The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very much more could be said about the present subject; however, some indications, only, could be given and with these we must for the moment be satisfied. Today I shall try, by means of a kind of comprehensive overview, to show how the soul of man is incorporated into world evolution as a whole.

When we, as ensouled beings between birth and death, let the external world act upon us, we receive in the first place a number of impressions. Present-day man has for centuries been in the habit of regarding the external world as the most essential; this attitude is largely due to the scientific education which he receives already from the lower school onwards. Lately even psychology is dealt with as if it were one of the natural sciences, not only by the experts but by the simplest people. This all stems from the fact that modern man has little talent for examining his own inner being. Consequently, it is not easy for him to become aware of things such as those we spoke about yesterday. Present- day man has no inclination to look into himself objectively; he is not in the habit of doing so. He is aware of all that which I referred to yesterday as the up-surging waves of instinctive life—urges, cravings and passions—in fact, all emotions in general. But he is little inclined to look at these in an objective way because when he observes himself all that emerges are just these cravings. Through education they often become refined, but it is still instinctive life that wells up. On the other hand, man forms at least some ideas concerning the external world in which he is not personally involved; these ideas therefore have a certain objectivity.

There are many people who do not care for such objective ideas; they prefer to keep to what is subjective and personal. However, modern cultural life brings up in every field such objective concepts concerning external nature and has done so for centuries. These concepts about the world fill man's inner being. Whether it is only a little local paper he reads or one of the Sunday supplements, he is learning, in both, to look at the world according to such concepts. He is not aware that, even from the smallest publication, he absorbs a natural-scientific view of the world, but he does so nonetheless. So it can be said that the only thing that really occupies man today is the external world. I am not saying this in criticism of individuals. It is more a criticism of the age; or, better said, a characterization of the age, for there is no point in criticizing. The whole situation is simply a necessary outcome of the time. People today are so little interested in man as such that it has become a matter of indifference whether a living actor is seen on the stage or a specter on the cinema screen. In reality, it naturally does make a considerable difference. But today there is no deep fundamental feeling for this difference. If there were, then there would also be more concern for the considerable part played by the cinema and similar phenomena in the decline of our civilization.

The concepts which are today imparted to man's soul are simply accepted through blind faith in authority. When told that science has achieved this or established that, he is immediately convinced. One really must be clear about the fact that utterly blind faith in authority is involved in the way ideas about the world are conveyed. Things are accepted simply on the basis of a statement without the slightest knowledge of what actually takes place in the laboratories and so on.

It was by no means always so. I have often drawn attention to the fact that if we go back in the history of mankind's evolution, we arrive at a time when something was present in man which I have always designated as an instinctive, dreamlike clairvoyance. This clairvoyance was indeed instinctive and dreamlike, yet far better able to enter into the nature of things than the so-called scientific ideas of today. Through those conceptual pictures, which today are considered to be merely symbolic or allegoric or else flights of fancy, one was actually transported into the reality of things. Whether a particular picture corresponded quite exactly to the external object was not what mattered. Of importance was rather that, with the picture, one also received the spiritual reality of the object. Today it is, of course, essential that the idea one has formed corresponds exactly to the external fact, for this correspondence is all man has to hold on to.

This touches on something we must be quite clear about because it is of immense importance for judging our present civilization. It must be strongly emphasized that, formerly, man in his instinctive clairvoyance had a living quality within him. Modern man believes that it was mere fantasy and that it had nothing to do with external objects.

In a certain sense, it is of particular importance, if our insight is firmly rooted in Anthroposophy, that we accept this modern approach in which, disregarding the inner reality of external nature, we formulate faithful copies of her. Perhaps you are aware of how scientifically scrupulous Anthroposophy does just that, by declining every kind of hypothesis about the phenomena of nature. On the contrary, we remain in our phenomenalism, as it must be termed, strictly within the phenomena themselves—that is, within what nature conveys—and that we allow the phenomena to explain themselves, in the Goethean sense.¹ We do not think into them all kinds of atom-bombardment or atom-splitting and the like, as is usually done nowadays because of the inertia of old habits. When we speak about external nature, on the basis of Anthroposophy, it is essential that we do not hypothetically add anything to what the phenomena themselves reveal.

Modern technology is an example of how not to think anything into the phenomena. It has arisen with the natural- scientific world view in recent times. When we utilize nature's laws in technology we actually create the phenomena ourselves. True, something is left out of account in the phenomena, in electricity, for example, of which the modern researcher says that he uses it, but does not know what it is. He speaks similarly about all nature forces such as heat and light, etc. In other words, there is always an element which is not explained. However, what really matters in technology is that which we want to control. And as it is we ourselves who put everything together in the experiments, we can survey every detail.

It is just because every detail is surveyable that one can have an immediate feeling of certainty about what is built up technically—for example, in chemistry; whereas, when one turns to nature there is always the possibility of several interpretations. So it must be said that a thinking which is truly of our time is to be seen at its most perfect in the technician. Someone with no inkling as to how a machine or a chemical product is made, and works does not yet think in the modern way. He lets other people think in him, as it were; people who are in the know, who think technically. The external achievements of technology such as mechanisms, chemistry and so on, have gradually become the basis for a modern view of the world. In the course of time this approach has spread to what is today regarded as a world conception.

What is modern astronomy? For a long time it has represented nothing but a world mechanism. The way the sun is seen in relation to the planets and their movements is nothing but the picture of a huge machine. Lately, chemistry has been added to this in the form of spectral-analysis.² Astronomy does not venture further. This science of the universe is today only concerned with the question of whether our mental picture of it will correspond to reality if it is simply built up on concepts taken from technology; that is, if what can be derived from technology is imagined transposed into outer space. We should then have a science, it is thought, containing valid ideas, if one excludes those of neo-vitalism³ and all talk of psychoid⁴ and the like. A world view would be obtained in which the effectual ideas would be those applied in chemical preparations and the construction of machines. These ideas are then carried over to the structure of the universe and thus represent that, too, as a huge mechanism in which certain chemical processes occur.

This was not always the view. Right up to the 15th Century—I am referring to the civilized part of the world—man lived with mental pictures of the world which were not merely technical. They were inner pictures in which he could participate. What is of a technical nature is quite external to man; it is completely separate from him. Formerly, man experienced what he knew; he, so to speak, lived within his knowledge. Modern man does not participate in what he knows. This is why, nowadays, clever people in particular feel that man in former times dreamed all kinds of things into his environment, he indulged in fantasies; whereas today we have at last the possibility to represent the world to ourselves without such fantasy. It is even believed that technical concepts are the only kind that ought to be applied to the world, because only then can the danger of fantasy be avoided, and true knowledge obtained.

However, something of a very much more fundamental nature lies at the basis of what has just been stated; something which was prophesied already in the ancient mysteries by initiates who had attained a certain grade. In fact, it is characteristic of the mysteries, at the time when the ancient clairvoyance was prevalent, that they prophetically foresaw the kind of view of the world that was bound to come.

Something like the following was said: If the view of the world prevalent today—this “today” was in very early times when man, in an instinctive, dreamlike way, participated in his environment—is preserved for future mankind then the human being will never become free. His impulse to action will always come from his inner experience of the world. In his heart a divine world will speak, but a divine world that makes him dependent. People in the ancient civilizations were always unfree. They were aware that, when they were not obeying laws of state, laid down by their rulers, they followed divine commands. They were, so to speak, beings who simply carried out the impulses prompted by the divine within them. Therefore, in the mysteries it was said: A time must come when the divine influence within man must cease. A time must come when he looks out on an external world and sees only objects and events that have nothing to do with his humanity, a world of which he only takes into his soul the external aspect. Man can be free inwardly just when he witnesses, and experiences only forces of nature and not those that sustain him. Then his inner being will be unburdened because nothing will fill his soul except what is external to his nature.

A phase had to come in mankind's evolution when he would see external nature as something apart from himself and thus achieve independence. This was foreseen in the ancient mysteries where the initiate said: What at present we can give human beings, whose instinctive clairvoyance enables them to meet us with understanding, will not always be possible to give to men, because it makes them dependent. Man must acquire a knowledge which does not determine his inner impulse to action but leaves him free. A knowledge that only conveys concepts of what exists outside his being will awaken his inner impulse to freedom.

This characterizes the extreme problem I was faced with when I felt impelled to write, first the introductory essays, and then my Philosophy of Freedom. The fact had to be fully recognized, with all its implications, that the age in which we live is completely orientated towards knowledge of a technical nature. There is no choice but to adapt to this approach; otherwise the doctrines derived from the instinctive experience of the world in ancient times, and still preserved in the creeds and so on, will be distorted. No other possibility exists than to make use of concepts which are also applicable to the construction of machinery and so on. We live in a world that is thought of as a huge machine and as a huge chemical plant. If we are to find again what is spiritual in the world then we must simply break completely with everything that has come down in the form of mysticism from former times. In the mechanical world, devoid of spirit, given us by modern science, there we must find the spirit.

Let me sketch on the blackboard the situation that had to be reckoned with when I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom. If this is man (see drawing on the left, white lines) and this his surrounding world (yellow lines) then one must depict the situation in ancient times as follows: When man looked into the environment he experienced—also within himself—what his instinctive, dreamlike, clairvoyant pictures transmitted to him (red lines). And he related his inner experiences to what he saw outside. Therefore, he perceived the environment as spiritual through and through (red lines within yellow ones). He saw elemental and also higher beings in everything, because he brought towards them the right inner condition.

Modern man of the civilized world, for whom in the early Nineties I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom, has a different relation to his environment (drawing on the right). He no longer unites his inner being with what he perceives; he focuses on what can be worked out in technical terms. He traces the laws at work in the environment, but these are laws of nature and in them no moral impulses are to be found; whereas man in ancient times, as I drew it here (drawing on the left), was still inwardly connected with the environment. He saw in stone, animal, and plant moral impulses, because everything contained divine spiritual beings. In the laws of nature there is only what applies to mechanical construction.

What then did the Philosophy of Freedom set out to do? The necessary task to be accomplished was to show that if man is unable to find moral impulses, when he stands outside of nature, because through his senses he can reach only natural laws, then he must go out of himself. He can no longer remain within the confines of his body. I had to describe this first going out, when man leaves behind his bodily nature. This first going out is accomplished in pure thinking in the way it is described in the Philosophy of Freedom. Here man does not project himself into the environment by means of instinctive clairvoyance; he goes out of his body altogether. He transfers his consciousness into the external world (green lines). And what does he attain there? He attains moral intuition because he has reached the very first delicate degree of clairvoyance—or you may wish to use the subjective term I used then: moral imagination. Here man goes out of himself to find within the technical the spiritual—the spiritual is, after all, within it—where it is first to be found: in the sphere of morality.

But people do not recognize that what is described in the Philosophy of Freedom is the very first degree of the new clairvoyance. This is not recognized because people still think that clairvoyance means plunging into something obscure and unfamiliar. Here it is just the familiar that is sought; here one goes out with a thinking that has become independent of matter. It is a thinking that sustains itself, so that, through this self-sustaining thinking, the world is grasped for the first time purely spiritually. Indeed, the world is grasped through the very purest spirituality.

Mystics find in the Philosophy of Freedom too much emphasis on thinking. According to them it is just too full of thoughts. Others, such as rationalists and scientists and even modern philosophers, can make nothing of it for the very reason that it leads into a realm of spiritual sight where they do not want to go. They want to remain within the realm of external sight even when their subject is philosophy. The whole approach and content of the Philosophy of Freedom fulfils the obligation placed upon modern man.

This is what in an elementary way can be said in connection with what was prophetically forecast in the ancient mysteries. The initiates saw the future situation in exact details, both in relation to the human soul and also to world evolution. They saw clearly that the world, which man would later come to know, would be not only external to man but also to the Gods. It would be a world outside the realm of that divine creation about which they—the initiates—spoke. They sought revelations of the divine through initiation; thus, they were able to commune with the Gods. The various heathen peoples communed with their own divinities. The Jews, for example, with Jahve or Jehovah, and, insofar as they were initiates, did so not just in thought, but in actual fact. It is absolutely correct to speak about real communion with divine beings. The initiates achieved this within the mysteries. When they and their pupils were in the outside world they saw the surrounding world, and in it what their instinctive clairvoyance conveyed. The initiates in particular and also their pupils knew that the external world they saw resisted, in a certain sense, what they projected into it through their clairvoyance. They knew that a time would come when it would no longer be a question of resistance only, but one would only see merely that which can be seen without such projection.

These initiates recognized a truth which modern man would not have the courage to admit because his knowledge would be too shallow. The initiates said, “The external world we see is non-divine unless we project into it what the Gods have bestowed upon us.” For what they saw within the external world had been bestowed upon them by the Gods since the beginning of world evolution. They said, “We have around us a world which has not originated from the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries.”

It was this which later, in the Middle Ages, led to a particular form of contempt for nature and to asceticism and which still is to be found in certain religious confessions, though often hypercritically. This attitude had its first beginning in the ancient mysteries when man had to acknowledge: When I look into my inner being I can commune with the Gods, but the world I see around me does not originate from them. This world is not created by those Gods whom I seek when I go through initiation.

Through initiation within the mysteries it was learned that the external world had not originated from the Gods. This was accepted more and more as a fundamental objective truth. The Gods had intended quite a different world.

A particular event had caused man to sink down into a world not at all willed by the Gods. If time allowed, it could be shown that all ideas concerning the fall of man—his expulsion from paradise—stem from the recognition that the world around him is not a world created by the Gods.

Attempts were made to discover the will of the Gods in regard to the world they had not created, and it was realized that what the Gods wanted was the disintegration, the annihilation of that world. This fact, too, the initiates in ancient times had to face. The Gods whom they reached up to revealed that their decision regarding this world was its destruction. Yet the initiates also knew that man, in order to become independent, had at some time to derive his human knowledge precisely from the world which the Gods found ripe for extinction.

In the early Greek mysteries this knowledge was understood in a specific way. There the aim was to interpret the world through art. At that time there was no inkling of a natural-scientific approach such as we have today. Through plastic art and particularly through the Greek tragedy—in fact, through art in general—the aim was to create something through man which, though associated with this world, nevertheless transcended it. The initiated Greek said to himself: The world I see around me with its trees, its springs and so on, all this will disintegrate; however, what from this world has been secreted into a Venus de Milo, a Zeus or Athene, or into the dramas of Sophocles, will surely pass over from the realm of the visible into the invisible. The thoughts which had gone into a work of art would remain and would secure the continuation of the earthly world—which otherwise might disappear completely—even if the earth itself disintegrated.

Already the very early Greeks, at the time when art still proceeded from the mysteries, visualized that the world must be saved through art. For the world, though derived from the Gods, had absorbed a content which the Gods themselves wished destroyed. Certain fundamental facts of science were fully known to the initiates; this can be proved even historically. Certainly we have added much by way of technical construction in the course of recent centuries, particularly the 19th Century. But certain fundamental things which are still operative in technology were well known to the initiates of old. They knew much more than can be derived from what they told others who were not initiated. This knowledge led the initiates in the mysteries to say: If by combining natural forces we simply put together something technically we shall have something in the nature of a machine. We shall be making something which will be destroyed together with that aspect of the earth which the Gods themselves wish annihilated. For every initiate knows, and did know, that those Gods they venerated and communed with in the ancient mysteries—and with whom one can naturally still commune—those Gods hate nothing so much as, for example, a locomotive or a motor car. That to them is something dreadful. Those Gods say, “Not only must we endure that Ahriman has made the earth machinelike: now added to that, human beings are imitating the work of Ahriman. Our task in destroying Ahriman's endeavors is great enough and now we have in addition all these steam engines, all these electric machines and all that trash which has to be destroyed as well.”

Therefore, the initiate in ancient times said: It is of no help at all if we simply add to the outer forces of nature, which no longer contain anything spiritual, by constructing technical works like machinery or chemicals. The initiates were absolutely convinced that this was how matters stood and they decided, therefore, that as much as possible of the world must be rescued. As mentioned already, in Greece the impulse to do so was through art. If we go further towards the East people would say: As far as man's true evolution is concerned, everything that works according to so-called natural laws has, in reality, no meaning. The Gods will eventually destroy it. We shall, therefore, clothe all we do in such a way that the spiritual can live within it. This is how the cult in its earliest form originated. The spiritual cannot enter a creation such as a machine or a chemical, but it can enter the act of worship. It was considered that what one did should be something sacramental, something in which the spirit could live and participate. The aim of the cult was to rescue as much as possible from earth evolution.

I have often spoken of this on earlier occasions when I illustrated it by saying that we must reach a point in our technical research when the bench in the laboratory becomes an altar for divine service; so that we perform a moral-spiritual deed on the bench which in the laboratories of physics or chemistry has become an altar. I have often spoken of this; today I approached it more from the historical aspect.

This was the origin of religious cults to which people are again returning because they cannot rouse themselves to spiritual activity. It is remarkable that it is just people of intelligence who are today returning in great numbers to the bosom of the Catholic church. They do this for the simple reason that they want to be saved. They want to stay with what will remain when the earth disappears without trace, through the will of the Gods. Little attention is paid to what is happening in our time; so this present flow of intelligent people into Catholicism goes on unnoticed. It is happening because people want to escape from destruction. They want to participate in something, like the Catholic ceremonies and Mass, which, resting as they do on very old traditions, will at least belong to what will remain. It is happening because people lack the motivation to discover something new and essential for the future. People lack inner strength because they have lost it in our technical age.

At a certain moment it ought to have been realized that our world of technology is a negative world; it contains no inner impulses as was formerly the case. It should have been recognized that now it is necessary to achieve moral intuition and moral imagination. It is just those who are blind to this necessity of the age who are now returning to Catholicism. The explanation lies in the weakness of our time.

That this situation would arise was known to the initiates in ancient times. They asked themselves: What is going to happen? We know that the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries want the destruction of the earth. But if human beings are to become free and independent they must of necessity become ever more like the things of earth. Only through technical knowledge can man become free. If the initiates of old could have foreseen no more than this, they would have faced a dreadful prophetic revelation. They would have foreseen that man, in order to become truly man, had to entangle himself completely in the Ahrimanic world bereft of God, and must turn to dust with the earth when the Gods dissolve it. Men themselves would gradually become mechanisms, become ever more like machines. Eventually, only technical impulses would activate their thoughts. Astronomy is basically nothing but thoughts about a huge world machine. Man's thoughts concerning astronomy are of a mechanical nature. If the thoughts are of the same technical pattern it ultimately makes no difference whether one thinks of nuts and bolts or about Venus and Mercury.

But in the mysteries, prophetically, something else was foreseen before it happened on earth: the Mystery of Golgotha. Once it had taken place it would gradually be understood more and more. This the initiates in ancient times learned from their Gods with whom they communed. The Gods knew all things; from them the initiates could receive an all-embracing wisdom. But there was one thing they could never learn from these Gods; they could never learn anything relating to birth and death. Particularly about death the Gods knew nothing. But in the mysteries, it was known that the God who was later called the Christ would come down, and that on earth he would know death. Thus, the Mystery of Golgotha consists of the fact that one of the Gods, who till then had known neither death nor birth and heredity, would learn to know death. Through knowing death, he could unite with earth evolution and create a counterweight to what necessarily had to happen for the development of freedom: the ever-increasing union of man with the disintegrating earth. Man can now create in himself the counterweight. He must, on the one hand, devote himself completely to modern cognition, really take into himself modern natural-scientific knowledge; yet, on the other hand, turn to the God who has come to know death and birth—the Christ. Now it is possible for man to incline fully towards what is necessary for attaining freedom; but he must, on the other hand, find the counterweight by balancing this knowledge with that of the other realm. He must find the path leading to the Pauline saying, “Not I, but the Christ in me.” Then man will again find the possibility, through pervading the world with his Christianized thinking, to transform from within himself what must otherwise fall away from the world of the Gods, to which man, in reality, belongs.

Thus, the Ahrimanic powers, active on earth in what is disintegrating, are being opposed by the Christ, Who through an extra-earthly decision of the Gods is now active in the earth. It was not necessary for him to become free; He is a God and remains a God after going through death. He does not become akin to the earth. He lives as a God within the being of the earth. As a consequence, man now has the possibility to restore the balance by the development of freedom. He can go to the highest limit of individualism; for only in individual man can moral imagination be attained.

My Philosophy of Freedom has been called the most extreme philosophy of individualism. It cannot be anything else because it is the most Christian of philosophies. Thus, one must place on one side of the scales everything that can be attained through knowledge of the laws of nature, which can only be penetrated with spirituality by ascending to pure independent thinking. Independent thinking can still be restored within pure technical knowledge. However, there must be placed on the other side of the scales a true recognition of Christ, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

It was, therefore, a matter of course that I wrote, on the one hand, the Philosophy of Freedom and, on the other, found it essential to point to the Mystery of Golgotha in my Christianity as Mystical Fact and Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age. These two things simply belong together. Yet there are people who superficially see a contradiction in these two kinds of books. To them it is as if meat were placed on one scale and a weight on the other and they exclaim: What nonsense—these two things belong together. In short, everything must be mixed up. So, they take the weights and put them with the meat. Well, you do not get balance that way. Yet that is the way of modern critics. Having placed mysticism on one side and philosophy on the other they proceed to mix them together. But if modern man wants to stand in the right way within world evolution then there must live in his soul, on the one hand, a strong impulse towards freedom, towards independence, and, on the other, a strong impulse towards a deep inner experience of the Mystery of Golgotha.

This must gradually develop in the life of the individual and must also be developed in the sciences. The individual must overcome the old instinctive mysticism and clairvoyance. He must rely solely on knowledge of the kind needed for understanding, say, how a steam engine works. In my

Philosophy of Freedom, when I spoke of knowledge of external nature, I presupposed only the kind of concepts needed for understanding a steam engine. However, in order to understand a steam engine, one must set aside one's whole human personality except for the very last: pure thinking. The latter must be inwardly cultivated and then carried outside into the object, where it will be found to exist already.

Thus, one can take one's stand fully on the ground of freedom provided one also stands fully on the ground of the Christ fact. This applies also to science. And it will be seen to apply when it is realized that, no matter how extensively external nature is investigated according to Haeckel,⁵

something is always left unexplained, something always remains which cannot be understood with concepts of that kind. Let me put it somewhat more strongly: We are, after all, earnest people who have come together to understand something and not to enjoy five o'clock tea. So let me put it this way: The two things of which I have spoken must enter civilization in the right manner. In earlier times, when one was aware through instinctive clairvoyance of man's connection with the spiritual in the external world, it led to depicting the halo. The halo was particularly cultivated in very early times, appearing frequently in many different forms, even in the cult itself. With the approach of the Middle Ages and the first awakening of materialism there was a preference for depicting something else: the pregnant woman. Just look at the many pictures from the Middle Ages in which all the women are pregnant. So, you have, on the one hand, the halo which is the loftiest proclamation of the spiritual world and points to man's salvation after death, and, on the other, what points to that which again and again brings man into the physical world—birth.

When the present-day world is contemplated one cannot but recognize the need for the things I have described. There is nothing nebulous about it; the need is comprehensible through and through. It must, therefore, be said that the soul in its striving towards freedom brushes against the Ahrimanic. In the soul's religious experiences, even when they concern the Mystery of Golgotha, it comes very near the Luciferic. If egoistical religious instincts alone are cultivated, which is often the case today, it is all too easy to cultivate Luciferic instincts and desires as well.

This is what in the immediate present must concern the human soul; it is also what Christ taught his intimate disciples directly after the Resurrection. His intimate disciples were successors of the initiates of old. They were to teach that He had descended from the world of the Gods who did not yet know death, and who therefore in primordial times could tell man nothing about death. They were to teach that Christ had descended in order to experience the mystery of birth and death. Teachings about the birth and death of Christ have remained so obscure because human beings could not find a way to explain these things. Yet after the Resurrection, in the original Christian mysteries, Christ Himself imparted to His first initiated pupils the secret of a God's learning about earthly death. In their true form the Christian mysteries disappeared already in the Fourth Century. They disappeared because the impulse to freedom had to be developed first. However, the original wisdom had already been imparted to man by the ancient Gods. It had increasingly been transmitted to later generations, becoming all the time more diluted. What Christ imparted to His intimate disciples after the Resurrection was the original revelation concerning the meaning of earth evolution. This revelation was the spiritual foundation for the further life of the human soul. What the ancient Gods had taught in the mysteries was basically the secrets of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The essential secret of the Earth could be imparted to the human soul only after this secret had been experienced by a God on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Birth and death, in the human sense, did not occur until the earth evolution. Previously only metamorphosis and transformation took place.

Thus, the most fundamental revelation after the death of Christ is at the same time the foundation from which the human soul can set out to accomplish the salvation of earthly life.

You see how human souls are connected in manifold ways with the evolution of the earth, indeed with the evolution of the world as a whole, not only through the various facts I have presented to you during the last few days, but above all through their understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what I wished to impart to you in these lectures.

• 1. Goethe's Natural-Scientific Writings.
• 2. Spectral-analysis: Chemical analysis by means of spectroscope.
• 3. Neo-vitalism: developed by Hans Driesch, 1867—1941, biologist.
• 4. Psychoid: Concept of Vitalism. Description of certain strata of soul (C.G. Jung).
• 5. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919. Natural scientist. Founder of Monism. Defender of Darwin's Origin of Species.

If an understanding for what one can call the reappearance of Christ is to find its place in the soul in the right way it is necessary to create a preparatory understanding for the course that the Christ-idea, the image people have had of the Christ, has taken in the course of human development. We remember that human development has proceeded from a constitution of soul which we have often called a kind of instinctive perception; a clairvoyance which was dim and dreamlike. And we have, on repeated occasions, characterized the different epochs of human development in such a way that we have placed the corresponding form of this constitution of soul into different times.

Today we will remind ourselves that there were still strong remnants of this old clairvoyant condition of humanity existing at the time of the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood in the first place as a fact, but as a fact which, in its inner essence, can never be grasped by the intellect which since the middle of the fifteenth century has constituted the soul-life of modern civilization but which was already prepared for in Greek and Roman times. Thus one can say: During the course of Greek and Roman history, when the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on the earth, there were still strong remnants of the ancient clairvoyance existing in many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance—were already definitely in the beginnings of an intellectual development. This was particularly so in the Romans. And one can therefore say that, in its reality, in its essence, the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped at first only by those who still had a remnant of the old clairvoyance. It could be described—the symbolism too could be indicated—by those who had these remnants. This instinctive clairvoyance was a particular characteristic of the ancient oriental peoples and existed essentially in its last remnants above all in these peoples. And Christ Jesus, too, did, after all, walk on the earth among oriental people.

Thus the Mystery of Golgotha was understood first of all through the remnants of ancient oriental wisdom. And when this Mystery of Golgotha moved towards the West—to the Greeks and the Romans—one could receive what was related by those people who, out of the remains of the old clairvoyance, had understood what had really come to pass on the earth. And in order that there could be a perception through an 'eyewitness' of the soul there arose in St Paul, through a particular enlightenment which came to him at a late period of his life, a clairvoyant state through which he could convince himself of the truth, of the genuine nature, of the Mystery of Golgotha. What St Paul was able to relate out of his conviction—what those who had preserved the remains of an old clairvoyance could bring forward concerning the Mystery of Golgotha out of an ancient oriental wisdom, could be received by people as news—could be clothed in the form of the germinating intellect. Intellect itself, however, was not able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha.

The way in which those who still had remains of the old clairvoyance spoke about the Mystery of Golgotha is called Gnosis. And, if I can put it so, the form of speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha in the way that was possible with these remnants of old clairvoyance—this was Christian Gnosis. And the presentation of the Mystery of Golgotha then reached posterity in the way I have described in my book Christianity as mystical Fact. Thus the first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was attained through these remains of the old clairvoyance; through the ancient, instinctive oriental perception. One could say that this ancient oriental perception was preserved up to the Mystery of Golgotha to such a degree that a truly human grasp of this Mystery could find a place before the intellect broke in and understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be found. Had the Mystery of Golgotha come during the full flowering of the intellect it would, of course, have made no impression on humanity at all.

Thus the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha lived in the accounts of the old clairvoyants and, basically, as you know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Gospels are nothing other than accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha gained through clairvoyance. But then there spread out over humanity's development the wave which had already taken root in Greece, as I have described to you, which had its source particularly in Rome and which can be seen as the wave that prepared the later intellectuality but in which this intellectuality already lived. Dialectical-legal thinking spread out and, in turn, led to civic-political thinking. This spread from the South into those northern regions where, as I related yesterday, there was still a nature-based economy. Central European civilization, nourished at first by Rome, took shape primarily in the sign of the intellectual, the dialectical-legal, development of the human soul. In the midst of everything that occurred here people could no longer themselves behold the Mystery in the sense of the old spirituality, but received the accounts, the traditions, and clothed these in the forms of their own soul-constitution. People clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Rome the Mystery of Golgotha became clothed in dialectics. Out of what was Christian Gnosis, which still relied on vision, there took shape the pure dialectical theology which went hand in hand with the establishing of the European Empire that later became [nation] States. But the first great Empire was actually the secularized ecclesiastical 'Empire of the Church', permeated by Roman judicial forms. Many external facts show how this dialectical-legal, political thinking, in which the old oriental direct perception clothed itself, spread out over Europe.

Charlemagne, for example, was a vassal of the Pope who had bestowed on him his title of Emperor. And when one studies the whole extent of the rulership of Charlemagne, one finds among the forces through which his rulership spread an ecclesiastical-theological influence. It was a kind of theocratic empire that spread there but it was everywhere permeated by dialectical-legal forms. The clergy were the bureaucracy. They held the offices of the State and united in their person the political and ecclesiastical elements. The old spiritual life based on spiritual vision—which, as you know, had abolished the spirit in 869—this old spiritual life moves over entirely into a political Church-Empire which extends over the greater part of Europe.

You know from history and from what I have related here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this continuous cross-flow of the Roman ecclesiastical element, and that which tried more or less to free itself from it, produced conflicts, and how these conflicts really form a great part of medieval history. But one must look at the immense difference that exists between the whole social structure of the Middle Ages, which then dissolved into the modern states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient which was entirely permeated by the spirit, by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and all that this brought with it.

From what source did this ancient oriental vision receive its content? It was—one cannot put it differently—'inborn' (Angeborensein); for the sages of the Mysteries sought as their pupils those who had inborn faculties of such a nature that they were able to come to this instinctive perception. Out of the great mass of people those were chosen in whose blood it lay to have such vision. Thus one simply knew that in the human beings that were sent as children from the spiritual worlds into this physical world came remnants of the experiences in those spiritual worlds. (I am still speaking of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha approached or was already accomplished.) In one individual these came less; in another, more. With the blood, so to say, echoes from the experiences in the spiritual worlds came in. Those who had the largest number of instinctive memories of experiences before birth or conception were the suitable pupils for the Mysteries. They were able to comprehend and see, or, rather, were able through comprehending vision to recognize the intentions of the gods regarding human beings, for they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this life on earth. And they were sought out by the wise men of the Mysteries, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as individuals who could bear witness to the will of the spiritual world with regard to the physical world. It was human beings such as these who were the first ones able to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha. One can certainly say that this was a very different way of placing a human being in the social order. He was placed in this social order by the gods themselves through the recognizing of this fact by the Mysteries.

The inborn faculties based on the action of the blood then gave way to the medieval wave. Human beings then had nothing, or they had less and less, of what is brought into the physical world at birth from the spiritual worlds. Certainly the people who counted had nothing of this. Nothing but an instinctive memory remained. So upon what basis could a social structure be founded? What could this be founded on in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be founded on authority—the authority claimed above all by the Popes of Rome. It was this authority that took the place of that which the priests of the ancient Mysteries had beheld and recognized as being sent from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times decisions were made as to what should happen in the social life according to what was brought from the spiritual worlds. This could now only be decided in that certain people—that is the Roman Popes and, by extension, the individual vassal princes of the Popes, the kings and other princes—were ascribed with a certain authority on earth, and ascribed through legal justification, by formal, legal right. Men must now command, since the gods no longer commanded. And who was to command had now to be established through external law.

Thus arose the medieval principle of authority and one can say that into this principle was also incorporated the whole perception of the Mystery of Golgotha which one only received as an account. At most one could clothe it in symbols, in which, however, one only had images. A symbol of this kind is the mass with the sacred Last Supper and all that the Christian could experience in the Church. In the Last Supper he had directly present, according to his comprehension, the entry of the Christ-force into the world. The fact that this Christ-force was able to stream into the physical world for the believers was subject to the authority which in turn proceeded from the ordinations of the Roman Church.

But what was developing here as the dialectical-legal Roman element also bore in its bosom, as it were, its other side. It bore the continuous protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then there also already comes to expression in the human being that which is to come in the future: inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through the most diverse historical phenomena, through such people as Wyclif,¹ Hus² and so on, who set themselves against the bare principle of authority, who wished to comprehend Christ out of their inner being—for which, however, the time had not yet come. In fact, one could only give onself up to the illusion that one grasped Christ out of one's own inner being.

Those men who still made their appearance as mystics in the Middle Ages also spoke of the Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ-experience. But they did have the old accounts concerning the Christ. And this rebellion against authority became stronger and stronger and because of this the urge to fortify this authority also naturally became stronger and stronger. And the strongest exercise of power to fortify this authority—to put, in a sense, everything that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha only on a basis of authority and permanently so—came from Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing more of the Christ. Jesuitism already contains in itself a complete rebellion against the original understanding of Christ. The first understanding occurred in Gnosis with the remains of the oriental clairvoyance. Jesuitism took up only the intellectual-dialectic element and rejected the Christ-principle. It did not develop a Christology but a fighting doctrine for Jesus: a Jesuology. Even though Jesus was seen as one reaching beyond all human beings, that which led to the Mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was nevertheless to be something founded purely on authority.

Thus was prepared the situation which then came about, with its culmination in the nineteenth century, in which the Christ-impulse as something spiritual was completely lost—in which theology, in wishing to be a modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. But as this whole development took its course it gave rise to many difficult conditions. Take the fact that the existing accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha were taken up by the Roman principle into a purely juristic dialectics; that they were taken up through external symbolism which could be explained. It was then impossible to let these accounts, as they existed, come into the hands of the faithful. Thus the strict forbiddance for those of the Roman faith to read the Bible.

This was the most important fact right into the later Middle Ages; that the faithful were forbidden to read the Bible. It was considered by the priesthood and the leading Catholic circles that it would be the most frightful thing if the Gospels were to become known among the broad mass of the faithful. For the Gospels originate out of a completely different constitution of soul. The Gospels can only be understood through a spiritual constitution of soul. A dialectical soul-constitution can make nothing of them. It was therefore impossible for those times, in which the intellect and dialectics were prepared, to allow the masses access to the Gospels. The Church fought furiously against the Gospels becoming known and regarded those who went against the prohibition of reading them as the most flagrant heretics; like, for example, the Waldenses and Albigenses. These claimed the right to teach themselves about the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. The Church opposed this because it knew full well that the way the Church itself presented the Mystery of Golgotha was irreconcilable with a common knowledge of the Gospels. For the Gospel in its true form actually consists of four Gospels which contradict one another. They knew that if they gave out the Gospels to the great mass of the faithful, the faithful would straightaway be confronted with contradictory accounts which, with the dawning intellectuality, they could only grasp as something to be understood as one understands things of the physical plane. After all, with an event on the physical plane one cannot understand why it ought to be described in four different ways. For an event that has to be understood by higher forces one is concerned with how it looks from this or that view, since it must always be seen from different sides. I have often said that this holds true even for dreams. People can dream the same thing; that is to say the same thing can take place within them but the pictures that are formed can differ in the most manifold ways. Thus for someone who stands in a spiritual relation to the Mystery of Golgotha the contradictions are of no significance.

But the people at the dawn of the Middle Ages did not stand in a spiritual relation; they stood in the sign of dialectics right into the lowest classes of the people. And for dialectics one could not simply give out a fourfold mutually contradictory account of the Mystery of Golgotha. And when Protestantism emerged and the Church could no longer maintain the prohibition of the Bible, there arose that discrepancy in European life which then led to the modern theology of the nineteenth century which finally erased from the Gospels everything that was contradictory. And what the Gospels have now become is, in the end, really just a well-picked carcass. The most meagre that has appeared, the most plucked, are the things which the famous Schmiedel has discovered. He considers the only genuine places in the Gospels are those where someone is not praised, where something disapproving is said, and dismisses everything else. And thus there arose the descriptions of Jesus of the theologians of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, who only wanted to describe Jesus the man and believed that with that they could still remain within Christianity. An intellectual-dialectical age could only remain within Christianity by prohibiting the Gospels. With the Gospels a dialectical-legal age could only have the effect of gradually eliminating the figure of Christ completely.

Modern humanity has actually developed under this untruth. This humanity has absolutely no inkling that, fundamentally, it lives under the principle of authority but continually denies that this is so. There is hardly a stronger stamp of the belief in authority than exists among those who accept modern official science as the standard for the world. Just look how easily people are satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been 'scientifically proven'. They know nothing more about this proof than that it has been stated by someone who has been to grammar school and university, has become a lecturer or professor and has therefore been appointed again by authority. This is how this is promulgated. And then what gets out among people in this way is supposed to be true science. Just try sometime to hold in mind for yourself everything that people accept nowadays as being true, proven science. In the last analysis it rests upon nothing other than a pure principle of authority, on absolute faith in authority—it is only that people delude themselves about this. This is the belief in authority that has replaced the other way of ordering the social structure which was derived from the Orient.

And one must grasp what hatred developed within those circles who had no understanding at all for the Mystery of Golgotha, who had only tradition continued through authority, and were terrified of the Gospels becoming generally known among the masses. One must grasp the hatred that became ever stronger and stronger and especially in Jesuitism was developed into a complete system—a hatred for Gnosis. And even today we still see how theologians get hot under the collar whenever there is any talk of Gnosis! We have to understand this on the basis of the development of European humanity. One must, for example, understand the development of the universities. How have the universities developed? One should look at history from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. They developed out of the Church. The monastery schools have become universities. Everything that was taught had to have the stamp of approval from Rome and only what had received this stamp was to be believed. The thought that it had to be approved by Rome was gradually lost but the thought that it had to be approved by something remained. And thus there remained the principle of authority even in those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And this continuation of the Roman authority-principle, but without a belief in Rome itself, is the mentality of our universities today. It is also the mentality in Protestant countries. The Catholic Church only fights on for its authority, with the exclusion of everything spiritual; it calumniates everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal mode of thinking, calumniates everything which resists being fitted into the social authority principle. One must only understand how deeply this has penetrated into the soul-constitution of those human beings living at the dawn of our modern civilization. In this way the majority lost the power to face the truth for themselves and in the last resort this has produced the great confusion; the frightful chaos in which we are now living.

But at the same time we are now living,in an age in which a faculty of vision, of supersensible perception, is again being prepared. It is the wish of spiritual science to prepare for this faculty which humanity must take hold of again. Not the old instinctive vision, but a supersensible perception founded on full consciousness. Theology professors and others fight against this perception; they confuse it with the old Gnostic visionary gift and say all sorts of things they do not understand themselves against this modern faculty. But this new vision is rising up as a necessity which must take hold of humanity. And it is into this faculty of vision that a true comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha can shine again.

Thus, the course of man's image of Christ is as follows. The Mystery of Golgotha takes place at a time in which remnants of the old clairvoyance still exist. Human beings can still just about understand it. They set down this understanding in the Gospels. Christianity moves westwards and it taken up by Rome in the dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People talk in words about the Mystery of Golgotha; in words that are merely words so that the faithful are also quite content when they are in church and the priest speaks words in a language they do not understand. For it is not a matter for them of understanding but a matter, at most, of living in the general atmosphere which is directed to the Mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection of human beings with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain point in the Middle Ages people begin to debate the significance of the symbol in which the continuous communication of the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself. People begin to debate, for example, the significance of the Last Supper. But as soon as people begin to debate something it means they no longer understand it. What lives in the evolution of humanity lives as experience; as long as people have the experience they do not dispute it. When the conflict over the nature of the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages the very last traces of understanding for the Last Supper were gone—the play of dialectics had already taken possession of it. And so the modern life of humanity unfolded until the prohibition of the Bible could no longer hold. In theory, all Catholics are still forbidden to read it. Theoretically they are allowed to read only that extract that is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity. Even today it is strictly forbidden for Catholics to occupy themselves with the four Gospels because, of course, the moment one goes into the four gospels with the modern spirit, where they are read in the same way one reads an account of the physical plane, they fragment into shreds. It is irresponsible when people who are fully aware of this and who have also experienced how in the course of the nineteenth century, under the philologizing of theology, the Gospels have been destroyed—when these people have the cheek, it cannot be called anything else, to say that Anthroposophy explains the Gospels in an arbitrary way, that it reads all sorts of things into them. These people know that the connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences people getting up onto the platform and again and again gabbling from a Catholic or Protestant point of view about how Anthroposophy puts things into the Gospels although they know perfectly well that if no spiritual comprehension is given to the Gospels they must radically destroy the Christian constitution of soul. If people would only pay more attention to how the majority of those who utter such nonsense about Anthroposophy are really only concerned with keeping their office in the most comfortable way, in the way they learnt in their youth—if people knew that in these theologians there is living not the slightest feeling for truth but only fear of losing their comfortable way of comprehending things—then we would get much further in rejecting the sort of Frolinmeyers and similar people who no longer possess the slightest spark of any sense of truth.

What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. And preparation must be made so that this Mystery of Golgotha may shine forth again to human imagination. For it cannot shine forth to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can either only wipe it from the world with its art of philology or preserve it by a tyrannical authority in the Jesuitical sense which does not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those, however, who strive for truth the path today leads towards Imagination; that is to conscious perception of the spiritual world. And the important thing is that, from the vantage point of this conscious perception of the spiritual world, One should be in the position to comprehend once again the whole being of humanity. Above all, it is essential that all human education and instruction be given from this point of view.

We know that until the age of seven, until the change of teeth, the child lives in imitation. Imitation is, in fact, nothing less than a continuation of what, in a completely different form, was present in the spirit world before birth or conception. There, in the spiritual world, one being merges into another and this is then expressed in the child's imitation of the people around it, as an echo of its spiritual experiences. Then, from the seventh Year, from the change of teeth up to puberty, comes the child's need for authority. What still lives in childish imitation lived in a certain way in the whole human nature during the ancient oriental culture. Those who worked out of the Mysteries worked with such a powerful force that other human beings followed them, as the child follows the grown-ups in its environment. Then came the principle of authority. And now the human being is growing out of this principle and is growing into that principle which begins to show itself after puberty—although of course in a personal, individual way, different from the way it is in the development of humanity as a whole. Today the human being is approaching the time when it will be necessary to develop in himself something which cannot be developed of itself. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In the ancient oriental social life it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in the child as the principle of imitation remained active even into the time of authority: the time of discerning judgements, remained active with regard to social affairs and everything that was encompassed as the religious life. The authority-principle in the ancient Orient applied only to the immediate environment. The greater affairs of life remained in the form of child-like experience.

These larger affairs of life then came into the times of the Middle Ages. The authority-principle prevailed and now, for the first time, a withdrawl from the authority-principle asserted itself—the principle of individual judgement arose. All that was developed for the affairs of the religious life, the artistic life -for human life in general that goes over and beyond the immediate elementary affairs of nature—could be found in the child, who brought it with him into the physical world from the spiritual worlds through the blood. When the authority principle still held sway, one only needed to build upon something which, with a certain necessity, developed out of the still quite unconscious etheric body. Today, when the principle of independent judgment is appearing, there arises an enormous new responsibility for pedagogy and didactics. There arises the fact that one must look in the growing child towards what will emerge. When a child reaches the age of fifteen the astral body is born in him. There is born in him that which carries into the world—now not unconsciously but in a more and more conscious way- the experiences of the spiritual world.

The time is approaching when in all our education and training we must look to what emerges from the child when he is in the fourteenth, fifteenth years of life. This was not of such great importance in all earlier times for it is connected with what lives independently in the human being which he does not bring with him through birth and which he cannot receive through authority but must really draw out of himself. And in order that he may draw it out of himself rightly we must take care that the child has the right upbringing and education up to the fourteenth, fifteenth years so that in those years he can then develop the astral body in the right way. Education and training take on a completely new significance in our modern time and, in fact, there should be no more teaching without insight into the relation of the human being to the spiritual world. That is the battle that is arising.

The sense of 'I' which pressed to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe asserted itself, as it were, out of still instinctive depths. In Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, however, this sense of 'I' dealt only with what man experiences between birth and death and had nothing to do with what is the super-physical human being. I said yesterday that the Mid-European was cut off by Turkey and by the influence of Peter the Great from anything oriental. But what continued to hover before the Mid-European as a revelation still lived on as an inheritance. This was really only understood out of the clairvoyance of the ancient Orient but still had its echoes in Asiatic Russia, the Russia not yet Europeanized.

Revelation is still alive today in Asia although in a completely decadent form. A sense for revelation is there still. The intellectual, the purely dialectical element, belongs to the West and is only developed today for the economic life. The Mid-European element was always hemmed in between these two—the Western intellectualism, still entirely restricted to the earthly economic, human reason that wishes to occupy itself only with external experience, and the oriental revelation. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly since only a kind of rhythmic balance existed between revelation and reason. What the great Scholastics of the Middle Ages had sought to hold apart—a rational grasp of the outer sense-world and supersensible revelation—collided increasingly into one another as the modern age arose. And we see this mutual interlocking particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century when the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe was born. We see then how the Western element expands in the second half of the nineteenth century; how, to a certain degree, the whole of Europe, even up to Russia, is Anglicized, and how the crushed condition, the devastated state, of Central Europe is an external sign of a deep inner process which humanity today is unwilling to grasp. Everything that is hemmed in between West and East is razed to the ground, is dashed to pieces, and does not know what to do. It lives in upheavals; talks of all sorts of things by which, somehow or other, progress can be made—but talks, however, nothing but nullities. This is expressed right into small details. There is an utter inability to cope with economics under the old conditions. What do people do? They either squeeze out of the old what is still left by a dreadful tightening of taxation or they fill what is lacking by printing worthless notes; millions of bank-notes a week. And though it is perhaps only a symbol, there nevertheless stands before the soul of individual people the following: a decadent clinging to revelation in the East, the nullity of the Centre and the rationality of the West, still bogged down in economics. And yet they talk as if of a future perspective—as though the Centre were simply not there—of the great conflict that lies ahead between Japan and America.

People, of course, picture this purely physically. This also signifies something of immense profundity. And when the decadent element existing in the East and that which is as yet unborn in the West clash together through ignoring the Centre—then the sense of 'I' which came to expression in the Centre is submerged in that chaos that arises through the crushing from East to West. Contemplation of the 'I' vanished with the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe. It has ceased to exist since the middle of the nineteenth century. And what people tried to create as political structure out of the upheavals—that, too, lies on the ground today. Impossible political structures spring up like that of Czechoslovakia which, quite certainly, in the long run cannot live and cannot die. These impossible structures can only spring up through the fact that peace is made by the people of the West who have no idea what the conditions for life are in the Centre. In Zurich people listen to someone or other who comes from Paris and holds forth to them brilliantly, as one says, on the unity of the Slovak and the Czech elements. The listeners are astounded at what such a professor makes known about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because they have no idea of the conditions for life in the East and because they do not know that what is brought into being there is only the squeezing element, the crushing together of East and West. People still cover their eyes so as not to see what the external symptoms are saying. You won't believe how, even here in Central Europe, scenes take place—though at the present time still very much towards the East—where remnants of the troops who carried the war on their shoulders appear here and there. They are now officers although there is no justification for this under present conditions. They make innocent women dance naked before them and then thrust bayonets into their bellies. Such scenes actually take place at the command of people who, incidentally, fought bravely in the war.

Before all these things the deluded men of the West, who conclude a peace of which they understand nothing, cover up their eyes. They do not see how, in what is actually going on, significant things proclaim themselves. And, for the most part, people go on with life as though nothing were happening in the world at all. And thus, one could say, things are driven into the very narrowest corner of the consciousness. That which once brought forth such idealistic heights—such ideas as one finds in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—in reality no longer exists in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered. Trumped-up slanderous stuff crops up everywhere; people cite it as something which they pretend to understand and must pass judgment on. Something is developing into nullity which a century ago was still radiant spirit-life. And above this the clouds are rolling together from the East and the West.

And what is the meaning of this that must come to expression In the most frightful way in coming decades? What is its Meaning? On the one hand it is the challenge to stand firm on the ground that would give birth to the new life of the spirit. On the other hand it is the sign in the heavens of that which has been spoken about among us for some time: the approach of the Christ in the form in which He must be seen from the twentieth century onwards. For, before the middle of this century has passed, the Christ must be seen. But before that, all that remains of the old must be driven into nullity, the clouds must gather. The human being must find his full freedom out of nullity and the new perception must be born out of this nullity. The human being must find his whole strength out of the nothingness. It is but the desire of spiritual science to prepare him for it. This is something of which one may not say that it desires to, but that it must desire to!

• 1 . John Wyclif (c. 1324–84).
• 2 . John Huss (1369–1415).

My dear Friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moon—Ancient Indian civilisation

Mercury—Ancient Persian civilisation

Venus—Egypto-Chaldean civilisation

Sun—Greco-Latin civilisation

Mars (Iron)—

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

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

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

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

In continuing our studies on karma, we are under the necessity, at the outset, of casting a glance at the manner in which karma intervenes in the evolution of man, how destiny, which intervenes with the free deeds of man, is really fashioned in its physical reflection out of the spiritual world.

To begin with, I shall have to tell you today a few things about that which is connected with the human being in as far as he lives on earth. This earthly man—during these lectures we have been studying him in regard to the various members of his being. We have distinguished in him the physical body, the ether body, the astral body, the ego organism. We can, however, by directing our gaze upon him, just as he stands before us in the physical world, perceive the membering of the human being in yet another way.

Today we intend—quite independently of what we have already been discussing—to consider a certain membering of the human being, and we shall try to build a bridge between what we discuss today and that which we already know.

If we consider the human being as he stands before us on the earth, simply according to his physical form, then this physical form has three clearly differentiated members. This differentiation is, however, not usually observed, because that which asserts itself as science nowadays really looks at things and facts in a merely superficial way. It has no sensibility for what reveals itself when things and facts are considered with a perception inwardly illumined.

We have, to begin with, the human head. Even outwardly considered, this human head shows itself as something quite different from the remainder of the human form. We need but turn our attention to the formation of the human being out of the human embryo. The first thing we can see developing in the body of the mother as human embryo is the head organization.

The whole human organization takes its start from the head, and everything else in the human being which afterwards flows into his configuration is, actually, an appendage-organ of the human embryo. As physical form, the human being is a head in the beginning. The rest are appendage-organs. And the functions which these appendage-organs assume in later life—such as breathing, circulation, nutrition—are, in the first period of the embryonic existence, activities proceeding not from within the embryo, but from without inward, out of the body of the mother, through organs which afterwards fall off, organs which are no longer present later in the human being.

Figure IX

The human being is, at the outset, entirely head. The rest is appendage-organ. We do not exaggerate in the following sentence: The human being is in the beginning head; the rest is, so to speak, appendage-organ. Since that which at first was appendage-organ later on grows and gains in importance for the human being, his head finally loses its sharp distinction from the rest of the organs.

But this gives only a superficial characterization of the human being. For in reality he is, also as physical form, a threefold being. All that which actually constitutes his first form—the head—remains throughout his earthly life a more or less individual member. We fail merely to recognize this; nevertheless, it is a fact.

You will say: Indeed, one ought not to divide the human being in such a way that we behead him, as it were, chop off his head. That this happens in Anthroposophy was only the belief of Professor “Blank” who reproached Anthroposophy for dividing men into head, chest organs, and limb organs. But this charge is not true; it is not at all a fact; for in what is outwardly head configuration, lies only the main outer expression of the head configuration. Man remains completely “head” throughout his whole life. The most important sense organs—the eyes, ears, the organs of smell, the organs of taste—are, to be sure, in the head, but the sense of warmth, for example, the sense of pressure, the sense of touch, are spread out over the whole human being. That is precisely because the three members of the human organism are not to be differentiated spatially, but only in such a way that the head formation mainly appears in the outwardly formed head, while in reality it permeates the entire human being. And this is true also for the rest of the members. The head is, throughout man's earthly life, in the big toe, in so far as the big toe possesses a sense of touch or a sense of warmth.

Thus we have characterized, to begin with, the one member of the human being's essential nature, that human nature which confronts us as something sensuous. In my books I have designated this organization also as the nerve-sense organism in order to characterize it more inwardly. This, then, is one member of the human being, the nerve-sense organism.

The second member of the essential nature of the human being is all that manifests in rhythmical activity. You cannot say of the nerve-sense system that it finds expression in rhythmic activity, for example, in the perception of the eye; for in that case you would have to perceive one thing at a certain moment, then another, then a third, then a fourth, and then return again to the first, and so on. In other words, there would have to be a rhythm in your sense perception. But that is not the case. Observe on the other hand the main characteristic of your breast organism. There you will find the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of circulation, the rhythm of digestion, and so forth. There, everything is rhythm.

Rhythm, with its organs of rhythm, is the second thing to develop in the human being; and it also extends over the whole human being, though its chief external manifestation is in the organs of the breast. The whole human being, again, is a lung; yet lung and heart are localized, so to speak, in the organs so named. The whole human being, indeed, breathes; you breathe in every spot of your organism. People speak of skin respiration. Only, in the activity of the lung is respiration mainly concentrated.

The third human organism is that of the limbs—the limb organism. The limbs terminate in the breast organism. In the embryonic stage of existence, they appear as appendages. They are the latest to develop. They are, however, the organs which are chiefly connected with metabolism. The metabolic process finds its chief stimulus through the fact that these organs are put into motion, perform most of the work in the human being. We have thus characterized the three members that appear to us in the human form.

But these three members are intimately connected with the soul life of the human being. His soul life can be divided into thinking, feeling, and willing. Thinking finds its physical expression chiefly in the head. But it has its physical organism also in the entire human being, because the head exists, in the way I have just described, throughout the entire human being.

Feeling is connected with the rhythmic organism. It is a prejudice, indeed even a superstition on the part of modern science to assume that the nervous system has directly to do with feeling. The nervous system has nothing directly to do with feeling. The respiration and circulation rhythms are the organs of feeling, and the nerves only transmit the fact that we cognize our feelings, that we experience them. The feelings have their organism in the rhythmic system, but we should know nothing of our feelings if the nerves did not procure for us percepts of them. And because the nerves procure for us these percepts of our feelings, modern intellectualism creates the superstition that the nerves themselves are tin* organs of feeling. This is not the case.

But, when we consciously observe our feelings, as they arise out of our rhythmic organism, and compare them with the thoughts which an* bound to our head, to our nerve-sense organism, then—if we are able to observe at all—we shall perceive the same difference between our thoughts and our feelings that exists between our daytime thoughts which we have in waking life and our dreams. Our feelings have no greater intensity in consciousness than dreams. They only have a different form; they only make their appearance in a different way. When you dream in pictures, your consciousness lives in pictures. But these pictures, in their picture character, have the same significance—although in another form—as our feelings. Thus, we may say that we have the clearest consciousness, the most illumined consciousness in our visualizations, in our thoughts. We have a kind of dream consciousness in regard to our feelings. We only believe that we have a clear consciousness of our feelings; we have no clearer consciousness of our feelings than we have of our dreams. If on awaking from sleep we recollect our dreams and form of them wide-awake visualizations, we do not seize hold of the dream. The dream is far richer than our visualization of it afterwards. In like manner is the world of feeling infinitely richer than our mental pictures of it, which we make present to our consciousness.

Figure X

And completely immersed in sleep is our willing. This willing is bound to the limb-metabolic organism, to the motor organism. All that we really know of our willing are the thoughts. I form the visualization: I shall take hold of this watch. Just try to think quite sincerely that you form the visualization: I shall take hold of this watch. Then you do take hold of it. What proceeds from your visualization, your thought, right down into the muscles and finally leads to something which again appears as a visualization—your taking hold of the watch, which is a continuation of the first visualization—what lies between the thought of the intention to act, and the thought of its fulfilment, what occurs in your organism, all these activities remain just as unconscious as your life in the deepest dreamless sleep.

We do at least dream of our feelings, but from our impulses of will we have nothing but what we have from our sleep. You may say: I have nothing at all from sleep. Well, I do not speak now from the physical standpoint; even from the physical standpoint it is, indeed, entirely senseless to say that you have nothing at all from sleep. But psychically, too, you have a great deal from your sleep. If you were never to sleep, you would never reach your ego consciousness.

You need only realize the following: When you remember the experiences you have had, then you say that you are going back in time, that from the present you go further back in time. Indeed, you imagine that it is a fact that you go further back in time. But it is not so at all. In reality you only go back to the moment when you awoke from sleep the last time. (See Figure X.) Then you have fallen asleep. What lies there between is eliminated. And then in the interval from the last time you fell asleep back to the time before the last when you woke up, memory appears again. So the matter continues on, back in time. And by looking back, you must really always insert the periods of unconsciousness. In doing so we must insert unconsciousness for one third of our life. We do not pay attention to this. But it is just as if you had a white plane with a black hole in the center. (See Figure XI.) You see the black hole, in spite of the fact that there are no forces present. Thus, in looking back in memory, in spite of the fact that it contains nothing from life's reminiscences, you see, nevertheless, the blackness—the nights, through which you have slept. There your consciousness strikes against this blackness continually, and that impels you to call yourself an I, an ego.

Figure XI

If this really continued on and you were to knock against nothing, you would never gain an ego consciousness. Thus we can, indeed, say that we benefit from sleep. And just as we benefit from our sleep in the ordinary earth life, do we benefit from the sleep which rules in our willing. We sleep through that which really takes place in us with every act of will. But in it there lies the true ego. Just as we receive our ego consciousness through the black void (see Figure XI), so does our ego lie in that which sleeps in us during the act of will—the ego, however, which passed through our former earth lives.

That is where karma holds sway. Karma rules in our willing. In our willing all the impulses from our preceding earth life hold sway; only, even in the waking human being, they are sunk in sleep.

Thus, when we visualize the human being as he confronts us in earth life, a threefold membering of his organism is observable: the head organism, the rhythmic organism, and the motor organism. That is a schematic division. Each member belongs in turn to the whole man. Visualizing is bound to the head organism, feeling is bound to the rhythmic organism, and willing to the motor organism. Our state while visualizing is wakefulness, while feeling is dreaming. Our state in which willing, in which the will impulses take place is sleep, even during our waking life.

Now, in the head—that is, in our visualizing—we must distinguish two things; we must discover, as it were, a more subtle membering of the head. This more subtle membering leads us to distinguish what we have as momentary visualization by virtue of our having intercourse with the world, from what we have as memory.

You go through the world, constantly forming visualizations, mental images, according to the impressions you receive from the world. But it remains possible for you to call up these impressions again out of your memory. The visualizations you form in your intercourse with the world at present are not differentiated inwardly from the visualizations aroused to life when memory becomes active. In one case they come from without, and in the other from within. It is, indeed, a naive thought to imagine that memory works in the following way: I now confront a thing or event, form a visualization, a mental picture of it; this visualization sinks down into me somewhere, into some sort of pigeon-hole, and, when later I remember, I take it again out of the pigeon-hole. There are, indeed, whole philosophies which are able to describe how the visualizations sink down beneath the threshold of consciousness, then are fished out again in the act of recollecting. These are naive concepts.

There is, of course, no such pigeon-hole in which our visualizations lie when we remember them. Nor is there any such place in us where they are moving about and whence, when we remember them, they walk up again into our head. All these things are utterly non-existent, nor is there any explanation in their favor.

The facts are rather as follows, you need only to reflect on the following: When you wish to exercise your memory, you often do not work merely with your powers of visualizing, but you bring to your aid very different means. I have seen people memorizing who exercised their power to visualize just as little as possible, but carried on vehement outer movements accompanying their speech (arm movements) again and again:

And it undulates, surges, and roars and hisses

[Und es wallet und woget und brauset und zischt.
A well-known line of German poetry. (Tr.)]

Thus, people memorize in this way, and in so doing the least possible thinking occurs. And in order to add a further stimulus—And it undulates, surges, and roars and hisses—they beat their forehead with their fists. Even this happens. It is definitely a fact that the visualizations we form as we occupy ourselves with the world are as evanescent as dreams. On the other hand, what emerges out of memory are not visualizations which have sunk below into us, but something quite different. Were I to give you some notion of it, I should have to draw it thus (see Figure XII). This is, naturally, only a kind of symbolic figure. Imagine the human being as a seeing being. He sees something. I shall not describe the process more exactly; that could be done, but for the moment we do not need it. The human being sees something. It passes through his eye (see Figure XII), through the optic nerve into the organs into which the optic nerve then merges.

We have two clearly distinct members of our brain: the more external brain, the gray matter; and, beneath it, the white matter. The white matter terminates in the sense organs, the gray matter lies within it; it is far less developed than the white mass. “Gray” and “white” are, of course, only approximate terms. But even thus crudely anatomically considered, the matter is as follows: The objects make an impression on us, pass through our eyes, and on into the processes that take place in the white matter of the brain.

On the other hand, our visualizations have their organs in the gray matter (see Figure XII) which, incidentally, has quite a different cell structure. Therein our visualizations glimmer and vanish like dreams. They glimmer, because the impressions are occurring underneath.

If you were dependent upon having the mental images sink down into you, and you then had to call them up again in memory, you would remember nothing at all, you would have no memory. The fact is like this: At the present moment, let us say, I see something. The impression of it—whatever it may be—sinks into me, the white matter of the brain acting as the medium. The gray matter functions by dreaming in its turn of the impressions, making pictures of them. These are only transitory pictures; they come and go. That which remains we do not visualize at all at this moment, but that goes down into our organism. And when we remember, we look within; down there below, the impression remains.

Thus, when you see something blue, then an impression of blue sinks down into you (below, in Figure XII), here (above, in Figure XII) you form the visualization of blue. It is transitory. Then, after three days, you

observe in your brain the impression which has remained. Now, by looking inward, you visualize the blue. The first time, when you saw the blue from without, you were stimulated from outside by the blue object. The second time, when you remember, you are stimulated from within, because the blueness portrayed itself within you. In both cases, the process is the same. It is always a perception. Memory, too, is a perception. So that our day-waking consciousness is actually to be found, as it were, in the visualizing process; but, beneath the visualizing, certain processes are going on which also rise into consciousness through visualizing, namely, through the memory visualizations. Below this visualizing lies perceiving,

Figure XII

the actual perception, and only below this lies feeling. Thus, we can distinguish more intimately between the processes of visualizing and perceiving in our head organism, our thought organism. That which we have perceived we can then remember. But it remains, indeed, very unconscious; only in memory does it rise into consciousness. What really takes place in the human being is actually no longer experienced by him. When he perceives, he experiences the visualization. The effect of the perception penetrates him. Out of this effect he is able to awaken the memory. But then the unconscious has already begun.

In reality it is only here, in this region—where in waking-day consciousness we visualize—there only do we ourselves exist as human beings. There only are we really aware of ourselves as human beings (see Figure XIII). Where we do not reach down with our consciousness (we do not even reach the causes of our memories) there we are not aware of ourselves as human beings but are incorporated into the world. It is just as it is in the physical life. You inhale, the air you now have within yourself was a short while ago outside, it was the air of the outer atmosphere; it is now your air. After a short time, you give it back again to the world; you are one with the world. The air is now outside you, now inside you, now without, now within. You would not be a human being were you not united with the world in such a way that you possess not only that which is

Figure XIII

present within your skin, but that by means of which you yourself are connected with the whole surrounding atmosphere. And just as you are thus connected on your physical side, so are you connected on your spiritual side—the moment you descend into the nearest sub-conscious region, the region out of which memory arises—so are you connected with that which we call the third Hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. Just as you are connected through your breathing with the air, so are you connected through your head organism, the lower head organism, with the third Hierarchy. The outer lobes of the brain, consisting of gray matter, only and solely belong to the earth. What is beneath (the white matter) is connected with the third Hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai.

Now let us descend into the region, psychologically speaking, of feeling; corporeally speaking, of the rhythmic organism, out of which the dreams of our feeling life arise. There we do not at all possess ourselves as human beings; there we are connected with what constitutes the second Hierarchy—the spiritual beings who do not incarnate in any kind of earthly body, but who remain in the spiritual world. They, however, send unceasingly their currents, their impulses, that which streams from them as forces, into the rhythmic organism of the human being. Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—these are the beings whom we bear within our breast.

Just as we bear our human ego only in the outer lobes of our brain, so do we bear the Angeloi and Archangeloi, directly beneath this region, but still within the head organism. That is the scene of their earthly activities; there the starting-points of their activity are to be found.

In our breast we bear the second Hierarchy—Exusiai, and so forth; there in our breast are the starting-points of their activity. And if we now descend into the sphere of our motor organism, if we enter our movement organism, then in this sphere the beings of the first Hierarchy are active—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.

The transmuted food-stuffs, the food-stuffs we have eaten, circulate in our limbs, undergo there a process which is a living combustion process. For, if we take just a single step, there arises in us a living process of combustion, a burning up of that which was outside us. We are connected with it. Through our limb and metabolic organism, we are connected as human beings with the lowest, and yet it is precisely through the limb organism that we are connected with the highest. With the first Hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, we are connected by that which permeates us with spirit. Now the great question arises—it may sound trivial in that I clothe it in earthly words, but there is nothing else I can do—the question arises: With what are they occupied—these beings of the three successive Hierarchies, while they are among us—with what do they occupy themselves?

The third Hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so forth—concerns itself with that which has its physical organism in the head; this Hierarchy occupies itself with our thinking. Were it not concerned with our thinking, with that which takes place in our head, we would have no memory in ordinary earth life. The beings of this Hierarchy retain in us the impulses which we receive with our perceptions. They underlie the activity which manifests itself in our recollection, manifests itself in memory. They lead us through our earth life within this, our first unconscious region.

Now let us proceed to the beings of the second Hierarchy—Exusiai, and so forth. They are the beings we encounter when we have passed through the gate of death, in the life between death and a new birth. There we encounter the souls of the departed human beings who lived with us on earth; but we encounter there, above all, the spiritual beings of this second Hierarchy also, it is true, those of the third Hierarchy, but the second Hierarchy is more important. We work with them during the time between death and a new birth upon all that we have felt in our earth life, all that we have transplanted into our organism. In union with these beings of the second Hierarchy, we elaborate our next earth life.

When we stand here on the earth, we have the feeling that the spiritual beings of the divine world are in us. When we are there beyond in the sphere between death and a new birth, we have the reverse thought. The Angeloi, Archangeloi and so forth, who guide us through our earth life in the manner indicated, live on the same plane with us, so to speak, after our death. Directly underneath are the beings of the second Hierarchy. With them we work on the forming, the shaping, of our inner karma. And all that I told you yesterday about the karma of health and disease we elaborate with these beings, the beings of the second Hierarchy.

And if we look still deeper in the time between death and a new birth, that is, if we, as it were, look through the beings of the second Hierarchy, then below we discover the beings of the first Hierarchy, Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones. As earthly human beings, we seek the highest Gods above us. We seek as human beings between death and a new birth in the profoundest depths below us for the highest Divinity attainable by us. And while we are working with the beings of the second Hierarchy, dab- orating our inner karma between death and a new birth, that inner karma which afterwards appears reflected in the healthy or diseased constitution of our next earth life, while we are engaged in this work, while we work with ourselves and with other human beings upon the bodies which will then appear in our next earth life, the beings of the first Hierarchy are occupied below in a peculiar way. We behold that. They stand within a certain necessity in regard to their activity, in regard to a part, a small part, of their activity. They must imitate—for they are the creators of the earthly—that which the human being has molded during his earth life but imitate it in a quite definite way.

Think of the following: In his will, the human being performs certain deeds on earth. The will belongs to the first Hierarchy. Be these deeds good or bad, wise or foolish, the beings of the first Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—have to mold the counterparts of these deeds in their own sphere.

You know, my dear friends, we live together. No matter, whether the things we do together are good or evil, for all that is good, for all that is evil, the beings of the first Hierarchy must shape the corresponding counterparts. Among the first Hierarchy all things are judged, but also shaped and fashioned. While we work on our inner karma with the second Hierarchy and with the departed human souls, we behold between death and a new birth what Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones have experienced through our earthly deeds.

Indeed, my dear friends, here upon earth the blue sky with its cloud formations and sunshine arches overhead, and at night, as the starry heavens, it vaults above us. Between death and a new birth, the activity of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones vaults beneath us. And we gaze down upon these Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones just as we here look up to the clouds, to the blue heaven, to the star-strewn heaven. Beneath us we behold the heavens formed of the activity of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. But what kind of activity is it? While we live between death and a new birth, we behold the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones performing the activity which results as the just and compensating activity from our own deeds on earth—our own and the earthly deeds lived through with other human beings. The Gods are obliged to exercise the compensating activity, and we behold it as our heavens which are now beneath us. In the deeds of the Gods we behold the consequences of our earthly deeds, whether good or bad, wise or foolish. And by looking downward we relate ourselves, between death and a new birth, to the reflection of our deeds in the same way as in earthly life we relate ourselves to the vaulting heaven above us.

We carry our inner karma into our inner organism. We bring it back with us onto the earth as our faculties and talents, our genius and our stupidity. What the Gods fashion there beneath us, what they must experience in consequence of our earth lives, confronts us in our next earth life as the facts of destiny which come to meet us from without. We may say that what we pass through to which we are asleep carries us into our destiny in our earth life. But in this lives what the Gods in question, those of the first Hierarchy, had to experience as the consequences of our deeds in their domain during the time between our death and a new birth.

One always feels the need of expressing such things in pictures. Let us imagine ourselves standing somewhere in the physical world. The sky is overcast; we behold the clouded sky. Soon thereafter, a rain begins to trickle down; the rain is falling. What previously hovered above us we now see on the dripping fields, on the dripping trees. If we look back, with the eye of the initiate, from human life into the time we passed through between our last death and our last birth, we then see therein, first of all, the forming of divine deeds, the consequences of our own deeds in our last earth life. We then see how this spiritually rains down and becomes our destiny.

If I meet a human being who has significance for me in earth life, who has a determining influence upon my destiny, what occurs with (his meeting of the other human being has been previously experienced by the Gods as a result of what I have had in common with him in a former earl h life. If I am transferred during my earth life to some locality important to me or placed in some important calling, all that comes to me thus as outer destiny is a likeness of what the Gods have experienced—Gods of the first Hierarchy—as a consequence of my former earth life, during the time when I was myself between death and a new birth.

Indeed, if you think abstractly, then you think: “There we have the former earth lives; the deeds of the former earth lives work across into the present. Previously they were causes; now they are effects.” With this we cannot think very far; we have actually little more than words when we make this statement. But behind what we thus describe as the law of karma lie the deeds of the Gods, experiences of the Gods; and behind all that lie the other facts.

If we human beings approach our destiny only through feeling, then we look up, according to our faith, either to the Gods or to some Providence, upon which we feel the course of our earth life depending. But the Gods—those whom we know as the beings of the first Hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—have, as it were, a reverse religious confession. They feel their necessity lies with men on earth whose creators they arc. The aberrations human beings suffer, and the progress they enjoy, must be equalized by the Gods. And what the Gods prepare for us as our destiny in a subsequent life they have already lived through before us.

These truths must be found again through Anthroposophy. Out of a consciousness not fully developed, they were perceived by mankind in an erstwhile instinctive clairvoyance. The ancient wisdom contained such truths. Then only a dim feeling about them remained. In much that meets us in the spiritual life of mankind, there is still a dim feeling for these things. You need only remember the verse by Angelus Silesius which you will also find quoted elsewhere in my writings. To a narrow religious understanding it sounds like an impertinence:

Without me, God could not a moment live at most.
Came I to naught, must He from need give up the ghost.

Ohn' mich könnt' Gott ein Nu nicht leben.
Würd' ich zunicht, müsst' er vor Not den Geist aufgeben.

Angelus Silesius went over to Roman Catholicism and as a Catholic wrote such verses. To him it was still clear that the Gods are dependent on the world, just as the world is dependent on the Gods, that this dependence is something mutual, and that the Gods must direct their life according to the life of human beings. But the divine life acts creatively and has its effect in turn in the destiny of human beings. Angelus Silesius, dimly feeling, but not knowing the exact truth, said:

Without me, God could not a moment live at most.
Came I to naught, must He from need give up the ghost.

World and Godhead depend on one another and work into one another. Today we have seen this interactivity in the example of human destiny, of karma.

For a long time we have been speaking of the karmic facts and conditions connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, with the Anthroposophical Society and with the individuals who feel impelled out of an inner sincerity, to choose their path of life within this Movement. Much will remain to be said on these karmic questions after my return from England, but today, in our last lecture before my departure which will take me away for the rest of August,¹ today I would like to bring to a kind of conclusion what I have said. Thus in today's lecture we will to some extent round off the thoughts I have been able to communicate to you in these our studies upon karma.

You will all have observed, my dear friends, how manifold are the forms through which the karma of the individual anthroposophist has passed in former lives on earth and between death and a new birth. Especially in the last two lectures we have been able to hint at the great significance which these things may have for the individual anthroposophist in his karma. We have seen how the karma of anthroposophists is connected with the evolution of the Michael principle through long, long epochs of time. To begin with, we saw in a more abstract form how the rulership of the Cosmic Intelligence—for so we called it—fell from the dominion of Michael. For as I said, in ancient times it was so indeed, that men could not ascribe to themselves the essence of Intelligence. They ascribed to the inspiration of higher Powers all that they could express in forms of Intelligence. And those who had knowledge of these matters knew that the higher Powers here concerned were the ones who afterwards, in Christian terminology, were designated as the Powers of Michael. I also spoke to you of the 8th or 9th century A.D. as the point of time in the evolution of civilised mankind when the Cosmic Intelligence gradually moved down to the earth, took shape as it were in many single drops which then lived on as personal Intelligence in single human souls. And I told you, my dear friends, how the perception and understanding of the Cosmic Intelligence—that is to say, of the old rulership by Michael,—lived on traditionally, with a certain reality of insight. We turn our gaze for instance to those, in many respects excellent, scholars who were connected with Arabism and with the Aristotelianism that had lived on in Asia since the campaigns of Alexander. This Aristotelianism had also permeated the mysticism of the East, filling it, as it were, with Intelligence. All this was carried across through Africa to Spain and went on working there, in the wisdom of the Moors, in such outstanding individualities as Averroes; and in the teachings of these Moorish, Spanish scholars we find a very real reflection of those old perceptions which had still looked upward to the Cosmic Intelligence.

Let us try to gain a vivid idea of how the Cosmic Intelligence had been conceived. I will give you a rough sketch of what these Moorish, Spanish scholars taught to their pupils in Spain in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, in the time when in other parts of Europe such things were prevailing as the School of Chartres, of which I have told you so much. In Spain it was taught by the Moorish scholars and above all by such an individuality as Averroes, that the Intelligence holds sway everywhere. The whole world, the whole cosmos is filled with the all-pervading Intelligence. Human beings down here on earth have many different properties, but they do not possess a personal intelligence of their own. On the contrary, every time a human being is active on the earth, a drop of Intelligence, a ray of Intelligence proceeds from the universal Intelligence, and descends as it were into the head, into the body of the single human being. So that the human being as he walks about on earth, shares in the universal Cosmic Intelligence which is common to all. And when he dies, when he passes through the gate of death, the Intelligence that was his returns to the universal Intelligence, flows back again. Thus all the thoughts, conceptions and ideas which man possesses in the life between birth and death flow back into the common reservoir of the universal Intelligence. One cannot therefore say that the thing of outstanding value in man's soul, namely his Intelligence, is subject to personal immortality. Indeed it was actually taught by the Spanish, Moorish scholars that man does not possess personal immortality. True, he lives on, but, said these scholars, the most important thing about him during his life is the fact that he can unfold intelligent knowledge, and this does not remain with his own being. We cannot therefore say that the intelligent being possesses personal immortality. You see, this was the very point in the fury of the battle which was waged by the Schoolmen of the Dominican Order. It was to maintain and uphold the personal immortality of man. And in that time, such a striving could appear in no other way than it did when the Dominicans declared: Man is personally immortal, and the teaching of Averroes on this subject is heresy, absolute heresy. Today we have to put it differently, but for that time one can understand that a man like Averroes in Spain, who did not assume the personal immortality of man, was declared a heretic. Today we have to study the matter in its reality. We have to say: In the sense in which man has become immortal, as to his Spiritual Soul, he has indeed attained immortality—the continued consciousness of personality after passing through the gate of death—but he has attained this only since the time when a Spiritual Soul took up its abode in earthly man. If therefore we had asked Aristotle or Alexander what were their thoughts about immortality, what would have been their answer? The words of course are not the point. But if, being asked, they had answered in our Christian terminology, they would have said: Our soul is received by Michael and we live on in the communion of Michael. Or they would have expressed it cosmologically. Above all in a community such as that of Alexander or Aristotle, they would have spoken thus in cosmic terms, and indeed they did speak thus: The soul of man is intelligent on earth, but this Intelligence is a drop out of the fulness of what Michael pours forth like a rain of Intelligence, flowing out over mankind. This rain proceeds from the Sun, and the Sun receives the human soul back again into its own being. The human soul as it exists between birth and death is rayed down to Earth from the Sun. Thus on the Sun they would have looked for the dominion of Michael, and such would have been their answer, cosmologically speaking.

These conceptions found their way into Asia, returned from Asia and flourished among the Moors in Spain at the very time when the Scholastic Philosophy rose up in defence of personal immortality. We must not say with the Schoolmen that this conception was an error, but we must say: The evolution of mankind brought with it the individual and personal immortality of man. And it was by the Dominican Schoolmen that this personal immortality was first emphasised, while on the other hand an ancient truth—one that was no longer true for that age in the evolution of the human race—was put forward in the Academies conducted by the Moors in Spain. For we today must not only be tolerant of our contemporaries. We must be tolerant of those who went on propagating ancient teachings. Such tolerance was not possible in that time. Hence it is important for us to repeat this to ourselves again and again: The personal immortality maintained by Dominican Schoolmen has only been true since the time when the Spiritual Soul slowly and gradually entered into mankind.

We can also describe these things in a fully Imaginative form. When a man dies in our time—a man who was really able, during his earthly life, to permeate his soul with true Intelligence—having gone through the gate of death, he looks back upon his past earthly life and sees it as an independent life on earth. In former centuries, man having passed through the gate of death, and looking back upon his earthly life, saw how the etheric body became dissolved in the cosmos. Then he passed through the realm of souls, living through the events again in backward order. Then he could say to himself: ‘Thus Michael, through the Sun, administers what was mine before.’ This is the great difference. But we can only understand such developments in evolution when we look behind the scenes of existence, perceiving the Spiritual behind the Material. We must see the outer events in mankind even as they are shaped and formed out of the spiritual world.

At this point, my dear friends, you must enter once more into all that I have now told you. Remember that with the 9th century A.D. the great crisis was accomplished: the Cosmic Intelligence came down among earthly men. This was the objective fact, this was actually taking place. And now transplant yourselves into the Sun-sphere, where Michael and his hosts were holding sway as I have described. For they had perceived the departure of Christ from the Sun and His passage to the earth in the Mystery of Golgotha, and after that, they had experienced how the Cosmic Intelligence descended more and more, to become individual human knowledge. Now there was one important event which made a deep impression, above all, on those who belong to Michael—whom in our last lecture I called the ‘Michaelites.’ It was an altogether outstanding event, which I have often described in other connections, showing the part it played in the unfolding of civilisation on the earth. Now, however, we must describe it as it appeared from the aspect of the Michaelites themselves, namely from the Sun. We must describe it as it is seen from that perspective—when one looks down from the realm of Michael on to the earth. This most significant event took place in the year 869 A.D. At the 8th Ecumenical Council held in that year at Constantinople, it was declared dogmatically that the old conception of Trichotomy, saying that man consists of body, soul and Spirit, is heretical. It was declared: Man has only body and soul, save that his soul possesses certain spiritual qualities. While in the sphere of objective realities the passage of the Intelligence into the single human beings was being accomplished, it was decreed on earth: Trichotomy is a false heresy. It was decreed in such a final and decisive form that no one within European civilisation could venture henceforth to contradict it. Henceforth one was forbidden to say that man has body, soul and Spirit. One might only speak of body and soul, ascribing spiritual qualities and forces to the soul. Something had thus taken place on earth, of which in the realms of Michael they could only say: Now there will enter into the souls of men the conviction that the Spiritual is but a quality of the soul, and not the Divine which holds sway in the great process of mankind's evolution. ‘Look down upon the earth’—such was the language of Michael—‘Look down upon the earth, behold the consciousness of the Spirit vanishing away.’ But you must see, my dear friends, this vanishing of the consciousness of the Spirit was bound up with the main subject of which we wish to speak today.

As I said just now, hitherto I have only described in abstract terms how the evolution of the Michael realm has taken place behind the scenes of earth-existence. I have said: the Cosmic Intelligence came down to the single men. But this, my dear friends, is only an abstraction. For what is Intelligence? Needless to say we must not conceive that when we ascend into the higher regions we shall be able to take hold of the Intelligence there as we take hold of trees and shrubs here in the physical world. What is Intelligence? These abstract generalisations do not of course exist in reality. ‘Intelligence’ means the mutual relationships of conduct among the higher Hierarchies. What they do, how they relate themselves to one another, what they are to one another,—this is the Cosmic Intelligence. And since as human beings we must first consider the kingdom that is nearest to us, concretely speaking the Cosmic Intelligence will be for us the sum-total of the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi. If we are speaking concretely we cannot say ‘so much Intelligence,’ but rather ‘so many Angeloi.’ This is the reality.

When the Church Fathers were discussing in the year 869 A.D. whether man should speak henceforth of the Spirit, it was a consequence of the fact that a number of Angel Beings were separating from the realm of Michael where they had been before, and were assuming that they would henceforth have to do with earthly Powers only;—that the guidance of human beings would be achieved henceforth through earthly powers alone. You must see clearly what kind of an event this was. Angels are the Beings who guide men from earthly life to earthly life. They are the Beings next above us in the spiritual world, who lead us along our path in the life between death and a new birth and show us the way to our returning earthly life. They make of our several earthly lives a connected chain, a totality of human life. Now a number of Angel Beings—Beings who have this task and who had been united formerly with the Michael kingdom—went out and left the kingdom of Michael. Such being the conduct of these Angel Beings, the destiny of human beings could not possibly remain untouched. Who is it partakes in the very first place in the unfolding of human karma—in the way the earthly thoughts, the earthly deeds and earthly feelings are transformed and elaborated between death and a new birth? It is the Beings of the Angeloi. If now these Angel Beings come to an entirely different position in the cosmos—if, so to speak, they leave the kingdom of the Sun and become no longer celestial Angels but terrestrial—what then must happen? Here we come upon a secret, permeating the whole evolution and history of Europe, hidden behind the external facts. Certain Angeloi remained in the kingdom of Michael. In that great School in the beginning of the 15th century we find also the Angel Beings belonging to the human beings who were then in the kingdom of Michael. To all the souls of human beings who lived in the kingdom of Michael and of whom I have spoken to you, belong Angel Beings who have remained in Michael's kingdom. But there were others who left it and identified themselves with that which was in essence earthly.

Now you will say: How is it possible that it suddenly occurs to a number of Michael Angels to leave the kingdom of Michael? It does not occur to the others to leave.—This, my dear friends, I must admit, is one of the most difficult questions that can possibly be raised in connection with the modern evolution of mankind. It is a question such that as we enter into it all the inner forces of the human being are called into play. It is a question deeply and intimately connected with the whole life of man. For you see, at the foundation of it there lies a cosmic fact. You know, from lectures I have given here, that what is commonly referred to as a mere physical planet is in reality a gathering of Spiritual Beings. When we look up to a star, that which appears to us physically is but the external aspect. In reality we have to do with a gathering of Spiritual Beings. Now there is a certain contrast. Since the very beginning of earthly evolution, this contrast has existed. It is the contrast between the Intelligences of all the planets and the Intelligence of the Sun. There is indeed on the one hand the Sun Intelligence, while on the other there are the Intelligences of the several planets. And it was always so, that the Sun Intelligence stood paramountly under the dominion of Michael, while the other Planetary Intelligences were subject to the other Archangels. Thus we may say:

SUN INTELLIGENCE. PLANETARY INTELLIGENCES.

Sun ... ... MICHAEL

Mercury ... ... RAPHAEL

Venus ... ... ANAEL

Mars ... ... SAMAEL

Jupiter ... ... ZACHARIEL

Moon ... ... GABRIEL

Saturn ... ... ORIPHIEL

On the other hand it was always so that one might not say, Michael administers the Sun Intelligence alone, but rather, Michael administers the whole Cosmic Intelligence, differentiated as it is into the Sun Intelligence and the Planetary Intelligences, Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc. The several Beings of the Hierarchy of Archangeloi partake in its administration. But over all of them together Michael holds sway ever and again. Thus the whole Cosmic Intelligence is administered by Michael. Now of course, every human being was a human being even before, when Michael administered the Cosmic Intelligence from which only a ray descended into the human individual. And it was due to the Sun that man on earth could yet feel himself as man; could feel himself as single man and not as a mere vehicle for the common Cosmic Intelligence. All human Intelligence comes from Michael in the Sun.

But when these centuries approached—the 8th, the 9th, the 10th century A.D.—it happened that the Planetary Intelligences began to reckon with the fact that the earth had changed, and that the Sun too had changed.

My dear friends, that which goes on externally, which the astronomers describe, is after all only the outer side. You know that approximately every 11 years we have a period of Sun-spots, when in the shining of the Sun upon the earth certain places are darkened, covered with spots or blotches. This was not always so. In very ancient times the Sun shone down as a uniform disc of light. There were no Sun-spots. Moreover, after some thousands of years the Sun will have very many more spots than it has today. The Sun is growing ever more spotted. This again is the outer manifestation of the fact that the Michael Power, the Cosmic Power of Intelligence is still decreasing. In the increase of the Sun-spots in the course of Cosmic Evolution is revealed the Sun's decay; the Sun within the cosmos grows increasingly dim and old. And at the appearance of a sufficiently large number of Sun-spots, the other Planetary Intelligences recognised that they would now no longer be ruled by the Sun. They resolved no longer to allow the earth to be dependent on the Sun, but to make it dependent henceforth on the entire cosmos directly. This took place through the planetary Counsels of the Archangels. Notably under the leadership of Oriphiel, this emancipation of the Planetary Intelligences from the Sun-Intelligence took place. It was a complete separation of Cosmic Powers that had hitherto belonged together. The Sun-Intelligence of Michael and the Planetary Intelligences gradually came into cosmic opposition one with another.

Yes, my dear friends, though we do ascribe an entirely different kind of inner nature—of soul-faculty and soul-condition—to the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, nevertheless we must ascribe decisions, weighty reflections on that which is taking place, even to them. For we human beings also make our decisions in no other way. We observe the things that are taking place externally before us, we let the facts speak for themselves and then, under the influence of the facts, we act accordingly. Only the determining factors for us between birth and death are earthly facts, whereas for the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi they are cosmic facts, as when a split takes place in the planetary life.

Thus the one host of Beings turned to the Earth-Intelligence and therewith at the same time to the Planetary Intelligence. The other host remained true to the sphere of Michael in order to carry into all the future what Michael administers as the Eternal. And this is the decisive question today. Now that all the power is among men, will Michael be able to carry into all the future that which is Eternal in his working,—now that that which appears in the physical Sun grows darker and vanishes slowly away?

Thus we see, as an outcome of cosmic events, a split among the Angeloi who were formerly united with Michael. But these Beings themselves partake in the karmic evolution. Consider the whole of this as it takes place in the life between death and a new birth. Here it is not so that every human soul can run his course alone, nor can every Angel who guides the human being run his course alone, but the Hierarchy of Angeloi work together; and in their working together karma lives and is worked out. If in an earthly life I become connected with another human being and we work this out karmically in our next life, then, needless to say, the Angel of the one human being must come together with the Angel of the other. A co-operation must take place. But in many cases this was what happened (and this is the overwhelming, shattering experience). In the Ecumenical Council that took place on earth in 869 A.D. the signal was given for an overwhelming event in the spiritual world above. It would almost shatter one to pieces, when one holds oneself entirely upright with the true use of the Cosmic Intelligence, face to face with such overpowering relationships. It is a thing of untold significance that has already happened and is happening more and more: the Angel of the one human being, of the one human soul who was karmically connected with another human soul, did not go on with the Angel of that other soul. Of two human souls karmically united with one another, the one Angel remained with Michael while the other went down to earth. What was bound to happen as a result? In the time between the founding of Christianity and the age of the Spiritual Soul, which is signalised above all by the 9th century and the year 869 A.D., the karma of human beings came into disorder. This is to pronounce one of the deepest and most important words that can possibly be uttered with regard to the modern history of mankind. Disorder came into the karma of present-day humanity. In the following lives on earth the experiences of men were no longer all of them rightly co-ordinated with their karma. This is the chaotic element in the history of recent times. This has brought into the history of recent times more and more social chaos, chaos of civilisation; and the disorder that has come into human karma can find no end. For a split has taken place in the Hierarchy of Angeloi belonging to Michael.

And now we may express something that is deeply connected with the karma of the Anthroposophical Society. It is a thing of immense significance, and, if I may say so, it is only here that we come to the right shade of feeling. For with all that we can describe by choosing comparisons from the conditions that surround us, we cannot exhaustively characterise what is taking place behind the scenes in spiritual worlds. Whatever thoughts we may select from the earthly conditions that surround us, they are but dim and feeble. Having made all these preparations, we must have recourse to the pure description of things spiritual.

Thus we must say: All that has led the souls together into the Anthroposophical Society, all that has brought them into this community through a sincere and inward impulse of their souls, holds good, needless to say. Yet how does it come about? How are the forces really there, which lead these human beings in our time to find their way together under purely spiritual principles, when in the ordinary world of today they are complete strangers to one another? Where do the forces lie, that lead them together? My dear friends, they lie in this: Through the entry of Michael's dominion in the Michael age in which we live—with the penetration of Michael to earthly rulership, replacing the rulership of Gabriel—Michael himself is bringing the power which is to bring order again into the karma of those who have gone with him. Thus we may say: What is it in the last resort that unites the Members of the Anthroposophical Society? It is that they are to bring order again into their karma. This unites them. And if any one of them notices in the course of his life that he is entering here or there into relationships that do not conform to his inmost impulse,—relationships, perhaps, diverging in one way or another from what we may call the true harmony in man as between good and evil,—if he has this on the one hand, while on the other hand he has constant impulse to press forward in the Anthroposophical life,—the fact is that such a man is striving back again to his real karma. He is striving once more to live and express the real karma. This is the cosmic ray that pours through the Anthroposophical Movement, clearly perceptible to him who knows. It is the restoration of the truth in karma.

In this connection we can understand very much, both of the destiny of individuals in the Anthroposophical Society and of the destiny of the whole Society. For these, of course, merge into one another.

We must also realise the following: For the human beings who are connected with those Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi who remained in the kingdom of Michael, it is difficult to find the forms of Intelligence adequate to that which they are now to understand. They are striving to maintain even the personal Intelligence in keeping with the true reverence for Michael. These souls, who as I told you partook in those spiritual preparations in the 15th and 19th centuries, come down to earth, devoted still, with their deepest inner striving, to Michael and to his sphere. And yet, in accordance with the principles of human evolution, they must receive the personal and individual Intelligence. The result is a split, a division which must however be solved by spiritual development. They, in their individual affinity, must come together with what the spiritual worlds are bringing down to them in the present age of Intelligence. Those on the other hand whose Angels fell away (which is of course connected with their karma, for the Angel falls if he is connected with a human karma that is according to this)—they receive their personal Intelligence as a complete matter of course. This means that it works in them automatically, through their bodily nature. It works in such a way that they think, think cleverly, but are not fully and deeply and humanly concerned in what they think. This indeed was the great conflict which lasted so long, between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Dominicans could not evolve the principle of personal Intelligence otherwise than in the greatest possible faithfulness to the sphere of Michael. But the Franciscans, the followers of Duns Scotus (not Scotus Erigena) became complete Nominalists. They said: Intelligence in any case is only so many words. All that happened in these discussions and arguments between men was in reality an image of mighty conflicts that took place between the one host of Angeloi and the other.

You see, it is so, that the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi who have now united themselves with the earth-principle, have been living on the earth, in a manner of speaking, since about the 9th or 10th century. This again is the shattering tragedy, my dear friends. Here upon earth, materialism is increasing. The human beings—and above all the most advanced, the cleverest among them—are of such a kind as to deny the Spiritual. They begin to laugh in scorn at the idea that Spiritual Beings should be in their environment no less than physical human beings. During this time in which materialism has been expanding on the earth, more and more Angels are descending and living on the earth. They themselves join in; for it was they who at certain times, when a human consciousness became impaired and dull, incorporated themselves and worked on earth. A large number of Angeloi-Beings refrain and hold themselves aloof; but those who by their karma as Angeloi stand nearest to the Ahrimanic powers, do not hold back; at certain times they incorporate themselves in men; they dive down into human beings.

Then there arises what I described in our last lecture, when I said: Here now is such a man on earth. He has great human talent, human Intelligence, which he expresses, maybe, with genius. But for a certain time when his consciousness is dimmed, an Ahrimanic Angeloi-Intelligence takes up his abode in him. At such a time, this may occur: There is the human being; he seems as though he were an ordinary human being, writing this or that out of his own humanity. (Now Ahriman can approach the human being most easily through the very things which the men of today receive in the forms of Intelligence. One must assert one's personality fully, if one is not to be engulfed today in all those things that I have indicated in the course of the last lectures). Hence it is that Ahriman can appear as an author. He makes use, of course, of an Angelos-Being. He can write like an author. And as we are now united in the sign of our Christmas Foundation Meeting, we will not be silent on these things. Therefore I will now add the following.

A very different attitude was possible to one of the most brilliant authors of recent times, one of the greatest authors—a very different attitude was possible before his last works appeared. When I wrote my book Nietzsche, a Wrestler with his Time, all that had come before the public was Nietzsche the brilliant writer, a man who had carried human faculties to the highest point of eminence. It was only afterwards that one became acquainted with what Nietzsche wrote in the period of his decay. There are above all the two works Anti-Christ and Ecce Homo. These two works were written by Ahriman and not by Nietzsche. It was an Ahrimanic spirit incorporated in Nietzsche. Here it was, for the first time, that Ahriman appeared as an author upon earth. He will continue to do so. Nietzsche broke down over it. He went to pieces. We must understand the true nature of the impulses we are confronting when we stand face to face with the ideas that lived in Nietzsche in the time when he wrote the brilliant but devilish works Anti-Christ and Ecce Homo,—intelligent works indeed. I have spoken of the great and all-embracing Intelligence of Ahriman. For greatness, majesty and brilliance, we do not decry a work in calling it Ahrimanic. Only simpletons could think so, who do not know the greatness there can be in Ahriman. We do not blame when we speak of Ahriman. Very much on earth depends on him. I can truly say that in my soul I bled, when for the first time I read Nietzsche's writing on the ‘Will to Power,’ which was then published in such a way that men could gain no right conception of it. But if at the same time one is able to look into those kingdoms which since the dominion of Michael, since the eighties of last century, were severed by the thinnest of thin walls from the earth-kingdom; if one knows how immediately this kingdom adjoins the physical, so that we may say: ‘It is a kingdom similar to that which man passes through after his death’; if one can gaze into these things and see how great the strivings are in this direction, then too one knows with what impulsive power they are coming to expression in such a thing as the Ecce Homo and the Anti-Christ. We need only consider how Ahrimanic are the remarks that occur in the Anti-Christ. I do not know whether the passage is still in the same form in the more recent editions. There is a passage where he is writing on Jesus. (I am not quoting verbatim). He says: Renan describes Jesus as a genius. Nietzsche does not see him as a genius, for he goes on to say: Speaking with the strict accuracy of a psychologist we should use a very different word. ... In my edition of Nietzsche's works there are three dots at this point. I do not know whether it is so in the newer editions too, but in the manuscript there stands at this point the word ‘idiot,’ written in full. That Jesus is described as an ‘idiot,’ this is the hand of Ahriman. And many other things of this kind stand written there. We must remember that at the very time when he was writing these things, there were tendencies in Nietzsche's soul towards Catholicism. We must not forget that these things went parallel with one another. Who, knowing this, could fail to think that a deep riddle lies hidden there? And what are the concluding words of the Anti-Christ? They are somewhat as follows, though again I am not quoting verbatim: ‘I would like to write it on every wall and I have the materials to write it in radiant letters shining far and wide; I would fain write what Christianity is. It is the greatest curse of mankind.’—Thus ends the book. Surely here lies a problem. We must see indeed, how that kingdom which was separated by a thin wall only from our own, and where all the spiritual battles took place towards the end and a little beyond the end of Kali Yuga—we must see how that kingdom is striving to penetrate into the physical domain of earth.

To these things we must look if we would understand what can be the position of mankind today, towards the things that must emerge in civilisation through the dawn of the age of Michael. At the transition of the Kali Yuga—the transition from the dark to the light age—one did indeed have to see things clearly, graphically, in the spiritual and in the physical together, if one would describe (as I did in the Introduction to my Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life) the necessary feeling at that time towards the Spiritual and the Material. From all directions one would like to gather the means of expression to describe the mighty transition that takes place at the dawn of the Michael age. And with all that the Anthroposophical Movement is, we must feel ourselves within these things. For all these mighty, overwhelming facts express themselves to begin with in the human karma which has now come into disorder. We must think of the great and universal truth that lies inherent in the karmic relationships. Yet the world today is such that even into these general karmic laws and relationships, exceptions could enter through the course of many centuries. And now the requirement is to bring these cosmic exceptions back into their true course. If we think of these things—for this is the task, the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement,—we shall feel something of the great and far-reaching significance of this Movement.

This, my dear friends, shall now rest in your souls. You must say to yourselves: Those who out of these great decisions feel in themselves the impulse to come to the anthroposophical life today, will be called again at the end of the 20th century, when at the culminating point the greatest possible expansion of the Anthroposophical Movement will be attained. But it will only happen if these things can really live in us,—if there can live in us the perception of what penetrates cosmically, spiritually, into the earthly physical domain. It will only be so if there penetrates even into the earthly Intelligence, into the perceptions of men, the knowledge of the significance of Michael.

This impulse must be the very soul of our anthroposophical striving. The soul itself must have the will to stand fully in the midst of the Anthroposophical Movement. Thus we shall find it possible, my dear friends, for a certain time to come, to carry in our souls thoughts of a great and far-reaching nature. But we shall not only preserve them, we shall make them living in our souls. And through these thoughts our souls will grow and develop anthroposophically, so that the soul will become what it was intended to become through its own unconscious impulse to come to Anthroposophy. I say again: So that the soul may be taken hold of by the mission of Anthroposophy. I have spoken these earnest words to you in this last hour, so that you may let them work in you quietly and in silence for a time: that the soul shall really be taken hold of by the mission of Anthroposophy. We shall continue these lessons when we come together again,—that will be in the first days of September. For the intervening time I would like to have laid on all your hearts what I have had to say this evening in connection with the karma of individual anthroposophists and of the Anthroposophical Society.

• 1. The twenty-seven lectures given by Dr. Steiner in England (11th–30th August) were as follows:
  
  In Torquay: True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation. A course of eleven lectures published in English translation under this title: published in German under the title, Das Initiaten-Bewusstsein.
  
  Course of seven lectures on Education.
  
  Three lectures to Members of the Anthroposophical Society, published in English translation, together with those given in London, in the volume entitle, Cosmic Christianity: Karma in the life of Individuals, and in the Evolution of the World.
  
  In London: Three lectures to Members (see above).
  
  Two lectures for doctors and medical students: The Art of Healing from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.
  
  Public lecture on Education (arranged by the Educational Union for the Realisation of Spiritual Values).

In the lecture yesterday I spoke of certain aspects of karma operating through the earthly lives of men, and of the forming of destiny, and I shall try to-day to give you an idea of how destiny actually takes shape.

When a man passes through the gate of death he comes into a spiritual world that is not, so to speak, more devoid of happenings and beings than our physical world, but infinitely richer. Understandable as it may be that it is never possible to do more than describe one phenomenon or another from the wide orbit of this spiritual world, the different descriptions given will have conveyed some idea of the infinite richness and manifoldness of man's life between death and a new birth. Here on the Earth, where our life between birth and death runs its course, we are surrounded by the several kingdoms of nature: by minerals, plants and animals, and by the physical human kingdom. Apart from the human kingdom, we rightly consider that the beings comprised in these other kingdoms belong to a rank below that of man. During his earthly existence, therefore, man feels himself—and rightly so—as the highest being within these kingdoms of nature. In the realm into which he enters after death, exactly the opposite is the case: man feels himself there to be the lowest among orders of Beings ranking above him. In Anthroposophical literature I have, as you know, adopted for these Beings the names used in olden times to designate the higher Hierarchies. The first is the Hierarchy immediately above man, linked with him from above as the animal kingdom on Earth is linked with him from below. This is the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. Then, above this Hierarchy, comes that of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and then the highest Hierarchy of all—the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. There are nine ranks, three times three ranks of Beings higher than man. Between each group of three higher ranks (ranging from below upwards) there is a parallelism with the three lower stages (ranking from above downwards) of animal, plant, mineral.—Only by including all these ranks have we a complete picture of the world to which man belongs.

Human existence may also be characterised by saying that at physical birth or conception man passes from a purely spiritual existence into the realm of the natural orders of animal, plant, mineral; when he passes through the gate of death he enters the realm of Beings ranking above him. Between birth and death he lives in a physical body which connects him with the kingdoms of nature; between death and a new birth he lives in a ‘spirit body' which connects him with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Here on Earth our attention is directed, first and foremost, to our environment; we feel on a level with this world and from the Earth we look upwards to the Heavens, to the realm of spirit—whatever may be the designation used in the different religions. From the Earth man looks upwards with his longings, with his piety, with his highest aspirations in earthly existence. And in trying to envisage the spiritual realm above him, he uses imagery borrowed from the earthly world, he pictures what is above him in forms derived from earthly existence. In the life between death and a new birth it is the opposite: his gaze then is directed downwards from above. You may say, “But this means that his gaze is directed to an inferior world.” That is not the case, for the earthly world presents a quite different aspect when seen from above. And precisely in the study of karma it will become clear to us how different happenings on the Earth appear when seen from above.

Having entered the spiritual world through the gate of death, we come, first of all, into the realm of the lowest Hierarchy: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. We feel linked with this next higher Hierarchy and we are aware that just as in the earthly realm everything around us means something to our senses, what the spiritual realm contains means something to the innermost core of our soul. We speak of minerals, of plants, of animals, inasmuch as we see them with our eyes and touch them with our hands, inasmuch as they are perceptible in a material sense. Between death and a new birth we speak of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, inasmuch as these Beings have a connection with the innermost core of the soul. And passing on through the long existence spent between death and a new birth, we learn gradually to become part of the life of the Beings of the next higher Hierarchy who are concerned with us and with one another. These Beings are as it were the link connecting us with the spiritual outer world. During the first period of life between death and a new birth we are also very deeply occupied with ourselves, for the Third Hierarchy has to do with our own inner life and being. But then, after a certain time, our gaze widens: we come to know the spiritual world outside us, the objective spiritual world. Our leaders here are the Exusiai, the Dynamis, the Kyriotetes. They bring us into connection with the spiritual outer world. Just as here on Earth we speak of what is around us—mountains, rivers, forests, fields, whatever it may be—so do we speak in yonder world of that to which the Beings of the Second Hierarchy lead us. That is now our environment. But this environment is not a world of objects like the Earth; everything lives and has being, lives as spiritual reality. Nor in this life between death and a new birth do we come to know Beings only; we come to know their deeds as well, we feel that we ourselves are participating in these deeds.

But then a time comes when we feel how the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—and the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—are working together with us at what we ourselves are to become in the next earthly life. A mighty, awe inspiring vista opens before us. We behold the activities of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai and we perceive how these Beings act in relation to one another. Pictures come to us of what is proceeding among these Beings of the Third Hierarchy; but all these pictures are related to ourselves. And gazing at these pictures of the deeds of the Third Hierarchy, it dawns upon us that they represent the counterpart, the counter image of the attitude of soul, of the inner quality of mind and heart that characterised us in the last earthly life. We now no longer say in terms of an abstract idea of conscience, “You were a man who acted unjustly to this person or that, whose thoughts were unjust.” No, in the majestic pictures of the deeds of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, we behold the fruits of our attitude of mind and heart, of our life of soul, of our mode of thinking, in the last earthly life; we perceive images of this in what the Beings of the Third Hierarchy are doing. Our attitude, our feelings towards other individuals, towards other earthly things, are now outspread in the spiritual sphere of the Universe. And we become aware of what our thinking and our feeling signify. Here on the Earth this inner activity manifests in Maya, as if it were enclosed within our skin. Not so in the life between death and a new birth. The manner of its appearance then is such that we know that whatever thoughts, feelings or sentiments we unfold are part of the whole world, work into and affect the whole world.

Echoing the East, many people speak of Maya, of the illusion of the external world; but it remains an abstract thought. Studies like those we have been pursuing make us aware of the deep import of the words: “The world surrounding us is Maya, the great illusion.” We realise, too, what an illusory view prevails of the life of soul. We think that this is our affair and ours alone, for the truth is revealed only during our existence between death and a new birth. We perceive then that what seemed to be enclosed within us forms the content of a vast and majestic spiritual world. As our life after death continues, we observe how the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, are connected with the faculties we have acquired in earthly life as the fruits of diligence, activity, interest in the things and happenings of the Earth. For having cast into mighty pictures our interest and diligence during the last earthly life, the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes then proceed to shape images of the talents and faculties we shall possess in our next earthly life. In the images and pictures fashioned by the Beings of the Second Hierarchy we behold what talents and faculties will be ours in the next incarnation.

The course of this life continues and when the middle point of time between death and a new birth is about to be reached, something of particular importance takes place. From our habitations here on Earth—especially in those moments when as we look upwards to the firmament of heaven the stars send down their shimmering radiance—we feel the sublimity of the heavens above us. But something of far greater splendour is experienced as we gaze downwards now—from the realms of spirit. For then we behold the deeds of the Beings of the First Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones working in mutual interrelationship. Mighty pictures of spiritual happenings are revealed to us as we gaze downwards—for our heaven now lies below. Just as in physical existence on Earth we gaze at the starry script above us, so when we look downwards from the realm of spirit we behold the deeds of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. And in this spiritual existence we are aware that what is proceeding among these Beings, revealed in sublime, majestic pictures, has something to do with what we ourselves are and shall become. For now we feel that what is taking place there among the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones reveals the consequences which our deeds of the previous earthly life will have in the earthly life to come. We perceive how in earthly life we behaved in this way to one individual, in that way to another individual, how we were compassionate or pitiless, whether our deeds were good or evil. Our attitude and disposition are the concern of the Third Hierarchy, our deeds of the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Then, in the cosmic memory now alive in us, there arises a shattering, awe inspiring realisation of our deeds and actions between birth and death in the last earthly life. Down below we behold the deeds of spiritual Beings, of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. What are they doing? They show us, in pictures, what our experiences with individuals with whom we had some relationship in the previous incarnation will have to become in the new relationship that will be established in order that mutual compensation may be made for what happened between us in the previous life. And from the way in which the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones work in cooperation, we realise that the great problem is there being solved. When I have dealings with an individual in some earthly life, I myself prepare the compensatory adjustment; the work performed by the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones merely ensures that the compensation will be made, that it will become reality. And it is these Beings who also ensure that the other individual with whom I shall again make contact is led to me in the same way as I am led to him. It is the majestic experiences arising from the pictures of the deeds of the higher Hierarchies which are recorded by the Moon Beings and subsequently inscribed by them in our astral body when the time comes for the descent to another earthly existence. Together with us in the life between death and a new birth, these Moon Beings witness what is happening in order that the adjustment of the previous earthly life may take place in a subsequent life.

This, my dear friends, will give you an inkling of the majesty and grandeur of what is here revealed, as compared with the sense world. But you will realise, too, that the things of the sense world conceal far, far more than they actually make manifest.

Having lived through the region of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, man passes to still other realms of existence. More and more the longing arises in him for a new incarnation in which compensation can be made for what he did and experienced in his previous earthly life.

Anthroposophy has failed in its purpose when it remains a mere collection of ideas and conceptions, when people speak abstractly of the existence of karma, of the way in which one incarnation works over into another. Anthroposophy is only fulfilling its real purpose when it speaks not only to the head but awakens in the heart a feeling, a discernment, of the impressions that can be received in the super-sensible world through the Beings of that world. It seems to me that nobody with an unprejudiced, receptive mind can listen to such communications about the super-sensible world as I am now giving, without being inwardly stirred. We ought to be able to realise that although here on Earth we live through the whole gamut of human experiences, from deepest suffering to supreme happiness, what we are able to experience of the spiritual world should affect us far more potently than the most intense suffering or the highest happiness. We can only have the right relationship to the spiritual world when we admit, “In comparison with earthly sufferings or earthly happiness, what we are able to experience of the truths and beings of the spiritual world remains shadowy”—as indeed it does to those who merely listen to information about Initiation science. But to Initiates themselves it is far from shadowy. We should also be able to say, “I can feel how deeply what is here imparted about the spiritual world would affect the soul, if the soul had only sufficient strength and energy.” A man should ascribe it to earthly weakness if he is incapable of experiencing every degree of feeling, from fiery enthusiasm to deepest suffering, when he hears about the spiritual world and the Beings of that world. If he ascribes to his own weakness the fact that he is unable to feel these things with due intensity, then the soul has gone some way towards establishing the true and right relationship to the spiritual world.

When all is said and done, what value is there in spiritual knowledge if it cannot penetrate to the concrete facts or indicate what is really taking place in the spiritual world! We do not expect our fellow men on Earth to talk about a meadow in the way that pantheists or monists or would-be philosophers talk about the Godhead; we expect a detailed description of the meadow. And the same applies to the spiritual world. It must be possible to describe the concrete details. People to-day are still unaccustomed to this. Many who are not out and out materialists will accept generalities about the existence of a spiritual world and so forth. But when this spiritual world is described in detail they often become indignant because they will not admit that it is possible to speak in this way of the Beings and happenings of the spiritual world. If human civilisation is not to fall into chaos, more and more will have to be said about the realities of the spiritual world. For earthly happenings too remain obscure when people have no understanding of what lies behind them.

In this connection, my dear friends, there is something in the destiny of the Anthroposophical Society that strikes a note of tragedy. But if the necessary understanding for these things becomes more widespread, at any rate among Anthroposophists themselves, there is justification for hoping that good may develop out of the tragedy, that from the Anthroposophical Society there may go forth a quickening of the civilisation that is so obviously heading for the chaos of materialism. But if that quickening is to be a reality, something must be understood which at the beginning was not understood—which can more easily be understood to-day because more than two decades of effort have passed since the founding of Anthroposophical work.

At the beginning, as you know, the Anthroposophical Movement was within the Theosophical Movement. When we founded in Berlin the Section from which the Anthroposophical Society eventually developed, I wanted at our first gathering to strike a kind of keynote for what ought really to have followed. And now that we have tried through the Christmas Meeting at the Goetheanum to reorganise the Anthroposophical Society, I am able to speak about a certain fact to which probably very little attention has been paid hitherto. Nor could it have been otherwise here, because as far as is known to me none of our friends from Bohemia was present at the time. I gave a first lecture which was similar in character to the lectures given later on to the Groups. This first lecture had an unusual title, one which might at the time have been considered rather daring. The title was: “Studies of the practical working of karma.” (Praktische Karmaübungen.) My intention was to speak quite openly about the way in which karma works.

Now the leading lights of the Theosophical Movement who at that time regarded me as something of an intruder, were present at the meeting and they were convinced at the outset that I was not qualified to speak of inner, spiritual matters. At that period the leading lights of the old Theosophical Movement were always reiterating: “Science must be upheld, account must be taken of modern science. ...” Well and good—but nothing much came of it. Things have now been set on the right path but only the very first steps have been taken; nor will anything essential have been achieved until we have advanced beyond these first steps. And so what was intended in those early days all became rather theoretical. “Studies of the practical working of karma” were announced but nobody at that time would have understood their import, least of all the leading lights of the Theosophical Society. It therefore remained a task which had to be pursued under the surface as it were of the Anthroposophical stream, performed as an obligation to the spiritual world. But to-day—and how often it has been so during the development of the Anthroposophical Movement—I am reminded of the title of what was to have been the first Anthroposophical Group lecture: “Studies of the practical working of karma.” I can also remember how shocked the leading lights of the Theosophical Society were by such a presumptuous title.

But time marches on and more than two decades have elapsed since then—much has been prepared, but this preparatory work must also have its results. And so to-day these results must become reality. “Studies of the practical working of karma” which one desired—rather boldly—to begin at that time, must be actually undertaken. Such indeed was the aim of our Christmas Meeting: to bring real and living esotericism into the Anthroposophical Movement. This must be taken in all earnestness. By formalism alone the Anthroposophical Movement will have no regenerating effect upon our civilisation. In the future we must not shrink from speaking quite openly about the things of the spiritual world.

I want to begin to-day to speak of spiritual realities underlying earthly happenings and the life of humanity on Earth. Within the whole process of earthly evolution stands the Mystery of Golgotha—the Event which imbued this evolution with meaning. To deeper observation, everything that preceded this Event was in the nature of preparation. And although on account of the shortcomings of men and the influence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers from the spiritual side, the impediments to progress are more in evidence than the progress itself, it is nevertheless true that since the Mystery of Golgotha everything proceeding from the physical and spiritual worlds alike has come to pass for the sake of bringing man further along the path of world evolution as a whole. The gifts of Christianity to humanity will—if men prove worthy to receive them in their deeper, spiritual significance—be revealed only in times to come. But the essential impulse—and this applies, as well, to everything that Anthroposophy can achieve—lies in the Mystery of Golgotha.

We know that the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha made its way, to begin with, across the South of Europe and on into Middle Europe. But I do not want to speak of that to-day. I want you to think of how Christianity spread across the North of Africa into European civilisation. You know that some six hundred years after the founding of Christianity through the Mystery of Golgotha, a different religious stream—the stream of Mohammedanism—spread across from Asia. In contrast to Christianity, the spiritual life that is connected with the name of Mohammed expresses itself more in abstractions. In Christianity there are many more direct descriptions of the spiritual world than there are in Mohammedanism. But it has been the destiny of Mohammedanism to absorb much ancient science, much ancient culture. We see how Mohammedanism comes over from Asia and spreads in the wake of Christianity. It is an interesting spectacle. We see the stream of Christianity flowing towards the North, reaching Middle Europe; we see, too, how Mohammedanism twines as it were around this Christian stream—across North Africa, Spain and on into France.

Now it is quite easy to realise that had Christianity alone been at work, European culture would have taken a quite different form. In an outer, political sense it is of course true that Europe repulsed the waves of Mohammedanism—or better said, of Arabism. But anyone who observes the spiritual life of Europe will realise, for example, that our modern way of thinking—the materialistic spirit on the one side and science with its clear cut, arabesque like logic on the other—would not have developed had Arabism not worked on, despite its setbacks. From Spain, from France, from Sicily, from North Africa, mighty and potent influences have had their effect upon European thinking, have moulded it into forms it would not have assumed had Christianity alone been at work. In our modern science there is verily more Arabism than Christianity!

Later on, as a result of the Crusades, much Eastern culture—by then, of course, in the throes of decadence—came directly to the ken of the European peoples. Many of the secrets of Eastern culture found their way to Europe through this channel. In Western civilisation, above the stratum of Christianity, lie those elements of oriental spiritual life which were absorbed into Arabism. But you see, none of this is really understandable when perceived only from the outside; it must all be perceived from within. And from within, the spectacle presented to us is that although wars and victories brought about the suppression of Arabism and the bearers of Mohammedanism, the Moors and so forth, nevertheless the souls of these people were born again and continued to work. Nothing whatever can be gained from abstract accounts of how Arabism made its way to Europe from Spain; insight can only arise from a knowledge of the inner, concrete facts.

We will consider one such fact. At the time of Charles the Great in European history—it was at the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th centuries—Haroun al Raschid¹ was living over in Asia, in Baghdad, in an entourage of brilliant oriental scholarship. Everything then existing in the way of Western Asiatic learning, indeed of Asiatic learning in general, had been brought together at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. True, it was all steeped in Mohammedanism, but everything in the way of culture—mathematics, philosophy, architecture, commerce, industry, geography, medicine, astronomy—was fostered at this Court by the most enlightened men in Asia. People to-day have little conception of the grandeur and magnificence of what was achieved at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. First and foremost there was Haroun al Raschid himself—not by any means a ruler of mediocre intelligence or one who merely for the sake of self glorification called to his Court the greatest sages of Western Asia, but a personality who in spite of unwavering adherence to Mohammedanism was open and receptive to everything that oriental civilisation had to offer. At the time when Charles the Great was struggling with difficulty to master the rudiments of reading and writing, much brilliant learning flourished at the Court of Baghdad. The conditions in which Charles the Great lived are not comparable in any way with those brought into being by Haroun al Raschid.

This was at a time when many regions of Western Asia and wide territories in Africa had already adopted Mohammedanism, and the brilliant learning cultivated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid had spread far and wide. But among the wise men at that Court—men deeply versed in geography, in nature lore, in medicine and so forth—was many a one who in still earlier incarnations had belonged to ancient Mystery Schools. For men who were Initiates in an earlier life do not always give direct evidence of this in another incarnation. In spite of having been an Initiate in earlier Mysteries, it is only possible for a man in any given epoch to absorb the spirituality and develop the constitution of soul which the body of that particular epoch allows. Seen in its essential nature, the life of the soul does not tally with the intellectual ideas of the psyche in man prevailing at the present time. The soul lies at a far deeper level than is usually imagined.

Let me give you an example. Think of a personality like Ernst Haeckel.² The first impression one gets of him is that his view of the world is coloured by materialism, that he expounds a kind of mechanism by which the life of nature and also the life of soul is determined, that in his invectives against Catholicism he is sometimes fascinating, sometimes fanatic, and sometimes, too, lacking in taste. One who is cognisant of the threads connecting the different earthly lives of a human being will pay little attention to these traits; he will look at the deeper qualities of soul. Nobody who in trying to observe the actual manifestations of karma allows himself to be blinded by Haeckel's most striking external characteristics will be able to discover his previous incarnation. In order to find Haeckel's previous incarnation attention must be paid to the way and manner in which he expounded his views. The fact that Haeckel's erudition bore the stamp of materialism is due to the age in which he lived; that, however, is unimportant; what is important is the inner constitution and attitude of soul. If this is perceived by occult sight, then in the case of Haeckel the gaze is led back to Pope Gregory VII,³ the former Abbot Hildebrand—actually one of the most impassioned advocates of Catholicism. If one compares the two personages, knowing that both come into the picture here, one will perceive that they are the same and also learn to recognise the unessentials and the essentials in respect of the great affairs of humanity as a whole. The theoretical ideas themselves are by no means the prime essential; they are only essential in this abstract, materialistic age of ours. Behind the scenes of world history it is the quality, the modus operandi, of the soul that is all important. And when this is grasped it will certainly be possible to perceive the similarity between Gregory VII and his reincarnation as Haeckel.

Insight of this kind has to be acquired in studying the concrete realities of karma, and if it is to mean anything to us to be told that at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, for example, there were men who, although their physical bodies and education make them appear outwardly to be typical products of the 8th and 9th centuries, were nevertheless the reincarnations of Initiates in ancient Mysteries. When the eye of spirit is directed to this Court, a certain personality stands out in bold relief—one who was a deeply discerning, influential counsellor of Haroun al Raschid, and for that epoch a man of great universality. A remarkable destiny lay behind him. In a much earlier incarnation, and in the same region afterwards ruled over by Haroun al Raschid, but inhabited, then, by quite different peoples, he had participated in all the Initiations which had there taken place, and in a later incarnation, as a different personality, he had striven for Initiation with deep and intense longing, but was unable to achieve it because at that time destiny prevented it. Such a personality lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid but was for this reason obliged to conceal deep down in his inner life what lay within him as the fruits of the earlier incarnation as an Initiate. The inability to achieve Initiation occurred in a later incarnation and after that came the incarnation at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at this Court, for the reason that in those times Initiations in the old sense were no longer possible—this personality was one who out of a strong inner impulse and with powerful and sound imagination, organised and vitalised everything that was cultivated at this Court. Scholars, artists, a whole host of poets, representatives of all the sciences, were to be found there; moreover Baghdad itself at that time was the centre of the very widespread scientific and artistic activity prevailing in the empire of the Caliphs. The organisation of it all was the work of this personality—a personality endowed with great powers of initiative. Such individuals invariably play a significant role in the onward march of civilisation.

Let us think of Haroun al Raschid himself. If with occult sight one discerns the qualities of soul he possessed and then tries to discover whether he has since reincarnated, one finds that Haroun al Raschid continued to be associated with and to carry further what he had instituted on Earth; having passed through the gate of death he participated, spiritually, in the earthly evolution of mankind; from the spiritual world his influence was considerable but he himself assimilated a great deal. And then, in the form appropriate to the epoch, this personality came again as Lord Bacon of Verulam,⁴ the founder of modern science. From England, Bacon of Verulam. gave a strong impetus to European thinking. You may say: but what a different personality from Haroun al Raschid! ... Nevertheless it is the same individuality. The outward differences are a matter of the external world only. We see the soul of Haroun al Raschid after death moving across from Asia and then, from the West, influencing the later civilisation of Europe, doing much to lay the foundations of modern materialism.

The other personality—he who had been not only the right hand but the very soul of Haroun al Raschid's Court and had had that strange spiritual destiny—this personality took a different path. Far from seeking a life of outward brilliance, the urge in this soul after death was to unfold a rich inner life, a life of deep inwardness. Because this was so, there could be no question of taking a path leading to the West. Think again of Haroun al Raschid and his Court—outward brilliance and magnificence, inner consolidation of the fruits of civilisation, but at the same time the impulse to externalise everything contained in Mohammedanism. This was bound to come to expression in a subsequent incarnation. The wide and all embracing application of scientific method had to come to the fore—and so indeed it did. The outward brilliance that had characterised the Court of Haroun al Raschid came to clear expression in Bacon himself.

The other personality who had been the very soul of the Court in Baghdad was of a deeply inward nature, closely related to what had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries. This could not come to expression—not at any rate until our own time when, since Kali Yuga is over and the Michael Age has begun, it is possible once again to speak openly of the spiritual. Nevertheless it was found possible to pour what had been received from the Mysteries in such volume and with such vital power into civilisation that its influence was profound. Something of the kind may be said in connection with the other personality whose development in the spiritual world after death was such that finally, when the time arrived for a new incarnation, he could not land, so to speak, in the Western world where materialism had its rise; he was led, inevitably, to Middle Europe and was able there to give expression to the impulse deriving from the ancient Mysteries but conforming with the altered conditions of the times. This personality lived as Amos Comenius.⁵ And so in the later course of world history these two souls who had lived together at the Court of Baghdad took different paths: the one as it were circling the South of Europe in order, from the West, as Bacon of Verulam, to become the organising genius in modern literature, philosophy and the sciences; the other taking the overland path—as did the Crusades—towards Middle Europe. He too was a great and gifted organiser but the effects of what he achieved were of an entirely different character. It is a wonderful and deeply impressive spectacle—there they were, Amos Comenius and Bacon of Verulam, having taken different paths. The fact that the period of their lives did not exactly coincide is connected with world karma, but ultimately—if I may express it in a trivial way—they met in Middle Europe. And a great deal that is needed in civilisation would become reality if the esoteric influences contained in the work of Amos Comenius were to unite with the power achieved by the technical sciences founded through Bacon of Verulam. This outcome of the paths taken by two souls who in the 8th and 9th centuries worked at the Court of Haroun al Raschid is one of the most wonderful illustrations of how world history runs its course. Haroun al Raschid makes his way across Africa and Southern Europe to England, whence his influence works over into Middle Europe; Amos Comenius takes the path which brings him to Middle Europe, and in what develops from his achievements there he meets the other soul.

Only when history is studied in this way does it become reality. What passes over from one epoch of world history so into another does not consist of abstract concepts; it is human souls themselves who carry onward the fruits of each epoch. We can only understand how what makes its appearance in a later epoch has come over from an earlier one, when we perceive how the souls themselves develop onwards from one epoch to the next. The distinction between what is called ‘Maya' and inner reality must everywhere be taken earnestly. Perceived in its outward aspect only, history is itself Maya; it can only be rightly understood by getting away from the Maya and penetrating to the truth.

We will continue these studies in the next lecture to Members. May the right kind of understanding be forthcoming as we now pursue the task inaugurated by the Christmas Foundation Meeting: to make into a reality what was announced at the very beginning, perhaps rather naively, as ‘Studies of the practical working of karma.' After preparation that has been going on for decades now, a genuine study of karma and of its manifestations will certainly be possible in the Anthroposophical Society without causing misunderstanding and apprehension.

• 1. Haroun al Raschid, 764–809.
• 2. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919.
• 3. Gregory VII, Pope from 1053 to 1085.
• 4. Bacon of Verulam, 1561–1626.
• 5. Amos Comenius, 1592–1671.

My dear Friends! The day before yesterday we considered the first part of what we can call the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. I said that this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold must be taken with much more than ordinary seriousness. One should be clear about this, for unless a person develops the feelings and empathic findings that accompany the impartations, then most certainly the person cannot achieve the reality of inner awareness. A certain sort of inner awareness certainly can also be held by a person without these unsettling experiences of personal self-knowledge which the passage into the spiritual world is able to give. That which is obtained without this inward unsettling experience, however, is not true inner knowing. Everything we can learn through our senses, and even what we can achieve with ordinary thinking, can at most yield knowledge of things that lie outside the human being; it yields nothing about the human being as such. This is because by his very nature the human being is supersensible. Whatever we can perceive of the human being with our senses, well, that is no more than his outer appearance. Whenever you encounter a human being, my dear friends, you should have the feeling that what you are seeing is no more than a picture of the true being of the person. In actual fact the true being of a person is something extraordinarily comprehensive, and we only gain an impression of what this true human being is once we try to reach some clarity about a number of things that appear simple.

Consider only the fact, my dear brothers and sisters, that certain manifestations of illness in the human being have to be counteracted with what we call poison. This simple, ordinary fact is actually a tremendous puzzle. Why must poison be administered to human beings so that they can be cured of certain illnesses? What is poison? Ask the fascinating shiny black berry of the deadly nightshade, ask the belladonna, such a striking creature, what it actually is, my dear friends!

Looking at the wide variety of many-colored plants that we can use as food without harm, we realize that they are the plants that thrive in ordinary sunlight, with the spirit that lives in sunlight. For just as we have a body that is spirit-infused, just so is all that is physical spirit-infused by sunlight. However, plants that do us no harm when we eat them absorb only the etheric forces. The moment a plant begins to absorb the astral forces that normally hover like a mist above the plants, it becomes poisonous. Belladonna sucks astral forces into its shiny black berries and is therefore poisonous. What does this mean? When we eat belladonna, we take in something that is astral. We bear within us astral nature anyway, since we possess an astral body, so we have within us something that constantly produces poison. And our ego produces even more poison than our astral body.

We can now go on to say that our physical and our etheric body bear within them the processes of building-up. However, if these were the only forces active within us, we would remain permanently unconscious. If the budding, sprouting processes were to gain the upper hand, we would remain unconscious, for we owe our consciousness to the fact that our astral body and our ego-organization carry out breaking-down processes within us. A space for the spirit is created in us by the way the physical and etheric processes are broken down by our astral body and our ego. There would be no spirit in us if breaking-down forces were not constantly at work. When the astral body and the ego are too weak to do the breaking-down sufficiently strongly, excessive growth arises in the physical and etheric bodies. When the astral body and the ego are too weak, we sometimes have to support them by administering poisons from outside, poisons that can break down what the astral body and ego cannot.

What does the physician do in certain cases? He says that in the sick person the spiritual element is too weak. The ego and the astral body are not carrying out the process of breaking-down sufficiently strongly. The physician asks for help from outside so that more breaking-down can take place. He seeks out plants that are more spiritual than others, for poisonous plants are toxic simply because they are more spiritual than others. This alone goes to show what great mysteries lie hidden in human existence and in the human being's relationship with the natural world. Only by approaching the spirit can we bring these mysteries to light.

From what I have said so far you will sense that there is something almost uncanny about getting to know the true mysteries of the spirit, for we discover something that is creative in the spiritual world and yet destructive in the physical world. We cannot grasp the spirit in all its reality until we seek it where it expresses itself through breaking-down, through destruction in the physical world. The moment we approach the threshold to the spiritual world we find ourselves power¬fully confronted by the forces of destruction. Anyone who would prefer not to become familiar with the forces of breaking-down, the forces of destruction, cannot in reality enter the spiritual world.

My dear brothers and sisters, when we look at the physical human being here on the earth, we find that the physical organism, quite by itself, forms a totality, and it is because of this that thinking, feeling, and willing also form a totality. You cannot think without there being a certain amount of willing present. Merely unfolding a thought involves some willing. You cannot will without also thinking. You cannot feel without some thinking. In ordinary consciousness thinking, feeling, and willing are intermingled. When we say we are thinking, it merely means that we are thinking most strongly, while our feeling remains more in the subconscious and our willing entirely so. When we say we are feeling, it means that we are feeling most strongly while thinking and willing are reduced. Every stirring of soul in the human being always involves thinking, feeling, and willing together.

By being bound together like this, each of these three, thinking, feeling, and willing, is weaker than when standing alone. Our thinking is weakened rather than strengthened by willing. Our willing is weakened rather than strengthened by thinking. Our feeling is weakened rather than strengthened by thinking.

Were we to think without any willing for the merest moment within our physical body, were the power of thinking, as it lives in the widths of the world, to fill us for the merest moment without being accompanied by the forces of feeling and willing, in this moment we as physical people would be totally paralyzed. Were we also just for a moment as physical people merely feeling, without it being accompanied by thinking and willing, because feeling is to some extent tremendously lively, we would be knotted up, we would have extreme bouts of cramping. Were we also just for a moment as physical people merely willing, without it being accompanied by thinking, we would be consumed by fiery fevers.

Before we descended through birth, taking on physical-sensory existence in the womb, before that we as people were so constructed that thinking, feeling, and willing each stood separately, each by itself. There, however, our surrounding was the spiritual world. There we could endure this separation. If we would become at all familiar with the actuality of inner knowing, we must develop an intuitive understanding about the experience of being outside the physical world, outside an earthly body, our being split apart in regard to thinking, feeling, and willing.

There is a great meaningful moment when someone steps across the threshold of the spiritual world and meets the souls of deceased people. In this moment, he must be sufficiently prepared, that coming forth from the very depths of his inner being in his heart he says the words, “These are the truly living!” A person says it when really stepping into the spiritual world, “These are the truly living!” For what lives in them above all else is their thinking.

Yes, this thinking begins to live, when we step through the portal of death. Yes, this thinking also lived before we descended into earthly life. There thinking lived! And we behold thinking correctly in physical living on earth only when we say to ourselves, “I have taken clearly to mind, that before me is a corpse.” A corpse without soul, as such, cannot be. It can only be the remnant of a living person. A corpse cannot arise out of itself. In spite of being physically embodied, it does not have any natural physical possibility of intrinsic existence, but rather hearkens back to the living that preceded it.

By unfolding my thinking in myself, I can think just how one thinks as an earthly person, namely as a sort of corpse. All earthly thinking is a corpse, a corpse of the thinking that was so very much alive before we descended into our earth-bound existence. Our physical body is the coffin into which our thinking was laid when we descended into the physical-sensory world.

Without losing the ability for tucking¹ into earthly life, without losing one’s connection to earthly life, to that end a person must be able to say honestly and sincerely, “As a physical, earthly human being you yourself are a coffin for your thinking, for when you descended from the supersensible world to the world of the senses, in this moment thinking died and is now the corpse of living thinking that dwelt in you before you descended to earth-existence.”

Our will also does not live. It will only live when we have passed through the portal of death. Willing is a seed. Thinking is a corpse. Willing is an embryo of what rises up in us when we stride through the portal of death.

What I have just said must be clear to one who delves in the esoteric. If it is, he will have an inkling of the way in which the whole of the person’s soul life will be transformed when he truly does enter into the world of actual inner knowing. He can only enter if he subdues the three beasts I spoke about last time, the beasts that are brought to light in the set of meditation-phrases I gave you. I will present these meditation-phrases to you at the end of the lesson, as I didn't write them on the blackboard last time, and you can all copy them. Just now, however, we will look back upon ourselves in how our willing, our feeling, and our thinking appear in picture-form in imagination, which allows these three beasts to appear when our inner life meets and manifests itself in the world outside, a world with which we are most certainly always inwardly conjoined.

Therefore, any person who now steps forth along the esoteric path must become clear, that when he stands at the beginning, he must make at least a rudimentary attempt to separate thinking, feeling, and willing from one another. Otherwise, the person simply cannot come to the actuality of inner knowing. And the proper protection, which can come into being for a person in the danger of thinking, feeling, and willing disconnected from one another, that specific protection will be granted to a person when he takes up honorably what Anthroposophy has to offer.

Anthroposophy forms thoughts so that the person can become strong for supersensible awareness. Also, just in coming upon supersensible-world communications, if a person even starts to consider them, the person must be strong. Thinking is strong just because we have to exert ourselves in thinking about understanding the supersensible world.

What is the position of those who do not want to reach out to the supersensible world, of those who do not want to know anything about anthroposophical spiritual science? They are in the position of their brain being unable to keep up with their etheric body. The moment such people fill themselves with thoughts that have been presented in Anthroposophy, their etheric body runs out of the head, out of the brain. All that remains is only what the physical organism can think. From a higher point of view one can only pity those who cannot reach out to an anthroposophical understanding of the world.

On the other hand, my dear brothers and sisters, it is certainly so, that however much thinking, feeling, and willing become independent in the currents of anthroposophical awareness, that this in turn also links a person properly with the forces of the world. Therefore, it naturally follows that the person so orients his soul forces, so that with his thinking, with his feeling, and with his willing he finds the way that must be walked, by means of which thinking, feeling, and willing can enter into the spiritual world in the right way.

A further admonition, appended to those that were given in the last lesson, therefore a further admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold deals with how we should position thinking, feeling and willing, so that we can step into the spiritual world in the right way. We must ourselves be clear about the nature of thinking, feeling, and willing in order to understand what the Guardian of the Threshold is saying.

The Guardian of the Threshold will first show how corpse-like our souls are, namely the shimmering-sheen, the semblance-image¹⁷¹ all thinking is that we develop in customary awareness in the physical body. A semblance of the world is this thinking, just as a corpse is the semblance of living, no longer living itself. Within this thinking that we have in customary life in the physical body, within this thinking is not our true self. It manifests itself there just as minimally as does the truly living manifest itself in a corpse. As soon as we have the courage, however, really to say to ourselves, “Yes, thinking that is developed from morning to evening in physical living, this thinking is mere semblance, I will become familiar with it as semblance, I will dive down beneath this appearance.” Then will we become ever clearer and clearer, that the physical body gives us a sort of thinking that is only dead semblance. The etheric body alone begins to give us the sort of thinking that goes out beyond appearance.

Whoever correctly feels that earth-bound thinking is mere semblance, only the corpse of what before being earth-bound is spirited-soulfulness, that person feels himself, by and by, only as ether-being.

Then bit by bit we become aware that in us is the spirit, the spirit that in ordinary awareness hides itself. We can, however, in no other way approach this spirit, unless in the same moment in which the appearance of thinking leaves us, in which the thinking so to say dies off in us, unless in this blink of an eye we begin to honor what now emerges in us as spirited ether-being, as ether-body.

Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, when we look at the plants, the stones, the animals, or even the physical human being, none of this withdraws from us, even if we remain sober and dispassionate and are unable to admire² nature properly. That ceases when a person crosses over into the spiritual world, for then the etheric immediately withdraws itself if a person is unable to admire it, to honor it. In the blink of an eye, when I can say to myself that thinking is mere appearance, when I have the will to dive down into this semblance, just then I must begin to admire, to really honor this ether-being.

To this end the Guardian of the Threshold speaks the words for self-awareness: [The lines were written on the blackboard.]

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

This is the earnest admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold in regard to our attitude toward thinking. We must pause at the words honor and guiding beings [These two words were underlined.], as thinking, recognizing itself as mere appearance, must feel itself admiring, honoring. And the person feels, finds with empathy, what he then lives into, experiences as his ether-being, as something that leads outward from the earth into the reaches of the cosmos. Only then does a person know, as we depart from the physical, my dear friends, going over to the finer etheric, leaving the robust, forceful, solid physicality we are accustomed to, only then does a person know how to find the passageway to the finer, more intimate etheric. We must, if we would lead these thoughts over beyond their dead grave-like physical existence, over to where they are finer than in physical existence, over to where they themselves are alive, then we must choose a cadence for such a mantra, a cadence that is trochaic, that begins each line with emphasis, with accent.

We must be clear about something, my dear friends, that what we embody in words the spirit merely descends into, rests, and reverberates initially at the Threshold. The word in our modern civilization has already become so physical, that it is like a corpse. Only when we feel the words embedded in rhythm, just as human being’s stuff of blood and air circulates in rhythm, then we begin to feel the word carrying us over into the spiritual world. Just as we literally feel blood circulating spirit in us, if we make such a strength-filled mantric maxim come alive in us, then we feel its rhythm, and feel carried by its rhythm into the spiritual world, just as we feel our life borne by, carried in the rhythm of our blood.

The admonition about thinking which the Guardian of the Threshold speaks to human beings must be trochaic.

[The word “trochaic” was written beside the first verse of the mantra; the trochaic rhythm was marked at the beginning of all seven lines with a macron and a breve and the verse was spoken with the corresponding emphasis.]

Lōok ŭpon your web of thoughts:
Wōrld ŏf semblance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath dissemblance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

Felt this with empathy, again and again allowing the soul to be stirred into activity, forgetting all remnants of earthly life, living only in the words and rhythm, this carries ordinary human thinking up out of the physical world and into the etheric world. Used in addition to all the other meditations you have, my dear brothers and sisters, such a maxim, if you make use of it every now and then, as often as you would, is just what can carry you out of thinking into the spiritual world.

Moving on from a person’s thinking to feeling, the matter is quite different. Thinking is pure semblance, a real corpse, dead. It did live before we descended into the physical world. With feeling it is somewhat different, for we regard feelings just as we regard dreaming, for feelings are no more intensive than dreams. The feeling person dreams, but in dreaming something of real existence certainly lives, there semblance and substance mingle, just as in our approach to feelings.

But we also feel that we certainly do not want to plunge beneath this existence that begins in us with feeling. We like the appearance of thinking, which lives in the physical world, ever present. In this manner we never come to true existence, true reality. We must have the courage to dive down below what appears as existence. We must have the courage to place ourselves fully within feeling, into the inmost parts of our soul, and then, through the semblance in which we have become used to living in our thinking, through this semblance, something of reality will begin to emerge. Then we become aware of world forces surfacing in us that otherwise are around us in the world.

At first, we are told to honor, when we want to ascend from the semblance of thinking to its true reality. Now we are to begin being sensitive in feeling, we are to begin directly being considerate in feeling, for in doing this we come upon the living powers of existence within ourselves.

This is the second, which as an instruction for feeling the Guardian of the Threshold places before us:

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

This is the second admonition, the admonition concerning the guidance of feelings, the second coming from the earnest Guardian. [The second stanza was now written on the blackboard.]

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well

Inherent in soul the powers of life.

And if we should go on finding through feeling the passageway out of semblance to substance, then we must go beyond the etheric into the astral. Then we must exert a steady force, as if climbing a mountain that becomes ever steeper. To do this we must point to the simple content of the words in which the progressive force of rhythm unfolds. It must be iambic, entrained in the warning words of the Guardian concerning the experience of feelings. And it is iambic. [Iambic was written beside the second stanza of the mantra and indicated at the beginning of all seven lines with breves and macrons, while the verse was spoken with corresponding emphasis.]

Ĕmbrāce your stream of feelings:
Whĕre sēmblance and substance mingle,
Ăwāre self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath dissemblance:
Ănd wōrld soul forces are in you;
Ăwāre self should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

In this manner should we feel the rhythm, in this manner making the content of the words come alive within us, plunging properly down into feeling and striding properly along the pathway into the spiritual world. For the simple meaning of the words cannot yet do this by itself. We must bring our whole soul nature to a true perception, to a sensing, to a feeling of the rhythm in the mantric maxim.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

Still deeper we plunge down out of the apparent sensory shine into real substance, into the world’s true reality, when we descend into willing.

At this point, so that we can move along the right pathway, we must be able to hear the Guardian’s word that he speaks at the Threshold in admonition. The will is the strongest force in human soul life, even here on earth. But we cannot feel it because we only experience willing, so to speak, only as if sleeping. We are awake, really awake only in thinking. We are dreaming in feeling. We are sleeping in willing.

We must ever and again think over, how first we fasten onto a decisi0n and then have it in thoughts, and then we see it again as a completed act. What lies in between, the crossing over in willing, is for customary awareness just as unknown to us as what we experience in spirit between falling asleep and awakening. Just as feeling is submerged in dreams, just so is willing submerged in sleep. But in this willing we put to sleep true existence, the genuine reality of existence. Just as we must increasingly learn to draw up from the depths of sleep whatever we experience there, so must we learn to draw up from the depths of the will what we experience in it.

That is the third admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, the admonition concerning the will, that we should find the right ways into the spiritual world. Then, when we can really heed this admonition, we become filled with what is spiritual existence in ourselves.

Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, we experience that we have blood in us, that we have satisfaction through eating, that we have semblance of thoughts, that we have dream-like feelings. But in our ordinary awareness we do not experience how spirit streams through us, just as our blood does. When we heed what the Guardian speaks to us as the third admonition, then we can become aware in us of willing, then we can experience how the spirit in us rules. In lifting up a hand or an arm, I have willed. What has happened? Substance has been burned in me. A lively process of burning has drawn to a conclusion in the act of willing. This normally remains unknown. Each time, when through our own body a determination of willing is occurring, a lively process of burning is there. The chemist and physicist even say a burning process. But just as minimally as the human body is a mineral, but rather living and thoroughly beset by spirit, this is no ordinary fire in the human body, but rather living spirit-infused fire. This is no fire such as one sees in an ordinary candle; what is in the person is no combining of carbon with oxygen. Just as the person is ensouled, so are all the processes of nature in him ensouled. Whoever speaks of processes within a person from the standpoint of external processes of nature, such a one talks without knowing the truth of the matter, for no process of external nature settles down inside the person. Something quite else sets to work in the person. Within the skin of a person is no nature. Within the skin of a person is the metamorphosis of nature, the completed spiritualization of nature. Nothing remains in us as it is externally in nature. We could not live for the single blink of an eye if anything of the sort remained as it is externally in nature.

In order to present willing to ourselves, we must grasp a picture. We must use a picture so that a lively imagination illustrating willing will come alive in us. Therefore, place walking in your mind’s eye. Walking is normally quite unremarkable in living. The greatest mysteries actually take place as a person is taking a single step. Now concentrate on this, as one walks, the arms are stirred into moving and fire sprays forth out of the person.

A person will find, if focusing his attention in a lively way on how he flames, he will find the connection to what he as a willing being is in truth. He will become acquainted with himself, if he has the courage to focus in preparation on this imagination, with himself as a fiery flaming willing being. Then we will have grasped the creative might of the world, going beyond our individual existence within the skin, expanding ourselves to world-selves, which we as human beings are, and feeling ourselves in union with the whole world as willing-beings.³ But we have to learn to stay there, becoming willing’s flaming within the world’s fire, fire within fire.

About this the Guardian of the Threshold speaks concerning our willing. And he speaks of the thrust of the will, as the will thrusts us into the full actual reality.

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being,
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

These are the words, inwardly and thoroughly felt, that will guide our willing properly in entering the spiritual world. [The third verse was now written on the blackboard.]

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being,
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

We have to develop honor in ascending from thinking to its reality. We have to develop soul consideration in ascending through to feeling from semblance to existence. Here [in the first stanza] in the next-to-last line there is “honor”. For feeling there is “consider well”. Here [in the third stanza] we similarly now have “grasp”. [The words consider well and grasp were underlined.] Grasping, therefore already close to existence, within existence, appears here in the third stanza for willing.

There is a similar progression that we are made aware of: guiding beings for thinking, powers of life for feeling, world-maker-might for willing. That is the progression. [The words powers of life and world-maker-might were underlined.]

But as I said fire in fire, reality that that is in all, in the reality of this all itself, that is what the Guardian of the Threshold informs us about. We must stand within this more firmly than we did when we descended in thinking from the rough robust semblance through to more intimate reality, where it was trochaic rhythm, macron then breve, stressed then unstressed. In feeling we have to ascend, as if climbing a hill, where it is iambic rhythm, breve then macron, unstressed then stressed. Here in willing we must stand within it differently. There it will be spondaic, macron then another macron, stressed and stressed. [The word spondaic was written beside the third verse of the mantra; the spondaic rhythm was marked at the beginning of all seven lines with two macrons, while the verse was spoken with the corresponding emphasis.]

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt is with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence, it should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

The stark emphasis on the two first syllables in each line we should feel rhythmically. We should win steadfastness as the Guardian directs to us the third admonition.

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, we should become aware how this word of the Guardian guides us specifically to actual inner knowing. While this Guardian-word has initially made us aware how we have thinking, feeling and willing in us in the images of the three beasts, the Guardian of the Threshold guides us further, about how we can strengthen this thinking, how we can strengthen this feeling, how we can strengthen this willing, so that they grow, rise, and cross over⁴ the animality, get beyond⁵ these three beasts, so that the soul grows wings, as depicted in the prior session’s mantra, in order to cross over into the spiritual world.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

But the Guardian in due course gives us in the last mantra, which I then pass on,⁶ the instruction about what we should do to become stronger, so that we grow wings to awareness.

Take it up, my dear brothers and sisters, take into your meditation what is given in these three mantras. This is what the classes should lead to, these classes that have been established since the Christmas Conference, that the esoteric might flow⁷ through the anthroposophical movement. Take up into your meditation these admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold. It is not I who speak them; I speak them for the Guardian of the Threshold, who through these words will speak to all of you.⁸ For this school is an institution of spiritual life itself.

Therefore, let us take up these words as those of the Guardian himself. Then they will be for us strengthening and invigorating words, coming to us after the harrowing effect of the last lesson, concerning which in looking ahead they step forth now in strengthening of the soul. A person must first be knocked down and away from what he grasps in the sensory world, in order to remain stout and strong in the spiritual world, in order to gain wings, to be carried across the abyss, which leads into the brilliance which streams out of the abyss, out of the darkness, out of which our humanity is born.

To this end the Guardian speaks the words, in order to lift us up in turn out of this harrowing:

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being,
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

And as the Guardian spoke this word, he comes himself, infusing rhythm again and again on those words, to teach us in perspective about what we should attain, about what beckons us from the spiritual world across the Threshold.

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:
There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

• 1. tüchtig
• 171. Scheingebilde
• 2. verehren, which is stronger than just ehren or bewundern (to honor), but in English to honor is sufficient.
• 3. Wollende
• 4. hinüberwachsen
• 5. hinauskommen
• 6. This seems to be in the conjunctive tense, das ich dann übergeben werde.
• 7. fließe, which again is in the conjunctive tense, it might, can, may, ought to, could, should flow.
• 8. Euch is the second person pleural, no longer capitalized since the 1996 spelling reform except in formal situations, as here.

[* Metallität is a coined word not in usage. The Romanic suffix—ität (Latin:—itatem; French:—ite) is common to abstract nouns. The approximate meaning is metallic quality, metal-ness. (Note by translator.)]

Yesterday I attempted to give some idea of the inner experiences of the soul when, through spiritual training and meditation, man develops higher levels of consciousness. At the same time I indicated that the chaotic, uncoordinated experiences of dream life during sleep, typical of normal consciousness, can be transformed into the fully conscious, concrete experiences of waking life. We can thus attain a level of consciousness which, to some extent, is sequential to normal consciousness. We then perceive, for example, the animal kingdom in its totality which is in touch with a higher world of soul, the astral plane. Then I tried to show how the plant-cover appears in its totality when, in full waking consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions, we attain to the world of stars with this second level of consciousness and there for the first time learn the truth about the plant-cover of the Earth. We then realize that the plants we see growing out of the Earth are a reflected image of that majesty and grandeur which sparkle out amongst the world of stars like the dewdrops upon the plants. Indeed, the firmament and all that therein is, takes on substantial reality, form, colour and even resonance when we apprehend it with this higher consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions. Then we can look back upon the Earth and perceive that the world of plants in reality is a reflected image of cosmic beings, of cosmic deeds.

I should like to draw your attention to a peculiar phenomenon when we observe the world of stars on the one hand and the world of plants on the other. I should like to describe these things entirely from the point of view of inner experience, exactly as they occur, as they are revealed to direct spiritual experience and investigation. My description will not be supported by any tradition, literary or otherwise. But first of all I should like to point out a peculiarity that is familiar to anyone who explores the spiritual in the way I have described.

Let us visualize the following picture: above us is the world of stars, below is the Earth. The point from which we start our enquiry we call our point of observation. At the second level of consciousness, a consciousness that sees the world of the stars and of plants in the manner already described, we are able to confirm that the archetypal forms are present in the Cosmos, that they are mirrored in the Earth, not as reflected images but in the form of living plants. These plants do not appear as lifeless, unreal, nebulous images, but as concrete reflections created by the Earth. One feels that the Earth must be there to act as a mirror, so that the plant-beings in the Cosmos can spring up out of this terrestrial mirror.

Without the solid Earth there could be no plants. And just as a mirror intercepts the light and acts as resistance—for otherwise it could not reflect—so the Earth must act as a reflecting medium in order that the plants may come into being.

We can now pursue the matter further. Having developed this second level of consciousness, a waking consciousness independent of sensory impressions, we can take the next step towards the development of an inner strength of soul, of the spirit of love towards all created things and all living beings. The acquisition of these new powers is seldom recognized as a positive force for knowledge. If, after entering into this realm that is so differently constituted, where the Cosmos no longer appears bright with stars but is the abode of spiritual beings, this power of love fills our heart and soul, if, after embarking, so to speak, on the spiritual ocean of the universe, we can preserve our spiritual, psychic and physical identity and extend the infinite power of love and devotion to all beings, then we progressively perfect our insight and understanding. We then develop the capacity to perceive clairvoyantly not only the animal and plant kingdoms, but also the mineral kingdom and especially that part of the mineral kingdom which is crystalline in structure. For those who wish to investigate the higher worlds, mineral crystals offer an excellent field for observation and study.

When we are fully acquainted with the animal and plant kingdoms we are then in a position to investigate the mineral-crystal world. As on the previous occasion, we feel impelled to turn our attention from the mineral kingdom on Earth to the contemplation of the Cosmos. And again we find there a living reality, the archetypes akin to those of the plant kingdom. But the picture now presented to us is totally different. We become aware of a living reality in the Cosmos; the mineral-crystal world that we see on Earth is the creation of an active, spiritual principle in the Cosmos. In its progressive descent to the Earth, it is not reflected in the Earth or by means of the Earth. That is the crucial point. When we raise our consciousness from contemplation of the mineral-crystal kingdom to the Cosmos and look back to Earth again, the Earth no longer acts as a mirror; one has the impression that the Earth has vanished from our sight. We cannot, however, say, as we said of the plants, that the Earth below us reflects the higher beings. On the contrary, the Earth does not act as a reflecting medium; it has seemingly vanished. When we have meditated upon the spiritual vista evoked by the mineral-crystal kingdom, when we direct our spiritual eye from cosmic space to the Earth, we appear to be suspended over a terrifying abyss, over a void. We must remain in a waiting attitude. We must keep a firm hand on ourselves, we must preserve our presence of mind. The period of waiting should not be too prolonged, otherwise our fear is magnified; we are terrified because there is no ground under our feet. This sensation, which is wholly foreign to us, reduces us to a state of panic if we do not preserve our self-control, the necessary presence of mind which enables us to take active steps to see beyond this void. For this reason we must look beyond the Earth which is no longer present to our spiritual vision. Then we are obliged to contemplate, not only that aspect of the mineral kingdom which is associated with the Cosmos, but also its relationship to the total environment. The Earth ceases to exist for us. We must see the mineral kingdom as a total whole.

We then experience a current of cosmic energy from below, in contrast to the cosmic energy of the plants which streams down from above. We see everywhere currents and counter-currents, converging currents of cosmic energy from all directions. In the case of the plants this stream of cosmic energy flows down from above, the Earth offers resistance and the plants grow up out of the Earth. In the case of the mineral kingdom we are aware that through the free interplay of these currents from the cosmic All, the mineral kingdom is created. In the case of the mineral-crystal kingdom nothing is reflected back from the Earth. Everything is mirrored in its own element.

If you discover a quartz crystal in the mountains, it is usually found in a vertical position. Its base is embedded in the rock. This is accounted for by the intervention of terrestrial, Ahrimanic forces which act as a disruptive factor. In reality, the quartz is formed by the pressure of a spiritual element from all sides; there is an interplay of reflecting facets and you see the crystal free in cosmic space. Each single crystal whose every facet is perfectly fashioned, is a little world unto itself.

Now there are many types of crystal formation—cubes, octahedrons, tetrahedrons, rhomboids, dodekahedrons, monoklinics, triklinics, every conceivable kind of structure in fact. When we examine them, we note how the currents of cosmic energy converge and interact to form the quartz crystal, a hexagonal prism terminating in a hexagonal pyramid, or a salt crystal possibly in the shape of a cube, or a pyrites crystal in the shape of a dodekahedron. Each of these crystals is formed in the way I have described. And there are as many different cosmic forces, indeed, as many worlds in cosmic space as there are crystals in the Earth. We begin to have insight into an infinitude of worlds.

As we look at the salt crystal, we realize that a spiritual principle is active in the universe. The salt crystal is a manifestation of that spiritual reality which permeates the whole universe; it is a world unto itself. Then, from an examination of the dodekahedron, we discover that there exists in the universe something that permeates the world of space; the crystal is the impress, the manifestation of a whole world. We are gazing on countless beings, each of which is a world unto itself. As human beings here on Earth, we conclude that the Earth-sphere is the focal point of the activities of many worlds. In all that we think and do here on Earth are reflected the thoughts and deeds of a wide diversity of beings. The infinite variety of crystal forms reveals the multitude of beings whose activities find consummation in the mathematical-spatial forms of the crystals. In the crystals we recognize the presence of the Gods. As an expression of reverence, of adoration even towards the universe, it is far more important to allow the sublime secrets of this universe to possess our souls than to gather theoretical knowledge on a purely intellectual basis.

Anthroposophy should lead to this feeling of at-one-ment with the universe. Through Anthroposophy man shall be able to perceive in every crystal the weaving and working of a divine Being. Then cosmic knowledge and understanding begins to flood man's whole soul. The task of Anthroposophy is not to appeal to the intellectual faculty alone, but to enlighten the whole man and show his total involvement in the universe and to inspire him with reverence and devotion towards it. Every object and every event in the world shall be invested with a spirit of selfless service proceeding from the heart and soul of man. And this selfless service will be rewarded by knowledge and understanding.

When we are in contact with the cosmic All and see the emergence of the crystals out of the manifestations of the crystal-mineral kingdom, we feel a sense of satisfaction. But very soon that state of anxiety and fear which I have already mentioned, returns again. Before discovering the divinely ordered world of crystals, we had been filled with fear. When we are aware of that divinely inspired world, this feeling of uncertainty vanishes; but after a time a strange sensation overtakes us and the fear returns, the feeling that the whole process of crystal formation is unsubstantial and provides only partial support.

Let us take the example of the two kinds of crystal already mentioned, a salt crystal and a pyrite, a metal crystal. The pyrites gives the impression that it can provide us with solid support, that it is firm and durable. The salt crystal, on the other hand, appears to offer no support; it seems unsubstantial and we feel as if we might fall through it.

In brief then: in relation to certain forms, the fear that once possessed us, the fear that we are suspended over an abyss because the Earth has become a void, has not finally been overcome. This sensation of fear has definite moral implications. When we feel a recurrence of this fear, then, at that moment, we become aware, not only of all our past sins, but of those of which we are potentially capable.

All this acts upon us like a leaden weight that drags us down and threatens to plunge us into the abyss which the mineral crystals open up before us and which is ready to engulf us. At this point we must be prepared for an additional experience. We realize that the sum of our experiences demands of us courage and we confidently proclaim: I am firmly anchored, I cannot drift from my moorings; the centre of gravity of my own being now lies within myself.

Never in the whole course of life do we need more confidence, more moral courage than at the moment when, confronted with the crystal world, the leaden weight of egotism—and egotism is always a sin—weighs upon the soul. That transparent void over which we are suspended now holds a terrible warning for us. If we stand firm and remain self-reliant, we can say: a spark of the divine is within me; I cannot perish, for I partake of the divine essence. If this becomes a concrete experience and not mere theoretical belief, then we have the courage to be self-sufficient, to stand on our own feet. We are now ready and determined to press on further.

We now learn something further about the mineral kingdom. Hitherto we have heard about the crystal being of the minerals. We have already discussed their external form; now we become aware of their composition and structure, their substantiality and metallity. And we discover how certain basic metals in their different ways act as a stabilizing factor. For the first time we begin to understand how man is related to the Cosmos. We learn of the different characteristics of the metals, of the substantiality of the mineral being and we really begin to feel in ourselves that centre of gravity which I have just mentioned.

In what I am about to say I must perforce use a terminology that describes the material world; it should not be accepted in its literal meaning only. When we speak of the heart or head, the commonsense view conjures up a picture of a physical heart or head. But they are, of course, spiritual in origin. And so when we look at man in his totality, as an entity consisting of body, soul and spirit, we have the clear impression that his centre of gravity lies in the heart. This centre guards him against extremes, prevents him from being the plaything of external circumstances and lends him stability. If we retain that courageous spirit which I have just mentioned, we shall ultimately find ourselves firmly anchored in the universe.

When a person loses consciousness he is not firmly anchored. If he suffers a psychic shock—for under these conditions he is more susceptible to pain than normally and after all, pain is an intensification of inner feeling—then he is not in a normal state of consciousness. Under conditions of pain normal consciousness is expelled. Between birth and death man lives in a kind of intermediate state of consciousness. This may well serve for the normal purposes of daily life. But if this consciousness becomes too weak, too tenuous, he loses consciousness. If it becomes too dense, too concentrated, pain ensues. The loss of consciousness in a state of swoon, and the state of tension under the influence of pain, are polarities which illustrate the aberrations of consciousness. This describes exactly our reactions to the world of mineral crystals before we become aware of their substantiality—on the one hand, the feeling that in a state of swoon we might at any moment be dissolved in the universe, and on the other hand that under the influence of pain we might collapse.

Then we feel that everything that provides stability is centred in the cardiac region. And if we have developed our consciousness to the level already indicated, we then perceive that everything that sustains our ordinary waking consciousness, all that keeps it ‘normal,’ if I may use this somewhat crude expression, is gold, aurum, which is finely distributed over the Earth and works with greater immediacy upon the heart than upon any other organ.

Previously we became acquainted with the formation, the crystallization of minerals. We now become aware of their substantiality, of their metallity. We realize in what manner this metallic nature works upon man himself.

Outwardly we see the crystal formations of the metals in the mineral world. But we know inwardly that the forces of gold which are finely distributed over the Earth sustain our heart and maintain the normal consciousness of our daily life. And so we can say, gold works upon the heart centre of man. On the basis of this information we are now in a position to start our investigations. If, taking the metal gold as we know it, we concentrate upon its colour, its hardness and all aspects of its composition and structure and then transform the experience into inner reality, we find that gold is related to the heart. By concentrating on other metals, on iron and its properties, for example, we discover what effect iron has upon us. Gold has a harmonizing influence, it resolves tension and conflict and man is thereby restored to a state of inner equilibrium. If, after becoming familiar with all its aspects, we concentrate intently on iron, forgetting the entire universe and concentrating solely upon the metal itself, so that we become, as it were, inwardly merged with iron, become identified with iron, then we feel as if our consciousness were rising up from the regions of the heart. We are still fully conscious as we follow this consciousness as it ascends from the heart to the larynx. If we have carried out our spiritual exercises adequately, no harm can result; otherwise a slight feeling of faintness overtakes us. As our consciousness ascends we recognize this condition from the fact that we have developed an intense inner activity, a heightened consciousness. Then we gradually transpose ourselves into this ascending consciousness and contact the world where we see the group-soul of the animals. By concentrating on the metallity of iron we have now entered the astral world.

When we become acquainted with the form of the metals we reach the realm of the higher spiritual beings; when we become acquainted with their substantiality and metallity we enter the astral world, the world of souls. We feel our consciousness rising upward to the larynx and we emerge into a new sphere. We owe this shift of consciousness to our concentration upon iron and we feel that we are no longer the same person as before. If we attain this state in full, clear consciousness, we are sensible of having transcended our former self; we have entered into the etheric world. The Earth has vanished, it no longer holds any interest for us. We have ascended into the planetary spheres which, as it were, have become our abode. Thus we gradually withdraw from the body and become integrated into the universe. The path from gold to iron is the path leading into the universe.

After gold and iron we next concentrate upon tin, upon its metallity, its colour and substantiality, with the result that our consciousness becomes wholly identified with tin. We feel that our consciousness is now rising to still higher levels. But if we undertake this step without adequate preparation, we suffer a near total swoon, scarcely any sign of consciousness remains. If we have prepared ourselves in advance, we can hold ourselves in this state of diminished consciousness; but we feel that our consciousness is withdrawing still further from the body and ultimately reaches the region between the eyes. Though the vast expanse of the universe encompasses us, we are still within the realm of stars. The Earth, however, begins to appear as a distant star. And we conclude that we have left our body on Earth, that we have ascended into the Cosmos and share the life of the stars.

All this is by no means as simple as it sounds. What I have described to you, what we experience when we follow the path of Initiation, namely, that consciousness is situated in the larynx, the base of the skull or the forehead, is an indication that all these various states of consciousness are permanently present in man. All of you sitting here have within you these states of consciousness, but you are not aware of it. Why is this so? Now man is a complex being. If, at the moment when you were conscious of the whole laryngeal organization, you could dispense with your brain and sense organs, you would never be free of this slight subconscious feeling of faintness. And in effect this is so; it is simply overlaid by the ordinary heart consciousness, the gold consciousness. It is common to all of you, it is part of your human make-up. A part of you that shares this consciousness is situated in the stars and does not exist on Earth at all.

The tin consciousness lies further out in the Cosmos. It would be untrue to state that the Earth is your sole habitat. It is the heart that anchors your consciousness to the Earth. That which has its centre in the larynx is out in the Cosmos and, situated still further out, is that which has its centre in the forehead (tin). The iron consciousness embraces the Mars sphere, tin the Jupiter sphere. Only in the gold consciousness do you belong to the Earth. You are always interwoven with the universe, but the heart consciousness conceals this from you.

If you meditate on lead or some similar metal and again concentrate on its substantiality and metallity, you relinquish the body completely. You are left in no doubt that your physical body and etheric body are left behind on Earth. They appear strange and remote. They concern you as little as the stone concerns the rock on which it rests. Consciousness has left the body through the crown (the sagittal suture) of the head. Wherever we turn, a minute quantity, a tincture of lead is always to be found in the universe. This form of consciousness reaches far out into space; with the consciousness that is centred in the cranium man always remains in a state of complete insensibility.

Picture to yourselves the state of illusion in which man habitually lives. When he is sitting at his desk making up his accounts or writing articles he fondly imagines that he is thinking with his head. That is not the reality. It is not the head as such, but its physical aspect, that belongs to the Earth. The head consciousness extends from the larynx upwards far out into the universe. The universe reveals itself solely in the head centre. What determines your human condition between birth and death is the heart centre. Whether you write good or bad articles, whether your accounts may or may not be to your neighbour's disadvantage—this is determined by the heart centre. It is pure illusion to imagine that man's head consciousness is confined to the Earth alone, for, in effect, it is in a permanent state of insensibility. And that is why it is also peculiarly subject to pain from which other organs are free. Let me take this point a little further. When, in our present state, we try to find the reasons for this situation we are continually threatened from the spirit with the annihilation of our intellectual consciousness, with a breakdown of the whole consciousness and a collapse into total insensibility.

Our picture of man is then as follows: in the larynx (iron) man develops the consciousness that reaches to the archetypes of the animal kingdom. It is the consciousness that belongs to the stars, but we are unaware of it in ordinary life. Higher still, in the region of the eyes (tin) is the consciousness of the archetypes of the plant kingdom and below are their reflected images. Crowning all is the centre of the lead consciousness which reaches to the Saturn sphere; our head centre is oblivious of the articles we write, they are the product of the heart centre. But the head is fully aware of the happenings in cosmic space. Our description of terrestrial events and activities proceeds from the heart; the head, meanwhile, can concentrate on the manner in which a divine being manifests himself in a pyrites, in a crystal of salt or of quartz.

When Initiate consciousness surveys the audience present here, it is evident that you are listening to what I am saying with your hearts, whilst your three higher levels of consciousness are out in the Cosmos. The Cosmos is the scene of activities of an order wholly different from those known to ordinary earthly consciousness. In the Cosmos, especially in what is enacted there and radiates far and wide, is woven for all of us the web of our destiny, our karma.

Thus we have gradually come to understand man through his relationship with the universe—how fundamentally he is associated with the external world, is continually under the threat of annihilation from without, of reduction to insensibility and is ultimately sustained by the heart.

When we meditate on other kinds of metals our spiritual approach is different. We can follow the same procedure with copper as we have done with iron, tin and lead. When we meditate on the metallic nature of copper, we become, as it were, merged with, one with copper; our whole soul is permeated with copper, with its colour and consistency, its curiously ribbed surface. In brief, we become wholly identified with our psychic response to the metallity of copper. Then we do not experience a gradual transition towards insensibility, but rather the reverse. We have the sensation that something floods our whole inner being; our response grows more sensitive. We have a definite impression that when we meditate on copper it pervades our whole being. It radiates from the centre below the heart and is diffused over the whole body.

It is as though we had a second body, a second man within us. We have a sensation of inner pressure. This sets up a slight pain that gradually increases. Everything seems to be in a state of inner tension.

When we invest this condition with Initiate consciousness we feel the presence of a second man within us. And this experience has important implications, for we can say to ourselves: the normal self, the legacy of birth and education the instrument through which we apprehend the world, accompanies us through life; but, through training and meditation, we awaken m this second man who now takes over his potentiality for perception. This second man is indeed a remarkable being. He does not possess separate eyes and ears, but is at one and the same time eyes and ears together. He resembles a sense organ with delicate powers of perception; he perceives things that we do not normally perceive. Our world becomes suddenly enriched.

Just as a snake can slough its skin, so it is possible for a short time—and much can be experienced in the course of a few seconds—for this second man, the “copper” man, to withdraw from the body and move about freely in the spiritual world. He can be separated from the body, though at the cost of increasing pain. When we are dissociated from the body we have a wider range of experiences. When we have reached the point when we can relinquish the body, we are then able to follow a person who has passed through the gate of death.

In that case all our terrestrial associations with the deceased are now ended. He has been buried or cremated, he has severed his connection with the Earth. When we relinquish the body with the second man, that is with clairvoyant perception, we are able to follow the journey of the soul after death. And then we learn that the soul in the first years or decades after death relives in reverse order its life on Earth. This is a fact that can be observed since we accompany the soul through the gate of death. The time taken to recapitulate our life experiences is a third of our life span. A man who dies at sixty will recapitulate his life experiences over twenty years approximately. We can follow his soul throughout this period. We can now learn much about man's experiences after death. In recapitulating his life the experiences are of a different order. Forgive me if I give a somewhat crude example. Let us assume that three years before your death you gave someone a box on the ear. You were annoyed with him and you exploded with anger; you caused him physical and moral pain. You derived a certain satisfaction from punishing him for having offended you. Now, when you recapitulate your life in reverse order and come upon this episode after a year, you do not experience your original outburst of anger, but the physical and moral pain of your victim. You live right into his feelings and experience psychically the box on the ear; you re-experience the pain you have inflicted. And the same applies to all actions. You experience them exactly as others who were involved experienced them. It is possible to follow man's soul after death through all such experiences.

The ancient Chaldeans who owed their cultural impulses to the Mystery teachings had deeper insight into these matters than the men of today. The remarkable fact is that in those days these ancient Chaldeans actually lived in the larynx consciousness, whereas we today live in the heart consciousness. The consciousness natural to them was a kind of iron consciousness; their experience was associated with the universe; for them the Earth did not have the solid consistency it holds for us. When, under particularly favourable conditions they lived, for example, in communion with the beings of Mars, there came a moment of time when beings came over from the Moon and brought with them other beings such as those we perceive with the consciousness of the second man. And thus indirectly the Chaldeans learned of sublime truths relating to life after death. They received their instruction in these truths from the universe without.

This is no longer necessary for us today when we can follow the dead without intermediary help. We can follow them as they live through their experiences in reverse sequence and each experience in reverse. And the strange thing is that when we are identified with this second man we find ourselves in a world that is infinitely more real than the phenomenal world. This present world and the sum of our experiences there appear unsubstantial in comparison with the solid, exacting world ~of reality which we have now entered.

In accompanying the dead in the way described we experience everything on a magnified scale; everything appears to be more intensely real. By comparison, the phenomenal world leaves a nebulous impression. To anyone who is associated with the world of the dead through Initiate consciousness, the physical world appears like a painted masquerade and an Initiate who, through meditation, has been closely associated with the dead in this way would say: You are all painted masks. There is no reality about you; you are simply painted masks sitting on your chairs.

True reality is only found beyond the realm of physical existence and this reality can be experienced here and now. Perhaps some of you can recall the figure of Strader in my Mystery Plays. This character is drawn from life. Strader is a poetic, non-realistic portrait of a personality who lived in the last third of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century. In real life he was a man who interested me deeply. He began life as a Capuchin novice, abandoned his vocation in favour of philosophy and stayed for a time in the monastery at Dornach. I recast him as Strader in the Mystery Plays. It was not a faithful portrait, but bore a certain likeness to him. In the fourth Mystery Play, you will remember, Strader dies. I had to let him die as I had exhausted all possibilities of developing his character further. Had I attempted to do so I could not have put pen to paper. He could not possibly have appeared again in the fifth Mystery Play. What is the reason for this?

In the meantime the real person who had changed his rôle from monk to philosopher had died. And because I was deeply interested in him I was able to follow his journey through the spiritual world. There the impression created by his personality was far more real. His life and activities on Earth ceased to evoke the same interest now that one could share his experiences in the life after death.

Then a strange thing happened. A few anthroposophists tumbled to the state of affairs. They discovered—the ingenuity of man knows no bounds—that Strader was to some extent a portrait of the historical person. In the course of their investigations they discovered his unpublished manuscripts and all sorts of interesting documents which he had left behind. They brought them to me expecting that I would be overjoyed at the discovery. I had not the slightest interest in them. What did interest me, on the other hand, was what he was doing after his death. This was far more real. In comparison with this, everything related to the external world which he had left behind, was of no significance.

People were surprised that I showed so little interest after they had been at such pains to gather information. I had no use for it then, nor do I need it now. The fact is that the reality of this world is illusory in comparison with that sublime reality which is revealed to us when we follow a soul beyond the gate of death. There the soul endures in a world that we can experience ourselves when we are identified with the second man who can relinquish the physical body, if only for a short time. But in that short space of time much can be experienced.

The existence of this world whose frontiers border directly on those of the phenomenal world is never in doubt. It is a world in which the deceased are living more abundantly. We apprehend them through this second man who relinquishes the physical body. We have suffered no loss of consciousness, rather is our consciousness more deeply interfused.

If we rise above the heart centre, our consciousness becomes more dimmed, we are near to a state of unconsciousness. If we descend below the heart centre our consciousness is intensified. We enter a world of reality, but we must learn to bear the pain and suffering this entails. But if we breach the walls surrounding this world with courage and determination our entry is assured.

We have now arrived at an understanding of the ordinary day consciousness, of a second consciousness in the larynx, a third in the region of the eyes, a fourth, that reaches out into the universe, at the crown of the head, and a fifth that is unrelated to the worlds of space and leads us back into the world of time. We travel through time; when we attain this fifth level of consciousness we share the same time-scale in reverse as the deceased. We have stepped out of space into time.

Everything therefore depends upon our ability to transpose ourselves into different states of consciousness which open up to us new worlds. On Earth man is the prisoner of a single, insulated world because he knows only one state of consciousness; in all other states of consciousness he is asleep. If we awaken them and develop them, we can experience the other worlds.

The secret of spiritual investigation is that through transmutation of his consciousness man transforms himself. We cannot penetrate into other worlds by adopting the orthodox methods of research and investigation; we must undergo metamorphosis, transform our consciousness into new and different forms.

Everything will depend on whether the whole attitude of the lectures that you now want to present to the public is different from the one that usually underlies the discussions that have been common up to now. The attitude that you will have to take will be particularly determined by the fact that you will have to point out everywhere the importance of the human being in all of social life.

Today you will find social judgments everywhere that start from something other than the human being as such. You will find social judgments that are based on the concept of capital, on the function of capital and so on within the social order. You will then find that capitalism is spoken of as if it were some kind of power that goes around the world, and that in all this talk of “capitalism” there is actually little basis in consideration of the essence of man as such.

You will then hear talk again about work, about the social significance of work. Here too you will be able to sense that, by talking about work, one already takes the human being as a starting point, because he is, after all, the one who works. But one also talks about work as such in isolation from the human being, namely from humanity, and from “work itself”.

Then, thirdly, you will find that people talk about the product. This may have its good meaning within economic life; but it only leads to errors and distorted social conceptions if one does not take into account the essence of man as such in all areas.

Certainly, especially when one sets out on the threefold social order, one must distinguish sharply between what, I would say, must be a field of human activity to express itself in the spiritual realm, and what must express itself in the legal-political realm, and finally what must express itself in the economic realm. But these ideas, which must be so one-sidedly conceived about human activity, cannot be properly formed unless one can turn one's gaze to the essence of man as a whole human being. It is precisely this turning of the gaze to the essence of man as a whole human being that reveals to us the necessity for the external social order to be structured into the three areas characterized by the corresponding writings.

Now, however, man has gradually been eliminated from consideration in modern world view life. You will find everywhere that man as such has actually been eliminated. You will find this first of all in the narrowest spiritual field, that of science. Science considers the kingdoms of nature, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, then looks at the development of the animal kingdom up to man and presents man as a more complicated, transformed, metamorphosed animal. But it does not set out to consider man himself. It presents man only as the end point of the animal series. This has long been the aim of science. But this is only one symptom of the fact that feeling and thinking have been expelled from the essence of man. If in modern times there had been a strong feeling for the purely human in the most diverse areas of life, then it would not have been possible to expel man from so-called science, to treat him only as a final point.

But you can also see how man is excluded from the institutions that are now being laid down for spiritual life. He is, as far as possible, harnessed to regulations that do not come from himself; or he is harnessed to the effect of forces that come from economic life; but very, very little attention is paid to what man is as a human being in social life. And so they start coming up with definitions of everything possible, of capital, of labor, of goods; but the human being is completely left out of the equation.

In the life of the state itself, it is very strange how, especially in Central European countries, the feeling has been lost in the very latest times that everything that is state or other commonality is actually there for the sake of the human being , not man for the sake of the state; that all institutions originating in these communities must ultimately aim to develop the human being into a full human being, into a full individuality, as far as possible.

How often, especially in recent times, has it been repeated that man must sacrifice everything for the sake of community! Yes, my dear friends, if what at first seems to sound right were to be put into practice, that man must sacrifice everything for the sake of community, it would gradually lead to the most severe atrophy of community life. For nothing establishes community life better than when, within this community life, individual human personalities can develop in the fullest sense of the word. Those who think the opposite usually do not take the main point into account.

The person who develops as a whole human being, who can bring their human individuality to bear in all respects, is, because of this development, dependent on contributing as much as possible to community life; they already establish community life in the very best way through what is within them. What can be developed in the human being, if it is guided and directed in the right way, is by no means based on selfishness. Selfishness in the human being is actually generated from the outside, not from the inside. Selfishness is often generated precisely by community life. This is far too little considered in the treatment of social issues. And so it has also become apparent that in recent times there has been a real imbalance between the self-evident lack of selfishness and generosity in spiritual matters and the selfishness and greed in all material things. In terms of what people produce spiritually, they are not exactly stingy by nature; they would like to share as much of this as possible with every human being. A person who is only a lyricist would like to give what he produces as a lyricist to all people, most generously and without selfishness, not keep it to himself. People today do it differently with regard to external, material goods; they want to keep them to themselves. But these never come to us from within, but are conditioned by what surrounds us. And the social art would consist in gradually transforming that which surrounds us externally so that we can treat it like that which is our own from within, like that which springs entirely from our individuality. But for this to happen, it is necessary that people incorporate into their minds a way of thinking such as I have now indicated in a few abstract sentences. They will never be able to do this within the present spiritual life, because this present spiritual life harnesses the human being to the external state or economic order and does not aim to develop what is in the human being from within. In education, it remains an abstract principle to say that everything that is taught and taught must be brought out of the human being. This abstract principle is of no help at all. And those who preach it the most are also the ones who usually sin against it the most in practice, for example.

What fills one with such an attitude, which is focused on the human as such, can only be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it leads in every direction to the recognition of the essence of the human being itself. It places the human being at the center of all consideration. Take, for example, you can just as easily take something else, my “Secret Science”: there the stages of earthly development are traced through pre-earthly conditions, the names of which do not matter, through the state of Saturn, the state of the sun, the state of the moon, and so on. But not one of these states is followed in the way that it is followed in the hypotheses of modern science. What did they have in this modern science? At first they had some nebulous state in very distant times; there was nothing in it of the human being. And for a long time to come, in the stages of development that arose from the thoughts of science, there was nothing of the human being in it. Then man suddenly appears, after all the other creatures had gathered together. Then he will later pass away again, and the earth and everything will pass away with him. And ultimately, the whole development is heading towards a field of corpses. What we think about the world, about the cosmos, is dehumanizing. And if one were not compelled to do so – because one has this two-legged animal on earth after all and because this two-legged animal at least does the insignificant thing of thinking at all – one would be compelled to swindle man into a position after all, one would put him aside altogether, because there would then be no necessity at all to swindle man into it.

But consider my “occult science”: from the first installations, man is in it. Nothing in the cosmos is considered without man being in it. Everything only makes sense and at the same time provides a basis for knowledge by being considered in relation to man. Nowhere is man excluded. This anthroposophically oriented spiritual science leads our world view back to a consideration of the human being.

I am suggesting some thoughts that are important for you when you go out to give your lectures, because they should give you cause to pursue the idea of putting the human at the center of the social process; and you will, I would say, color your speech in such a way that you place the human being at the center and avoid leaving the human being out of this center.

You see, the theoretical approach of recent years has already left the human being out at the starting point, it actually regards him only as a kind of luxury object for knowledge. But the national economic considerations of recent times have also taken a similar path. Go back to the source, and you will find that Marxist and other schools of thought also go back to it – go back to Adam Smith. You will see that two things have been placed at the center of attention: firstly, economic freedom and secondly, private property. Man is not really the main focus anywhere. He is occasionally considered, of course, but he is not the main focus, he is not placed at the center.

But humans as such cannot have economic freedom! For economic freedom is not something that one has as a human being, but as the owner of certain goods. It is as the owner of certain goods that one moves within the social process, and by possessing these goods one can, in a sense, have what Adam Smith calls freedom. But you don't move as a human being; instead, you set goods in motion, you trigger processes in the goods. And these processes – the plowing, the harvesting, if you are the owner of a good, or what you do in industry – these are free, independent; but the human being as such is not taken into account at all when one speaks of economic freedom.

And private property? Well, one must remember that this must somehow have been acquired, whether by robbery, conquest, inheritance or otherwise; so somehow it must have had to do with man. But Smith does not look at it in terms of how man originally formed a relationship to property; instead, he regards it as something absolutely given. This is how people view private property in general: man is just like a herd of pigs. They only consider man by not focusing on him, the human being, but on property as such. The national economic point of view has thrown out the human being.

But this is no longer merely the result of a lack of knowledge or a lack of insight, one would like to say, but it has arisen because, basically, economic life itself has taken on this form. Under the influence of the newer, more abstract way of thinking, economic life has automatically developed itself. Man has gradually withdrawn from it, leaving it to what has been shaped outside of human beings. Basically, you could easily make the following observation:

Take, say, a stately home and, with the exception of what external forces have brought about through technology and so on, follow it purely in relation to the human element, which has been through a series of generations; go up from the owner at the end of the 19th century to the owner in the middle of the 19th century, to the owner at the beginning of the 19th century and so on. You can actually follow how the process took place, how the estates intervened in the economic process, without worrying too much about the estate owner at the end of the 19th century, the estate owner in the middle of the 19th century, or the estate owner at the beginning of the 19th century. They go for walks on their estates, do what follows from the matter itself and intervene there; but it is indifferent, one cannot distinguish whether it is the owner of the end of the 19th century or of the middle or the beginning of the 19th century. What matters is the extra-human process. So, the objective has already developed in such a way that the human being has been excluded.

But he has only been excluded on the one hand, but that is the basis of our catastrophic conditions. He has not been excluded with regard to a certain area of intellectual life: the technical-scientific. There he intervened, but the two things did not go together. One only pushed itself into the other. Man has, however, intervened in many other ways, in that, as a result of ignoring the human being, more and more people have become proletarianized. What had become proletarianized, which was actually nothing other than the human being, asserted itself again. And so, in the more recent development, what man meant in the whole economic process, in the whole social process, was absolutely not developed together, but the individual areas had an inorganic effect on each other. One simply pushed its way mechanically into the other. Nowhere, it can be said, did technology develop in such a way that those who owned the goods would have had technology in their hands, but rather, technology, I might say, pushed its way into the administration of the goods from the side. Of course, nothing organic came of this, but rather something that ultimately had to be fought fiercely. Everything that is being fought in our time basically stems from these facts.

But this has had the effect – and you must now present this to humanity from the opposite perspective in your lectures – that we have increasingly lost sight of the context of the entire economic process and have focused more and more more and more on partial processes, that is, on the way capital is created and functions, how labor fits into the national economic process, how goods are produced, how they circulate, and so on. But the view of what belongs together has not been developed at all. Because, you see, if you look at the interrelated process, the process of social life, as a whole, you cannot help but place the human being at the center, relating everything to the human being.

But only a correct spiritual science can give us the right attitude, because it puts the human being at the center of everything. In the “Key Points of the Social Question”, I therefore did not have to ask: From which production conditions did modern social life arise? That is the question Marx and similar thinkers ask, and that is also the question Rodbertus asks. Instead, I had to ask: How did the modern proletarian come into being? How did the impulses in the modern proletariat arise? That is the subject of the first chapter of the Kernpunkte: how did this important fact, that the proletarian regards all intellectual, moral, scientific, religious, and artistic life as an ideology, how did that come to be in the proletariat? Man is placed in the center here. And so you will find it in the following chapters.

But only by placing the human being at the center can the concepts of goods, capital, and labor attain their true meaning, just as scientific concepts also attain their true meaning when the human being is placed at the center of the entire cosmic evolution. Your lectures must be imbued with this idea, so that you always have the human being at the center of your thoughts and feelings and also evoke in your listeners the feeling that it is the human being that matters and not capital and commodities.

I would like to talk about this nuance of your lecture: in a certain way, you must be very familiar with the terms that you find in the usual handbooks and manuals of economics. You should know them. But it is not that difficult to know them. You are just too impressed by too much of what you are brought up with. Just take a look at the small collections that have appeared in recent years, such as “Natur und Geisteswelt” or the Göschen collection and other collections, and you will see that you can simply get hold of the tables of contents. If you want to get to know, say, political economy and are not completely up in the clouds upstairs, but have an ability to grasp concepts as they have developed, then you really don't need to distinguish much between one collection and another. You can choose either. If you want to learn economics, take the little books from the Göschen collection – but it is not necessary that it should be these particular books, you can just as easily take another collection, it makes no difference at all. They do not differ much internally. Everything is uniformed. Not only have the soldiers been drawn into the uniform, but basically all the scientific books have also been uniformed. The only ones that have internal life, albeit precarious internal life, are those collections that come from publishers such as the Herdersche Bookstore in Freiburg im Breisgau. There is still something of the old, corrupting intellectual life of today in them, namely, of original Catholicism; there are concepts in them that at least differ from the others and that have a certain inner momentum, albeit momentum in a direction that we do not want to go. In the end, it is the same phenomenon as when you take a Goethe biography that originated within the new spiritual life. It does not matter so much whether you pick up one or the other, whether Heinemann or Bielschowsky or Meyer. People tell different stories, of course: Heinemann like a schoolmaster, Bielschowsky like a bad journalist, and Meyer like a collector of notes. Gundolf, I believe, is the name of one who, on the other hand, tells how, let's say, a somewhat flirtatious cultural Gigerl; but you won't learn anything new from it that isn't in the other biographies. Not even Emil Ludwig, I believe, will tell you anything seriously new, although he differs considerably from the others in that the others tell like philistines who grew up in rooms, and he tells like a street urchin. But that doesn't make up for the actual lack of substance either. In contrast, take a book as inwardly solid as that by the Jesuit priest Baumgartner about Goethe, who indeed grumbles about Goethe, but in whose book there is spirit, spirit of course, which we wouldn't wish any impact!

And so we can say: You do indeed have to familiarize yourself with what is being produced in today's world. You need to know how people think about work, about capital, and so on. But you have to be aware that you have to reverse the whole thing everywhere and put people at the center of your considerations.

You may say: This is rather daunting. We are soon to go out and give speeches and do everything that is said here! But it is not like that! It depends on our attitude and not on our sitting down and thinking long and hard about how we put people at the center. Now we must immediately do what is indicated here. And so it is important that you go out with the attitude that is characterized here and try to achieve what you can according to the state of your development so far. But I must still present things as they are, for my sake, let us say, ideally. And you can deduce from this what you can actually apply.

Now, if you gear everything to the human being, if you proceed anthroposophically in this sense, if you also occasionally incorporate what comes to you straight from anthroposophy, without because you don't need to insert the structure of the human being into a treatise on economic life physical body, etheric body, astral body, I, because then modern man cannot follow it at all. One must try to put things in the language of modern man. If, therefore, anthroposophical life is not only in the background of your own life, but also in the way you present and in your references, which is only found in anthroposophy, then you will be able to evoke a certain impression, but you will also be in a position to do so, not from one-sidedness, because you will not just take the examples from anthroposophy, but you will also take the insights into social life that you have gained from them. ophy the examples, that is, the ones you use to illustrate the actual insights of social life, you will be able to create a certain impression, but you will also be in a position to work from the one-sidedness of the concepts.

I will give you an example of how work is done from the one-sidedness of concepts in current social thinking. I have already indicated how, for example, the Marxists speak about labor and the commodity. They say: In the product that appears on the market, we have that into which labor has, as it were, congealed; when we pay for the product that has come onto the market, we pay for “coagulated labor.” Attention is also drawn to the time that is invested in it; but that is not what matters. The worker works. This is how the product comes about, and this is how the product is “clotted labor”. The raw product that nature provides has no intrinsic value in human intercourse. Labor “runs into” it, and basically it is a matter of determining how much a commodity object is worth in that a certain amount of labor has “run into” it. This quantity of labor that has been “incorporated” is imagined to mean the wear and tear of human muscle power, which in turn must be replaced. This is achieved indirectly through wages, so that people must be paid in such a way that the wages replace what they have lost through labor, what has been “incorporated” into the product. This is an extremely plausible idea if you only look at the worker and his relationship to the product from one perspective, especially in the area where real physical labor is involved. So you could say, if you look at this area one-sidedly: a product that appears on the market is worth as much as the labor that has gone into it. Of course, this is something that is indisputable from a certain point of view, which can be proven strictly logically, from a certain point of view.

But look, take a different point of view. Take a worker who, let's say, has been working for the production of certain products. Through some economic relationship, one side is inclined to give him more for the work he has done than he used to get, because, due to economic cycles and so on, one side can give him more. He will be inclined to give his labor to the one who now gives him more. So in the following moment he gets more goods for his labor than he used to get. But as a result, the goods now acquire a different value for him, a significantly different value. He ceases to consider the only point of view of labor flowing into the commodity. The opposite point of view becomes decisive for him. He begins to evaluate the goods in such a way that he says: A good is all the more valuable to me the more labor I save, the less labor flows into the good, the less I need to work. And if you consider that you can also acquire a good in other ways than through work: you can rob it, you can find it, you can also acquire it in a way that the terms “rob” and “find” are then only figurative, but in terms of economics mean something similar, then this way of looking at things is the most common one! For, having such a commodity, what does it mean for one? It means that one can give it away, and the other performs work for one. One has not worked for it, but one can give it away. The other, in our economic context, performs work for one; one can have so and so many people work for one. There you have the saving of labor expressed in the value of the commodity in the most eminent sense. And in the final analysis it goes so far that certain goods are produced entirely from this point of view, to save labor, to avoid doing it. If I paint a picture and sell it, the economic value lies in the fact that I no longer need to make my own boots, sweep my own room or do many other things, but that I save all this work. In this case, the value measure goes straight to what labor is saved. There you have to measure the value according to the labor saved.

And so I can say: there are two points of view from which one can define the relationship between labor and goods, or at least the value of them. One can say that a commodity is worth as much as labor has gone into it. But one can also say that a good is worth as much as one saves labor with it, as one does not need to put labor into anything. And the former definition, that of congealed labor, will be all the more valid the more we are dealing with purely physical goods or goods produced by physical labor. But the other definition will be all the more valid the more we are dealing with goods to which thinking, speculation, or other more valuable intellectual powers are applied. Both apply to the whole of life, one as much as the other.

But the point is not to be deceived by the fact that one definition is correct for certain cases, because then one can argue with the other. In life, there are two opposing views for everything. Therefore, one should not approach life from the conceptual point of view. Because no matter how correct a concept is, if one aims at life with it, one will only ever find part of life. But if one starts from life, then one finds that one can always characterize things in opposite ways, just as one can photograph a person from the front and back, from the right and left. Proper contemplation of knowledge is no different from artistic representation. And we must replace the theorizing views that have been brought to people in recent times with a view of life.

But when people have views, they act accordingly. And for three, four, five centuries, people have adopted views that start from the concept, and they have organized social life accordingly. People make social life! And so today we not only have one-sided ideas in human terms, but we also have one-sided institutions in life itself, which then do not correspond. For example, in the proletariat we have a mode of labor in which the relation between labor and commodity is such that the commodity represents congealed labor; but when we look at the capitalist side, we have the essence of the value of a commodity in that this value is determined by the labor power that is saved.

Thus, in the real process, we have something that cannot be compared. The capitalist acts differently than the proletarian. The proletarian not only thinks, but acts in such a way that values arise out of his actions according to the labor incorporated into the commodity; the capitalist acts in such a way that values arise according to the principle of labor saving. So one must waste labor to create commodities, the other economizes on labor. And these two processes clash. And the social evils of the present time arise from this antagonism. And there is no other remedy than to really look at the real processes, to know life as such, to actually admit to oneself: It is necessary in the social process that there are people in it - you see, that's where you come the human being – that there are people in it who work in such a way that their work runs into the product, and people who work in such a way – the work of others cannot be done at all without following this principle – that work can be spared. Because you can't manage without following this principle: to spare labor.

It follows that it is not at all acceptable to introduce the regulation of labor into the economic process, but that the regulation of labor must take place in the social sphere, which is the sphere of state and legal life.

If you follow such trains of thought, you will see what is at stake. It is important, because the world today is full of unclear, nebulous concepts, especially in the practical sphere, to correct these concepts so that people can bring what is right into the institutions again. If we lack the courage to proclaim: You must not continue to think as you have thought up to now, for you are ruining the outer world with your thinking; you must place the human being at the center and not goods or capital and so on; — if we lack the courage to proclaim this in the face of the errors of the present, then we will not make a single step forward. This must be done precisely where people otherwise speak entirely from the old ideas, especially in economics.

From the nature of the arguments that I give, you can see how you have to take into account the cases of life everywhere. They are not taken into account in the usual economic literature, so that you can easily be recommended one or the other book of it. It does no harm whether you get the Göschensche book on economics or the one from “Natur und Geisteswelt”. For you will find in them all what you need and the opportunity to educate yourself in the way one must not think. And everywhere you need to counter this with a way of looking at things that penetrates and proceeds from the human being. But one can only educate oneself and educate people to this through something like anthroposophical spiritual science. Therefore, it should not be misunderstood that a recovery of the outer social life is only possible if a recovery of one of the threefold social organism, the spiritual link, occurs in education and teaching and so on, in order to then be able to visualize how a productive spiritual life can come about, that is, one that completely fulfills the human being.

In this regard, it is so difficult to be understood, but at least those who are sitting here now should understand such things quite well. You see, again and again, from a wide variety of sources, we are told that schools should be set up along the lines of the Waldorf School. Some people say to us, “We can set up such schools as soon as we have the money.” I always ask them, “Yes, how do you want to do that afterwards?” They answer: We want to ask you which teachers we should take. I tell them: I will only be partially considered in the choice of teachers, because there are legal requirements that only those teachers may be used who have passed the state examinations and been certified. So it does not come out at all, what should come out, if Waldorf schools are to be established. One would have to start from the assumption that one has a completely free choice of teachers, which does not exclude the possibility that a state-approved teacher may be needed. But there should not be the necessity that only such teachers may be used, because otherwise we do not stand in the threefold order.

What is important is not to found schools within the present system in which teaching surrogates are created simply because one believes that one can follow the course I have given. What is important is to pursue the principle in this area: freedom in spiritual life. Then such a school would mark the beginning of the threefold social order. So do not create false ideas in people's minds by teaching them to believe that they can remain obediently within the old structures and still found Waldorf schools. Instead, create the idea that there is truly free spiritual life in the school in Stuttgart. For there is no program and no curriculum there, but there is the teacher with his real ability, not with the decree of how much he should know. You are dealing with the real, real teacher. It is still better to envisage a poor real teacher than to envisage one who is simply part of the decree and who is not real. And when you teach, you are dealing with the students and with the things that fill the six walls of the classroom, not with what is called teaching material, teaching method and so on in the regulations. And that is what you have to point out: that you should deal with realities.

If it comes down to programmatic institutions, then, as far as I'm concerned, twelve people can sit down together – it could also be more or less. I give you my assurance: if these twelve people are only a little disciplined among themselves, they will think terribly cleverly, will be able to draw up reform plans; what they think will be terribly clever, terribly reasonable. One will be able to say: this must happen, that so and so on. In regard to such things one could even claim that there are numerous people who could very well say how some field of science should ideally be treated or how a journal should ideally be organized. But that is not the point. The point is that one works out of reality.

What use are school regulations, no matter how well formulated, when teachers are provided with material that is far removed from their abilities? Such regulations only serve to delude people, whereas the truth is served by using the material that is available. One must reckon with realities and beware of reckoning in any way with paragraphs and programs when it comes to creating anything.

This is so difficult to understand in our time, and that is why it is necessary for humanity to be made keenly aware of this point. For by working with programs in the broadest sphere of life in recent times, one has thoroughly corrupted life.

If you take, for example, the development of Social Democracy from the Eisenach Program to the Gotha Program, you see a flattening out. It is at its worst in the Erfurt Program. It says how everything should be organized, for example, the socialization of the means of production. But it was created with the exclusion of any view of life. And then someone came along who more or less took as his starting point the principle: What do I care about life? – I am only concerned with the Marxist program! Let life perish if only the Marxist program is fulfilled! For my sake thousands and thousands of people can be hanged in a day if only the Marxist program is fulfilled! This man is Lenin. He would be willing to have thousands of people hanged every day if only the Marxist program were fulfilled.

Of course, these are all radical statements, but they still characterize the situation correctly. And what does the man come to? You see, this man's unrealistic view of life stems from something that basically only brilliant people say. Of course, Lenin is a brilliant man again, albeit stubbornly brilliant, bullishly brilliant, but brilliant nonetheless. In his writing 'State and Revolution' you can find something like this: Yes, the fulfillment of what is to come does not follow from my Marxist program. But my Marxist program will ruin everything that is there now. But then a new humanity will be bred. It will not have a Marxist program, but will live according to the program: Each according to his abilities and needs. But first a new humanity must be bred!

So our life today has become so divorced from reality that a man, with the help of his accomplices, can organize an entire great empire not according to life but according to programs. He admits, however, that this organization is basically hopeless, because healthy conditions will only arise when the people who are there now are no longer there, but when other people have taken their place. I would like to say: it is obvious what the particular world of ideas and feelings of the present has come to. Such things should not be underestimated, but must be faced squarely.