The Rudolf Steiner Archive

To get even closer to the problems we have opened up in these lectures, I want to make some incidental comments today. You probably know the amusing experiment so often done by conjurers: they show the audience some heavy weights and the effort required to lift them. To make the thing more credible, the pretend weights usually have figures written on them—so and so many hundredweight, or kilogram or whatever. Having made enormous efforts and slowly lifted the weights, so that the audience can admire his muscular strength, the conjurer then suddenly lifts them up high, or may even bring on a small boy who'll trot off swinging the weights—for the whole is made of cardboard. It is merely that the shape and the figures have been imitated to give the impression that those are real weights.

This experiment will frequently come to mind for anyone who has a little bit of spiritual science and who learns what people, even the more intelligent ones, are saying or writing about historical events or historical figures. This applies even to biographers and historians who, according to current opinion, are doing their work extremely well. If you have training in spiritual science, you may be entirely satisfied with the descriptions which are given—for a time. But when you go over it all in your mind again, it does seems as if a child might as well come and run off swinging all this stuff.

Perhaps there are not very many people who feel like this, though I have found something like it, at an instinctive level, with quite a number of people when it comes to the historical writings one gets today. The whole of Roman history, and particularly also Greek history, which is written today comes under this heading. And I am forced to say that historians dealing with one particular field, people whom I respect highly, nevertheless leave me with this impression. I have enormous respect for the historian Herman Grimm,¹ as will be evident from several of my lectures. But when I take up his books on Goethe, Michelangelo or Raphael, these figures seem as if they had no real weight—comparatively speaking—as if they were but darting shadows. The whole of Grimm's Goethe, the whole of his Michelangelo, are merely figures from a magic lantern, for these, too, have no weight.

What is the reason for this? It is that people who are merely equipped with the education, the intellectual content, of our present time do not have a real idea of the true reality, even though they generally think they are describing such a reality. People are infinitely far away from the true reality today because they do not know the element which is always around us and gives spiritual, if not exactly physical, weight to the figures.

Luther is being presented in hundreds, if not thousands, of ways during these weeks.² All very erudite, of course, for today's writers generally are most erudite; I am quite serious about this. But the Martin Luther described by our contemporaries is like the image we have of the weight made of cardboard, for the element which lends weight to a figure is missing. You may say: If one is sitting on a chair and watching the man lifting weights, it looks exactly the same whether the weights are made of cardboard or are real weights. You could even paint the scene; it would look the same. The painting could be perfectly true, even if the weights lifted by the model were made of cardboard. The descriptions given of historical figures like Luther may be eminently true, and the individuals who are so proud of their realism may have succeeded extremely well in using numerous details, numerous characteristic and significant things to create a sophisticated image, but the image does not necessarily correspond to reality, because the spiritual weight is lacking.

If we really want to understand Luther today we must know the inner quality of his true nature, quite independent of our own point of view; we must know he lived a short time after the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean age, but that all the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean age were alive in his heart and mind. He was out of place in the fifth post-Atlantean age, for he felt, thought and reacted like someone from the fourth post-Atlantean age; the task facing him belonged to the fifth postAtlantean age which then was just beginning. And so the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age, the horizon of that age, sees an individual whose inner impulses really came from all the qualities of the fourth post-Atlantean age. The prospect of what was to come in the fifth post-Atlantean age lived in Luther's soul at an unconscious, instinctive level.

That age was to bring all the materialism which could only arise for humanity in post-Atlantean times and would gradually penetrate every human sphere. To put it as a paradox—paradoxes never represent the actual facts, of course, but we are able to deduce the facts from them—we might say: Luther was entirely rooted in the fourth post-Atlantean age when it came to the impulses in his heart and mind and feelings, and this meant that he did not really understand the innermost nature of the materialistic human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean age. He certainly had an instinctive, more or less unconscious, inner grasp of the conflicts which would arise between the people of the fifth post-Atlantean age and the outside world, of how they would act in that world and be caught up in its works. Yet all this was really of no concern to him, because his feelings were those of the people who had lived in the fourth postAtlantean age. Hence his insistence that no good would come of being connected with the works of the world and being involved in the world. You must distance yourselves from these works and from everything which exists in the outside world, and find the way to the world of the spirit solely in your heart and mind. You must build your bridge between the spiritual and the earthly world not on the basis of what you are able to know, but what you are able to believe; it must grow from your inner mind and soul. Because he was not connected with the outside world, Luther emphasized that the relationship with the spiritual world was a purely inward one based on faith.

Or consider this: In some respects the world of the spirit lay open before Luther's inner eye. His visions of the devil do not need to be explained in the way Ricarda Huch³ explains them in her book, which otherwise has considerable merit. There is no need to make excuses for his visions of the devil by saying that he did not believe in a devil with horns and tail walking around in the street. Luther really had the devil appear to him; he knew full well the nature of this ahrimanic spirit. To some extent the spiritual world still lay open before his mind's eye as it had done for the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, and it lay open specifically for the phenomena which were, in fact, to be of the essence in the fifth post-Atlantean age. The ahrimanic powers were pre-eminent in the fifth post-Atlantean age, and Luther saw them. People of the fifth post-Atlantean age are characteristically under the influence of these powers but not able to see them. Luther, however, was an individual of the fourth post-Atlantean age displaced into the fifth, and he saw those powers and therefore gave them such emphasis. This is the concrete situation as regards the spiritual world, and Luther cannot be understood unless this is taken into account.

If you go back to the fifteenth, fourteenth, thirteenth and, ultimately, the twelfth century, you will always find that people understood the conversion of matter. Anything written about this at a later date was largely fraudulent, because the real secrets were lost with the end of the fourth post-Atlantean age. But not everything written is fraudulent, and some of the things which were said were true, though they are difficult to find. What has been written is not exactly outstanding, however, especially anything printed at a later time. Yet at the time when the secrets of alchemy were known, which was during the fourth post-Atlantean age, church people were well able to speak of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and the blood, for there were definite ideas connected with these words. Luther was caught up in the thinking and inner responses of the fourth post-Atlantean age; yet he lived in the fifth post-Atlantean age. He had to separate transubstantiation from the process of physical conversion of matter. So what did the sacrament of the transubstantiation become for him?—It became a process which occurs entirely in the realm of the spirit. Nothing is transformed, he said; but when the faithful receive the bread and the wine the Body and blood of Christ enter into them. Everything Luther said, thought and felt was said, thought and felt by someone whose heart and mind belonged to the fourth post-Atlantean age. He clung to the spiritual connection between man and the gods which belonged to the fourth post-Atlantean age, taking this with him into the godless fifth age, an age of materialism, empty of spirit, without faith and without understanding.

Now Luther has weight, and we understand why he said the things he said—we know it quite apart from the impression he makes on us today. We see him standing in the outside world and he is like the real weight, not the cardboard one. Hundreds or thousands of modern theologians or historians may now come and give their impressions—these will not give us the man, someone with real weight; they will only give us the kind of thing produced by someone who is not holding up a real weight but one made of cardboard.

You see now what really matters at the present time. We must labour to gain awareness of the factors which give the world around us spiritual weight, and be aware of the fact that the spirit is alive in everything, and that this spirit can only be found with the help of anthroposophy. You can collect all the documents you want and scribble endless notes on Luther, you can present an accurate picture as far as the outer aspects are concerned—but, to stay with our analogy, you will always have a cardboard figure, unless you are truly able to look for the things that give the figure real weight. Now you may well say it seems hard to say to compare the work of some of the most erudite people to cardboard weights. And even if this were so, their work was really beautiful and satisfying in many ways. Is all this to be changed? Could we not go on enjoying their work?

You see, two questions arise for people in the present-day state of consciousness, questions which may well touch us deeply. Why did the spiritual world demand that these people should have the instincts which have led to such works? Well, these things really point to something which is very widespread today and closely bound up with human nature. As I have already mentioned, we are living at a time when certain truths have to become known which are not welcome truths. Yet anyone who can read the signs of the times knows that they have to become known.

In the first part of my essay on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, written for the next issue of the journal Das Reich,⁴ I have touched lightly on some of these truths. Just a short while ago it was still taboo for those in the know to speak of these things in public. Today one must speak of them, even if this may cause problems. A short passage in my essay relates specifically to what I am going to say now.

Is it not true that as we move about in this world we do not have full and real knowledge of the things which are immediately around us, at least not to begin with? I think this is something anyone can quite easily establish for himself. We mainly use our sense of sight as we move through the world; but if we did not have other kinds of experiences as well, we would never know with complete certainty if something we see weighs a great deal or only little. We would have to pick it up to check the weight. Think of how many things there are where you cannot know if they are heavy or light as air until you pick them up. And finally, when you know that something is not as light as air, this knowledge has not come from looking at it but from having lifted something like it before. You do not even think about it, but unconsciously, instinctively come to the conclusion: If it looks the way such things always look, it will also weigh the same. Just looking at objects therefore provides you with nothing at all.

What does looking at objects provide? Illusion! If you regard the world with just one of the senses, you are deceived wherever you go. You only escape the illusion because you are unconsciously and instinctively drawing on experience. The whole world is really trying to deceive us, even in the world we perceive around us with the senses. The illusion may be very naturalistic nowadays. Painters and sculptors, who aim to present something to just one of the senses, fail to realize that they are merely presenting maya, illusion; for the more you try and present something realistically for just one of the senses, the more you are presenting maya. This is necessary, however, for if it were not for this illusion we would not be able to progress in conscious awareness. We owe our progress in consciousness to this illusion. To stay with my original analogy: If all objects appeared in their true weight, even when they were just perceived by the eye, if I were to feel the burden of their weight as I looked around me, I would quite obviously be unable to develop conscious awareness of the outside world. We owe our consciousness to this illusion. It lies at the root of all things which make up our consciousness. We have to be deceived in order to progress in consciousness, for our consciousness is the child of illusion. To begin with, however, the illusion must not enter into human beings or they will become unsure. The illusion remains beyond the threshold of conscious awareness. The Guardian makes sure that we do not realize how the world around us is deceiving us at every step. We fight our way upwards because the world does not reveal its weight to us and in this way lets us rise above it and be conscious. Consciousness also depends on many other things, but it mainly depends on the fact that the world around us is full of illusion.

Yet, necessary as it may be for illusion to be there for a time so that consciousness may arise, it is also necessary that when consciousness has developed we rise above the illusion, particularly in certain areas. Because it is based on maya, on illusion, our consciousness cannot gain access to true reality. Over and over again it would have to be subject to the kind of confusion I have mentioned. And so there must be alternating periods, periods when weightless situations and people are presented, and periods when the weight, the spiritual weight, is perceived. We are now facing the latter kind of period with regard to major world events as well as everyday events. We have to see through the things which seriously come into consideration in this respect.

One thing is particularly important: When the world looks to the East now, to what really lives in the east of Europe today, the people of Central Europe and America see the east of Europe exactly like someone who is looking at weights made of cardboard. They do not see the true spiritual weight of it. And indeed, neither do the people who actually live in eastern Europe have a real idea of the spirit which lives there. We can see Luther as an individual whose inner life belonged to the fourth post-Atlantean age, but who himself lived in the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. In the same way the world must come to see the true nature of the spirit in eastern Europe, for this is how we should actively consider these things in the fifth post-Atlantean age. If you take everything I have said about eastern Europe in lectures and lecture cycles—how the spirit-self is actively seeking to develop and how it must unite with the consciousness soul⁵ of the West—and if you add the fact that impulses for the sixth post-Atlantean age are in preparation in the east of Europe, then you have something which will lend weight to the east of Europe. If on the other hand you take all the statements people make today, however erudite, then you have weights which may just as well be made of cardboard.

However, we cannot buy or sell maya, illusion; we can only buy and sell real objects. You would say ‘thank you very much' if your grocer were to put cardboard weights rather than real ones on the scales. You would certainly demand real weights, not just some which look as if they were real. All political principles and impulses discussed with reference to Russia will be nothing, they will be null and void, unless they come from the awareness gained by knowing what gives spiritual weight. The way people talk today you would really think they are putting cardboard weights on the scales of world history. However, once awareness has come, it must not be used in the old lackadaisical and slovenly way, but must address itself to reality, not just to outer illusion. A transition will have to be made from the familiar, comfortable way of looking at things to one which is much more alive in its concepts—these will, of course, be less comfortable, for they also Shake us awake. Life will be less comfortable with the views which have to be taken in future. Why is this so? Let me give you an analogy which will probably also take you aback. I am not going to flinch, however, and I will say these things, irrespective of what individual people may feel about them.

As I have mentioned, in earlier ages, including the fourth post-Atlantean age, powers were available to humans which have been transformed into something else today. As I said, clairvoyance has become something different today, it is based on different things. Certain things can no longer be as they were even as late as the fourth post-Atlantean age, and one of these is the following.

In the fourth post-Atlantean age—people only know tales about it today and of course they do not believe them—there was an ordeal by fire. To prove guilt or innocence, people were made to walk a red hot grid. If they got burned, they were considered to be guilty, if not, if they walked across without being harmed, they were considered to be innocent. People consider this to be an old superstition today, but it is true. It is one of the abilities people had in the past and are no longer able to have today. In those days, human nature had this quality: Innocents who were utterly convinced of their innocence and knew themselves to be in the protection of the divine spirits at such a solemn moment, people who were so firmly connected with the spiritual world in their consciousness that the astral body would be taken out of the physical body, could walk across the embers with their physical bodies. It really was so in the past. This is the truth. It is really a good thing for you to be fully and completely clear in your minds that this old superstition is based on truth—though of course it is not a good idea for you to go and tell the vicar all about it.

These things have undergone a transformation. In the past, individuals who had to prove their innocence in a particular way, could be made to walk the embers on occasion. You can, however, be quite certain, that, generally speaking, people were afraid of fire even then; they did not enjoy walking over red hot grids. Even in those days it would generally make them shudder—except for those who were able to prove their innocence in this way. But some of the power which carried people through the embers in those days has now become more inward in the sense I spoke of in my last lecture. The clairvoyance of the fifth post-Atlantean age, the connection with the world of the spirit, is based on the same powers, except that the powers which formerly enabled people to walk through fire have been transformed and become more inward.

If one wants to be in touch with certain factors which belong to the world of the spirit, one has to overcome much the same reluctance as had to be overcome when people went through fire. That is the reason why many people fear the spiritual world today as much as they fear fire. We cannot really say people are just speaking figuratively when they say they are afraid of getting burned; they really are afraid. This is the reason for the opposition to anthroposophy: people are afraid of getting burned. Yet the progress of time demands that we gradually approach the fire and do not shy away from reality. The new inwardness of life of which I have spoken has many factors which demand that we gently draw closer to the world of the spirit—gently for the time being; later it will be stronger and stronger—in all spheres, but especially in the field of education.

In the sphere of education people will have to realize that quite different factors need to be considered than those which arise from the great climax now reached in the age of materialism. The realization must come that many of the things which from the materialistic point of view are eminently right—though the point of view is based on the senses and hence on maya, illusion—must be set aside and the opposite put in their place. Today it is considered important, especially in the field of education, to train teachers by teaching them as much method as possible. All the time it is said: This must be done like this, and that must be done like that. The aim is to develop well-regulated ideas of how one should educate. People love the idea of the regulative ideal. They would like to have the image of the ideal teacher and then always have such a teacher. But they only have to think a little bit about themselves and the issue will be clear. Ask yourself with as much self-knowledge as you are able to muster what has become of you—up to a certain point we can all see what has become of us—and then ask yourself who the teachers, the educators were who influenced you when you were young. Or, if this is a problem, try and think of a well-known and reasonably important person and then consider the teachers of that individual to see if you can somehow connect the significance of those teachers with the achievements of the individual.

It would be interesting if biographies told us more about the teachers; some interesting things would then emerge. But we would not be able to find out much about what those teachers did to make the individuals in question what they were. In most cases we would have the situation we have in the case of Herder, who achieved much;⁶ one of his best-known teachers was headmaster Herman Grimm.⁷ He was in the habit of tanning the boys' backsides as hard as he could. Herder's achievements did not come from having his backside tanned; he was a good boy and had few beatings. The teacher's general inclinations therefore did not have any effect on him! A nice story is told of this teacher, and it is really true. On one occasion he gave a terrible beating to a boy in Herder's class. Later, the boy was walking in the street when a man who had brought calfskins and sheepskins from the country asked him: ‘Tell me, boy, where can I find someone who'll bark tan these skins for me?’ ‘Ah,’ said the boy, ‘go to Mr Grimm, he is good at it.’ And the man actually went and rang Mr Grimm's doorbell—that taught the headmaster a lesson. But, you see, Herder did not become a great man because his teacher had this inclination. You will find many such things if you look into the education of individuals who later became great people.

Something else, however, which relates to something much more subtle, will be important. It will be important that the question of karma, or destiny, is taken into account, especially with regard to education and teaching methods. The people with whom my karma brought me together in childhood and youth certainly are important. And a tremendous amount depends on it that in our teaching we are aware that we and our pupils have been brought together. You see, much depends on a particular quality of mind and attitude.

Take the things we are already able to say about education today from the point of view of anthroposophy and you will find this to be wholly in accord with what I have said. It really has to be emphasized today that for the first seven years, up to the changing of the teeth, children want to imitate everything, and during the next seven years, until they reach puberty, they must submit to authority. We therefore have to do things which the children can imitate in the right way. Children will of course imitate everybody, but they do so especially with their teachers. They also believe everybody from their seventh to fourteenth year, but they should do so especially when it comes to their teachers and educators. We will know how to behave if we are constantly aware of the idea of karma; but we must have a real inner connection with this. Whether we are particularly good at teaching something, or perhaps less good, is not really so important. Even completely inept teachers may on occasion have a tremendous influence. Now, in the age of inwardness of which I have spoken, the question as to whether we are the right teacher or educator depends on the way in which we were connected with the child's soul before either of us—teacher and child—were born. The difference is merely that we teachers have come into the world a few years earlier than the children. Before that we were together with them in the world of the spirit.

Where does the desire to imitate come from, this tendency to imitate after we are born? We are imitators in our early years because we bring the tendency to Imitate with us from the world of the spirit. And whom do we like best to imitate? The individual who gave us our qualities in the world of the spirit, from whom we took something when we were in that world, be it in one particular field or another. The child's soul was connected with the soul of the teacher before birth. The connection was a close one; later, the outer physical being who lives in the physical world merely has to follow this line.

If you do not merely take what I am saying as an abstract truth but let it enter fully into your soul, you will find it has tremendous significance. Just think of the truly serious mood, the profundity of feeling which would come if, in the field of education, people lived with the idea: You are now showing the child something which it accepted from you in the world of the spirit before it was born. Just think, if this were to be the real impulse! It is much more important that such a mood, such a feeling, is brought to the task, rather than teaching people how to do this and how to do that. This will follow if the atmosphere is right between teacher and pupil, and if teachers are truly conscious of the great task life has given them. Above all there has to be this truly serious mood. It is poison to demand that children should understand everything, as it is often demanded today. I have frequently pointed out that children cannot understand everything. From their first to their seventh year they cannot understand at all; they imitate everything. And if they do not imitate sufficiently they will not have enough in them later which they can use. From their seventh to the fourteenth year they must believe, they must be under the influence of authority, if they are to develop in a healthy way. These things have to be made part of human life.

It is generally considered most important today to understand everything. We are not even supposed to teach the children their tables without their understanding it. But they do not understand anyway! Such an approach makes children into calculating machines rather than sensible people. They are supposed to accept the intellect which is in the elemental environment of which I have spoken,⁸ rather than develop their own understanding. This happens a great deal nowadays. Instead of helping the mind of the individual to develop, efforts are actually in progress to make it the ideal to inculcate the elemental intellect which is outside the human being, so that children are caught up in the elemental world. Many instances can be seen today where we can actually say: These people are not thinking for themselves, they are thinking in the general thinking atmosphere, as it were. And if something of an individual nature should come up, its origins are not in the divine element which can be perceived in human nature.

Human beings must enter into truly living ways again, even in their understanding of the world. As I have said, this is more difficult than working with mere corpses of ideas. Humanity must once again find a living approach, and people must realize that dead truths cannot govern life, only living truths can do so. The following is a dead truth.

We are supposed to train human beings to be intelligent human beings. Therefore—as dead truth says—we must cultivate the intellect as early as possible, for this will produce intelligent people. This is arrant nonsense, however. It is as much nonsense as it would be to train a one-year-old to be a shoemaker. People will, in fact, be intelligent only if they are not given intellectual training too early. It is often necessary to do the opposite of what we want to achieve in life. We cannot eat our food raw, but have to cook it first. And if this cooking process were to include the processes which are involved in eating, we might perhaps save ourselves the effort of eating! You cannot make people intelligent by cultivating the intellect as early as possible, but only by cultivating in them when very young the faculties which will later have them prepared to be intelligent. The abstract truth is: the intellect is cultivated via the intellect. The living truth is: the intellect is cultivated by healthy belief in rightful authority. Both parts of the statement have quite a different content in the living truth compared to the dead, abstract truth. This is something humanity will have to come to realize more and more as time goes on.

It is awkward. Consider how comfortable it is to have a goal and to believe this can be achieved by doing exactly what the goal says. But in life one has to do the opposite. This is certainly awkward. It is the challenge of our time that we must find our way to reality and life; this is what we must eminently make our own. There is need for this in both the great and the small things in life. You will not understand this age, you will be doing things as wrong as they can possibly be done, unless you consider this. People have no idea today of how immensely abstract they are, with everything forced always into the same mould. But the reality is not produced in the same mould, for it is in constant metamorphosis. The modified vertebrae which form part of the human head look very different from the vertebrae which make up the spine. Let me give you an example taken from everyday life. Imagine someone on the teaching staff of a university who teaches something which I, or someone else, must go against. I would of course make every effort to show that the things this person teaches are wrong; wanting to do my duty, I would go to any length to show that he is wrong and everything he says—well, to put it bluntly—is balderdash. This is one side of the matter.

Now let us assume the individual concerned found himself in a situation where the authorities wanted to dismiss him from his post or discipline him in some way. Well, of course, I would stand up for him in every possible way, against his dismissal or disciplining; for this would not be a question of the content of his teaching, but of ensuring academic freedom. For as long as we are dealing with people's theories, we have to fight; when it comes to an external institution, the fight ends and may even be transformed into coming to the individual's defence. It has to be realized that it is abominable if someone lets his opposition to someone induce him to take an active part in disciplining such a person. Let us assume, however, the individual concerned was a lecturer or professor of economics or politics and were appointed to hold a government office. What would our attitude be then? It would have to be such that one got him out of that office as quickly as possible, for there his theories would cause real damage.

In anything we do, we must relate to the immediate, living reality and not let ourselves be ruled by concepts. In the sphere of concepts, on the other hand, it is important to take a good hard look at the concepts we use. I have given this example to demonstrate the difference between dealing with reality and dealing with concepts. People who do not make this distinction will find it quite impossible to live with the tasks of the immediate future; they will at best be Wilsonians. What matters is to consider carefully what lives in reality and what one has to have by way of convictions in the sphere of concepts.

This is particularly important in the education of the young. Teachers in training are weighed down today with all kinds of principles as to how they should teach, how they should educate. In the immediate future this will become much less important. The important thing will be for them to get to know human nature and the different ways in which it comes to expression; they have to become psychologists in a most subtle way and really know the human soul. The relationship of the teacher to the pupil must in future be something analogous to clairvoyance. Teachers may not be fully conscious of this, and it may only live instinctively in their souls, but they must instinctively, at a level close to prophecy, have a picture of what wants to emerge from the individual who is to be educated. Then a strange thing will happen, peculiar as it may sound today. The teachers of the future will dream a great deal of their pupils, for the prophecies will be wearing the garment of dreams. The pictures we see in our dreams arise only because we are not used to connecting our dreams with the future; we dress them in elements remembered from the past, as in a garment. In reality dreams always point to the future. Yes, it is indeed true that the inner life will have to be changed, especially in those who educate the young. This is the most important aspect. Of course, everybody is more or less involved in educating the young, with just a very few exceptions, and it must therefore also hold true in a more general sense that we must have understanding for the karmic connections, as I have mentioned. Tremendously much will depend on this becoming general knowledge.

The present generation is mainly educated to think in abstract terms, and keeps confusing abstract and living ways of thinking. This is why it is so rare for anyone to support someone with glowing enthusiasm, for, having his own concepts, he dislikes those of the other person, and it suits him rather well if others come and put the other person out of action. These, however, are the very things which can teach us. And there can be no better education for people but to find ways in which they can stand up for their opponents with ever-increasing enthusiasm. This should not be forced, of course. People are friends or enemies today on a purely abstract basis. There is no point to this, however. Only the realities of life have a point to them, and they are given by life, not by our sympathies and antipathies. We should still have those sympathies and antipathies, but the pendulum should not merely swing up in one direction but also go down and in the opposite direction. Humanity must learn to live on two levels at once, in dualism—to enter into profound thought and, where reality demands this, to pour ourselves out over reality. Today, people want to take their thought-forms into everything connected with real life; and they are only prepared to put up with reality if it fits in with their own thought-forms. Uniformity is what they are after. But uniformity cannot be justified in the light of the spirit; this is impossible. The world cannot be easy and comfortable the way it is in reality. Not everyone will have the kind of face we like and find sympathetic. But it is wrong to let our actions towards others be determined by our personal sympathies and antipathies. Other impulses must come into play. People find it difficult to manage today because they look at the world, and if they do not find it in accord with their sympathies and antipathies then, in their view, everything is crooked and awry and quite wrong, and they are governed by just one impulse—that the world ought to be different.

This is one thing which has to be said. On the other hand we must not allow this to take us to the opposite, equally lackadaisical extreme, where we say that one should not be too fussy and just take the world as it is. This would be equally wrong. There are situations in life when serious objections must be raised, and this is what should be done. It means that due recognition must be given to reality. What really matters is the pendulum swing between a clear-minded inner life in well-defined concepts and loving care extended to the phenomena of the world.

Anthroposophy can show the way if we have the right attitude to it. But this, too, is something which has to be learned. The truths which are won from the world of the spirit are like communications, even for clairvoyant individuals. If we treat these truths in the same way we treat the facts of the outside world which are accessible to our unrefined senses, we are being unfair to spiritual science. The whole of spiritual science is open to our understanding. But it is wrong to ask the spiritual scientist ‘Yes, but why?’ each time he says anything, for these are communications he has received from the spiritual world. And if I say: ‘Jack Miller has told me this or that,’ it is pointless to say: And why did he tell you this?' He simply told me; the question as to why has little relevance. The things which come from the spiritual world must be considered as communications of this kind. It is important to understand this.

We shall continue with this tomorrow.

• 1. Herman Grimm (1828–1901), German cultural historian.
• 2. Reference to the 400th Anniversary of the Reformation, which started on 31 October 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg.
• 3. See Note 3 of lecture 4.
• 4. See Note 2 of lecture 2.
• 5. To understand Steiner's concept of the consciousness soul (another translation would be ‘awareness soul’), see his Theosophy and Occult Science.
• 6. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), German critic and poet who was a major influence on Goethe.
• 7. Herman Grimm: see Note 1 above. The story told by Rudolf Steiner is in a biography of Gottfried Herder which was published by his son (Gottfried Herders Lebensbild, 1. Band, S. 39). This also gives a more detailed description of Grimm's educational method.
• 8. See Lecture 4.

To-day I would like to bring our recent studies to a certain conclusion. To begin with, as I may remind you, you are already aware what awaits the human being immediately after death. His physical body being laid aside, he is in a condition in which he can never be, in the prevailing consciousness of our time, during earthly life. Within and about him he has his I, his astral body and his ether-body. From birth till death, as you know, the ether-body remains united with the physical. Even in sleep it is only with the I and astral body that the human being is outside the physical,—and thus outside the etheric body too. Now, however, then for a short while after death (only a matter of days, you will remember), man still inhabits his etheric body—his body of formative forces—and he is thereby enabled to look back on the whole course of his past earthly life, which is in fact always contained in the etheric body. As I have mentioned in the recent public lectures, this can happen in Initiation too; when man is able to set the etheric body free, he beholds the entire vista of his earthly life.

Yet it is not for long that we can retain the etheric body after death. Belonging as it does to the entire Cosmos, the ether-body is always wanting to expand. Even during life, if we lost hold of our physical body for a single instant, our ether-body would at once be tending—drawing as it were by an elastic power—to dissolve into the whole Cosmos. Only the physical body, in which it stays throughout our life, holds it together. And then when the physical body’s coherent power, is no longer ours, straightway the ether-body begins to expand, so much so that in a few days' time it is there for us no longer. It is as when you take a little drop of water; the drop is there before you; warm it and it evaporates and expands in all directions; then it is there no more—you can no longer see it. So does the ether-body expand into the Cosmos after death; after a very few days it is there no more.

Initiation-wisdom shows that this can last only for few days. For by Initiation we are able—as it were, artificially—to make use of the ether-body even during earthly life. Though it remains in the physical body, we become able to disregard the latter, using the ether-body as such. At once we have the panorama of our earthly life until the given moment. Yet at the same time we see glistening and shining forth in our etheric body a reflection of the great Universe. The entire starry Heavens are there in the etheric body. Indeed you cannot ever see the ether-body apart from the physical without its showing you at once the starry world on every hand—the planets and the fixed stars too. It is the planets and the fixed stars which at long last receive our etheric body. Initiation-science shows that we can hold the pictures in our etheric body only for three or four days at the most; then they vanish, and to avoid being disconnected altogether we must return into our physical body before this happens, otherwise the ether-body will no longer hold together. And thus indeed, a few days after death the ether-body vanishes, we have it no longer. Yet we ourselves are thereby progressively received into the world of stars.

At first, when divested of our ether-body, we feel like strangers amid the world of stars. Only the Moon, only the Lunar forces seem as it were familiar to us there. The Moon emerges on the one hand as in an after-image of its physical appearance. Yet at the same time we now begin to discover what kind of spiritual forces are connected with it. We realise how with the Moon the Jahve-power of the Universe is connected, as was explained in our last lecture. For the soul who has passed through the Gate of Death, the Moon is transformed, as it were, into a colony of spiritual Beings, and Jahve is their Leader. Now after death, we really learn to know what Initiation Science tells of, for pictures of these spiritual truths can be received by Initiation Science even into earthly life. We learn to know what it signifies that man on Earth must die. Yes, it is through the Moon—through the Jahve Powers—that we learn the significance of death.

Looking at death from the earthly standpoint, we see the physical body of a human being rendered lifeless, while all the soul and spirit and the etheric life that filled it hitherto have disappeared. The physical body is received by the forces of the Earth, that is to say, the Elements,—earth and water if it is buried, or air and fire if cremated. The human physical body, laid aside by the human being who indwelt it, is now received by the forces of the Earth. Yet we must ask: What does it mean for the physical body to be thus laid aside by man and given over to destruction? Truth is: When man is born and has in him the force of childlike growth—nay, even before his birth, when, as an embryo in his mother's womb, as to the body he belongs already to the Earth—it is these very forces, made manifest as destroying forces when man dies, which help to build his body. The self-same forces which take leave of the human physical body at death, made manifest in death in that the physical body is disintegrated, play an essential part in building up this very body. Through his ethereal and subsequent astral experiences the man himself goes on into the Spiritual World, yet something of importance happens also here on Earth. From the physical body a spiritual apparition is released, emerging, as it were, out of the human body. While the real human being goes upon his way, here on the other hand, we might say, another being issues from the human body. Truly it is so when a human being dies. There lies his physical body the man himself is departing from it, and simultaneously another being leaves it. What is this other being? It is the forces of the Moon, living as they do also here on Earth. Concentrated though they be in the cosmic entity we call the Moon, the range of these forces extends far and wide, and on the Earth they are made manifest in the powers of Death. Moreover the powers of Death are at the same time those of Birth. They lead the human being into earthly life and are made manifest when he leaves it. We thus begin to realize the deep connection between birth and death. Take all the human beings who die in successive times. From each of them in turn the apparition of death, as it were, comes forth and joins a spiritual atmosphere which is there around the Earth no less than is the air we breathe. This spiritual atmosphere contains what death gives up and birth receives. From the very forces that soar upward, as it were, from human corpses, human beings in their turn, are born. Spiritually, our powers of growth are intimately connected with this sphere of death-force—or forces made manifest in death—which surrounds the Earth.

Now, my dear friends, think of the following: These spiritual forces—at once of death and birth, as we have seen—are forces of the Moon, and into them is mingled all that the dead human being, all along the way from birth till death, accumulated by way of moral powers, moral values. Have you been good in any way,—in the sphere of these death-Moon-forces you will find, as it were, a specific being, imbued with inner force deriving from your goodness. Yet the same being is imbued with all that derives from your badness. It is a being we ourselves engender, all the time, while living on the Earth. Unaware of it as we are in our normal consciousness, we bear it in us. We leave it every night when we are sleeping, for in effect this entity remains in the physical body when we but go out of it in sleep. I told you, did I not, that our moral and religious feelings are left behind in sleep in the physical and ether-body? There too is left behind this real being which we ourselves give birth to during earthly life—the bearer of our Karma.

This being now remains with us after death so long as we are in the realm of the Moon forces. Indeed, just because this being keeps us amid the Moon-forces, that is, in the near neighbourhood of Earth, during the first time after death we are obliged to remain connected with these Lunar forces and with our own Karma, so much so that we live again through all the deeds we did on Earth from birth till death. We have to live them through again in a spiritual form of being, three times as fast as we did on Earth. We live them through again in backward order. So do we spend a period of time after death, obliged to do things intimately connected with our earthly deeds. We are united, it is true, no longer through the physical body with the Moon-forces of death (for we have laid the physical body aside), and yet as beings of soul and spirit we are obliged to carry out deeds intimately connected with our deeds on Earth. And as we thus go through our life again in backward order, our Karma is ever more convincingly brought home to us.

Yet with all this, my dear friends, you must remember to mostly judge spiritual matters in a spiritual way. If you were fond of a human being on the Earth, you may now be feeling: Today, alas, after his death, he will be living again through all that was bad or faulty in his actions! From your physical and earthly standpoint you are sorry for him. But if you asked the soul himself who has gone through the gate of death, whether he too judges it thus, he would answer: “No. I should not want to be undergoing this after-death life in any other way than with the judgment which is mine here and now, as a being of pure soul and spirit experiencing all things again, so to impress them ever more deeply into the true being of my soul. If I have been responsible for any deed which makes me appear a morally imperfect man, and if I were not to go through it all again deeply and inwardly as I am doing now, I should not feel the strong impulsion to make it good. I should not want to free myself from this my failing. Precisely by experiencing the deed all over again in soul and spirit, the urge is born in me to overcome it by a better action.” Not for anything in the world would the dead forgo this opportunity to make good again, for this alone will give him power to achieve his full humanity,—will give him strength to be made whole. In this respect you may be sure, even as a landscape looks very different seen from the valley or from a mountain-top, so life itself looks different seen from this physical world where we are now and from yonder side. Only too often the relationships of earthly life to the life after death, which after all transcends the physical, are misjudged for this reason. Think of another example, my dear friends. Maybe you are a really good anthroposophist, very keen on spiritual science, but you are living in the same house and in very close connection with someone else who detests it, who regards Anthroposophy as his greatest enemy. Now you may say, you are extremely sorry to be causing him so much pain by your attachment to what he detests. From the aspect of earthly life this may be rightly judged. Seen from the other side however, very often it turns out in such a case that it lay in the other person's Karma not to be able to come near to Anthroposophy owing to hindrances brought from a former life, making him in his head a very hater of it. As to his head, he simply cannot bear it. He becomes vexed and excited every time he hears tell of anthroposophical truths. Yet all the time, in his inmost heart he may not be averse to them at all, and when he dies it may well be that he has after death a very deep longing for Anthroposophy. Often therefore you will be doing just what is needed for one who hated it during earthly life, if after his death, you turn to him with thoughts derived from Anthroposophy, so as to bring them to him. Paradoxical as it may sound, not a few relatives who raged and stormed when another member of the family became [an] anthroposophist have become deeply attached to it after death. In this respect once more, you must take seriously what I said during my last sojourn here: we judge life very differently from yonder side than we do from this side.

Yes, man becomes very different after his death. For you should also think of this: In physical and earthly life there is your brain inside the cavity of your skull; a little farther down there is the lung, and then the other organs. More outwardly, towards the surface of the body, there are your senses. Through all that is thus contained within the limits of your skin, you are enabled to perceive the outer world. Now after death you yourself go out into the world. At first the stars are only shining into your etheric body, but when the etheric body too has been laid aside, you will actually identify yourself with the stars. Before, you had in you a brain; now you will have in you the Spiritual essences of Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and so on. You can truly say: Even as on the Earth I had in me my lung, my heart, my kidneys and so forth, so Moon and Mercury and Sun are in me now. You in your inner being are at one with the great Universe. Do you imagine that the Universe will provide you with the same kind of perception and understanding as your brain does? The world will look very different to you now! The Earth itself looks different when we behold it from the Sun than when we ourselves are on Earth and looking upwards to the Sun.

So then we undergo in all reality this backward recapitulation of our life, during which time we still remain in close connection with Moon and Mercury and Venus, while our relation to the more distant stars—to Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, and to the Fixed Stars above all—is as yet feebly developed.

When we have thus retraced our actions all the way backward until birth, then do we judge them from the standpoint of the stars; and in our judgment of ourselves we are no longer merely looking backward now, but forward. We have the kind of judgment which tells us: You must do thus to balance out this action, and thus to balance out another action, and so on.

We are immersed in the recapitulation of our life during the first twenty or thirty years after death, according to the age we reached,—it takes a third as long as earthly life. (Children who have died go through it quickly: while for very little children, you will easily conclude, it scarcely comes into question.) Connected still in soul and spirit with your past earthly life, you live it through again in backward sequence. And when at last you have arrived at birth, only the “memory” of it will remain with you. It is as though at this moment you were to lay aside yet another body. We are accustomed to say, we lay aside the astral body. What happens in reality is that the living action in which you were hitherto immersed is now transformed for you into a thought-picture,—only it is a consciousness pertaining to the stars that thinks it, whilst here on Earth an earthly consciousness was thinking.

As you set forth now on your further way within the spiritual world you will be living with the Beings of whom the physical refulgence are the Sun and Moon and Stars. With the spiritual Beings of the Stars you will now live on. Moreover into this life amid the Stars you bear with you the memory of the Karmic entity you had to lay aside with your astral body. Once more, the “laying aside” means nothing else than that the life we were immersed and actively engaged in is but a memory to us now—a memory which we as cosmic Man take with us. Weighted with this memory—the legacy of our earthly life—we step forth into a purely spiritual world.

*

While undergoing the aforesaid recapitulation of his past earthly life, man is essentially within the planetary sphere. Advancing from the spiritual forces of the Moon to those of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and at last Saturn,—living therefore between the spheres of Moon and Saturn, feeling within himself the Planetary Cosmos—throughout this time man is still undergoing the backward recapitulation of his recent Earth-life. A few days ago I was telling you of how the Moon- and Saturn-forces counteract each other. Whereas the Moon harbours the forces which bring man down into the earthly realm, seeking ever and again to hold him fast on Earth, Saturn on the other hand seeks to bear him out into the Universe of Stars. Yet we must understand this truly, for when man goes into the Universe of Stars between death and new birth, he is no longer seeing the physical reflection of the Stars; he is living now with the Beings, to whom the several Stars belong.

When after death we have passed the sphere of Saturn, we become ripe to experience the pure spiritual world. In the book Theosophy this moment is described as the passage from the soul-world into Spirit-land. Trammeled however as he is by the memory of his past earthly life, man is unable to achieve the crossing by himself. He needs a helper in the spiritual world,—and of this too, you will recall, I was telling in recent lectures. In the age before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Initiates in the Mysteries could say to their disciples: If you have duly sent your religious offerings up into the spiritual world, you will be able to find the sublime Being of the Sun who goes with you from the time when you with yourself take leave of the Sun-sphere. He in His spiritual Being will accompany you to the other side, where, so to speak, the Sun shines spiritually outward into cosmic space, even as He himself shines physically down on to the Earth. The sublime Being of the Sun will then go with you; He will escort you to the Saturn sphere and farther out from thence into the sphere of Stars. The spiritual Sun will, as it were, be shining for you; thus and thus only will you win your passage from the soul-world into Spirit-land.

Now through the Mystery of Golgotha it has grown different. The Being of the Sun came down to Earth,—took on a body in the Man, Jesus of Nazareth. By turning now in heart and mind and feeling to the Christ and to the Mystery of Golgotha, already here upon the Earth, man receives power that will enable him to get beyond the spheres of Sun and Saturn, so to gain entry into Spirit-land,—in other words, into the world of Stars.

Then comes the state in which man undergoes his further life between death and new birth. If I am now to tell you more about this state, in the way man of present time—after the Mystery of Golgotha—can undergo it by virtue of the power of Christ which he has received, I must insert the following. In the first place I must point out what it really means, when we are out yonder in the world of Stars, in Spirit-land, for us to have the “memory” of our earthly life. The following will help you understand it.

Getting beyond the Saturn sphere, we enter into what was named the Zodiac, in ancient world-conceptions. Though it was meant to typify the fixed-star-heavens as a whole—the Spirit-land, in other words—in the sum-total of the stars which constitute the Zodiac we have a comprehensive picture of the path which Man must undergo, to build from the entire Cosmos, with the help of the Beings of the Hierarchies, the Spirit-seed of his physical body for the next incarnation. If you should say: “Here upon Earth we have such interesting work to do, building up civilisation, working for our fellowmen and so on; how meagre it must be to be engaged only in forming a body for ourselves,” you would be making a great mistake. Nothing that you can ever do on Earth can be as great and manifold as what you have to do when from the starry worlds you build this temple of the Gods, the human body. This is by far the greater task and the more manifold. Nor do you merely make your own body for yourself. As we shall see in a moment, you really make it so that it belongs to mankind as a whole. Associated as you are by Karma with one human being or another, while building your new body you imbue it with the tendency to bring you together again in a beneficial way, so that you and they together can make good. You are working for mankind in a far higher degree out there than you are able to do while here on Earth. Now as to how you work amid the Stars, let me describe it in more detail, only remember please what I said before. Telling of yonder worlds sublime, I can speak only in pictures; the human concepts of our time are not so formed as to enable one to express it otherwise.

In its entirety, once more, you have to build the spiritual seed of your next physical body. From the ingredients of the whole Universe you built it. When for example you are living in and with those spiritual Beings who have their physical reflection in the constellation of Aries, the Ram, you will work with the Hierarchies of Aries in forming your future head, which is indeed a Universe in itself. No matter how contracted here in the physical body, in your head you carry the entire Cosmos—the Cosmos seen from the aspect of Aries. And while, upon the scene of Aries, you are at work with the Hierarchy of that constellation, meanwhile the planets are shining; as they shine physically down on to the Earth, so do they shine spiritually to the other side. Say for example that you have worked your way from Aries to the next constellation—Taurus, the Bull. While working with the Hierarchies in Taurus, you elaborate the region of your larynx in its connection with the lungs. Mars in the meantime, from the planetary spheres, shines up into the sphere of Taurus, and in the movements of Mars there is expressed all that you did with your organs of speech, rightly or wrongly, while you were on the Earth. Every untruth which a man uttered shines at him spiritually from the planet Mars while he is working through the Taurus sphere. You may imagine therefore, what is the nature of the “memory” we there retain of our own deeds. We find it after death, written into the Universe—nay, as the very Logos, speaking from the Universe towards that other side of world-existence.

Thus for the region of the speech-organs we have to work at our future body, hindered or helped according as we lied or told the truth. And so it is, to take another example, when we are going through the constellation of Leo. It is the Sun now that sheds spiritual light on all the imperfections of our heart—more or less deep or superficial as we have been in our feelings and in our sympathies and antipathies, belonging as these do to our temperament and blood-circulation while on Earth. So while we work and build at our future body, the language of the Planets, sounding into the cosmic spaces, utters forth the whole of our preceding life. It is so in deed and truth, strange as it may seem from an earthly standpoint. We watch the planetary movements from yonder side, even from without,—Mars for example moving in the face of Taurus. The movements form themselves into a cosmic writing, but the writing is not mute, it actually sounds into the Universe. Such is the writing of the Stars, by our own deeds inscribed into the cosmic spaces. Small wonder if on our return we prepare what will then be ours—the measure of our Karma. For we can only build the physical body for our future life under the ceaseless influence of this speaking of the Stars.

So then we work our way through the spiritual realm. We spend the longer time upon this spiritual journey, the greater the proportion of our full consciousness in the past earthly life to the dim consciousness we had as a little child. For we are now in a state of consciousness transcending the consciousness we had on Earth, even as our earthly consciousness as grown-up men and women transcends the dreamy state of childhood. There are distinctly these three stages. If a man lived to the age of thirty and spent the first five years in the dream-consciousness of childhood, he will have lived in fuller consciousness six times as long. So now again he lives six times longer than his entire Earth-life in the still fuller consciousness which pertains to him out there amid the Stars. We understand it therefore quite simply: a child who dies will live only for a short time between death and new birth. The older a man grows, the longer must he spend there. For by his longer life on Earth his higher consciousness was darkened for a longer time,—I mean the higher-than-earthly consciousness which he underwent in the spiritual world after his former death. The longer this was darkened, the longer must he work to make it light again. For we must enter right fully into the light.

When we are fully in the light, then comes the time between death and new birth which you will find described in one of the Mystery Plays as the midnight hour in the spiritual life of man. It is about the middle of the time between death and new birth. This is the time when our consciousness, amid the Beings of the Hierarchies in the spiritual world, is most steeped in Spiritual light. Yet at this very time we also experience most deeply: Down yonder in the planetary sphere is the abiding record of all that you, man, did. You may not abandon it, you cannot leave it thus,—so say we to ourselves—nor can you ever alter it while you are here; you can change it only by going down to Earth. And so the urge arises, to descend again to Earth,—to resolve, as it were, between Moon and Saturn. The forces of the Moon are drawing for us once again and we resolve to follow them, so to set forth on our returning journey. If a man grew to adult life in his last incarnation, it will be centuries later.

The nearer we now come to the planetary sphere and notably to the spheres of Mercury, Venus and Moon, the more we lose the consciousness of community with the Beings of the Hierarchies. To tell it more precisely: the consciousness we enter into now contains only the revelations of these spiritual Beings, whereas we felt ourselves till lately living among them and within them. While preparing the human head of our next incarnation for example, we felt ourselves working, very intimately with them. Now they appear to us as if in pictures. Meanwhile the forces of the Moon arise within us. We feel once more: we are a being destined to live a life of our own. Although not yet in a physical body, we have a premonition of living in and by ourselves, a stranger to the Cosmos. No longer do we see the spiritual Beings as they really are; all that we now possess are the pictures of them.

Whilst we are going through these pictures, the spiritual seed of the physical body which we were preparing falls ever farther from us and disappears. We are obliged to witness this: the spiritual seed has fallen from us; it has gone down into a physical mother and father, entering into the forces of generation, into the stream of generation upon the physical Earth. So it is in all reality. The physical body we also were preparing shrinks and contracts and falls into the streams of generation,—into a physical father and mother upon Earth,—while we ourselves as soul and spiritual being are left behind, feeling that we belong to what has fallen from us, yet cannot unite with it directly. In this condition—it is our only means of re-uniting with it—we now begin to draw to ourselves the forces of the Ether that are there throughout the Cosmos; we begin to form our ether-body. We do this when the spirit-seed of our physical body has already fallen from us and is down there on Earth, preparing the physical body in the mother's womb, while we are gathering the forces with which we form our ether-body. With this etheric body we then unite ourselves, when the human seed has already been for a time in the mother's womb.

Such is the process of return to earthly life. We have been living with the pictures—no more than the pictures—of the spiritual Beings; now we incorporate what we can take into ourselves only through the forces of the Moon. What until now was but the “memory” of our own Karmic entity, we now take in as real effective forces, right into our ether-body. Therefore we afterwards appear on Earth in such a way that we of ourselves bring about the unfoldment of our destiny, our Karma. It is while passing through the Lunar forces that we conceive the longing thus to live and fulfil our Karma upon Earth.

Such, my dear friends, is the cycle through which man lives from death till birth. First he experiences the ascent to independent consciousness within the spirit-sphere. Thereafter, this consciousness is gradually steeped again in twilight; the Spirit-sphere remains with him in pictures only, and he receives into himself the will to Karma. He comes back to Earth, to work once more in a physical body. So he goes on, till through a sequence of such Earth-lives he shall become capable of yet another metamorphosis, another mode of being.

In present earthly time it is as I have been relating. In his descent from the starry spheres, man has the memory of his former Earth-existence and from this memory he now takes his start. Having prepared it for himself within the starry spheres, at his descent he now unites with his own physical body. But we are living now in a very important period of Earth-existence, the significance of which we can understand only if we first know what has just been related—how in the starry spheres we prepare and work and win for ourselves the physical body which we eventually put on when we come down again to Earth. For at this very point something of great significance is about to happen in our epoch. I will say more of it in the third part of the lecture.

*

I have often drawn attention to the fact that in the last third of the 19th century changes whose origin is in the spiritual world began to affect the whole course of human earthly life. The gates of knowledge were in a way opened to the spiritual world. If man is duly active on his own part he can now reach into the spiritual world with true cognition, whereas for many centuries before, while material knowledge was developing, this possibility had not been given.

The change took place to begin with in the spiritual world, in that the Beings who had been leading hitherto were replaced by that spiritual Being who for his likeness in character to what is traditionally known by this name may be described as the Being of Michael. Michael, we may truly say, has taken over the Spiritual guidance of mankind. The fact that Michael is now entering the soul-life and spiritual life of mankind has its visible counterpart on Earth. An ever growing number of people begin to realize that man is livingly and constantly connected, not only through his physical body with the Earth, but through his soul and spirit with the spiritual world.

Man is thus growing into conscious spiritual knowledge. This is the one aspect of the leadership of Michael, but there is also another. To be sincerely filled with spiritual knowledge also affects the human heart, the human soul. The more the light of Spiritual Science spreads, the less will it remain a mere theory; it will pour out into human feeling,—it will be present in the form of true human love, in ever widening circles.

What, in effect, is the relation to the human being of all the learning and information accumulated in the last few centuries? It lives as knowledge in the human head; it does not reach the entire man,—it fails to flow from the head into the human being as a whole. Knowledge of this sort then becomes a kind of tumour in the soul. Failing to receive the proper forces from the rest of the human being, it gradually hardens. This is what happens when we merely grow more clever in our head, and the appropriate feelings, springing from the rest of our human being, no longer permeate our increasing cleverness. A kind of cancerous growth becomes established in our soul and spiritual life. The head itself cannot truly thrive if the whole human being is not living in the world with heartfelt love, and also willing what he loves.

Yet man will never understand what the leadership of Michael intends unless he goes out to meet it with his own active contribution—unless he opens out his mind to spiritual enlightenment and becomes filled with the human love which springs from such enlightenment. When he does this, then also will he realize with ever growing comprehension the significance of Michael's leadership and guidance.

The people of the Old Testament,—they too spoke of a leadership of Michael, and in so speaking they conceived Michael to be the servant of Jahve. Michael therefore, in the Old Testament times, worked with those spiritual forces which are the forces of Jahve. He was the minister of Jahve. He helped in the inexorable fight of which I spoke before—the fight with the Ahrimanic powers. In our age, on the other hand, Michael's leadership now begins to help regulate the historic destinies of mankind, it also is signifying that the word shall presently come true: the leadership of Christ will spread over the Earth. It is as though Michael goes before, bearing the light of spiritual knowledge, while after Him there comes the Christ, calling man to universal, all-embracing love. Now this entails a change not only for the Earth; it involves changes also for the life man undergoes between death and a new birth.

Since ancient times of earthly evolution it has been as I today described it. The human being prepares the spiritual seed of his own physical body, which he takes over when he steps forth into his new life on Earth. Now however, since the Christ-Michael-leadership has begun, men will be able ever increasingly to make another important decision before they come down to Earth. Today as yet only a few will do so; a growing number will as time goes on. For spiritual knowledge sheds its light not only on the Earth, but out into the higher realms as well. Through the present leadership of Michael man will now learn to make a very significant decision at the moment when he has already taken on his Karma—taken it into his new ether-body—but is still only setting out upon the way into the physical. With the increasing spread of spiritual knowledge on the Earth and with man’s growing experience within himself of universal human love, the following possibility will arise for mankind in coming time. When at the point of descending into a next earthly life, man will be able to say to himself: ‘This is the body I have been preparing; yet, having sent it down to Earth and having now received my Karma into the ether-body which I have drawn together from the Cosmos, I see how it is with this Karma. Through something that I did in former lives I see that I have gravely hurt some other human being.’ For we are always in the danger of hurting others through the things we do. The light of judgment as to what we have done to another man will be particularly vivid at this moment when we are still living only in our ether-body, having not yet put on the physical. Here too in future time the light of Michael will be working, and the love of Christ. And we shall then be enabled to bring about a change in our decision,—namely to give to the other man the body we have been preparing, while we ourselves take on the body he prepared, whom we have injured.

Such is the mighty transition which will be taking place from now onward in the spiritual life of men. It will be possible for us of our own decision to enter into the body prepared perforce by another human soul to whom we once did grievous harm; he on the other hand will be enabled to enter into the body we prepared. What we are able to achieve on Earth will thus bring about Karmic compensation in quite another way than heretofore. We human beings shall be able even to exchange our physical bodies. Indeed, the Earth could never reach her goal if this did not take place; mankind would never grow into a single whole. In preparation for future planetary embodiments of the Earth, a time must come in earthly evolution when it will be impossible for one individual to enjoy things on the Earth at the expense of another. As in a plant the single leaf or petal feels itself a member of the whole and shares—pictorially speaking—in the weal and woe of the whole plant, so must a future come for the planet Earth when one human being will not want to enjoy happiness at the expense of the whole, but man will feel a member of mankind. And it will be the true spiritual counterpart of this when we shall learn to prepare the physical body even for one another.

We are in fact emerging from the epoch when each of us had so to speak, his own continuation to himself as to the physical body. In the new epoch that is now beginning—brought on by the present leadership of Michael—we shall work at the spirit-seeds of the physical bodies of men in such a way that one works for another. Moreover, as our incarnations of the Earth go on, this will lead even further. For in thus working for one another in the spirit, we shall prepare for a yet later time, to tell the character of which will sound completely strange and paradoxical, yet it is true. For in that more distant future, human souls even while on Earth will be able to go across into the bodies of those to whom they have done some special hurt and to receive the other soul into their own body. That will be when the Earth herself will have passed into quite new conditions. Yet it is also being prepared for by the actual and impending change of which I have been telling, and which is coming about in the spiritual world through the leadership of Michael.

From this example you can see most vividly the essence of “ideal magic”. If while on Earth you are receptive to the illumination that comes from Spiritual Science, then you are truly helping on the leadership of Michael. Then you are helping on those spiritual forces which will enable men so to live for one another, that even in deciding upon the physical body they are to take, they will consider what is best for all mankind. When we are choosing our physical body, this will determine our decision. If you prepare for this event even now on Earth—prepare for it by the Wisdom-of-Man and by the Love-of-Man—what you are doing will have reality in the spiritual world. And this is true “ideal magic”. It is the true “white magic” as it was called in olden times, and into it mankind is now about to enter.

I wanted to tell you of this most vital factor which has now come into the evolutionary pathway of mankind. We must not shrink for want of courage when it is needful to unveil facts of the spiritual world entering deep into the life of man. For the whole future of mankind depends on man's learning really to live with the spiritual world as naturally as on the Earth he lives with the physical. Mankind must learn to be at home again in the spiritual world as it was in the beginning, in primeval time. Only by doing so shall we be helping mankind's future. In the true sense we must understand the word of Christ: “My Kingdom is not of this world”. How then shall we understand it? Did He not after all come down to Earth? Should He not therefore have said: "My kingdom is of this world?" No, He did not say that, for He intended gradually to transform the Earth into a Kingdom that should not be utterly absorbed in earthly things, but should pass over, ever more and more, into a spiritual state. Christ's Kingdom is not as the Earth was until the Mystery of Golgotha, nor as it still continued, running on in the old lines as if by dint of inertia. The Spirit shall prevail upon the Earth,—such is His Kingdom! And this will come to pass when mankind truly comprehends the leadership of Michael. Nor is true comprehension proved in any other way than by the quest I have now indicated—the quest of spiritual illumination and of human, Christ-filled love.

Strakosch Sanatorium Wiesneck 15.2.57

Buchenbach im Breisgau

Dear Mr. Bock!

From the fact that I am writing from Wiesneck, you will be able to conclude that many things have turned out quite differently than we expected. We came here on July 31, stayed in the so-called country house, which is furnished for convalescents, and hoped to regain our strength by Michaelmas so that we could then resume our normal life in Dornach. But in August, Frau Strakosch suffered a dangerous relapse. We suddenly had to move to the actual sanatorium, where we are still today, because the periods of improvement were followed by repeated relapses. As a result, I was unable to carry out my intended visit to Stuttgart to see you. In December and early January, little went well, but fortunately Ms. Strakosch has been getting a little stronger in the last few weeks. However, we will probably have to stay here for some time. Given these facts, you can well imagine that I am still a little upset. We hope that you were able to recover properly in the Black Forest and we wish you – unfortunately belatedly, but all the more sincerely for it – all the best for your health and your work. In view of the tragic events in society, your work is now more important than ever. Will friends in Germany finally wake up and take positive action?

And now to the subject of the F.M. and M.Ac. – I would like to proceed in the order of your letter.

The 5th degree was that of the “Knights of the Rose Cross”. – I have only ever met Michael Bauer in the fourth degree. From the very beginning, there were 9 (nine) degrees in the M.Ae.. The number of 33 degrees is based - as Rudolf Steiner told me - on the fact that the F. M. could not read occult correctly. Because two threes 3 3 must be read 3x3 = 9! This simplifies the question. In the M.Ae. the first three degrees - symbolic degrees - (they corresponded to my view) were called the “II. class”. When one was initiated into these degrees, the answer to the question of the Dweller of the Threshold, “Have all the conditions been fulfilled?” was: “The Great Master has granted a dispensation.” From the 4th degree onwards, we knew that one had to have occult abilities. Therefore, there were only a few members of these degrees. There were about 12 in the 5th degree; Marie Steiner was the only one in the 6th degree. It was called the Kadosh or Avenger degree.

What you mean by the transition from black to red in connection with the 5th degree is not clear to me. I only experienced during each practice of the ritual how at a certain word of the so-called “Rosicrucian conclusion” the black curtains fell and the walls lit up in red.

I never heard of an analogy between the degrees of the M.Ac. and those of the outer F. M.; it may never have been mentioned, because Rudolf Steiner soon said that we were now on our own. (In terms of meaning, I no longer remember the wording.) The degrees of the FM did not apply in the M.Ac. I knew personalities who had reached high degrees in the FM, but in the M.Ae. they had to start from the bottom. We were also not allowed to call ourselves or identify ourselves as “Freemasons” in relation to the FM.

We had only three altars. At the altar of the East, Rudolf Steiner always stood as the “master”; Marie von Sivers was always at his left. The other altars were occupied by personalities from the respective cities.

There was no mention of a transition from compass to straight edge in my case. I only know that in the formula spoken in the ritual from the first degree onwards, only the brothers of the past, the present and the future are mentioned, and that the first are referred to as: “We take compass and straight edge in our hands...”

I do not want to give up hope that I will be able to talk to you about these and other things one day. In a strange way, two rhythms overlap in Mrs. Strakosch's and my life. As you know from volume 1 of my “Life Paths” ($. 35), Rudolf Steiner invited me in March 1908 to work for anthroposophy, that is 49 = 7 x 7 years, and for 33 years this work has been developing within the form that Rudolf Steiner gave it at the Christmas Conference.

Ms. Strakosch and I thank you very much for your kind wishes and send you our warmest regards,

Alexander Strakosch

In response to remarks by Dr. Walter Johannes Stein, who had described the anthroposophical impulse as a world affair, Rudolf Steiner said [according to notes by Lilly Kolisko (in “Eugen Kolisko. Ein Lebensbild,” manuscript print for members, Gerabronn 1961, S. 87/88). There is no official shorthand transcript of these farewell words.]: “It is certainly beautiful and corresponds to a natural enthusiasm, which must arise from anthroposophy in everyone who loves it, when dear friends now close this meeting in an enthusiastic way,” and then continued:

But the enthusiasm that has entered the hearts of those gathered here today corresponds, especially today, as always in the anthroposophical movement, to a world impulse that should also be looked at concretely.

Just a few days ago, I was asked, by an Oriental, what the significance of it is in earthly karma that some peoples seem to be called to make others dependent on them. You understand that in today's world, which is by no means yet very objective, it is not exactly easy to give an answer to such a question, because such answers are really quite poorly understood. But I was able to answer that things sometimes appear differently on the inside than they seem on the outside, and that even if it is true that in world-historical development one people sometimes becomes physically dependent on another, the spiritual opposite is often hidden behind this physical dependence. The physically oppressed nation sometimes becomes the spiritual conqueror over the conqueror in a very mysterious way. This was only meant as a suggestive answer. It did not refer to Europe, at least not to continental Europe, but to wider circles of the earth.

But the thoughts that can be inspired by it do have something to do with the horizons in which Central European people live. You see, my dear friends, although much of what surrounds us today in such a depressing, terribly terrible way, and which will become even more terrible, does not yet belong to the most painful things in a deeper sense, nevertheless much of it is extraordinarily painful. It does not yet belong to the most painful. Something does belong to the most painful, which was already present in the “Appeal to the German People” at the time, even if only in a hinting way. It belongs to the most painful that in a strong sense, especially in Central Europe, the Central European past is in many ways being denied and forgotten in a spiritual sense in the present. But today the situation is such that this Central European will, despite the physical misery, is awaiting a kind of resurrection. What is in the background really arouses very significant feelings. Much of what seems to be buried in the intellectual life of Central Europe awaits a certain future. In the not too distant future, people all over the world will long for what is often denied here today, even by many people with an older, Central European mindset. People all over the world will long for Central European spirituality.

And here, my dear friends, I come to what I would still like to hint at with these few words at this point. You see, many bad things may be caused by the fact that some things are overlooked in the spiritual today, many things are overlooked. But one thing must not happen, for that would be the most terrible thing: that when the world cries out for the resurrection of Central European spiritual life, and it will do so in the relatively near future, for its own salvation, there should be no people in Central Europe who could themselves be the ones to occupy the important spiritual positions, if they cannot understand this call.

If one must say that the world outside of Central Europe is today waiting for a spirituality, then it would be very bad if one had to experience that Central European humanity does not wait for this spirituality. For that would be the greatest loss for the world. It would be one of the most terrible catastrophes the earth could experience if the call goes out to Central Europe — regardless of what the world may look like — and the call goes out: We need this spiritual life — and Europe would carelessly ignore this call because it cannot appreciate this Central European spiritual life. Let us remember today that it could perhaps be the mission of the Central European in the very near future to understand from the nature of Central European spirituality what the world will want to receive from Central Europe, for it would be terrible if there were then no one in Central Europe who would have an understanding of giving.

You will understand that only a short and in a sense superficial sketch of a pneumatosophy can be given in the four lectures at our disposal. Obviously, much can only be suggested, some of which, in fact, really calls for elaboration to confirm it. In some cases it will even be difficult to understand the context between the subject matter and what is here termed pneumatosophy. Yesterday, for example, we showed how one transcends the realm of merely psychic phenomena and enters regions that, in view of their whole nature, must be counted among the super-sensible worlds. We recognized this from the simple fact that the province of the soul in respect to such matters ends at a definite frontier, and that even shrewd psychologists, when studying and classifying the realm of the soul, are brought up short at that point.

Now, anthroposophists as such are familiar from another angle with concepts we encountered there, such as imagination, inspiration and intuition; so you will have to take for granted that all this, as set forth, for example, in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, can be understood and justified when one goes far enough in showing the threads that lead from the ordinary soul life—the life of visualizations, emotions and reasoning—to imagination, inspiration and intuition. It is natural that in making this transition we should focus our attention principally upon the psycho-spiritual elements that are present in our own soul and spirit, that we should, so to speak, first of all seek enlightenment concerning our own souls and spirits.

In the course of these lectures we pointed out that in Western civilization, right up to our own time, people have had difficulty in recognizing a fact that to us appears fundamental: that man's spirit passes through repeated earth lives, and at the end of the second lecture we cited one who was thoroughly representative in the struggle with such difficulties, Frohschammer. Wrestling with problems of the first rank, he laments, “What would be the consequence if man's permanent element, his spirit, were compelled to immerse itself again and again in a corporeality, in a sort of purgatory, a prison, a dungeon?” “Should one,” asks Frohschammer, “look upon everything connected with the relations of love and the contrast of sexes as a provision for imprisoning the human soul for the period between birth and death?” In view of such an honest objection to the doctrine of repeated earth lives, it behooves us to ask ourselves whether Frohschammer possibly established a certain standpoint in the case, and whether there might not perhaps be another as well.

What we must grant in Frohschammer's attitude is his frank enthusiasm for everything beautiful and glorious in the world, in the face of all that he cites to the contrary. The spiritual life of the Occident imbued Frohschammer with this enthusiasm for the beauty and grandeur of the external world. The doctrine of repeated earth lives seems to him to imply that a spiritual-eternal element is assumed by the human individuality, the human spirit—an element that might be well content and blissful in the spiritual world, but which is forced into and embodied in a world in no way commensurate with the lofty sublimity of the human spirit. Were that the meaning of reincarnation, anyone developing a justified enthusiasm for the beauty and grandeur of God's nature, for historical evolution, and for all the latter has brought forth in the way of exalted human passions and impulses, might well resent the imprisonment of the human soul, as did Frohschammer.

Is that really the only point of view available? It must be admitted that among the advocates of the doctrine of repeated earth lives there are to be found even today those who maintain that the spirit descends from exalted heights into earth life. Such people are really not dealing with matters such as spiritual science is capable of bringing to light out of the spiritual worlds, but merely with general, vague ideas about repeated earth lives. We could ask ourselves, “Might not the condition into which we are born be something beautiful and grand? Might we not recognize that man, as he appears in his physical form, is an image of God in the true Biblical sense?” That would suffice to enkindle our enthusiasm, and then we would admit that man had been transferred, not to a dungeon, but to a beautiful field of action, to a beautiful house.

Does our contentment, our feeling at home, really depend upon the house, upon its beauty and grandeur, or upon the concessions we must make? Does it depend upon the house at all? Possibly its very grandeur and beauty might be oppressive and prison-like for an underdeveloped man, chained to it without knowing what to do with it. He might say, “Yes, the house is beautiful, but it annoys me to be locked up in it.” That is what becomes evident through observation based on spiritual science, observation that ascends by way of imagination, inspiration, and intuition to a genuine cognition of what remains continuous in man throughout his various earth lives.

The first thing man has always experienced when arriving in the imaginative world from the world of visualizations—retrogressing, as it were, in the manner often described—is, to be sure, a world of images. All sorts of people have at all times entered this imaginative world. Considered purely in appearance, this imaginative world, which can open up before the soul either through careful concentration and meditation or through special aptitude, still presents at first the rudiments of the external world of the senses. One sees houses, animals, people; various events unroll in pictures; scenes and beings are there in a living world of images. On the other hand, this imaginative world stamps itself as pertaining, in a certain sense, to the super-sensible world through the fact that it is not within one's arbitrary power to decipher the symbolism of the images, that in determining this or that, one is subject to inner laws, that definite experiences express themselves in definite pictures.

Thus a man can be fairly sure that in any case he is developing certain levels of his soul, that in certain stages certain capacities grow, that he attains to living in certain regions of the super-sensible world, when, for example, a cup is offered him, or he is led through a stream, or he is baptized, and so forth. It can also happen that within this imaginative world, and these are less agreeable experiences, he encounters his various passions and impulses that appear to him symbolically either as huge, frightful animals, or as little squirming, wriggling ones. This plane of the spiritual world, attainable by man, can of course be described only approximately. On the whole, even when this world is highly distasteful and appears altogether hideous and the animals symbolizing his passions seem loathsome, this world appears in most cases quite agreeable. As a rule, people disregard the nature of what they experience and are gratified to be able to see at all in the spiritual world.

That is readily understandable because the spiritual world does not weigh heavily, even when it appears ugly. It is fundamentally a world of images, and only when a man lacks the requisite strength, so that it overwhelms him, crushes him, as it were, does it indeed destroy the health of the soul life. What we can call a feeling of moral responsibility, particularly toward the great world events, need not necessarily result from such seeing; the exact opposite can occur. People who have achieved great skill in penetrating this imaginative world may be morally quite casual, for instance, in the matter of a feeling for truth and falsehood. In this world there is strong temptation not to take truth pertaining to the physical world seriously, and that in a way is deplorable. One is prone to lose the ability to distinguish between what is objectively true and false.

To stand firmly in this imaginative world, to be able to learn its true meaning, is a matter of development. As a human being a man can be quite undeveloped and yet see into this imaginative world; he can see many vision-like phenomena of the higher world without rating at all high as a human being. It is all a matter of development. In the course of time development shows that one learns to distinguish certain imaginations exactly as one learns to differentiate in the physical world, only in the physical world this occurs so early in life that we take no account of it. In the physical world we learn to distinguish between an elephant and a tree frog, and as we learn to differentiate, the world begins to take shape. When a man first faces the imaginative world, it is as though he took the tree frog for the same sort of animal as the elephant.

How uniformly important this imaginative world seems! It is only through development that we learn the relative importance of different things, that something outwardly small may be perhaps more important than another thing outwardly bigger. These things of the imaginative world do not seem big or little to us by reason of what they are, but of what we see in them. Let us suppose a person to be haughty and arrogant. His quality of arrogance will appeal to him, and when he passes into the imaginative world this feeling, his delight in arrogance, is transferred to the size of the beings he sees there. Everything in the imaginative world that appears as arrogance, haughtiness, looks gigantic to him, while everything that to a humble man must seem great appears to him small, like the tiny tree frog. The appearance of this world depends entirely upon individual attributes. Perception of the correct relative sizes, the actual intensities and qualities, is a question of development.

The phenomena are entirely objective, but they can be completely distorted and seen in caricature. The essential thing is for man to pass through in a certain way what he himself is, in this higher cognition as well. He must learn to know himself in an imaginative way. That, indeed, is a precarious matter, because a perspective of what the imaginative world offers is wholly determined, rightly or wrongly, by the person's own qualities. What does that mean, that a man must learn to know himself through imaginative cognition? It means that through the agency of the images he meets in the imaginative world, he must see himself as an objective image. Just as in the physical world he has this bell before him as something objective, so he must meet himself in the imaginative world as the reality he is. This he can achieve in a normal way only by actually ascending through meditation from perception of the outer world to life in visualizations, that is, in certain symbolical visualizations that will free him from perception.

A man must live long and often enough in the pure inner life of visualizations to transmute it into something he passes through naturally. Then he will gradually notice something like a split in his personality. Often during the transition stages he will have to make an effort to prevent a certain condition from growing too strong. When this peculiar condition approaches, he faces a visualization in which he lives, in which he is. It seems to him that that is the way he is; that is he. Then occasionally he notices that the remainder of his being, the part of him not freed, becomes like an automaton. He notices a desire to express something automatically, to gesticulate. Unschooled people will sometimes catch themselves making faces, but that sort of thing should really not be allowed to go beyond an initial experiment. Here he must keep himself in hand. Like other objects, his own being must be kept without.

The possibility of attaining to this imagination as one should depends largely upon having previously developed certain psychic attributes, for in connection with this imaginative self-cognition all sorts of illusions arise. Everything in the way of human pride, in fact, every kind of human susceptibility to illusion, lies in ambush. You can see a great variety of things in the imaginative world. For example, you might mistake something that is really purely a matter of the feelings for yourself. It is a common phenomenon that people hold high opinions of themselves, and a person of this sort, in reflecting on the extraordinary creature he has become, is prone to conclude that he must have been something exalted, royal, or the like—Charlemagne, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, or the reincarnation of some saint. Because such people tend to consider their individuality so important, the individuality they encounter occupying their body in the sense world, they can only assume that in a previous incarnation they were something exalted.

These matters are indeed serious, for they point to the fact that the manner in which a man's own being confronts him imaginatively depends entirely upon his soul. The point is that we alter our own beings if we really get completely away from ourselves, if we work with all our energy to learn to know all our attributes that we can observe in ordinary life, the attributes we believe to be dreadful and possibly objectionable to other people. We must take serious note of these attributes that we carry about with us but really should not possess. We are naturally not concerned here with saying agreeable things but with speaking the truth objectively. We can rest assured that, if we will only go to work objectively, self-criticism will prove to be a full-time task, and only in the last extremity should we engage, as is rather commonly done by humanity, in criticism or judgment of others. He who occupies his mind much with others and criticizes them freely, can be sure that he is far too little concerned with himself to enable him to clear away what must be cleared away if he is to see his own individuality in its true likeness. The reply to the oft-repeated query of why one does not progress, which by rights a man should answer himself, is obvious. He should refrain from all criticism of others except when outer necessity demands it. Above all, he should never forget what this “refrain” implies. It includes, for example, the occasional acceptance of something disagreeable or baneful. Certainly one must accept such things, but anyone who seriously believes in karma knows, naturally, that he brought all that on himself; karma placed the other man where he was in order that he might inflict the injury. A genuine personal reason for taking the world to task never really exists.

A great deal, then, is required to attain to this imagination, this self-cognition. Having achieved it, you will see why Frohschammer's picture of imprisonment is wrong. You come to realize that, while this incarnation in which you find yourself is indeed wonderfully beautiful and glorious, you yourself are not beautiful, you are not so constituted as to be able to take advantage of all that it offers. You say to yourself, “Here I stand in the world, at a certain point of time and space, surrounded by all that is grand and mighty. I have bodily organs to convey all this glorious and mighty magnificence. I have every reason to believe that we live in a paradise, even when ills befall us because it all depends merely upon whether the dome of the sky towers above us, the stars travel their paths, the Sun rises every morning and sets in the glow of evening.” For full satisfaction, however, we are given our outer world and our bodies with their organs, but great indeed is the difference between what we might derive from the world and what we actually do derive. Why do we extract so little from it? Because something is embodied in our corporeality that is diminutive compared with the world, something that allows us to perceive a trifling sector of it. Just compare what your eyes actually see in the world with what you might see!

When we have learned to know ourselves imaginatively, we realize that we are by no means as well adapted to this world as we would be if we could make proper use of our entire organism. We discover that what we are, in the light of imaginative cognition, must be opposed by something else in the world. Here we arrive at an interesting dilemma that must impress our souls if we would really learn to know the world. We find that in view of all that surrounds him in the world, man, as he learns to know himself in the imaginative world, cannot possibly consider himself great and mighty. It is not a case of coming from a higher world and being imprisoned in this earth body, but of being not at all adapted to it, not able to make use of it all. For this reason the imaginative world is opposed by another, a world that corrects what man does badly as a result of his inability to use his body. As opposed to what man is in the imaginative world we have the whole cultural evolution of man, from the beginning of the world to the end.

Why is this the case? We understand now that in the course of the cultural evolution of the earth man must become, through many incarnations, what he will be able to be in some one future incarnation, and for this reason he has the longing to keep returning. In each incarnation he must long for what is impossible of achievement in a single earth life. He must keep returning; then he can eventually become what it is possible to be in one incarnation. Precisely by acquiring the knowledge of and feeling for what he really should be in one life, but what he cannot be for inner—not outer—reasons, he knows what feeling must predominate in the soul when he passes through the portal of death. The predominating feeling must be a longing to return, in order to become, in the next life and in subsequent ones, what he could not become in one incarnation. This longing for ever new earth lives must be the most powerful force. These thoughts can only be touched upon, but they yield the strongest confirmation of reincarnation.

The accuracy of what I have stated is confirmed by something else as well. We can continue our efforts to reach the spiritual world. In a purely technical way we can achieve perception of the higher world by ignoring external perceptions and devoting ourselves to the life of visualizations. There is a still further possibility of giving a definite turn to meditation and concentration, namely, by endeavoring to let our memories unfold with complete inner faithfulness, with absolute inner conscientiousness. This need only be done for a few hours, but seriously. What is one, really, in life? Well, by means of logic and the theory of knowledge we learn that one is an ego, but in ordinary life one is a very doubtful ego. One is exactly what this ego is filled with at the moment. If you are playing cards, you are exactly what the impressions of the card game provide. Your consciousness is actually filled with the impressions of the card game, or whatever it may be. This is the ego to which consciousness can attain. It is attainable, but it is something highly variable, fluctuating.

We really find out what this ego has been by placing our memories before us. Instead of having them behind us, as is usual, we place them before us. That is an important proceeding. In ordinary life we are the result of our memories. Suppose that on a certain day you had experienced nothing but disagreeable things, horrible things. Just think how all that, concentrated, makes you feel in the evening—cross, unresponsive, carping, and so on. Then again, you may have had nothing but gratifying experiences, again concentrated; you are pleasant, smiling, perhaps cordial. So, at one time we are one thing, at another time another. We are exactly what we have behind us as experiences. When we bring all these as memories and place them before ourselves, at the same time going through them once more, we are then behind them. If you do that seriously—not in a routine, mechanical way, if you really relive it all, even for only a few hours, then something enters your soul, if it is sufficiently observing, which one might call a sort of fundamental tone that you yourself seem to be—a bitter, acid-bitter, fundamental tone. If you then go to work on yourself thoroughly, which again really depends on your development, that process will rarely show you to yourself as a sweet being. You will be able to find a bitter fundamental tone in yourself.

That is the truth, whether we like it or not. One who is capable of applying the requisite attention to himself will in this way gradually arrive at what may be called inspirational cognition of himself. The path leads through bitter experiences, but finally one seems like an instrument badly out of tune in the harmony of the spheres, causing a discord there. Through this further self-knowledge we realize still more clearly how little we are able to make of this glorious divine nature, whereas we could make so much of it if we were equal to it. If we repeat such an exercise many times, then, toward the end of our lives, but beginning as early as the thirty-fifth year, the peculiar character of the tone compels us to realize how much there is to improve upon what we were in life, and that we should long for reincarnation in order to be able to correct our shortcomings. That is one of the most important results of inspirational cognition. When a man learns to know his own fundamental tone, he discovers how ill adapted he is to external nature, and how little opportunity he has to find peace and inner harmony. Those who boggle at the idea of reincarnation only show how incapable they are of understanding themselves in their inadequacy, how egotistical they are in having no wish to develop further so beautiful a gift of God.

The second goal, then, that we can reach in our search for self-understanding is inspiration: the understanding of man as the spiritual tone world reveals him. There, when we have learned to know our own tone, so to speak, we discover how ill adapted we are to what lives in the great realm of nature. Another possible approach would start from the lapse into mere morality of what properly pertains to destiny, taking account of how little we are able to arrive at the peace and inner harmony for which we yearn. Those who have achieved the power of self-knowledge will often have occasion to realize how incapable they are of finding the inner calm and confidence that they are bound to crave. Recall this beautiful passage in Goethe's writings. He is seated on a mountain-top that voices the tranquility of earth's lovely nature. Beneath him lies what earth's eldest son, the granite rock, has spread before his eyes, and he senses the greatness of nature's laws—repose in contrast to delirious joy or frantic misery—the swinging pendulum, the inner tone in the nature of man.

When we study the laws of nature, study what still lives in space as natural laws, we come to see that just as the evolution of culture is the counterpart of imaginative man, so the world of natural laws—the true laws of nature out there in space—are the counterpart of inspired man.

Penetrating maya, the world of spiritual activity reveals itself in the laws of nature with that inner quiet consistency that, through our errors, has become restless discordance, and we recognize it as such when we have discovered the inspired man within us. Then this thought can come to us that when we really understand the essence of nature's laws we know, indeed, that the earth passes from one form to another, but that something in the laws of nature gives assurance that in it, man must find the compensation for what he himself ruins. That is because of the inherent verity of the laws of nature, and it applies even when man passes through his various incarnations, that is, when he receives into himself throughout a long cultural evolution what he must so receive because it lies potentially within the scope of one incarnation.

Thus we find a deep connection between all that is spread out in nature as spirit deeds manifested in natural laws, and what we discover within ourselves, through inspiration, to be our deeper self. That is why in all esotericism, in all mysticism, the inner peace and harmony of nature's laws are always held up as the ideal for man's inner law. It was by no means fortuitous that in the ancient Persian initiation one who had attained to the sixth stage was called a Sun hero. His inner law and sureness were such that he could no more deviate from the prescribed path than could the sun from its course through the universe. If the sun could depart from its course for one moment, untold revolutionary destruction would inevitably result in the cosmos. There is a further step that we can take on our way to self-comprehension. We could ascend to the grasp of man in intuitive cognition, but that would lead us into such exalted regions that it would be extraordinarily difficult to clarify the matter, or to designate that world that appears externally as the counterpart of intuitive man.

From all this you will see that the human being is, in fact, able to observe all that he has the possibility of being, that is, what he might be in that glorious exterior structure of the world in which he is “imprisoned,” surely not because this exterior structure is bad, but because he falls so far short of measuring up to it. This shows us that the important thing is a right evaluation of all world contexts, a proper understanding of the basis of that sort of spiritual cognition, including the nature of man, that is presented by anthroposophy. Most of the objections commonly raised arise out of principles that completely misjudge world contexts.

Finally, we must ask, “Why is it necessary for man to be externally embodied at all?” In order to illustrate still further what little remains to be said, I should like to remind you of Dr. Unger's lectures on the position of the ego and the “I am” in the whole inner life of man; also of what you can find on the subject in The Philosophy of Freedom and in Truth and Science. True, a little thought can show us that a significant being hides behind the ego or the “I am,” but what we experience we experience in our consciousness precisely as our ego-consciousness, our self-consciousness. This is interrupted, even when we fall asleep, and if we were able to keep on sleeping, never awaking, we might still have an ego but we could never be aware of it through our own agency. Our awareness of it depends upon the employment of our bodily organization, our corporeality, while awake. We can experience other things outside of our body, but our ego in the first instance only by confronting the outer world. For if man had never descended to earth in order to make use of a body, he would for all eternity have felt himself to be but a component of an angel, as the hand feels itself to be a member of the organism, and he would never have achieved self-consciousness. He might have become aware of any number of grandiose facts in the world, but never could he have arrived at ego-consciousness without being incarnated in a physical body. That is where he had to turn for his ego-consciousness.

You need only study sleep consciousness in order to see that the human being does not work together with his ego in sleep. Ego-consciousness presupposes imprisonment in a body, employment of the instruments of the senses and of the brain. Now, if during a single incarnation man is able only to a slight extent to make use of all that is given him in this incarnation, it should not seem surprising when clairvoyant consciousness tells us that a thorough search in the human ego, in so far as the latter manifests itself in its true form, discloses as its prime impulse, its predominant force, the longing for ever new earth lives, in order to fill and enrich this ego-consciousness more and more, to develop it to an ever higher state.

In so doing we would be echoing something in our theosophy that the theosophists of the eighteenth century so often maintained, something that can be helpful if expanded into pneumatosophy. How did eighteenth century theosophists like Ottinger, Völker, Bengel, and others express from their monotheistic standpoint the activity of spirit and of divine spirits, or of the Divine Spirit, as they called it? They said, “The bodily world, corporeality, is the goal of God's ways.” That is a lovely concept, “the goal of God's ways.” It means that by virtue of its inherent impulses, divinity passed through many spiritual worlds, then descended in order to arrive at a kind of goal from which it turns back to rise again. This goal is the shaping, the crystallizing, of the bodily, corporeal form. Were we to translate this utterance of the eighteenth century theosophists into more emotional phraseology, we could say, “Ardently longing for incarnation in a corporeality is the way the spirit reveals itself to us when we contemplate it in the higher regions, and it ceases to manifest itself in this longing for incarnation only after it has been embodied and has started back. The Divinity manifests itself as ardently desiring embodiment in the flesh, and not until the re-ascent to the spirit has commenced may this ardor abate.”

That wonderful utterance of the eighteenth century theosophists did more to illuminate and clarify the mysteries of man than much that was said in the philosophies of the nineteenth century, and theosophical activity and endeavor fell off completely in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century genuine theosophy of the older kind was to be found in diverse localities but it lacked the knowledge of incarnation because Christian evolution retarded it in the Occident. Concerning divinity, those eighteenth century theosophists knew that “corporeality is the goal of God's ways.” They knew the goal of God's ways, but not that of man. They did not find it in the case of man, otherwise they would have understood from each incarnation, from the entire nature of man, that there must arise the longing for a new embodiment, until such time as everything that fits man to rise to new forms of existence has been extracted from the life on earth.

At the conclusion of these lectures on pneumatosophy I feel more than ever how sketchy and incomplete everything must be left, and what I said in connection with the first two cycles, Anthroposophy and Psychosophy, applies here as well. The intention has been to provide stimulating suggestions. If you will follow up these suggestions, you will find plenty of material for working out what has been offered. You will need to look about in the world and take account of manifold factors. One cannot escape the fact, however, that spiritual science is so comprehensive that, were we to proceed systematically and in the manner commonly aimed at in other sciences, we would not have progressed to the point where our sections actually stand after ten years of work. We would be about as far along as we might be after the first three months.

Let me say at the close of this cycle that spiritual science depends upon souls that are seriously willing to work out independently what has been merely suggested. In such independent work much will crop up out of regions that have not even been mentioned. Everyone proceeding with an independent spirit will find points of contact for this work. Our communion will become ever closer if we keep intensifying the feeling that we receive something in order to be stimulated, so that our innermost self comes more and more to take part in the worlds that are intended to be revealed to mankind through the spiritual current we have come to call anthroposophy.

In this lecture I want to speak of certain facts which belong essentially to the ethical and moral domain and help us to understand the mission of Spiritual Science in our time.

We are all deeply convinced of the great truth of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, and we must realise that this repetition has its own good purpose in the Earth's evolution. To the question, ‘Why do we reincarnate?’—occult research gives the answer that our experiences differ in each of the epochs during which we are reborn on the Earth. In incarnations immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe the experiences of the human soul were entirely different from those undergone in later pre-Christian epochs and in our own age.

I need only briefly mention that in the times directly after the Atlantean catastrophe, souls were endowed with a certain elementary clairvoyance in the bodies they then inhabited. This clairvoyance, once a natural faculty in man, was gradually lost, mainly as a result of the conditions prevailing during the Græco-Roman epoch of culture. Since then, man has developed in such a way that great progress has been achieved on the physical plane and during the course of the present post-Atlantean epoch clairvoyance will gradually be reacquired.

We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Indian being the first, the ancient Persian the second, the Babylonian-Chaldean the third, the Græco-Roman the fourth; the sixth and seventh epochs will follow our own. And then another great catastrophe will befall the Earth and humanity, as was the case at the end of the Atlantean epoch.

Occult research is able to indicate the characteristic trend of human evolution in each of these post-Atlantean epochs of civilisation—including the fifth, sixth and seventh. The essential characteristic of our present fifth epoch is the development of intellect, of reason. The main characteristic of the sixth epoch will be that very definite feelings regarding what is moral and what is immoral will arise in the souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy will be aroused by compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy by malicious actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the faintest conception of the intensity of these feelings.

The sixth epoch will be followed by the seventh, when the moral life will be still further deepened. Whereas in the sixth epoch man will take pleasure in good and noble actions, in the seventh epoch the natural outcome of such pleasure will be a moral impulse, that is to say there will be a firm resolve to do what is moral. There is a great difference between taking pleasure in a moral action and the doing of it. We can therefore say: our own epoch is the epoch of intellectualism; the essential characteristic of the following epoch will be aesthetic pleasure in the good, aesthetic displeasure in the evil; and the seventh will be characterised by an active moral life.

At the present time only the seeds of what will become part of mankind in future epochs are contained in the human soul and it can be said that all these aptitudes or predispositions in man—intellectual aptitudes, predispositions leading to feelings of sympathy or antipathy aroused by certain actions, to moral impulses—all these are related to the higher worlds. Every moral action has a definite connection with the higher worlds. Our intellectual aptitudes have a super-sensible connection with the astral plane. Our sympathies and antipathies for the good or the evil are connected with the sphere of Lower Devachan; and the domain of moral impulses in the soul is connected with Higher Devachan. Hence we can also say: In our present age it is mainly the forces of the astral world that penetrate into and take effect in the human soul; in the sixth epoch it will be the forces of Lower Devachan that penetrate more deeply into the soul; and in the seventh, the forces of Higher Devachan will work with special strength into humanity.

From this it is understandable that in the preceding fourth post-Atlantean epoch (the Græco-Roman) it was the forces of the physical plane that exercised the strongest influence upon the soul of man. That is why Greek culture was able to produce such wonderful sculptures, in which the human form was given such magnificent expression on the physical plane. Conditions in that epoch were therefore especially suitable for men to experience the Christ on the physical plane in a physical body. In our own, fifth epoch which will last until the fourth millennium, souls will gradually become able, from the twentieth century onwards, to experience the Christ Being in an etheric form on the astral plane, just as in the fourth epoch Christ was visible on the physical plane in a physical form.

In order to understand the nature of development in the sixth epoch of culture, it is well to consider what will be the characteristic qualities of the soul in future incarnations. To-day, in our intellectual age, intellectuality and morality are practically separate spheres in the life of soul. It is quite possible nowadays for a man to be very clever and at the same time immoral, or vice versa—to be deeply moral and anything but clever.

In the fourth epoch the future juxtaposition of morality and intellectuality was prophetically foreseen by a certain people, namely the Hebrews. They endeavoured to bring about on artificial harmony between morality and intellectuality, whereas among the Greeks such harmony was more a natural matter of course. To-day we can learn from the Akashic Chronicle how the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people strove to establish this harmony between intellectuality and morality. They wore symbols, of which they had such profound understanding that if they concentrated their gaze upon them and made themselves receptive to their influences, a certain harmony could be established between what was good in a moral sense and what was wise. The priests of the ancient Hebrew people wore these symbols on their breastplate. The symbol for morality was called Urim, the symbol of wisdom, Thummim.¹

If a Hebrew priest wanted to discover whether a certain action was both good and wise, he made himself receptive to the forces of Urim and Thummim; the result was that a certain harmony between morality and intellectuality was induced. Magical effects were produced by means of these symbols and a magical link established with the spiritual world.

Our task now is to achieve in future incarnations through inner development of the soul the effect that in earlier times was produced by means of these symbols.

Let us think once again of the phases of evolution through the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean culture-epochs in order to grasp how intellectuality, aestheticism and morality will come to expression in men's life of soul.

Whereas in the present fifth epoch, intellectuality can remain unimpaired even if no pleasure is taken in moral actions, in the sixth epoch, it will be quite different. In the sixth epoch, that is, from about the third millennium onwards, immorality will have a paralysing effect upon intellectuality. The mental powers of a man who is intellectual and at the same time immoral will definitely deteriorate and this condition will become more and more pronounced in the future evolution of humanity. A man who has no morals will therefore have no intellectual power for this will depend entirely upon moral actions; and in the seventh epoch, cleverness without morality will be non-existent.

At this point it will be well to consider the nature of moral forces in individual souls in their present incarnations. How is it that in our phase of evolution a human being can become immoral? It is because in his successive incarnations man has descended more and more deeply into the physical world and has therefore been impelled more and more strongly towards the world of the senses.

The more forcefully the impulses belonging to the descending phase of evolution work upon a soul, the more immoral it tends to become. This fact is confirmed by a very interesting finding of occult research. You know that when a man passes through the gate of death, he lays aside his physical and etheric bodies and for a short time has a retrospective view of his past life on earth. A kind of sleep then ensues and after a few months, or perhaps years, he wakens on the astral plane, in Kamaloka. Then follows the life in Kamaloka, when the earthly life is lived over again in backward order, three times as quickly.

At the beginning of life in Kamaloka a very significant experience comes to every individual. In the case of most Europeans or, speaking generally, of men belonging to modern civilisation, this experience takes the following form.—At the beginning of life in Kamaloka a spiritual Individuality shows us everything we have done out of selfish motives in the last life, shows us a kind of register of all our transgressions. The more concretely you picture this experience, the better. At the beginning of the Kamaloka period it is actually as though a figure were presenting us with the register of our physical life. The important fact—for which, naturally, there can be no further proof because it can be confirmed only by occult experience—is that the majority of men belonging to European civilisation recognise Moses in this figure. This fact has always been known to Rosicrucian research since the Middle Ages and in recent years it has been confirmed by very delicate investigations.

You can gather from this that at the beginning of his life in Kamaloka man feels a very great responsibility towards the pre-Christian powers for having allowed himself to be drawn downwards, and it is an actual fact in occult life that it is the Moses-Individuality who demands reckoning for the wrongs committed in our time.

The powers and forces which draw man upwards again to the spiritual world fall into two categories: those which draw him upwards on the path of Wisdom, and those which draw him upwards on the path of Morality. The forces to which intellectual progress is mainly due all proceed from the impulse given by a great Individuality of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch who is known to you all, namely Gautama Buddha. It is a remarkable discovery of spiritual investigation that the most penetrating, most significant, thoughts conceived in our present epoch have proceeded from Gautama Buddha. This is all the more remarkable inasmuch as until the days of Schopenhauer—therefore by no means long ago—the name of Gautama Buddha was almost unknown in the West. This is very understandable, for when Gautama Buddha was born as the son of King Suddhodana, he rose from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, and to become a Buddha means that the Individuality concerned does not incarnate again on Earth in a body of flesh. The Bodhisattva-Individuality who became Buddha five or six centuries before the beginning of the Christian era has not since incarnated, nor can he incarnate, in a physical body. But instead he sends down his forces from the higher worlds, from the super-sensible worlds, and inspires all bearers of culture who are not yet permeated by the Christ Impulse. Consciousness of this truth was demonstrated in a beautiful legend written down by John of Damascus in the eighth century and well known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It is the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which relates how he who had become the successor of Buddha (Joshaphat is a phonetic variation of ‘Bodhisattva’) received teaching from Barlaam about the Christ Impulse. The legend, which was subsequently forgotten, tells us that the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha was instructed by Barlaam and his soul was fired by the Christian Impulse. This was the second impulse which, in addition to that of Buddha, continues to work in the evolution of humanity. It is the Christ Impulse and is connected with the future ascent of humanity to Morality. Although Buddha's teaching is in a particular sense moral teaching, the Christ Impulse is not teaching but actual power which works as such and to an increasing degree imbues mankind with moral strength. (I Corinthians IV, 20)

In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch the Christ Being who descended from cosmic heights had first to appear in a physical body. In our fifth epoch the intense consolidation of intellectual forces will make it possible for man to behold the Christ as an etheric Figure. This is even now beginning in our century. From the thirties to the forties of this century onwards, individuals will appear who have developed in a way that will enable them to see the etheric Form of Christ, as at the time of Jesus of Nazareth they saw the physical Christ. And during the next three thousand years the number of those able to behold the etheric Christ will steadily increase, until in about three thousand years, reckoning from the present time, there will be a sufficient number of human beings on the Earth who will need no gospels or other such records, because in their own life of soul they will have actual vision of the Christ.

We must therefore clearly understand that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch men were only capable of beholding the physical Christ; He therefore came in a physical body. In our own epoch and on into the third millennium, they will gradually grow capable of beholding the etheric Christ. He will never come again in a physical body.

If we bear in mind the fact that when a man of the present age who unites himself more and more deeply with the Christ Impulse passes into Kamaloka and is called to account by a figure personifying a moral force—by Moses—we shall understand how a transformation of the Moses-figure can be brought about. For what does Moses show us when he confronts us with the register of our sins and transgressions? He shows us what stands on the debit side of our Karma. For a soul of our epoch it is of great significance that through the inspiration of Buddha the doctrine of Karma can be comprehended, but that the reality of the working of Karma after death is revealed to us by the Old Testament figure of Moses.

As the influences of the super-sensible Christ pervade the souls of men to an ever-increasing extent, the figure of Moses will be transformed after death into that of Christ Jesus. This means that our Karma is linked with Christ, that Christ unites with our Karma.

It is interesting to realise that in the teachings of Buddha, Karma is an abstract matter, having an impersonal character. In the future incarnations of men, as Christ comes into ever closer connection with Karma, it will acquire the quality of being, of potential life.

Our earlier stages of evolution, our lives in the past, may be related to the words: Ex Deo nascimur. If we direct our development in such a way that after death, instead of Moses we meet Christ with whom our Karma is then united, this is expressed in the Rosicrucian Christianity that has existed since the 13th century, by the words: In Christo morimur.

Just as Buddha-hood can be attained only on the physical plane, the qualification for meeting Christ in death can likewise be acquired by the human soul only on the physical plane. A Buddha is first a Bodhisattva, but he rises to the rank of Buddha during a physical incarnation and it is then no longer necessary for him to return to the Earth. Understanding of Christ in the sense just explained can be acquired only on the physical plane. Hence during the next three thousand years men will have to acquire in the physical world the power to behold the super-sensible Christ, and it is the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement to create, first of all, the conditions which make understanding of Christ possible on the physical plane, and then the power to behold Him.

In the age when Christ works in the world of men as the etheric Christ it matters not whether we are living in a physical body or between death and a new birth, if on the physical plane we have acquired the power to behold Him. Let us suppose, for example, that because of his earlier death a man had no opportunity of beholding Christ in his present etheric Form. Nevertheless, if during his life in the physical world such a man had acquired the necessary understanding, vision of the Christ would be possible for him between death and rebirth. A man who keeps aloof from spiritual life and acquires no understanding of Christ will remain without such knowledge until he can acquire it in his next incarnation.

What has just been said will indicate to you that as humanity lives on through the fifth, sixth and seventh epochs of civilisation the Christ Impulse will gain increasing power on the Earth. We have heard that in the sixth epoch, intellectuality will be impaired through immorality. The other aspect is that a man who has paralysed his intellectual faculty as a result of immorality must turn to Christ with all the greater strength in order that Christ may lead him to morality and imbue him with moral strength.

What I have told you has been investigated particularly closely by Rosicrucians since the 13th century but it is a truth that has at all times been known to many occultists.

If it were to be asserted that there could be a second appearance of Christ on Earth in a physical body, according to occultism that would be equivalent to stating that a balance works more efficiently if it is supported at two points instead of at one. In very truth the three years' duration of Christ's life on Earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the fulcrum of Earth evolution; and just as there can be only one point at which the beam of a balance is attached, so too there can be only one fulcrum of Earth evolution.

The teaching of moral development is not the same as the impulse for such development.

Before the Event of Golgotha the Bodhisattva who was the successor of Buddha was present on the Earth in order to prepare for that Event and give teaching to those around him. He incarnated in the personality of Jeshu ben Pandira [See Jeshu ben Pandira, two lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Leipzig on November 4th and 5th, 1911, and references in his later cycle, The Gospel of St. Matthew.], one century before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus we must distinguish between the Jeshu ben Pandira-incarnation of the Bodhisattva who was the successor of Gautama Buddha, and the incarnation at the beginning of our era of Jesus of Nazareth who for three years of his life was permeated by the cosmic Being we call the Christ.

The Bodhisattva who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira and in other personalities too, returns again and again, until in about three thousand years from now, he will attain Buddha-hood and as Maitreya Buddha live through his final incarnation. The Christ-Individuality was on the Earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years only and does not come again in a physical body; in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch He comes in an etheric body, in the sixth epoch in an astral body, and in the seventh in a mighty Cosmic Ego that is like a great Group-Soul of humanity.

When a human being dies, his physical, etheric and astral bodies fall away from him and his ego passes over to the next incarnation. It is exactly the same with the planet Earth. What is physical in our Earth falls away at the end of the Earth-period and human souls in their totality pass over into the Jupiter condition, the next planetary embodiment of the Earth. And just as in the case of an individual human being the ego is the centre of his further evolution, so for the whole of future humanity the Christ-Ego in the astral and etheric bodies of men goes on to ensoul the Jupiter-existence. We therefore see how starting from a physical man -on Earth the Christ gradually evolves as Etheric Christ, as Astral Christ, as Ego-Christ, in order, as Ego-Christ, to be the Spirit of the Earth who then rises to even higher stages together with all mankind.

What are we doing when we teach Spiritual Science to-day? We are teaching what Oriental wisdom so clearly proclaimed when the Bodhisattva who was then the son of King Suddhodana, attained Buddha-hood. In those Oriental teachings was expressed the realisation that it was the task of the next Bodhisattva—who would eventually become a Buddha—to spread over the Earth the knowledge that would reveal Christ to men in the true light. Thus the Bodhisattva who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira and again and again in others, became the great Teacher of the Christ Impulse. This is indicated very clearly in the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which tells how Joshaphat (i.e. the Bodhisattva) is instructed by Barlaam, the Christian teacher. The Oriental occult teachings call this Bodhisattva the ‘Bringer of the Good’—Maitreya Buddha. And we know from occult investigations that in this Maitreya Buddha the power of the Word will be present in a degree of which men of the present time can as yet have no conception. It is possible to-day through higher clairvoyant perception of the process of world-evolution to discover how the, Maitreya Buddha will teach after three thousand years have passed. Much of his teaching can also be expressed in symbolic forms. But to-day—because mankind is insufficiently mature—it is not yet possible to utter words such as those that will come from the lips of the Maitreya Buddha.

In the Eightfold Path, Gautama Buddha gave the great intellectual teachings of right speech, right thinking, right action, and so on. The words uttered by the Maitreya Buddha will contain a magic power that will become moral impulses in the men who hear them. And if there should be a gospel telling of the Maitreya Buddha, the writer of it would have to use words differing from those used of Christ in the Gospel of St. John: “And the Word was made Flesh.” The evangelist of the Maitreya Buddha would have to testify: “And the Flesh was made Word.”

The utterances of the Maitreya Buddha will be permeated in a miraculous way with the power of Christ. Occult investigations show us to-day that in a certain respect even the external life of the Maitreya Buddha will be patterned on the life of Christ. In ancient times, when a great Individuality appeared and was to become a Teacher of humanity, signs indicating this showed themselves in the early youth of the child in question, in special talents and qualities of soul. There is however a different kind of development in the course of which a complete change in the personality becomes apparent at a certain point in his life. What happens is that when this human being has reached a certain age, his ego is taken out of his bodily sheaths and a different ego passes into his body. The greatest example of this is Christ Jesus Himself, of whom in his thirtieth year the Christ-Individuality had taken possession. All the incarnations of the Bodhisattva who will become the Maitreya Buddha have shown that in this sense his life will resemble that of Christ.

In none of the incarnations of the Bodhisattva is it known, either in his childhood or youth, that he will become a Bodhisattva. Whenever the Bodhisattva becomes Buddha there is evidence that at the age of 30 or 31, another individuality takes possession of his body. The Bodhisattva will never reveal himself as such in his early youth, but in his thirtieth or thirty-first year he will manifest quite different qualities, because another Being takes possession of his body. Individualities who will take possession of the personality of some human being in this way and will not incarnate as children, are, for example, individualities such as Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel.

So too is it in our present century in the case of the Bodhisattva who later on, in three thousand years time, will become the Maitreya Buddha. It would be so much occult dilettantism to assert that this Being would be recognisable in his early years as the Bodhisattva. It is between his thirtieth and thirty-first years that he first reveals Himself through his own power, without having to be proclaimed by others. He will convince the world through his own power and it would be well to realise that if the Bodhisattva were alleged in some quarters to be revealing himself in a human being under the age of thirty, that very fact would be evidence of the fallacy of such a statement. Claims of the kind have frequently been made. For example, in the 17th century a certain individual proclaimed himself to be an incarnation of the Messiah, of Christ. His name was Sabbati Zewi and hosts of people from all over Europe, from Spain, Italy and France, made pilgrimages to him in Smyrna.

It is certainly true that in our time there is a rooted disinclination to recognise genius in human beings. But on the other hand, mental laziness is very prevalent, with the result that people are only too ready to acknowledge some individual as a great soul, merely on authority. It is important to-day for Anthroposophy to be presented in such a way as to be based to the smallest possible extent on belief in authority.

Much that I have said today can be substantiated only by means of occult investigation. Yet I beg you not to give credence to these things because I say them, but to test them by everything known to you from history—above all by what you can learn from your own experience—and I am absolutely certain that the more closely you examine them, the more confirmation you will find. In this age of intellectualism, I do not appeal to your belief in authority but to your capacity for intelligent examination. The Bodhisattva of the 20th century will not rely upon any herald to announce him as the Maitreya Buddha, but upon the power of his own words; he will stand on his own feet in the world.

What has been said in this lecture may perhaps be summed up as follows.—

In our period of evolution, two streams of spiritual life are at work; one of them is the stream of Wisdom, or the Buddha-stream, containing the most sublime teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on Earth. To enable this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ Impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ-stream itself which will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality. And the greatest Teacher of the Christ Impulse will in all ages be the successor of that Bodhisattva who incarnates again and again and who, in three thousand years from now, will become the Maitreya Buddha. For the statement contained in Oriental chronicles is true: that exactly five thousand years after Gautama Buddha attained Enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Maitreya Buddha will incarnate on Earth for the last time.

The succession of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas has no relation as such to the cosmic Being we call Christ; it was a Bodhisattva—not the Christ—who incarnated in the body of Jeshu ben Pandira. Christ incarnated in a physical body once, and once only, for a period of three years. The Bodhisattva appears in every century until his existence as Maitreya Buddha.

The mission of Anthroposophy to-day is to be a synthesis of religions. We can conceive of one form of religion being comprised in Buddhism, another form in Christianity, and as evolution proceeds the more closely do the different religions unite—in the way that Buddha and Christ themselves are united in our hearts.

This vista of the spiritual development of humanity brings home to us the necessity of the impulse of Anthroposophy as a preparation for understanding the progress of culture and happenings in the great process of evolution itself.

• 1. According to the footnote in the German text of this lecture, Urim = Glanz (Radiance or Lustre) and Thummim = Wahrheit (Truth). Most English books of reference give “lights” and “perfections” as the interpretations, while acknowledging uncertainty. The Septuagint translates them as “manifestation” and “truth”. There is no unanimity as to whether the objects in question can be reliably identified, but the biblical references suggest that they were precious stones. Some scholars suppose that they were the twelve stones of the breastplate of the High Priest. What seems to be certain is that on these objects were engraved the names of the twelve tribes and that the High Priest used them as an oracle in order to ascertain the will of God. (See among other biblical references: Exodus 28, 9-30; Leviticus 8, 8.) Robertson Smith wrote in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church: “In ancient times the priestly oracle of Urim and Thummim was a sacred lot; for in I Sam. xiv:41 the true text, as we can still restore it from the LXX., makes Saul pray, If the iniquity be in me or Jonathan, give Urim; but if in Israel, give Thummim. This sacred lot was connected with the ephod, which in the time of the Judges was something very like an idol.” See in the Moffatt translation of the Bible I Sam. xiv. 18-43.
  
  —Note by D.S.O. and M.K.

Animal forms—the physiognomical expression of human passions. The religion of Egypt—a remembrance of Lemurian times. Fish and serpent symbols. The remembrance of Atlantis in Europe. The Light of Christ.

In the last lecture it was shown how a differentiation had arisen in evolution generally, and particularly in human evolution, because human beings, and other beings also, could not await the right point in their evolution; they therefore fell behind and became hardened to a certain degree, while others retained the necessary softness and pliability until the right moment, and were thus able to carry out the changes that were fitting. It was also shown that it was only in the middle of the Atlantean epoch that the true human form appeared. In the previous epoch, and indeed at a very early period, the external form of man was very mobile; not only could he move his limbs as at present, but through inner powers he could elongate or shorten them, etc. To the ordinary consciousness of today it seems a kind of outrage to say such things about past conditions of the earth and of man. Even here among Anthroposophists you may have observed that we endeavour to develop certain truths step by step; we give them forth gradually, in small doses—they are then more easily digested.

Let us turn our attention once more to this early development. Even the Atlantean epoch had a beginning, and it came to an end through mighty water catastrophes of a very complicated kind. The Atlantean epoch lasted for a long, a very long, time. When we go back still further we come to other catastrophes in the course of evolution, these may be called volcanic in nature, when large tracts of land lying south of Asia, east of Africa, and north of Australia were demolished. On these tracts of land humanity had dwelt, and, to borrow a term from natural science, the land was called the Lemurian continent.

At that time humanity had a body much softer and more plastic than it is now; it was a period when man could assume many shapes; if we were to describe them they would seem very grotesque to the consciousness of the present day. We arrive here at a point of time before which no kind of feeling of personality, no feeling of selfhood, had as yet come to man. As he had no consciousness of self, and as the human shape was still very mobile and unfinished, something else happened. The shape which man presented outwardly—and which changed according to his emotions, being one thing at one time and something quite different at another—was in this way a kind of betrayer of his inner being; according as his thoughts and passions were good or bad his external shape assumed a different form. It was impossible at that time to entertain an evil thought and keep it hidden, for the external bodily form immediately expressed it, therefore man appeared in all kinds of shapes.

There were at this time very few of the higher kinds of animals; the earth was peopled by the lower animals and man. And if one were companionable—and such indeed we all were fundamentally—one could find one's fellowman through the expression they gave to this or that thought, or to this or that passion. What really are all such expressions? What are the physiognomical expressions of passions and thoughts? They are the shapes of animals. When we observe the form of animals we see in the higher orders of the animal kingdom nothing but thoughts and passions of all sorts worked into a great piece of tapestry. Everything that moves within the human astral body today, and remains hidden, was such a strong force at that time that it imparted at once to the soft body (which was really only formed out of fire-mist) the shape which was the expression of that passion. A large part of our present higher animals consists of human beings who were so entangled in their passions that they became hardened in these forms and fell behind in evolution. Anyone who looks with really occult perception on his environment can express his feeling approximately as follows: In the course of becoming an ego I have passed through that which I now see in lions and snakes; I lived in all these forms, for in my inner being I experienced the qualities which are expressed in these animal shapes.

Those human beings who were capable of rising, who maintained their inner centre, found a certain balance, so that they have within them only the possibility of these passions, which are, however, of a soul nature only, and take on no external form. This is what man's higher development means. In animals we see our own past, although these have not the same form as that in which they appeared in past ages, for millions of years have passed away since then. Let us suppose that passions such as are now found in lions were made manifest at that time in man's outward form, giving him the semblance of a lion, that this form then hardened, and the genus lion originated. Since that time, however, the genus lion has also passed through further development, and because of this the present lion has no longer the same form as at that time. The present lion is the descendant of a genus that branched off from the human long ages ago. In the various animals we have, in a certain sense, to see our degenerate descendants; this should help us to look with understanding into the world around us.

We must not, however, imagine that all the animal forms we see around us, and which represent certain conditions of hardening, are the result of evil human passions. Passions were necessary; man had to experience them in order that he might absorb from them into his own nature all that was useful; so that when we look back into such periods of the earth's evolution we find in our environment animal shapes that are in a state of material self-metamorphosis.

These are the expressions of passions, and working in them we find those Spiritual beings with whom we have become acquainted in previous lectures. We have to think of the earth as being still of a soft substance, and Spiritual beings working upon this substance, and forming the various animal-like shapes.

Let us now recall how it was said that the Egyptian religion repeated the facts of the third epoch of the earth, preserving the results of it as religious knowledge. The Egyptian form of religion contained as knowledge that which had taken place at one time on earth. You will now wonder no longer that so many animal and animal-headed shapes appeared in Egyptian art. This was a spiritual repetition of what had actually existed on the earth at one time, and was more than a mere simile. In a certain sense it is literally true when we say that the souls who principally incarnated in Egyptian bodies remembered the Lemurian epoch, and that their religion was spiritually a reborn memory of it.

Thus epoch after epoch of the earth is born again within the souls of men in the various religious conceptions through which the world passes. Even at a period later than this the environment of man was absolutely different from what it is now, and, of course, the conditions of consciousness were essentially different.

We must clearly understand that from the Lemurian epoch to the middle of the Atlantean epoch the present human form was only gradually constructed. By the middle of the Atlantean epoch it had reached, in a normal way, to a certain perfection through Jehovah and the Spirits of Form; the totality of what we find in man today was first formed throughout this period, viz., from the Lemurian epoch to the Atlantean epoch. The man of Lemuria, had we been able to see him clairvoyantly, would have presented still further problems, for functions which today are separate were still united in him in a certain way. For example, when the Lemurian evolution was in its prime neither such a breathing system nor such a system of alimentation existed as we have now. Substances were quite different; respiration and nutrition were in a certain sense connected; they performed one common function which was only divided later. Man absorbed a kind of watery, milky substance, and this supplied him at the one time with that which he now acquires separately in the processes of respiration and nutrition.

Another thing was also not as yet separated. We know that in the course of the period with which we are dealing the senses first opened to the outer world. Our present senses did not perceive external objects at that time man was limited to a picture-consciousness; vivid dream pictures rose within him, but there was no external objective consciousness. On the other hand, he received, as the first heralding of outer life—the first inkling of outer sense perception—the capacity to distinguish heat and cold in his environment. This was the very first beginning of sense perception on the earth, for the man of that time still moved within the fluidic element, but he now knew whether he was approaching a warm place or a cold one. This was made possible through an organ which he possessed at that time and which has since become atrophied.

You will have heard that within the human brain there is an organ called the pineal gland; today it is atrophied, but formerly it was open outwardly; it was an organ of force, and sent forth rays. Man moved about in the watery element with a kind of lantern which developed a certain light. This lantern, when the pineal gland was developed, projected from the head, enabling man to distinguish different degrees of warmth. It was the first universal sense organ. Natural science describes it as a degenerated eye. This it never was; it was an organ of warmth, and could in fact perceive not only in its immediate environment, but also at a distance. It had also another duty.

This organ, which closed when the other senses opened, was in certain ancient periods an organ of fertilization, so that sense-perception and fertilization were associated at one time. Through this organ man absorbed into himself from his environment the forces which made him capable of bringing forth his like. At one particular period, when the sun was in a certain position and the moon still one with the earth, the atmosphere of the earth was able to furnish the substance which caused this organ to shine. There actually were periods (and certain fishes which at times develop a light remind us of them) when there was a common fertilization of the human being, who was without sex at that time, and when, because of the sun being in a particular position, he was enabled to bring forth his like. Sense-perception and fertilization, nutrition and breathing, were intimately connected in the primeval past.

The various organs were differentiated gradually, and very gradually man acquired the form he now possesses. Through this he became more and more fitted to be his own master, and to develop what we call ego-consciousness. But all through the period when he moved through the earth's atmosphere guided by his perception of warmth he was under the influence of higher beings. It was principally the forces of the sun (which had already left the earth) working upon the earth's atmosphere that stimulated the organ of self-consciousness. On the other hand, there was another organ which was specially stimulated through the moon-forces (both before and after it withdrew from the earth). This is situated in another part of the brain, and is usually called the pituitary body. Today this organ has no particular duty, formerly it regulated the lower functions, those of nutrition and respiration, which originally were one. With this pituitary body were connected all the inner forces by which man inflated himself and was enabled to assume various shapes—everything by which he could voluntarily alter his form. Those alterations which were less voluntary depended on the other organ, the pineal gland.

From this we see how man has changed, and how, through obtaining a solid, definite shape, he has separated himself from the beings working on him from outside, who had made of him an instinctive being. All this gives us a clearer idea of the processes in human evolution which led at length to that condition when, in the middle of the Atlantean epoch he was sufficiently matured for the outer world to influence him through his sense organs, and he reached a position where he could form an opinion of the outer world. Up till that time judgment had flowed into him from without. What we might call a kind of thinking flowed into him, somewhat as is the case with animals today. We have to bear in mind that humanity progressed irregularly, one portion entered into a condition of hardening earlier, another later, and we have already seen the various kinds of human forms that developed. We saw how certain human beings became stunted in their development by allowing this hardening process to take place too soon, by assuming some particular shape too soon, and how through this different races developed. Only those people, who migrated from their homes in the neighbourhood of Ireland were really mature enough to be receptive of what the earth had to offer to their outward sight; and as they traveled from the West to the East they populated the various countries they passed through in which remnants of those people were found who had gone by other paths. With these they mingled, and from this union the various civilizations originated, while from those who were most backward when migration took place has sprung the European civilizations.

In order to complete our preliminary studies we must first glance into the mighty cosmos and then at the earth itself. We have explained man's evolution in connection with the animals, and shown how he thrust them from him and left them behind at an earlier stage of evolution. There is, of course, a great difference in animals; between the higher and the lower forms there is a certain boundary in development that is of importance.

Remember that as man evolved he gradually thrust aside the animal forms, and that he had only a very fine etheric form at the time when earth and sun were still united. When these separated he thrust from him certain animal forms, and these have remained behind at the stage in evolution which corresponds to the time when the sun was still within the earth. From these entirely different forms have naturally arisen in the course of time, for we are here concerned with a very long after-development. Were we to select a characteristic form which is still to be found today, and which may in some way be compared with those which remained behind when the earth was thrust away by the sun, we must select the form of the fish. This is the form which remained over when the earth was thrown, as it were, on its own resources; it is that which still has within it the last echo of the Sun-Forces. Let us keep this moment before us. There were quite other beings which were more of a plant-like nature, but with these we shall not deal at present.

The beings who represented the first material construction of the human form at the time of the sun's departure have undergone manifold changes, but in fishes is preserved that which reminds us of our separation from the sun; reminds us that at one time we belonged to the sun.

The sun departed from the earth and began to influence it from outside, and it also influenced the earth-man; gradually alternating conditions of consciousness developed—those of waking and sleeping. Gradually the condition developed in which man was more united with his ego and also with his higher principles (his etheric and astral body), and this condition alternated with another in which the astral body withdrew from the physical body. This condition is still preserved today in the alternation between waking and sleeping. Let us for a while study this alternating condition. We all know it, for it belongs to the most elementary teaching of Anthroposophy; we know that when man is awake there is a regular connection between his physical, etheric, and astral bodies, and his ego. When he is asleep the astral body and the ego withdraw from the physical and etheric body.

In the very early epoch with which we have been dealing the ego was not yet present, and in its place part of the etheric body withdrew; this condition may be compared with that of sleep. Now we must clearly understand that when man leaves the physical and etheric body behind on the bed he really bestows on them the value of a plant. Plants have a sleep-consciousness; so has man's physical and etheric body during sleep. But at the present time during sleep the astral body and ego of the normal man have also a kind of vegetable consciousness, for he is not aware of his environment. This was different in olden times, for then when the astral body and ego withdrew the man was dimly conscious of the spiritual world which was around him.

We can now form an idea of another important fact which came to pass through the sun separating from the earth. Before this took place the whole man, as regards his physical, etheric, and astral bodies, was under the influence and the control of the material and spiritual Sun-Forces, but after it depended upon the sun's position; it depended on whether the man in regard to his physical, etheric, and astral bodies came under the sun's influence, and whether it shone on him directly or not. We may now ask: Was there not at this epoch another influence coming from the sun?

Yes; at the time when no physical eye had as yet seen the sun, when the sun did not as yet penetrate the dense atmosphere of the earth, man's etheric and astral body (when outside the physical body) received important influences from the Spiritual Forces proceeding from the sun. He was unable to perceive these influences, for he was not mature enough, but later he became able to do so through receiving a force which enabled him to see that which came to him spiritually from the sun.

What was this event which made man capable of perceiving the forces which dwelt in the sun, those very exalted forces which had to leave the earth and unite themselves with the sun? When did this perception come to him? Gradually these forces streamed into the earth, and the most important point of time, that into which the whole thing resolves itself, was when man received full power to assimilate not only the physical forces, but also the spiritual forces of the sun in full consciousness. This was the moment of Christ's coming to the earth.

One might say therefore: There was a time when man was separated physically from the sun. Among animals the fish directs our thoughts to this time, for it recalls the condition of man before he was obliged to be separated from the sun. Then came the time when the higher forces whose leader is Christ—the great Sun-Spirit—left the earth; after which man gradually matured until able to receive these higher forces in the same way he received the physical Sun-Forces from outside. Inward spiritual power had to appear on earth as a fact, just as earlier the physical sun forces had appeared.

Of what was it the duty of Initiates to remind man when Christ appeared? They had to remind him of his ancient home on the Sun, and the symbol used for this was the symbol of the fish. This is why the fish appears in the catacombs as a true symbol connected with the evolution of humanity, and the disciples of the early centuries, seeing the fish symbol everywhere, received the words of the Initiates which rang in their ears with deep emotion, for spiritually it led them to the inward holiness of the story of Palestine, and at the same time led them forth cosmically into the mighty evolutionary phases of the earth.

Such things as these were studied in the schools of the Initiates, and in outward symbols like that of the fish, which were to be found in many places, we have an expression of these mysteries, just as geologists see in the fossils of plants tokens of a primeval past. But just as the impress of a fossil points to an original reality, so the symbol of the fish is a token of that which was cultivated within the mysteries.

This symbol did not appear suddenly. Long before the coming of Christ the Prophets of the Messiah had directed their pupils to His coming, and everywhere, back to the time of the Druidic Mysteries, the fish symbol played its part.

To proceed: a time came when the moon separated from the earth; previously the earth and the moon had formed one body. Then the threefold formation—sun, moon, and earth—came into being. Mighty were the natural catastrophes which then took place; events were of a very stormy nature. The physical part of man was not then at a very high stage of development, and he left it behind him as an ossified type.

In order to understand this we must keep one thing in mind: when the sun separated from the earth, the earth went back in development, it degenerated; and only after the moon withdrew with the worst constituents did improvement again take place. There was, therefore, for some time an ascending development until the departure of the sun; then a descending one, when everything became worse, more grotesque; then, after the moon withdrew, a re-ascending development again.

From this stage of evolution we have also a form which has degenerated, and which does not by any means appear now as it did then, but it exists; it is the form which belonged to man before the moon withdrew, before he had an ego. The animal form which recalls the lowest stage of earthly devilment, the time when man plunged most deeply into passions and when his astral body was susceptible to the worst external influences, is that of the serpent, a creature in which is preserved the shameful depths of our evolution on this planet, although what we see now has degenerated still further. The symbol of the serpent is also derived from evolution; it has not been thought out, but is rooted in the depth of things.

Fish and snake symbols are derived from the mysteries of our evolution. It is quite natural for a person to experience a feeling of pleasure when he sees the glistening body of a fish in the pure, chaste watery element; it gives him a feeling of peace; just as to those of a pure disposition it gives a feeling of horror to see a creeping snake. Such feelings are by no means meaningless memories of things once passed through. Man likes to see the wonderful living sunny form of a fish in water; he recalls his former innocence when as yet he possessed no ego, but was directed by the best Spirits in evolution; and it is a fact that he remembers the most horrible period in evolution, the time when he was near to falling out of evolution, when a crawling snake approaches him.

One can now understand the unconscious experiences of the human soul which are so puzzling to us, and which appear with such vividness when man is unaffected by culture, when we realize that the feelings we thus experience are connected with cosmic facts. Through this knowledge many things are made clear. Man can certainly overcome his fear of snakes, but this is by culture; but the fundamental feeling of repulsion is in his soul, and it points us back to the ancient times of which I am speaking. They were times when man was physically at the snake stage, when those elemental Beings set to work of whom we said that they prepared man for freedom, prepared him to receive the Christ in His full meaning and grandeur.

We now ask: Who were the elemental Beings who helped man not to sink into the depths? They are those mentioned in the last lecture, those who worked on him when he had descended to the depths, and who led him again to the heights—the Luciferic beings. The Sun-Spirits did not yet work upon him, but those beings did who sacrificed themselves. They moved among the people of the earth in a very remarkable way. Outwardly they had a certain human form, for even the highest spirits have to incarnate in forms which are to be found on earth, so these Beings took upon them the external shape that was man's at that time. They said: In form we are similar to man, but our true home is not on the earth; it is upon the two intermediate planets, Venus and Mercury. The best part of their souls were on these planets, but their outward form, which in fact was a kind of illusion, was on earth.

They gave to man what he needed, namely, guidance and teaching, for the reason that their home was not on earth, which was the first planet to be formed, but upon Venus and Mercury. These beings must be described as the first teachers, the first Initiates of humanity; outwardly they resembled the human beings of that time, but inwardly they possessed lofty and important qualities enabling them to work upon humanity as a whole, and also to work on the more advanced individuals in special schools, which were the first Mystery schools. There were always some of these more advanced individuals who had their home in the stars and who, although connected with the stars, had a human shape and walked among men.

Man himself continued to progress, and now passed on into the middle of the Atlantean epoch; the present human form only began to develop during the first half of that epoch; only then did man begin to feel fully at home in it.

Now, there were some beings in those ancient times who were very low down in the scale of humanity; these became the backward races; there were others who kept themselves plastic; and, again, others who only occasionally inhabited human bodies. What I am now about to describe happened very frequently in the first part of the Atlantean epoch. Imagine a man of that time who for an Atlantean was highly evolved; through certain procedures it frequently happened that such a man was caused to separate his physical body (which was then very plastic) and his etheric and astral bodies from his more spiritual parts, which then withdrew more into the spiritual world so as later to take on another body.

It very frequently happened that, long before the physical, etheric and astral bodies were ready to die, they were willingly vacated by their soul and spirit-principles. These, when they had belonged to especially exalted individuals, were pure and good bodies. Highly spiritual beings then let themselves descend into these bodies; and so it frequently happened during the ancient Atlantean epoch that beings who were otherwise unable to incarnate on earth made use of such advanced bodies in order to descend among men. These were the beings who acted as great teachers in the Atlantean schools of initiation. They worked powerfully with the means available at that time.

When at that time man left his physical body at night he had what may be called a dim clairvoyant consciousness; during the day the outline of objects was still indistinct, and there was no such clearly defined difference between the conditions of sleeping and waking as exists today. It happened, therefore, that the ordinary man beheld such an individual as I have described in an alternating manner—by day he saw him like a man, but at night he saw him quite otherwise, in a spiritual soul-like way, though he knew it was the same being who appeared to him by day in a physical body. These were beings belonging to Venus and Mercury who interposed into human existence and were with man day and night. The remembrance of these beings remained in the souls who incarnated again and again among the peoples of Europe, and they recalled them when they uttered the names Wotan, Thor, etc.

When the inhabitants of ancient Europe spoke of the Gods they were no imaginary figures to them, but memories of forms seen in Atlantis. In the same way, when the Greeks spoke of Zeus, Apollo, and Ares these were forms they had themselves perceived during the Atlantean epoch. Whereas in the Egyptian age memories of ancient Lemuria arose, in the Grecian age memories of the earthly experiences on Atlantis rose within the souls of the people.

We must clearly understand that if everything contained in later religions was a memory of facts connected with the earth at an earlier age some very important event would have to take place when the last of these memories had appeared; this was about the time when the Greeks and Romans recalled the Atlantean epoch. This was also the time when the Christ brought an essentially new Impulse into evolution. We indicated the nature of this Impulse when we spoke about the long intermediate period of evolution in which Luciferic beings were preparing mankind, making him capable of receiving the Christ Impulse, so that the sun should not merely send down its force externally, but that inner forces should also stream into man from it. This period has not nearly come to an end; it is still in its beginning, for with the coming of Christ only the first impulse was given for the inwardly spiritual part of the sun to stream to earth in addition to the physical sunlight. Ever stronger will that light become, which as Spiritual Sunlight, or Christ-light, will irradiate mankind from within as the physical sunlight illuminates him from without.

It will come to pass in the future that man will look upon the sun, not only with his external eyes perceiving its glory, but he will also experience the spiritual side of the sun in his inner being. Only when he is in a position to do this will he fully understand what really dwelt on earth as the Being whom we call Christ Jesus. Only slowly and gradually will man come to an understanding of this; and just as truly as in pre-Christian times he had to understand the pronouncements of those spiritual beings who guided man when he contracted in his descent into the physical world, so by a truly spiritual effort he must henceforth try to understand the Spiritual Power which at one time went forth from the earth with the sun. Man must be able to receive this Power again as an inner spiritual force; he must comprehend this Christ power—this Spiritual power which imparts to him the great impulse for the future.

The object of spiritual science, and of all that can be acquired as spiritual teaching, is to enable us to comprehend this Power of Christ. One cannot say that Anthroposophy is Christianity, but one can say that what has been given to man and to the earth by the Christ Principle will be gradually made comprehensible through the instrumentality of Anthroposophy. When that mighty Impulse is understood it will pour into humanity more and more, for man has need of it in order that, after having contracted and sunk most deeply into matter, he may once more tear himself free and turn again to his spiritual home.

[ 1 ] This course of lectures will take us into the high spiritual regions we shall be led from the earth, where we live, not only into the wide physical spaces of our universe, but also be uplifted to those spiritual worlds, from which this whole physical universe has derived its origin.

Such a course will show us, that the fundamental object of all knowledge and all wisdom is to solve the greatest problem of all — the problem of humanity. In order to make the human being understandable, explanatory facts have to be brought from far away. Above all it is necessary that those who wish to follow this course should be acquainted with the fundamental conceptions of Anthroposophy; although it is true that all Anthroposophists are acquainted with them in a general way. In these lectures we may rise in spirit to very exalted spheres, but we shall always endeavour to bring those facts which lie so far afield near to you and make them as comprehensible as possible.

[ 2 ] When we have to speak of what we call the Spiritual Hierarchies, it means that our souls' gaze must rise to those beings who, in the sphere of our earth, have a higher existence than man. In the visible world we can only progress to beings that represent four degrees of one hierarchy, i.e., the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world and the human world. Above man begins a world of invisible beings, through the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and man is able (as far as it is possible for him) to rise a certain distance towards those beings and powers, which are the continuation in the invisible world of the four grades found within the realm of the earth. The knowledge and investigation which lead us into those regions has not, as you all know, come into existence only at our present time in evolution. There is what we may call a primeval world-wisdom; — all that man can fathom, all that he can know and realise, all that he has gained in ideas and conceptions, all that he has attained through clairvoyant imagination, inspiration, and intuition, — all has been lived before, and known before, by those Beings who are higher than he. He only follows so to say, in their track. To make use of a trivial example: the watchmaker has first the idea, then he makes the watch according to the idea. A watch is made after the maker's ideas which preceded the watch; afterwards everyone can study and observe for himself from what ideas the watch was made, he can follow up the thoughts of the watchmaker. At the present point of evolution it is indeed only this kind of connection that man can have with primeval world-wisdom and with the spiritual beings that stand above him. Spiritual beings had first those imaginations, inspirations, intuitions, those ideas and thoughts according to which the world, as we see it, was formed. Man finds these thoughts and ideas in the world again; when he rises to clairvoyant vision, he finds the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions, by the help of which he can penetrate into the world of those spiritual beings. We can, therefore, say that before our world came into being there already existed the wisdom of which we are going to speak: it is the Plan of the World.

[ 3 ] How far must we go back, while still remaining within the limits of reality, if we want to come into touch with that primeval world-wisdom? Must we go back to some time or other in the historical past, when some great teacher was teaching? We can certainly learn a great deal if we do; but to come into touch with true primeval world-wisdom we must go back to the time when there was no outwardly visible earth, when no world visible to the outer senses was as yet in existence. It was from out [of] that wisdom itself that the world came forth. But this wisdom, out of which spiritual beings formed our world, was imparted to man later. Man with his thoughts could see behind those thoughts, could realise the thoughts according to which spiritual beings have built the world. After this primeval wisdom, this wisdom of the creators of the world had worked through many forms, it appeared in a form known to many of you: after the great Atlantean period it appeared in those ancient, holy Rishis, the great teachers of India, during our first epoch of civilisation. [ 4 ] With these sublime Rishis the primeval wisdom expressed itself in a form which the man of the present day can but little understand. The human capacities of feeling and thinking have greatly changed since the times when the great teachers of India taught man in the first epoch of civilisation after Atlantis; and if the words which came from the Rishis were simply repeated as they were said, there would be hardly one soul in the whole earth who could hear anything more in them nowadays than just words and again words. One has need of other capabilities of feeling than those at present existing, in order to understand the wisdom which was given to humanity in the first epoch after Atlantis. For all that is found in the best books regarding primeval world-wisdom, is but a faint echo of what this really is which in many ways is but a deceptive, obscured wisdom. However grand and sublime the Vedas appear to us, however beautiful the songs of Zarathustra sound, and however magnificent the language in which the ancient wisdom of Egypt speaks, so that we can never sufficiently admire it; still, all that has been written down gives us but a dim, dull reflection of the wisdom of Hermes, of the grand teaching of Zarathustra, or of the sublime knowledge which the Ancient Rishis proclaimed. This sublime wisdom has been preserved and guarded for humanity; it was always to be found in certain very limited circles of people who watched over what is called the knowledge of the Mysteries. In the Mysteries of India, Persia, Chaldea, Egypt, and in the Christian Mysteries, all the primeval wisdom of humanity has been safely preserved up to our times. Up to a short time ago it was only in those narrow circles, that not book-wisdom, but living wisdom, could be found. For certain reasons which will be made clear in this course of lectures, our time has been chosen for extending to larger masses of people that which has been kept alive by those little groups. The original wisdom of the Rishis, for instance, has never lost life. It permeated, like the fountain of youth, the age which we regard as the beginning of our era. The very holy wisdom which the Rishis gave to man was continued through Zarathustra and his pupils, through the Chaldean and Egyptian teachers. It also flowed in the words of Moses, and it came forth again with. an altogether new impulse, as from the fountain of life, with the appearance of the Christ upon earth. It then became so deep, so intrinsically internal, that it could only gradually flow again into humanity. Thus we see that since the outward declaration of Christianity, the primeval world wisdom has penetrated but slowly and gradually into humanity from most elementary beginnings. [ 5 ] Its messages are there, they are to be found in the Gospels and in other Christian writings which include the wisdom of the holy Rishis, in a new form; like a new birth out of a new fountain. But how could these messages be understood at the beginning of the era for whose purification Christianity had been created? Through the Gospels it was least of all understood; they only attained very gradually to further comprehension and in many ways to a still further obscuration, and to-day the Gospels are, in truth, the most sealed of all books for the larger part of humanity — books which will only be first understood by a future age which will have refreshed itself at the source of the original world-wisdom. But the treasures hidden in the Christian revelation have been preserved, treasures no other than those of the Eastern wisdom, but renewed by means of fresh forces They have been guarded in narrow circles which were the continuation of Mystery Societies, like the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, and finally in the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. These treasures of truth have been kept well hidden and have been accessible only to those who through severe trials had prepared themselves for the living wisdom. Thus the treasures of the Eastern and Western wisdom, through all the centuries of evolution from the beginning of our era, were made almost inaccessible to the larger mass of humanity.

[ 1 ] Only a little trickled through here and there to the outer world: the most part remained a secret of the new Mysteries. [ 6 ] Then came a time when some of the contents of primeval wisdom, treasured in narrow circles, was allowed to be given out to larger masses of humanity in a language comprehensible to them. Since the last third of the nineteenth century or thereabouts one can speak of this world wisdom in a more or less unveiled form. It is only because certain things have taken place in the spiritual worlds that the Guardians of the Mysteries received permission to allow some of the ancient wisdom to penetrate to the outer world. All of you, my dear friends, know the course of development of the Anthroposophical Society. You know how the ice in which its development was bound was, so to say, broken by those words of wisdom, revealed in a way which I am not going to enter into now — the stanzas of Dzyan. Those stanzas of Dzyan, of the secret teaching, contain in truth some of the deepest and most important wisdom; they have in them much of that which coming from the teaching of the holy Rishis has flowed through the sanctuaries of the East. They contain also much of what has streamed into Western Europe since the Christian rejuvenation. For the stanzas of Dzyan do not include only the wisdom which had to be kept exclusively for the East, but also a great deal of that which streamed as a clear light through the centuries of our time, through the Middle Ages into the Mystery Schools of the West. Much that is to be found in the stanzas of Dzyan will only be gradually understood in all its depth. It may well be said here that the wisdom of the stanzas of Dzyan is of such a kind that it cannot yet be understood in the widest anthroposophical circles, or fathomed with the exoteric capabilities of the present day.

[ 7 ] After the first ice had been broken in this way, the time came when one could speak more openly from the sources of Western occultism, which is no other than the occultism of the East transplanted and continued in a way that has adapted itself to new circumstances and conditions of physical and spiritual life.

The time has come when one can speak from those ever living sources of occultism which have been faithfully treasured in the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross. There is no wisdom of the East which has not streamed into Western occultism and into the teaching and investigations of the Rosy Cross; in them is to be found absolutely all that the great teachers of the East ever had in their keeping. Nothing, nothing whatever of that which is to be found in the Eastern wisdom is lacking in the wisdom of the West. The only difference — if it can be called a difference — is that Western occultism has to include the whole of the Eastern wisdom and teaching and, without losing anything, to blend it with the light which has been kindled in humanity through the Christ Impulse. When one speaks of Western occultism, of that which has its derivation from the hidden Western Rishis (whom certainly no eye hath seen) it is impossible to say that in it is wanting one single iota, one single shred of the Eastern wisdom. Only it had all to be brought forth again fresh and new from the fountain-head of the Christ Impulse. All the great treasures of wisdom which were first revealed by the holy Rishis regarding superhuman worlds and super-sensible existence, resound in the description we have to give of the spiritual hierarchies and their reflection in the physical world. Just as the geometry of Euclid has not become something different from what it used to be, because one teaches and learns it with new human capabilities, just as little has the wisdom of the holy Rishis changed because we learn and teach it with the new capabilities which have been kindled in us by the Christ Impulse. Therefore much of what we have to say about the spiritual worlds can be called Eastern wisdom. There must not be any misunderstanding in these things — and misunderstandings happen so easily. [ 8 ] Those who will not free themselves of a misconception, in order to come to understanding, can very easily misinterpret what, for instance, was said yesterday at the Easter lecture. They might assert about the so-called truths of Buddha, that I had said that the Buddha had taught and revealed the truths about life and life's pain as follows: ‘birth is pain, illness is pain, old age is pain, death is pain; to be separated from those one loves is pain, not to be united with what one loves is pain, not to have what one desires is pain’ and that I said: ‘Let us look at those who, in the times after Christ, really understood the Christ Impulse; for all the holy truths of the Buddha about the pain of life have no more their full importance; something has been created by the Christ Impulse that is like a cure for the pain of life.’ The Buddha taught: ‘Birth is pain’; but those who understood the Christ would answer that through birth we enter into a life shared with the Christ, and through the Christ's share in it the pain of life will be extinguished. Illness will also be extinguished through the healing power of the Christ Impulse, and there is no more pain in illness for one who understands Christ, and death also has no more pain for him who understands Christ. Yet someone might reply to this ‘Yes, but I could point to the Gospels to show that also there you will find it said that illness is pain, life is pain’: and one might superficially come to the conclusion: ‘We have those modern religious documents, but what they contain can also be found in Buddhism, therefore religions are not making progress, there is no evolution in them. All religions say the same things, but you have spoken of a progress, you expounded to us how, with the help of Christianity, the old truths of Buddhism would not be true any more.’ If anyone were to say this he would be guilty of a very serious misunderstanding. For that was not said: everything indeed was said with the exception of the last sentence. It is very important that this very subtle question should be rightly understood. A fanatic can never understand with precision, but a man who is objective can. [ 9 ] No one who speaks with knowledge of Rosicrucian wisdom will ever expound anything that would be against any of the writings of the great Buddha, or say that anything in them is untrue. Every man who speaks from the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom shares the conviction of Buddha, no one denies it. ‘Yes,’ such a man says, ‘what thou, great Buddha, through thy inner illumination, hast seen of the great truths about pain and life is exactly true, it is true to its last iota.’ Nothing, absolutely nothing will be taken away from it. All of it remains as it was. And it is just because all of it remains as it was, because all is true of what the Buddha said about the pain of life, of illness, of old age and of death, just because of this, the Christ Impulse is such a powerful and important saving help to us, for it is just this which lifts the pain, because it is true that pain would be there, if the world could not be lifted beyond and above it through that great Impulse. Why could the Christ work effectively? Because the Buddha had spoken the truth. Humanity had to be brought down out of the spiritual heights where the primeval world wisdom is active in its purest form; man had to be led to independence, through physical existence with which life's pain and illness are bound up, and the great healing help had to oppose those unavoidable facts in the course of further evolution. Does that man deny the reality of facts who, while declaring that these realities exist, holds at the same time that remedy has been given us by which the facts, about which those truths have been said, can be brought to a salutary development; does he who says this deny any existing reality? Oh! in those heights of existence where we must look for the spheres of the spiritual hierarchies — there Buddhism is not opposed to Christianity, nor Christianity to Buddhism; there the Buddha gives his hand to the Christ, and the Christ to the Buddha. But every misconception regarding human evolution, every misconception as to its ascending development, is a misconception also of that spiritual act in our earthly evolution which is the Act of Christ.

Thus nothing is denied. of the wisdom of the East, the wisdom which has brought down to us the teaching of the holy Rishis, and with it the primeval world-wisdom, which through such long epochs of time has ever been streaming into humanity. But, all through those very long epochs, large masses of humanity could not penetrate to the sources of that wisdom, could only understand it with great difficulty; it was precisely the understanding of it which came with such difficulty. [ 10 ] In ancient Atlantean times, before the great catastrophe, when the masses of humanity were still clairvoyant with the thin ancient clairvoyance, they beheld something quite different when they looked upwards to the spaces of heaven, to the spiritual hierarchies, from what they saw in the times after Atlantis when the larger part of humanity had lost its clairvoyance and so could gaze only with its physical eyes into the physical distances of the heavens. Therefore, in the times before the Atlantean catastrophe, it would have been quite senseless to speak to them of the heavenly bodies spread out in space as they are to-day. The clairvoyant human eye gazed into heavenly distance and saw the spiritual worlds. In those times there would have been no sense in speaking of Mercury or of Neptune or of Saturn, etc., as our astronomy speaks. The way astronomy speaks of the spaces of the world and what they contain is merely a reflection of what is seen by our own physical sight when it looks into depths of the sky. This did not exist for the ancient clairvoyant humanity of Atlantis; when they looked upwards, they did not see physically-limited stars, what the physical eye sees to-day is but the outer physical expression of the spiritual realities which people then beheld. When looking to-day with one's physical eye through a telescope at the place where Jupiter is, one perceives a physical globe surrounded by moons. What was seen by the man of Atlantis when he lifted his clairvoyant gaze to that same point which we look at to-day with our physical eyes? The Atlantean's eyes would have seen as little of what our sight sees to-day, as we should if we looked at a light through a thick autumn fog. The eye of the Atlantean would not have seen the physical star Jupiter, but he would have seen that which is also united with Jupiter to-day, which the man of the present day does not see: the aura of Jupiter, a totality of spiritual beings, of which the physical Jupiter is only the external expression. Thus did the gaze of man, before the Atlantean catastrophe, sweep round the spaces of the world seeing everywhere its spiritual content. He could speak only of the spiritual, for it would have had no meaning to speak of physical stars, when the physical eye was not yet opened as it is to-day. Looking into the spaces of the universe man saw spiritual beings — the spiritual hierarchies. He actually saw beings. [ 11 ] We can compare the changes that took place with further evolution in this way: let us suppose that we are going out into a thick fog; we do not see separate lights, everything is surrounded by aura or fog. The fog lifts and disperses, the separate lights are visible, but their aura becomes invisible ... This is only a physical process which must serve for an example. But the ancient eye saw the aura of Jupiter, it saw spiritual beings in that aura which at certain points of their evolution were united to Jupiter. Humanity then developed further, to the attainment of physical sight. The aura remained: men could no longer see it, but the physical body in the centre became ever clearer and clearer, spiritually it was lost to sight as its corporeal part became visible. But the knowledge of the spiritual, the knowledge of the beings surrounding the star was kept and guarded in the holy Mysteries.

All the holy Rishis speak of that knowledge. In the times when men already saw only in a physical way, the Rishis spoke to them of the spiritual atmospheres, of the spiritual inhabitants of those spheres which are spread out in the spaces of the world.

[ 12 ] Consider what the situation then was. In the centres of knowledge, spiritual beings were spoken of which surround the spheres of the universe. Outside where the physical eye was growing always sharper, physical matter was spoken of more and more. When the Ancient Rishis said the word Mercury (they did not use that word, but we take it as an example), did they mean by it the physical orb of that name? No! — even the ancient Greeks did not use it in that sense; what they meant was the totality of spiritual beings belonging to that planet. Spiritual world and spiritual beings were spoken of when, in the centres of secret knowledge for instance, the word Mercury was pronounced. When the disciples of that sacred knowledge spoke of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn pronouncing these words in their different languages, they expressed the gradations of spiritual beings. When those names are used to-day, only the coarsest part is meant of that which was originally understood by Moon, Mercury, Venus. The principal part is just what is omitted to-day; the ancient teacher of wisdom said the word Moon and with that word he evoked the idea of a great spiritual world. When he, pronouncing the word ‘Moon’, pointed to the place in heaven where the moon was, he felt in his consciousness that it was the lowest stage of the spiritual hierarchies, but the man to whom he was showing it, who was getting ever further from that spiritual sight because humanity was growing more and more physical, saw only the physical moon, and called it ‘Moon.’

One single word for two things which, though they certainly belong to each other, call forth quite different ideas in man. It was the same when the sages of the sacred knowledge pointed to Mercury, Sun, or Mars. [ 13 ] Thus we see that the two currents grew always further apart in humanity, the spiritual one describing something quite different from the material current. In the sacred Mysteries these words — which later became the mere names of physical planets — were always understood as descriptions of spiritual worlds and gradations of spiritual realms. The outer world always understood it materially up to the time of modern Mythology — I use the word purposely — which is called Astronomy. And as Anthroposophy has recognised the full worth of all the other Mythologies, it has also, as you will understand, given full value to that Mythology which is called modern Astronomy, which sees only space and in it, the physical world-spheres as physical orbs. But to him who knows, modern Mythology is only a special phase of all Mythologies. What the ancient inhabitants of Europe said in their myths about gods and stars, what the Romans gave in their Mythologies, and what appeared as the obscured Mythology of the Middle Ages, lead up in a straight line to the wonderful and admirable discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. A future will come when modern Mythology will be spoken of somewhat in this way: ‘There was a time when people found it right to place a material sun as the middle point of an ellipse and let the planets rotate within it, and spin round themselves on their own axes in different ways; they arranged a world system in that way, as people of earlier times also did. To-day’ — so will that future age think — ‘all that is only legend and fairy tale.’ Yes, that future age will come, although the man of the present who laughs at former Mythologies thinks it impossible that one could ever speak of Copernican Mythology. But this consideration will make clear to us how through the same words something ever more different may be meant. In spite of this the true primeval wisdom has always been cultivated and has always continued; it has however always been less understood exoterically and its spiritual side less seen, the more it has been materially explained.

In the beginning of our era, when there was a rejuvenescence of primeval wisdom, (in order that humanity should not lose all touch with that ancient wisdom), it was said. in sharp, clear words, that when man looks at the outer space of the world and his physical eye sees only what is physical, the space is filled with spirit. It was the most intimate pupil of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, who said in clear-cut words: ‘There is not only matter out there in space; there is, for the soul which rises consciously into the spaces of universal existence, the spiritual part which stands above man in the evolution of existence.’ And he used words which sounded different from the old ones, for if he had used the old words everybody would have understood them in the material sense. The Rishis spoke of the spiritual hierarchies, they expressed in their language what the Greek and Roman wisdom still described when speaking of the ascending scale of worlds: of the Moon, of Mercury, Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Dionysius, the pupil of the Apostle Paul had the same worlds in his mind as the Rishis, he repeated in clear cut words that here one had to do with spiritual realms, and he used words which he could be certain would be understood in their spiritual sense: he spoke of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Powers, Mights, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. For now humanity had completely forgot what it once knew. Had it still been able to understand the connection between what Dionysius and the Rishis had seen, it would have grasped, while hearing on the one side of the Moon, and on the other side of the Mysteries of the Angels, that these were one and the same thing. It would have heard the word Mercury on the one hand and Archangel on the other, and would have known they were the same. The word ‘Archai’ spoken by the one, and ‘Venus’ by the other, were the same. And men. would have understood that with the words ‘Sun’ and ‘Powers’ the same worlds were meant. With the name ‘Mars’ they would have felt that they had to rise to the Mights (Dynamis). When they heard Jupiter mentioned, they would have known that it was the same as when in the school of Dionysius, Dominions were described. Saturn corresponds to ‘Thrones’; [ 14 ] but in wider circles this was not known any more, it could not be known. Thus there was on the one side a science of matter, which became ever more material, and the old names which once signified spiritual forces, were now used in a material sense. And on the other side, there was a spiritual life which spoke of Angels and Archangels, etc. which had lost its connection with the physical designations of these spiritual beings.

Thus we see how the primeval wisdom enters through Dionysius into the school which Paul had inaugurated, and how this new inauguration had to be penetrated by the ancient spirit. It is the task of modern Spiritual Science, or anthroposophy to form once more the bond which must unite the physical to the spiritual, the bond between the earth and the spiritual hierarchies. It is impossible for those who do not know where their ideas about the outer world of the senses come from, to realise the other, the spiritual side of knowledge. [ 15 ] This will be particularly noticeable when we have to deal with those writings which, although they are but a faint echo of the primeval cosmic wisdom, can still be understood in the light of that wisdom.

Let me show you an example of the difficulty there is in understanding writings which come down to us from that primeval wisdom. It is an example out of the Song Celestial, the Bhagavad Gita, where a sentence throws a very significant light on the connection between human life and the hierarchies. It is the following: (8th Chap. beginning with 23rd verse) ‘I will explain unto thee, oh man seeking for truth’ (it is thus generally translated) ‘under what circumstances those who know the Eternal leave the earth through the gate of death, to be later reborn or not. I will tell thee: Behold the fire, behold the day, behold the time of the waning moon, behold the half year when the sun is high — those who die at that time, who die in fire, in the day, in the time of the waxing moon, those enter through the gates of death into Brahma, but those who die in the sign of the smoke, in the night, when the moon is waning, in the half year when the sun stands low, these when they leave the world and pass through the gates of death enter only into the light of the moon, and return again to the world.’ [ 16 ] Here you have, my dear anthroposophical friends, a sentence from the Bhagavad Gita, in which it says that the condition of man's progress and of his reincarnation depends on whether he dies in the sign of the light, by day, with the waxing moon, during the half year when the sun stands high, or whether he dies in the sign of the smoke, by night, when the moon wanes and when the sun is low. It is said that this refers to the material sun. Of those who die in the sign of the fire by day, with the moon waxing, and during that half of the year when the sun is high, it is said that they do not need to return. Those who die in the sign of the smoke, by night, with the moon waning, and when the sun is low, must return into the world. This sentence out of the divine song of the East presents the greatest difficulty to all those who want to explain it within the limits of exoteric life. It can be explained only when it is illuminated by the light of spiritual knowledge, by the light in which it was received and written, the light which streams out of the Mystery schools, which can be increased. which has known its rejuvenescence through Christianity and which shows us how to find the link which binds the names Moon to Angels, Mercury to Archangels, Venus to the Archai and so on. With its help we shall find the key to such sentences as the one we gave as an example. Our course of studies will start from the explanation of this sentence in the Bhagavad Gita, a thing which is impossible in exoteric life; and after we have found the key to it, we shall pass on to further explanations of the spiritual hierarchies.

In the lecture yesterday we heard that man spends the first period of his life between death and a new birth in the Moon sphere, preparing the forces that will eventually take effect in his karma. In the Moon sphere he encounters Beings who were once together with him on the Earth as the great primeval Teachers of humanity. These are the Beings with whom he comes into contact almost immediately after death; he also comes into contact with the Hierarchy of Beings to whom the book Occult Science: An Outline refers as the Angeloi. The Angeloi have never been inhabitants of the Earth in the literal sense; they have never borne earthly bodies, nor even etheric bodies resembling those of men. The etheric bodies of the other Moon Beings of whom I spoke were not altogether dissimilar from those of men, but those Beings did not incarnate in physical bodies.

The Angeloi are the Beings who in the present period of our cosmic evolution guide us from one earthly life to another, and it is from the Moon sphere that they guide us. We have heard how in this same sphere the human being lays the foundations of his karma, gathers into himself the impulses which will bring about its ultimate fulfilment. But whatever has passed with a man through the gate of death as the result of unrighteous deeds, deeds which cannot be tolerated by the spiritual worlds—all this ‘bad’ karma, if I may so express it, must be left behind in the Moon sphere. For as he moves onwards through his life between death and a new birth, a man could not be encumbered with the consequences and effects of his unrighteous deeds. When he passes beyond the Moon sphere his inner life has expanded into a still wider region of the Cosmos, and he enters the Mercury sphere. Here he lives, primarily, in communion with the Beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. In all these realms, of course, he is in contact with human souls who have also passed through the gate of death. In the Moon sphere, these are the third class of beings among whom he lives—they are disembodied human souls who, like himself, have passed through the gate of death. We shall presently see why the spiritual effects of the bad karma must remain behind in the Moon sphere. For the moment, the fact itself will suffice.

When man enters the Mercury sphere, he undergoes further purification. Even when he has laid aside in the Moon sphere those moral attributes which are unfit for the Cosmos, the spiritual counterparts of his physical weaknesses, of his physical infirmities, still remain with him, as do the tendencies to illness and the effects of the illnesses from which he suffered here on Earth. Surprising as it may seem, it is the case that in the life between death and a new birth, man lays aside his moral failings first and his physical infirmities only later, when he enters the Mercury sphere. In the Mercury sphere his soul is purged of the inner effects of those morbid processes which came to expression in illness during his life on Earth and in his soul he becomes completely healthy. You must remember that man is a single whole. From the occult standpoint it is erroneous to speak of him as a compound of spirit, soul and body. He is not a compound of these three constituents, but when we observe him he is revealed on the one side as body, on the other as spirit, and between body and spirit, as soul. In reality, man is one whole, a self-contained unity. The soul and the spirit too are involved in the conditions which prevail in illness. And when man has laid aside the physical body at death, the effects of the experiences resulting from the disease-processes are, to begin with, still present in his soul. But in the Mercury sphere these effects are obliterated under the influences of the Beings we know as the Archangeloi.

You see, therefore, that having passed stage by stage through the Moon sphere and the Mercury sphere, man becomes a being from whom moral and physical weaknesses have been removed. Then—after the lapse of many decades—he enters the Venus sphere and there, as one who has lived through the spheres of Moon and Mercury, he is ready to pass from the Venus sphere into the Sun sphere where the longest period of life between death and a new birth is spent. The indications I am giving will show you how well-founded were the practices of those ancient Mysteries where men acted out of wisdom which, although it was an instinctive wisdom, was the outcome of wonderful powers of clairvoyance. In those olden times it would have been unthinkable to study medicine, for example, in the way that is customary nowadays. What happens now is that the purely physical symptoms of disease are observed and efforts are made to discover ameliorative measures by dissecting the corpse and observing the changes in evidence there, as compared with those which take place in the normal, living organism—and so forth. Such procedure would have been regarded as futile in the days of the ancient Mystery-wisdom when it was known that illumination leading to the healing of illness must come from the Beings of the Mercury sphere. For it was known that only if illumination proceeds from the whole nexus of cosmic processes can a man be healed fundamentally. The description of the Oracle of the Mercury Mysteries given from a different point of view in the book Occult Science indicates the nature of the practices in these Mysteries which were dedicated primarily to the ancient Art of Healing.

In the lecture yesterday we heard of the great primeval Teachers who were once together with men on Earth; wherever human beings dwelt, these Teachers were among them, peopling the etheric sphere of the Earth as a kind of second race. But in their dim, dreamlike consciousness men were aware that other Beings too came down among them, Beings whose abode has never been on the Earth. What has to be said about these things will of course seem not only paradoxical but sheer nonsense to the modern mind with its devotion to materialistic science. Nevertheless this ‘nonsense’ is the truth. The sages in the ancient Mysteries knew well that illumination on the processes of healing can be given only by the super-sensible Mercury Beings. And so through the sacred rites enacted in these Mysteries, spiritual Beings were able to come down from the Mercury sphere to the altars in the sanctuaries where the priests of the Mysteries conversed with them. The Beings who thus descended to the altars were known in the Mysteries simply as the God Mercury. The influence was the same, although it was not necessarily the same Being who descended on every occasion. Men's attitude to this sacred medicine in olden times was such that they said: the Art of Healing has been imparted by the God Mercury to his priest-healers.

Even to-day it cannot be said that Spiritual Science does not depend upon the help of Beings of the Cosmos who, when the necessary preparation has been made by Initiates, are able to come down to the Earth. Initiates of the Mystery-wisdom belonging to the modern age know well how much depends upon the possibility of conversing with Beings of the Cosmos. But the mentality prevailing to-day is utterly different from that of olden times. A doctor nowadays is one upon whom some University has conferred a medical degree, whereas in days of antiquity a doctor was one who had conversed with the God Mercury. But as time went on this converse took place no longer and only traditions remained of what was once achieved in the Mysteries when the priest-healers had conversed with the God.

In the Venus sphere it is a matter of leading over into the Sun sphere whatever still remains of the human being when his tendencies to unrighteousness and to illness have been eliminated. To understand this we must think of something that is characteristic of man. Here on Earth a man is always one whole, one undivided whole. Only if he is executed for some terrible crime is he no longer a single whole in respect of the physical body. However severe the punishment he may receive for lesser transgressions, he is still one whole. But this is not the case with the soul-and-spiritual counterpart which has passed through the Moon sphere and the Mercury sphere. When as a being still possessed of soul and spirit in the super-sensible world after death, man has cast off the weaknesses due to the wrongdoings and to illnesses, he is in a certain sense no longer whole. For a man is one with his wrongdoings; his sinfulness is part of him. If someone were so utterly villainous as to possess no good qualities at all, his whole being would have to remain in the Moon sphere and he could make no further progress; for to the extent to which we are evil, to that extent we leave our own being behind in the Moon sphere. We are one with, identical with, what is evil in us according to the standards of the spiritual world. Therefore when we arrive in the Venus sphere, we have been mutilated in a certain respect. In the Venus sphere the element of purest Love prevails—purest Love in the spiritual sense; and it is this Cosmic Love that bears what now remains of the human being from the Venus sphere into the Sun existence.

There, in the Sun existence, man has to work in a very real way at the moulding and shaping of his karma. Now if our physicists were ever to reach the Sun they would be astonished, to say the least of it! For everything that men claim to have discovered about the Sun is at variance with the facts. The Sun is supposed to be a kind of globe filled with incandescent gas—but that is far from the truth. Let us take a rather commonplace illustration. If you have some Seltzer water in a glass you will have to look carefully if you want to see the actual water, for what you see are the bubbles in the water. These bubbles are less dense than the water itself and you see what is the less dense. And now, what about the Sun? When you look at the Sun you do not see it because it is a globe of densified, incandescent gas in empty space, as science alleges, but you see it because just at that place there is a condition of utmost rarefication.—And now you must get accustomed to an idea that is far from familiar.-

You look out into space—I am not going to speak now about the nature of space. Here, when you look into the water, there are bubbles everywhere—bubbles which are thinner, less dense than the water. Where the Sun stands in the sky, conditions are less dense even than space. You will say: ‘but space itself is void, it is nullity.’ Nevertheless at the place where the Sun is situated there is actually less than nullity. It should not be difficult, especially in these days, for people to think of something else that is less than nothing. If there were originally five shillings in my pocket and I spend them one by one, in the end I have nothing. But when I get into debt I have less than nothing—which is the plight of a good many people to-day! Very well, then: where there is space, space alone, there is nothing; but where the Sun is there is less than nothing, there is a lacuna in space—and there dwell the spiritual Beings referred to in the book Occult Science as the Exousiai, the Dynamis, the Kyriotetes. There they have their abode, sending their own essence and power through all creation. Among them man spends the greater part of his life between death and a new birth. In association with the Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, with human souls karmically connected with him who have also passed through the gate of death, and with yet other Beings whose existence is hardly even conjectured, the karma for the next earthly life is worked out and formulated. Conditions in this Sun region are not as they are on Earth. Why do our clever scientists—and clever they certainly are—picture the Sun as a globe of incandescent gas? It is because a certain illusory, materialistic instinct makes them want to detect physical processes in the Sun. But there is nothing physical in the Sun. One may at most speak of physical processes in the Sun's corona, but certainly not in the Sun itself. In the Sun there is nothing like natural law, for it is a world of purest spirit. Materialists would like to insist that the Sun too is under the sway of natural law, but it is not so. The only laws prevailing in the Sun are those which give effect to the karmic consequences of the Good and which operate in restoring the mutilation man has undergone as the result of his ‘bad’ karma when he has been transported by the Love of the Venus Beings into the Sun sphere. When the life of man between death and a new birth is described many will wonder how this very lengthy period is spent. Many things that happen on the Earth command admiration and awe, but the most sublime achievements of earthly civilisation are puny and insignificant in comparison with what is accomplished in a purely spiritual way during this Sun existence, when mighty Powers are all around and within us, working to the end that our karma shall take effect in the next earthly life.

The elaboration of part of man's karma is completed in the Venus sphere, and some part even in the Mercury sphere. Later on we shall hear of a certain well-known historical personality whose destiny in his incarnation in the nineteenth century was due to the fact that his karma was very largely wrought out in the spheres of Venus and Mercury. Souls who begin to give shape to their karma in these spheres often become personalities of outstanding significance in the subsequent incarnation. But in the great majority of cases the main part of the karma for the following earthly life is worked out in the Sun sphere, where the longest period is spent. We will speak in greater detail later on but to-day I will give an outline of how the foundations of karma are laid, stage by stage, in the various spheres. In order not to be confused by other descriptions I have given of the life between death and a new birth, you must be clear that in moving through these spheres man enters into entirely different conditions of cosmic existence. When the time comes for him to enter the Mars sphere, he is still not altogether outside the Sun sphere, for the influences of the Sun are still active in this part of the Cosmos which was once cast off by the Earth. In the Sun sphere, man is concerned only with his moral qualities and with those attributes of his being which have remained healthy; the rest has been laid aside. It persists in him as a kind of incompleteness but this is made good in the Sun sphere. During the first half of existence in the Sun sphere we are engaged in making preparation for the appropriate physical organisation of the next earthly body. During the second half of the Sun existence, in union with the Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and with human souls karmically connected with us, we are concerned with the preparation of the moral side of karma, the moral qualities which will then be present in the next life. But this moral part and the spiritual part of karma—for example, specific talents in one direction or another—are then further elaborated in the Mars sphere, in the Jupiter sphere and in the Saturn sphere. And in passing through these spheres we come to know what the ‘physical’ stars are in reality.

To speak of a ‘physical’ star is not really correct. For what is a star? Physicists imagine that combustion of gas or some process of the kind is taking place in the sky. But as I said, if they could actually get there they would be amazed to find no burning gas in the Sun but actually a lacuna, a gap in space, in a condition infinitely more rarefied than any particles of earthly matter could ever be. Everything is Spirit, pure Spirit. Nor are the other stars so many bodies of incandescent, burning gas, but something entirely different. Bordering on this Earth with its physical substances and physical forces, is the universal Cosmic Ether. We are able to perceive the Cosmic Ether because, as we gaze into it, our field of vision is circumscribed and the surrounding ether appears blue. But to believe as materialistic thinkers do, that physical substances are roaming around up there in the Cosmos is just childish fancy. No physical substances are moving around, for at the place where a star is seen, there is something altogether different. The farthest reaches of the etheric would lead out of and beyond space, into the spheres where the Gods have their abode. And now picture to yourselves a certain inner relationship which may exist between one person and another and comes to physical expression. Picture it quite graphically. You are caressed by someone who loves you. You feel the caress but it would be childish to associate it in any way with physical matter. The caress is not matter at all, it is a process, and you experience it inwardly, in your soul. So it is when we look outwards into the spheres of the Ether. The Gods in their love caress the world. But the caress lasts long, because the life of the Gods spans immense reaches of time. In very truth the stars are the expression of love in the Cosmic Ether; there is nothing physical about them. And from the cosmic aspect, to see a star means to feel a caress that has been prompted by love. To gaze at the stars is to become aware of the love proceeding from the divine-spiritual Beings. What we must learn to realise is that the stars are only the signs and tokens of the presence of the Gods in the Universe. Physical science has much to learn on its path from illusion to truth! But men will not achieve self-knowledge nor will they understand their own true being until this physical science has been transformed into a spiritual science of the worlds beyond the Earth. Science in its present form has meaning only for the Earth, for physical matter in the real sense [The difference between physical and mineral matter must be remembered here.] exists only on the Earth. And so when we depart from the Earth at death, we enter more and more into a life of purely spiritual experiences. The reason why our physical life presents an entirely different aspect in these backward-streaming experiences which continue for a third of the length of earthly existence, is that we have been permeated with the essence and substance of the Moon sphere. The preparation of karma is one of the many things that have to be accomplished in the worlds of the stars.

In order that one set of facts may be supported by others, let me explain how such observations are made by one who is versed in modern Initiation Science. For some time now, even in public lectures, I have been describing how when a man develops the faculty of genuine super-sensible perception through the methods indicated in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, he looks back over his earthly life, seeing it as a kind of tableau. Everything is present simultaneously, in a mighty panorama of the whole of life since the birth of the ‘I’; but the several epochs are in a certain respect distinct from each other. We survey our experiences from birth until the change of teeth, then again, as one complete series, the experiences occurring between the time of the change of teeth and puberty, then the experiences of the period from puberty until the beginning of the twenties, and so forth. Further concentration and application of the methods for the attainment of spiritual knowledge enable us, as we survey this tableau, to observe, firstly, our life from birth to the seventh year. But later on these pictures are allowed to fade away and we see right through our life; when the consciousness has been emptied of all pictorial impressions and we have achieved Inspiration, we behold the living, weaving activity of the Moon sphere in place of the tableau of early childhood from birth until the seventh year. We behold this living, weaving activity. And so Initiation in the form that is normal and right for this present age brings us knowledge of the secrets of the Moon sphere, when the pictures of our own life up to the seventh year are obliterated in the consciousness of Inspiration and we perceive what now flashes up in their place.

Then, if we observe the tableau of life between the seventh and fourteenth years and again obliterate the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we gaze into the Mercury sphere. Everything has to do with the being of man, for man is an integral part of the whole Universe. If he learns to know himself as he really is, in the innermost core of his being, he learns to know the whole Universe. And now I would ask you to pay attention to the following.—Deepest respect arises in us for the old, instinctive Initiation Science which gave things that have remained in existence to this day, their true and proper names. Designations that are coined nowadays result in nothing but confusion, for modern scholarship is incapable of naming things in accordance with reality. An unprejudiced observation of life will fill us with reverence for the achievements of ancient Initiation Science. Ancient Initiation Science knew by instinct something that is confirmed to-day by statistics, namely, that the illnesses of childhood occur most frequently in the first period of life; it is then that the human being is most prone to illness, and even to death; after puberty this tendency abates, but the healthiest period of all, the period when mortality is at its lowest, is between the ages of seven and fourteen. The wise men of old knew that this is due to the influences of the Mercury sphere and again to-day we may make the same discovery when through modern Initiation Science we penetrate the secrets of existence. Such things fill us with reverence for these sacred traditions of humanity.

By looking back into our experiences from the fourteenth to the twenty-first years and obliterating the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the secrets of the Venus sphere. Here again the wonderful wisdom of ancient Initiation Science comes into evidence. The human being reaches puberty; love is born. When the pictures of this period of life are illumined by Initiation Science, the secrets of the Venus sphere are disclosed. Everything I am now describing is part of the true self-knowledge which unfolds in this way.

When the pictures of experiences occurring between the twenty-first and forty-second years of life are eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the Sun sphere. Through deepened self-knowledge the secrets of the Sun sphere can be experienced in this retrospective contemplation of the events of our life between the twenty-first and forty-second years. To acquire knowledge of the Sun existence our vision must cover a period three times longer than that of the periods connected with the other planetary bodies.

I told you that the karma of a certain well-known personality in history had taken shape paramountly in the spheres of Mercury and Venus, and you will now understand how such things are investigated. We look back, firstly, into the period of our own life between the seventh and fourteenth years, and then into the period between the fourteenth and twenty-first years; when the pictures have been eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, light is shed upon the secrets of the Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere. Through this illumination we perceive how such an individuality worked together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies and with other human souls, and how his subsequent earthly incarnation in the nineteenth century took shape.

Now if the elaboration of karma has taken place mainly in the Mars sphere, investigation is more difficult. For if a man attains Initiation before the age of 49, it is not possible for him to look back into the period of life which here comes into question, namely, the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. He must have passed his forty-ninth year if he is to be able to eliminate the pictures of this particular set of experiences and penetrate the secrets of the Mars sphere. If Initiation is attained after the age of fifty-six it is possible to look back into the period between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth years of life, when karma that is connected with the Jupiter sphere takes shape. And now we are at the point where the various sets of events come together in one connected whole.

It is not until the period between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years can be included in this retrospective vision that we are able to survey the whole range of experiences and to speak out of our own inner knowledge. For then we can gaze into the profoundly significant secrets of the Saturn sphere. Karmas that were wrought out mainly in the Saturn sphere operate in mysterious ways to bring men together again in the world. In order to perceive all these connections in the light of Initiation Science itself—they can of course be explained and so become intelligible—but in order to perceive with independent vision and be able to judge them, we must ourselves have reached the age of sixty-three. A human being appears in some earthly life—thus for example there is a certain great poet of whom I shall speak later—and we find that through his faculties, through his literary creations, he was giving expression to that in his karma which could have been wrought out only in the Saturn sphere.

When we look up to the Sun, to the planetary system—and the same applies to the rest of the starry heavens for they are connected in a very real way with the being of man—we can witness how human karma takes shape in the Cosmos. The Moon, the planets Venus, Jupiter—verily these heavenly bodies are not as physical astronomy describes them. In their constellations, in their mutual relationships, in their radiance, in their whole existence, they are the builders and ¹ shapers of human destinies, they are the cosmic timepiece according to which we live out our karma. As they shine downwards from the heavens their influences have real power. This was known in the days of the ancient Mystery-wisdom but the old Astrology—which was a purely spiritual science, concerned with the spiritual foundations of existence—has come down to posterity in a degraded, amateurish form. Anthroposophy alone can contribute something that will enable us to perceive the spiritual connections as they truly are and to understand how through the great timepiece of destiny, human life on Earth is shaped according to law.

From this point of view let us think of the human being and his karma. Those who with the help of Anthroposophy evolve a healthy conception of the world as against the unsound views prevailing to-day, will unfold not only quite different concepts and ideas but also quite different feelings and perceptions. For you see, if we really understand the destiny of a man, we also learn to understand the secrets of the world of stars, the secrets of the Cosmos. But nowadays people write biographies without the faintest inkling that something is really being profaned by the way in which they write. In times when knowledge was held to be sacred because it issued from the Mysteries, nobody would have written biographies in the way that is customary to-day. Every ancient ‘biography’ contained indications of the influences and secrets of the world of stars. In human destiny we can perceive, firstly, the working of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then of still loftier Sun Beings, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; then of the Thrones who are concerned mainly with the elaboration of karma in the Mars sphere; then of the Cherubim who elaborate the karma belonging to the Jupiter sphere; and then of the Seraphim who work together with man at the elaboration of karma in the Saturn sphere—Saturn karma. In a man's destiny, in his karma, we behold the working of the higher Hierarchies. This karma, at first, is like a veil, a curtain. If we look behind this veil we gaze at the weaving deeds and influences of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. Every human destiny is like script on a sheet of paper. Just imagine that someone looking at the writing on the paper were to say that he can see signs - K - E - I, and so forth, but he is quite unable to combine these letters into words! As there are some twenty-two to twenty-eight letters (to be exact, about thirty to thirty-four in all) such a man could only conceive that the whole of Goethe's Faust is made up entirely of those thirty-four letters. He cannot read, therefore he sees only the different letters. When someone else finds a great deal more in Faust because he can combine the letters into the words of which this wonderful work is composed, an out-and-out illiterate with no notion of how to read may say with horror: Here is someone who actually thinks that all kinds of things are contained in Faust—but he is an utter fool! Yet the whole of Faust does actually consists of these letters. Similarly, when we observe the karma of a human being in the ordinary way, we see letters only; but the moment we begin to read this karma we behold the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and their mutual, interrelated deeds. The destiny of an individual human life becomes the richer, the more we get beyond the thirty-four letters and find in them—Faust! And the picture of a human destiny is enriched beyond measure when earthly ignorance is transformed into knowledge of the Cosmic Alphabet, when we realise that the letters of that script are the signs and tokens of the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

To a man who beholds it, the vista of karma as the shape taken by destiny in life is so overwhelming, so sublime and majestic that simply by understanding how karma is related to the spiritual Cosmos he will unfold quite different qualities of feeling and discernment. It will not remain so much theoretical knowledge. What we acquire through Anthroposophy should not be a mere accumulation of theoretical information but should work more and more upon our life of thought and feeling, in that it rids us of the notion that we live an earthworm's existence and makes us aware that we belong to the land of Spirits. Verily, we are citizens not of the Earth alone but of the land of Spirits. The whole existence we have spent between death and a new birth converges in that which, on Earth, is enclosed within our skin. The secrets of worlds are contained in a particular form within this encircling skin.

Self-knowledge is by no means the trivial sentimentality of which there is so much talk nowadays. Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge. And so when friends have given me an opportunity, I have often written down for them the following lines:

If thou would'st know thy Self,
Look out into the Cosmic Spaces.
thou would'st fathom the Cosmic Spaces,
Look inwards, into thine own Self.

Willst Du Dein Selbst erkennen,
Schaue hinaus in die Weltenweiten.
Willst Du die Weltenweiten durchschauen,
Blicke hinein in das eigene Selbst.

The preceding considerations have essentially been concerned with showing how man in this day and age can gain an awareness of his present position in the evolution of mankind on earth. Even in circles that today do not want to know about the knowledge of spiritual worlds, some conception of this consciousness of the relationship of man to the universe is formed. And let us recall something that is much spoken of today in this connection, in this direction. Where all views of the universe are derived from the outer sensory events and the intellectual grasp of these sensory events, it is also said that the whole world consciousness of modern man has changed over the last few centuries. Attention is drawn to the great change that has taken place in this world consciousness of man through the Copernican world view.

We need only look back to the centuries that preceded the Copernican worldview; we need only look back, for example, to the scholastic worldview, which has been mentioned again here recently, and we find that for this worldview, spiritual forces and spiritual beings were present in the world of the stars. We hear how the scholastics spoke of the inhabitants of the stars, who belong to higher hierarchies in the development of their natures.

Thus, the people of this world view have directed their gaze out into the universe, have looked towards the planets of our planetary system, and towards the other stars in the night sky, and they have developed an awareness that not only etheric-material light from the starry worlds penetrates to them, but that, so to speak, when they look at the starry sky, the eyes of spiritual beings, whose outer embodiment can be seen in the stars, fall into their souls. Today, when man looks up at the planets and the other stars, he first of all forms an idea of how material bodies, permeated by ether, are floating freely in space, and how light emanates from these stars. But man does not think at all of the fact that from these stars the glances of spiritual beings of higher hierarchies meet him.

For modern man the Universe has become dead and unspiritual. And in the sphere of earthly existence, the man of ancient times found that which was intimately connected with the spiritual life of the universe. In the spiritual beings of the other stars were creative powers that had something to do with what develops spiritually and soul-wise here in man, spiritually, soul-wise and bodily, we might say. Men have looked up, let us say, to Saturn. They saw in the forces that come down from Saturn to Earth with the rays of light those forces that work within the human being and bring about the power of memory in this human being. They looked up to Jupiter, saw Jupiter connected with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies, who send their effects into man, so that the consequence of these effects in man is the development of the power of imagination. They looked up at Mars: they were of the view that the forces that work into man from the spiritual entities of Mars give man the power of reason.

Thus, a person belonging to an older stage of human development on Earth looked up at the starry sky and saw in the starry sky the origins of that which he perceived in himself spiritually, soulfully and physically. Man felt that he belonged together with beings of higher hierarchies, and man saw the outer revelations of these beings of higher hierarchies in the stars.

With the advent of the Copernican worldview, this world view also fell away. For it will be understood that an earth, which was seen as being under the influence of the immeasurable spiritual forces of the universe, was, one might say, also a gift of the whole universe for man, that man, by living on earth, saw in this earth the confluence of the effects of innumerable entities. Man felt, as it were, as a citizen of the earth, but, in feeling as such, at the same time as a citizen of the universe.

He looked up to the gods, worshiped his gods, but spoke of these gods in such a way that it was in their intentions to determine the course of human development on earth. The earth was explained in terms of its history, the earth as a dwelling place for man was explained from what was understood of the cosmos, what was understood of the universe. The earth was explained from heaven, and the gods were sought for the intentions for what was seen in the orbit of earthly events, and with which man was intimately connected.

What has emerged from the Copernican worldview gives modern man a completely different view of the world. Man increasingly felt that the earth is an insignificant world body flying around the sun. And when he reflected in a modern way on the relationship between this earth and the rest of the universe, he could not help but call this earth a speck of dust in the universe. All the other celestial bodies that his eye could see seemed more important to him than the earth, because external physical size became decisive for him. And in terms of this, the earth can hardly compete with a few celestial bodies.

Thus, for man, the earth became more and more a mere speck in the universe, as it were, and man felt insignificant in the cosmos on this insignificant earth, insignificant in the universe. With his spiritual powers, he was no longer connected to this universe. It must have seemed impossible for him to believe that what happens on this insignificant speck of dust in the universe, called Earth, is connected with the intentions of divine beings in the universe. One would like to say: All that man has seen on earth, because he recognized that heaven is populated by spirits and spiritual forces, all that has been lost to man in modern times. The universe has been desensualized and de-spirited. The earth has shrunk to an insignificant speck of dust in a world that has been de-spirited and de-spirited.

One must understand such a change in the world picture not only from the standpoint of a theoretical explanation of the world, but also from the standpoint of human consciousness itself. Man, who saw himself on an earth influenced by innumerable spiritual beings that had their realization, their intentions in man of the earth, otherwise knew himself, otherwise these views affected man, than the more spiritual space, in which glowing, spatially formed globes stand and move, of which one conceives no other activity than movement in space, than the revelation through light. How different must the human being, who now knew himself to be on one of the smallest of these world bodies, feel in the spiritless, soulless space, than within earlier world pictures. And yet, this conception of the world must have arisen in the course of the evolution of mankind. What an older mankind once knew about the heavens and their inhabitants, the divine spiritual beings, was indeed the inspiration, the imagination of an ancient dream-like clairvoyance, which was something that as such clairvoyance had descended from the universe into man. One must only imagine this correctly. When people in ancient times looked up at Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and saw divine spiritual forces at work in these heavenly bodies, it was because these revelations penetrated from the heavenly bodies themselves into their inner being and were reflected in them, so that through the influences of the universe, of the cosmos, they knew within themselves what was flowing from the cosmos into the earth. And so, through what heaven gave him, the earth became intelligible to him. Man looked up to his gods and knew what being he is on earth. In the modern conception of the world, he does not know any of this.

In the modern world view, the Earth has shrunk to a speck of dust in the universe, and now man stands as a small, insignificant creature on this speck of dust. Now the gods of the stars no longer tell him anything about plants, animals and the other kingdoms of the earth. Now he must direct his senses only to what lives in the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, what lives in wind and wave, what dwells in clouds, lightning and thunder. Now he can receive no revelations other than those that his senses give him about the things of the earth, and he can then only conclude from the revelations of the things of the earth about what is in the universe, according to the sensual and intellectual revelation.

Man has undergone this significant transformation in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which signifies the development, the unfolding of the consciousness soul. Everything that had previously come to him from the universe, and which then shone again within his soul, had to be squeezed out of him, so that he could stand there and say to himself: I know nothing but that I live on a speck of dust in the universe. This universe gives me nothing that enlightens me about the spiritual and soul life within me. If I want to experience such spiritual and soul life within me, I must extract it from my own being. I must renounce the idea that the revealing powers come to me from the vastness of the universe. I must fill my soul through my own efforts and activity, and perhaps hope that something in what wells up out of my soul is alive, which, conversely, gives me an insight into the universe from the human point of view.

In the past, man had the opportunity to gain insight into himself as a human being through what the universe revealed to him. He was able to see himself as the son of heaven because the heavens told him what he was as such a son of heaven. Now man had more or less become the earth's hermit, who in the solitude of his life on the dust-grain of the universe must gather strength in order, so to speak, to develop in solitude that which can be developed in him, and to wait to see whether that which reveals itself within is something that can shed light on the universe.

And for a long time, for centuries, what was revealed within was not about the universe. Man described the mineral kingdom according to spatial-temporal forces. He then described the workings of this mineral kingdom in geognosy, in geology. He described the outer sensory processes, how they take place, how plants sprout out of the mineral ground of the earth. He also described the sensory processes that take place in the inner being of the animal and the physical human being itself. He looked around everywhere on earth, inquiring what his senses told him about this earthly existence. Above all, they told him nothing about his own soul, about his own spirit. It was precisely out of this cosmic mood, if one grasped it properly, out of this mood, which can be expressed in the words: I, a human being, am an earth hermit on a speck of dust in the universe — it was precisely out of this mood that the impulse had to come to develop the truly human in free inner unfolding.

And a great, all-embracing question had to arise: Is it really true that in the whole range of what my senses can see, feel, hear, etc., here on earth, what can be combined by the intellect from them, is it really true that there is nothing in this range that gives me more than these senses can tell me? Man has developed a science. But this science, however interesting it may be, says nothing about man. It aims at abstract, dead concepts, which then culminate in natural laws. But all this leaves man indifferent. Man cannot possibly be merely the confluence of these abstract concepts, I would say, this receptacle for all natural laws! For these laws of nature have nothing spiritual, nothing of the soul about them, although they are conceived out of the human spirit.

You see, the person who felt this mood at a time of great significance for the development of world views was the young Goethe. And the expression of what he felt is what he wrote in the first form that he gave to his “Faust”.

Let us recall how Goethe, in the very first form he gave to his “Faust”, really presents this Faust, still remembering what it is that man should seek in the universe, how he would like to feel as a spirit and soul within spirits and souls, but how he feels rejected by the soulless and unspiritual world. How he then reaches for the old revelation of the mystical, the magical, opens an old book in which he finds descriptions of how the higher hierarchical beings live in the stars and their movements, a book that speaks of how heavenly forces ascend and descend and pass golden buckets to each other.

Such a view had existed, but in the times in which Goethe places Faust, such a view no longer captivates people. And Faust turns away, as Goethe himself turned away from the old explanation of the universe, which sought a spiritual and soul element in the whole universe, and he opens the book of the Earth Spirit. And then we read the remarkable words with which the Earth Spirit speaks:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So at the whirling loom of time I labor,
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

But that there is something not quite right in the encounter between this Earth Spirit and Faust is clearly shown by Goethe in that Faust falls under the effect of this Earth Spirit, and that he is then exposed to the influences of Mephistopheles.

If you look at the monumental, succinct words of the Earth Spirit from the point of view of a concrete world view and are unbiased enough to make an assessment that was actually close to Goethe's own feelings, in that he did not stop at the Earth Spirit scene when writing Faust , but continued, if one considers all this, then one must fall into a kind of heresy in the face of much of what has been said and printed about “Faust,” but which certainly does not reflect the real opinion, the real view of Goethe. After all, what has not been said in connection with “Faust”!

You keep looking back to the words that Faust speaks to Gretchen, who is around sixteen years old, later in the course of the Faust epic: “the all-embracing, all-sustaining... Feeling is everything, name is sound and smoke,” and one feels so tremendously philosophical when quoting all that the expression is supposed to mean for one's own soul concepts, and now also quoting what Faust gives as instruction to a teenage girl. It is a schoolgirl instruction. It is actually compromising that one can cite this schoolgirl instruction from people who want to be clever as the quintessence of what one puts into words as a world view. This does indeed result, even if it is heretical, in an unbiased consideration.

But something similar also applies to the lapidary, monumental words spoken by the Earth Spirit: “In the floods of life, in the storm of action” and so on. They are beautiful, these words, but very general; we find something of a mystical pantheism of a sensually nebulous kind in them. I would say that it does not feel cloudy to us when we have this before us:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So at the whirling loom of time I labor,
And fashion the living robe of divinity.

Nothing happens that does not give us the ability to look concretely into the universe, into the cosmos.

Goethe certainly felt this, especially later, because he didn't stop there, he wrote the Prologue to Heaven. And if we take the prologue in heaven: “The sun resounds in the old way, in the spheres of the brothers' song” and so on, then it is much more reminiscent of the heavenly powers that float up and down and pass the golden buckets than of the somewhat nebulous tides and weaves of the earth spirit. Goethe returned from – well, one cannot say the 'divinization of the earth spirit', but something similar. Later, as a more mature person, Goethe no longer regarded this earth spirit as the one to which he wanted to turn solely and exclusively in the form of Faust, but he took up again the spirit of the great world, the spirit of the universe. And even if the words spoken by the Earth Spirit in the first version of Faust are beautiful, succinct and monumental, these words spoken by the Earth Spirit are also distantly related to the “All-embracing, All-sustaining One” and the teachings of the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. only distant kinship – these words spoken by the Earth Spirit also have a distant kinship with the “All-embracing, All-sustaining One”, with the instruction of the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. Why shouldn't they be beautiful for that reason? Of course, when instructing schoolgirls, one must take particular care to say things beautifully! Why shouldn't they be beautiful?

But of course we have to be clear about the fact that Goethe, as a mature man, did not see in nebulous pantheism that which gives man a real world-consciousness.

But there is something else at the root of it. Goethe, with his concrete way of looking at the things of the world – at least to a certain degree – would not have been able to draw his Faust in the way he did if he had portrayed him as a representative of humanity for the 12th century of Western civilization. He would have had to take on a different form, but he would never have been able to draw this form as he drew his Faust. Faust should not have put aside the book of Nostradamus and turned from the spirit of the great world to the earth spirit, because at that time there was an awareness that man, when he understands himself correctly, understands himself as a son of heaven, and the spirits of heaven have something to say to him about his own nature. But Faust is the representative of humanity who belongs to the 16th century, thus already to the fifth post-Atlantic period, the period that approaches the view: I live as the earth hermit on a speck of dust in the universe. It would no longer have been honest of the young Goethe to have Faust look up to the spirit of the great world. As a representative of humanity, this could not be the case with Faust, because in his consciousness, the human being no longer had any connection with the heavenly powers that rise and descend and pass the golden buckets to each other, that is, with the entities of the higher hierarchies. That was darkened, that was no longer there for human consciousness. So Faust could only turn to that with which he could be connected as an earthen hermit: He turned to the genius of the earth.

That Faust turns to the genius of the earth is something, I would say, radically grandiose, which occurs in Goethe: for this is the turn that human consciousness has taken in this age, away from the darkening powers of heaven to the genius of the earth, to whom the spirit itself has pointed, which has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. For this genius, who has passed through the mystery of Golgotha, has connected himself with the earth. By connecting himself with the evolution of humanity on earth, he has now given man the power, in the time when he can no longer look up to the spirits of heaven, to look to the spirits of the earth, and the spirits of the earth now speak in man. Formerly it was the stars in their motion that revealed the words of heaven to the human soul that could interpret and recognize these words of heaven. Now man had to look at his connection with the earth, that is, ask himself whether the genius of the earth speaks in him.

But only nebulous words, mystically pantheistic words, can Goethe in his age wrest from the genius of the earth. It is right, it is magnificent that Faust turns to the genius of the earth, but I would like to say that it is quite magnificent that Goethe does not yet let this genius of the earth express anything that can already satisfy. That the Genius of the Earth first stammers and stutters, I might say, the secrets of the world into mystic pantheistic formulas, instead of pronouncing them in a sharply defined manner, shows that Goethe has placed his Faust in the age in which he saw his Faust and himself.

But one must feel one's way towards this relationship between Faust and the Earth Genius, so beautifully portrayed by Goethe, so that the Earth Genius will gradually become more and more understandable to man, so that he will reveal himself more and more clearly to man when man allows the activity of his own soul, the activity of his own spirit, to reveal what is in the heavens. Formerly the heavens revealed to man what he needed to know for the earth; now man turns to the earth, because the earth is, after all, a creature of the heavens. And if one gets to know the genius or genii that have taken up their residences on earth, then one nevertheless gets to know things about the heavens.

That was also the procedure adopted, for example, in my book 'Occult Science: An Outline of Its Methods'. There, everything within the human being was questioned and asked to speak. There, much was actually drawn from the spirit of the earth. But the spirit of the earth speaks about the Saturn age, the Sun age, the Moon age of the earth, the Jupiter age, the Venus age. The spirit of the earth speaks to us of what it has retained in its memory of the universe. Once upon a time, people turned their gaze out into the vastness of the heavens to gain insights about the earth. Now, they look down into the human soul, listen to what the spirit of the earth has to say about human nature from the memory of the world, and through their understanding of the genius of the earth, they gain macrocosmic knowledge. Today, of course, if one attaches the right importance to spiritual science, to spiritual knowledge, one would no longer present Faust's conversation with the Earth Spirit as Goethe did, although in his time it was ingenious to present it in this way.

Today, the earth spirit should not speak in those general, abstract words that can be said to express anything from a floating water wave to a spirit of the earth. Only that is mystically dark, because this floating wave of water is now sitting at a loom and weaving! I know, of course, that many people feel extraordinarily well when such vagueness stirs in them through the soul; but one does not thereby attain the inner human conscious stabilization that one needs as a modern person. There is always something of a reverie or even of intoxication about it: “All-embracing, All-sustaining,” “in the tides of life, in the storm of action,” one is always a little beside oneself, not quite in oneself. It certainly gives people a sense of well-being when they can be a little beside themselves; some people prefer to be completely beside themselves and let all kinds of ghosts give them insights into the world.

By this I would just like to suggest that we cannot do otherwise in modern times than to turn to the genius of the earth that lives in ourselves! The fact of the matter is this: if we simply take what the scientific ideas of modern times give us, as it is, as it is laid down in external civilization today, then it remains abstract, leaving human consciousness cold. But when one begins to wrestle with these concepts, to wrestle even with Haeckel's abstractions, then something very concrete, something that can be experienced directly, comes out of this wrestling: Then the great realization comes over us that although we initially receive the indifferent scientific ideas, this form is only a mask. We must first realize that the genius of the earth is telling us what we receive. We must first listen with the whole ear of the soul to what we initially hear with the abstract mind. And in this way we learn to understand the genius of the earth in a concrete way by listening.

In this way we approach the way in which man, in the age of consciousness soul development, must attain world consciousness. These things must be grasped by the human being in a way that is felt. Then, with feeling, I would say with his heart's blood, he approaches the anthroposophical world feeling. And this, not just individual ideas about the world, but this world feeling, must be acquired by the modern human being if he wants to feel and think in the right way, in accordance with the suggestions that I have made here recently.

Tomorrow, my dear friends, I will continue these reflections. Today, I would first like to say a few words to you about the state of the negotiations in Stuttgart. These negotiations are connected with what you have noticed as a kind of crisis within the Anthroposophical Society.

At this moment, the Anthroposophical Society must decide in its leading personalities whether it has viability or not. You have also heard various things here about the living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society. I would just like to say a few words about this today: this anthroposophical movement started in Central Europe. But it is of interest to the broadest international circles. And anthroposophy itself has gone through the three phases I spoke to you about last time. The Anthroposophical Society has not fully kept pace with the development of anthroposophy, and today there is an abyss between the work of the Anthroposophical Society and the reality of anthroposophy as it can be found today. This abyss must be bridged. And since the anthroposophical movement originated in Central Europe, it is a matter of fact that conditions must first be put in order in Central Europe. Then, when they are in order in Central Europe, we must immediately think about the order of the international anthroposophical societies, which will then have their center here or elsewhere. But the vagueness in which the Anthroposophical Society finds itself today must first be resolved. For this reason, the first step was to work on the consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart.

Now the negotiations were extremely difficult. This crisis arose for the reasons I mentioned here on January 6, and the situation is as follows: on December 10, I gave a kind of mandate to one of the members of the Central Council, Mr. Uehli. I said at the time: It has been noticeable for a long time that the Anthroposophical Society needs consolidation, and I can only hope for success if the Central Board in Stuttgart, supplemented by leading personalities in Stuttgart, tells me the next time I am in Stuttgart how they would like to begin the consolidation; otherwise, if the Central Board does not come up with ideas about the consolidation, I would have to approach each individual member myself. Only this alternative is possible. —

You can see from this, my dear friends, that what was presented as a necessity for the consolidation of the Society was said on December 10; so it has nothing to do with the fire. After the fire, after this terrible catastrophe that has shattered our hearts, it must be said: if reconstruction is to happen, a strong Anthroposophical Society is needed; because without it, reconstruction would not be possible.

So it is imperative that a consolidation, an inner strengthening, a clear will of the Anthroposophical Society comes about.

This has involved very difficult negotiations in recent weeks, initially in Stuttgart. I said: They have to happen first, then they will be able to be on international ground. Well, I would have to tell you a book, a very thick book, if I wanted to tell you everything that has been negotiated in these weeks. But basically it was inconclusive until yesterday. And the day before yesterday I suggested that, now things have turned out this way, a kind of committee should deal with drafting a circular letter in which the great questions affecting the Anthroposophical Society and movement today be brought to the attention of the members; that such a circular letter call for the calling of a meeting of delegates in Stuttgart, initially for the German and Austrian branches, so that work can be done on this consolidation [see $. 268].

This committee, whose effectiveness is initially intended only until the delegates' meeting, which is to take place at the end of February, on February 25, 26 and 27, is a provisional one. Until this delegates' meeting, it is to have the leading position in the Central European Anthroposophical Society. The representatives on the committee are Dr. Unger, a member of the old Central Executive Council, and Mr. Leinhas, representing the “Kommenden Tages”; then, as a result of the circumstances, there are a number of prominent Stuttgart citizens: Dr. Rittelmeyer, Mr. von Grone, Mr. Wolfgang Wachsmuth, Dr. Palmer, Dr. Kolisko; from elsewhere, Mr. Werbeck from Hamburg and, representing the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press, Miss Mücke. This committee has been entrusted with the preparatory work for the consolidation. After all the other efforts failed, a draft of the appeal to the assembly of delegates was produced yesterday. It is to be finalized and sent out at the beginning of next week and is to include the real issues facing the Anthroposophical Society today. So that is what I have to announce for the time being.

The negotiations were indeed accompanied by widespread dissatisfaction. After we had finished the negotiations on the draft appeal yesterday morning, I was able to speak to the members of our academic youth movement who were particularly concerned; so I hope that during the days I am now here in Dornach, the young will negotiate with the old in an appropriate way. The day before yesterday I expressed it in this way: I said, “I hope that now, taking into account the new committee, the young will be accepted by the old among the young.”

Something like this had to take place, because everywhere people are demanding a new, fresh element of life. That must come. Youth is knocking at the gates. It has every right to do so; it must be understood. But age cannot be ignored; it must be allowed to work; the foundations of the Anthroposophical Society have come out of it. A modus operandi must be found as quickly as possible that will lead to a strong Anthroposophical Society, otherwise we will not be able to continue our work.

I wanted to share this with you today so that you are informed about these matters. The old Central Executive Council has ceased to exist, and this committee will now manage affairs until the end of February.