to remain below in the physical-material world. Just as we must place at the beginning of our evolution a guilt which man did not himself incur, so at the end of evolution we must place a gift that is bestowed upon him without merit on his part. These two things belong together. The best way of understanding why it is so is to think of the following.

What a man does in ordinary life proceeds from the impulses of his feelings, his emotions, his natural urges, his desires; he gets angry and does certain things out of anger; or he loves in the ordinary way and his actions are prompted by this emotion. There is one word only that can aptly express what man does in this way. You will all admit that in what a man does out of passions, out of anger, or out of ordinary love, there is an element that defies all abstract definition. Only a prosaic, academic brain would attempt to define what actually underlies some particular action of a human being. Yet there is a word which indicates the antecedents of the actions of a man in ordinary life—it is the word ‘Personality’. This word embraces all the indefinable factors. When we have really understood a man's personality, then we may be able to judge why it was that he developed this or that passion, this or that desire, or whatever it may be. Everything that is done out of these impulses bears a personal character. But we are so entangled in material life when we act out of our impulses, desires and passions! Our ego is submerged in the ocean of the physical-material world, is anything but free when it follows the dictates of anger, of passions, or also of love in the ordinary sense. The ego is unfree because it is ensnared in the toils of anger, of passion and the like.

If we observe our present age we shall find something that simply did not exist in ancient times. Only those who have no knowledge of history and who can scarcely see farther than their noses will declare that in the earlier periods of ancient Greece, for example, there were present such things as we today express with words that have been famous now for more than a century—words such as ‘liberty’, ‘equality among men’, and the like. These words signify moral and ethical ideas, as in the first declared object of the Theosophical Society: ‘To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Man without distinction of race, creed, caste or sex.’ For us, as men of the modern age, this is an ideal. It was not at all the same among the ancient Egyptians, among the ancient Persians, or indeed among any of the other peoples of antiquity. In the present age men adhere to such ideals but, in most cases, what they do in the name of liberty, brotherhood, and so forth, bears all the characteristics of abstraction, and admits of definition. For the majority of men, what they grasp of the real import of these ideals of freedom, brotherhood and so on, is capable of definition because they grasp so very little. Passions may become inflated but, for all that, numbers of human beings give us the impression that we have before us something that is withered and sapless. These ‘ideals’ cannot be called personal; they are abstract ideas, lacking the full-blooded vigour of personal life. Yet we attribute greatness to individuals in whom the idea of liberty, for example, seems to have become an out-streaming elemental force, as if it were issuing from wrath, passion, or ordinary love. In many respects today ideas which are to be regarded as the very highest moral ideals are allowed to lie fallow; yet these ideas could be the beginning of momentous development. Just as man has plunged with his ego into the physical-material world, has unfolded personality while acting under the influences of passions, impulses and desires, so he must rise, not merely with abstract concepts but with personality to the heights of ideas which are still abstract today. When this happens, spiritual ideals will be imbued with the same elemental force that can be perceived in actions springing from hatred or love in the ordinary sense.

Man will eventually ascend to higher spheres with his personality. But something else is required. When the human being dives with his ego into the ocean of physical-material life, he finds his personality, he finds his warm blood, he finds the surging impulses and desires in his astral body—in short, he dives down into his personality. But now he must ascend into the realm of moral ideals—which must no longer be a realm of abstraction. He must rise to the Spiritual, and then there must stream towards him a reality in every sense as ‘personal’ as the reality streaming to him when he dives with his ego into his warm blood and surging passions. He must now scale the heights without lapsing into abstraction. How, then, as he rises into the Spiritual, can he enter into something that is a ‘personal’ reality? How can he develop these ideals in such a way that they are invested with the character of personality? There is only one way whereby this can be achieved. In these heights of spiritual life man must be able to draw to himself a Personality as inwardly real as the personality below in the flesh is real. Who is this Personality Whom man must draw to himself if he is to ascend into the Spiritual? This Personality is none other than Christ! One who speaks in the sense contrary to St. Paul may say: ‘Not I, but my astral body’—but St. Paul says, ‘Not I, but Christ in me’—indicating that when Christ lives in us, abstract ideas are invested with a personal character. Herein lies the significance of the Christ Impulse. Without the Christ Impulse humanity would reach abstract ideals only, abstract ideas of morality and the like, such as are described as ideas working in history by many historians today but which can neither live nor die because they have no creative power. When reference is made to the part played by ideas in history, it should be realized that these are dead, abstract concepts, incapable of exercising sway over epochs of civilization. Living reality alone can exercise such sway. The task before man is to unfold a higher Personality. This is the Christ-Personality Whom he draws to himself, receives into himself.

Man cannot rise again to the Spiritual by merely talking about the Spirit but only by taking the Spirit into himself in the living, personal form presented to him in the Events of Palestine, in the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus does man rise upwards again under the influence of the Christ Impulse. In no other way can abstract ideals be invested with the force of personality than by allowing the Christ Impulse to permeate the whole of our spiritual life. If on the one side, through guilt incurred before the development of the ego, we have burdened ourselves with what is called Original Sin, if there we have something for which we cannot be held wholly responsible, neither are we ourselves responsible for the fact that it is possible to draw the Christ to ourselves. Our ego plays a part in what we do or endeavour to do in order to come near to Christ, and there we can truly speak of merit. But the fact that Christ is present, that we are living on a planet where He once dwelt and in times after this actually happened—this is not due to any merit of our own. Therefore what flows from the Living Christ in order to bring us upwards again into the spiritual world, comes from beyond the sphere of the ego and draws us upwards as irresistibly as we incurred guilt without ourselves being guilty. Through Christ's existence on earth we have the strength to rise again into the spiritual world without merit of our own, just as we incurred guilt without sin of our own. Neither fact has to do with the element of personality in which the ego lives, but both are connected with happenings that precede and follow the coming of the ego. Man has evolved from a state of existence when he had only physical body, etheric body and astral body, and he evolves further through transforming his astral body into Manas (Spirit-Self). Just as man has worsened his astral body through incurring Original Sin, so he heals it again through the Christ Impulse. An inflowing power repairs the astral body to the same extent to which it has deteriorated. That is the Atonement, that is what in the true sense is called ‘Grace’. Grace is the concept that is complementary to that of Original Sin. So the Christ Impulse has made it possible for man to become one with Christ, to say with St. Paul: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, thus giving expression to everything that is designated by the concept of Grace.

Therefore to speak of the existence of Original Sin and of Grace does not denote misunderstanding of the idea of karma. For in speaking of the idea of karma we are speaking of the reincarnation of the ego in the different earth-lives. Karma is inconceivable without the presence of the ego: Original Sin and Grace, impulses which lie below the surface of karma, [are] in the astral body. We can say with truth that human karma was first brought about because man had burdened himself with Original Sin. Karma flows through the incarnations and before and after there are happenings which introduce and subsequently expurgate it. Before karma—Original Sin; and after—the victory of the Christ Impulse, the fullness of Grace.

So again from this point of view, Spiritual Science has a great and significant mission, particularly in our time. For true as it is that humanity has only lately come to recognize ideals in the form of abstractions, to unfold abstract ideas of liberty, brotherhood and the like, it is also true that we are facing a future when these ideas must no longer hovel before us as abstractions but approach us as living forces. True as it is that men have passed through the transitional stage of forming abstract ideals, it is equally true that they must advance to the stage where these ideals come to personal fulfillment within them; they must advance to the portal of the new Temple. That is the prospect before us. Men will be taught that what works down from spiritual heights is not mere abstraction but living reality. When the new faculty of vision that is to arise in the next phase of evolution begins to function, when men give up thinking, ‘How well I am getting on!’ but with etheric vision behold the living power of Christ Who will reveal Himself in an etheric body—as we know, this will happen to certain individuals before the middle of the century—when they begin to behold the Living Christ, they will know that what they have glimpsed for a time in the form of abstract ideas are in very truth living beings within our evolution. For the Living Christ Who first appeared in physical form—which at that time was the only form in which He could convey to men that even those who were not His contemporaries could believe in Him—the Living Christ will reveal Himself in a new form. The fact that He lives will need no proof, for then there will be actual witnesses—men who themselves experience, even without special development but with a kind of matured vision, that the moral powers of our World Order are living realities, not merely abstract ideals.

Our thoughts cannot carry us into the true spiritual worlds because they have no life. Not until we cease to regard these thoughts as our own creations but as testimonies of the Living Christ Who will appear to men, shall we rightly understand these thoughts. Then, as truly as man became a personality through descending with his ego into lower spheres, as truly will he be a personality when he ascends to the heights of spirit. This is beyond the comprehension of materialistic thinking. All that materialism can understand, and readily understand, is that there are abstract ideals, ideals of the Good, the Beautiful, and so forth. That there are living Powers who draw us upwards through their Grace—this can be realized only through spiritual development. That is what the renewed Christ Impulse means. When we no longer regard our ideals simply as ideals but through them find the way to Christ, then we help Christianity forward in the sense of Spiritual Science; then Christianity will enter a new stage and cease to be merely a preparation. Christianity will itself make evident that it contains the greatest of all impulses for all time to come. And then those who believe that to speak of developing Christianity is only to endanger it will see how greatly they are in error. These are the people of ‘little faith’, who are alarmed when it is said that in Christianity there are glories still greater than have yet been revealed. Those whose conception of Christianity bears the hallmark of greatness are men who know that the words that Christ is with us to the end of time are true—meaning that He is the constant Revealer of the New and at the same time its origin and source.

By realizing that Christianity will bring forth from its depths an increasing flow of new and more living creations, we enhance its greatness. Those who are always saying: ‘That is not in the Bible, that is not true Christianity and those who maintain that it is, are heretics’, must be reminded that Christ also said: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now’. He did not say this in order to indicate that He wished to withhold anything from men, but that from epoch to epoch He would bring them new revelations. And this He will do through those who are willing to understand Him. Those who deny that there can be new revelations do not understand the Bible, neither do they understand Christianity. For they have no ears for what is implied in the admonition given by Christ: ‘I have still much to say to you—but prepare yourselves in order that you may be able to bear it and understand it.’

The true Christians of the future will be those who are willing to hear what the Christians who were contemporaries of Christ were not yet able to bear. Those who allow Christ's Grace to flow into their hearts in ever increasing abundance—they will be the true Christians. The ‘hard of heart’ will resist this Grace, saying: Go back to the Bible, to the literal text of the Bible, for that alone is true. This is a disavowal of the words which in Christianity itself kindle light, words which we will take into our hearts: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ Good it will be for men when they can bear more and more in this sense: for thereby they prepare themselves for the ascent into the spiritual heights. And to these spiritual heights Christianity leads the way.

This lecture-cycle deals with a subject which concerns Man very closely, namely, the exact nature and life of Man himself. Although so close to man, because it concerns himself; the subject is a difficult one to approach. For if we turn our attention to the challenge ”Know thyself!”, a challenge that has forced itself upon man through all the ages, as we may say, from mystic, occult heights, we see at once that a real, true self-knowledge is very hard of attainment. This applies not only to individual, personal self-knowledge, but above all to knowledge of the human being as such. Indeed it is precisely because man is so far from knowing his own being and has such a long way to go in order to know himself, that the subject we are about to discuss in the course of these few days will be in a certain respect something alien to us, something for which much preparation is necessary. Moreover it is not without reason that I myself have only reached the point where I can at last speak upon this theme as the result of mature reflection covering a long period of time. For it is a theme which cannot be approached with any prospect of arriving at a true and honest observation unless a certain attitude, often left out of account in ordinary scientific observation, be adopted. This attitude is one of reverence in the presence of the essential nature and Being of Man. It is, then, of vital importance that we maintain this attitude as a fundamental condition underlying the following reflections.

How can one truly maintain this reverence? In no other way, than by first disregarding what he appears to be in everyday life, whether it be oneself or another is of no consequence, and then by uplifting ourselves to the conception: Man, with all that he has evolved into, is not here for his own sake; he is here as revelation of the Divine Spirit, of the whole World. He is a revelation of the Godhead of the World! And, when a man speaks of aspiring after self-knowledge, of aspiring to become ever more and more perfect, in the spiritual-scientific sense which has just been indicated, this should not be due to the fact that he desires merely from curiosity, or from a mere craving or knowledge, to know what man is; but rather that he feels it to be his duty to fashion ever more and more perfectly this representation, this revelation, of the World Spirit through Man, so that he may find some meaning in the words, “to remain unknowing is to sin against Divine destiny!” For the World Spirit has implanted in us the power to have knowledge; and, when we do not will to acquire knowledge, we refuse what we really ought not to refuse, namely, to be a revelation of the World Spirit; and we represent more and more, not a revelation of the World Spirit, but a caricature, a distorted image of it. It is our duty to strive to become ever increasingly an image of the World Spirit. Only when we can give meaning to these words, “to become an image of the World Spirit”; only when it becomes significant for us in this sense to say, “We must learn to know, it is our duty to learn to know,” only then can we sense aright that feeling of reverence we have just demanded, in the presence of the Being of Man. And for one who wishes to reflect, in the occult sense, upon the life of man, upon the essential quality of man's being, this reverence before the nature of man is an absolute necessity, for the simple reason that it is the only thing capable of awakening our spiritual sight, our entire spiritual faculty for seeing and beholding the things of the spirit, of awakening those forces which permit us to penetrate into the spiritual foundation of man's nature. Anyone who, as seer and investigator of the Spirit, is unable to have the very highest degree of reverence in the presence of the nature of man, who cannot permeate himself to the very fibres of his soul with the feeling of reverence before man's nature, must remain with closed eyes (however open they may be for this or that spiritual secret of the world) to all that concerns what is really deepest in the Being of Man. There may be many clairvoyants who can behold this or that in the spiritual environment of our existence; yet, if this reverence is lacking, they lack also the capacity to see into the depths of man's nature, and they will not know how to say anything rightly with regard to what constitutes the Being of Man.

In the external sense the teaching about life is called physiology. This teaching should not here be regarded in the same way as in external science but as it presents itself to the spiritual eye; so that we may look beyond the forms of the outer man, beyond the form and functions of his physical organs into the spiritual, super-sensible foundation of the organs, of the life-forms and life processes. And since it is not our intention here to pursue this “occult physiology,” as it may be called, in any unreal way, it will be necessary in several cases to refer with entire candour to things which from the very beginning will sound rather improbable to anyone who is more or less uninitiated. At the same time, it may be stated that this cycle of lectures, even more than some others I have delivered, forms a whole, and that no single part of any one lecture, especially the earlier ones—for much that is to find expression in the course of this cycle will have to be affirmed without restraint—should be torn from its context and judged separately. On the contrary, only after having heard the concluding lectures will it be possible to form a judgment with regard to what really has been said. For this reason, therefore, it will be necessary to proceed in a somewhat different way, in this occult physiology, from that of external physiology. The foundations for our introductory statements will be confirmed by what meets us at the conclusion. We shall not be called upon to draw a straight line, as it were, from the beginning to the end; but we shall proceed in a circle so that we shall return again, at the end, to the point from which we started.

It is an examination, a study, of Man, that is to be presented here. At first he appears before our external senses in his outer form. We know, of course, that to what in the first place the layman with his purely external observation can know concerning man, there is to-day a very great deal which science has added through research. Therefore, when considering what we are able to know of the human being at the present time through external experience and observation, we must of necessity combine what the layman is in a position to observe in himself and others with what science has to say, including those branches of scientific observation which come to their results through methods and instruments worthy of our admiration.

If we bear in mind first, purely as regards external man, all that a layman may observe in him (or may perhaps have learned from some sort of popular description of the nature of man), then it will perhaps not seem incomprehensible if, from the very beginning, attention is called to the fact that even the outer shape of man, as it meets us in the outside world, really consists of a duality. And for anyone who wishes to penetrate into the depths of human nature, it is absolutely necessary that he becomes conscious of the fact, that even external man, as regards his form and stature, presents fundamentally a duality.

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One part of man, which we can clearly distinguish, consists of everything that is to be found enclosed in organs affording the greatest protection against the outside world: that is, all that we may include within the region of the brain and the spinal cord. Everything belonging in this connection to the nature of man, to the brain and spinal cord, is firmly enclosed in a secure protective bony structure. Taking a side view, we observe that what belongs to these two systems may be illustrated in the following way. If a in this diagram represents all the super-imposed vertebrae along the whole length of the spinal cord, and b the cranium and the bones of the skull, then inside the canal which is formed by these super-imposed vertebrae, as well as by the bones of the skull, is enclosed everything belonging to the sphere of the brain and the spinal cord. One cannot observe the human being without becoming conscious of the fact that everything pertaining to this region forms a totality complete within itself; and that the rest of man (which we might group physiologically in the most varied ways, as the neck, the trunk, the limb-structure) keeps its connection with all that we reckon as brain and spinal cord by means of more or less thread-like or ribbon-shaped formations, pictorially speaking, which must first break through this protective sheath, in order that a connection may be brought about between the portion enclosed within this bony structure and the portion attached to it as exterior nature of man. Thus we may say that, even to a superficial observation, everything constituting man proves itself to be a duality, the one portion lying within the bony structure we have described, the firm and secure protective sheath, and the other portion without.

At this point we must cast a purely superficial glance at that which lies within this bony structure. Here again we can quite easily distinguish between the large mass embedded within the skull-bones in the form of a brain, and that other portion which is appended to it like a stalk or cord and which, while organically connected with the brain, extends in this thread-like outgrowth of the brain into the spinal canal. If we differentiate between these two structures we must at once call attention to something which external science does not need to consider, something of which occult science, however, since its task is to penetrate into the depths of the being of things, must indeed take note. We must call attention to the fact that everything which we consider as the basis of a study of man refers, in the first place, only to Man. For the moment we enter into the deeper fundaments of the separate organs, we become aware (and we shall see in the course of these lectures that this is true) that any one of these organs, through its deeper significance in the case of man, may have an entirely different task from that of the corresponding organ in the animal world. Or, to put it more exactly, anyone who looks upon such things with the help of ordinary external science will say: “What you have been telling us here may be just as truly affirmed with reference to the animals.” That which is said here, however, with reference to the essential nature of the organs in the case of the human being, cannot be said in the same way with regard to the animal. On the contrary the occult task is to consider the animal by itself, and to investigate whether that which we are in a position to state regarding man with reference to the spine and the brain, is valid also for animals. For the fact that the animals closely related to man also have a spine and a brain does not prove that these organs, in their deeper significance, have the same task in both man and animal; just as the fact that a man holds a knife in his hand does not indicate whether it is for the purpose of carving a piece of veal or in order to erase something. In both cases we have to do with a knife; and he who considers only the form of the knife, that is, the knife as knife, will believe that in both cases it amounts to the same thing. In both cases, he who stands on the basis of a science that is not occult will say that we have to do with a spinal cord and a brain; and he will believe, since the same organs are to be found in man and animal, that these organs must therefore have the same function. But this is not true. It is something that has become a habit of thought in external science, and has led to certain inaccuracies; and it can be corrected only if external science will accustom itself gradually to enter into what can be stated from out of the depths of super-sensible research regarding the different living beings.

Now, when we consider the spinal cord on the one hand, and the brain on the other, we can easily see that there is a certain element of truth in something already pointed out more than a hundred years ago by thoughtful students of nature. There is a certain rightness in the statement that when one observes the brain carefully it looks, so to speak, like a transformed spinal cord. This becomes all the more intelligible when we remember that Goethe, Oken, and other similarly reflective observers of nature, turned their attention primarily to the fact that the skull-bones bear certain resemblances of form to the vertebrae of the spine. Goethe, for example, was impressed very early in his reflections by the fact that when one imagines a single vertebra of the spinal column transformed, levelled and distended there may appear through such a reshaping of the vertebrae the bones of the head, the skull-bones; thus, if one should take a single vertebra and distend it on all sides so that it has elevations here and there, and at the same time is smooth and uniform in its expansions, the form of the skull might in this way be gradually derived from a single vertebra. Thus we may in a certain respect call the skull-bones reshaped vertebrae.

Now, just as we can look upon the skull-bones which enclose the brain as transformed vertebrae, as the transformation of such bones as enclose the spinal cord, so we may also think of the mass of the spinal cord distended in a different way, differentiated, more complex, till we obtain out of the spinal cord, so to speak, through this alteration, the brain. We might likewise, for instance, think how out of a plant, which at first has only green foliage, there grows forth the blossom. And so we might imagine that through the reshaping of a spinal cord, through its elevation to higher stages, the entire brain could be formed. (Later on, it will become clear how this matter is to be considered scientifically.) We may accordingly imagine our brain as a differentiated spinal cord.

Let us now look at both of these organs from this standpoint. Which of the two must we naturally look upon as the younger? Certainly not that one which shows the derived form, but rather the one which shows the original form. The spinal cord is at the first stage, it is younger; and the brain is at the second stage, it has gone through the stage of a spinal cord, is a transformed spinal cord, and is therefore to be considered as the older organ. In other words, if we fix our attention upon this new duality which meets us in man as brain and spinal cord, we may say that all the latent tendencies, all the forces, which lead to the building of a brain must be older forces in man; for they must first, at an earlier stage, have formed the tendency to a spinal cord, and must then have worked further toward the re-forming of this beginning of a spinal cord into a brain. A second start, as it were, must therefore have been made, in which our spinal cord did not progress far enough to reach the second stage but remained at the stage of the spinal cord. We have, accordingly, in this spine and nerve system (if we wish to express ourselves with pedantic exactness) a spine of the first order; and in our brain a spinal cord of the second order, a re-formed spinal cord which has become older—a spinal cord which once was there as such, but which has been transformed into a brain.

Thus we have, in the first place, shown with absolute accuracy just what we need to consider when we fix our attention objectively upon the organic mass enclosed; within this protective bony sheath. Here, however, something else must be taken into account, namely, something which really can confront us only in the field of occultism. A question may suggest itself, when for instance we speak as we have just been doing about the brain and the spinal cord, taking perhaps the following form: when such a re-formation as this takes place, from the plan of an organ at a first stage to the plan of an organ at a second stage, the evolutionary process may be progressive, or it may be retrogressive. That is, the process before us may either be one which leads to higher stages of perfection of the organ, or one which causes the organ to degenerate and gradually to die. We might say therefore, when we consider an organ like our spinal cord as it is to-day, that it seems to us to be at the present time a relatively young organ since it has not yet succeeded in becoming a brain. We may think about this spinal cord in two different ways. First, we may consider that it has in itself the forces through which it may also one day become a brain. In that case, it would be in a position to pass through a progressive evolution, and to become what our brain is to-day; or secondly, we may consider that it has not at all the latent tendency to attain to this second stage. In that case its evolution would be leading toward extinction; it would pass into decadence and be destined to suggest the first stage and not to arrive at the second. Now, if we reflect that the groundwork of our present brain is what was once the plan or beginning of a spinal cord, we see that that former spinal cord undoubtedly had in it the forces of a progressive evolution, since it actually did become a brain. If, on the other hand, we consider at this point our present spinal cord, the occult method of observation reveals that what to-day is our spinal cord has not within itself, as a matter of fact, the latent tendency to a forward-directed evolution, but is rather preparing to conclude its evolution at this present stage.

If I may express myself grotesquely, the human being is not called upon to believe that one day his spinal cord, which now has the form of a slender string, will be puffed out as the brain is puffed out. We shall see later what underlies the occult view, so as to enable us to say this. Yet, through this simple comparison of the form of this organ in man and in the lower animals, where it first appears, you will find an external intimation of what has just been stated. In the snake, for example, the spine adds on to itself a series of innumerable rings behind the head and is filled out with the spinal cord, and this spinal column extends both forward and backward indefinitely. In the case of man the spinal cord, as it extends downward from the point where it is joined to the brain, actually tends more and more to a conclusion, showing less and less clearly that formation which it exhibits in its upper portions. Thus, even through external observation, one may notice that what in the case of the snake continues its natural evolution rearward, is here hastening toward a conclusion, toward a sort of degeneration. This is a method of observation through external comparison, and we shall see how the occult view affects it.

To summarise, then, we may say that within the bony structure of the skull we have a spinal cord which through a progressive development has become a brain, and is now at a second stage of its evolution; and in our spinal cord we have, as it were, the attempt once again to form such a brain, an attempt, however, which is destined to fail and cannot reach its full growth into a real brain.

Let us now proceed from this reflection to that which can be known even from an external, layman's observation, to the functions of the brain and the spinal cord. It is more or less known to everyone that the instrument of the so-called higher soul-activities, is in a certain respect, in the brain, that these higher soul-activities are directed by the organs of the brain. Furthermore, it is recognised that the more unconscious soul-activities are directed from the spinal cord. I mean those soul-activities in which very little deliberation interposes itself between the reception of the external impression and the action which follows it. Consider for a moment how you jerk back your hand when it is stung. Not very much deliberation intervenes between the sting and the drawing back. Such soul-activities as these are in fact, and with a certain justification, even regarded by natural science in such a way as to attribute to them the spinal cord as their instrument.

We have other soul-activities in which a more mature reflection interposes itself between the external impression and that which finally leads to action. Take, for example, an artist who observes external nature, straining every sense and gathering countless impressions. A long time passes, during which he works over these impressions in an inner activity of soul. He then proceeds to establish after a long interval through outward action what has grown, in long-continued soul-activity, out of the external impressions. Here there intervenes, between the outer impression and that which the man produces as a result of the outer impression, a richer activity of soul. This is also true of the scientific investigator; and, indeed, of anyone who reflects about the things that he wishes to do, and does not rush wildly at every external impression, who does not as it were, in reflex action fly into a passion like a bull when he sees the colour red, but thinks about what he wishes to do. In every instance where reflection intervenes, we encounter the brain as an instrument of soul-activity.

If we go still deeper into this matter we may say to ourselves: True, but how then does this soul-activity of ours, in which we use the brain, manifest itself? We perceive, to begin with, that it is of two different kinds, one of which takes place in our ordinary waking day-consciousness. In this consciousness we accumulate, through the senses, external impressions; and these we work over by means of the brain in rational reflection. To express it in popular language—we shall have to go into this still more accurately—we must picture to ourselves that these outer impressions find their way inside us through the doors of the senses, and stimulate certain processes in the brain. If we should wish, purely in connection with the external organisation, to follow what there takes place, we should see that the brain is set into activity through the stream of external impressions flowing into it; and that what this stream becomes, as a result of reflection, that is the deeds, the actions, which we ascribe to the instrumentality of the spinal cord.

Then, there also mingles in human life as it is to-day, between the wide-awake life of day and the unconscious life of sleep, the picture-life of dreams. This dream-life is a remarkable intermingling of the wide-awake life of day, which lays full claim to the instrument of our brain, and the unconscious life of sleep. Merely in outline, in a way that the lay thinker may observe for himself, we will now say something about this life of dreams.

We see that the whole of the dream-life has a strange similarity, from one aspect, to that subordinate soul-activity which we associate with the spinal cord. For, when dream-pictures emerge in our soul they do not appear as representations resulting from reflection, but rather by reason of a certain necessity, as, for instance, a movement of the hand results when a fly settles on the eye. In this latter case an action takes place as an immediate, necessary movement of defense. In dream-life something different appears, yet likewise because of an immediate necessity. It is not an action which here appears but rather a picture upon the horizon of the soul. Yet, just as we have no deliberate influence upon the movement of the hand in the wide-awake life of day, but make this movement of necessity, even so do we have no influence over the way that dream-pictures shape themselves, as they come and go in the chaotic world of dreams. We might say, therefore, that if we look at a man during his wide-awake life of day, and see something of what goes on within him in the form of reflex movements of all sorts, when he does things without reflecting, in response to external impressions; if we observe the sum-total of gestures and physiognomic expressions which he accomplishes without reflection, we then have a sum of actions which through necessity become a part of this man as soul-actions. If we now consider a dreaming man we have a sum of pictures, in this case something possessing the character not of action but of pictures, which work into and act upon his being. We may say, therefore, that just as in the wakeful life of day those human actions are carried out which arise and take shape without reflection, so do the dream-conceptions, chaotically flowing together, come about within a world of pictures.

Now, if we look back again at our brain, and wished to consider it as being in a certain way the instrument also of the dream-consciousness, what should we have to do? We should have to suppose that there is in some way or other something inside the brain which behaves in a way similar to the spinal cord that guides the unconscious actions. Thus, we have, as it were, to look upon the brain as primarily the instrument of the wide-awake soul-life, during which we create our concepts through deliberation, and underlying it a mysterious spinal cord which does not express itself; however, as a complete spinal cord but remains compressed inside the brain, and does not attain to actions. Whereas our spinal cord does attain to actions, even though these are not brought about through deliberation; the brain in this case induces merely pictures. It stops midway, this mysterious thing which lies there like the groundwork of a brain. Might we not say, therefore, that the dream-world enables us in a most remarkable way to point, as in a mystery, to that spinal cord lying there at the basis of the brain?

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If we consider the brain, in its present fully-developed state, as the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, its appearance for us is that which it has when removed from the cavity of the skull. Yet there must be something there, within, when the wakeful life of day is blotted out. And here occult observation shows us that there actually is, inside the brain, a mysterious spinal cord which calls forth dreams. If we should wish to make a drawing of it, we could represent it in such a way that, within the brain which is connected with the world of ideas of the life of day, we should have an ancient mysterious spinal cord, invisible to external perception, in some way or other secreted inside it. I shall first state quite hypothetically that this spinal cord becomes active when man sleeps and dreams, and is active at that time in a manner characteristic of a spinal cord, namely, that it calls forth its effects through necessity. But, because it is compressed within the brain, it does not lead to actions, but only to pictures and picture-actions; for in dreams we act, as we know, only in pictures. So that because of this peculiar, strange, chaotic life that we carry on in dreams, we should have to point to the fact that underlying the brain, which we quite properly consider to be the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, is a mysterious organ which perhaps represents an earlier form of the brain—which has evolved itself to its present state out of this earlier form—and that this mysterious organ is active to-day only when the new form is inactive. It then reveals what the brain once was. This ancient spinal cord conjures up what is possible, considering the way it is enclosed, and induces, not completed actions, but only pictures.

Thus the observation of life leads us, of itself, to separate the brain into two stages. The very fact that we dream indicates that the brain has passed through two stages and has evolved to the wide-awake life of day. When, however, this wakeful day-time life is stilled, the ancient organ again exerts itself in the life of dreams. Thus we have first made types out of what external observation of the world furnishes us, which shows us that even observation of the soul-life adds meaning to what a consideration of the outer form can give us, namely, that the wide-awake life of day is related to dream-life in the same way as the perfected brain at the second stage of its evolution is related to its groundwork, to the ancient spinal cord which is at the first stage of its evolution. In a remarkable way, which we shall justify in the following lectures, occult, clairvoyant vision can serve us as a basis for a comprehensive observation of human nature, as it expresses itself in those organs enclosed within the bony mass of the skull and vertebrae.

In this connection you already know, from spiritual-scientific observations, that man's visible body is only one part of the whole human being, and that in the moment the seer's eye is opened the physical body reveals itself as enclosed, embedded, in a super-sensible organism, in what, roughly speaking, is called the “human aura.” For the present this may be here affirmed as a fact, and later we shall return to it to see how far the statement is justified. This human aura, within which physical man is simply enclosed like a kernel, shows itself to the seer's eye as having different colours. At the same time, we must not imagine that we could ever make a picture of this aura, for the colours are in continual movement; and every picture of it, therefore, that we sketch with pigment can be only an approximate likeness, somewhat in the same way that it is impossible to portray lightning, since one would always end by painting it only as a stiff rod, a rigid image. Just as it is never possible to paint lightning, so is it even less possible to do this in the case of the aura, because of the added fact that the auric colours are in themselves extraordinary unstable and mobile. We cannot, therefore, express it otherwise than to say that at best we are representing it symbolically.

Now, these auric colours show themselves as differing very remarkably, depending upon the fundamental character of the whole human organism. And it is interesting to call attention to the auric picture which presents itself to the clairvoyant eye, if we imagine the cranium and the spine observed from the rear. There we find that the appearance of that portion of the aura belonging to this region is such that we can only describe the whole man as embedded in the aura. Although we must remember that the auric colours are in a state of movement within the aura, yet it is evident that one of the colours is especially distinct, namely around the lower parts of the spine. We may call this greenish. And again we may mention another distinct colour, which does not in any other part of the body appear so beautiful as here, around the region of the brain; and this in its ground-tone is a sort of lilac-blue. You can get the best conception of this lilac-blue if you imagine the colour of the peach-blossom; yet even this is only approximate. Between this lilac-blue of the upper portion of the brain, and the green of the lower parts of the spine, we have other colour nuances surrounding the human being which are hard to describe, since they do not often appear among the ordinary colours present in the surrounding world of the senses. Thus, for instance, adjoining the green is a colour which is neither green, blue, nor yellow, but a mixture of all three. In short, there appear to us, in this intermediate space, colours which actually do not exist in the physical world of sense. Even though it is difficult to describe what is here within the aura, one thing may nevertheless be stated positively: beginning above with the puffed-out spinal cord, we have lilac-blue colour and then, coming down to the end of the spine, we have a more distinctly greenish shade.

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This I wish to state as a fact, along with what has been said to-day in connection with a purely external observation of the human form and of human conduct. Following this, we shall endeavour to observe also that other part of the human being which is attached to the portion we have discussed to-day, in the form of neck, trunk, limbs, etc., as constituting the second part of the human duality, to the end that we may then be able to proceed to a consideration of what is presented to us in the complete interaction of this human duality.

We shall encounter again and again, in the course of our reflections, the difficulty of keeping in our mind's eye ever more exactly the exterior organism of man, in order that we may learn to know the transitory, the perishable. But we shall also see that this very road will lead us to a knowledge of the imperishable, the eternal in human nature. Also it will be necessary, in order to attain this goal, to sustain the effort of looking upon the exterior human organism in all reverence, as a revelation of the spiritual world.

When once we have permeated ourselves in some measure with spiritual-scientific concepts and feelings, we shall come quite easily to the thought that the human organism in its stupendous complexity must be the most significant expression, the greatest and most important manifestation, of those forces which live and weave as Spirit throughout the world. We shall, indeed, have to find our way upward ever more and more from the outer to the inner.

We have already seen that external observations, both from the point of view of the layman and from that of the scientific inquirer, must lead us to look upon man in a certain sense as a duality. We have characterised this duality of the human being—only hastily yesterday, to be sure, for we shall have to go into this still more accurately—as being enclosed within the protecting bony sheath of the skull and the spinal vertebrae. We have seen that, if we ascend beyond the exterior form of this part of man, we may gain a preliminary view of the connection between the life which we call our waking life of day, and that other life, in the first place very full of uncertainty for us, which we call the life of dreams. And we have seen that the external forms of that portion of human nature which we have described give us a kind of image, signify in a way a revelation, on the one hand of dream-life, the chaotic life of pictures; and on the other hand the waking day life, which is endowed with the capacity to observe in sharp outlines.

To-day we shall first cast a fleeting glance over that part of the human duality which may be found outside the region we had in mind yesterday. Even the most superficial glance over this second portion of the human being can teach us that this portion really presents a picture in a certain respect the opposite of the other one. In the brain and the spinal cord we have the bony formation as the outer circumference, the covering. If we consider the other portion of man's nature, we are surely obliged to say that here we have the bony formation disposed rather more within the organs. And yet this would be only a very superficial observation. We shall be carried deeper into the construction of this other portion of man's nature if, for the moment, we keep the most important systems of organs apart one from another, and compare them, first, outwardly, with what we learned yesterday.

The systems of organs, or systems of instruments, of the human organism to be considered first in this connection, must be the apparatus of nutrition and all that lies between this apparatus and that wonderful structure the heart, which we readily experience as a sort of central point of the whole human organism... And here even a superficial glance shows us at once that these systems of instruments, especially the apparatus of nutrition as we may call it in everyday speech, are intended to take in the substances of our external, earthly world and prepare them for further digestive work in the physical organism of man. We know that this apparatus of digestion begins by extending downward from the mouth, in the form of a tube, to the organ which everyone knows as the stomach. And a superficial observation teaches us that, from those articles of food which are conveyed through this canal into the stomach, the portions which are to a certain extent unassimilated are simply excreted, whereas other portions are carried over by the remaining digestive organs into the organism of the human body.

It is also well known that, adjoining the actual digestive apparatus in the narrower sense of the term, and for the purpose of taking over from it in a transformed condition the nutritive substances with which it has been supplied, is what we may call the lymph-system. I shall at this point speak merely in outline. We may repeat accordingly that, adjoining the apparatus of nutrition in so far as this is attached chiefly to the stomach, there is this system of organs called the lymph-system, consisting of a number of canals, which in their turn spread over the whole body; and that this system takes over, in a certain way, what has been worked over by the rest of the digestive apparatus, and delivers it into the blood.

And then we have the third of these systems of organs, the blood-vessel system itself, with its larger and smaller tubes extending throughout the entire human organism and having the heart as the central point of all its work. We know also that, going out from the heart, those blood-vessels or blood-filled vessels which are called arteries, convey the blood to all parts of our organism; that the blood goes through a certain process in the separate parts of the human organism, and then is carried back to the heart by means of other similar vessels which bring it back, however, in a transformed condition as so called “blue blood” in contrast to its red state. We know that this transformed blood, no longer useful for our life, is conducted from the heart into the lungs; that it there comes into contact with the oxygen taken up from the outer air; and that, by means of this, it is renewed in the lungs and conducted back again to the heart, to go its way afresh throughout the whole human organism.

If we are to consider these systems in their completeness, in order to have in our external method of observation a foundation for the occult method, let us begin by holding to that system which must, at the very outset, obviously be for everyone the central system of the entire human organism, namely, the blood-and-heart system. Let us, moreover, keep in mind that after the stale blood has been freshened in the lungs, transformed from blue blood into red blood, it returns once more to the heart and then goes out again from the heart as red blood, to be used in the organism. Notice, that everything which I intend to draw will be in mere outline, so that we shall be dealing only with sketches.

Let us now briefly recall that the human heart is an organ which, properly speaking, consists in the first place of four parts or chambers, so separated by interior walls that one can distinguish between the two larger spaces lying below and the two smaller ones lying above, the two lower ones being the ventricles, as they are generally called, and the two upper ones the auricles. I shall not speak about the “valves” to-day, but shall rather call attention, quite sketchily, to the course of the most important organic activities. And here, to begin with, one thing is clear: after the blood has streamed out of the left auricle into the left ventricle, it flows off through a large artery and from this point is conducted through the entire remainder of the organism. Now, let us bear in mind that this blood is first distributed to every separate organ of the whole organism; that it is then used up in this organism so that it is changed into the so-called blue blood, and as such returns to the right auricle of the heart; and that from there it flows into the right ventricle in order that it may go out again from this into the lungs, there again to be renewed and take a fresh course throughout the organism.

When we begin to visualise all this it is important, as a basis for an occult method of study, that we also add the fact that what we may call a subsidiary stream branches out from the aorta very near the heart; that this subsidiary stream leads to the brain, thus providing for the upper organs, and from there leads back again in the form of stale blood into the right auricle; and that it is there transformed, as blood which has passed through the brain, so to speak, in the same way as that blood is transformed which comes from the remaining members of the organism. Thus we have a smaller, subsidiary circuit of the blood, in which the brain is inserted, separate from the other main circuit which provides for the entire remaining organism. Now, it is of extraordinary importance for us to bear this fact in mind. For we can only arrive at an important conception, affording us a basis for everything that will enable us to ascend to occult heights, if at this point we first ask ourselves the following question: In the same way in which the upper organs are inserted in the smaller circuit, is there something similar inserted within the circuit of the blood which provides for the rest of the organism. Here we come, as a matter of fact, to a conclusion which even the external, superficial method of study can supply, that is, that there is inserted in the large circuit of the blood the organ we call the spleen; that further on is inserted the liver; and, still further on, the organ which contains the gall prepared by the liver.

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Now, when we ask about the functions of these organs, external science answers by saying that the liver prepares the gall; that the gall flows out into the digestive canal, and takes part in digesting the food in such a way that this may then be taken up by the lymph-system and conducted over into the blood. Much less, however, does external science tell us with regard to the spleen, the third of the organs here considered as inserted in the main circuit. When we reflect upon these organs, we must first give attention to the fact that they have to occupy themselves with the preparation of the nutritive matter for the human organism; but that, on the other hand, they are all three inserted as organs into the circulatory course of the blood. It is not without reason that they are thus inserted, for, in so far as nutritive matter is taken up into the blood, to be conveyed by means of the blood to the human organism in order to continuously supply this with substances for its up-building, these three organs take part in the whole process of working over this nutritive matter.

Now arises the question: Can we already draw some sort of conclusion, from an external aspect, as to just how these organs take part in the joint activity of the human organism? Let us first fix our attention on this one external fact, namely, that these organs are inserted into the lower circulatory course of the blood in the same way in which the brain is inserted into the upper course; and let us now see for a moment, while first actually holding to this external method of study, which must later be deepened, whether it is possible that these organs really have a task similar to that of the brain. At the same time, wherein may such a task consist?

Let us begin by considering the upper portions of the human organism. It is these that receive the sense-impressions through the organs of sense, and work over the material contained in our sense-perceptions. We may say, therefore, that what takes place in the human head, in the upper part of the organism, is a working over of those impressions which flow in from outside through the sense-organs; and that what we may describe as the cause of everything that takes place in these upper parts is to be found in its essence in the external impressions or imprints. And, since these external impressions send their influences, together with what results from these influences in the working over of the outer impressions, into the upper organs of the organism, they therefore change the blood, or contribute to its change, and in their own way send this blood back to the heart transformed, just as the blood is sent back to the heart transformed from the rest of the organism.

Is it not obvious that we should now ask ourselves this other question: Since this upper part of the human organism opens outward by means of the sense-organs, opens doors to the outside world in the form of sense- organs, is there not a certain sort of correspondence between the working-in of the external world through these sense-organs upon the upper part of the human organism and that which works out of the three interior organs, the spleen, the liver, and the gall-bladder? Whereas, accordingly, the upper part of the organism opens outward in order to receive the influences of the outside world; and whereas the blood flows upwards, so to speak, in order to capture these impressions of the outside world, it flows downwards in order to take up what comes from these three organs. Thus we may say that, when we look out upon the world round about us, this world exercises its influence through our senses upon our upper organisation. And what thus flows in from outside, through the world of sense, we may think of as pressed together, contracted, as if into one centre; so that what flows into our organism from all sides is seen to be the same thing as that which flows out from the liver, the gall-bladder and the spleen, namely, transformed outside world. If you go further into this matter you will see that it is not such a very strange reflection.

Imagine to yourselves the different sense-impressions that stream into us; imagine these contracted, thickened or condensed, formed into organs and placed inside us. Thus the blood presents itself inwardly to the liver, gallbladder and spleen, in the same way as the upper part of the human organism presents itself to the outside world. And so we have the outside world which surrounds our sense-organs above, condensed as it were into organs that are placed in the interior of man, so that we may say: At one moment the world is working from outside, streaming into us, coming into contact with our blood in the upper organs, acting upon our blood; and the next moment that which is in the macrocosm works mysteriously in those organs into which it has first contracted itself, and there, from the opposite direction, acts upon our blood, presenting itself again in the same way as it does in the upper organs.

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If we were to draw a sketch of this, we could do it by imagining the world on the one hand, acting from all directions upon our senses, and the blood exposing itself like a tablet to the impressions of this world; that would be our upper organism. And now let us imagine that we could contract this whole outer world into single organs, thus forming an extract of this world; that we could then transfer this extract into our interior in such a way that what is working from all directions now acts upon the blood from the other side of the tablet. We should then have formed in a most extraordinary way a pictorial scheme of the exterior and the interior of the human organism. And we might already to a certain extent be able to say that the brain actually corresponds to our inner organism, in so far as this latter occupies the breast and the abdominal cavity. The world has, as it were been placed in our inner man.

Even in this organisation, which we distinguish as a subordinate one, and which serves primarily for the carrying forward of the process of nutrition, we have something so mysterious as the fusion of the whole outer cosmos into a number of inner organs, inner instruments. And, if we now observe these organs more closely for a moment, the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen, we shall be able to say that the spleen is the first of these to offer itself to the blood-stream. This spleen is a strange organisation, embedded in plethoric tissue, and in this tissue there is a great number of tiny little granules—something which, in contrast to the rest of the mass of tissue, has the appearance of little white granules.

When we observe the relation between the blood and the spleen, the latter appears to us like a sieve through which the blood passes in order that it may offer itself to an organ of the kind which, in a certain sense, is a shrivelled-up portion of the macrocosm. Again, the spleen stands in connection with the liver. At the next stage we see how the blood offers itself to the liver, and how the liver in its turn, as a third step, secretes the gall, which then goes over into the nutritive substances, and from there comes with the transformed nutritive substances into the blood.

This offering of itself on the part of the blood to these three organs we cannot think of in any but the following way: The organ which first meets the blood is the spleen, the second is the liver, and the third is the gallbladder, which has really a very complicated relation to the entire blood system, in that the gall is given over to the food and takes part in its digestion. On such grounds, the occultists of all times have given certain names to these organs. Now, I beg of you most earnestly not to think of anything special for the time being in connection with these names, but rather to think of them only as names that were originally given to these organs and to disregard the fact that the names signify also something else in connection with these organs. Later on we shall see why just these names were chosen. Because the spleen is the first of the three organs to present itself to the blood—we can say this by way of a purely external comparison—it appeared to the occultists of old to be best designated by the name belonging to that star which, to these ancient occultists and their observations, was the first within our solar system to show itself in cosmic space. For this reason they called the spleen “saturnine,” or an inner Saturn in man; and, similarly, the liver they called an inner Jupiter; and the gallbladder, an inner Mars. Let us begin by thinking of nothing in connection with these names, except that we have chosen them because we have arrived at the concept, at first hypothetical, that the external worlds, which otherwise are accessible rather to our senses, have been contracted into these organs and that in these organs inner worlds, so to speak, come to meet us, just as outer worlds meet us in the planets. We may now be able to say that, just as the external worlds show themselves to our senses in that they press in upon us from outside, so do these inner worlds show themselves as acting upon the blood-system in that they influence that for which the blood-system is there.

We shall find, to be sure, a significant difference between what we spoke of yesterday as the peculiarities of the human brain and that which here appears to us as a sort of inner cosmic system. This difference lies simply in the fact that man, to begin with, knows nothing about what takes place within his lower organism: that is, he knows nothing about the impressions which the inner worlds, or planets, as we may call them, make upon him, whereas the very characteristic of the other experience is that the outer worlds do make their impressions upon his consciousness. In a certain respect, therefore, we may call these inner worlds the realm of the unconscious, in contrast to the conscious realm we have learned to know in the life of the brain.

Now, precisely that which lies in this “conscious” and this “unconscious” is more clearly explained when we employ something else to assist us. We all know that external science states that the organ of consciousness is the nerve-system, together with all that pertains to it. Now we must bear in mind, as a basis for our occult study, a certain relationship which the nerve-system has to the blood-system, that is, to what we have to-day considered in a sketchy way. We then see that our nerve-system everywhere enters in certain ways into relation with our blood-system, that the blood everywhere presses upon our nerve-system. Moreover, we must here first take notice of something which external science in this connection holds to be already established. This science looks upon it as a settled matter that in the nerve-system is to be found the sole and entire regulator of all activity of consciousness, of everything, that is, which we characterise as “soul-life.” We cannot here refrain from recalling, although at first only by way of allusion for the purpose of authenticating this later on, that for the occultist the nerve-system exists only as a sort of basis for consciousness. For precisely in the same way that the nerve-system is a part of our organism and comes into contact with the blood-system, or at least bears a certain relation to it, so do the ego and that which we call the astral body make themselves a part of the whole human being. And even an external observation, which has frequently been employed in my lectures, can show us that the nerve-system is in a certain way a manifestation of the astral body. Through such an observation we can see that, in the case of ordinary inanimate beings in nature, we can ascribe only a physical body to that part of their being which they present to us. When, however, we ascend from inanimate, inorganic natural bodies to animate natural bodies, to organisms, we are obliged to suppose that these organisms are permeated by the so-called ether-body, or life-body, which contains in itself the causes of the phenomena of life. We shall see later on that anthroposophy, or occultism, does not speak of the ether-body, or life-body, in the same way that people in the past spoke of “life-force.” Rather does anthroposophy, when it speaks of the ether-body, speak of some thing which the spiritual eye actually sees, that is, of something real underlying the external physical body. When we consider the plants we are obliged to attribute to them an ether-body. And, if we ascend from the plants to sentient beings, to the animals, we find that it is this element of sentiency, of inner life, or, better still, of inner experience, which primarily differentiates the animal externally from the plant. If mere life-activity, which cannot yet sense itself inwardly, cannot yet attain to the kindling of feeling, is to be able to kindle feeling, to sense life inwardly, the astral body must become a part of the animal's organism. And in the nerve-system, which the plants do not yet have, we must recognise the external instrument of the astral body, which in turn is the spiritual prototype of the nerve-system. As the archetype is related to its manifestation, to its image, so is the astral body related to the nerve-system.

Now when we come to man—and I said yesterday that in occultism our task is not as simple as it is for the external scientific method in which everything can, so to speak, be jumbled together—we must always, when we study the human organs, be aware of the fact that these organs, or systems of organs, are capable of being put to certain uses for which the corresponding systems of organs in the animal organism, even when these appear similar, cannot be used. At this point we shall merely affirm in advance what will appear later as having a still more profound basis, that, in the case of man, we must designate the blood as an external instrument for the ego, for all that we denote as our innermost soul-centre, the ego; so that in the nerve-system we have an external instrument of the astral body, and in our blood an external instrument of the ego. Just as the nerve-system in our organism enters into certain relations with the blood, so do those inner regions of the soul which we experience in ourselves as concepts, feelings or sensations, etc., enter into a certain relation with our ego.

The nerve-system is differentiated in the human organism in manifold ways the inner nerve-fibres for example, at the points where these develop into nerves of hearing, of seeing, etc., show us how diverse are its differentiations. Thus the nerve-system is something that reaches out everywhere through the organism in such a way as to comprise the most manifold inner diversities. When we observe the blood as it streams through the organism it shows us, even taking into account the transformation from red into blue blood, that it is, nevertheless, a unity in the whole organism. Having this character of unity, it comes into contact with the differentiated nerve-system, just as does the ego with the differentiated soul-life, for it also is made up of conceptions, sensations, will-impulses, feelings and the like. The further you pursue this comparison—and it is given meanwhile only as a comparison—the more clearly you will be shown that a far-reaching similarity exists in the relations of the two archetypes, the ego and the astral body, to their respective images, the blood-system and the nerve-system. Now, of course, one may say at this point that blood is surely everywhere blood. At the same time, it undergoes a change in flowing through the organism; and consequently we can draw a parallel between these changes that take place in the blood and what goes on in the ego. But our ego is a unity. As far back as we can remember in our life between birth and death we can say: “This ego was always present, in our fifth year just as in our sixth year, yesterday just as to-day. It is the same ego.” And yet, if we now look into what this ego contains, we shall discover this fact: This ego that lives in me is filled with a sum-total of conceptions, sensations, feelings, etc., which are to be attributed to the astral body and which comes into contact with the ego. A year ago this ego was filled with a different content, yesterday it contained still another, and to-day its content is again different. Thus the ego, we see, comes into contact with the entire soul-content, streams through this entire soul-content. And, just as the blood streams through the whole organism and comes everywhere into contact with the differentiated nerve-system, so does the ego come together with the differentiated life of the soul, in conceptions, feelings, will-impulses and the like. Already, therefore, this merely comparative method of study shows us that there is a certain justification in looking upon the blood system as an image of the ego, and the nerve system as an image of the astral body, as higher, super-sensible members of the nature of man.

It is necessary for us to remember that the blood streams throughout the organism in the manner already indicated; that on the one side it presents itself to the outer world like a tablet facing the impressions of the outer world; on the other side, it faces what we have called the inner world. And so indeed it is with our ego also. We first direct this ego of ours toward the outside world and receive impressions from it. There results from this a great variety of content within the ego; it is filled with these impressions coming from outside. There are also such moments when the ego retires within itself and is given up to its pain and suffering, pleasure and happiness, inner feelings and so forth, when it permits to arise in the memory what it is not receiving at this moment directly through contact with the external world, but what it carries within itself. Thus, in this connection also, we find a parallel between the blood and the ego; for the blood, like a tablet, presents itself at one time to the outside world and at another time to the inner world; and we could accordingly represent this ego by a simple sketch [see earlier drawing] exactly as we have represented the blood. We can bring the external impressions which the ego receives, when we think of them as concepts, as soul-pictures in general, into the same sort of relation to the ego as that which we have brought about between our blood and the real external occurrences coming to us through the senses. That is, exactly as we have done in the case of the physical bodily life and the blood, so could we bring what is related to the soul-life into connection with the ego.

Let us now observe from this standpoint the cooperation, the mutual interaction, between the blood and the nerves. If we consider the eye, we see that outer impressions act upon this organ. The impressions of colour and light act upon the optic nerve. So long as they affect the optic nerve, having for themselves an active instrument in the nerve-system, we are able to affirm that they have an effect upon the astral body. We may state that, at the moment when a connection takes place between the nerves and the blood, the parallel process which takes place in the soul is, that the manifold conceptions within the life of the soul come into connection with the ego. When, therefore, we consider this relationship between the nerves and the blood, we may represent by another sketch how that which streams in from outside through the nerves when we see an object, forms a certain connection with those courses of the blood which come into the neighbourhood of the optic nerve.

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This connection is something of extraordinary importance for us, if we wish to observe the human organism in such a way that our observation shall provide a basis for arriving at the occult foundations of human nature. In ordinary life the process that takes place is such that each influence transmitted by means of the nerves inscribes itself in the blood, as on a tablet, and in doing so records itself in the instrument of the ego. Let us suppose for a moment, however, that we should artificially interrupt the connection between the nerve and the circulation of the blood, that is, that we should artificially put a man in such a condition that the activity of the nerve should be severed from the circulation of the blood, so that they could no longer act upon each other. We can indicate this by a diagram in which the two parts are shown more widely separated, so that a reciprocal action between the nerves and the blood can no longer take place. In this case the condition may be such that no impression can be made upon the nerve. Something of this sort can be brought about if, for example, the nerve is cut. If, indeed, it should come to pass by some means that no impression is made upon the nerve, then it is also not strange if the man himself is unable to experience anything especial through this nerve. But let us suppose that in spite of the interrupting of the connection between the nerve and the blood a certain impression is made upon the nerve. This can be brought to pass through an external experiment by stimulating the nerve by means of an electric current. Such external influence on the nerve does not, however, concern us here. But there is still another way of affecting the nerve under conditions in which it cannot act upon the course of the blood normally connected with it.

It is possible to bring about such a condition of the human organism; and this is done in a particular way, by means of certain concepts, emotions and feelings which the human being has experienced and made a part of himself, and which, if this inner experiment is to be truly successful, ought, properly speaking, to be really lofty, moral or intellectual concepts. When a man practises a rigorous inner concentration of the soul on such imaginative concepts, forming these into symbols let us say, it then happens, if he does this in a state of waking consciousness, that he takes complete control of the nerve and, as a result of this inner concentration, draws it back to a certain extent from the course of the blood. For when man simply gives himself up to normal, external impressions, the natural connection between the nerve and the circulation is present; but if, in strict concentration upon his ego, he holds fast to what he obtains in a normal way, apart from all external impressions and apart from what the outside world brings about in the ego, he then has something in his soul which can have originated only in the consciousness and is the content of consciousness, and which makes a special demand upon the nerve and separates its activity then and there from its connection with the activity of the blood. The consequence of this is that, by means of such inner concentration, which actually breaks the connection between the nerve and the blood, that is, when it is so strong that the nerve is in a certain sense freed from its connection with the blood-system, the nerve is at the same time freed from that for which the blood is the external instrument, namely, from the ordinary experiences of the ego. And it is, indeed, a fact—this finds its complete experimental support through the inner experiences of that spiritual training designed to lead upward into the higher worlds—that as a result of such concentration the entire nerve-system is removed from the blood-system and from its ordinary tasks in connection with the ego. It then happens, as the particular consequence of this, that whereas the nerve-system had previously written its action upon the tablet of the blood, it now permits what it contains within itself as working power to return into itself, and does not permit it to reach the blood. It is, therefore, possible purely through processes of inner concentration, to separate the blood-system from the nerve-system, and thereby to cause that which, pictorially expressed, would otherwise have flowed into the ego, to course back again into the nerve-system.

Now, the peculiar thing is that once the human being actually brings this about through such inward exertion of the soul, he has then an entirely different sort of inner experience. He stands before a completely changed horizon of consciousness which may be described somewhat as follows: When the nerve and the blood have an appropriate connection with each other, as is the case in normal life, man brings into relation with the ego the impressions which come from within his inner being and those which come from the outer world. The ego then conserves those forces which reach out along the entire horizon of consciousness, and everything is related to the ego. But when, through inner concentration, he separates his nerve-system, lifts it, that is to say, through inner soul-forces out of his blood-system, he does not then live in his ordinary ego. He cannot then say “I” with respect to that which he calls his “Self,” in the same sense in which he had previously said “I” in his ordinary normal consciousness. It then seems to the man as if he had quite consciously lifted a portion of his real being out of himself, as if something which he does not ordinarily see, which is super-sensible and works in upon his nerves, does not now impress itself upon his blood-tablet or make any impression upon his ordinary ego. He feels himself lifted away from the entire blood-system, raised up, as it were, out of his organism; and he meets something different as a substitute for what he has experienced in the blood-system. Whereas the nerve-activity was previously imaged in the blood-system, it is now reflected back into itself. He is now living in something different; he feels himself in another ego, another Self, which before this could at best be merely divined. He feels a super-sensible world uplifted within him.

If once more we draw a sketch, showing the relation between the blood and the nerve, or the entire nerve-system, as this receives into itself the impressions from the outside world, this may be done in the following way.

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The normal impressions would then image themselves in the blood-system, and thus be within it. If, however, we have removed the nerve-system, nothing goes as far as the tablet of the blood, nothing goes into the blood-system; everything flows back again into the nerve-system; and thus a world has opened to us of which we had previously no intimation. It has opened as far as the terminations of our nerve-system, and we feel the recoil. To be sure, only he can feel this recoil who goes through the necessary soul-exercises. In the case of the normal consciousness, man feels that he takes into himself whatever sort of world happens to face him, so that everything is inscribed upon the blood-system as on a tablet, and he then lives in his ego with these impressions. In the other case, however, he goes with these impressions only to that point where the terminations of the nerves offer him an inner resistance. Here, at the nerve-terminals, he rebounds as it were, and experiences himself in the outside world. Thus, when we have a colour impression, which we receive through the eye, it passes into the optic nerve, images itself upon the tablet of the blood, and we feel what we express as a fact when we say: “I see red.” But now, after we have made ourselves capable of doing so, let us suppose that we do not go with our impressions as far as the blood, but only to the terminations of the nerves; that at this point we rebound into our inner life, rebound before we reach the blood. In that case we live, as a matter of fact, only as far as our eye, our optic nerve. We recoil before the bodily expression of our blood, we live outside our Self and are actually within the light-rays which penetrate our eyes. Thus we have actually come out of ourselves; indeed, we have accomplished this by reason of the fact that we do not penetrate as deep down into our Self as we ordinarily do, but rather go only as far as the nerve-terminals. The effect on a soul-life such as this, if we have brought it to the stage where we turn back at the terminations of the nerves into our inner being, so that we do not go as far as our blood, is that we have in this case disconnected the blood; whereas otherwise the normal consciousness of the inner man ordinarily goes down into the blood, and the soul-life identifies itself with the physical man, feels itself at one with him.

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As a result of these external observations we have to-day succeeded in disconnecting the entire blood-system, which we have thought of as a kind of tablet that presents itself on the one side to the external, on the other side to the internal impressions, from what we may call the higher man, the man we may become if we find release from our Selves and become free. Now, we shall best be able to study the whole inner nature of this blood-system if we do not make use of general phrases, but observe what exists as reality in man, namely, the super-sensible, invisible man to whom we can lift ourselves when we go only as far as the terminations of our nerves, and if we also observe man as he is when he goes all the way into the blood. For we can then advance further, to the thought that man can really live in the outside world, that he can pour himself out over the whole external world, can go forth into this world and view from the reverse standpoint, as it were, the inner man, or what is usually meant by that term. In short, we shall learn to know the functions of the blood, and of those organs which are inserted into the circulatory course of the blood, when we can answer the following questions: What does a more accurate knowledge show us, when that which comes from a higher world, to which man can raise himself, is portrayed upon the tablet of the blood? It shows us that everything connected with the life of the blood is the very central point of the human being, when, without coining phrases, but rather looking only at sensible as well as super-sensible realities, we consider carefully the relationship of this wonderful system to a higher world. For this is in truth to be our task: to learn to see clearly the whole visible physical Man as an image of that other “Man” who is rooted and lives in the spiritual world. We shall thereby come to find that the human organism is one of the truest images of that Spirit which lives in the universe, and we shall attain to a very special understanding of that Spirit.