The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Mystery of Golgotha is the most difficult of all Mysteries to understand, even for those who have already reached an advanced stage of occult knowledge. And of all the truths within the range of the human mind it is the one that can most easily be misunderstood. This is because the Mystery of Golgotha was a unique event in the whole evolution of the earth; in the evolution of mankind on the earth it was a mighty impulse which had never before been given in the same way and will never be repeated in a similar form. The human mind always looks for a standard of comparison by means of which things can be understood, but what is incomparable defies all comparison and because it is unique will be very difficult to comprehend.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we have endeavoured to describe the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view, but new aspects and new features of this momentous event in the evolution of humanity may continually be presented.

One aspect will be presented today and attention directed particularly to what may in a certain sense be called the renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha in our own age.

The Mystery of Golgotha should not be regarded as an event quite separate from the evolution of humanity, as coming into consideration only during its duration of three or thirty-three years; we must remember that it occurred in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in the Greco-Latin civilisation-epoch, and remind ourselves that preparation was made for it during the whole period of the development of the ancient Hebrew people. What happened in humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was of the utmost importance in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha; so too was the worship of Jehovah which was practised among the ancient Hebrews. It is therefore essential to consider the nature of the Being who revealed himself in those times under the name of Jahve or Jehovah.

The man of the modern age brings his intellect to bear upon everything; he wants to comprehend things from the standpoint of the intellect. But the moment a man crosses the threshold leading from the world of the senses into the super-sensible worlds, at that moment the possibility of grasping reality by means of the intellect alone, ceases. The intellect can render good service on the earth, but directly a man enters the super-sensible worlds, although it can still be considered a useful instrument, it is no longer in itself a means of acquiring knowledge.

Intellect likes, above all, to make distinctions and requires definitions in order to understand things. Those of you who have often followed my lectures will have noticed the almost complete absence of definitions—because realities cannot be grasped by their means. There are, of course, good and bad definitions—some are comprehensive, others less satisfactory. In order to understand the things of the earth, definitions may be helpful; but when it is a matter of understanding realities—above all super-sensible realities—one cannot define, one must ‘characterise’; for then it is necessary to contemplate the facts and the beings from every possible vantage-point. Definitions are always one-sided and remind one who has studied logic of the old Greek School of Philosophy where endeavours were once made to define a man. The following definition was given: ‘A man is a two-legged creature without feathers.’ The next day someone brought in a plucked fowl and said: ‘This is a two-legged creature and has no feathers; it is therefore a man.’ We may often be reminded of this when definitions are demanded for something that is so many-sided and profoundly philosophical that definitions are inadequate and all that can be done is to characterise. In order to be able to distinguish the different beings in the super-sensible worlds, people would like above all to have definitions. They ask: ‘What exactly is this or that being?’ But the more deeply one penetrates into the super-sensible worlds, the more do the beings there merge into one another; there is no longer any demarcation and consequently it is very difficult to distinguish the one from the other.

Above all, the factor of evolution must not be left out of account when thinking of the name of Jahve or Jehovah, especially in connection with the name of Christ. Even in the New Testament you will find—and in my books I have often referred to it—that in Jehovah the Christ revealed Himself, to the extent that was possible in times before the Mystery of Golgotha.

If it is desired to make a comparison between Jehovah and Christ it is well to take sunlight and moonlight as an illustration. What is sunlight, what is moonlight? They are one and the same, and yet very different. Sunlight streams out from the sun but in moonlight is reflected back by the moon. In the same sense Christ and Jehovah are one and the same. Christ is like the sunlight, Jehovah is like the reflected Christ-light in so far as it could reveal itself to the earth under the name of Jehovah, before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass. When contemplating a Being as sublime as Jehovah-Christ we must seek in the very heights of the super-sensible world for His true significance. In reality it is presumption to approach such a Being with everyday concepts.

The ancient Hebrews endeavoured to find a way out of this difficulty. In spite of inadequacy, human thinking made efforts to form an idea of this sublime Being. Attention was not turned directly to Jehovah (a name that in itself was held to be inexpressible), but to the Being to whom our Western literature refers by the name of Michael. Naturally, a great deal of misunderstanding may arise from this statement, but that is unavoidable. One person may say, ‘This will evoke the prejudices of Christians’; another will have nothing to do with such matters. Nevertheless the Being whom we may call Michael, and who belongs to the Hierarchy of the Archangels—whatever name we may give him—this Being does exist. There are many Beings of the same hierarchical rank, but this particular Being who is known esoterically by the name of Michael is as superior to his companions as the Sun is to the planets—Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and so on.

He—Michael—is the most eminent, the most significant Being in the Hierarchy of the Archangels. The ancients called him the ‘Countenance of God’. As a man reveals himself by his gestures and the expression of his countenance, so in ancient mythology Jehovah was understood through Michael.

Jehovah made himself known to the Hebrew Initiates in such a way that they realised something they had never, with their ordinary powers of comprehension, previously been able to grasp, namely, that Michael was verily the countenance of Jehovah. Hence the ancient Hebrews spoke of Jehovah-Michael: Jehovah the unapproachable, unattainable by man, just as a person's thoughts, his sorrows and cares, lie hidden behind his outward physiognomy. Michael was the outer manifestation of Jahve or Jehovah, just as in a human being the manifestation of his Ego is to be recognised in his brow and countenance.

We can therefore say that Jehovah revealed himself through Michael, one of the Archangels. Knowledge of the Being described above as Jahve was not confined to the ancient Hebrews, but was far more widespread. And if we investigate the last five hundred years before the Christian era, we find that throughout this whole period revelation was given through Michael. This revelation can be discovered in another form in Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, in Greek philosophy, even in the ancient Greek tragedies, during the five centuries before the event of Golgotha.

When with the help of occult knowledge we endeavour to shed light upon what actually took place, we can say that Christ-Jehovah is the Being who has accompanied mankind through the whole course of evolution. But during the successive epochs Christ-Jehovah always reveals Himself through different Beings of the same rank as Michael. He chooses a different countenance, as it were, to turn towards mankind. And according as one or the other Being from the Hierarchy of the Archangels is chosen to be the mediator between Christ-Jehovah and humanity, widely different ideas and conceptions, impulses of feeling, impulses of will, are revealed to men. The whole period which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha can be described as the Age of Michael, and Michael may be regarded as the messenger of Jehovah.

During the period which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha by almost five hundred years and continued for several decades afterwards, the leading form of culture bore the stamp of Michael. Through his power he poured into mankind what was destined to be imparted at that time. And then came other Beings who equally were the Inspirers of mankind from the spiritual worlds—other Beings of the rank of the Archangels. As has been said, Michael was the greatest, the mightiest, among them. Therefore an Age of Michael is always the most significant, or one of the most significant, that can occur in the evolution of humanity. For the Ages of the different Archangels are repeated; and a fact of supreme importance is that every such Archangel gives to the Age its fundamental character. These Archangels are the leaders of the different nations and peoples, but because they become leaders of particular epochs, and because they were also leaders in bygone Ages, they have become in a certain sense also the leaders of mankind as a whole.¹

As regards Michael, a change has taken place; for Michael himself has attained a further stage of development. This is of great importance, for according to occult knowledge we have again, within the last few decades, entered an epoch inspired by the same Being who inspired the Age during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Michael may again be regarded as the leader.

To understand this we must consider the Mystery of Golgotha from another point of view and ask ourselves: What, in this Mystery, is of chief importance? The fact of supreme importance is that the Being who bears the name of Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and through the gate of death at that time. Never, throughout the evolution of the earth, could one speak of the Mystery of Golgotha without considering the fact that the Christ passed through death—that is the very core of the Mystery.

And now think of the laws of Nature. A great deal can be understood by studying them and in future time much more will be learnt, but we must be mere dreamers if we do not realise that the understanding of life as such is an ideal attainable only through actual development, never through the mere study of these laws. True, there are dreamers today who believe that through scientific knowledge a fundamental understanding of the principle of life will eventually be achieved, but this will never be the case. In the course of the earth's evolution many more laws will be discovered through the use of the senses, but the principle of life as such can never be revealed to the world in this way.

Hence life appears to us to be something which here on the earth is inaccessible to science, and just as life is inaccessible to human knowledge so is death to the true knowledge that is attained in the super-sensible worlds. In the super-sensible worlds there is no death—we can die only on the earth, in the physical world—and none of the Beings of an hierarchical rank higher than that of man have any knowledge of death; they know only different states of consciousness. Their consciousness can for a time be so diminished that it resembles our earthly condition of sleep, but it can wake out of this sleep. There is no death in the spiritual worlds, there is only change of consciousness; and the greatest fear by which man is possessed—the fear of death—cannot be felt by one who has risen into the super-sensible worlds after death. The moment he passes through the gates of death his condition is one of intense sensibility, but he can only exist in either a clear or a dimmed state of consciousness. That a human being in the super-sensible world could be dead would be inconceivable.

There is no death for any of the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, with the one exception of Christ. But in order that a super-sensible Being such as Christ should be able to pass through death, He must first have descended to the earth. And the fact of immeasurable significance in the Mystery of Golgotha is that a Being who in the realm of His own will could never have experienced death, should have descended to the earth in order to undergo an experience connected inherently with man. Thereby that inner bond was created between earthly mankind and Christ, in that this Being passed through death in order to share this destiny with man. As I have already emphasised, that death was of the greatest possible importance, above all for the present evolutionary period of the earth. A Being of unique nature who until then was only cosmic, was united with the earth's evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, through Christ's death. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He entered into the very process of the earth's evolution. This had not been the case before that event, for He then belonged to the cosmos alone; but through the Mystery of Golgotha, He descended out of the cosmos and was incorporated on earth. Since then, He lives on the earth, is united with the earth in such a way that He lives within the souls' of men and with them experiences life on the earth.

Thus the whole period before the Mystery of Golgotha was only a time of preparation in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha imparted to the earth its meaning and purpose.

When the Mystery of Golgotha took place the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth was given over to the elements of the earth, and from that time onwards Christ has been united with the spiritual sphere of the earth and lives within it.

As already said, it is extremely difficult to characterise the Mystery of Golgotha because there is no standard with which it can be compared. Nevertheless we will endeavour to approach it from still another point of view.

For three years after the Baptism in the Jordan, Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth as a man among men of the earth. This may be called the earthly manifestation of Christ in a physical, human body. How, then, does Christ manifest Himself since the time when, in the Mystery of Golgotha, He laid aside the physical body?

We must naturally think of the Christ Being as a stupendously lofty Being, but although He is so sublime, He was nevertheless able, during the three years after the Baptism, to express Himself in a human body. But in what form does He reveal Himself since that time? No longer in the physical body, for that was given over to the physical earth and is now part of it. To those who through the study of occult science have developed the power to see into these things, it will be revealed that this Being can be recognised in one belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels. Just as the Saviour of the world manifested Himself during the three years after the Baptism in a human body—in spite of His sublimity—so, since that time, He manifests Himself directly as an Angel, as a spiritual Being belonging to the hierarchical rank immediately above that of mankind. As such, He could always be found by those who were clairvoyant, as such, He has always been united with evolution. Just as truly as Christ, when incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, was more than man, so is the Christ Being more than an Angel—that is His outer form only.

But the fact that a mighty, sublime Being descended from the spiritual worlds and dwelt for three years in a human body also includes the fact that during that time this Being Himself progressed a stage further in His development.

When such a Being takes on a human or an angelic form, He Himself progresses. And it is this that we have indicated in speaking of the evolution of Christ-Jehovah. Christ has reached the stage where He reveals Himself henceforth not as a human being, not through His reflection only, not through the name of Jehovah, but directly. And the great difference in all the teachings and all the wisdom that have streamed into the evolution of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, is that through the coming of Michael—the Spirit Michael—to the earth, through his inspiration, man could gradually begin to understand all that the Christ Impulse, all that the Mystery of Golgotha, signifies. But in that earlier time Michael was the messenger of Jehovah, the reflection of the light of Christ; he was not yet the messenger of Christ Himself.

Michael inspired mankind for several centuries, for almost five hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, as was indicated in the old Mysteries, by Plato and so forth. Soon, however, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and Christ had united Himself with the evolution of the earth, the direct impulse of Michael ceased. At the time when the old documents we possess in the form of the Gospels were written—as I have said in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—Michael himself could no longer inspire mankind; but through his companions among the Archangels men were inspired in such a way that much soul-force was received unconsciously through inspiration.

The writers of the Gospel had no clear occult knowledge themselves, for the inspiration of Michael came to an end shortly after the Mystery of Golgotha. The other Archangels, the companions of Michael, could not inspire mankind in such a way as to make the Mystery of Golgotha comprehensible. This accounts for the divergent inspirations of the various Christian teachings. Much in these teachings was inspired by the companions of Michael; the teachings were not inspired by Michael himself but bear the same relation to his inspirations as do the planets to the mighty sun.

Only now, in our own age, is there again such an influence, a direct inspiration from Michael. Preparation for this direct inspiration from Michael has been going on since the sixteenth century. At that time it was the Archangel nearest to Michael who gave mankind the inspiration that has led to the great achievements of natural science in modern times. This natural science is not attributable to the inspiration of Michael but to that of one of his companions, Gabriel. The tendency of this scientific inspiration is to create a science, a world-picture that promotes understanding of the material world alone, and is connected with the physical brain.

Within the last few decades Michael has taken the place of this Inspirer of science, and in the next few centuries will give to the world something that in a spiritual sense will be equally important—indeed more important, because it is more spiritual—immeasurably more important than the physical science which has advanced from stage to stage since the sixteenth century. Just as his companion Archangel endowed the world with science, so will Michael in the future endow mankind with spiritual knowledge, of which we are now only at the very beginning. Just as Michael was sent as the messenger of Jehovah, as the reflection of Christ, five hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha in order to give that era its keynote, just as then he was still the messenger of Jehovah, so now, for our own epoch, Michael has become the messenger of Christ Himself. Just as in the times of the ancient Hebrews, times which were a direct preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, the Initiates among the Hebrews could turn to Michael as the outer revelation of Jahve or Jehovah, so we now are able to turn to Michael—who from being the messenger of Jehovah has become the messenger of Christ—in order to receive from him during the next few centuries increasing spiritual revelations that will shed more and more light upon the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened two thousand years ago could only be made known to the world through the various Christian sects and its profundities can only be unveiled in the twentieth century when, instead of science, spiritual knowledge—our gift from Michael—will come into its own. This should fill our hearts with deep feelings for spiritual reality in our present time. We shall be able to realise that within the last few decades a door has opened through which understanding can come.

Michael can give us new spiritual light which may be regarded as a transformation of the light that was given through him at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; and the men of our day can receive that light. If we can realise this we can grasp the significance of the new age that is now issuing from our own; we can be aware of the dawn of a spiritual revelation that is to come in the next few centuries into the life of humanity on the earth. Indeed, because men have become freer than in former times, we shall be able, through our own wills, to progress to the stage where this revelation may be received.

Reference shall now be made to the event in the higher worlds which has led to this altered state of affairs, to this time of a renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha. When we look back we remember what came to pass at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, when Christ revealed Himself in a human form, visible on the earth among mankind. Further, we will fill our souls with the thought of how, as regards His outer form, Christ then united Himself with the Hierarchy of the Angels and has since that time lived invisibly in the sphere of the earth.

Let us remember what has been said—that in the invisible worlds there is no death. Christ Himself, because He descended to our world, passed through a death similar to that of human beings. When He again became a spiritual Being, He still retained the remembrance of His death; but as a Being of the rank of the Angels in which He continued to manifest Himself outwardly, He could experience only a diminution of consciousness.

Through that which since the 16th century had become necessary for the evolution of the earth, namely the triumph of science at higher and higher levels, something which has significance also for the invisible worlds entered into the whole evolution of mankind. With the triumph of science, materialistic and agnostic sentiments of greater intensity than hitherto arose in mankind. In earlier times too there had been materialistic tendencies but not the intense materialism that has prevailed since the sixteenth century. More and more, as men passed into the spiritual worlds through the gate of death, they bore with them the outcome of their materialistic ideas on the earth. After the sixteenth century more and more seeds of earthly materialism were carried over, and these seeds developed in a particular way.

Christ came into the old Hebrew race and was led to His death within it. The angelic Being, who since then has been the outer form assumed by Christ, suffered an extinction of consciousness in the course of the intervening nineteen centuries as a result of the opposing materialistic forces that had been brought into the spiritual worlds by materialistic human souls who had passed through the gate of death. This onset of unconsciousness in the spiritual worlds will lead to the resurrection of the Christ-consciousness in the souls of men on earth between birth and death in the twentieth century. In a certain sense it may therefore be said that from the twentieth century onwards, what has been lost by mankind in the way of consciousness will arise again for clairvoyant vision. At first only a few, and then an ever-increasing number of human beings in the twentieth century will be capable of perceiving the manifestation of the Etheric Christ—that is to say, Christ in the form of an Angel. It was for the sake of humanity that there was what may be called an extinction of consciousness in the worlds immediately above our earthly world, in which Christ has been visible in the period between the Mystery of Golgotha and the present day.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha something took place in a little-known corner of Palestine, something that was the greatest event in the whole evolution of humanity, but of which little notice was taken by the people of that day. If such a thing could be, need we be astonished when we hear what conditions were like during the nineteenth century, when those who since the sixteenth century had passed through death, confronted Christ?

The ‘seeds of earthly materialism’ which were increasingly carried into the spiritual world by the souls who went through the portal of death since the sixteenth century, and which caused more and more darkness, built the ‘black sphere of materialism.’ Christ took this black sphere into being in the sense of the Manichean principle for the purpose of transforming it. For the angel being in which the Christ had manifested himself since the Mystery of Golgotha the black sphere caused a ‘death by suffocation.’ This sacrifice by Christ in the nineteenth century is comparable to the sacrifice on the physical plane through the Mystery of Golgotha and can be called the second crucifixion of Christ on the etheric plane. This spiritual death by suffocation, which brought about the extinction of the consciousness of the angelic Being is a repetition of the Mystery of Golgotha in those worlds that lie immediately behind our world. It took place to make possible a revival of the Christ consciousness which was earlier hidden in human souls on earth. The revival becomes clairvoyant vision of humanity in the twentieth century.

Thus the Christ-consciousness may be united with the earthly consciousness of men from our time on into the future; for the dying of the Christ-consciousness in the sphere of the Angels in the nineteenth century signifies the resurrection of the direct consciousness of Christ—that is to say, Christ's life will be felt in the souls of men more and more as a direct personal experience from the twentieth century onwards.

Just as the few who once were able to read the signs of the times and in contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha were able to realise that Christ had descended from the spiritual worlds to live on the earth and undergo death in order that through His death the substances incorporated into Him might pass into the earth, so are we able to perceive that in certain worlds lying immediately behind our own a sort of spiritual death, a suspension of consciousness, took place. This was a renewal of the Mystery of Golgotha, in order to bring about an awakening of the previously hidden Christ-consciousness within the souls of men on the earth.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha many human beings have been able to proclaim the Name of Christ, and from this twentieth century onwards an ever-increasing number will be able to make known the knowledge of the Christ that is given in Anthroposophy. Out of their own experience they will be able to proclaim Him.

Twice already Christ has been crucified: once physically, in the physical world at the beginning of our era, and a second time spiritually, in the nineteenth century, in the way described above. It could be said that mankind experienced the resurrection of His body in that former time and will experience the resurrection of His consciousness from the twentieth century onwards.

The brief indications I have been able to give you will gradually make their way into the souls of men, and the mediator, the messenger, will be Michael, who is now the ambassador of Christ. Just as he once led human souls towards an understanding of Christ's life descending from heaven to the earth, so he is now preparing mankind to experience emergence of the Christ-consciousness from the realm of the unknown into the realm of the known. And just as at the time of the earthly life of Christ the greater number of His contemporaries were incapable of believing what a stupendous event had taken place in the evolution of the earth, so, in our own day, the outer world is striving to increase the power of materialism, and will continue for a long time to regard what has been spoken of today as so much fantasy, dreaming, perhaps even downright folly. This too will be the verdict on the truth concerning Michael, who at the present time is beginning to reveal Christ anew. Nevertheless many human beings will recognize the new dawn that is rising and during the coming centuries will pour its forces into the souls of men like a sun—for Michael can always be likened to a sun. And even if many people fail to recognize this new Michael revelation, it will spread through humanity nevertheless.

That is what may be said today about the relation of the Mystery of Golgotha which took place at the beginning of our era and the Mystery of Golgotha as it can now be understood. From time to time other revelations will be given and for these our minds must be kept open. Should we not be aware that it would be selfish to keep these feelings exclusively for our own inner satisfaction? Let us rather feel that the solemn duty we have recognized through Anthroposophy is to make ourselves into willing instruments for such revelations; and although we are only a small community in mankind which is endeavoring to comprehend this new truth about the Mystery of Golgotha, to grasp this new revelation of Michael, we are nevertheless building up a new power that does not in the least depend upon our belief in this revelation but simply and solely upon the truth itself. Then we shall realize that only a few of us are adequately prepared to declare the following to the world, in so far as the world is willing to listen.

From now onwards there is a new revelation of Christ; we will be ready to acknowledge it; we will belong to the few who will help it to become more powerful, to become lasting; we will base ourselves upon the inner strength of such a revelation, so that it may spread among mankind, for this knowledge will gradually be shared by all.

This is what we call wisdom and some may call folly. To stand firm we need only remind ourselves that this is the time of the second Michael revelation, and remember what was said by one of the early Initiates at the time of the former Michael revelation: What often seems folly to man, is wisdom in the eyes of God.

Let us try to draw strength from feelings and spiritual knowledge which must in many respects seem folly to the outer world. Let us have the courage to realize that what appears to be folly to those who depend upon the senses for knowledge, to us may be wisdom, light, and clearer understanding of the super-sensible worlds towards which we will strive with all the power of our souls and of our conviction.

• 1. See Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. III, Lecture VII: The New Age of Michael.

Since we can meet so seldom, it will perhaps be good to touch upon some questions today, through which anthroposophy is directly concerned with life. Anthroposophists will often be asked: what does anthroposophy mean for someone not yet able to see into the spiritual worlds by means of clairvoyant consciousness? For the content of spiritual science is in the main received, derived and imparted through research undertaken through clairvoyant consciousness. It must be emphasised again and again that everything, all the facts and relationships, investigated and imparted from clairvoyant consciousness, must be comprehended by healthy human understanding. Once the things found by clairvoyant consciousness are there, they can be grasped and understood by the logic inherent in every ordinary human being, if only his judgment is unprejudiced enough.

Further, it can be asked: are there not facts experienced in normal human life which give direct support to the assertion by spiritual research, that our physical world and all its phenomena have underlying them a spiritual world? There are indeed many facts in ordinary life of which we could say that man would never comprehend them, although he has to accept their existence, without the recognition of a spiritual world.

We can look to begin with at two facts in ordinary human consciousness which cannot be explained without taking the presence of a spiritual world into consideration. Man knows these indeed as everyday facts, but does not usually regard them in the right light; if he did, there would be no necessity for a materialistic conception of the world. The first of these facts can be regarded in connection with very familiar events in ordinary life.

When a man faces a fact which he cannot explain with the conceptions that he has acquired up to that moment, he is astonished. Someone for example who saw for the first time a car or a train in movement (though such things will soon not be unusual even in the interior of Africa) would be very astonished, because he would think something like this: According to my experience up to now it seems impossible to me that a thing can move along quickly, without having something harnessed to it in front, that can pull it. But I can see that this is moving along quickly without being pulled! That is astonishing. What a man does not yet know causes him astonishment; something he has already seen, no longer astonishes him. Only the things which cannot be connected with previous experiences cause astonishment; let us keep this fact of ordinary life clearly before us. And we can bring it now into connection with another fact, which is very remarkable. Human beings are faced in ordinary life with many things that they have never seen before and which they nevertheless accept without astonishment. There are many such events. What are they?

It would be very astonishing, for example, if someone was to find in the ordinary way that after sitting quietly on his chair he suddenly began to fly up through the chimney into the air. It would indeed be astonishing; but when this happens in a dream he would do it all without being in any way amazed. We experience in dreams much more fantastic things than this, but are not astonished although we cannot relate them to daily events. In waking life we are even astonished if somebody leaps high into the air; but in a dream we can fly without being surprised at all. So we are faced with the fact that while in waking life we are astonished about things we had not experienced previously, in dreams we are not at all amazed.

As a second fact from which we shall begin, we have the question of conscience. When a man does something, and with a sensitive nature even when he thinks, something stirs in him that we call conscience. This conscience is entirely independent of the external significance of events. We could for example have done something very advantageous to us, and yet this act might be condemned by our conscience. Everyone feels that when conscience goes into action something influences the judgment of an act that has nothing to do with its utility. It is like a voice that says within us: Truly, you should have done this, or you should not have done this—this is the fact of conscience, and we know how strong its warning power can be, and how it can pursue us through life. We know that the presence of conscience cannot be denied.

Now we can consider again the life of dreams. Here we may do the strangest things which would cause us the most terrible pangs of conscience if we did them in waking life. Anyone can confirm this from his own experience, that he does things in dreams without his conscience stirring at all; while if he were to do them awake the voice of conscience would speak.

Thus these two facts, amazement and conscience, are excluded in a remarkable way from the life of dreams. Ordinarily man does not notice such things; nevertheless they throw their light upon the depths of our existence.

There is something else that throws light on this, concerned less with conscience than with astonishment. In ancient Greece the saying appears that all philosophy begins with astonishment, with wonder. The feeling expressed in this saying—the feeling of the Greeks themselves—cannot be found in the earlier periods of Greek history; only from a certain point in the development of philosophy is it to be found. Earlier periods did not have this feeling. Why was it that from a certain point onwards in ancient Greece this observation about astonishment was made? We have seen that we are astonished about something that does not fit in with our previous life; but if we have only this kind of astonishment this is nothing specially remarkable. Someone who is astonished about a car or train is simply unaccustomed to see such things. It is much more remarkable that a man can begin to be astonished about accustomed things. For example there is the fact that the sun rises every morning. Those people who are accustomed to this fact with their ordinary consciousness are not surprised about it. But when there is astonishment about the everyday things, which one is accustomed to see, philosophy and knowledge arise. Those men are the richer in knowledge, who are able to be astonished about things which the ordinary man simply accepts. Only then does a man strive for knowledge. For this reason, it was said in ancient Greece: All philosophy begins in wonder.

How is it with the conscience? Once more it is interesting, that the word ‘conscience’—and therefore the concept too, for only when we have a conception of something does the word appear—is also only to be found in ancient Greece from a certain time onwards. It is impossible to find in earlier Greek literature, about up to the time of Aeschylus, a word that should be translated ‘conscience’. But we find one in the later Greek writers, for example Euripides. Thus it can be pointed out precisely that conscience is something, just as is amazement about familiar things, known to man only from a certain period of ancient Greece onwards. What sprang up at this time as the activity of conscience was something quite different among the earlier Greeks. It did not then happen that the pangs of conscience appeared when a man had done something wrong. Men had then an original, elemental clairvoyance; going back only a short time before the Christian era we would find that all human beings still had this original clairvoyance. If a man then did something wrong, it was not followed by the stirring of conscience, but a demonic form appeared before the old clairvoyance, and a man was tormented by it. Such forms were called Erinys or Furies. Only when men had lost the capacity to see these demonic forms did they become able to feel, when they had done something wrong, the power of conscience as an inner experience.

What do such facts show? What really happens in the everyday fact of astonishment—when for example a tribesman from the depths of Africa, suddenly transported to Europe, sees here the trains and cars for the first time? He is astonished because his astonishment presupposes that something new is entering his life, something that he before saw differently.

If now a developed man has a particular need to find explanations for many things, including everyday things, because he is able to be astonished about everyday things—this too presupposes that he had seen the thing differently before. No-one would be able to reach another explanation of the sunrise, distinct from the mere appearance of its rising, if he had not seen it differently before. But it might be objected that we see the sunrise happening in just the same way from our earliest youth; would it not be nonsensical to be astonished about it? There is no other explanation of this than that if we are amazed about it after all, we must have experienced it earlier in another condition, in a way different from our present experience in this life. For if spiritual science says that man exists between birth and a previous life in another condition, we have in the fact of astonishment about something so everyday as a sunrise an indication of this earlier condition, in which man also perceived the sunrise, but in another way, without bodily organs. He perceived all this then with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. In the moment where dim feelings lead him to say: ‘You face the rising sun, the roaring sea, the growing plant, and are filled with wonder!’—there is in this wonder the knowledge, that all this has once been perceived in another way, not with bodily eyes. He has looked at all these with his spiritual eyes before he entered the physical world. He feels dimly: ‘Yet this is all different, from the form in which you saw it earlier.’ This was, and could only be, before birth. These facts compel us to recognise that knowledge would not be possible at all if man did not enter this life from a preceding super-sensible existence. Otherwise there would be no explanation for amazement and the knowledge that follows from it. Naturally man does not remember in clear pictures what he experienced in a different way before birth; but though it is not in the form of clear thought, it is present in feeling. It can only be brought as a clear memory through initiation.

Now we can go deeper into the fact that we are not amazed in dreams. First the question must be answered, what a dream really is. Dreams are an ancient heritage from earlier incarnations. Men passed in earlier incarnations through other conditions of consciousness which were similar to clairvoyance. In the further course of evolution man lost the capacity to look clairvoyantly into the world of soul and spirit. It was a shadowy clairvoyance; evolution proceeded gradually, from the earlier, shadowy clairvoyance into our present clear, waking consciousness, which could develop in the physical world—in order, when it is fully developed, to ascend again into the worlds of soul and spirit with the capacities which man has acquired with his ‘I’ in waking consciousness. But what did men acquire then in the old clairvoyance? Something has remained; the life of dreams. But the life of dreams is distinguished from the old clairvoyance by the fact that it is an experience of present-day man, and present-day man has developed a consciousness which contains the impulse to acquire knowledge. Dreams, as a remnant of an earlier consciousness, do not contain the impulse to acquire knowledge and for this reason man feels the distinction between waking consciousness and the consciousness of dreams.

Astonishment, which did not exist in the ancient shadowy clairvoyance, cannot enter even today the consciousness of dreams. Astonishment and wonder cannot enter the life of dreams. We have them in the waking consciousness, which is directed to the external world. In his dreams, man is not in the external world; he is placed into the spiritual world, and does not experience physical things. But it was in facing the physical world that man learned amazement. In dreams he accepts everything as it comes, as he did in the old clairvoyance. He could do this then because the spiritual powers came and showed him the good and evil that he had done; man did not then need wonder. Dreams thus show us by their own character that they are inherited from ancient times, when there was not yet any astonishment about everyday things, and not yet a conscience.

Why was it necessary that man, having once been clairvoyant, could not remain so? Why has he descended? Did the gods perhaps drive him down unnecessarily? It is really so, that man could never have acquired what lies in his capacity of wonder and what lies in his conscience, if he had not descended. Man descended in order to acquire knowledge and conscience; he could only do so through being separated for a time from these spiritual worlds. And he has achieved knowledge and conscience here, in order to ascend once more with them.

Spiritual science shows us that man spends each time a period between death and a new birth in a purely spiritual world. We experience to begin with after death the time of Kamaloca, the condition in the soul world where desires are purified, where man is only half in the spiritual world, so to speak, because he still looks back upon his impulses and attachments and is thus still drawn by what bound him to the physical world. Only when this Kamaloca period has been wiped out does he experience purely spiritual life in its fulness, in the realm of spirit.

When a man enters this purely spiritual world, what is his experience? How is it experienced by every human being? Consideration even by the quite ordinary understanding leads to the conclusion that our environment between death and a new birth must appear entirely different from what we have in physical life. Here we see colours because we have eyes; here we hear sounds because we have ears. But when in spiritual existence after death we have no eyes and no ears, we cannot perceive these colours, and sounds. Even here we see and hear badly or not at all, if we have not got good eyes and ears. It is self-evident that we have to conceive the spiritual world as entirely different from the world in which we here live between birth and death. We can form a picture of the way in which this world must alter when we pass through the gate of death with the help of a comparison. A man sees a lamb and a wolf. By means of the organs of perception available to him in physical life man perceives the lamb and the wolf; he sees them as material lamb, as material wolf. Other lambs and wolves too he recognises, and calls them lamb and wolf. He has a conceptual picture of a lamb, and another of a wolf. It could now be said, and is in fact said: the conceptual picture of the animal is not visible, it lives within the animal; one does not really see materially the essential being of lamb and wolf. One forms mental pictures of the essential being of the animal, but this essential being is in itself invisible.

There are theorists who hold that the concepts of wolf and lamb which we form for ourselves live only within us, and that they have nothing to do with the wolf and the lamb themselves. A man who holds this view should be asked to feed a wolf with lambs until all material parts of the wolf body have been renewed, according to scientific research—then the wolf would be built entirely of matter from lambs. And then this man should see whether the wolf has turned into a lamb! But if the result is nevertheless that the wolf has not become a lamb, it has been proved that ‘wolf’, as a fact, is something distinct from the material wolf and that the wolf's objective existence is something more than a material thing.

This invisible reality, which in ordinary life one only forms as a concept, one actually sees after death. One does not see there the lamb's white colour, or hear the sounds which it makes but one beholds the invisible power which works in the lamb. For the one who lives in the spiritual world this is just as real, this is actually there. Where a lamb is standing, there stands too a spiritual reality, which becomes visible for man after death. And it is the same with all phenomena of the physical environment. One sees the sun differently, the moon differently, everything differently; and one brings something of this with one, while entering through birth into a new existence. And if through this there arises the feeling that one has once seen something quite differently, then there descends with one's astonishment and wonder the power of knowledge.

It is something different, if one observes a human action. Then the element of conscience is added. If we wish to know what this is we must turn our attention to a fact of life which can be confirmed without the development of clairvoyance. The moment of falling asleep must be carefully observed. One can learn to do this without any clairvoyance; this experience is open to anyone. Just before one falls asleep, things first lose their sharp outlines, colours grow faint, sounds not only grow weaker, but it is as if they go away from us into the distance; they reach us only from far away, they grow weaker just as if they were going into the distance. The way in which the whole visible world grows less distinct is a transformation like the oncoming of mist. And the limbs grow heavier. One feels in them something which one has not felt before in waking life; it is as if they acquired their own weight, their own heaviness. In waking life if one were to consider it one should really feel that a leg, when one is walking, or a hand, which one raises, have for us no weight. We raise our hand, carrying a hundredweight—why is the hundredweight heavy? We raise our hand and it carries itself—why do we feel no weight? The hand belongs to me, and so its heaviness is not felt; the hundredweight is outside me, and since it does not belong to me, it is heavy. Let us imagine a being from Mars descending to the earth, knowing nothing about earthly things; and the first thing he sees is a man holding a weight in each hand. To begin with he would have to suppose that both these weights belong to the man as if they were part of his hands, part of his whole being. If he then later had to accept the idea that the man feels a difference between the hundredweight and his hand, he would find it astonishing. We really only feel something as a weight if it is outside us. So that if man feels his limbs beginning to become heavy as he falls asleep, this is a sign that man goes out of his body, out of his physical being.

Much now depends upon a delicate observation, which can be made at the moment when the limbs grow heavy. A remarkable feeling appears. It tells us: ‘You have done this—you have left this undone!’ Like a living conscience the deeds of the previous day stand out. And if something is there that we cannot approve of we toss on our bed and cannot fall asleep. If we can be content with our action there comes a happy moment as we fall asleep, when a man says to himself: ‘Could it always be so!’ Then there comes a jolt—that is when man leaves his physical and ethereal body, and then a man is in the spiritual world.

Let us observe the moment of this phenomenon, which is like a living conscience, more exactly. A man has not really any power to do something reasonable, and tosses about on his bed. This is an unhealthy condition which prevents him from getting to sleep. It happens at the moment when we are about to leave the physical plane through falling asleep, in order to ascend into another world; but this is not willing to accept what we call our ‘bad conscience’. A man cannot fall asleep because he is cast back by the world into which he should enter in sleep. Thus if we say that we will listen to our conscience about some action, this means that we have a presentiment of what the human being will need to be in future in order to enter the spiritual world.

Thus we have in astonishment an expression of what we have seen at an earlier time, and conscience is an expression of a future vision in the spiritual world. Conscience reveals whether we shall be horrified or happy, when we are able to behold our actions in the realm of spirit. Conscience is a presentiment that reveals prophetically how we shall experience our deeds after death.

Astonishment and the impulse towards knowledge on the one hand, and the conscience on the other—these are living signs of the spiritual world. These phenomena cannot be explained without bringing in the spiritual worlds. A man will be more inclined to become an anthroposophist if he feels reverence and wonder before the facts of the world. The most developed souls are those which are able to feel wonder more and more. The less one can feel wonder, the less advanced is the soul. Human beings bring to the everyday things of life far less wonder than they bring for example to the starry sky in its majesty. But the real higher development of the soul only begins when one can feel as much wonder about the smallest flower and petal, about the most inconspicuous beetle or worm, as about the greatest cosmic events. These things are very remarkable; a man will generally be moved very easily to ask for the explanation of something which strikes him as sensational. People who live near a volcano for example will ask for the explanation of volcanic eruptions, because people in such regions have to be alert about such things and give them more attention than everyday affairs. Even people who live far away from volcanoes ask for an explanation of them, because these events are startling and sensational for them too. But when a man enters life with such a soul, that he is astonished about everything, because he feels something of the spiritual through all his surroundings, then he is not very much more astonished about a volcano than about the little bubbles and craters which he notices in a cup of milk or coffee on his breakfast table. He is just as interested in small things as in great things.

To be able to bring wonder everywhere—that is a memory of the vision before birth. To bring conscience everywhere into our deeds is to have a living presentiment that every deed which we fulfil will appear to us in the future in another form. Human beings who feel this are more predestined than others to find their way to spiritual science.

We live in a time in which certain things are being revealed which can only be explained through spiritual science. Some things defy every other explanation. People behave very differently towards such things. We have certainly in our time many human characters to observe, and yet within the great variety of shades of character we encounter two main qualities.

We can describe one group as meditative natures, inclined towards contemplation, able everywhere to feel astonishment, feeling everywhere their conscience stirred. Many sorrows, many heavy melancholic moods can pile up in the soul if the longing for explanations remains unsatisfied. A delicate conscience can make life very difficult. Another kind of human being is present today. They have no wish for such an explanation of the world. All the things that are brought forward as explanations derived from spiritual research appear to them terribly dull, and they prefer to live actively and unheedingly, rather than asking for explanations. If you even begin to speak about explanations, they yawn at once. And certainly with people of this kind, conscience is less active than with the others. What is the source of such polarities in character? Spiritual science is ready to examine the reasons for the one quality of character, remarkable for its tendency towards meditation, its thirst for knowledge—while the other is prepared to enjoy life simply without seeking any explanation.

If the compass of the human soul is examined by means of spiritual research—one can only indicate these things, many hours would be needed to give a more thorough description—it can be found that many of those whose lives have a meditative quality, who need to seek explanations for what is around them, can be followed back to previous lives in which they had an immediate knowledge in their souls about the fact of reincarnation. Even today there are many human beings on earth who know it, for whom repeated earthly lives are an absolute fact. We need only think of those in Asia. Thus those men who in the present time lead a meditative life, are in the present connected with a previous incarnation in which they knew something about repeated earthly lives.

But the other, more insensitive natures come over from previous lives in which nothing was known about reincarnation. They have no impulse to burden themselves much with what conscience says about the deeds of their lives, or to be concerned much with seeking explanations. Very many people with us in the Occident have this quality; it is indeed the mark of occidental civilisation, that men have forgotten, so to speak, their earlier lives on earth. Indeed, they have forgotten them; but civilisation is standing at a turning point where a memory for former lives on earth will revive. Men who are living today are going to meet a future which will have as its characteristic the renewal of connection with the spiritual world.

This is still the case only with very few human beings; but certainly in the course of the twentieth century it will become widespread. It will take this form; let us assume that a man has done something, and is troubled afterwards by a bad conscience. It is like this at the present time. But later, when the connection with the spiritual world has been restored, a man will feel impelled, after he has done this or that, to draw back from his action as if with blindfolded eyes. And then something like a dream picture, but one that is entirely living for him will arise; a future event, which will happen because of his deed. And men experiencing such a picture will say something like this to themselves: ‘Yes, it is I who am experiencing this, but what I am seeing is no part of my past!’

For all those who have heard nothing of spiritual science this will be a terrible thing. But those who have prepared for what all will experience will say to themselves: ‘This is indeed no part of my past, but I will experience it in the future as the karmic result of what I have just done.’

Today we are in the anteroom of that time, when the karmic compensation will appear to men in a prophetic dream-picture. And when you think of this experience in the course of time developing further and further, you can conceive the man of the future who will behold the karmic judgment upon his deeds.

How does something like this happen—that human beings become capable of seeing this karmic compensation? This is connected with the fact that human beings once had no conscience but were tormented after evil deeds by the Furies. This was an ancient clairvoyance which has passed away. Then came the middle period when they no longer saw the Furies, but what was brought about by the Furies previously now arose inwardly as conscience. A time is now gradually approaching in which we shall again see something—and this is the karmic compensation. That man has now developed conscience begins to enable him to behold the spiritual world consciously.

Just as some human beings in the present have become meditative natures because they acquired powers in earlier incarnations which reveal themselves—like a memory of these lives—in the power of wonder,—in the same way the men of today will bring over powers into their next incarnation if they now acquire knowledge of the spiritual worlds. But it will go badly in the future world for those who today reject any explanation of the law of reincarnation. This will be a terrible fact for these souls. We are still living in a time in which men can manage their lives without any explanation of them which relates them to the spiritual worlds. But this period, in which this has been permitted by the cosmic powers, is coming to an end. Those men who have no connection with the spiritual world will awaken in the next life in such a way that the world into which they are born once more is incomprehensible to them. And when they leave once more the physical existence which has been incomprehensible to them, they will have no understanding either after death for the spiritual world into which they are growing. Of course they enter the spiritual world; but they will not grasp it. They will find themselves in an environment which they do not comprehend, which appears not to belong to them, and torments them as a bad conscience does. Returning once more into a new incarnation, it is just as bad; they will have all kinds of impulses and passions and will live in these, because they are not able to develop any wonder, as in illusions and hallucinations. The materialists of the present time are those who are going towards a future in which they will be terribly tormented by hallucinations and illusions; for what a man thinks in the present life, he experiences then as illusion and hallucination.

This can be conceived as an absolute reality. We can picture for example two men walking in a street together at the present time. One is a materialist, the other a non-materialist. The latter says something about the spiritual world; and the other says, or thinks: ‘What nonsense! That is all illusion!’ Indeed, for him, this is illusion, but for the other, who made the remark about the spiritual world, it is no illusion. The consequences for the materialist will begin to appear already after death, and then very definitely in the next earthly life. He will then feel the spiritual worlds as something that torments him like a living rebuke. In the period of Kamaloca between death and a new birth he will not feel the distinction between Kamaloca and the spiritual realm. And when he is born again, and the spiritual world approaches him in the way that has been described, then it appears to him as something unreal, as an illusion, as a hallucination.

Spiritual science is not something intended simply to satisfy our inquisitiveness. We are not sitting here simply because we are more inquisitive than other people about the spiritual world, but because we have some feeling for the fact that human beings in the future will not be able to live without spiritual science. All efforts which do not take this fact into account will become decadent. But life is arranged in such a way that those who resist spiritual knowledge at the present time will have the opportunity to approach it in later incarnations. But there must be outposts. Human beings who through their karma have a longing for spiritual knowledge already in the present can become outposts through this. You have this opportunity because there must be outposts, and you can be among them. Other human beings who cannot yet come to spiritual knowledge according to their karma, even though they do not reject it, will find later the longing for spiritual knowledge arising within them, more from the general karma of mankind.

In this final lecture of our conference on education based on anthroposophic insight into the human being, I would like to speak about the moral and religious aspect in teaching, two related subjects that naturally belong together. Again, there is time for only a few characteristic observations.

There is hardly any other subject that pervades every aspect and branch of education with such an all-embracing and unifying spirit, born from a real knowledge of the human being. Yesterday I spoke to you about physical education, whereas today’s theme must be considered truly spiritual—very much so when we look at it from the spirit of our civilization. I want to emphasize immediately that these two subjects—both physical and spiritual in nature—must flow together and form a unity in the kind of education we are considering here, even though they tend to be treated as two very separate branches in traditional education. It may take time for this to happen in general. But in our Waldorf school, we have tried to make a small beginning in this intimate intermingling of spiritual and physical activities by introducing eurythmy as a required subject in all classes that could be seen as a kind of soul and spiritual form of gymnastics. Eurythmy uses the human physical body as a medium to express whatever it brings. Yet, right down to the smallest detail, every movement is also meaningfully permeated by soul and spirit. Eurythmy depends on the physical organs, as speech depends on the human speech organs, without which there could be no vocal communication. The physical speech organs carry soul and spiritual content.

The spiritual element in language can lead directly into the moral and even religious sphere if we are perceptive enough; there is a reason that the Gospel of St. John begins with “In the beginning was the Word.” Thus we can say, This flowing together of body, soul, and spirit is cultivated by teaching eurythmy in every class of the Waldorf school, though it is not a well known subject and, as yet, employs a somewhat instinctive way. Although directly linked to physical movements, eurythmy is one of the subjects that can show, perhaps more clearly than any other, how the unification of body, soul, and spirit can be practiced methodically within class lessons. In the future, many other activities will have to stand alongside eurythmy, offering possibilities as yet undreamed of by people today, and working even more directly into the soul and spiritual realm. Such possibilities are inherent in what has already been given, and waiting to be realized; the way is there. Even if our first efforts in eurythmy are far from perfect and limited in scope, the principles of eurythmy will eventually overcome all imbalance in gymnastics, which is the result of today’s materialistic influences.

One really feels an inner urge to speak about the ethical and religious aspects of education, even if this can be done only aphoristically. On the one hand, we wish to appeal most strongly to what all human beings share as a common bond, beyond the limits of race and nationality. On the other, it has become obvious that it is almost impossible to speak of matters so intimately connected with people’s inner lives in a way that is both understood and accepted by all nationalities. An example may show how very different moral and religious attitudes are in various regions of the world, and how one thus feels inhibited when trying to reach people on this particular level. In reality, such intimate questions of morality and religion can be approached only through the national and religious background of the people concerned.

In all the previous considerations during our conference, I was able to speak in far more general terms about human affairs than I can today. But the anthroposophic view of the world engenders a strong desire to build bridges across all divisions into nationalities, races, and so on. In its inmost being anthroposophy feels compelled to speak with a voice that is supranational, or international. Nevertheless, we are acutely aware of the difficulties in speaking with a voice of universal humanity about such intimate matters of human life, especially in the contemporary scene, which, after all, is the reality that confronts us. So I must beg you to take what I am going to say with the attitude I just mentioned. It is an example intended to illustrate the deep gulfs dividing humankind.

During these lectures I have mentioned Herbert Spencer, who, regardless of personal opinions of his philosophy, must be considered an exponent of Western civilization. I have indicated that Spencer introduced the world to specific educational principles, one of which may be summarized as follows: It is the goal of humankind to reproduce in kind; consequently, it is in our moral interests to raise and educate our offspring accordingly. We must therefore endeavor to provide suitable parents and educators. Such, approximately, are Spencer’s views, which begin with, and aim at, a physical picture of the human being. He follows the development of the human race with an eye on its reproduction and adapts his educational goals accordingly.

Now let us look at another person who, though living a little later, can nevertheless be seen as representing an Eastern worldview. Let us consider the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. Although he expresses himself in Western terminology, a true Russian folk soul speaks through his works. And so we find that the ethical and religious aims of Solovyov have a very different message for humankind, one permeated by the spirit of the East. He tells us that, on the one hand, people must strive for perfection with regard to truth, and, on the other, people must partake of immortality. Here Solovyov does not imply an earthly immortality resulting from fame or glory, but the real immortality of the soul, which rightly belongs to every human soul. He goes on to say that, without this effort toward perfection in truth—in other words, without the attainment of real knowledge—human existence would be worthless. Only if we are able to perfect ourselves more and more will our human life gain in value. But if the human soul were denied immortality, then all perfection, all ability to strive toward perfection, would be nothing but a monstrous cosmic deception. Then, all human achievements in the search for truth would be submerged, and humankind would be cheated of its most precious aspirations by the very cosmic foundations themselves. However, Solovyov claims, this would be the case if, through earthly development, humankind were to consider human reproduction the final and most important goal. Then humankind’s special task in the world would be shunted from one generation to the next, and the human course would be like the spinning of an unchanging wheel, at least in terms of the moral values of existence. In other words, in the spirit of the East, Solovyov clearly rejects the Western ideals of Spencer.

This twofold way of experiencing and judging our human task on earth colors all the many divisions with regard to moral and religious issues. If we wish to understand the ethical and moral aims of humankind, we must first free ourselves from prejudice. Then we need to make an honest effort to understand the various diverging philosophies of life. The opposing views of these two thinkers show how the human constitution differs in terms of the intimate subject of today’s discussion.

The anthroposophic worldview itself is intended to help people, wherever they live on earth, toward knowledge that is beyond all limits of race or national language. Consequently, spiritual science tries to speak a supranational language (not in any physical sense, of course), a language that can be understood throughout modern civilization. For now, we can realize these goals only to a limited extent. But even these initial steps will enable us to appreciate wider issues as well. Once we have a better understanding of what was just said, we will see how little can be accomplished in moral and religious education as long as we introduce religious dogmas and fixed moral concepts to children. At best we can teach them to become Christians, Jews, Roman Catholics, or Protestants, according to our own religious beliefs. But we must eradicate from a true art of education any attempt to indoctrinate young people into our own particular ideology.

A specific problem in education may help illustrate this point and also help us respect matters of human freedom when dealing with children. And we will quickly realize that we must respect the inherent freedom of children if we also recognized that a dull or a bright student, or even a budding genius, should be treated with equal care. What would happen if teachers were to decide that students should take in only what was near to their own souls? In their bodily nature, those of a lower intelligence are born with a heavy burden. A genius, on the other hand, is born with a winged soul. We must admit to ourselves that we are called to help carry the burden of a disabled person. But we must also admit that, as teachers, we may not be able to follow the flight of a young genius. Otherwise, every school would have to be staffed with great geniuses, and this is probably impossible. Our teaching methods must nevertheless ensure that we do not impede the progress of an inherent genius. We must never clip the wings of a genius’s spirit. We can do these things only by developing an art of education that does not interfere with the spiritual forces that must work freely in growing human beings.

All of our previous considerations of this conference were directed to this goal, and once you examine these things in greater depth, you will find it is true. You will also find that the principles of Waldorf education can be implemented in practical life in such a way that teachers need to deal only with what they can develop in children, even in one who will eventually become a genius. Just as a teacher of short stature cannot prevent a student from becoming tall, similarly a teacher’s spiritual limitations need not limit a student’s innate possibilities for spiritual growth. The later lives of students will remain unimpeded by the inevitable shortcomings of teachers as long as we stand on a knowledge of the whole human being, which emanates from the complete human being just as the forces of physical growth do.

Consequently, I welcome the fact that, in the Stuttgart Waldorf school, something has emerged that could easily go unnoticed by a passing visitor; nevertheless it is a concrete reality. I’m speaking of the spirit of the Waldorf school, which exists independently, irrespective of the personal situations of various staff members, whose soul and spiritual lives thrive as a result of communal efforts to cultivate it. This spirit encourages teachers more and more to educate children, even when they have to help carry the heavy burden of the disabled. The teachers’ group study of the human being helps them bear this burden while making every effort to avoid the educational error of hindering a highly gifted student’s free development. This is our ideal, and it goes without saying that it does not exist just in the clouds of cuckooland, because the teachers make concerted efforts to bring it into daily life at the Waldorf school.

When dealing with the moral and religious aspects of education, we cannot draw material from existing ideologies, religious institutions, or established ethics. Our task is to reach the students’ inner being so that, in keeping with their destinies, they will be able to work freely with others in the social sphere. Consequently, we do not begin teaching by appealing to their conceptual faculties. Although knowledge provides meaning, it does not make it possible to go into the intimate regions of the soul in a living way. When imparting knowledge—and we are bound to do this in our school—when addressing the faculty of thinking as one of the three soul faculties, we must realize that thinking, too, must be channeled toward ethical aims. However, when dealing with the moral and religious aspects of education, we must appeal first and foremost to the feeling life of students. We cannot address the will directly, because human activities immediately connect people socially, and social activities are determined largely by the prevailing conditions and demands of the social milieu.

So we cannot turn directly to thinking, which always wants to turn in a certain direction, nor to willing, which must take its impulses from prevailing social conditions. We can, however, always appeal to feeling, which to a certain extent is the private domain of each individual. If we appeal to this element when teaching, we meet forces of the human soul that have a moral and religious quality. Yet, we must go beyond cultivating the students’ thinking, feeling, and willing as though each were a separate faculty. We must try to train the soul forces together. Obviously, it would be wrong to concentrate on training thinking in a lopsided way, just as it would it be wrong to concentrate only on the will. Rather, we must let feeling flow into both thinking and willing.

With thinking, only knowledge of the world and the human being—based on spiritual science—really helps us, because it allows us to build on a physical foundation. With such knowledge, we can safely turn to subjects such as physics and chemistry without the danger of being unable to rise to the level of metaphysics, or spirit. If we reach the suprasensory world along the way, we engage not only thinking but also feeling. The very moment we lift knowledge of the world to a suprasensory level, we begin to achieve a moral relationship with the ground of the world and to suprasensory beings themselves.

The element of feeling is the first of three soul faculties to which we must turn in moral and religious education. If fostered correctly, feeling will be transformed into gratitude. Right from the very beginning of school life, we must systematically develop a mood of gratitude in children—something that modern education allows in only a limited and relatively unconscious way. We must try to engender a mood of gratitude for everything children receive, with every concrete example we take from life itself.

When this feeling is developed properly, it can rise to the highest realms of cosmic laws available to cognition. At such a moment, people feel how the sensory world surrounds them. They come to understand natural laws and see themselves within the sensory realm. They begin to understand that whatever they discover through the senses alone will never make them fully human. Gradually they find a way of knowing the human being that points beyond the limits of the sensory world but, nevertheless, is accessible by scientific methods. They then not only experience the activity of universal cosmic laws in themselves, but divine the existence of spiritual beings. Such awareness changes knowledge into a deep feeling of gratitude toward the suprasensory beings who placed them into the world. Knowledge broadens into gratitude toward divine beings. We know we have given young people knowledge of the world in the right way if it eventually wells up in them as a feeling of gratitude toward the suprasensory world.

Thus, a feeling of gratitude is the first quality within the three human soul faculties that leads into the moral and religious sphere and that we must cultivate in young people. Gratitude itself includes a certain quality of knowing, since we must understand why we are grateful. It is characteristic of this feeling that it is closely related to our powers of comprehension. In the Waldorf school, we do not appeal to faith as handed down by tradition; this is left to our visiting religion teachers. After the ground has been prepared by class teachers, religious teachers are invited to relate what they can give to life in general.

With the students’ faculty of thinking, we first try to create a mood of gratitude. When we turn to feeling, what we find takes us beyond ourselves and out into the world. With the experience of gratitude, we find ourselves facing other beings. And, if we can identify with other beings to the extent of experiencing them as ourselves, then something begins to develop in our feeling life that we call love in the true sense of this word. Love is the second mood of soul that needs to be nurtured in moral and religious life, the kind of love we can nurture at school by doing whatever we can to help students love one another. We can provide a firm foundation for this kind of love by helping children make a gradual transition from the stage of imitation and authority, in the ninth or tenth year, to a genuine feeling of love for their teachers, whose bearing and general behavior at school must naturally warrant it.

In this way we lay the foundations of a twofold human quality; we instill the essence of the ancient call to love your neighbor as you love yourself, while helping to develop a feeling of gratitude that points more to a comprehension of the world. “Love your neighbor as you love yourself ” is complemented by the call to “love Divine Being above everything.”

Such words of truth have a familiar ring to most people today, for they have sounded through the ages. However, knowing them in theory and repeating them is not the point. It is most important to find ways to put them into practice in the immediate present, thus every age sees a renewal of humankind. We often hear the admonition to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and God above everything, yet we see little evidence of it. Life at school should try to assure that such things are not just talked about but become infused with new life.

There is only one way that offers a firm foundation for the capacity to love in a mature way, and that is the natural transformation of the childhood stages of imitation and authority to that of love. If we work in harmony with children’s natural development toward the attainment of love—whose quality should be self-evident when seen in this light—we will not need to invent the sort of long-winded theories that are fabricated by materialistic thinkers, intended to guide sexually maturing adolescents in their first experiences of love. A whole literature has been written on the subject, all of which suffers from the simple fact that one no longer knows what to do with young people once they reach sexual maturity. The reason for this failure is that children were not prepared properly, because people did not know how to handle the previous stages of childhood. If adolescents have been guided correctly up to this incisive time in their lives, we do not have such difficulties with them.

In children’s life of will, we must guide the developing soul so that feelings flow freely into the will in the right way. Children must naturally express many different will impulses outwardly, but what asserts itself now? If we were unable to use our physical powers to express our will impulses, we would not be human in the physical sense, especially when our actions are seen in the light of morality and religion. By engendering love, we pour ourselves out into the world. By willing, we return to ourselves, and because willing is essential to our lives, we enter the realm of instincts, drives, and emotions. At the moment we look for a path to morality and religion, we must realize that everything that makes us human must now flow into our instincts and desires. This path reveals itself to us when we knowingly contemplate the universe and find the human being there. Ancient tradition put this into words by telling us that human beings are images of the Godhead.

Volition that has an ethical and religious character arises only when we can carry this kind of experience into our deliberate actions—when we can find the image of God even in our instinctive impulses. Thus we know that our true humanity remains alive in the domain of the will. What are we doing when we allow will impulses to enter the world so that, right down to the level of instincts, people recognize a true human being in us? By developing a feeling for our own humanity, which we pour into our will impulses and activities, we reveal the third of the three soul moods. There is no word in German for this third element. So, to make my meaning clear, I have to borrow a word from English—the word duty. There is no German word for duty. Those who can experience how words reveal the genius of language (as described a previous meeting) will be able to sense my meaning. It is true that anyone who, without further ado, translates simply according to what one finds in a dictionary, would translate the word duty into the German word Pflicht. But this word does not meet the need at all. As a noun, formed from the verb pflegen, it comes from a very different region of the soul. One would have to approach this matter very differently if we were to base it on Pflicht. This difficulty of finding the right word presents another example of how differently people are constituted in various parts of the earth. If we aim to be conscientious and correct in our use of language, we cannot translate duty with Pflicht to express the third mood of soul, because it would not reflect the truth. It would be a lie, even if only a technical one.

1. Gratitude
2. Love
3. Duty

Again, it is characteristic that we can use the German words for gratitude (Dankbarkeit) and love (Liebe), but that there is no German word for expressing the third mood of soul. It is characteristic because we find ourselves entering a definite geographic locale as soon as we step from the area of cognition, which links us to humanity (since thought can be shared by all thinking people), and as soon as we leave the realm of love, which can unite people everywhere, and enter the sphere of individual volition. Here we are called on to form our lives and become aware of the individuality being developed in us by our having been placed into a definite location on earth.

However, if we approach students through their life of feeling during their ninth or tenth year, when previous powers of imitation and the inborn sense of authority have gradually changed into new faculties, our teaching will, by its very nature, lead to a moral and religious experience on their part. And when human beings are permeated by the feeling that they want to be truly human, that they must conduct their lives so that, right down to the level of instincts, they themselves and others will recognize true humanity in them, they immediately become messengers, angels of the divine world. Moral life will be pervaded by a religious mood.

If students have been guided properly up to the twelfth year, the introduction of new subjects will lead them into what lies beyond the human realm. This makes them realize that, by observing outer nature, they are entering another world, limited by the senses and obedient to the laws of a lifeless, inorganic world. (We have already described this period and indicated the right pedagogical approach.) At that moment, children feel, deep down, that they want to be truly human, even in their lower nature, at the level of instincts and drives. And then the third mood of soul arises, which is a sense of duty. Thus, through our education and in conformity with the children’s nature, we have guided them to experience the three moods of soul. Naturally, the ground had to be prepared during the previous school years.

At the stage of development toward the twelfth year, a certain loss of inner harmony will manifest in our students’ religious experiences. I mean that, in their religious life, a most important moment has arrived. Naturally, students have to be prepared for this turning point so that they can pass through it in the right way. Educators must not simply accept the “fact” that certain conflicts caused by modern civilization are inevitable. In our time, people have their moral and ethical views, which are deeply rooted in the human soul and without which they cannot imagine human dignity and human values. On the other hand, they find themselves surrounded by the effects of natural laws that, in themselves, are completely amoral, laws that affect human lives regardless of any moral issues and can be dealt with only if questions of morality are left entirely out of consideration.

In educational circles today, there is a widespread tendency to conveniently bypass this issue when children reach this critical point in their lives. In our present civilization, however, this conflict in the human soul is both deep-seated and tragic. This must be resolved one way or another before adulthood. Unless students can reconcile the moral and natural orders of the world so they are seen as part of a unity, they may suffer an inner conflict that has the strength to tear their lives apart. Today such a conflict exists in the lives of nearly all thinking people, but they remain unaware of it. People prefer to fall back on traditional religious creeds, trying to bridge what remains unbridgeable unless they can rise from the sensory world to the spiritual world, as anthroposophy endeavors to do.

For adults, such a conflict is indeed tragic. If it arises in childhood before the eleventh year, it brings disturbances in its wake that are serious enough to ruin the soul life of a child. A child should never have to say, “I study zoology and find nothing about God. It’s true that I hear of God when I study religion, but this does not help explain zoology.” To allow children to be caught in such a dilemma would be awful, since this kind of questioning can completely throw them off their proper course in life. Of course, the education we have been considering during the last few days would never allow such a schism to develop in a child’s soul, because it fully considers the importance of the eleventh to twelfth years and all that follows. Only then (not before) is it time for the student to become aware of the disharmony between life as seen in terms of nature and life seen from the moral point of view. We should not overprotect children by glossing over certain facts of life—such as the fact that, apart from gratitude, love, and duty, the world is a duality seen with human eyes. However, if education is based on the principles elaborated here, students will be able to resolve this seeming disharmony in the world, especially at this particular age. Certain problems will deepen and enrich our students’ religious lives far more than if they were fed only the traditional sorts of religious instruction, which have to be accepted on faith. Such real meaning assures students that a bridge can be built across the abyss they have experienced for the first time, because it is a reality.

Our civilization requires that we let our ethical and religious views play their proper role in life as it is. And in our religious teaching we must take our cue from the critical moments of the students’ developing life of feeling. The difficulties of finding the kind of bridge I have described are highlighted by a book published in London toward the end of the eighties. It is called Lux Mundi, and among its contributors are several authors who represent the official views of the High Church of England. It attempts to take what has crystallized in the Church and integrate it more into social life. Even members of the High Church are at pains to build such a bridge—needless to say, from their point of view. You find people discussing this everywhere, and it could well become the substance of our religious life.

Can we really offer something that is being debated so much today as a subject for growing children? Are we in a position to lead young people into Christianity, while theologians increasingly argue about the reality of Christ? Should it not be our task to find ways to help each person relate to Christianity as a free individual? We must not teach accepted dogmas or fixed formulas as ethical and religious instruction; rather, we must learn to nurture the divine spiritual element that lives in the human soul. Only then shall we guide children correctly, without impinging on their inner freedom to eventually choose their own religious denomination. Only then will students be spared inner uncertainty on discovering that one adult is a member of the High Church while another may be a Puritan. We must succeed in enabling students to grasp the real essence of religion. Likewise, through the cultivation of the three moods of soul, we must succeed in allowing morality to develop freely in the souls of children instead of trying to inculcate them by means of set moral precepts. This problem is at the very heart of the social question, and all the talk or social work related to it will depend on whether we provide the right basis for the moral education of young people. A significant part of the whole social question is simply a question of education.

It was possible to present only a few rough outlines of the moral and religious aspect of Waldorf education, which we have been studying during the last few days. If our educational aims are rooted in a true knowledge of the human being, and as long as we realize that we must refrain from introducing dogmas, theories, or moral obligations into our teaching, we will eventually succeed in laying the right foundation for the moral and religious life of our students.

So we must continue to work toward a true art of education that conforms to the needs of our time. Perhaps I may hope that what I presented to you during the last few days will show that I an not at all against the achievements of general education. Broadly speaking, our present civilization is not lacking in good educational aims and principles, and during the nineteenth century, they were stated in abstract terms by the great educators of various countries around the world. Waldorf education has no intention of opposing or belittling their findings, but it believes it knows that these ideas can be implemented only through the appropriate measures, and that such measures can grow only from a real and deep experience of the human being and the world. Fundamentally, Waldorf education tries to bring about what most people are looking for, though their goals may be somewhat abstract or ill-defined. We are seeking ways to achieve something that everyone would really like to see in education, and if this is the feeling that has arisen among those who have shown genuine interest in an anthroposophically based education as practiced in the Waldorf school, then the right kind of response has been evoked here.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has meant a great deal to me to be permitted to speak to you in this spirit. It is more important to me that you appreciate the spirit from which I have spoken than that you hear the details of what I brought. Details might have to be modified or adapted in one way or another. What matters are not the details but the spirit behind them. If I have succeeded in evoking some experience of the tolerant and humane, yet active spirit behind our education based on spiritual science, then perhaps just a little of what I wanted to bring in these lectures has been achieved.

In conclusion, I wish to emphasize once more my firm conviction that it is of utmost importance to speak from this spirit during our time. I would like to thank you for the interest you have shown during these lectures. I would also like to thank you for spending your time at this conference, especially during this festive season, and I hope that, as you leave, you feel at least some justification for your journey to Dornach. If this is the case, I would like to give you my heartiest farewell in the hope that we may meet again, in the sense in which I spoke to you at the opening of this lecture course.

You will not only have to be teachers and educators at the Waldorf School, but if things go well you will also have to be protagonists of the whole Waldorf School system. For, of course, you will know far more exactly what the Waldorf School really means than can be conveyed to the neighbouring or more distant outside world. But to be the true protagonists of the aims of the Waldorf School and of its aims for civilization in general you will have to be in a position to conduct your defence against prevailing opinion wherever this shows itself antagonistic or even merely demurring. Consequently, I must introduce into these pedagogical-didactic reflections a chapter which will quite naturally connect with what we have already so far analysed in our discussions on method.

You know that in the sphere of educational theory, as well as other spheres, much is expected at the present time from the so-called experimental psychology. Experiments are carried out on people to determine an individual's gift for forming ideas, for memorizing, even for willing, although this can naturally only be ascertained by a detour. The will fulfils itself in sleep, and the electrical apparatus in the psychological laboratory can only indirectly discover an individual's experiences during sleep, just as these cannot be observed directly by way of experiment. Such experiments, indeed, are carried out. Do not imagine that I object to such experiments as a whole. They can be valuable as tendrils of science, as offshoots of science. All kinds of interesting things can be learnt from such experiments and I have decidedly no desire to condemn them, lock, stock, and barrel. I should like everyone who is attracted to work of this kind to have the means of acquiring such psychological laboratories and of carrying out their experiments there. But we must consider for a moment the rise of this experimental psychology in the form in which it is especially recommended by the educationist, Meumann,¹ who is really one of the Herbartian school.

Why is experimental psychology practised to-day? Because people have lost the gift of studying man directly. They can no longer rely on the forces which inwardly bind one man to another—or, to the child. So they try to discover by external devices, by external experiments, what should be done with the growing child. Clearly our principles and methods of teaching take a much more inward course. This is, moreover, urgent and vital for the present day and the immediate future of mankind. Granted, then, on the one hand, the urge to experimental psychology, on the other hand, as a result of this experimental psychology, we get the misconstruction of certain simple facts of life. Let me illustrate this by an example.

These experimental psychologists and educationists have lately been particularly interested in what they call the process of comprehension; for instance, the process of comprehension in reading, in the reading of a given passage. In order to ascertain this process of comprehension they have tried to work with “subjects,” as they are called. If we summarize the steps taken in great detail, this is the procedure. A “subject,” a child or an adult, is given a reading passage, and the investigation is now directed as to which is the most effective method for the child, for instance, to adopt, in order to arrive at the most rapid comprehension. It is discovered that the most effective method is first to “dispose” the reader to the reading passage, that is, first to introduce the person concerned to the meaning of such a reading passage. Then, after numerous tests, the “subject” carries out what is called “passive comprehension.” After having dealt with the meaning, by making “scheme” or plan, it is supposed to be passively comprehended. For through this passive assimilation of a reading passage there should occur what is called “learning to anticipate”: repeating once more in free spiritual activity what has just been worked out in scheme or plan and then passively assimilated. And then follows, as fourth act to this drama, the filling in of all that until now has remained uncertain, that is, of all that has not penetrated completely into the life of the human spirit and soul. If you let the subject carry out, in correct succession, first the process of familiarizing himself with the meaning of a reading passage, then of passive assimilation, then of learning to anticipate, then of returning to the as yet incompletely assimilated parts, you then see that a given reading passage is most effectively grasped, read, and remembered. Do not misunderstand me: I mention this procedure because it must be mentioned in view of the fact that people talk to-day so much at cross-purposes, for they may want to imply the same thing with diametrically opposed words. Accordingly, the experimental psychologists will say: “A scrupulously faithful method like this reveals exactly what should be done in education.” But those who have a profounder understanding of the life of the whole being know that this is not the way to true education—any more than you can put together again a living beetle from its separate parts after it has been dissected. It cannot be done. Nor can it be done by trying anatomy on the human soul-activity. It is interesting, of course, and in another connection it can be extremely valuable for science, to practise anatomy on the activity of the human soul—but it does not make educators. For this reason there can proceed from this experimental psychology no new true building up of education; this can only proceed from an inner understanding of man.

I had to say this for fear lest you should misunderstand me when I make a statement which will naturally cause annoyance to a supporter of modern opinion. The statement is one-sided in its way, and its one-sidedness must, of course, be counterbalanced. What do the experimental psychologists get, when they have split up into atoms like this the soul of their subject and have made a martyr of him—this process is not pleasant if it is inflicted on you—what good do they get out of it? According to them they have obtained an extraordinarily valuable result, which is constantly being impressed by italics in educational textbooks as a conclusion arrived at. This statement, translated into decent German, runs roughly like this: You can remember a reading passage better when you have understood the meaning than when you have not understood the meaning. It has been “determined by research”—to use scientific jargon—that it is useful firstly to understand the meaning of a reading passage if you want to learn it easily. And here I must make the heretical declaration that, in as far as this theory is correct, I could have known it before, for I should like to know what person with a normal human intelligence does not know for himself that a reading passage can be remembered better when its meaning has been understood than when this has not been understood. Every single one of the conclusions of experimental psychology is an appalling platitude. The platitudes printed in the textbooks of experimental psychology are sometimes of such a kind that only those people can have anything to do with them who have already trained themselves in the pursuit of science to submit to intense boredom for an occasional striking point. You are easily trained to do this by the drill of the school-system—for even the elementary school has this defect, although it is less conspicuous here than at the universities.

This heretical statement is meant particularly for the educationist: It is to some extent self-evident that one must first understand the meaning of a thing which is to be remembered. But there is this to consider: that what has been assimilated by understanding the meaning, only affects the observation, only affects thought-perception, and that this elevation of the human being to the level of sense-comprehension educates him one-sidedly to a mere observation of the world, to a thought-perception. And if we teach simply and solely in accordance with this theory we shall get nothing but weak-willed people. The statement, then, is in a sense correct—and yet not conclusively correct. It ought, as a matter of fact, to be further expressed in these terms: If you want to do the best possible thing for the thinking perception of the individual you can do it by analysing the meaning of everything that he absorbs. And, in fact, if we were to analyse merely the meaning of things, we could go very far in educating human observation of the world. But we should never educate a man's will—volitional man—for the will cannot be forced by simply throwing the light on the meaning of a thing. The will likes to sleep, and it does not wish to be fully awakened by what I should like to call the perpetual unchaste laying bare of the meaning. And the point is, that the very inevitability of life breaks in upon this simple truth of the value of revealing meanings, so that with the child, too, we must study subjects which do not lay bare the meaning. Then we shall educate his will.

The mischievous effects of the one-sided application of the principles of explaining the meanings have been particularly active in movements like the Theosophical Movement. You know how much I have protested for years against a certain mischievous influence in Theosophical circles. I have even had to see Hamlet, for instance, a pure work of art, explained in terms of theosophical cant like this: “This is Manas, this is the Ego—that is the astral body. This character represents one thing—that one another.” Such explanations were particularly in favour. I protested against them because it is a sin against human life to interpret symbolically what is meant to be taken directly, in its elements, as art. It leads to a mischievous reading of a meaning into things, and this is dragged to the level of mere observation to which it should not be dragged. This all arises from the fact that the actual Theosophical Movement is a decadent movement. It is the furthest-flung offshoot of a declining culture; in its entire attitude it has nothing to do with Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy aims at being the opposite: at being an ascending movement, the beginning of an ascent. That is a radical difference. That is why so much is written in the field of Theosophy which is really an extreme symptom of decadence. But that there exist people at all who contrive to interpret Hamlet symbolically, character by character, is the result of the appalling way in which we have been educated only to look for meanings.

Human life makes it indispensable that we should not only be educated in terms of the meaning, but from what the will experiences in the sleeping life: by rhythm, measure, melody, harmony of colours, repetition, in fact all spontaneous activity which does not seek to comprehend. When you let the child repeat sentences which he is far from understanding because of his tender age, when you encourage the child to take in these sentences just by memory itself, you certainly do not influence his comprehension—because you are unable to enter into their meaning, for that must only dawn later—but you influence his will, and that is what you should do; that is what you must do. You must try first of all to acquaint the child with things which are first and foremost artistic: music, drawing, plastic art, etc.; but on the other hand you must also give the child things which can have some abstract form of meaning in such a way that he does not, it is true, understand this at once, but only later in life. Then he will understand it because he has assimilated it by repetition, and can remember, and later understand, with his greater maturity, what he could not understand before. There you have worked upon his will. And quite especially you have worked upon his feeling—and you should not forget this. Just as feeling—this can be observed of the soul as well as of the spirit—lies between willing and thinking, so does the education of feeling lie midway between the methods of educating the thinking and those of willing. For the thinking knowledge or thinking perception we must definitely practise subjects concerned with revealing meanings: reading, writing, etc.; for action inspired by will we must cultivate everything which does not aim at a mere interpretation of meanings but at a direct impression through the whole being, for instance, of artistic subjects. What lies midway between the two (i.e. thought and will) will chiefly influence the development of feeling, the formation of its disposition. You can produce a strong effect on the education of the feeling nature when the child is made to assimilate something first of all only by rote, uncomprehended, without tampering with its meaning. For only after some time, when he has matured through other processes, and remembers it, can he understand what he absorbed earlier. This is a subtlety of education which must absolutely be respected, if we are to educate people with inner feelings. For feeling plays a peculiar role in life. In this sphere, too, people should make observations. But they do not observe rightly. I will indicate an observation which you can easily, with a little industry, make for yourselves.

Suppose you are trying to get a clear idea of the state of Goethe's soul in 1790. You can do this by studying a selection of the works composed by Goethe in the year 1790. You find, of course, at the end of every edition of Goethe a chronological index of his poems, in their order of composition; so you take out the poems written in 1790 and the plays written in 1790 and study them. You remember that in precisely this year he finished the beautiful essay, Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (“The Metamorphosis of Plants”); you recall that just at that time he conceived the first idea of the Farbenlehre (“Theory of Colour”); you imagine from all this the state of his soul in 1790 and ask yourselves: “What were the influences active on Goethe's psychic life in 1790?” You will only be able to answer this question if you cast a critical glance on all Goethe's previous experiences from 1749 to 1790 and on what followed after this year—of which Goethe at the time was still unaware, but which you now know—during the period from 1790 to 1832, that is, to his death. Then there emerges the remarkable realization that the actual state of his soul in the year 1790 was a combination of what was to come later, the conquests remaining for the individual to make, and those he had already experienced. This is an extraordinarily significant discovery. People only avoid it because it leads into provinces which they quite naturally do not like to enter for observations of this kind. Try to extend your observations in this way to the soul-life of an individual who died recently and whom you have known for some time. If you train yourself to a more careful study of the soul you will then find this: A man, a friend of yours, died, let us say, in 1918. You have known him for some time, so that you can ask yourselves: “What was the state of his soul in 1912?” If you consider everything that you know of him you will find that the state of his soul in 1912 was such that the preparation for his approaching death was unconsciously reflected in his psychic disposition at that time; it was unconsciously reflected in his feelings. Taken as a whole I call the life of the feelings the psychic disposition, “Mood of Soul” (Seelenstimmung). A man who is soon to die has a quite different inner disposition from one who has still long to live.

You will now understand that people do not like to study these things, for it would create a very unpleasant impression—to put it mildly—if we were to observe the signs of approaching death in people's psychic disposition. These, however, can be observed. But in everyday life it is not wise for people to notice these things. That is why they are usually hidden from this life just as the will is withdrawn, as a sleeping power, even when we are awake, from the waking consciousness. But the educator must, after all, take up a position outside ordinary life to some extent. He must not be afraid to take up his stand detached from his usual life and to absorb truths for his teaching which are rather disturbing, rather tragic, for everyday life. In this connection there is lost ground to cover in the educational system of Central Europe. You know that especially the teachers in the universities in the early decades of this Central European system of education and teaching were people on whom the actual man of the world rather turned up his nose in scorn. Unworldly, pedantic fellows, who could not adapt themselves properly to the world, who always wore long, black frock-coats and never evening dress; these were the former educators of youth, especially the teachers of more mature youth. In these days things have changed. The university professors have begun to wear correct evening dress and to adapt themselves to worldly custom, and it is considered a great mark of progress that their former state is at last a thing of the past. It is a good thing. But it must be a thing of the past in other senses, too; it must in future be a thing of the past to the extent that the detachment from life does not merely consist, as it did formerly, in the teacher's wearing the invariable long pedantic frock-coat when other people did not. The detachment from life can remain to some extent, but it must be bound up with a profounder conception of life than that of people who wear evening dress for dinner. I am only speaking figuratively, of course, for I have nothing against “evening dress.”

An educator must be able to study life more profoundly, otherwise he will never give appropriate and fruitful attention to the growing child. Consequently, he will have to accept, among others, such truths as I have just mentioned. Life itself, to a certain extent, demands the presence of mysteries. We need no diplomatic secrets in the near future. But for education we need the knowledge of certain mysteries of life. The old Mystery teachers withheld such secrets of life esoterically because these could not be revealed directly to life. But in a certain degree every teacher must know truths which he cannot impart directly to the world, because the world would be confused in normal progress, if it had access to such truths all the time. But you do not fully understand how to treat the growing child if you cannot estimate the influence on him of something imparted in such a way that he does not fully understand it at the time. He will understand when it is returned to later, and when he is told, not only what he then realizes, but what he had assimilated earlier. This makes a profound impression on the feelings and disposition.

For this reason the custom should be followed in every school as faithfully as possible—wherever possible—of the teacher retaining his same pupils; of taking them over for the first form, of keeping them the next year in the second form, of going up with them again in the third year, etc., as far as this is possible in conjunction with outside regulations. The teacher, after finishing with the eighth class, should then begin anew with the first class. For one must sometimes be able to come back years later in a positive way to what was instilled into the children's souls years before. In any case, the formation of the disposition or feeling life suffers greatly when the children are passed every year to a fresh teacher who cannot himself develop what he instilled into children in earlier years. It is part of the teaching method itself that the teacher should go up with his own pupils through the different school-stages. Only in this way can we enter into the rhythm of life. And in the most comprehensive sense life has a rhythm. This manifests itself even in everyday decisions, in the rhythm of day to day itself. If you have accustomed yourself, for instance, only for a week, to eat a buttered roll every day at half-past ten in the morning, you will probably feel hungry for the buttered roll at the same time in the second week. The human organism conforms as closely as this to a rhythm. But not only the external organism, but the whole being, is rhythmically organized. For this reason, too, it is a good thing throughout life as a whole—and that is what we are concerned with when we educate and teach children—to be able to attend to rhythmical repetition. For this reason we do well to think that even every year is not too often to return to quite definite educational themes. Therefore select subjects for the children, make a note of them, and come back to something similar every year. Even in more abstract things this method can be followed. You teach, let us say, in a way suited to the child's disposition, addition in the first school year; you come back to addition in the second, and teach more about it, and in the third year you return to it in the same way, so that the same act takes place repeatedly, but in progressive repetition.

To enter like this into the rhythm of life is of quite particular importance for all education and teaching—far more important than continuously repeating: Do build up your lessons according to the principle of meaning—thus inartistically pulling to bits whatever you deal with. You can only divine what is demanded here by gradually developing a feeling for life itself. But you will then part company very markedly, precisely as educationists, from the external experimental aims so frequent to-day even in education. Again, not to condemn, but to correct, certain tendencies which have proved detrimental to our spiritual culture, do I emphasize these things. You can embark on modern textbooks of education where the results are worked out which have been obtained through experiments on memory. The “subjects”—people experimented upon—are treated in a strange way. Tests are made on them to show how they can remember something of which they have understood the meaning; then they are given words written one after the other with no connecting sense, and they have to learn these, etc. These experiments for ascertaining the laws of the memory are practised very extensively to-day. Again a result has been obtained which is committed to formulae in scientific form. Just as, for instance, in physics, the Law of Gay-Lussac, among others, is formulated, people are anxious to formulate such laws in experimental education or psychology. You find, for example, very learnedly expounded, the gist of conclusions about a certain scientific yearning which is quite justified, namely, to prove the existence of types of memory. Firstly, the quickly or slowly assimilating memory; secondly, the quickly or slowly reproducing memory. So a “subject” is tormented to furnish evidence for the fact that there are people who memorize easily and people who memorize with difficulty; then other “subjects” are tormented to prove that there are people who can call back to mind easily, and people who can call back to mind only with difficulty, what they have once learnt. Now it has been determined by research that there are such types of memory; those showing a rapid or a slow assimilation, and those showing an easy or painful recollection or reproduction of what was assimilated. Thirdly, there are also types of memory which can be called “true and exact;” fourthly, there is a comprehensive memory; fifthly, a retentive and reliable memory, in opposition to the type which easily forgets. This answers very satisfactorily to the craving of modern science to systematize. The scientific result has now been obtained. We can ask: “What has been discovered scientifically in exact psychology about the types of memory?” And we learn: firstly, there is a type of memory which assimilates easily or laboriously; secondly, a type which reproduces easily or laboriously; thirdly, there is a true or exact memory; fourthly, a comprehensive memory, that is, there are people who can remember great passages of prose in contrast to those who can only remember short ones; fifthly, a retentive memory, which has perhaps remembered things from years ago, in contrast to the kind which forgets quickly.

This scientific method of observation scrupulously and very conscientiously maltreats innumerable victims, and sets to work most ingeniously to obtain results, in order that education, too, after having tested the children in experimental psychology, may know what various types of memory are to be differentiated. But with all due respect for such a science, I should like to make the following objection. Anyone endowed with a little sound common sense must know that there are people who commit things to memory easily or with difficulty; there are also those who easily or laboriously recall things once known, and again there are people who can recount things truly and accurately, in contrast to those who muddle everything they try to tell. There are people with an extensive memory, who can remember a long story, in contrast to those who can only remember a short one; and there are also people who can remember a thing for a long time, even years, and people who have forgotten everything in a week! It is part, in fact, of the fairly ancient wisdom of sound common sense, but it is discovered again in a science which inspires us with respect, because the methods which it applies are so ingenious.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this: firstly, let us, above all, prefer to cultivate sound common sense in education and teaching, rather than expend it on such experimenting, which will, it is true, develop ingenuity very considerably, but which will not bring the teacher in touch with the quality of individuality in the child. But we can also draw a second conclusion: our age is actually in a sorry plight if we have to assume that the people who are going to become our teachers and educators have so little healthy human intelligence that they can only learn in this roundabout way that there are the different kinds of memory which we have just mentioned. Moreover, these things must undoubtedly be considered symptoms of the state of our present spiritual standard.

I had to draw your attention to these things. For people will say to you: “Well, you have let yourself be appointed at this Waldorf School. It is only a dilettante institution; the people there don't even want to know anything about the greatest conquest of our time: about the methods of experimental psychology. The study of this experimental psychological method is for experts, but the methods of the Waldorf School are quackery in comparison!” You will have to realize that you will sometimes have to acknowledge the connection of science—which must not be respected any the less for that—with what remains to be built up by us on an inner educational theory and method, but which, compared with the external relations which are set up by experiment, inspires an inner loving attentiveness towards the child. Certainly this quality has not completely disappeared; it prevails even more than is realized. But it definitely prevails in opposition to the ever-encroaching aims of scientific educational theory. To a certain extent it is true that the pursuit of science can destroy a good deal in modern life, but it has not the power to drive out all healthy human intelligence. This healthy human intelligence or sound common sense should be our starting-point, and when this is properly cultivated it will produce an inner connection with the ideals of teaching. We must realize, of course, that we live at the beginning of a new age, and we must completely master this fact. Down to the middle of the fifteenth century the surviving traditions of the Greek and Latin-Roman times were preserved. After the middle of the fifteenth century these are only the clattering after traditional repetition. But the people whose life is in this “clattering” still feel, in certain sub-regions of their consciousness, the craving to return to the Graeco-Latin age, which we can admire profoundly in its place, of course, but whose persistence into our age is no longer a living thing. Just think for a moment how self-satisfied the person is in these days, who has learnt something and can descant on it in the following terms: “A good teacher must not merely bring out the rhythm, and the rhyme in a poem; he must comment technically on the text; he must introduce the meaning, and only when he has unravelled the meaning will the pupils absorb it as an inner activity.” After such a person has long held forth on the importance of starting with the meaning, he concludes with: “As the old Latin said: rem tene, verba sequuntur, if you have understood the question, words will follow of themselves.” These are tactics which you will frequently find in people who imagine that they have learnt a great deal, that they have gone far beyond dilettantism in enunciating something first as a piece of sublime contemporary wisdom, and then following it up with, “as the old Latin said. ...” And, of course, he has only to say it in Greek for people to believe implicitly that it is something quite extraordinary. For the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization, this attitude was desirable; it is unbecoming in our age. The Greek did not introduce his children, first of all, to old grammar schools where they could learn, let us say, ancient Egyptian; he made them learn Greek. But to-day we begin by introducing people to ancient tongues before their own. That is a fact which must be realized.

• 1. See Dr. C. v. Heydebrand, Gegen Experimentalpsychologie und Pädagogik.

I have carefully considered for some time whether or not to include today's chapter in this lecture series, for its subject matter can only be presented in outline. But I have decided to include it, even if only to prove once more how greatly such things may be misunderstood. For on the one side, some people have long endeavoured to prove that Anthroposophy and its doctrines are muddled nonsense. Recently, however, it appears to have dawned on some other people that this opinion can no longer be held, but that Anthroposophy appears to correspond with the results of additional research into the ancient mysteries. So the attack is now from the other side: I am represented as a betrayer of the mysteries. Thus people can always find a possibility of accusation and attack, whether on one score or the other. If they can no longer state that these things are false they can at least maintain that it is extremely wrong to say them.

I must first of all repeat that the exclusively physical study of man only surveys a part and a comparatively small part of human nature This is for the simple reason that man contains the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, which are constantly working upon and moulding the physical organism, yet entirely inaccessible to external physical judgment—I use this term with intention and reference to what follows. At the same time it is not impossible for the human being to educate himself and evolve (granting steadfast effort) to the point of acquiring and assimilating a certain degree of clairvoyance into the operation of intellect and judgment. This will not yet mean the attainment of a proper clairvoyance associated with definite visual images, but it will be possible to attain a type of judgment capable of strong and reliable coincidence with the results of clairvoyance.

Now consider this. Let us begin with the ego—as it were the opposite extreme from the physical. The ego works upon the other human vehicles, and at the present stage of evolution its main sphere of action is on the physical body. In mankind today the ego has as yet comparatively little capacity for governing the etheric body. During childhood, it has such power strongly but unconsciously. This ceases later on. Only in those who retain in later life a vivid imagination or fantasy, is there a strong ego influence over the etheric body. In general, however, in all persons who develop their intelligence as distinct from their imagination and become dry intellectualists, there is a strong ego-influence over the physical body and only a slight influence over the etheric.

If you try to visualise this influence over the physical body, you will not need to go much further in order to picture in your minds as the work of the ego an intricate framework extending throughout the bodily organism; a delicate, weblike scaffolding. This scaffolding in the physical body, like a kind of phantom of man, is always present. We human beings carry with us through life, a framework imprinted into us through our ego-organisation; its structure is most delicate, and indeed it is the forces of the etheric body that insert it into the physical. But in the course of our lives, we gradually forfeit the power of consciously contributing to this structure. Only in people with creative imagination we find a half-conscious, dreamlike remnant of such power.

As you will have easily conceived, this weblike framework which the ego “timbers” into the organism of man is actually in some sense a “foreign body.” And there is a constant tendency to resist it. Every night during sleep, the human organism seeks to tear down this structure. Although we remain unaware of it in everyday waking life, do not let us forget this tendency. For this continuous tendency on the part of the ego-framework to break up, to fall to pieces in the organism, is the secret and permanent source of inflammatory conditions.

The concept of this kind of phantom-structure inserted by the ego into the human organism is of great importance, as is the realisation of the constant organic defensive reaction against it as a “foreign body,” and its continuous tendency to break up within the physical organisation. You will arrive at a visualisation which helps your judgment if you study psycho-physiologically the organisation of the human eyes. For all that takes place as between the eye itself and the external world, that is to say, between the soul and the external world by means of the eye, represents par excellence the erecting of this scaffold. There is an intimate interaction between the ego-framework proper and the results of the interplay of the eye with the world around it. I have often had occasion to study this interaction of eye and ego, in blind-born persons and in those who had lost their sight. Such cases reveal very plainly the mutual reactions of that phantom—normal to most people—which becomes incorporated in the organism by the mere fact of sight, and the other phantom which is the result of the ego's activity in the organism.

Suppose that an attempt be made to represent all this in graphic form. Through sight, through the visual process, a phantom is incorporated into the organism: and the other ego-structure lies a little deeper within, a little more inward. (See Diagram 25. Yellow portion and white portion.) The latter, more deep-seated structure is so constituted as to be perceptibly tinged with physical forces. It is an almost physical phantom that the ego inserts and erects; a real scaffold, but what the eye transmits is still etheric. And here we come to a striking difference between short-sighted and long-sighted people. In people of short sight, these two frameworks approach one another; the portion coloured white in the diagram moves inwards, closer to the yellow. In long-sighted persons, on the other hand, the white framework moves outwards, away from the yellow. In fact, if you study the organisation of the eye in any human being you will have the material for a sound judgment of the person's etheric body; the etheric body which is so like what I have just termed a framework. You cannot better train yourself to divine something of the nature of an individual etheric body, than by attentive study of the organisation of the organ of vision. Having once grasped this, you will find that the rest will be easy. Acquire the habit of observing whether individuals focus their gaze at a distance or near by, and let this impression work on you; and you will cultivate a sensibility to the perception of the etheric body. Call meditation to your aid, and it will no longer be so difficult to ascend from a devoted attention to the effects of the eye-organisation to the contemplation of the etheric body itself.

This will convince you that the process linked with the eye organisation is continuous, and it is the normal form of a process which may appear in an abnormal form. It is normal in the life of everyday, and it has its abnormal counterpart in cases of inflammation, indeed in all inflammatory conditions. So that you are justified in stating that a too vigorous development of this framework (which in the physical body is similar to the etheric) give rise to inflammations and to all the sequelæ of the inflammatory states. You can confirm your convictions in this matter by the external use of an animal product, formic acid. The best manner of studying the application of this substance is in its highest possible dilution, e.g., sprinkled in bath water. If the mildest dilution of formic acid is made to work on the human being through bath water, you will cause a consolidation of the ego-scaffold coloured yellow in the Diagram. (See Diagram 25). This consolidation takes place because by means of the formic acid the ego is forcibly compelled to approach the framework so that it becomes penetrated with the ego. And thus it is possible to counteract the tendency to inflammation for the framework only inclines to disintegrate in the inflammatory process if it is not properly permeated by the ego and restrained by it; for the ego and this framework belong together. They may be brought together by the use of bath fluid, but in extremely high dilution—for this stimulates the peculiar properties of formic acid.

A certain amount of attention to symptomatology is necessary, if you wish to enter into these matters. For instance: observe carefully in treating inflammatory conditions, whether or not they appear in persons with a concurrent tendency to obesity. For it is only in such cases, where you find both sets of symptoms, the tendency to inflammations and also to adipose deposits, that any real benefit can accrue from the external formic acid treatment just described. You will always attain extremely good results, if you have sound reason to believe in the disintegration of the ego-framework—which may be deduced from other symptoms, to be described presently—and if there is a simultaneous tendency to excessive fat.

For Spiritual Science is aware of something that shocks and offends contemporary mankind in its simple enunciation. It knows that what has to happen in the human organism, in order that the eyes shall be formed, and formed in the manner indispensable to human evolution—of course in the long run of this evolutionary history—is really a permanent process of inflammation, which is continually transferred into the normal and does not break out. Think of the processes inherent in inflammations, think of them held up, slowed down, and telescoped together, so to speak, and you will have before you the formative process of the human eye in the human organism. You are even able to obtain an idea of individual tendency to inflammatory conditions, or the reverse, by looking at the person's eyes. It is possible to see this if one trains one's judgment. Indeed the experiences we may meet with regard to human sight are closely linked with the observation of the etheric body of mankind. In referring to the existence of the etheric body and its conscious perception, we must distinguish two methods of approach. There is of course that inner process which leads to genuine clairvoyance, by way of meditation. And there is also an educative process working from outside. If we take the trouble to see and estimate the processes of nature aright, we shall acquire a visualisation of these things which is based on judgment. The actual organs of clairvoyance must be developed from within; but judgment is developed in contact with the world outside ourselves. If we develop the finer shades of judgment in the external world, this highly evolved judgment will come towards that more intimate process which passes outwards from within, in meditation.

Perhaps some of you will ask—and quite justifiably ask—“Well, but cannot all these manifestations and reactions be observed in the animal world?” My friends, the fact is simply that the things that concern man cannot be found through the study of animals. I have often stressed this difference in public lectures, and should like to emphasise it still more here. People are in the habit of thinking: an eye is an eye, an organ is an organ, lungs are lungs, a liver is a liver, and so forth. But that is not so, the eye in man is the organ which also exists in the animal world as eye, but with a modification: it is changed by the fact that in man the ego has been incorporated. The same is the case with all other organs. And for the occurrences within the organs, especially in cases of disease, the permeation by the ego is of much greater importance than what happens in the animal's organs, where there is no such permeation. This essential difference is still far too little regarded and men persist in off-hand pronouncements of this sort: “here I have a knife; well, a knife's a knife, isn't it? One knife is the same as another, so both, being knives, must have the same origin.” But suppose that one of these “identical” knives is a table knife, the other a razor. In that case the simple proposition that “a knife's a knife” becomes untenable. It is making the same mistake to explain the human eye and the animal eye by the same methods and terms. It is simply nonsense to seek for the explanation of anything in its mere external aspect; moreover such an approach is entirely barren as a foundation for study. Study founded on animal “material” simply hinders the adequate study of certain conditions in mankind; for it is only possible to form a just estimate of the dissimilarity here, by realising that in man it is precisely the peripheral organs which are the most permeated by the ego and moulded by it.

In a completely different way is the human ear formed. It is possible to train oneself to a discriminative grasp of the human ear, just as in the case of the eye. And in this manner we then approach the clairvoyant apprehension of the etheric body. We can train ourselves to understand the fact that the ear is incorporated into man as it is in animals, but that its structure is permeated by the human ego. If with this faculty we study the formation of the ear we shall find that it is connected with a process in the deeper interior of the human organism, in the same manner as the eye formation of the etheric body is connected with some more peripheral process. Thus we arrive at the insight that the ego is concerned in the formative process of the ear, just as in that of the eyes. The ego incorporates yet another framework into the organism, differing somewhat from that already described; and akin to this framework is the whole process lying at the base of the ear formation. In order to keep these separate frameworks distinct, I will colour the one just mentioned blue; it lies more inward than the yellow, and it extends less into the limbs, so that if it could be extracted and revealed to the light of day, it would have only stumps in the place of arms and legs. Thus we might say that this framework in its formation has remained at the stage of childhood. It is also much less differentiated towards the head than is the other one. But we shall find that it corresponds to the basic principle underlying the formative forces of the human ear and the whole process of hearing. This latter principle I will color violet in the Diagram. (See Diagram 25). This framework has also its specific characteristic in the human organism. It can become abnormal if the ego works too strongly; i.e., if its activity works too much internally. We have already touched on the reverse case, when the ego's activity is too strong in the periphery.

The following suggestions may be of use, in the study of the problem before us. Again take the external symptoms as a starting point: consider cases where the tendency is to become more or less thin, and never put on fat. In these cases you see before you human beings in whom the ego works too strongly internally, and intensifies this latter framework. This framework, however, has a different tendency from the other one: the tendency to internal exuberance. The first framework inclines to disintegrate or to splinter itself; the last to exuberate internally.

The treatment of this scaffold can proceed on two lines. Firstly, it can be so developed that exuberance does not ensue, because the ego as it were, shimmers out of it. For both exuberance and disintegration of the scaffolds always arise from the inadequate permeation by the ego, from it shimmering away from it. If the ego does this and at the same time is strong enough to keep itself at work within the organism, there arise certain consequences for the soul and the body. The consequence for the soul is hypochondria; for the body, constipation and similar phenomena.

This is the one aspect. On the other hand it may be that the ego is too feeble to hold itself together when it glitters away from the scaffold, that it collapses in its essential quality as ego; and not owing to the faults in its physical vehicle, the scaffold, but to its own. Consider how strange this is: the ego is so feeble that its debris as it were become embedded in the organism. And this occurs because individuals of this particular constitution, when they fall asleep, are not able to take with them the whole of what shimmers and glitters away. Thus the debris remains within the body and proliferates as a sort of soul-like ego. And this type of individual constitution with these exuberations of the soul-like ego, which develop especially during sleep, is one that inclines to tumorous formations. This process is of infinite significance. Persons with tumorous tendencies are those who do not sleep properly, for the reason that remnants of the ego remain after they fall asleep. These remnants and debris are the real excitants of tumours, including malignant growths, and these growths are linked up with the whole complex of symptoms which I have just enumerated. It is a fact that we are faced on the one hand by hypochondria and constipation, and on the other hand, if the organism cannot help itself by making the individual suffer from hypochondria and constipation, it exuberates inwards and the most malignant growths appear. We shall deal with this subject further, but for the moment we are considering merely the general principle.

You can reach the conviction that this is how things stand from a study of the external side, in indications given in a preceding lecture. As I have already remarked, it is possible to deal with the formative tendencies to inflammation by the use of very highly dispersed animal formic acid, in bath water. That is an external application; now try the same substance, suitably diluted, internally, and observe the effects it will have on thin people. It will disperse the tumorous tendencies in thin persons, and counteract the formation of growths.

These matters must be observed macroscopically and they afford striking proof of the need to acquire this macroscopical view. One must learn to have a comprehensive vision of the whole stature and physique of a man, and the many marks of his individual constitutional type, and combine this with all the phenomena emerging in sickness. Thus we shall acquire also a sense of how to divide the treatment into external and internal respectively. To test and trace the effects of the same substance by the two different routes, will furnish most interesting information. Here again, spiritual science reveals something extremely enlightening in respect of these two parts of the organism. It knows that all the formative forces of the human ear are at an early stage on the same path of development as those forces which, finally, when they are allowed to go too far lead to the formation of internal tumours.

The fact that we have a human auditory organ, is due to a process which is kept normal because the tumour-forming force has emerged in the right place. The ear is an internal tumour extended into the region of the normal. Just as the evolutionary process of the eye's formation is akin to the process of inflammation, so that of the ear's formation is allied to the tumorous. It is indeed a wonderful relationship between disease and health in man; for the processes are the same in both, only in the case of normal health they proceed at the right rate, and in the case of disease at an abnormal rate. If the inflammatory process were abolished in nature, no living creature would be able to see. Living creatures have the power of sight only because the inflammatory process is inserted into the whole of nature. But it has a certain velocity, a definite tempo. If it proceeds at a wrong speed then the abnormal process of inflammation results. Similarly, the process of tumorous formation has its significance in nature, at the right rate of development. If it were abolished no being in the world would be able to hear. If the rate is wrong, there results all that happens in cases of myoma, carcinoma, sarcoma. We will deal with this later.

Those who are not in a position to find and recognise the healthy counterpart of every morbid process, cannot understand its place within the human organisation. For the human organisation is founded on the fact that certain processes dispersed throughout the periphery of nature become interiorised and centralised in man.

Many things are discussed in our physiological text books: we should fix our attention elsewhere, on subjects whose existence is admitted but whose significance is constantly under-rated. Here is one instance. You are able to observe—quite macroscopically and as it were in a commonplace way—that the epidermis covers the human body, and has various inward folds or pockets; and its continuing membrane lines the parts situated to the interior. This is very important—the reversal of functions, as, e.g., we find it in passing from the cheeks and the external parts of the face, over the edge of the lips to the interior. There indeed one finds, in the external formation of man, the vestige of the process which where all development really proceeds by means of folding inwards and invaginations. In following up the differences in the reaction of the upper epidermis and the internal mucous membrane to preparations of formic acid, and fully realising the delicate differences in these results, one would reach tremendous results. For all the facts I here set before you are really nothing but specialisations of the elementary structural principle indicated. The study of these facts will bring before you the whole polar opposition of that external lining (also etherically) of the human organism and that which goes inside and becomes central in the same organism.

This is of importance in the following. To what corresponds the second phantom indicated in the rough sketch? (See Diagram 25). The blue phantom is that physical framework within the organism, which tends to exuberate unduly. Its normal form is associated with the formation of the ear. Educate yourselves, train yourselves in the study of man so far as to have regard to this ear organisation and especially its interiorisation, and at the same time to the characteristics of the organ of sight. Then remember that the process of sight occurs in the etheric, the process of hearing in the air. This is a considerable difference. All that lies comparatively low in the ascending scale of ponderable and imponderable is associated and linked with the more deep-seated organs and functions in the interior of man's organism. All that is more akin to the etheric and imponderable, is situated towards the surface and periphery.

The outlines coloured violet (See Diagram 25) define nothing less than that which lives in the human astral body. If you train your power of judgment, through the study of the ear, for the observation of man, you get a kind of substitute or preliminary apperception for the clairvoyant vision of the astral body. To learn to observe sight is training for the observation of the etheric body. To learn to observe hearing is training for the observation of the astral body.

The most interesting observations can be made in persons who have been deaf from birth or have lost their sense of hearing; deeper connections of nature are then revealed. I suggest that you should try to study children who have been born deaf: if they had not been born with that defect, they would develop the most terrible tumours even at that early age. We stand here before outlets supplied by nature itself, and they are rooted not only in the single individual organisation between birth and death; but they reach out into and must be understood from the repeated earth lives in which the compensation is brought about. If we follow up these phenomena beyond a certain point, we shall arrive at some apprehension of repeated lives on earth.

If you attempt to stimulate the peripheral areas in man, you will reinforce what has been dealt with in explaining the relationship of the ego to its framework. If you find it necessary to reinforce the human ego, there is a choice of methods; therapeutic or educational. Wherever it is possible to observe a tendency to inflammation, you will find that it will be necessary to re-invigorate the ego's activity in the individual. If this be done, the ego will insert itself in the proper way into its phantom, its framework; for this framework will not disintegrate where the ego adequately takes hold of it.

An appreciable reinforcement and stimulus to this activity of the ego may be obtained, e.g., by baths containing a very finely distributed solution of rosemary—that is, of the juices extracted from the leaves of the rosemary. This solution stimulates the periphery to such a degree that the ego can act and function better in that which approaches man through the finely distributed rosemary juice. The results are quite remarkable.

Now let us consider the human eye, and its specific insertion into the human organism. The process of sight depends on the power of the human ego to penetrate this isolated part in our organism. There is very little of the animal process in the eye, the sense of sight depends on the fact that man with his soul and spirit nature penetrates a region which has ceased to be animal; so that man can identify himself with the external world, not only with his internal processes. If you identify yourself with a muscle, you identify yourselves from inside, with the formative process of man. But if you identify yourself with the eyes, you really identify yourself with the external world. For this reason, I have already called this organ a gulf which the external extends physiology to neglect the facts, thereby engendering those foolish fairy stories of “subjectivity” and so forth. For it is the fashion today to ignore the fact that “objectivity” is intruded upon us and that within this “objectivity” we share in a part of the processes of the external world. For the last century and a half, every sort of sensory physiology has been founded upon subjectivity because there has been no inkling of the entry of the external world into these organic gulfs, by which we participate, through our senses, in the processes outside ourselves. To understand this rightly means also to understand the action of some foreign substance in this fine dispersal.

Take the human skin, and its pores and all the processes linked with the pores. (See Diagram 26). Sprinkle very mild dilutions of rosemary juice in a bath, immerse the patient in it and you will not be surprised to know that a sensory interaction is set in train between the skin and the minute drops of the Rosemary juice. Through this stimulation, an effect is produced upon the sensory process. This stimulation of the sensory process works on the human ego and it becomes more closely inserted into its framework. A further benefit may accrue from the same method, if it is used in time and not postponed till too late. If the skin of the head is exposed to the stimulation of diluted rosemary juice, you may be able to arrest the peripheral process of loss of hair. Only, of course, it must be applied in the correct manner. Well, there again you have something active on the surface and periphery of the human organism.

Let us suppose now, that the collaboration of the ego with the human organisation suffers a rupture from the outside world. The ego is, of course, not only a point, but a point active around itself; and this working abroad signifies the formative force of the whole human organisation; the ego-organising force spreads throughout the human organisation, permeating it throughout. Let us suppose that an external injury is inflicted on some area, interrupting this mutual action of ego and human organisation; in such cases it will be necessary to attract to this place something springing from the astral organisation (which stands a step below the ego-organisation); something which, working from out of the astral organisation, may so permeate the human organism as to enable the ego to develop its curative forces at the seat of the external injury. The astral body as I have indicated (See Diagram 25) lies nearer the centre of the total organism. Call it to your aid; not this time by means of immersion in any bath, but by a compress of arnica in woolen cloths—a proper arnica compress. The application of arnica compresses to any sprain or dislocation or similar lesion ‘ wherever the injury may have been inflicted—which impairs the efficiency of the ego's function, summons the astral body from inside; calls to it to come to the aid of the ego, and has a compensating effect on the peripheral area.

In these phenomena we have a standard for comparison of the different substances available in the external world. They may have a great tendency towards expansion, and thus be of benefit to the peripheral regions, if administered in baths, for the support of the ego's action. Or again, they may belong to the group which includes especially arnica and are thus indicated when we wish to summon the astral body and draw on its power for the indirect support of the ego.

It is impossible to understand the operation of such substances except as summoners of help from the ego and astral body. To recognise this principle must be indeed fundamental for a theory of therapeutics. both for internal and external treatment.

If we look again at the three most important phases of elementary school, then we see that they are: first, from entering elementary school at about the age of six or seven until the age of nine; then second, from the age of nine until about the age of twelve; and finally from twelve until puberty. The capacity to reason independently only begins to occur when people have reached sexual maturity, even though a kind of preparation for this capacity begins around the age of twelve. For this reason, the third phase of elementary school begins about the age of twelve.

Every time a new phase occurs in the course of human life, something is born out of human nature. I have previously noted how the same forces—which become apparent as the capacity to remember, the capacity to have memories, and so forth—that appear at about the age of seven have previously worked upon the human organism up until that age. The most obvious expression of that working is the appearance of the second set of teeth. In a certain sense, forces are active in the organism that later become important during elementary school as the capacity to form thoughts. They are active but hidden. Later they are freed and become independent. The forces that become independent we call the forces of the etheric body.

Once again at puberty other forces become independent which guide us into the external world in numerous ways. Hidden within that system of forces is also the capacity for independent reasoning. We can therefore say that the actual medium of the human capacity for reason, the forces within the human being that give rise to reasoning, are basically born only at the time of puberty, and have slowly been prepared for that birth beginning at the age of twelve.

When we know this and can properly honor it, then we also become aware of the responsibility we take upon ourselves if we accustom people to forming independent judgments too soon. The most damaging prejudices in this regard prevail at the present time. People want to accustom children to forming independent judgments as early as possible.

I previously said that we should relate to children until puberty in such a way that they recognize us as an authority, that they accept something because someone standing next to them who is visibly an authority requests it and wants it. If we accustom children to accepting the truth simply because we as authorities present it to them, we will prepare them properly for having free and independent reasoning later in life. If we do not want to serve as an authority figure for the child and instead try to disappear so that everything has to develop out of the child’s own nature, we are demanding a capacity for reason too early, before what we call the astral body becomes free and independent at puberty. We would be working with the astral body by allowing it to act upon the physical nature of the child. In that way we will impress upon the child’s physical body what we should actually only provide for his soul. We are preparing something that will continue to have a damaging effect throughout the child’s life.

There is quite a difference between maturing to free judgment at the age of fourteen or fifteen—when the astral body, which is the carrier of reasoning, has become free after a solid preparation—than if we have been trained in so-called independent judgment at too early an age. In the latter case, it is not our astral aspect, that is, our soul, which is brought into independent reasoning, but our physical body instead. The physical body is drawn in with all its natural characteristics, with its temperament, its blood characteristics, and everything that gives rise to sympathy and antipathy within it, with everything that provides it with no objectivity. In other words, if a child between the ages of seven and fourteen is supposed to reason independently, the child reasons out of that part of human nature which we later can no longer rid ourselves of if we are not careful to see that it is cared for in a natural way, namely, through authority, during the elementary school period. If we allow children to reason too early, it will be the physical body that reasons throughout life. We then remain unsteady in our reasoning, as it depends upon our temperament and all kinds of other things in the physical body. If we are prepared in a way appropriate to the physical body and in a way that the nature of the physical body requires—that is, if we are brought up during the proper time under the influence of authority—then the part of us that should reason becomes free in the proper way and later in life we will be able to achieve objective judgment. Therefore the best way to prepare someone to become a free and independent human being is to avoid guiding the child toward freedom at too early an age.

This can cause a great deal of harm if it is not used properly in education. In our time it is very difficult to become sufficiently aware of this. If you talk about this subject with people today who are totally unprepared and who have no good will in this regard, you will find yourself simply preaching to deaf ears. Today we live much more than we believe in a period of materialism, and it is this age of materialism that needs to be precisely recognized by teachers. They need to be very aware of how much materialism is boiling up within modern culture and modern attitudes.

I would now like to describe this matter from a very different perspective. Something remarkable happened in European civilization around 1850, although it was barely noticed: a direct and basic feeling for rhythm was to a very large extent lost. Hence we now have people a few generations later who have entirely lost this feeling for rhythm. Such people are completely unaware of what this lack of rhythm means in raising children. In order to understand this, we need to consider the following.

In life people alternate between sleeping and being awake. People think they understand the state called wakefulness because they are aware of themselves. During this time, through sense impressions they gain an awareness of the external world. But they do not know the state between falling asleep and awakening. In modern life, people have no awareness of themselves then. They have few, if any, direct conscious perceptions of the external world. This is therefore a state in which life moves into something like a state of unconsciousness.

We can easily gain a picture of the inner connections between these two states only when we recognize two polar opposites in human life that have great significance for education. I am referring here to drawing and music, two opposites I have already mentioned and which I would like to consider from a special point of view again today.

Let us first look at drawing, in which I also include painting and sculpting. While doing so, let us recall everything in regard to drawing that we consider to be important to the child from the beginning of elementary school. Drawing shows us that, out of his or her own nature, the human being creates a form we find reflected in the external world. I have already mentioned that it is not so important to hold ourselves strictly to the model. Instead we need to find a feeling for form within our own nature. In the end, we will recognize that we exist in an element that surrounds us during our state of wakefulness in the external world, in everything that we do forming spatially. We draw lines. We paint colors. We sculpt shapes. Lines present themselves to us, although they do not exist in nature as such. Nevertheless they present themselves to us through nature, and the same is true of colors and forms.

Let us look at the other element, which we can call musical, that also permeates speech. Here we must admit that in what is musical we have an expression of the human soul. Like sculpting and drawing, everything that is expressed through music has a very rudimentary analogy to external nature. It is not possible to simply imitate with music that which occurs naturally in the external world, just as it is not possible, in a time where a feeling for sculpting or drawing is so weak, to simply imitate the external world. We must ask ourselves then if music has no content. Music does have its own content. The content of music is primarily its melodic element. Melodies need to come to us. When many people today place little value upon the melodic element, it is nothing more than a characteristic of our materialistic age. Melodies simply do not come to people often enough. We can well compare the melodic element with the sculptural element. It is certainly true that the sculptural element is related to space. In the same way the melodic element is related to time. Those who have a lively feeling for this relationship will realize that the melodic element contains a kind of sculpting. In a certain way, the melodic element corresponds to what sculpting is in the external world.

Let us now look at something else. You are all acquainted with that flighty element in the life of our souls that becomes apparent in dreams. If we concern ourselves objectively with that element of dreaming, we slowly achieve a different view of dreams than the ordinary one. The common view of dreams focuses upon the content of the dream, which is what commonly interests most people. But as soon as we concern ourselves objectively with this wonderful and mysterious world of dreams, the situation becomes different. Someone might talk about the following dream.

I climbed up a mountain, but just before I came to the peak there was an obstacle that I was unable to overcome. I was therefore unable to reach the peak. As I attempted to overcome that obstacle, I was met by evil, unfriendly animals, beings with demonic forms.

Another person might describe the following:

I was walking along a path and came to a cave. I went into the cave and it grew suddenly dark so I could go no further. I then encountered all kinds of obstacles, but I could go no further and could not reach my goal.

A third or a fourth person could tell still other stories. The pictures are quite different. One person dreams about climbing a mountain, another about going into a cave, and a third about still something else. It is not the pictures that are important. The pictures are simply woven into the dream. What is important is that the person experiences a kind of tension into which they fall when they are unable to solve something that can first be solved upon awakening. It is this moving into a state of tension, the occurrence of the tension, of becoming tense that is expressed in the various pictures.

What is important is that human beings in dreams experience increasing and decreasing tension, resolution, expectations, and disappointments, in short, that they experience inner states of the soul that are then expressed in widely differing pictures. The pictures are similar in their qualities of increase and decrease. It is the state of the soul that is important, since these experiences are connected to the general state of the soul. It is totally irrelevant whether a person experiences one picture or another during the night. It is not unimportant, however, whether one experiences a tension and then its resolution or first an expectation and then a disappointment, since the person’s state of mind on the next day depends upon it. It is also possible to experience a dream that reflects the person’s state of soul that has resulted from a stroke of fate or from many other things. In my opinion, it is the ups and downs that are important. That which appears, that forms the picture at the edge of awakening, is only a cloak into which the dream weaves itself.

When we look more closely at the world of dreams, and when we ask ourselves what a human being experiences until awakening, we will admit that until we awaken, these ups and downs of feeling clothe themselves in pictures just at the moment of awakening. Of course, we can perceive this in characteristic dreams such as this one:

A student stands at the door of a lecture room. He dreams about how another student comes up to him and says such nasty things that it is obvious that this is a challenge to duel. The student dreams that the seconds are chosen, that they go out into the forest, and that everything is prepared. First shot. The student hears this sound and awakens to find that he has knocked over a chair standing next to his bed: that was the shot. That was the only external event.

Thus the entire picture of the dream flashed through his head at that moment. However, what was clothed in those pictures is a lasting state of his soul.

Now you need to seriously compare what lies at the basis of these dreams—the welling up and subsiding of feelings, the tension and its resolution or perhaps the tendency toward something which then leads to some calamity and so forth. Compare that seriously with what lies at the basis of the musical element and you will find in those dream pictures only something that is irregular (not rhythmic). In music, you find something that is very similar to this welling up and subsiding and so forth. If you then continue to follow this path, you will find that sculpture and drawing imitate the form in which we find ourselves during ordinary life from awakening until falling asleep. Melodies, which are connected to music, give us the experiences of an apparently unconscious state, and they occur as reminiscences of such in our daily lives. People know so little about the actual origins of musical themes because they experience what lives in musical themes only during the period from falling asleep till awakening. This exists for human beings today as a still-unconscious element, though revealed through forming pictures in dreams. However, we need to take up this unconscious element that prevails in dreams and which also prevails as melody in music in our teaching, so that we rise above materialism.

If you understand the spirit of what I have just presented, you will recognize how everywhere there has been an attempt to work with this unconscious element. I have done that first by showing how the artistic element is necessary right from the very beginning of elementary school. I have insisted that we should use the dialect that the children speak to reveal the content of grammar, that is, we should take the children’s language as such and accept it as something complete and then use it as the basis for presenting grammar. Think for a moment about what you do in such a case. In what period of life is speech actually formed? Attempt to think back as far as you can in the course of your life, and you will see that you can remember nothing from the period in which you could not speak. Human beings learn language in a period when they are still sleeping through life. If you then compare the dreamy world of the child’s soul with dreams and with how melodies are interwoven in music, you will see that they are similar. Like dreaming, learning to speak occurs through the unconscious, and is something like an awakening at dawn. Melodies simply exist and we do not know where they come from. In reality, they arise out of this sleep element of the human being. We experience a sculpting with time from the time we fall asleep until we awaken. At their present stage of development human beings are not capable of experiencing this sculpting with time. You can read about how we experience that in my book How to Know Higher Worlds. That is something that does not belong to education as such. From that description, you will see how necessary it is to take into account that unconscious element which has its effect during the time the child sleeps. It is certainly taken into account in our teaching of music, particularly in teaching musical themes, so that we must attempt to exactly analyze the musical element to the extent that it is present in children in just the same way as we analyze language as presented in sentences. In other words, we attempt to guide children at an early age to recognize themes in music, to actually feel the melodic element like a sentence. Here it begins and here it stops; here there is a connection and here begins something new. In this regard, we can have a wonderful effect upon the child’s development by bringing an understanding of the not-yet-real content of music. In this way, the child is guided back to something that exists in human nature but is almost never seen.

Nearly everyone knows what a melody is and what a sentence is. But a sentence that consists of a subject, a predicate, and an object and which is in reality unconsciously a melody is something that only a few people know. Just as we experience the rising and subsiding of feelings as a rhythm in sleeping, which we then become conscious of and surround with a picture, we also, in the depths of our nature, experience a sentence as music. By conforming to the outer world, we surround what we perceive as music with something that is a picture. The child writes the essay—subject, predicate, object. A triplet is felt at the deepest core of the human being. That triplet is used through projecting the first tone in a certain way upon the child, the second upon writing, and the third upon the essay. Just as these three are felt and then surrounded with pictures (which, however, correspond to reality and are not felt as they are in dreams), the sentence lives in our higher consciousness; whereas in our deepest unconsciousness, something musical, a melody, lives. When we are aware that, at the moment we move from the sense-perceptible to the supersensible, we must rid ourselves of the sense-perceptible content, and in its place experience what eludes us in music—the theme whose real form we can experience in sleep—only then can we consider the human being as a whole. Only then do we become genuinely aware of what it means to teach language to children in such a living way that the child perceives a trace of melody in a sentence. This means we do not simply speak in a dry way, but instead in a way that gives the full tone, that presents the inner melody and subsides through the rhythmic element.

Around 1850 European people lost that deeper feeling for rhythm. Before that, there was still a certain relationship to what I just described. If you look at some treatises that appeared around that time about music or about the musical themes from Beethoven and others, then you will see how at about that time those who were referred to as authorities in music often cut up and destroyed in the most unimaginable ways what lived in music. You will see how that period represents the low point of experiencing rhythm.

As educators, we need to be aware of that, because we need to guide sentences themselves back to rhythm in the school. If we keep that in mind, over a longer period of time we will begin to recognize the artistic element of teaching. We would not allow the artistic element to disappear so quickly if we were required to bring it more into the content.

All this is connected with a question that was presented to me yesterday and which I can more thoroughly discuss in this connection. The question was, “Why is it not possible to teach proper handwriting to those children who have such a difficult time writing properly?” Those who might study Goethe’s handwriting or that of other famous people will get the odd impression that famous people often have very strange handwriting. In education, we certainly cannot allow a child to have sloppy handwriting on the grounds that the child will probably someday be a famous person and we should not disturb him. We must not allow that to influence us. But what is actually present when a child writes in such a sloppy manner? If you make some comparisons, you will notice that sloppy handwriting generally arises from the fact that such children have a rather unmusical ear, or if not that, then a reason that is closely related to it. Children write in a sloppy way because they have not learned to hear precisely: they have not learned to hear a word in its full form.

There may be different reasons why children do not hear words correctly. The child may be growing up in a family or environment where people speak unclearly. In such a case, the child does not learn to hear properly and will thus not be able to write properly, or at least not very easily. In another case, a child may tend to have little perception for what he or she hears. In that case, we need to draw the child’s attention to listening properly. In other situations it is the teacher who is responsible for the child’s poor handwriting. Teachers should pay attention to speaking clearly and also to using very descriptive language. They do not have to speak like actors, making sure to enunciate the ending syllable. But they must accustom themselves to living into each syllable, so that the syllables are clearly spoken and children will be more likely to repeat the syllables in a clear way. When you speak in a clear and complete way, you will be able to achieve a great deal with regard to proper handwriting for some children. All this is connected with the unconscious, with the dream and sleep element, since the sleep element is simply the unconscious element. It is not something we should teach to children in an artificial way.

What is the basis of listening? That is normally not discussed in psychology. In the evening we fall asleep and in the morning we awake; that is all we know. We can think about it afterward by saying to ourselves that we are not conscious during that period. Conventional, nonspiritual science is unaware of what occurs to us from the time we fall asleep until we awaken. However, the inner state of our soul is no different when we are listening than when we are sleeping. The only difference is that there is a continual movement from being within ourselves to being outside ourselves. It is extremely important that we become aware of this undulation in the life of our souls. When I listen, my attention is turned toward the outer world. However, while listening, there are moments where I actually awaken within myself. If I did not have those moments, listening would be of absolutely no use. While we are listening or looking at something, there is a continual awakening and falling asleep, even though we are awake. It is a continual undulation—waking, falling asleep, waking, falling asleep. In the final analysis, our entire relationship to the external world is based upon this capacity to move into the other world, which could be expressed paradoxically as “being able to fall asleep.” What else could it mean to listen to a conversation than to fall asleep into the content of the conversation? Understanding is awakening out of the conversation, nothing more. What that means, however, is that we should not attempt to reach what should actually be developed out of the unconsciousness, out of the sleeping or dreaming of the human being in a conscious way.

For that reason, we should not attempt to teach children proper handwriting in an artificial way. Instead we should teach them by properly speaking our words and then having the child repeat the words. Thus we will slowly develop the child’s hearing and therefore writing. We need to assume that if a child writes in a sloppy way, she does not hear properly. Our task is to support proper hearing in the child and not to do something that is directed more toward full consciousness than hearing is.

As I mentioned yesterday, we should also take such things into account when teaching music. We must not allow artificial methods to enter into the school where, for instance, the consciousness is mistreated by such means as artificial breathing. The children should learn to breathe through grasping the melody. The children should learn to follow the melody through hearing and then adjust themselves to it. That should be an unconscious process. It must occur as a matter of course. As I mentioned, we should have the music teachers hold off on such things until the children are older, when they will be less influenced by them. Children should be taught about the melodic element in an unconscious way through a discussion of the themes. The artificial methods I mentioned have just as bad an effect as it would have to teach children drawing by showing them how to hold their arms instead of giving them a feeling for line. It would be like saying to a child, “You will be able to draw an acanthus leaf if you only learn to hold your arm in such and such a way and to move it in such and such a way.” Through this and similar methods, we do nothing more than to simply consider the human organism from a materialistic standpoint, as a machine that needs to be adjusted so it does one thing properly. If we begin from a spiritual standpoint, we will always make the detour through the soul and allow the organism to adjust itself to what is properly felt in the soul.

We can therefore say that if we support the child in the drawing element, we give the child a relationship to its environment, and if we support the child in the musical element, then we give the child a relationship to something that is not in our normal environment, but in the environment we exist in from the time of falling asleep until awakening. These two polarities are then combined when we teach grammar, for instance. Here we need to interweave a feeling for the structure of a sentence with an understanding of how to form sentences.

We need to know such things if we are to properly understand how beginning at approximately the age of twelve, we slowly prepare the intellectual aspect of understanding, namely, free will. Before the age of twelve, we need to protect the child from independent judgments. We attempt to base judgment upon authority so that authority has a certain unconscious effect upon the child. Through such methods we can have an effect unbeknownst to the child. Through this kind of relationship to the child, we already have an element that is very similar to the musical dreamlike element.

Around the age of twelve, we can begin to move from the botanical or zoological perspective toward the mineral or physical perspective. We can also move from the historical to the geographical perspective. It is not that such things should only begin at the age of twelve, but rather before then they should be handled in such a way that we use judgment less and feeling more. In a certain sense, before the age of twelve we should teach children history by presenting complete and rounded pictures and by creating a feeling of tension that is then resolved. Thus, before the age of twelve, we will primarily take into account how we can reach the child’s feeling and imagination through what we teach about history. Only at about the age of twelve is the child mature enough to hear about causality in history and to learn about geography.

If you now look at what we should teach children, you will feel the question of how we are to bring the religious element into all this so that the child gains a fully rounded picture of the world as well as a sense of the supersensible. People today are in a very difficult position in that regard. In the Waldorf School, pure externalities have kept us from following the proper pedagogical perspective in this area. Today we are unable to use all of what spiritual science can provide for education in our teaching other than to apply the consequences of it in how we teach. One of the important aspects of spiritual science is that it contains certain artistic impulses that are absorbed by human beings so that they not only simply know things, but they can do things. To put it in a more extreme way, people therefore become more adept; they can better take up life and thus can also exercise the art of education in a better way.

At the present time, however, we must refrain from bringing more of what we can learn from spiritual science into education than education can absorb. We were not able to form a school based upon a particular worldview at the Waldorf School. Instead from the very beginning I stipulated that Protestant teachers would teach the Protestant religion. Religion is taught separately, and we have nothing to do with it. The Protestant teacher comes and teaches the Protestant religion, just as the Catholic religion is taught by the Catholic priest or whomever the Catholic Church designates, the rabbi teaches the Jews, and so forth. At the present time we have been unable to bring more of spiritual science in other than to provide understanding for our teaching. The Waldorf School is not a parochial school.

Nevertheless the strangest things have occurred. A number of people have said that because they are not religious, they will not send their children to the Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish religion teachers. They have said that if we do not provide a religion teacher who teaches religion based solely upon a general understanding, they will not send their children to religion class at all. Thus those parents who wanted an anthroposophically oriented religion class to a certain extent forced us to provide one. This class is given, but not because we have a desire to propagate anthroposophy as a worldview. It is quite different to teach anthroposophy as a worldview than it is to use what spiritual science can provide in order to make education more fruitful.

We do not attempt to provide the content. What we do attempt to provide is a capacity to do. A number of strange things then occurred. For example, a rather large number of children left the other religion classes in order to join ours. That is something we cannot prohibit. It was very uncomfortable for me, at least from the perspective of retaining a good relationship to the external world. It was also quite dangerous, but that is the way it is. From the same group of parents we hear that the teaching of other religions will soon cease anyway. That is not at all our intent, as the Waldorf School is not intended as a parochial school. Today nowhere in the civilized world is it possible to genuinely teach out of the whole. That will be possible only when through the threefold social organism cultural life becomes independent. So long as that is not the case, we will not be able to provide the same religious instruction for everybody. Thus what we have attempted to do is to make education more fruitful through spiritual science.

Editor's/Translator's note: By the time Rudolf Steiner had given the first nineteen First Class Lessons (Volumes One and Two), so many new members had joined, or wanted to join, that he felt it necessary to recapitulate the lessons already given rather than continue to advance. However, although the mantras (verses) used are the same as in Volume One, the descriptions are sufficiently different to justify a new volume. Furthermore, much new and valuable material is introduced, which is not in the previous volumes.

As it turns out, many more friends have come to this Class Lesson—and probably will to the next lessons as well—who had not attended the previous ones. So, it would be impossible to simply continue in the same way as we have with the previous lessons. But it is also true that a repetition of these Class Lessons will not be a disadvantage for those members of this esoteric school who participated in the earlier lessons, because the content of this esoteric school is such that it works again and again on the soul. Therefore, for those who today are experiencing a repetition, it also constitutes a continuation.

But for all those who are here for the first time it means something else: it means an acquaintance with the beginning of the esoteric path.

And even those who are far advanced on the esoteric path see in it the advantages of their continued striving, in that again and again they return to the beginning. This return to the beginning is always also the endeavor to reach a more advanced stage. We should therefore consider this lesson of today in that sense. And so for the members of the School who are here for the first time, the meaning of the School must be explained beforehand.

As the impulse of the Christmas Conference with the spiritual laying of the foundation stone of the Anthroposophical Society took place in this hall, from now on an esoteric breath is to flow through the whole Anthroposophical Society—as I said yesterday—an esoteric breath that can already be noted in everything undertaken within the Anthroposophical Society since Christmas. The nucleus of this esoteric activity of the Anthroposophical Society must be the Esoteric School. This Esoteric School, coming from the entire character of anthroposophy, is to take the place of what has been previously attempted as the so-called Free School for Spiritual Science, which cannot exactly be described as having been successful.

It was at the time when I did not yet personally have the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, and thus had to entrust those who wanted to try something, to let them try. In the future, this cannot continue. The intention of what was formed together with me as the Christmas impulse was that the Free School for Spiritual Science, with its various sections, would form an esoteric nucleus for all the esoteric work in the Anthroposophical Society.

An esoteric school, however, is not founded as an earthly entity. An esoteric school can only be one if it is the earthly reflection of what has been founded in the super-sensible worlds. And it has often been declared among anthroposophists that in the succession of the reigning hierarchy of Archangels, those who reign over human spiritual life, the Archangel Michael took over this guidance during the last third of the nineteenth century. And it was made known that this guidance has a very special significance for the spiritual life and evolution of humanity on earth.

It is the case that in human evolution life is guided successively by seven Archangels who together comprise the spiritual ruling substance of the planetary system, to which the sun, earth and moon also belong. The impulse of one of these Archangels lasts about three to four centuries. And when we consider the Archangel under whose impulse the spiritual life of the present stands, when we consider Michael, we have the Archangelos who possesses the spiritual force of the sun in everything he does and supports.

Previously, again lasting for three to four centuries—that is, from the last third of the nineteenth century back through three to four centuries—was the reign of the Archangelos Gabriel, who mostly bears the moon's forces in his impulses.

And going further back we come to the centuries in which a kind of revolution against spiritual activity and spiritual being in humanity took place during the middle ages, even by those who were the bearers of civilization—the reign of Samuel, who had his impulses in the Mars forces.

When we go even further back we come to the era in which a medicinally oriented alchemy deeply influenced spiritual life under the rule of the Archangelos Raphael, who bears the Mercury forces in his impulses.

And when we go even further back, we are approaching more and more the Mystery of Golgotha, but have not yet reached it. We find there the reign of Zachariel, who bears the Jupiter forces in his impulses, and the reign of Anael—with whom we are getting very close to the Mystery of Golgotha—who bears the Venus forces in his impulses. Then we come to the time when the brilliance of the Mystery of Golgotha asserted itself against a profound spiritual darkness on earth—under the reign of Oriphiel, who bears the Saturn forces in his impulses.

Then we come back to the previous reign of Michael, that coincides with the great international, cosmopolitan impulses through Alexander the Great and Aristotle, which until that point was brought to humanity by means of the Greek mysteries and spirituality, and was then brought by Alexander over to Asia, to North Africa, so that what was the spiritual life of a small territory streamed out to the whole civilized world of those times. For it is always an attribute of a Michael era that what had previously blossomed in one place streams out to other localities in a cosmopolitan manner.

Thus, after having completed the cycle of successive Archangeloi epochs, we always return to the same Archangelos. We can go back further—again through the succession of Gabriel, Samuel, Raphael, Zachariel, Anael, Oriphiel—and would come again to Michael. And we would find that after the Michael era streams over us, an Oriphiel era follows.

So, my dear friends, we should be aware that the Michael impulse lives in the way characterized in everything which is spiritual activity and being in the present. But it is a more important Michael era than the previous ones. I would like to emphasize this.

When the Anthroposophical Society was placed at the service of the esoteric during the Christmas Conference, its esoteric nucleus, this Esoteric School, could only be founded by the spiritual power which is incumbent for its guidance at this time. Thus, we are in this Esoteric School as one which the spirit of the times himself, Michael, has founded; for it is the Michael-School of the present.

And only then, my dear friends, can you correctly understand what is being said here—when you are aware that nothing else is being said but what the Michael stream itself wishes to bring to humanity in the present time. All the words which will be spoken in this School are Michael words. Michael will is all that is willed in this School. You are all students of Michael in that you are present in the right way in this School. Only then, when you are aware of this, is it possible to be present in this School in the right way—with the correct disposition and attitude, feeling yourselves to be members not only of what enters the world as an earthly institution, but as a heavenly institution.

It is of course therefore a condition that every member of this School accept certain self-evident responsibilities. It is a property of the Christmas impulse of the Anthroposophical Society, that it has taken on the characteristic of complete openness. Therefore, nothing is demanded of members of the Anthroposophical Society other than what they themselves demand: that they receive through the Anthroposophical Society what flows within the anthroposophical spiritual movement. One does not take on further responsibilities when one becomes an anthroposophist. The responsibility for being a decent person is taken for granted.

It is otherwise when one seeks to enter this School. Then, based on the truly occult spirit of this School, the member assumes the responsibility of being a worthy representative of anthroposophy before the world with all his thinking, feeling and willing. One cannot otherwise be a member of this School.

That this is taken seriously, my dear friends, can be seen by that fact that since the short existence of this School in twenty instances temporary expulsions have already taken place. This strict measure will have to continue to be followed in the same way. One cannot play around with true esoteric matters; they must be realized with utmost earnestness. In this way, through this School the earnestness that is absolutely necessary for the anthroposophical movement to spiritually prosper can stream into it. That is what I wanted to say as an introduction.

If you—I'm speaking now to those of you who are here for the first time—if you receive the words spoken here as real messages from the spiritual world, as truly Michael-words, then you will be here in the right way, in the only way you should be here.

And so now we want to bring to our souls the words which resound to the human being when he objectively observes everything in the world that surrounds him—in the world above, in the middle and below. Let us look at the mute kingdom of minerals, at the sprouting plant kingdom, at the mobile animal kingdom, at the thinking kingdom of humanity on earth; let us direct our gaze to the mountains, to the seas, to the rivers, to the effervescent springs, to the shining sun, to the gleaming moon and the sparkling stars. If the human being keeps his heart open, if he can listen with the ears of soul, the admonishment resounds to him which is contained in the words which I shall now speak:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

And when we let the meaning and the spirit of these words work in us, then we feel the desire to go into the springs from which our true humanity flows. To really understand these words means to crave the path that leads to those waters from which the human soul flows—to seek the source of human life.

In seeking, my dear sisters and brothers, you will be rewarded to the extent it lies in your karma. But the first step will be to understand the inner meaning of the esoteric path. This esoteric path will be described in Michael-words here in this School. It will be described in such a way that everyone can follow it, but not that everyone must follow it, rather that it be understood; for such understanding is in itself the first step. Therefore, what Michael has to say to present-day humanity will flow in mantric words. These mantric words will at the same time be words for meditation.

Again, it will depend on karma how these words for meditation work for each individual. And the first thing is to understand that from the spoken words about human self-knowledge the desire arises to direct one's attention to the sources of human existence: O man, know thyself! Yes, this desire must awaken. We must seek: Where are the sources of what lives in the human soul, what our humanity actually is?

At first, we must observe the surroundings that have been given us. We must look around at all the little things we have been given, at all the great things we have been given. We observe the mute stone, the worm in the earth, we look at all that grows and exists and lives around us in the kingdoms of nature. We look up to the powerfully glittering stars. We listen to the turbulent thunder.

It is not by being ascetic that we can solve the riddle of our own humanity; it is not by despising the earthworm, the stars glittering in space, not by despising them as outer sensible phenomena and instead seeking an abstractly chaotic path; but when we develop a feeling for the transcendence of what shines down on us from the stars, for all that enters through the senses and becomes our perception: beauty, truth, purity, transcendence, magnificence and majesty. When you can stand there as an observer of all that surrounds you—of the plants, of the stones, of the animals, of the stars, of the clouds, of the seas, of the springs, of the mountains—and can absorb their majesty and greatness and truth and beauty and radiance, then can you first say with complete intensity: Yes, great and powerful and majestic and glorious are the worms that crawl under the earth, the stars that glitter above in heaven's space. But your being, O man, is not among them. You are not in what your senses reveal to you.

And then we direct our questioning gaze, laden with riddles, to the far distance. From here on, the esoteric path will be described in imaginations. We direct our gaze to the distance. Something like a path is shown, a path that leads to a black, night-cloaked wall that reveals itself as the beginning of deepest darkness. And we stand there, surrounded by the majesty of sensory perception, marveling at the greatness and majesty and radiance of sensory perception, but not finding our own being in it, with our gaze directed to the limits of sensory perception. But black, night-cloaked darkness begins there. But something in our heart tells us: Not here, where the sun reflects its light from all that grows and moves and lives, but there, where black, night-cloaked darkness is staring at us, are the sources of our own humanity. From out of there the answer must come to the question: O man, know thyself!

Then we go, hesitating, towards the black darkness and become aware that the first being who confronts us stands where the black, night-cloaked darkness begins. Like a previously unseen cloud formation taking shape, it becomes human-like, not weighted by gravity, but human-like nevertheless. With earnest, very earnest gaze, it meets our questioning gaze. It is the Guardian of the Threshold. For between the sun-radiating surroundings of humanity and that night-cloaked darkness there is an abyss, a deep, yawning abyss. The Guardian of the Threshold stands before us on this side of the abyss. We call him this for the following reason.

Oh, every night while sleeping the human being with his I and with his astral body is in that world that with imaginative gaze now appears as black, night-cloaked darkness; but he doesn't realize it—his soul-senses have not opened. He doesn't realize that he lives and acts among spiritual beings and spiritual facts between falling asleep and awakening; were he to consciously experience without further preparation what there is to experience there: he would be crushed! The Guardian of the Threshold protects us—therefore he is the Guardian of the Threshold—protects us against crossing the abyss unprepared. We must follow his admonitions if we wish to tread the esoteric path. He encloses the human being in darkness every night. He guards the threshold so that the human being does not, when falling asleep, enter into the spiritual-occult world unprepared.

Now he stands there—if we have sufficiently internalized our hearts and delved deeply into our souls—there he is, admonishing us as to how everything is beautiful in our surroundings, but that in this beauty we cannot find our own being and that we must seek beyond the yawning abyss of existence in the realms of night-cloaked, black darkness; that we must wait until it becomes dark here in the sunlit radiant realm of sensory light and it becomes light for us there, where now there is still only darkness.

That is what the Guardian of the Threshold reveals to our souls. We are still at a certain distance from him. We look at him, and perceive his admonishing words still from a distance, which resound so:

Where on earthly ground, color on color
Life is manifest in creation;
Where from earthly matter, form on form,
The lifeless is given shape;
Where sentient Beings, strong in will
Warm themselves in joy of existence;
Where you, O man, your bodily being
Is shaped from earth and air and light.

There your true being enters
Deep, night-cloaked, cold darkness;
You ask in the dark sweeping expanse
No longer, who you are and were and will be.
For your own being the day grows dimly
To the soul's night, to spirit-darkness;
And you turn with angst of soul
Toward the light that from darkness streams.

That is the Guardian of the Threshold's first admonishment, the earnest admonishment that tells us that our surroundings are beautiful and grand and sublime, radiant with light, sun-filled; but that this radiant, sun-filled world is for the human being the true darkness; that we must seek there, in the darkness, that darkness becomes light, so that humanity, illuminated from out of the darkness, can approach us, so that the riddle of humanity may be solved from out the darkness. The Guardian of the Threshold continues:

And from out of the darkness comes light,
—you in image-shape revealed—
Your likeness manifesting you,
Yet also a parable of you,
Earnest spirit-words in cosmic ether
Heard by your heart, imparting strength,

The Spirit-Messenger, who alone
Can light for you the way;
Before him the fields of sense widen,
Behind him yawn the abyss-depths.

And before his dark spirit-fields,
Hard by the yawning abyss of being,
Resounds his anciently potent creative words:
Behold, I am the only gate to knowledge.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard, with the last line underlined.]

The Guardian speaks:

Where on earthly ground, color on color
Life is manifest in creation;
Where from earthly matter, form on form,
The lifeless is given shape;
Where sentient Beings, strong in will
Warm themselves in joy of existence;
Where you, O man, your bodily being
Is shaped from earth and air and light.

There your true being enters
Deep, night-cloaked, cold darkness;
You ask in the dark sweeping expanse
No longer, who you are and were and will be.
For your own being the day grows dimly
To the soul's night, to spirit-darkness;
And you turn with angst of soul
Toward the light that from darkness streams.

And from out of the darkness comes light,

(The continuation of this phrase follows after a few lines. What comes now is an intermediate clause.)

— you in image-shape revealed,
Your likeness manifesting you,
Yet also a parable of you,
Earnest spirit-words in cosmic ether
Heard by your heart, imparting strength —

(The intermediate clause has ended; the phrase “And from the darkness comes light” continues.)

The Spirit-Messenger,
(the Guardian of the Threshold) who alone
Can light for you the way;
Before him the fields of sense widen,
Behind him yawn the abyss-depths.

And before his dark spirit-fields,
Hard by the yawning abyss of being,
Resounds his anciently potent creative words:
Behold, I am the only gate to knowledge.

For it is the Guardian himself who, once he has imparted to us this first admonition: to feel light as darkness, darkness as light, indicates the feelings and sensations which can come anciently potent from our souls. He speaks them aloud, does the Guardian, as his gaze becomes even more earnest, as he stretches out his arm and hand to us, he speaks further with these words:

From the distant beings in space
Who experience existence in light,

(We feel ourselves impelled to take a few steps closer to the Guardian.)

From the stages of the course of time,
Which finds expression in creating,
From the depths of heart-felt feeling
Where in the Self the world is fathomed:

They resound in the speech of the soul,
They gleam in the spirit-thoughts,
From divine curative powers,
In the cosmic formative forces
The undulating existential words:
O you man, know thyself!

It is different if we first hear these words from sensory beings, and if we correctly understand the words which resound: “O man, know thyself!”, or if they now resound before the terrible abyss of existence from the mouth of the Guardian of the Threshold himself. The same words: two different ways to grasp them. These words are mantric, for meditation, they are words which awaken the capacity in the soul to come near to the spiritual world, if they are able to ignite the soul.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard and the title and last line are underlined.]

The Guardian at the abyss

From the distant beings in space
Who experience existence in light,
From the stages of the course of time,
Which finds expression in creating,
From the depths of heart-felt feeling
Where in the Self the world is fathomed:

They resound in the speech of the soul,
They gleam in the spirit-thoughts,
From divine curative powers,
In the cosmic formative forces
The undulating existential words:
O you man, know thyself!

While the Guardian is saying these words, we have moved close to the yawning abyss of being. It is deep. There is no hope of crossing the abyss with the feet given us by the earth. We need freedom from earthly gravity. We need the wings of spiritual life in order to cross over the abyss. By at first beckoning us to the yawning abyss of existence, the Guardian of the Threshold made us aware of how our Self, before being illuminated and purified for the spiritual world, where actually today we are everywhere surrounded by hate for the spiritual world, by mockery of the spiritual world, by cowardice and fear of the spiritual world—the Guardian makes us aware of how this, our Self, which wills and feels and thinks, is constituted today in our present evolutionary cycle in its threefold character of willing, feeling and thinking. We must first recognize this before we can become aware, in real self-knowledge, of our true Self, which is implanted in us by the gods.

All three beasts, which arise from the abyss one after the other, appear to us as seen from the viewpoint of the eternal divine force of healing: human willing, human feeling, human thinking. As they appear one after the other—willing, feeling, thinking in their true form—the Guardian explains them:

We are standing at the edge of the abyss. The Guardian speaks—the beasts rise up:

Yes, you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bony head, the scrawny body,
His skin is all a dullish blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begat the monster in your will;
Knowledge bravery alone will overcome it.

Behold the second beast, it bares
Its teeth in a warped face, scornfully it lies,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begat this weakling in your feeling;
Your flame for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begat this ghost within your thinking;
Your creative knowledge must make it yield.

Only when you've defeated the three
Will wings sprout upon your soul
To fly the abyss over,
Which separates you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires
to consecrate itself in healing.

I will write these mantric words on the blackboard next time.

When one has heard this directly from the mouth of the Guardian, one may return, remembering, to the point of departure. There exists everything before the soul that all beings in our surroundings say, if we understand them correctly; what all beings in the most distant past already said to humanity, what all beings say to humanity in the present, and what all beings will say to the human beings of the future:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

These are the words of the Michael-School. When they are spoken, Michael's spirit flows in waves through the room in which they are spoken. And his sign is what confirms his presence.

Michael-Sign (red)

Then Michael leads us to the real Rosicrucian School, which shall reveal the secrets of humanity in the past, in the present and in the future through the Father-God, the Son-God and the Spirit-God. And then pressing the seal on the words “rosae et crucis”, the words may be pronounced:

Ex deo nascimur

In Christo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

accompanied by the sign of Michael's seal, which are for the first words “Ex deo nascimur” [See note]:

secondly by the words “In Christo morimur”:

thirdly by the words “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus”:

As we say the words “Ex deo nascimur”, we feel them confirmed by the seal and sign of Michael—

“Ex deo nascimur” by this sign [makes the gesture—see note]:

I esteem the Father

“In Christo morimur” by this sign:

I love the Son

“Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus” by this sign:

I bind myself to the Spirit

That is what the signs mean.

Michael's presence is confirmed by his seal and sign.

Michael-Sign [see note]

The mantric words written on the blackboard may only be kept by those who are legitimate members of the School, that is, who have been issued the blue certificate. No one else may possess these words. Of course, those may have them who for some reason cannot attend a particular session of the School, or because of the distance from their homes cannot attend. As members of the School they can receive them from other members.

However, in each case permission to pass on these words must be obtained. The one who is to receive the words may not request permission, but only the one who passes them on. He or she obtains permission either from Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not a mere administrative measure, but must be the basis for every passing on of the words that permission must be granted either by Dr. Wegman or by me. The words may not be sent by letters, but only personally; they may not be entrusted to the mail.

Note: It is not possible to determine from the stenographic records of the seven Repetition Lessons exactly when during each lesson, Rudolf Steiner drew the Michael-Sign and the Michael-gestures with their corresponding words, or when he made the signs and the gestures.

There was one point in the lecture yesterday about which I should not like misunderstanding to arise, but a conversation I had today indicated that this might be possible. It is, of course, difficult to formulate in words these matters connected with the more intimate workings of karma, and one point or another may well not be quite clear at the first time of hearing. In the lecture yesterday it was said that we have to regard our sufferings as having been sought out by the wiser being within us in order that certain imperfections may be overcome, and that by bearing these sufferings calmly we may make progress along our path. That, however, was not the point on which misunderstanding might have occurred. It was the other point, namely, that happiness and joy must not be regarded as due to our own merit or individual karma, but deemed a kind of grace whereby we are interwoven with the all-prevailing spirit. Please do not think that the emphasis here lies in the fact that joy comes to us as a mark of favour from the divine-spiritual powers; the emphasis lies in the fact that these experiences are made possible through grace. That is what our attitude must be if we are to reach a true understanding of karma. Happiness and joy are acts of grace. A man who imagines that the happiness and joy in his karma indicate a desire on the part of the gods to single him out and place him above the others will achieve just the opposite. We must never imagine that happiness is allotted to us as a mark of favour or distinction but rather as a reason for feeling that we have been recipients of the grace outpoured by the divine spiritual beings. It is this realisation of grace which makes progress possible; the other attitude would throw us back in our development. Nobody should ever believe that joy comes to him because of special karmic privileges; he should far rather believe that it comes to him because he has no privileges. Joy and happiness should move us to deeds of compassion and mercy, which we shall perform more effectively than if we are suffering the pangs of sorrow. What brings us forward is the realisation that we must make ourselves worthy of grace. There is no justification for the very prevalent view that one whose life abounds in happiness has deserved it. This is the very attitude that must be avoided. Please take this as an indication so that no misunderstanding may arise.

Today we will extend and widen the scope of our studies of karma, and talk about karma and our experiences in the world, so that Spiritual Science may become a real life force within us. Observation of life and its happenings will reveal, to begin with, experiences of two kinds. On the one hand we might say to ourselves: ‘Yes, a misfortune has befallen me, but thinking about it, I can see that it would not have come my way if I had not been careless or negligent.’ This realisation, however, will not always be within the power of ordinary consciousness; many a time we shall find it impossible to see any connection between the misfortune and the circumstances of our present life. With regard to much that befalls us, ordinary consciousness can only conclude that it was pure chance, unconnected with anything else. It will also be possible to make this distinction concerning undertakings which may either be successful or the reverse. In many cases we shall realise that failure was inevitable because of laziness, inattentiveness, or something of the kind, on our part; but in many others we shall be quite unable to discover any connection. It is a useful exercise to take stock of our own experiences and distinguish between things which have failed through no fault of our own, and others which succeed contrary to our expectations. We will try to get to the bottom of these matters, and of events which, on the face of them, seem to be due to pure chance, without any apparent cause, and also things we have done that are seemingly unrelated to our actual faculties. We will now make a close study of all these things.

We will proceed in rather a curious way. As an experiment, we will imagine that we ourselves have willed whatever may have happened to us. Suppose a loose tile from the roof of a house happened to crash down on us. We will picture, purely by way of experiment, that this did not happen by chance, and we will deliberately imagine that we ourselves climbed on that roof, loosened the tile and then ran down so quickly that we arrived just in time to be hit by it! Or, let us say, we caught a chill without any apparent cause; how would it be though, if we had given it to ourselves? Like the unfortunate lady who, being discontented with her lot, exposed herself to a chill, and died of it! In this way, therefore, we will imagine that things otherwise attributable to chance have been deliberately and carefully planned by ourselves. And we will also apply the same procedure to matters which are obviously dependent upon the faculties and qualities we happen to possess. Say some arrangement does not work out as planned. If we miss a train, for example, we shall not blame external circumstances but picture to ourselves that it was due to our own slackness. If we think of it in this way, as an experiment, we shall gradually succeed in creating a kind of being in our imagination, a very extraordinary being, who was responsible for all these things—for a stone having crashed upon us, for some illness, and so forth. We shall realise, of course, that this being is not ourselves; we simply picture such a being vividly and distinctly. And then, after a time, we will have a strange experience with regard to this being. We shall realise that though it is a creature we have only conjured up, yet we cannot free ourselves from him nor from the thought of him, and strange to say he does not stay as he is; he becomes alive and transforms himself within us. And then, when he has gone through this transformation, we get the impression that he really is there within us. And then we become more and more certain that we ourselves have had something to do with the things thus built up in imagination. There is no suggestion whatever that we once actually did them; but such thoughts do, nevertheless, correspond in a certain way with something we have done. We shall tell ourselves: ‘I have done this and that, and I am now having to suffer the consequences.’ This is a very good exercise for unfolding in the life of feeling a kind of memory of earlier incarnations. The soul seems to feel: I myself was there and prepared these things myself.

You will readily understand that it is not easy to awaken the memory of previous incarnations. For just think what mental effort is required to recall something only recently forgotten; genuine mental effort is required. Experiences which occurred in earlier incarnations have sunk into the depths of forgetfulness and much has to be done if they are to be remembered. One such exercise has just been described. In addition to what was said in the public lectures, let it be said here that a man will notice a kind of memory arising in his feeling: in former times you prepared this for yourself!

The principles indicated should not be ignored, for if we follow them we shall find that more and more light will be shed upon life, so that we grow stronger and stronger. Once the feeling has arisen that we ourselves were there and carried out the deeds ourselves we shall have quite a different attitude to events confronting us in the future; our whole life of feeling will be transformed. Whereas formerly we may have experienced fear and all the other similar feelings when something happened to us, we now have a kind of inner memory. And now when something happens, our feeling tells us that it is for a purpose; and that it is a memory of an earlier life. Life becomes much more tranquil and intelligible, and that is what men need, not only those who are sustained by a longing for Anthroposophy, but those too who are outside. It is no excuse to say: How can earlier incarnations matter if we cannot remember them! The right attitude towards earthly existence will certainly awaken memory, only it is a memory belonging to the heart, to the life of feeling, that must be developed, not the kind of memory that is composed of thoughts and concepts.

I considered it important during this particular visit to bring home to you how much can be given practical application, and how Anthroposophy can become actual experience in those who pursue it actively.

Now in addition to what accrued in earlier incarnations other factors are also of importance in a man's karma. We have a life between death and a new birth too, and this is by no means uneventful, it is filled with happenings and experiences. And the consequences of these experiences in the spiritual world appear in our earthly life, but in a peculiar form which often makes us inclined to attribute such occurrences to chance. Nevertheless they can be traced to significant experiences in the spiritual world.

I want to speak to you therefore of something which may seem remote from the first part of the lecture. But you will see that it is important for every human being and that what appear to be chance happenings may be deeply indicative of mysterious connecting threads in life.

I am now going to speak of an historical fact that is not preserved in history books but is in the Akashic Record. To begin with I have to draw your attention to the fact that the souls of all of us here now have been incarnated many times in earthly bodies, among the most diverse conditions of life, in ancient India, Persia, Egypt and Greece; again and again we have experienced different environments and conditions of existence, and there is purpose and meaning in the fact that we pass through one incarnation after another. Our present life could not be as it is if we had not lived through these other conditions. An extraordinary experience fell to the lot of men living in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era, for very exceptional conditions broke in upon humanity at that time—roughly speaking not quite seven hundred years ago. Conditions were such that the souls of men were completely shut off from the spiritual world; spiritual darkness prevailed, and it was impossible even for highly developed individuals to achieve direct contact with the spiritual world. In the thirteenth century even those who in earlier incarnations had been initiates were unable to look into the spiritual world. The gates of the spiritual world were closed for a certain period during that century, and although men who in former times had received initiation were able to call up memories of their earlier incarnations, in the thirteenth century they could not themselves gaze into the spiritual worlds. It was necessary for men to live through that condition of darkness, to find the gates to the spiritual world closed against them. Men of high spiritual development were, of course, also in incarnation at that time, but they too were obliged to experience the condition of darkness. When about the middle of the thirteenth century the darkness lifted, strange happenings occurred at a certain place in Europe. The name of this place cannot now be given, but sometime it may be possible to communicate it in a group lecture. Twelve men in Europe of great and outstanding wisdom, whose spiritual development had taken an unusual course, emerged from the condition of twilight that had obscured clairvoyant vision. Of these twelve wise men, seven, to begin with, have to be distinguished from the others. These seven men had retained the memory of their earlier initiations and this memory, together with the knowledge still surviving, was such that the seven men recapitulated in themselves conditions they had once lived through in the period following the Atlantean catastrophe—the ancient Indian epoch of culture. The teachings given by the seven holy Rishis of India had come to life again in the souls of these seven wise men of Europe; seven rays of the ancient wisdom of the sacred Atlantean culture shone forth in the hearts of these seven men who through the operations of world karma had gathered at a certain place in Europe in the thirteenth century and had found one another again. To these seven came four others. In the soul of the first of these four the wisdom belonging to the ancient Indian culture shone forth—he was the eighth among the twelve. The wisdom of the ancient Persian culture lived in the soul of the ninth; the wisdom of the third period—that of Egyptian-Chaldaean culture—lived in the soul of the tenth, and the wisdom of Greco-Roman culture in the soul of the eleventh. The wisdom of the culture as it was in that particular age—contemporary wisdom—lived in the soul of the twelfth. In these twelve men who came together to perform a special mission, the twelve different streams in the spiritual development of mankind were represented. The fact that all possible religions and all possible philosophies belong to twelve basic types is in itself a mystery. Buddhism, Brahmanism, Vedanta philosophy, materialism, or whatever it may be—all of them can be traced to the twelve basic types; it is just a matter of being quite exact. And so all the different streams of man's spiritual life—the religions, the philosophies and world conceptions that are spread over the earth—were united in that council of the twelve.⁵⁶

After the period of darkness had passed and spiritual achievement was possible again, a thirteenth came in remarkable circumstances to the twelve. I am telling you now of one of those events which take place secretly in the evolution of mankind once and once only. They cannot occur a second time and are mentioned not as an indication that efforts should be made to repeat them but for quite other reasons. When the darkness had lifted and it was possible to develop clairvoyant vision again, the coming of the thirteenth was announced in a mysterious way to the twelve wise men. They knew that the time had come when a child with significant and remarkable incarnations behind him was to be born. Above all they knew that one of his incarnations had been at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. It was known, therefore, that one who had been a contemporary of the events in Palestine was returning. And the birth of the child in these unusual circumstances during the thirteenth century could not have been said to be that of a person of renown. In speaking of previous lives there is a deplorable and only too widespread tendency to refer back to important historical personages. I have come across all kinds of people who believe that they were incarnated as some historical personage or figure in the Gospels. Quite recently a lady informed me that she had been Mary Magdelene, and I could only reply that she was the twenty-fourth Mary Magdelene I had met in my life. In these matters the greatest care must be taken to prevent fantastic notions arising.

History tells us very little about the incarnations of the thirteenth. He was born many times with great and profound qualities of heart. It was known that this individuality was to be born again as a child and that he was destined for a very special mission. This knowledge was revealed to the twelve seers who took the child entirely into their charge and were able to arrange that from the very beginning he was shut off from the outside world. He was removed from his family and cared for by these twelve men. Guided by their clairvoyance they reared the child with every care in such a way that all the forces acquired from previous incarnations were able to unfold in him. A kind of intuitive perception of this occurrence has arisen in men who know something of the history of spiritual life. Goethe's poem The Mysteries⁵⁷ has been recited to us many times. Out of a deep, intuitive perception Goethe speaks in that poem of the council of the twelve, and he has been able to convey to us the mood of heart and feeling in which they lived. The thirteenth is not brother Mark but the child of whom I have been telling you, and who almost immediately after his birth was taken into the care of the twelve and brought up by them until the age of early manhood. The child developed in a strange and remarkable way. The twelve were not in any sense fanatics; they were full of inner composure, enlightenment and peace of heart. How does a fanatic behave? He wants to convert people as quickly as possible; while they, as a rule, do not want to be converted. Everybody is expected immediately to believe what the fanatic wants them to believe and he is angry when this does not happen. In our day, when someone sets out to expound a particular subject, people simply do not believe that his aim may be not to voice his own views but something quite different, that is, the thoughts and opinions of the one of whom he is writing. For many years I was held to be a follower of Nietzsche⁵⁸ because I once wrote an absolutely objective book about him. People simply cannot understand that the aim of a writer may be to give an objective exposition. They think that everyone must be a fanatic on the subject of which he happens to be speaking.

The twelve in the thirteenth century were far from being fanatics, and they were very sparing with oral teaching. But because they lived in communion with the boy, twelve rays of light as it were went out from them into him and were resolved in his soul into one great harmony. It would not have been possible to give him any kind of academic examination; nevertheless there lived within him, transmuted into feeling and sensitive perception, all that the twelve representatives of the twelve different types of religion poured into his soul. His whole soul reflected the harmony of the twelve different forms of belief spread over the earth.

In this way the soul of the boy had to bear a great deal, and consequently it worked in a strange way upon the body. And it is precisely for this reason that the process of which I am telling you now may not be repeated: it could only be enacted at that particular time. Strange to say, as the harmony within the boy's soul increased, his body became more delicate—more and more delicate, until at a certain age it was transparent in every limb. The boy ate less and less until he finally took no nourishment at all. Then he lay for days in a condition of complete torpor: the soul had left the body, and returned into it again after a few days. The youth was now inwardly quite changed. The twelve different rays of human outlook were united in one single radiance, and he gave utterance to the greatest, most wonderful secrets; he did not repeat what the first, or the second, or the third had said, but gave forth in a new and wonderful synthesis all that they would have said had they spoken in unison; all the knowledge they possessed was gathered into one whole, and when he uttered it, it was as though this new wisdom had just come to birth in him. It was as though a higher spirit were speaking in him. Something entirely and essentially new was thus imparted to the twelve wise men. Wisdom in abundance was imparted to them; and to each, individually, greater illumination concerning what had been known to him hitherto.

I have been describing to you the first school of Christian Rosenkreutz, for the thirteenth is the individuality known to us by that name. In that incarnation he died after only a brief earthly existence; in the fourteenth century he was born again and lived then for more than a hundred years. All those things again appeared in him that had developed in him in the thirteenth century. Then his life had been brief, but in the fourteenth century it was very long. During the first half of this later incarnation he went on great journeys in search of the different centres of culture in Europe, Africa and Asia, in order to gather knowledge of what had come to life in him during the previous century; then he returned to Europe. A few of those who had brought him up in the thirteenth century were again in incarnation and were joined by others. This was the time of the inauguration of the rosicrucian stream of spiritual life. And Christian Rosenkreutz himself incarnated again and again.

To this very day he is at work—during the brief intervals, too, when he is not actually in incarnation; through his higher bodies he then works spiritually into human beings, without the need of spatial contact. We must try to picture the mysterious way in which his influence operates.

And I want to begin here by giving an example. Those who participate consciously in the occult life of the spirit had a strange experience from the eighties on into the nineties of the previous century; they became aware of certain influences emanating from a remarkable personality (I am only mentioning one case among many). There was, however, something not quite harmonious about these influences. Anyone who is sensitive to influences from contemporaries living a great distance away, would, at that time, have been aware of something raying out from a certain personality, which was not altogether harmonious. When the new century dawned, however, these influences became harmonious. What had happened? I will tell you the reason for this.

On the 12th August 1900 Soloviev had died—a man far too little appreciated or understood. The influences of his ether body radiated far and wide, but although Soloviev was a great philosopher, in his case the development of the soul was in advance of that of the head, the intellect; he was a great and splendid thinker, but his conscious philosophy was of far less significance than that which he bore in his soul. Up to the time of his death the head was a hindering factor and so, as an occult influence, he had an inharmonious effect. But when he was dead and the ether body, separated from the brain, rayed out in the ether world, he was liberated from the restrictions caused by his thinking, and the rays of his influence shone out with wonderful brilliance and power.

People may ask: How can such knowledge really concern us? This very question is an illusion, for the human being is through and through a product of the spiritual processes around him; and when certain occultists become aware of the reality of these processes, that is because they actually see them. But spiritual processes operate too in those others who do not see. Everything in the spiritual world is interconnected. Whatever influence may radiate from a highly developed Frenchman or Russian is felt not only on their own native soil, but their thought and influence has an effect over the whole earth. Everything that happens in the spiritual world has an influence on us, and only when we realise that the soul lives in the spiritual world just as the lung within the air, shall we have the right attitude.

The forces in the ether bodies of highly developed individualities stream out and have a potent effect upon other human beings. So too, the ether body of Christian Rosenkreutz works far and wide in the world. And reference must be made here to a fact that is of the greatest significance to many people; it is something that transpires in the spiritual world between death and a new birth and is not to be ascribed to chance.

Christian Rosenkreutz has always made use of the short intervals of time between his incarnations to call into his particular stream of spiritual life those souls whom he knows to be ripe; between his deaths and births he has concerned himself as it were with choosing those who are ready to enter his stream. But human beings themselves, by learning to be attentive, must be able to recognise by what means Christian Rosenkreutz gives them a sign showing them that they may count themselves among his chosen. This sign has been given in the lives of very many human beings of the present time, but they pay no heed to it. Yet among the apparently chance happenings in a man's life, there is for many people one in particular that is to be regarded as an indication that between death and a new birth Christian Rosenkreutz has found him mature and ready; the sign is given by Christian Rosenkreutz on the physical plane, however. This event may be called the mark of Christian Rosenkreutz. Let us suppose a man is lying in bed—in other places I have mentioned different forms of such a happening, but all of them have occurred—for some unaccountable reason he suddenly wakes up and, as though guided by instinct, looks at a wall that is usually quite dark. The room is dimly lit, the wall is dark, when suddenly he sees written on the wall: ‘Get up at once!’ It all seems very strange, but he gets up and leaves the house, and hardly has he done so when the ceiling over his bed collapses; although nobody else would have been in danger of getting hurt, he himself would inevitably have been killed. The most thorough investigation proves that nobody on the physical plane warned him to get up. If he had remained lying there he would certainly have been killed.

Such an experience may be thought to be an hallucination or something of the kind; but deeper investigation will reveal that these particular experiences—and they come to hundreds of people—are not accidental. A beckoning call has come from Christian Rosenkreutz. The karma of the one called in this way always indicates that Christian Rosenkreutz bestows the life he may claim. I say explicitly: such occurrences occur in the lives of many people at the present time, and it is only a question of being alert. The occurrence does not always take such a dramatic form as the example quoted, but numbers of human beings nowadays have had such experiences. Now when I say something more than once during a lecture, I do so quite deliberately, because I find that strange conclusions are apt to be drawn from things that are half or totally forgotten. I am saying this because nobody need be discouraged who has had no such experience; this might not be the case, for if he searches he will certainly find something of the kind in his life. Naturally I can only single out a typical example. Here then we have in our life a fact of which we may say that its cause does not lie in the period of actual incarnation; we may have met Christian Rosenkreutz in the spiritual world. I have laid particular stress on this outstanding event of the call. Other events, too, could be mentioned, events connected directly with the spiritual world that occur during the life between death and a new birth; but in our spiritual context this particular event should be of special significance for us as it is so intimately connected with our spiritual movement.

Such a happening surely indicates that we must develop quite a different attitude if we want to have a clear vision of what actually plays into life. Most human beings rush hectically through life and are not thoughtful and attentive; many people say that one should not brood but engage in a life of action. But how much better it would be if precipitate deeds were left undone and people were to brood a little their deeds, then, would be far more mature! If only the beckoning call were heeded with composure and attentiveness. Often it only seems as if we were brooding. It is precisely through quiet composure that strength comes to us—and then we shall follow when karma calls, understanding, too, when it is calling. These are the things I wanted to call your attention to today, for they do indeed make life more intelligible.

I have told you of the strange event in the thirteenth century, purely in the form of historical narrative, in order to indicate those things which men must heed if they are to find their proper place in life and understand the beckoning call of Christian Rosenkreutz. To make this possible the preparation by the twelve and the coming of the thirteenth were necessary. And the event in the thirteenth century was necessary in order that in our own time and hereafter such a beckoning or other sign may be understood and obeyed.

Christian Rosenkreutz has created this sign in order to rouse the attention of men to the needs of the times, to indicate to them that they belong to him and may dedicate their lives to him in the service of the progress of humanity.

• 56. all possible religions and all possible philosophies belong to twelve basic types: see Rudolf Steiner's ‘Human and Cosmic Thought’, 4 lectures Berlin, January 1914; Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1967.
• 57. see note 29.
• 58. Nietzsche because I once wrote an absolutely objective book about him: ‘Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom’, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New Jersey, 1960.

This lecture is meant as still introductory to our astral “General Meeting Campaign”, and it will have a particular purpose. It is to show that spiritual science—or rather the special way of observing the world, which underlies it—stands in fullest harmony with certain results of the specifically scientific method. It is not quite easy for the anthroposophist (as can be seen particularly in public lectures) to find complete understanding in a totally unprepared public. When spiritual science meets with an unprepared public, the anthroposophist must be aware that with regard to many things, he speaks quite a different language from those who so far have either heard nothing at all, or only superficially, of the knowledge that underlies the movement of spiritual science.

A certain deeper penetration is needed to find the harmony between what is so easily given today in ordinary science, the experiences of physical research, and what is given to us through the knowledge of the spiritual, the higher, the supersensible consciousness. One must gradually grow accustomed to see deeper into this harmony, and then one will find what a beautiful harmony exists between what is maintained by the spiritual researcher and the statements or enumeration of facts that can be brought forward by physical research. One must not, on this account, be too unjust towards those who cannot understand anthroposophists; they lack all the preparation that is definitely required in order to be able to grasp the results of spiritual research. And so in the majority of cases, they cannot help but think something quite different from what is intended—both in the words and in the ideas. Therefore, in wider circles a greater understanding for spiritual science can be achieved only if one speaks quite openly and frankly from the spiritual standpoint, even before an unprepared public.

Among these unprepared people, there will then be a great number who say, “That is all stupidity—fantastic things, puzzled-out nonsense.” But there will always be a few who, from inmost need of their soul, will get an inkling that there is, nevertheless, something behind it. They will go further and gradually familiarize themselves with it. And it is on such patient study that anthroposophy must depend, and at which we can aim. It will be very natural for a large part of those who come to a lecture on spiritual science from pure curiosity to give vent afterwards to the opinion: “That is a sect that only spreads its own particular gibberish!” But when one knows the difficulties, one will also wait patiently for the selection that must arise. Persons among the public will themselves find their way and form a nucleus through whom spiritual science will then gradually flow into our whole life.

A special example shall be given today to show how easy it is for prepared students of spiritual science, who have already grown accustomed to think and live in the conceptions aroused by spiritual science, to come to terms with the apparently most difficult reports given out by physical-sensible research. The learner will gradually become aware that the farther we advance, the more we will realize what a good foundation spiritual research is for universal knowledge. And that will give the seeker the necessary calmness to meet the storms pouring out against spiritual science, because it speaks quite a foreign language. If we have the patience to accustom ourselves to this harmony, we shall gain more and more assurance. Then when people say, “What you tell me does not agree with the most elementary researches of science,” the anthroposophist will answer, “I know that through what spiritual science can give, full harmony can be found with all these facts, although it is perhaps impossible to come to an understanding in a moment.”

We will now let something pass before our souls as a particular chapter, in order further to strengthen the consciousness.

After living for some time with the spiritual conception of the world, students of spiritual science have become accustomed to speaking of physical body, etheric body, and astral body as ideas, which they can then apply as guides when they are seeking to understand external things from a universal standpoint. They must gradually become used to seeing the difference in the physical nature of the objects around them. They look at the stone and do not say, “The stone consists of such and such materials, the human body consists of the same, and therefore, I can treat the human body just like the stone.” For even the plant body is quite different, though it consists of the same physical materials as the stone. It has the etheric body within it, and the plant's physical body would fall to pieces if the etheric body were not to permeate it in every part. Hence, the spiritual scientist says, “The physical body of the plant would dry away unless the etheric body kept it alive and fought against this dissolution. In regarding the plant, we find that it is a combination of the principles of the physical and etheric bodies.”

Now, it has often been emphasized that the most elementary principle of the etheric body is recapitulation. A being, standing solely under its etheric and physical principles, would express in itself the principle of recapitulation. We see evidence of this in the plant in a very marked degree: We see how leaf after leaf develops, since the plant's physical body is permeated by the recapitulation principle of the etheric. A leaf is formed, then a second and a third; leaf is added to leaf in continuous repetition. And even when the plant comes to a certain conclusion above, recapitulation is still there. There is a kind of wreath of leaves forming the calyx of the flower, though they have a different form from the other leaves. Yet, you feel that it is still a recapitulation of the same leaves in altered form. We may therefore say that the green calyx-leaves up above where the plant ends are a kind of recapitulation. And even the flower petals are a recapitulation. It is true that they have a different color, but in essentials, they are still leaves—greatly transformed leaves.

It was in Goethe's great work in the plant-kingdom that he showed how not only the calyx-leaves and flower petals are transformed leaves, but also how one must see in pistils and stamens just such a metamorphosed repetition. However, it is not a mere repetition that meets us in the plant. If the purely elemental etheric principle were alone active, the plant would come to no termination. The etheric body would press through the plant from below upwards, leaf upon leaf would be developed, and there would never be an end. Then, what makes the flower come to a conclusion, makes it end its existence, begin to be fruitful in order to produce another flower? It is the fact that in the same degree as the plant grows upward, there comes to meet it from above, enclosed in itself, the plant's astral body. The plant possesses in itself no astral body of its own, but as it grows upwards, the plant-like astral body meets it from above. It brings to a conclusion what the etheric body would continue in eternal recapitulation; it causes the transformation of the green leaves into the calyx, flower petals, stamens and pistil.

For occult sight, we can say that the plant grows towards its soul-like part, its astral part, which causes the metamorphosis. Now the fact that the plant remains plant and does not go over to voluntary movement and sensation is because the astral body, which meets the plant there above, does not take inner possession of the organs; it touches them only outwards from above. To the degree that the astral body seizes the organs inwardly, the plant goes over to the animal. That is the great difference. If you take a leaf of the plant, you can say: “Even in the leaf of the plant the etheric body and the astral body are working together, but the etheric body has, so to say, the upper hand. The astral body is not in a position to extend its feelers towards the interior; it works from outside.”

If we want to express that from the spiritual standpoint, we can say: “What is within, in the case of the animal, what it experiences inwardly as pleasure and sorrow, joy and pain, impulse, desire, and instinct, is not within in the plant; it sinks down, however, continuously towards the plant from above.” That is entirely something of a soul-nature. And whereas the animal directs its eyes outwards, has its pleasure in the surroundings, directs its perception of taste outwards and regales itself on some approaching enjoyment, i.e., experiences pleasure inwardly, one who can really regard these things spiritually can affirm that the astral being of the plant also feels joy and pain, pleasure and sadness through looking down upon that which it has brought about. It rejoices over the rose color and over all that comes towards it. And when the plants form leaves and flowers, then the plant-soul permeates and tastes all that as it looks down, and there is an exchange between the soul-part sinking down and the plant itself. The plant-world is there for the happiness—and at times also for the pain—of its soul-part. We can really see an exchange of feeling between the plant-covering of the earth and the earth's astrality, which enfolds the plants and represents their soul nature.

That which works on the plants from without seizes the soul-nature of the animal inwardly and first makes it animal. But there is an important difference between the active soul-nature in the astrality of the plant-world and that in the astrality of animal-life. If you test clairvoyantly what works as astrality on the plant-covering, you find in the soul-nature of the plants a certain sum of forces, and these all have a certain peculiarity. When I speak of plant soul-nature and of the earth's astrality that permeates it and in which the soul nature of the plants plays its part, you must be clear that these plant-souls do not live in their astrality as, for instance, physical beings on our earth.

Plant-souls can interpenetrate each other so that they flow along as in a fluid element. But one thing is characteristic of them; namely, they develop certain forces, and all these forces stream to the central point of the planet. A force works in every plant, which goes from above downwards and strives towards the center of the earth. That is what regulates the direction of the plant's growth. If you lengthen their axes, you come to the earth's center, which is the direction given to the plants by the soul-nature coming from above. If we investigate the soul-nature of the plant, we find that its most important characteristic is that it is rayed through by forces, which all strive towards the center of the earth.

It is different when we consider the astrality around our earth, which belongs to the animal nature. The plant-nature as such would not be able to call forth animal life. To produce the animal nature, it is necessary for still other forces to pass through the astral element. Thus, the occult investigator can distinguish purely from the astrality whether some will produce plant or animal growth. That can be distinguished in the astral sphere, for all astrality, showing only forces that strive towards the center of the earth or of some other planet, will give rise to plant growth. If, on the other hand, forces appear, which in fact stand at right angles to these, but which go round the whole planet as continuous circular movements with extraordinary mobility in every direction, then that is a different astrality, which gives rise to animal life. At any point where you set up observations, you find that the earth in every situation and direction and altitude is surrounded by currents, which, if lengthened, would form circles flowing round the earth. This astrality harmonizes quite well with the plant astrality. They interpenetrate each other and yet are inwardly separate, differing through their inner qualities. Thus, on one and the same spot of the earth's surface, both sorts of astrality can positively stream through each other. If a clairvoyant tests a definite portion of space, forces are found that strive only to the earth's center with others interpenetrating them that are only circular, and of which the clairvoyant knows that they give rise to animal life.

When you consider a physical body, no matter whether plant or animal, you have to look at it as a spatial enclosure and have no right to count something else as belonging to it that is separated from it in space. Where there is spatial separation, you must speak of different bodies; it is a single body when there is spatial connection. This is not so in the astral world, and particularly not so in the astrality that can give rise to the animal kingdom. There, it is a fact that astral structures, widely separated, can make up a single whole. Here in some part of space, there can be an astral structure, and in quite another part of space, there can be another enclosed astral structure; yet, in spite of having not the slightest thread of space in common, these two astral structures can make up a single being. Yes—three, four, five such spatially separated structures can be connected. Even the following can happen.

Suppose you have an astral being that has not embodied itself physically anywhere at all, and you then find another that belongs to this one. Now you observe the former and find something going on in it, which you can call intake of food, consumption of something, since certain substances are taken in and others thrust out. And while you perceive this in the one structure, you can perceive in the second being, spatially separated from the first, other processes going on that correspond to what occurred in the first as absorption of food. On the one hand, the being eats—on the other hand, it experiences the taste, and although there is no spatial connection, the process in the one structure entirely corresponds to the process in the other structure. Thus, astral structures quite separated in space can, nevertheless, belong inwardly to one another.

In fact, a hundred widely separated astral structures may be so interdependent that no process can take place in one without a corresponding process in the others. When the beings take physical embodiment, you can still find echoes of this astral peculiarity. You will have heard of the remarkable parallelism shown by twins. This is because they remain related in their astral bodies, although they are separated spatially through their physical embodiment. So that, when something goes on in the astral body of the one, it cannot take place alone but is expressed in the astral part of the other. Even where it is a case of plant astrality, this peculiarity is shown: the interdependence in things quite separated in space. You will perhaps have already heard of this peculiarity in the plant-nature—how the wine in vessels shows a quite remarkable activity when the grape season comes. What causes the grapes to ripen is to be remarked again even in the wine containers.

I wished only to bring forward the fact that in what is manifested, the hidden is always betrayed and can be brought to light with the methods of occult research. You will acknowledge from this that it does not seem at all unnatural that our whole organism is put together astrally out of quite differentiated members.

There are very singular sea-creatures, which you will understand if you remember what we have now described to some extent of the mysteries of the astral world. It is not at all necessary for the astral forces that bring about the intake of nourishment to be connected with those that regulate movement or reproduction. When the clairvoyant investigator examines astral space for such structures as can give rise to animal life, he finds something very remarkable. He finds a certain astral substantiality, of which he must say that if it worked in an animal body through the forces prevailing in it, it would be particularly fitted to transform the physical and make it an organ for taking nourishment. Now somewhere or other, there can be quite different members of astral being through which, when they submerge into a body, not organs of food-intake are formed but organs of movement or perception. You can conceive that, when on the one hand you have an apparatus for taking in food and again an apparatus for moving hands and feet, forces from the astral world are sunk into you, yet these forces can stream together from quite different sides. The one astral mass of forces has given you the one, the other has given you the other, and they find themselves together in your physical body, because your physical body has to be a connected object in space. That depends on the laws of the physical world. The different force-masses that come together there from outside must form a unity. They did not do so right from the beginning.

What we have just gone into as the result of occult research in the astral field can be definitely confirmed in its effect on the physical world. For there are certain creatures that have a remarkable life as marine creatures. We see in them something like a common stem or trunk, a kind of hollow tube. Above this, on the top, there is a formation that has, actually, no other ability than to fill itself with air and empty itself again. This achievement causes the whole structure to stand upright. If this bell-formed part were not there, then the whole thing that hangs on it could not keep itself upright. It is a kind of balance-being which gives equilibrium to the whole. This may not seem to us so very peculiar. But it is peculiar when we realize that the structure, which is up above and gives balance to the whole being, cannot exist without nourishment. It is of an animal nature and must therefore receive nourishment. Yet, it has no instrument at all for taking in food. But in order that this structure can be fed, there are placed on the hollow stem certain outgrowths—genuine polyps, distributed in all sorts of places; they would continually tumble about and not be able to keep in balance if they had not grown on a common stem. They can absorb nourishment from outside and give it to the whole stem, which they permeate. In that way, the air-balance-being is also nourished. Thus, on the one hand, there is a being that can only keep the balance, and on the other hand one that can only provide nourishment for the whole. But now we have a structure that can be very much held up in the matter of food; when the nourishment is taken in, nothing more is there, and the creature must seek other spots where it can find new food. For this, it must have organs of movement. Care has been taken for this, too, for there are still other structures that have grown on this stem and that have other capacities. They cannot keep the balance or provide nourishment, but instead, they possess certain muscular formations. These structures can draw themselves together and so press out the water. This causes a counter-thrust in the water, so that when the water is pressed out, the whole structure must move towards the other side and so be enabled to reach other creatures for food. The “medusae” move forward by pressing out water and in this way causing a counter-thrust. And such medusae, which are genuine movement-creatures, have now also grown on there. So here you have a conglomeration of differing animal formations, one kind that only keeps balance, another that only nourishes, and then other beings that provide movement.

If such a being, however, were no more than this, it would lie out entirely; it could not reproduce itself. But even this is provided for. Again, on other places of the stem, there grow ball-shaped forms that have no other capacity than reproduction. In a hollow space inside these beings, male and female fertilization substances are developed; they mutually fructify each other and beings of their own kind are brought forth. Thus the reproductive process in these beings is delegated to quite distinct formations that have no other capacity at all. In addition, you still find certain outgrowths on this common stem; these are beings in which everything is stunted; they are only there as a protection, so that what lies beneath has a certain protection. They have sacrificed themselves, have surrendered all else and become only protective polyps.

Still to be remarked are certain long threads called “tentacles”, which again are metamorphosed organs. These have none of the faculties of the other structures, but if the creature is attacked by some hostile creature, the “tentacles” repulse the attack; they are defensive organs. And still another kind of organ is there, which one calls “touchers”, “feelers”. These are fine, mobile, and very sensitive organs of feeling and touch—a kind of sense-organ. The sense of feeling, which in a human being is spread over the whole body, exists here in a special member.

Now what does this siphonophore—the name of this creature that you see swimming about in the water—mean to one who can look at things with the sight of an occultist? Here are the most varied structures astrally crowded together, creatures of nourishment, of movement, of reproduction, etc. And since these various good qualities of astral substance wish to incorporate physically, they had to string themselves on a common substantiality. So, here you see a being that predicts the human being to us in an extremely remarkable way!

Imagine that all the organs, appearing here as independent entities, were in an inward contact with each other, had developed together: then you have the human being and the higher animals in a physical respect. Here, through plain facts of the physical world, you see the confirmation of what is shown by occult research: namely, that in the human being, too, the most diverse astral forces stream together. These, we each hold together through our ego, and when they no longer work together as a being, feeling itself a unity, they make an individual strive apart in different directions. It is related in the Gospel, how so and so many demonic beings are in the man, which have streamed together in order to form a unity. And you also remember how in certain abnormal conditions, when there is mental illness, the person loses the inner connection. There are cases of insanity, where people can no longer hold fast to their ego and feel that they are split up into different parts; they confuse themselves with the original partial structures that have streamed together in them.

There is a certain occult principle, which asserts that everything present in the spiritual world ultimately betrays itself somewhere in the world of the senses. So you see what is interconnected in the human astral body embodied physically in such a siphonophore. The hidden world spies through a peep-hole into the physical. If human beings had not been able to delay their incorporation until they could achieve the suitable physical density, then they would be—not physically but spiritually—beings put together out of such a piece-work. Size has nothing at all to do with it. This type of creature—which belongs to the species of hollow creatures, described today by every natural history, and which, in a certain respect, form a kind of fascination for the material-science researcher—becomes inwardly comprehensible when we can understand it out of the occult principles of animal astrality. This is such an example, and you can listen calmly to one who speaks quite a different language and says that physical research contradicts the statements of anthroposophy. For you can reply that, if one patiently allows time to show the agreement, then harmony will certainly be displayed, even in most complicated things. The concept of "evolution" held by most people is a very simple one. Evolution has, however, taken place by no means so simply.

In conclusion, I should like to raise a kind of problem, which shall stand as a task for us to seek to solve from the occult standpoint. We have seen an important occult truth demonstrated externally in a relatively lower animal. Let us now pass to a somewhat higher animal species—the fish—which can give us still more riddles. I will put before you only a few characteristics.

When you observe fish in aquariums, you can again and again be amazed at the wonderful life of the water. But do not imagine that any occult insight will disturb these reflections. When you shed light there with the facts of occult research and see what still other hidden beings swim about just in order to form these creatures as they are, then the understanding will not lessen your wonder but only increase it. Let me, however, take an ordinary fish—it presents us with quite potent riddles. The average fish has, in the first place, remarkable stripes running along the sides, which appear also on the scales in another form. They run along both sides like two lines of longitude. If you were to deaden these two lines, the fish would behave as if it were mad. For then, it would have lost the power of finding the differences of pressure in the water—where the water gives greater support or less; where it is thinner and denser; the fish would no longer be able to move according to the pressure differences in the water. Water differs in density at different places, so that an uneven pressure is exercised. The fish moves at the surface of the water differently from below, and through these lines of longitude, it perceives the different pressures and all the movements produced by the fact that the water is in movement.

But now, through fine organs, which you find described in every natural-history book, the separate points of these lines of longitude are connected with the fish's quite primitive organ of hearing. The way in which the fish is aware of the movements and inner life of the water is just the same as the way in which we humans perceive the pressure of air—only that the conditions of pressure are felt first in the lines of longitude and are then transmitted to the hearing organ. The fish hears that; however, things are still more complicated.

The fish has a swimming-bladder that enables it in the first place to make use of the pressure of the water and to move just in definite conditions of pressure. The pressure on the swimming-bladder gives it the art of swimming, but because the different movements and vibrations touch upon the bladder and affect it like a membrane, this reacts on the hearing organ, and with the help of the hearing organ, the fish orientates itself in all its movements. The swimming-bladder is thus actually a kind of membrane, which is stretched out and which comes into vibrations that the fish hears. Where the fish's head ends towards the back, there are the gills, and these enable the fish to use the air of the water in order to breathe.

If you follow up all these things in the ordinary biological theories on evolution, you always find evolution presented somewhat primitively. The head of the fish is thought to evolve somewhat higher, and then the head of a more highly-organized animal arises; the fins evolve further, and then the organs of movement of the higher animals arise, and so on. But the matter is not so simple when one follows the processes with spiritual observation.

For in order that a spiritual structure that has embodied itself to form the fish may evolve higher, something much more complicated must happen. A great part of the organs must be transformed and turned inside out. The same forces that work in the fish's swimming-bladder conceal in themselves—in a mother-substance, as it were—the forces that the human being has in the lungs. But they are not lost. Tiny pieces remain behind—only turned inside out—everything material vanishes, and they then form our human ear drumskin. The eardrum, spatially considered, stands at a distance in man; it is, in fact, a portion of that membrane, and forces work within it that have functioned in the swimming-bladder of the fish. And further: the gills are transformed into the little bones of the ear, at least in part, so that in the human organ of hearing you have, for instance, transformed gills. Now you see that it is somewhat as if the fish's swimming-bladder, were turned over the gills. In human beings, therefore, you have the eardrum outside, the hearing organs inside. And what is quite outside in the fish—the remarkable lines of longitude through which the fish orientates itself—form in human beings the three semi-circular canals through which we keep our balance. If you destroyed these three semi-circular canals we would become giddy and could no longer keep our balance.

So you do not have just a simple process from natural history, but instead, a marvelous astral work, where things are indeed continually turned inside out. Imagine that you had a glove on this hand with patterns on it that were elastic. If you now reverse it, turn it inside out, it would become a quite tiny picture. So do the organs that were outside become small and tiny, and the organs that were inside will form a broad surface. We understand evolution only when we know that in the most mysterious way, such a reversal takes place in the astral and how, in this way, the progress of the spiritual takes place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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