The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In my first lecture, which I gave here in Amsterdam on the 19th of this month, I tried to explain how spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy fits into present-day civilization. This anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which today already has an artistically executed outer place of care in the Free University for Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel in Switzerland, wants to add supersensible knowledge through exact spiritual scientific methods to the tremendous, great results of natural scientific knowledge, which it fully recognizes. And in my last lecture here on February 19, I took the liberty of pointing out that in the present time, numerous souls long for knowledge that is just as securely based as the knowledge that is considered scientific today, but precisely knowledge that extends to the realms of the world with which the eternal in the human soul is connected.

I pointed out that these supersensible insights can only be attained by developing certain abilities that are present in the human soul. These abilities are, however, still unknown to broad sections of our educated society today. Yet it is precisely this ignorance of these abilities that is the cause of the catastrophic developments of our time, which are apparent to everyone.

If we want to approach what is meant here by spiritual science, we must first start from what I called 'intellectual modesty' in my lecture on February 19. This intellectual modesty will be regarded as a paradox in our own time, which is particularly proud of its intellectuality. But anyone who wants to penetrate into the supersensible worlds — to which the human soul with its essential being does, after all, belong — needs this starting point of intellectual modesty. And I would like to repeat the parable, which I already used the other day to point out this intellectual modesty, because I have to assume that, due to the change of venue, a large number of the audience gathered here today were not present at my first lecture.

If we have a five-year-old child in front of us and we give him a volume of Shakespeare, he will play with it, perhaps tear it up, but in any case not do what is appropriate for the volume of Shakespeare. But if the child has lived for another ten or fifteen years, then those abilities that were previously latent in the child's soul will have been developed through education and instruction; he will now read the volume of Shakespeare. The child has ascended to a higher level of human existence, has become a different being after fifteen to twenty years.

If you really want to penetrate into the supersensible world, you have to be able to say to yourself: Perhaps as an adult you are in the same position as the five-year-old child in relation to the volume of Shakespeare, with regard to nature with its secrets and its deeper laws, and perhaps there are forces within the soul that first have to be brought out. If we seriously approach these slumbering powers and abilities in our soul with this intellectual modesty as adults, we will develop higher insights than the ordinary ones of everyday life and ordinary science.

First of all, the faculty in the human soul must be developed, which in ordinary life we know as the ability to remember. Through this ability to remember, we bring coherence into our lives. Through this ability to remember, our soul conjures up images of what we have experienced up to a very early age in childhood. This ability to remember makes permanent what would otherwise flash by as a mere idea. If we could only surrender ourselves to the outside world, if we would only surrender ourselves to ideas of the events and experiences that flash by, our whole soul life would be different. If one now further develops what is present in memory as lasting images, then one attains a quite different capacity for knowledge. And one can develop this through methods that I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, in my “Occult Science” and in other of my writings. One can develop this through certain processes of meditation and concentration, through a devoted resting on certain easily comprehensible ideas, which must not be reminiscences, must not be based on any kind of auto-suggestion; therefore they must be easily comprehensible.

One must rest with the whole structure of one's soul on such ideas. And these studies, which the true spiritual researcher must make regarding the knowledge of the supersensible worlds, are no easier than the studies one does in the clinic, in the physics or chemistry laboratory, or in the observatory, and they by no means take less time. This meditation, this concentrating with the whole power of the soul on certain ideas, which one does continually and on which one rests, must be continued for years. The powers of knowledge that lie dormant deep within the soul, of which the human being has no other idea, must be brought up. When they are brought up, one is able to perceive, through these higher powers of knowledge, that which surrounds us just as the physical-sensory world surrounds us. At first one perceives one's own experiences, but not as the vague stream of consciousness that goes back to just before birth, where the memory fragments emerge. Rather, one perceives the whole panorama of what one has gone through in this life since birth, like a unified, all-at-once present life panorama. And when one gets to know this, one experiences what it means to live in one's soul outside of the body. Materialism usually claims – and at first glance it seems justified – that all ordinary thinking, all ordinary remembering, all ordinary feeling and willing is bound to the physical body. But in ordinary life, this feeling, this willing, this thinking is interrupted. Every day, through sleep, that which is the ordinary soul life bound to the body is interrupted. People do not feel deeply enough the significance of the riddle associated with falling asleep, sleeping and waking up again. After all, the human being must be present in sleep, otherwise he would have to arise anew each time he woke up. But one only learns to recognize the form in which the human being is present in sleep by doing the exercises, some of which I have mentioned here.

When you are actually able to imagine mentally in such a way that you do not use your external eyes, do not use other senses, and do not use the ordinary mind that is connected to the brain, but only the purely spiritual-soul - and you achieve this when you develop the ability to remember in the way I have described it - then one comes to know that from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up, the human being does indeed exist as a spiritual-soul entity outside of his body and that only the desire to return to his body then asserts itself. And this desire, which obscures consciousness.

Anyone who develops their powers of recollection as I have described will be able to behave exactly like the sleeping person – that is, not to perceive with the senses, not to combine the sensory perceptions with the mind – only to be fully conscious. He knows the spiritual soul independently of the body. This also enables him to recognize this spiritual soul before birth or conception and after death in its true essence and in connection with the rest of the supersensible world.

And if, in addition, he further develops a second soul power that is also present in ordinary life, namely the power of love, if he makes the power of love a power of knowledge, then the human being gets to know the images, which he otherwise experiences as a supersensible panorama, in their direct reality as well.

Today I would like to draw attention to something that is, in the most eminent sense, a link in a life practice that must interest all people. I would like to draw attention to the way in which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as I am referring to here, can enrich the art of education and teaching.

What do you actually gain from such a spiritual science, the methods of which I have now very briefly outlined? Above all, one acquires a real knowledge of the human being. Without being able to see into the supersensible, it is indeed impossible to have knowledge of the human being. After all, the human being is not only the outer physical organization, about which the outer scientific world view gives us such great, powerful, and insufficiently appreciated insights. Man is also soul and spirit. Man harbors within himself the eternal core of his being, which passes through births and deaths, which has a consciousness after death, because then he has no desire for the body, which lies in bed during sleep and after which he has desire during sleep, which his consciousness in ordinary sleep extinguishes.

When this physical body is discarded at death, the human being attains an all the more clear consciousness because it is not extinguished by any desire for a body. Through all this and much more, which I do not wish to describe now but which you can read about in my writings, the human being attains true knowledge of the human being. And only out of real knowledge of the human being can true teaching and true educational art arise.

We have tried to address this area of practical life in the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I run and whose pedagogy and didactics flow entirely from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Firstly, the attitude of the teaching staff is such that something is brought into the classroom with every lesson, with every new morning, which turns teaching and educating into a kind of spiritual service. Does it not mean something special when we know through anthroposophical spiritual science that this human being, who reveals himself to us so wonderfully in the growing child, has descended from the spiritual worlds through conception or birth? If this is a true realization, if it is conveyed through anthroposophical spiritual science, then we face the developing human being, the child, in such a way that we have a task entrusted to us from the spiritual worlds. Then we see how the eternal, which has descended from spiritual worlds, works its way out of the initially indeterminate physiognomic features and the indeterminate movements of the child from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, with ever greater certainty. We see the spiritual soul at work on the physical development of the human being.

This is not the place for a careless criticism of what pedagogical geniuses have produced over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. Certainly, some beautiful principles have been expressed with regard to pedagogy. For example, it is rightly emphasized that pedagogy has such principles as “one should not graft anything from the outside into children; one should draw everything one wants to introduce to children from their own abilities and capacities”. Quite right, an excellent principle – but abstract and theoretical. And so, by far the greatest part of our life practice confronts us in abstractions, in theoretical programs. For what is needed to carry out something like this, to extract from individuality what the child should develop within itself, requires real knowledge of the human being. Knowledge of the human being that goes into all the depths of the human being. But the science that has existed in modern civilization so far, despite its great triumphs, cannot have such knowledge of the human being.

I would now like to show you very specific things that will help you to see how this spiritual science, as it is meant here, can achieve real knowledge of the human being. There is a cheap saying that is thoughtlessly repeated over and over again: “Nature does not make leaps!” In fact, nature is constantly making leaps, and this expression is only thoughtless, as I said. Think of a plant: it develops green leaves, then it makes the leap to the calyx, then the leap to the colored petals, the stamens, and so on. And so it is with all life. It is just a phrase to say that nature does not make leaps. And so it is especially in human life. We have in human life, when we can observe it uninhibitedly through the impulses that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science provides, clearly distinct life epochs. The first life epoch goes from birth to the change of teeth, around the age of seven. It ends, then, with the year in which we start sending children to primary school. If one has the necessary insight and impartiality of observation, if one gets into the habit of observing life only at a higher level in the same way that one would otherwise observe at the lowest level in the natural sciences, one can sharply characterize the major differences between the first and second phases of human life. The first phase of life ends with the change of teeth, the second with sexual maturity. Both phases of life are quite distinct from one another. The first phase shows us the child as an imitative being. Even in play, the child is an imitative being. Of course, some believe that a certain imaginative being is formed during play. This is also the case, but if you study play in its deepest essence, you will perceive the moments of imitation everywhere, especially in children's play. And in connection with this play, I would like to remark right away how tremendously important knowledge of the human being, knowledge of the human being in relation to his totality, is for an education and pedagogical art that is full of life and truly engages with the world.

You see, every child plays differently. Anyone with an unbiased sense of observation can tell exactly how one child plays and how another child plays. Even if the difference is not a big one – you have to be a psychologist to be able to observe something like this if you want to become an educator at all. But if you can do that, then you have to relate the different ways of playing to a completely different epoch of a person's life. In terms of observing human beings, the natural sciences are such that they only rank what is nearest to what is nearest. But you won't get very far with that. What can be observed in children's play does not remain in the next phase of life. The child is turned to other things, that is, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. Even if it continues to play, the actual play age is no longer as characteristic as it used to be. What the play passions are withdraws into the depths of the soul and only comes to light again at a much later age: in the second half of the twenties, when the human being is supposed to enter into practical life. Some adapt themselves with great skill to the tasks of fate, while others become dreamers far removed from the world. The way in which a person can adapt to practical life in these years can be fully explained if one knows how the person played at the age of four, five, six, or seven.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for the pedagogue and educator to guide the child's play; to observe what the child wants to express and to guide what should not be expressed, because it would make the child awkward in later life. For when we guide play in the right way at the earliest age, we give the child something for life practice, as it develops in the twenties. The whole life of a human being is interrelated, and what we plant in the child's soul in youth only comes to light much later in life in the most diverse metamorphoses. Only a total knowledge of the human being, as provided by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can truly see through the connections that lie as far apart as the twenties and childhood, as well as the finding of one's way into practical life and the play instincts; only such spiritual science can see so deeply into life. This will give you an idea of the scope of human knowledge that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to work with in order to develop a pedagogical art.

I said that the child is an imitative being until about the age of seven. And I do not say the number seven out of some mystical inclination, but because the change of teeth is actually an important event in the child's overall development. The child learns the particular nature of his movements, and also his speech, through imitation; he even develops the form of his thoughts in this way. Because the connection between the child's environment and the child itself depends not only on external factors but also on imponderables, parents or educators who live in the child's environment must be clear about how the child adapts to what the adults around him do, not only externally – not only what they speak – but also what they feel, what they sense, what they think. It is usually not believed in our materialistic age that there is also a difference in terms of the child's education, whether we indulge in noble or ignoble thoughts in the presence of the child, because we see the connections in life only in terms of external material entities, and not in terms of how things are connected internally by imponderables. This can be seen if one really observes life according to its internal structures.

I would like to give an example of what is actually important in such matters: a father once came to me and complained bitterly – and I could give many similar examples – that his five-year-old boy had stolen something. He was very unhappy about it. I said: Let's see if the five-year-old boy really has stolen. – I had the case described to me. What had actually happened? The boy had taken some money out of the drawer where his mother kept her pennies, which she always needed for her daily needs. He had not even done it out of selfishness, but had distributed the money among other children. I said to the father: The child did not steal, but what the mother always does, the child also considers right to do, because at the age of five she is still very much an imitative being. We must be aware of this: we do not influence children through admonitions, through commandments, but only through what we do in their environment.

And we can only arrive at a sound judgment of the child's entire soul configuration if we know that this soul configuration of the child will change significantly with the change of teeth. The mere imitation is replaced by the mental behavior towards the environment as a self-evident authority. And we are dealing with this desire of the child for the self-evident authority of the teacher, the educator or whoever else is around the child throughout the entire school period. One only has to know what it means for the whole of life if, in this childhood from the seventh to the fifteenth year, one has looked up with a real, great inner awe to those who, as adults, were around with educational authority were around, that what we thought was true and false emerged from the way these educators saw true and false; from what was the standard of true and false for the educators. We enter into the human, not into some abstraction, when we want to distinguish true and false, good and evil in this childhood age.

You will not believe that I advocate this necessity – that all teaching and education between the ages of seven and fifteen should also be based on unquestioning authority – out of some kind of preference for conservative or reactionary ideas when I tell you that as early as 1892 I wrote a small pamphlet in which I firmly presented the individual freedom of the human being as a basic social requirement. But no one can become a truly free human being, no one can find the right social relationship with their fellow human beings in freedom if they have not recognized an authority beside them between the ages of seven and fifteen, and from this authority learned to shape the standard for right and wrong, good and evil, in order to only later arrive at their own standard of intellectual or other purely internal, autonomous judgment.

And then the soul of the child at this age is still so constituted that it is still completely merged with its surroundings. Only when we come to the end of this phase of life, which falls in the twelfth or thirteenth year, do we see that the child is clearly different from its surroundings, that it knows that the I is within and nature is without. Of course, self-awareness is present in the very earliest childhood, but it is more of a feeling. If you want to educate properly, you need to know that an extraordinarily important point in a child's development lies between the ages of nine and ten and a half. It is the point where the child becomes so absorbed inwardly that it learns to distinguish itself from nature and the rest of the external world. Before this point, which is a strong turning point in human life, the child basically sees his surroundings in images, because they are still connected to his own inner life, in images that are often symbolic. He thinks about his surroundings in a symbolic way. Later, a different era begins. The child differentiates between nature and the external environment. It is of immense importance that the educator is able to assess this point in life, which occurs a little later for one child and a little earlier for another, in the right way. For how the teacher and educator behaves in the right way between the ninth and tenth year – fatherly, friendly, lovingly guiding the child over this Rubicon – that means an incursion into human life that is lasting for the whole of the following existence until physical death. Whether a person has a zest for life in the decisive moments or carries inner soul barrenness through life depends in many respects - though not in every respect - on how the teacher and educator has behaved towards the child between the ages of nine and ten and a half. Sometimes it is a matter of simply finding the right word at the right moment when a boy or girl meets you in the corridor and asks a question, or of making the right expression when you answer. The art of education is not something that can be learned or taught in the abstract – any more than painting or sculpting or any other art can. Rather, it is something that is based on an infinite number of details that arise from the rhythm of the soul. This sense of rhythm is derived from anthroposophical spiritual science.

It is also important to distinguish between what we need to teach children before and after this important point in their lives between nine and a half and ten and a half years of age. Above all, we must bear in mind that in our present, advanced civilization, we have something that has become external, abstract and symbolic. Go back to ancient civilizations, take any pictographic writing, and what was grasped by the senses was fixed. This was made into an image with which the human being was connected, with which the human being lived through feeling and emotion. Today, however, all this has become a symbol. We must not introduce reading and writing to the child as something alien, because it wants to grow together with its environment before the age of nine; we must not teach it from that abstract level, as is the case today. In Waldorf schools, we begin teaching in an artistic way by letting the child draw, even paint, the forms that arise out of the fullness of humanity. We let the child do this at first, and then, when we guide the child further in this drawing-painting way, we develop the letter forms, the writing, from this drawing. We proceed from the artistic, and from the artistic we first bring out writing and then reading. In this way we really correspond to what lies within the child.

It is not a matter of saying in some abstract way in education that one should only bring out what is in the child. One must know how to do it practically, how to really meet human nature. Anthroposophical spiritual science is never theory, but always real practice. That is what enables it to develop such an art of education.

What I have said about authority can also make us aware of something else that may perhaps seem paradoxical to you. In today's materialistic age, an enormous amount of emphasis is placed on so-called illustrative instruction. To anyone who understands the true nature of the child, it is a terrible thing to see the abstract calculating machines and all the things that children are often subjected to today. Today, children are expected to understand everything immediately. The aim is to organize teaching in such a way that nothing goes beyond the usual eight- or nine-year-old understanding. It seems extraordinarily scientific. But believe me, ladies and gentlemen, even a person with thorough anthroposophical knowledge can grasp the obviousness of such a principle just as well as those who defend such principles today as something that should be taken for granted. But what is self-evident is that, above all, between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child must have its memory and sense of authority developed in a healthy way, as I have just described.

Those who only want vividness and vividness that is adapted to the child's understanding do not know the following: they do not know what it means for the whole of life if, let us say in the eighth or ninth year or in the tenth to fifteenth year, one has taken something on the authority of the teacher; because the revered authoritative personality tells one, one considers it to be true. It is still beyond the horizon, but it is absorbed into the soul. Perhaps it is only in the thirty-fifth or fortieth year that it is taken out again. What one has already had in one's memory is now understood through the power that has matured. This awareness of having matured, this awareness of being able to bring something up, refreshes and invigorates the soul's strength in a way that is not appreciated in ordinary life, whereas it deserts the soul if one wants to tailor everything to the understanding of the child in the eighth, ninth, twelfth year. This is something that must be said today, because people, out of their materialistic cleverness, are no longer able to see what is natural, right and essential in such matters.

And from the foundations of human nature, from what seeks to develop from week to week, from year to year, the curriculum of such a school is derived, as it is the Waldorf School. This curriculum arises entirely from the knowledge of the essence of man. It is not an abstract curriculum, but something that underlies the pedagogy of this school, just as painting can do for the painter, sculpting for the sculptor.

Here, I have described to you how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science enters into practical life from the fields of education and teaching. But just think about what kind of spiritual life would be needed if such educational and teaching practices were to really take hold! We are accustomed to seeing this spiritual life only as an appendix to the state, perhaps as an appendix to economic life. We are accustomed today to having the most important part of intellectual life, namely the teaching and education system, prescribed by the state. What anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must now assert for modern civilization, based on a truly penetrating knowledge of teaching and educational methods that are based on true human knowledge, is that intellectual life, teaching and education must be placed in its own free administration. I would like to be quite specific: teachers and educators should not only teach and educate, but they should also have the entire administration of teaching and education in their hands, freely and independently of the state and economic life. From the lowest elementary school up to the highest teaching institutions, every teacher and educator should be so busy teaching that there is still enough time left for them to also be administrators of the teaching and education system. And only those who are still actively involved in teaching and education, the real teachers and educators in any field, not those who have become civil servants and are no longer involved in education, should also be the administrators of the education system. Nothing should be spoken into the teaching and education system except what also speaks into knowledge and art and religious world view. People do not want to recognize that what was necessary for one period of historical development, and perhaps extraordinarily good, does not apply to every period of history. When the modern era dawned, with its centralized state, it was a good and self-evident thing that the old confessional administrations should be relieved of the schools. At that time, it was a blessing for the development of humanity. But now we have arrived at a point in human development where this cannot continue; where what the state could do for the school system has been exhausted and where the free spiritual life, the spiritual life that draws from real spiritual sources, wants the independent administration of the school system.

Here the school question, the question of education, touches directly on the great social question, on everything that is the very essence of the social question. You see, regarding the social question, many people think that the essence of it lies in external institutions, that one only has to look at these external institutions to recognize the social question, that one has to work on these external institutions to do something for the social question. Those who have really come to know life cannot think this way. I have come to know proletarian thinking. I had the opportunity to do so not only in my own youth, but also because I worked for many years as a teacher of various subjects at a workers' education school and saw what actually lives in the broadest strata of the proletariat, which basically only emerged as a class, as a social stratum, through modern technology.

There it is not the external institutions, not even the bread-and-butter questions, from which the actual social question arises; there it is the state of mind, which is connected with the fact that the kind of intellectual life that has developed among the leading classes over the last three to four centuries has passed over to the broad masses of the proletariat like a kind of religion. I have seen this world view arise from materialistic principles in serious people, in deeply-rooted souls who were part of the bourgeoisie, who belonged to the leading classes, and I have learned the following: They said to themselves: Take the external scientific world view seriously; look at how it shows how the Earth developed from some kind of nebulous state through purely natural necessities to its present stage and how the various living beings have gradually developed along with it up to the point of humans. And a time will come again when either glaciation or heat death will occur to the earth – one may imagine it either way – but then the great churchyard will be there. What will have become of that which man must surely see as the noblest in human nature, which arises within him as moral ideals, as religious impulses, as art, as science? I have known people who seriously asked themselves this question, while the majority of modern people thoughtlessly juxtapose these two worlds, the world of external natural necessity and the world of what is actually humanly valuable, of moral ideals, of religious convictions, of knowledge, of artistic creation. Then serious souls say to themselves: Yes, man becomes aware of that which wells up from the soul; but that is an illusion, it is like smoke rising from the material basis. But one day the great churchyard will be there, and what we call the great ideals will have disappeared and faded away. - I have come to know the tragedy and pessimism that deeply inclined people have come to. But I also witnessed how this world view then penetrated into the proletarian soul and how a word was encountered that has a tremendous impact but denotes many things. If one understands how it lives in the proletarian soul, then one knows a lot about the foundations of contemporary civilization and its social issues. The word “ideology” lives in the souls of proletarians. What these proletarian souls know as intellectual life, as custom, law, science, art and religion, they call a superstructure above the production processes, which are historically the only real thing for them. This is the legacy of the world view that I have just described as tragic and that the proletarian souls, the millions of souls, have desolate.

One may appear an idealist today if one seeks the actual proletarian question in what the terrible word ideology expresses. But these idealists will be right. And those who believe that they have a monopoly on human wisdom and the routine of life will see history marching over them. This 'ideology' means that the souls of these masses remain desolate, have no connection with the living spirit – just as the leading classes do not either, who prevent this science from reaching the proletarians.

And here I may say something that should make clear to you the essential task and mission of Dornach, of the Goetheanum in Dornach, in the present age of civilization. Many people today realize that enlightenment and science must be brought to the broad masses. People's libraries and people's colleges are being founded, and all kinds of other things, in order to bring the science that is in our universities and our secondary schools to the people. Dornach cannot go along with this. Dornach wants to do what was the purpose of that autumn course that we held in the fall of 1920 and which we will repeat at Easter on a smaller scale, in keeping with our modest circumstances. The aim was to fertilize the individual sciences from the perspective of spiritual science. Thirty lecturers from all branches of science, including industrialists, merchants and artists, presented at this autumn course to show how all branches of science, art and life can be fertilized by this spiritual science. The aim is to renew science. The aim is to bring the spiritual into the sciences, to bring in a spirit that does not arise from a culture of the head but from the fullness of the human being.

That, then, is the purpose of the Goetheanum in Dornach: that a new spirit be brought into the colleges, only then will it be able to become popular. - One wants to bring the spirit of our college into the people - can one not see in modern civilization what use this spirit has been to those who have it? This spirit must be renewed. It is not that the schools must spread education among the people, but that a spiritual education must first be brought into the schools. That is the point in which Dornach differs from all other efforts along these lines today. For in this field people are thoroughly convinced that they are very free-thinking, but that they have a terrible belief in authority when it comes to conventional science. I say this not out of disdain for modern scientific thinking, but out of decades of engagement with all branches of this thinking. We need to work towards the liberation of spiritual life and thus the liberation of the school and education system, just as the state was once forced to take on teaching and education and wrest them from the old denominations.

I know what objections can be raised to developing a free spiritual life as the first link in the tripartite social organism. But when people express their fear that people would then not send their children to these free schools, it means looking at the matter wrongly. The question is not whether people voluntarily send their children to school or not, but rather that a free system of teaching and education is a necessity for humanity today and that one must then ensure that children go to school despite this. This should not be seen as an objection to a free spiritual life, but should merely lead to a consideration of how to get the children of negligent or unscrupulous parents into school despite a free spiritual life. This is the first link in the impulse of the threefold social organism, as formulated by the anthroposophical world view, to move towards possible solutions to social issues: a free spiritual life, administered by spiritual workers alone.

One can find logically slighted terms that teach all sorts of things in defense of this necessary freedom of spiritual life, as well as to attack it and condemn it. But that is not the issue. Anthroposophy proceeds everywhere from life practice and life observation. Those who know what a real spiritual science will mean to humanity also know how necessary the liberation of spiritual life is. People speak of ideology because spiritual life consists of abstractions, because they have no concept that an idea, that which lives in the soul, is something other than the image of something, because they no longer know that the old religions have given to man, that living spirit lives in every human being, that man with his eternal belongs to the living spirit and not only in his soul live abstract images. A living spiritual world that fills us inwardly and connects us with the eternal is not an ideology. It is the rise of ideology that has led to the catastrophes of our time. But a school and education system that aims to bring the living spirit into humanity must be a school system that is as free as the one I have described. This free school system appears to me as something that must be understood in the most eminent sense as a necessity of modern humanity - provided that it is sincere about human salvation and human progress.

Therefore, I consider it – I say this without wanting to agitate – as absolutely necessary to eliminate many of the forces of decline in our modern civilization by means of forces of ascent, that something be created on the broadest international basis, such as what I would call a world school association. This world school association would have to include all nations and the broadest circles of people. These people must be aware that a free spiritual life is to be created. It is of no use at all if people think that our Waldorf School in Stuttgart is something practical that one must see for a few hours or for a few weeks. To want to see something that arises out of a whole spiritual life is like cutting out a piece of the Sistine Madonna to get an idea of the whole picture. You cannot learn anything about the spirit of the Waldorf School by sitting in on lessons, but by getting to know anthroposophy, the anthroposophical spiritual science that lives in every teacher, in every lesson, in the children, and that also lives in the school reports. I would like to briefly describe how we at the Waldorf School gradually get to know each child, despite the fact that we also have large classes. We do not give them grades, certificates that say “almost satisfactory”, “hardly sufficient” - that is all nonsense. You cannot grade like that. Rather, we give the children a true description of their character, which holds up a mirror to them for the whole of the following year, and a saying that has been chosen from the depths of our souls. We have also seen the value that these reports have for Waldorf school children. So we have experienced what the anthroposophical spirit has brought to this Waldorf school.

But we do not want as many Winkel schools as possible to be established along the lines of the Waldorf School. Rather, we want the widest possible international recognition that the old idea of basing the school system only on the state must be fought. We must strive to force the state to allow the free spiritual life to create its own free schools. We do not want to establish isolated schools by the grace of the state; we will not lend a hand to this, but what is necessary is an understanding of the kind of alliance of peoples that would lie spiritually in a world school association. This would bring people together across the wide expanse of the earth in a great, a gigantic task.

This is what I want to say first about the first link of the threefold social organism. I can only touch on the other links, because they belong to life in other areas. Over the last four to five centuries, we have developed the unified state in today's civilized world. On the one hand, it has absorbed intellectual life with the school and education system; it has also absorbed economic life, at least to a large extent. And social democracy, of course, strives to use the entire state, the state framework, to basically set up a kind of barracked economy, whereby all economic freedom and individuality is destroyed, as we see in Trotskyism, in Leninism, precisely in what has become there, what is happening there in such a terrible way in Eastern Europe and as far as Asia, causing humanity to convulse. The point is that people learn how certain things are necessary for humanity today.

Economic life has its own conditions, just as intellectual life has its own. Anyone who, like me, has spent thirty years, half of his life, in Austria, which was precisely the experimental country for the work of the socially destructive forces – which is why Austria became the first victim of this world catastrophe – anyone who has lived in Austria with open eyes could see as early as the 1970s how it was rushing towards its end. I can refer to an example of how this country worked its way into decline on a large scale. In the 1970s, they also wanted to democratize parliament. How did they do that? They set up four constituencies: the constituency of the large landowners, the constituency of the chambers of commerce, the constituency of the cities, markets and industrial towns, and the constituency of the rural communities. All economic interests were drawn into parliament. The representatives of mere economic interests in four curiae were to make the decisions for everything concerning the state. They made them, of course, according to economic interests. As a result, neither the legitimate state interests nor the economic interests were given their due.

I could give you hundreds and hundreds of reasons that would show you that just as intellectual life must be separated from actual state life on the one hand, economic life must also be separated on the other. Just as intellectual life must be organized for the completely free human being and the administration of free human beings, economic life must be organized according to the associative principle.

What does that mean, an associative principle? Well, today we already have a striving for the formation of consumer associations. People who consume join together. And we have a movement in which people from the most diverse circles who produce join together. But ultimately we actually only have a surrogate, composed of consumers and producers. Only when production is organized according to need, not the barometer of profit, when the interrelations between consumers and producers are guided by those people who are experts in the various branches of the economy, when we we strive for totality in relation to spiritual life, but never in economic life, where we are in contact with people in other sectors, as soon as we take this seriously, the associative principle will be introduced into economic life. Association will not be organization. Although I have spent some of my life in Germany, the word 'organization' has a terrible connotation for me, and it was in Germany that I first experienced what it means to want to organize everything possible. You achieve terrible things when you always want to organize from a central point. Association is not organization. There the individualities remain in full effect, join together, so that through the union a collective judgment comes about. You can read more about this in my book “The Crux of the Social Question” and in the book “In Ausführung der Dreigliederung” (In the Execution of the Threefold Order), which summarizes a number of articles that I have published in the Stuttgart journal “Die Dreigliederung”, which is published by the Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus.

In it, I showed how these associations can be formed out of real practical economic life; how these associations will lead to fair pricing, to tolerable pricing. Whereas today we only have random pricing, it will be a matter of pricing that really arises from associative cooperation between consumers and producers. For in economic life, the price question is the central question of the whole economic existence. Those who do not realize that prices must be regulated above all by associations and not by statistics or the like, but by the living interaction in associations, do not know what is important. There is no need to be afraid of bureaucracy; it will certainly not be greater than it is today. But the fact that the same people who are involved in practical business life will also be the leaders will simplify the whole process. And everyone will receive enough when they produce something for themselves and their families, for the other things they have to provide for, until they have produced the same product again. Roughly speaking: if I make a pair of boots, I must receive enough for it to make another pair of boots. This is not to be laid down in some utopian way, but will be the final result when the associations are in existence as I have described them in my book, The Core of the Social Question. The essential thing about this impulse of the threefold social organism is that it contains nothing utopian, but is born entirely out of practical life and the demands of the time. Knowledge of the subject and expertise must guide spiritual life; knowledge of the subject and professional ability must guide economic life in associations that combine to form a large world economic association independent of national borders.

With regard to the spiritual and economic life, majority decisions are an absurdity; everything must develop out of expertise and professional competence. Majority decisions, real democracy, is only possible for those matters in which every person is competent. There is a wide range of political and legal matters that then remain between a free spiritual life and an economic life based on the principle of association. These are all those matters in which every mature person faces the other as an equal in parliamentary life, where all the questions are decided that then remain by themselves from economic life and spiritual life.

Strangely enough, the experts have objected that they understand that in the tripartite social organism there must be free spiritual life and associative economic life, but then there is nothing left for state life. — This is very characteristic. Modern state life has absorbed so much of the economic and intellectual life, even in terms of ideas, that it has not developed the most important things, so that experts have no idea what tasks state life can perform.

What I have presented to you today is only a sketch. It is further developed in the books mentioned. But it is basically linked to the most intense historical necessities.

We see the great human ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity radiating from the 18th century into our own. How could we not feel what lies in these three great human impulses! And yet, there were clever people in the course of the 19th century who showed irrefutably that freedom, equality and fraternity cannot coexist in a unified state. Thus, on the one hand, we have the strange phenomenon that our hearts beat faster when we hear about these three great human ideals, when we feel them inwardly, but on the other hand, the clever statesman - and I say this quite without irony - can prove that these three ideals are incompatible in the unified state. What is the reason for this? The reason is that in the eighteenth century people felt that liberty, equality and fraternity were incontrovertible ideals and impulses of humanity. But they were still under the illusion that everything had to be done by the unified state. Today we must mature to the threefold social organism. Only in it will liberty, equality and fraternity be truly realized. In a free spiritual life, which I hope can really be brought to light by a world school association, real freedom for people will prevail. In the state life, which stands between the free spiritual life and economic life, everything will be built on equality; in its administration there will only be those things in which every mature person is competent and can face another mature person as an equal. In economic life, consumer and producer interests will join together in associations, find a balance and ultimately culminate in a pricing structure that respects people.

We will have an opportunity to incorporate the three great ideals of human development if we free ourselves from the suggestion of the unitary state by striving for: freedom in the spiritual life, equality in the state life or political or legal life - the second link in the social organism - and fraternity in the associatively organized economic life, which results from the objectivity of production and consumption.

Freedom in spiritual life, equality in state life, fraternity in economic life: only this gives the three greatest social ideals of humanity – freedom, equality, fraternity – their proper meaning.

Roman Boos: Dear attendees, the question of how judgment is formed in the threefold social organism is to be addressed this evening. Dr. Steiner will give the introductory lecture. I would like to ask you now to take an active part in the discussion, and especially those of you who have something to say about the problems that will be presented today, to speak up then. I now ask Dr. Steiner to begin his lecture.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! I would like to introduce this evening's discussion with a few remarks about how a social judgment, on which a new social order must be built, can come about. I should say at the outset that it will not be easy to speak about this subject in a popular way. One should actually recognize the impossibility of speaking about this subject in a popular way from the facts that we now live in.

You see, our time is basically in many ways quite opposed to man forming a healthy social judgment. It is true that much is said today about man as a social being, about social conditions and social demands in general. But this talk about social demands is not really based on a deep understanding of what a social being actually is. We need not be surprised at this, because it is only in the present time that we are at the beginning of the time in which humanity is to mature to form a social judgment. In a sense, humanity has not needed to form a social judgment until now. Why? Of course, human beings have always lived in some kind of social circumstances, but basically they have not – not until now – organized these social circumstances out of their social consciousness, out of a real understanding. They have, if I may say so, received them in an ordered way through a kind of instinctive activity. Up to the present form of the state, which, in Europe, is basically no more than three or four hundred years old, people have formed connections more out of their instincts, and it has not actually come to grouping people out of judgment, consideration and understanding. Out of this understanding, out of a truly clear judgment, the threefold social organism wants to tackle the social question. In doing so, it is basically doing something that is still quite unfamiliar to people and that is highly uncomfortable for the vast majority of people today.

What has actually happened? The earlier social associations and the present state association have developed from human instincts, and people today simply accept this association, which is still combined with all sorts of national instincts. They grow into this association. Instinctively, they grow into this association and avoid thinking about it – or at least they avoid thinking about it to a certain extent. At most, one thinks about the extent to which one wants to have a say in the affairs of the state, but the framework of the state is accepted. They accept it, even the most radical wing of the socialists; Lenin and Trotsky also accept the state, the state that is put together out of all sorts of things, but instinctively, the state that was ultimately worked on by the old tsars. They accept it and at most wonder how they should shape what they want within this state. The question of whether the state should be left as it is or whether a different structure should be adopted that is based on understanding is not even raised. But you see, this question – how can the instinctive nature of the old social life be transformed into a social life that is born out of the human soul? – is the main question underlying the impulse for the threefold social organism. This question cannot be resolved in any other way than by the emergence of a more thorough knowledge of the human being, more thorough than the knowledge of the human being that has existed in recent centuries and that exists in the present.

One can say that the impulse for the threefold social order arose directly from the question: How should man come to a judgment about how he should live together with other people? It arose from a correct observation of what man must demand in the present. But most people do not seriously want to respond to the demands of the present. They would prefer to take the existing situation and make more or less radical improvements here and there. For example, it is probably easier to talk to an Englishman about anything but the threefold social order, since he usually takes it for granted that the unified state of England is an ideal that must not be challenged. Wherever you touch on the subject, you notice this prejudice. But this is nothing more than the persistence of the old human instincts in relation to social coexistence, and we must get beyond them. We must come to a conscious coexistence. This is highly inconvenient for people today, because they do not really want to come to a judgment out of an inner activity, out of an inner activity. They would basically like, as I said, to have a say in what is already there, but they do not really want to think thoroughly about how to deal with what is there and how to rectify what has been led into the absurd by the last catastrophes. This absolutely new aspect of threefolding is something that people basically do not want to see. They are not willing to make the effort of forming a social judgment.

You see, the question: how does a social judgment come about? - immediately breaks down into three separate questions when approached in the right spiritual-scientific way. And the sources from which the threefold social organism flows are actually based on this, that the question of how to form a social judgment is immediately divided into three separate questions. It is impossible to arrive at a judgment in the same way in the common spiritual life, in the social spiritual life, as in the legal or state life or in the economic life. Recently an essay appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt entitled 'Political Scholasticism'. In it, a very clever gentleman – journalists are usually clever – makes fun of the fact that in contemporary public life, people strive to separate the political from the economic. He would, of course, also make fun of it and call it a scholastic hair-splitting if one wanted to separate public life into the three parts, the spiritual part, the legal or state part and the economic part, because he has a very special reason, a reason that is so very easy for the man of the present time to understand. He says: Yes, in real life the economic, political and intellectual life is nowhere separated; they flow into each other everywhere, so it is scholastic to separate them. Now, my esteemed audience, I think one could also say that one should not perceive the head and the trunk and the limbs of a person separately, because in real life they belong together. Of course, the three limbs of the social organism also belong together, but one cannot get by if one confuses the one with the other – just as little as nature would get by if it grew a foot or a hand on the shoulders instead of a head, if it were to shape the head into a hand. It is a particular characteristic of these clever people of the present day that they have taken the greatest happiness with the most stupid of our time, because the most stupid today appears to be the most intellectually clever of the great multitude.

What matters is that at the moment when humanity is no longer to enter public life instinctively, but more consciously than before, the whole way in which man stands in the spiritual life of culture, how he stands in the life of law and the state, how he stands in the life of economics, is different. It is just as different as the blood circulation is different in the head, in the feet or in the legs, and different in the heart - and yet the three work together in just the right way when they are organized separately in the right way.

And we too, as human beings, have to form our social judgment in various ways in the field of intellectual life, in the field of legal or state life, and in the field of economic life. But we have to find ways to arrive at a truly sound judgment in the three fields. In general, this path - basically there are three paths - is really quite heavily obstructed by the prejudices of the time. Many obstacles must first be removed from the way.

In order to arrive at a sound social judgment in spiritual life, it must be clear that today's man is utterly incapable of even posing the question: What does social mean in spiritual life? What does human coexistence mean in spiritual terms? We still do not have a knowledge of man that, I would not even say, provides answers to such questions, but I would just say that it encourages such questions. This knowledge of man must first be created by spiritual science and made popular among mankind. One must raise the question properly and reasonably: What difference does it make whether I am facing a human being or whether I, as a lonely observer of nature, have only nature facing me, thus gaining knowledge of this nature by directly facing nature as an observer? I enter into a certain reciprocal relationship with nature; I allow nature to make impressions on me; I process these impressions, form inner images about these impressions by entering into a reciprocal relationship with nature; I take something in from outside, process it inwardly. That is basically the simple fact. It looks the same on the outside when I listen to a person, that is, enter into a spiritual relationship with him, find in his words the meaning that he puts into them. The words of the person make an impression on me; I process them inwardly into ideas. I enter into interaction with other people. One might think that whether I interact with nature or with other people is basically the same. But it is not. Anyone who claims that it is the same has not even looked at the matter in the right way. You have to pay attention to these things.

You see, I would now like to give a specific example. There is a fact in German intellectual life without which this German intellectual life is inconceivable. When one describes the intellectual life of a certain area, then one usually describes – depending on what one has reason to do – either the economic conditions of the time when this intellectual life developed, or one describes individual great personalities who, through their ingenious achievements, have fertilized this intellectual life. But now I want to mention a fact of a quite different nature, without which the special character of German intellectual life in the 19th century is inconceivable. I would like to speak of an archetypal phenomenon of social intellectual coexistence: the ten-year intimate relationship between Goethe and Schiller. One cannot say that Goethe gave Schiller something or that Schiller gave Goethe something and that they worked together. That does not capture the fact that I mean, but it is something else. Schiller became something through Goethe that he would never have become alone. Goethe became something through Schiller that he would never have become alone. And if you only have Goethe and only have Schiller and think about their effect on the German people, you do not get what actually happened. Because if you only have Goethe or only have Schiller and consider the effects that emanate from emanating from both, there is not yet what has become, but a third, quite invisible, but of tremendously strong effect, arises from the confluence of the two (It is drawn on the blackboard). You see, that is an archetypal phenomenon of social interaction in the spiritual realm.

What is the actual basis for this? Today's rough science does not study such things, because today's science does not penetrate to the human being at all. Spiritual science will study such things and only through this will it bring light into the social and spiritual life of people. Those of you who have heard something about spiritual science know what I am only briefly hinting at now. Spiritual science shows that the development of the human being is a real, actual fact. It shows that as a person develops, he becomes ever more mature and original, ever bringing forth different and different things from the depths of his being. And if social life suppresses this bringing forth, then that social life is wrong and must be brought into line.

Now, Goethe and Schiller were both individuals and personalities who were socially blessed in the highest sense. When did it happen that one can say that Schiller understood Goethe best, and that Goethe understood Schiller best? They were able to converse with each other best, to exchange their ideas best, and to achieve something together, this invisible something, which in turn had an effect and is one of the most significant facts in German intellectual life. I have tried very hard to determine the year of the most intimate period of their lives together, the time when the ideas of one, I would say, most thoroughly penetrated the ideas of the other. I think it was around 1795 or 1796 (written on the board). 1796, there is really something very special about this collaboration between Goethe and Schiller.

If one now investigates why Schiller of all people understood Goethe best in this year and why Goethe allowed himself to be understood best by Schiller in this year, one comes to this. Schiller was born in 1759; so he was thirty-seven years old in 1796. Goethe was ten years older; so he was forty-seven years old. Now spiritual science shows us that there are various life junctions in human life; they are not usually taken into account today: the change of teeth - the human being becomes something else by surviving the change of teeth, also in the spiritual-soul relationship -, sexual maturity, later transitions - these are less noticeable, but they are still there in the 28th year, again in the 35th and in the 42nd year. If one is really able to observe this inner human life, then one knows that the beginning of the 40s, I would say on average the 42nd year, when the human being develops inwardly, when he undergoes an inner spiritual life, this 42nd year is something very special. Between the 35th year and the 42nd year, what can be called the consciousness soul matures in the human being. And it has become fully mature, this judging consciousness soul, this conscious soul that enters into a relationship with the world entirely from the ego – this consciousness soul becomes mature at that point. Schiller at 37 was five years younger than 42, Goethe at 47 was five years older than 42. Goethe had passed the 42nd year just as much as Schiller was below it.

Schiller was at the same stage in the development of the consciousness soul, Goethe was beyond it; they were at the same distance from it. What does that mean? In relation to the soul, it means a similar contrast. I know that such comparisons are daring, but our language is also coarse, and therefore one can only use daring comparisons when one has important, fundamental facts to cite. For the soul-spiritual, it means a similar contrast as the male and female for the physical-sexual. In relation to physical development, the sexualities are unevenly developed. Out of courtesy to the ladies, and in order not to make the gentlemen arrogant, I will not say which sexuality is a later development and which sexuality is an earlier development, but they are of a different temporal development. It is not the whole human being, the head does not take part in it, so those whose sexuality must be thought of in an earlier stage of development need not feel offended. But it is not so in relation to the soul; there the earlier can come together with the later, then a very special fertilization arises. Then something arises that can only arise through this different kind of combination at different times. This is, of course, a special case; here, in social life, the interplay of soul to soul is formed in a special way. Whenever people influence each other, something arises that can never arise from the mere interaction of human beings and nature. You see, you get a certain idea of what it actually means to let something that comes not from nature but from another human being take effect on you.

This became a very particular problem for me when I immersed myself in Nietzsche, for example. Nietzsche had something that a whole range of people with a similar background to Nietzsche's now also have; it's just that he had it in a particularly radical sense. For example, he looked at philosophers, the ancient Greek philosophers, he looked at Schopenhauer, he looked at Eduard von Hartmann and so on. It can be said that Nietzsche was never really interested in the content of a philosophy. The content of the philosophy, the content of the world view, was actually of no great importance to him; but he was interested in the person. What Thales was thinking as the content of his world view is of no importance to him, but how this person Thales lives his way to his concepts is what interests him. This is what interests him about Heraclitus, not the content of Heraclitus' philosophy. It is precisely that which comes from a human being that has an effect on him, and in this way Nietzsche shows himself to be an especially modern character. But this will become the general constitution of the human soul life. Today people still argue about opinions in many ways. They will have to stop arguing about opinions for the simple reason that everyone must have their own opinion. Just as if you have a tree and photograph it from different sides, it is still the same tree, but the photographs look quite different; so everyone can have their own opinion, depending on - it just depends on the point of view they take. If he is reasonable in today's sense, he no longer argues about opinions, but at most finds some opinions healthy and some unhealthy. He no longer argues about opinions. It would be the same as if someone looked at different photographs and then said: Yes, they are quite different, these are right and those are wrong. At most, one can be interested in how someone arrives at their opinion: whether it is particularly clever or foolish, whether it is low and bears no fruit or whether it is high and beneficial for humanity.

Today it is a matter of really clarifying how people relate to each other in their spiritual and social coexistence, and how one person has something to give to another. This is particularly evident when we see what a growing child must receive from the other person who is his or her teacher. There are quite different forces at work than between Goethe and Schiller, even if they are not placed in such a lofty position, but there are more complicated forces at play. What I am developing here now provides a way to find the path to how one can rise to a truly social judgment in the realm of spiritual life.

You see, I said before that I cannot speak in a particularly popular way today, because if I want to discuss these questions from the point of view of an as yet unknown human science, at least in wider circles, I have to start from that point of view. In my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (The Riddle of the Soul) I have pointed out how the human being is a threefold being: he is a head human being or nervous-sensory human being, a rhythmic human being, and a metabolic human being. The nerve-sense human being encompasses everything that is the senses and what the organs of the head are. The rhythmic human being, the trunk human being, could also be said to encompass what is rhythmic in the human being, what is the movement of the heart, the movement of the lungs, and so on. The third, the metabolic human being, encompasses everything else.

These three aspects are found in human nature; in a sense they are fundamentally different from each other, but it is difficult to pinpoint their actual differences. In the case of the rhythmic person, the following can be emphasized. You will hear more about the rhythmic in the human being later on this evening when Dr. Boos speaks about the formation of social judgment in legal or state life, which will then make up the second part of the introduction. Dr. Boos will speak about what is particularly close to him, about the formation of social judgment in the second link of the social organism, in legal and state life. But now I would like to emphasize the following: the rhythmic activity in man is particularly evident when we consider how man breathes in the outer air, processes it within himself, how he breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbonic acid. Inhalation – exhalation, inhalation – exhalation: this is one of the rhythms that are active in man. It is a relatively easy process to understand: inhalation – exhalation = rhythmic activity.

The other two activities can perhaps only be understood by starting from this rhythmic activity. In a sense, the whole human being is actually predisposed to rhythmic activity. But with ordinary science, we do not recognize the nervous sensory activity, the actual main activity, at all. It cannot be compared with the activity of the lungs and the heart, with rhythmic activity. I can only mention something that may seem paradoxical to those who are less familiar with spiritual science, with anthroposophy, but which will be confirmed by a real science. In the future, what I am saying now will be known to the world as a completely exact scientific fact when the necessary conditions are understood. During inhalation and exhalation, there is a certain equilibrium. This equilibrium that exists could be depicted as a pendulum that goes back and forth. It goes up just as high on one side as on the other. It swings back and forth. There is also an equilibrium between inhalation and exhalation, inhalation and exhalation and so on.

If a person did not live together with other people in a spiritual and soulful way, if a person were lonely and could only observe nature, that is, could only enter into an interrelationship with nature, look at nature and inwardly process it into images, then something very special would happen to that person. As I said, today this seems highly paradoxical to people, but it is nevertheless the case: his head would become too light. By observing nature, we are, after all, engaged in an activity. We are not doing nothing by observing nature; everything in us is engaged in a certain activity. This activity is, so to speak, a sucking activity at the head of man – not at the whole organism, but at the head of man, a sucking activity. And this sucking activity must be balanced, otherwise our head would become too light; we would become unconscious. It is compensated for by the fact that the head, which has become too light, undergoes a metabolism, blood nourishment, and all that is deposited in the head. And so, by observing nature, we continually have a lightening of the head and a subsequent heaviness due to the digestive activity going up into the head.

This balancing must take place. It is a higher rhythmic activity. But this activity would become extremely one-sided if the human being were only in contact with nature. Man would indeed become too light in his head if he were only in contact with nature outside; he would not send enough balancing metabolic activity up into his head from within. He does this to a sufficient extent when he enters into a relationship with his fellow human beings.

That is why you feel a certain pleasure when you enter into a relationship with your fellow human beings, when you exchange thoughts or ideas with them, when they teach you or the like. It is one thing to walk through nature alone and quite another to stand face to face with a person who expresses his ideas to you. When you are confronted with a person who expresses his ideas to you – you should just consider this carefully in self-observation – then you have a certain feeling of well-being. And he who can analyze this feeling of well-being will find a similarity between it and the feeling he has when he digests. It is a great similarity, only one feeling goes to the stomach, the other goes up to the head. You see, that is precisely the peculiarity of materialism: these subtle material processes in the human body remain closed to materialism. The fact that a hidden digestive activity takes place in the head precisely because one is sitting opposite a person with whom one is talking, with whom one is exchanging ideas, is something that people do not notice through today's crude science. Therefore, they cannot answer social questions, questions about the human context, even if they are quite trivial.

For the spiritual scientist, the anthroposophist, it is quite clear why the coffee sisters are so keen to sit together. They don't just sit together because they like coffee, but because they then digest themselves. The digestion goes to the head, and they feel that as a sense of well-being. And when coffee sister sits next to coffee sister, or even, I can't say coffee brother, but skat brother sits next to skat brother at the twilight drink, and so on, the same thing naturally takes place among men. I don't want to offend anyone, but when people sit together like that, yes, they feel the digestive activity going on behind their heads, and that means a certain sense of well-being. What happens there is really necessary for human life. It is really necessary, but it can be used for higher activity than just for the evening drink and for being a coffee nurse. Just as the blood must not stand still in the human being, so must what happens in the head not stand still. A stunted rhythm would occur in the nervous system if we did not have the right kind of spiritual connection with people outside. Our right humanity, that we become right people, depends on our coming into a reasonable connection with other people.

And so one can only form a social judgment when one realizes what is necessary for the human being – just as necessary as being born. When one realizes that the human being must come into a spiritual and soul connection with other human beings, only then can one form a correct social judgment about the way in which the spiritual element of the social organism must be formed. For then one knows that this social life is based on the fact that man must come into a right individual relationship with man, that no abstract state life must intervene there, that nothing must be organized from above, but that everything depends on the fact that the original original in the human being can approach the original in the other human being, that there is real, genuine freedom, direct freedom from individual to individual, be it in the social coexistence of the teacher with his students, be it in social coexistence in general. People wither away when school regulations or regulations about intellectual social life make it impossible for what is in one person to have a fertilizing effect on what is in another. A truly social judgment in the realm of spiritual life can only develop when that which elevates one person above themselves, when that which is more in one person than in another, can have an effect on the other person and when, in turn, that which is more in the other person than in oneself can have an effect on oneself. One can only understand the necessity of freedom in spiritual life when one realizes that this human coexistence can only develop in a spiritual and psychological way if what comes into existence with us through birth and what develops through our abilities can freely influence other people. Therefore, the spiritual element of the social organism must also be administered only within itself. The person who is active in the spiritual life must at the same time be in charge of the administration of the spiritual life. So: self-administration within this spiritual realm. You see, that is what is very special about this spiritual life, which arises from a true understanding of the human being.

Dr. Boos will then describe the legal life in more detail from the same point of view. The legal life proceeds as follows: when humanity, through the demands of the present, is increasingly moving towards a democratic state, so that the mature human being is confronted by another mature human being, we are not yet dealing with what works across from one person to another in the way I have described for the spiritual life, where the digestive activity shoots up into the head. In the sphere of right living, where one fully developed human being is confronted with another, no such changes take place as in the spiritual life, but only interactions between human being and human being. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect flows over in such a way that something new arises in the other person. In the sphere of right living, the effect I will now omit this middle aspect and move on to economic life, to the third link in the social organism. This economic life is not really understood today in such a way that a real social judgment can be formed from this understanding. What, in fact, can be called economic life? You see, you can clearly define economic life when you think of it in terms of the social organism. If we take any kind of animal, we cannot say that it lives in a social community in the human sense, because the animal finds what it desires in nature itself. It takes what it needs to live from the external nature; what is initially outside in nature passes into the animal, the animal processes it and releases it again – another kind of interaction. You see: here we have something that, I would say, is organized into nature. Such an animal species, so to speak, only continues the life of nature within itself. Nothing is changed in nature. The animal takes in what is in nature for its nourishment – just as it is in nature. We can find a complete opposite to this, and this contrast is present in zoo animals, which receive everything they eat through human intervention. Here, human reason supplies the animal with nourishment, and the human organization first assesses what the animals then receive. As a result, the animals are actually completely torn out of nature. Domestic animals are also completely torn out of nature; they are, so to speak, so changed that they not only absorb natural food substances into their inner being, but that food prepared by human reason is grafted into them. Domestic animals become a means of expression of that which, so to speak, has been processed spiritually, but they themselves do nothing to it. Animals are either such that they take in what is in nature unchanged in their own activity, or, when humans feed them something, they cannot contribute anything to it; they do not help to prepare what is fed to them.

In the middle, between these two extremes, is human economic activity, insofar as it lives in the social organism, at most not when man is at the lower level of a hunting people, when he still takes what is in nature unchanged, if he enjoys it raw, which he actually no longer does today. But the moment human culture begins in this respect, man takes something that he has already prepared himself, where he changes nature. The animal does not do that, and if it is a domestic animal, something foreign is supplied to it. That is actually economic activity: what man does in communion with nature by supplying himself with changed nature. We can say that all economic activity of man actually lies between these two extremes: between what the animal, which is not yet a social being, takes unchanged from nature, and what the domestic animal takes in, which is now fed entirely in the stable, only with what humans prepare for it. And when man works, he is involved with his economic activity between his inner being and nature. And this economic life that we know in the social organism is actually only a systematic summary of what individuals do in the direction that I have characterized.

Let us compare the economic life in a social context with the spiritual life that we have just characterized. The spiritual life is based on the fact that the individual human being, so to speak, has too much. What people possess spiritually, they usually give away very gladly; they are generous in this way and gladly hand it over to others. In contrast to material possessions, people are not as generous in the same sense; they prefer to keep material possessions for themselves. But what they possess spiritually, they are very happy to give away; they are generous in this way. But this is based on a good universal law. Man can indeed go beyond himself in a spiritual sense; and in the way I have just described it, it is beneficial for the other person when man gives him something, even if he in turn does not accept anything from the other. That is to say, when a person enters social life in a spiritual way, I would say that, in his inner being, he has too much judgment, too many ideas; he is compelled to give, he must communicate with others.

In economic life, it is exactly the opposite. But one can only come to this conclusion if one starts from experience, not from some kind of theoretical science. In economic life, one cannot arrive at a judgment in the same way as in the life of the spirit, that is, from person to person. Rather, in economic life one can only come to a judgment when one stands as an individual human being or as a human being placed in some association in relation to another association. Therefore, the impulse for the threefold social order demands the associative: people must associate according to their occupations or according to producers, consumers and so on. In the economic sphere, the association will be confronted with the association. Let us compare this to the individual human being, who, for my sake, has a lot of spirit in his head; he can share this spirit with many people. One person may absorb it better, another worse, but he can communicate this spirit that he has to many people. So there is the possibility that a person can give what he has of spirit to many people. In economic life, it is exactly the other way around.

At first we have no idea about economic life at all. What I said to some of you yesterday is absolutely true: if you want to judge what is right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy in economic life, and you just want to deduce it from the inner being, then you you are just like that character in a Jean Paul novel who wakes up in the middle of the night in a dark room and thinks about what time it is, who wants to find out what time it is in the dark room where he can't see or hear anything. You can't work out what time it is by thinking about it. You can't come to an economic judgment through thinking or through inner development. You can't even come to an economic judgment when you are negotiating with another person. Goethe and Schiller were good at exchanging spiritual and psychological ideas. Two people together cannot come to an economic judgment. One can only come to an economic judgment when one is faced with a group of people who have had experiences, each in his own field, and when one then takes in as judgment what they, as an association, as a group, have worked out. Just as you have to look at your watch if you want to know what time it is, in order to arrive at an economic judgment, you have to take on board the experiences of an association. And one can hear very beautiful things about the duty of one person towards another, about the rights of one person towards another when they are face to face; but one cannot come to an economic judgment when only one person is confronted with another, but one can only come to an economic judgment if one understands what is laid down in associations, in groups of people, in mutual economic intercourse as economic experience. There, the exact opposite of how one lives together socially, spiritually and soulfully must be present. In the spiritual and soul realm, the individual human being must give to others what he develops within himself. In the economic sphere, the individual must absorb the experiences gained by the association. If I want to form an economic judgment, I can only do so if I have asked associations what experiences they have had with this or that article in production, in mutual dealings, and so on. And this is what it comes down to when forming a social judgment in the economic sphere: that such associations make up the economic body of the threefold social organism and that each individual belongs to such associations. In order to arrive at an economic judgment, from which one can in turn act, the economic experiences of the associations must be available. What we are meant to learn scientifically, cognitively, we must acquire in the free spiritual life through individual experiences. What is to inspire us in our economic will must be experienced by the individual through the experiences handed down to him by associations. Only by uniting with people who are economically active can we ourselves arrive at an economic will.

The formation of judgment in the spiritual-mental and economic spheres is radically different. And an economic life cannot flourish alongside a spiritual life if the two spheres receive orders from one and the same place, but only if the spiritual life is such that the individual can freely hand over to another what he has within it. And economic life can flourish only when the associations are such that the economic branches related to one another by production or consumption are united associatively, and thus the economic judgment, which again underlies the economic will, arises. Otherwise, it becomes a muddle, and we end up with the reactionary, liberal or social ideas of modern times, where we never realize how radically different human activities are in the spiritual, economic and, in the middle, legal or state spheres.

Basically, it is so difficult for people today to arrive at a sound judgment in this area because they have been led astray by the traditional creeds from seeing the real structure of the human being in body, soul and spirit. Man is said to be only a duality, only body and soul. As a result, everything is mixed up. Only when we divide the human being into spirit, soul and body, only when we know how the spirit is that which we bring into existence through birth, how the spirit is that which brings forth the potential for development within us, which we must bring into the social sphere, only then will we get an idea of how this spiritual part of the social organism must have a separate existence. When we know how everything that springs from the soul, which is intimately connected with our rhythmic life, is the product of human beings living together in circles of duty, work and love, then we can see what must be present in the democratic state as the legal organization of the threefold organism. And when we realize that we cannot arrive at an economic judgment and therefore cannot engage in economic activity without being integrated into a fabric of associations in the threefold social organism, then we come to see how only that which is a special kind of judgment in the economic field can lead to help in the future.

It is the task of the present to achieve a true understanding of the human being and, on the basis of this true understanding of the human being, to then arrive at an understanding of what today is striving for a true understanding. Man judges quite differently in the social life in the spiritual realm than in the legal realm, and it is quite different again than in the economic realm. Therefore, if these three very differently structured social contexts are to develop in a healthy way in the future, they must also be administered separately and then work together. Just as in the individual organism it is not possible to form anything other than the shape of a head where the head is to be, nor a hand or foot or heart or liver, so the spiritual organism must not be systematized in the same way as the economic organism or the legal organism. But precisely when they are properly organized in the right place, they work together to form a whole, just as the hand and foot and trunk and head of the human being work together to form a whole. The right unity arises precisely from the fact that each is properly organized in its own way.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, the idea presented to humanity in the form of the threefold social organism is truly not a frivolous one, but one that has been extracted from a real science. This science must, of course, first be fought for against all the scientific chaos that prevails today. But it is, I might say, not only a wall, it is a thick barrier of prejudices through which one must first fight, first fight with what must underlie the science of man, and then with what emerges from this true science of man as an impulse for a real social reconstruction. One can say: It makes one's heart bleed when one looks today into this chaos of social misconceptions that reigns everywhere, and at the social drowsiness. And one must say: It is indeed not possible for everyone to make a social new order out of what has been taken up by this European humanity as a prejudice from a mistaken science for three to four centuries. It is a terrible thing when people talk about a social order based on a science that can never justify a social judgment because it does not know man. That science, ladies and gentlemen, does not regard man as man, but only as the highest link in the animal series. It does not ask: What is man? - but: What are the animals? It only says: When the animals develop to the highest level, that is precisely the human being. One does not ask what the human being is, but the animals are there, and in the series of animals, the human being is added as the last one, without saying anything different about the human being than what is said about the animal being. Such a science will never create a social reconstruction.

What is so distressing is not that people today are not radical enough to say to themselves: We must first demand real knowledge, real science – but that they are more faithful today to external scientific authority than Catholics ever were in the past to papal authority. At that time, at least some still rebelled against this papal authority. Today, however, everything is subjugated to scientific authority, even radical socialists like Lunacharsky; when it comes to defending the old science against a renewal of science, he crawls under scientific authority because he cannot imagine that science itself needs to be transformed if we want to make progress. These things must be taken very seriously and they must be said. And no matter how many social clubs, liberal communities, development communities, women's mobs or women's clubs people join, nothing will come of it if the matter is not approached radically, if one does not start from the point where one can arrive at a real social judgment: And this is only a social human knowledge that can give what today's science cannot give. And only a real spiritual science can give a renewal of science.

That is what I wanted to say in introduction to this evening. I now ask Dr. Boos to speak about the second part of the social organism, about the life of rights.

Roman Boos speaks about “The formation of judgment in the legal aspect of the social organism.” After that, a discussion will take place.

Roman Boos: Perhaps someone still has a question to ask, or perhaps someone would like to add something? - That does not seem to be the case. I do not know if Dr. Steiner could be asked for a final word. It is very late and I do not know if there are any other questions that Dr. Steiner would like to address.

Rudolf Steiner: Taking into account the lateness of the hour, I would just like to add a few words, because a closing word is customary at a discussion. This evening's two topics, the demand for a social reorganization on the one hand and on the other hand the necessity to penetrate to the sources of spiritual science, because only there can the forces be found to do justice to the demands of the day, these two things must always be emphasized again in all seriousness from this point of view. This has often been said, but it cannot be said too often.

I began by saying today that people have grown instinctively into the present social orders, and in fact the materialists would also instinctively like to remain in them. They do not want to take into account that today is the time to move on to the activity of judgment, that is, to consciousness, and to create a new social world out of consciousness. But we must penetrate to this consciousness if we do not simply want to continue the disastrous policies of recent years, which have taken hold in such a terrible way and are now being continued within European civilizational life and its appendages. I have already pointed out here how a mind like Oswald Spengler's, which is, after all, ingenious on the one hand but sick on the other, can seriously attempt to prove scientifically that the Occident must have arrived at barbarism, at complete and utter decline, at the beginning of the third millennium. One gets the same pain that I spoke of at the end of my introductory words today when one sees how extraordinarily difficult it is to instill in the minds of the present the sense of the seriousness of the times, and how much more difficult it is to instill the sense of the necessity to carry out a real transformation with the knowledge of the present.

My dear audience, do not say that this knowledge of the present is only found in a few scholars or in some contemporary views of people. No, this knowledge is everywhere, only people do not admit it to themselves. What matters is not whether one holds this or that hypothesis, this or that scientific theory, but whether one's whole life of ideas and feelings is moving in a certain direction, which ultimately amounts to this scientific life of the present, which impoverishes and empties the human being. Of course, some people may not be concerned that it is the consequence of contemporary science that the earth originated from a nebula and will end up in some final state of heat in which all life will be destroyed. Perhaps there are even some who say: That may be, but I don't care. — But, my dear audience, that is not the point. Open any chemistry, any physiology, any zoology or any anthropology today, read five lines in it and take these five lines – it says something along those lines. Regardless of whether you open this or that and take this or that, you are in the direction that leads to these views. Of course, today it is convenient when you want to know something about this or that to resort to the usual things and not to think that even something like this needs a thorough transformation. Today it is convenient if you want to learn something about malachite, to go to the encyclopedia, take out the volume with “M”, open “Malachit” and read what is in there. If you accept it uncritically, regardless of what you otherwise think, and if you are not aware that you are living in a serious time of transformation, then you are asleep, then you are not prepared for what is necessary in today's world. Today it is a matter of not just becoming aware of the seriousness at some times when reflecting on the ultimate problems of world view, but today it is a matter of being aware every minute of the day that it is our duty to work on the transformation, because we live in a thoroughly serious time. And just in these days we are again experiencing the tragedy that the most important problems are unfolding, perhaps even more important than during the external years of war, and that people are trying to sleep as much as possible, not even participating with their consciousness in what is actually taking place.

To accept anthroposophy as a confession does not mean merely to advocate this or that in theory, to speak of etheric body and astral body, of reincarnation and karma. To accept anthroposophy means to be connected in one's feelings, with one's whole being, to that which is now taking place in the day and now in the great epoch as the impulse of a significant transformation. And when you look into the sleeping people today, your heart bleeds. Because today it depends on waking up. And again and again I would like to say, and I would like to conclude every discussion with it: try to get to the sources of spiritual knowledge, because with the water that comes from these sources, you splash yourself from a real source of consciousness. This knowledge touches one's own personality in such a way that one, I would say, takes it up from the deepest depths of one's earthly nature and into one's human inner being: wake up and fulfill your tasks in the face of the great demands of the time.

Roman Boos: It will be announced what will be discussed here a week from today. This concludes today's event.

When a person who has concerned himself for some time with the world conception of spiritual science permits the various thoughts, ideas, and knowledge he has thereby acquired to work upon him, this knowledge suggests to him the most manifold questions. Indeed, one develops oneself as a spiritual scientist through associating such questions—which are in reality questions of sensation, feeling (Gemuet), and character, in short, questions of life—with the ideas of spiritual science.

These ideas do not serve merely to satisfy our theoretical or scientific curiosity. Rather, they elucidate the riddles of life, the mysteries of existence. Indeed, these thoughts and ideas become truly fruitful for us only when we no longer merely think, feel, and sense their content and significance but when, under their influence, we learn to look differently at the world about us. These ideas should permeate us with warmth; they should become impulses in us, forces of feeling (Gemuet) and mind. This they do increasingly when the answers that we have obtained to certain questions present us in turn with new questions, when we are led from question to answer, and the answer gives rise to further questions, and so on. In this way we advance in spiritual knowledge and in spiritual life.

It will be some time yet before it will be possible to reveal in public lectures the more intimate aspects of spiritual life to present-day humanity, but the time is approaching when the more intimate questions can be discussed within our own groups. In this connection it will continually happen that new members of the Anthroposophical Society may be taken by surprise by one thing or another and may be shocked. We would never progress in our work, however, if we were not to advance to discussion of the more intimate questions of life out of the depths of spiritual scientific research and knowledge. Today, therefore—though it may give rise to misconceptions on the part of those of you who have immersed yourselves in spiritual life for only a comparatively short time—we shall once more bring before our souls some of the more intimate facts of spiritual knowledge.

Without doubt, a significant question arises before us when we do not merely consider abstractly the idea of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, but when instead we allow ourselves to become thoughtfully absorbed in contemplation of this fact of spiritual life. Then, with the answer given to us in reincarnation, which provides such valuable fruit for our lives, there will in turn arise fresh questions. We may, for example, raise the following query: if a person lives on earth more than once, if he returns again and again in new embodiments, what can be the deeper meaning of this repeated passing through life? As a rule, this is answered by saying that we undoubtedly keep ascending higher in this way, and, through experiencing in later earthly lives the fruits of previous lives, we finally perfect ourselves. This, however, still represents a rather general, abstract opinion. It is only through more exact knowledge of the whole meaning of earthly life that we penetrate the significance of repeated lives on earth. If, for example, our earth were not to change, if man were to keep returning to an earth that remained essentially the same, then indeed there would be little to learn through successive embodiments or incarnations. On the contrary, their real meaning for us lies in the fact that each of these incarnations on earth presents us with fresh fields of learning and experience. This is not so apparent over short periods, but if we survey long stretches of time, as we are able to do through spiritual science, it becomes obvious at once that the epochs of our earth assume quite different forms and that we continually face new experiences.

Here we must realize something else, however. We must bear in mind these changes in the life of the earth itself, for if we neglect something that should be learned, something that should be experienced during a certain epoch of our earthly evolution, then, although we will come again into a new incarnation, we will have missed something entirely; we will have failed to allow something to stream into us that we should have allowed during the preceding epoch. As a result we will be unable in the succeeding period to employ our forces and faculties in the right way.

Speaking still quite generally, one can say that during our time something is possible on earth, almost anywhere on the globe, that was not possible, for example, during the previous incarnations of the people who are living now. It seems strange, but this fact is nonetheless of definite, indeed, of great significance. In the present incarnation it is possible for a certain number of persons to come to spiritual science, that is, to take up such conclusions of spiritual research as can be taken up today in the field of spiritual science. Of course, it may be regarded to be of trifling significance that a few people should come together who allow the discoveries of spiritual research to stream into them. Those who find this of little import, however, do not understand at all the significance of reincarnation and of the fact that one can take something up only during a particular incarnation. If one fails to take it up, one has missed something entirely and will lack it then in the following incarnations.

We must above all impress it upon our minds that what we learn today through spiritual science unites with our souls and that we bring it with us again when we descend into the next incarnation.

We will endeavor today to gain an understanding of what this means for our souls. Toward this end we must link together many facts of spiritual life, which are more or less new or even entirely unknown to you, with much that you already know from other lectures and from your reading. To begin with, we must go back to earlier periods in the evolution of humanity. We have often looked back to earlier periods of our earthly evolution. We have remarked that we are now living in the fifth period after the great Atlantean catastrophe. This fifth period was preceded by the fourth or Greco-Latin period, in which the Greek and Latin peoples indicated the principle ideas and feelings for the earth-will. This, in turn, was preceded by the third or Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian period, and this by the ancient Persian, which followed the ancient Indian. If we delve even further into antiquity, we come upon the great Atlantean catastrophe that destroyed an ancient continent, an ancient mainland, Atlantis, which once extended into the place where today lies the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm gradually engulfed the continent and thereby gave our solid earth its present countenance. Then, going further back, we come upon still earlier periods that existed before the Atlantean catastrophe; we arrive at those civilizations and conditions of life that developed on this Atlantean continent, the civilizations of the Atlantean races. Even earlier conditions preceded these.

If one considers what history tells us—and it does not, indeed, reach very far back—one can fall quite easily into the belief (although this is, even in relation to shorter periods of time, an entirely unfounded belief) that things on earth have always appeared as they do now. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, conditions on our earth have altered fundamentally, and the soul conditions of human beings have also changed to a tremendous extent. The souls of the persons sitting here were incarnated during each of these ancient periods in bodies that were in keeping with the various epochs, and they absorbed what was to be absorbed in these periods of earthly evolution. With each succeeding incarnation, then, the soul developed new faculties. Our souls were entirely different from what they are today—perhaps not so noticeably different during the Greco-Latin era, but in the old Persian period they differed greatly from those of today, and still more in the ancient Indian period. In those ancient periods, our souls were endowed with quite different faculties, and they lived under quite different conditions.

Today, therefore, in order that we may clearly understand each other with reference to what follows, we shall call before our mind's eye as distinctly as possible the nature of our souls in the age, let us say—so as to be dealing with something full of significance—after the Atlantean catastrophe, when they were incarnated in the bodies that were possible on earth only during the first Indian civilization. We must not understand this first Indian civilization as having been of value only in India. The Indian people were at that time merely the most advanced, the most important, but the civilization of the whole earth derived its characteristic qualities from what the leaders indicated to the ancient Indians.

If we consider our souls as they were at that time, we must first say that the kind of knowledge human beings have today was as yet utterly impossible. At that time there was no such clearly defined consciousness of self, no such clearly defined I-consciousness. It had hardly occurred to human beings that they were I's. To be sure, the I already existed as a force in human beings, but knowledge of the I is something different from the force of the I, from its effectiveness. Human beings were not yet endowed with such an intimate inner life as they now have. They possessed instead entirely different faculties, for example, what we have often called an ancient, shadowy clairvoyance.

When we consider the human soul as it was during the daytime in that period, we find that it did not actually feel itself to be an I; instead, man felt himself to be a member of his tribe, of his people. Just as the hand is a member of the body, so the separate I represented, as a member, the whole community formed by the tribe, the people. Man did not yet perceive himself as an individual I, as he does today; it was the tribal-I, the folk-I, on which he fixed his attention. One thus lived during the day not knowing clearly that one was a human being. When evening came, however, and one passed into sleep, consciousness did not become totally darkened as it does today, but instead the soul during sleep was able to perceive spiritual facts. One thus perceived in one’s environment, for example, facts of which the modern dream is only a shadow—spiritual events, spiritual facts, of which the dreams of the present day are as a rule no longer true representations. Such were the perceptions of the human beings of that time, so that they knew that a spiritual world existed. To them the spiritual world was a reality, not through any kind of logic, through anything that required proof, but simply because each night they found themselves within the spiritual world, though only with a dull and dreamlike consciousness.

That, however, was not the essential thing. Besides the conditions of sleeping and waking, there were also in between states during which the human being was neither wholly asleep nor wholly awake. At such times the I-consciousness abated even more than by day, but at the same time the perception of spiritual events, that dreamlike clairvoyance, was substantially stronger than during the night. There were thus intermediate states in which human beings lacked consciousness of self, to be sure, but in which they were endowed with clairvoyance. In such states the human being was as though entranced, so that he knew nothing of himself. He was not able to know, “I am a man,” but he clearly knew “I am a member of a spiritual world in which I am able to perceive; I know that there is a spiritual world.” These were the experiences of the human souls of that time, and this consciousness, this life in the spiritual world, was much clearer still in the Atlantean period—very much clearer. When we survey this, therefore, we look back to an ancient era of dim, dreamlike clairvoyance for our souls, which gradually diminished during human evolution.

If we had remained at the stage of this ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance, we could not have acquired the individual I-consciousness we have today. We could never have known that we are human beings. We had to lose that awareness of the spiritual world in order to exchange it for I-consciousness. In the future, we shall have both at the same time. While maintaining our I-consciousness, we shall all gain once more what amounts to full clairvoyance, as is possible today only to one who has traveled the path of initiation. In the future, every person will be able once more to look into the spiritual world and yet feel himself as a human being, as an I.

Picture to yourselves again what has taken place. The soul has passed from incarnation to incarnation. At first it was clairvoyant; later, the consciousness of becoming an I grew ever more distinct and with it the possibility of forming one's own judgments. As long as one still looks clairvoyantly into the spiritual world and does not feel oneself to be an I, it is impossible to form judgments, to combine thoughts. The ability to form judgments gradually emerged, but in exchange the old clairvoyance diminished with each succeeding incarnation. A person dwelt less and less in those states in which he could look into the spiritual world. Instead, he became acclimated to the physical plane, cultivated logical thinking, and felt himself as an I; clairvoyance thereby gradually receded. The human being now perceives the outer world and becomes ever more entangled in it, but his connection with the spiritual world becomes more tenuous. One can therefore say that in the distant past man was a kind of spiritual being, because he associated directly with other spiritual beings, was their companion, so to speak; he felt that he belonged with other spiritual beings to whom he can no longer look up with normal senses today. As we know, there are also today, beyond the world that immediately surrounds us, other spiritual worlds inhabited by other spiritual beings, but the person of today cannot look into those worlds with his ordinary consciousness. Earlier, however, he dwelt in them, both during the sleeping consciousness of the night and in that intermediate state of which we spoke. He lived in the spiritual world and had intercourse with these other beings. He can no longer do this normally. He has been, as it were, cast out of his home, the spiritual world, and with each new incarnation he becomes more and more firmly established in this world of the earth below.

In the sanctuaries of spiritual life and in those fields of knowledge and science in which such things were still known, it was always taken into consideration that our incarnations have passed through these different earthly periods. They looked back to an ancient period, even before the Atlantean catastrophe, when human beings dwelt in direct contact with the gods, or spirits, and when they naturally had entirely different feelings and sensations. You can imagine that the human soul must have had quite different sensations in an age when it knew certainly that it could look up to the higher beings and when it was aware of itself as a member of that higher world. It has thus learned to feel and to sense entirely differently.

When you consider these facts, you must picture to yourselves that we can learn to speak and to think today only if we grow up among humankind, because these faculties can be acquired only among human beings. If a child were to be cast upon some lonely island and were to grow up there, lacking association with human beings, he would be unable to acquire the faculties of thinking and speaking. We thus see that the way in which any being develops depends in part on the kind of beings among which it lives and matures. Evolution is affected by this fact. You can observe this among animals. It is known that dogs removed from association with human beings to some place where they never meet a human being actually forget how to bark. As a rule, the descendants of such dogs are unable to bark at all. Something depends upon whether a being grows up and lives among one kind of being or another kind. You can therefore imagine that it makes a difference whether you dwell on the physical plane among modern human beings or whether you—the same souls, as it were—lived earlier among spiritual beings in a spiritual world that can no longer be penetrated by the normal vision of today. At that time the soul developed differently; the human being had within him different impulses when he dwelt among the gods. The human being developed one kind of impulse among men and another kind when he dwelt with gods.

A higher knowledge has always known this; such a knowledge has always looked back to that time when human beings were in direct intercourse with divine-spiritual beings, on account of which the soul felt itself to belong to the divine-spiritual world. This, however, also engendered forces and impulses in the soul that were divine-spiritual in a totally different sense from the forces of today. At that time, when the soul still operated in such a way that it felt itself to be a part of the higher world, a will spoke out of this soul that also derived from the divine-spiritual world. One could say that this will was inspired, because the soul dwelt among the gods. This period when man was still united with the divine-spiritual beings is spoken of in the ancient wisdom as the Golden Age or Krita Yuga. We must look back to a time preceding the Atlantean catastrophe to find the greater part of this age.

Afterward, a time followed when human beings no longer felt their connection with the spiritual world so strongly as during Krita Yuga, when they felt their impulses to be less determined by their association with the gods, when even their vision began to grow dimmer regarding the spirit and the soul. They retained the memory, however, of having dwelt with the spirits and the gods. This was especially distinct in the ancient Indian world. There they spoke quite easily of spiritual matters; they could call attention to the outer world of physical perception and yet, as we say, recognize the maya or illusion in it, because human beings had had these physical perceptions for only a comparatively short time. That was the situation in ancient India. The souls in ancient India no longer saw the gods themselves, but they still saw spiritual realities and lower spiritual beings. The higher spiritual beings were still visible to a few people, but a living companionship with the gods was obscured even to these. Will impulses from the divine-spiritual world had already disappeared. It was still possible, however, to glimpse spiritual realities during particular states of consciousness: during sleep and during the intermediate state we have already mentioned. The most important realities of the spiritual world, however, which had previously been a matter of experience, had become merely a sort of knowledge of the truth, like something that the soul still knew distinctly but that had only the effect of knowledge, of truth. To be sure, human beings were still in the spiritual world, but their assurance of it was less strong in this later time than it had been before. This is known as the Silver Age or Treta Yuga.

Following this came the period of the incarnations in which human vision became more and more cut off from the spiritual world, became more and more adjusted to the immediate outer world of the senses and accordingly more firmly entrenched in this world of the senses. This period, during which emerged the inner I-consciousness, the consciousness of being human, is known as the Bronze Age or Dvapara Yuga. Although human beings no longer had the lofty, direct knowledge of the spiritual world belonging to earlier periods, at least something of the spiritual world still remained in humanity in general. One could perhaps describe this by comparing it to human beings of the present day who, when they grow older, retain something of the joy of youth. It has indeed fled, but once having experienced it, one knows it and can speak of it as something with which one is familiar. Similarly, the souls of that time were still somewhat familiar with what leads to the spiritual worlds. This is the essential feature of Dvapara Yuga.

A period followed when even this familiarity with the spiritual world ceased, when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were closed. Thereafter, human vision became so confined to the outer world of the senses and to the intellect that elaborated the sense impressions that they could now only reflect upon the spiritual world. This is the lowest means by which something about the spiritual world can be known. What human beings now actually knew from their own experience was the physical, sensible world. If human beings wished to know something of the spiritual world, they had to accomplish this through reflection. This is the period when human beings became the most unspiritual and accordingly the most attached to and rooted in the world of the senses. This was necessary in order that consciousness of self might gradually attain the peak of its evolution, since only through the sturdy opposition of the outer world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and to sense himself as an individual being. This last period is called Kali Yuga or the Dark Age.

I should like to emphasize that these expressions can also be used to refer to more extensive epochs. The designation of Krita Yuga, for example, may be applied to a much broader period, since before the Golden Age even existed, the human being participated with his experience in still higher spheres; hence, all these still earlier periods might be included in the term “Golden Age.” If one is moderate, so to speak, in one's claims, however, if one is content with that measure of spiritual experience that has been described, it is possible to divide in this way what has occurred in the past. Definite periods of time can be assigned to all such eras. To be sure, evolution moves forward slowly, through gradual stages, but there are certain boundaries of which we may say that prior to this, such a thing was primarily true, and after this some other condition of life and consciousness prevailed. Accordingly, we must calculate that, in the sense in which we first used the term, Kali Yuga began approximately in the year 3101 BC. We thus see that our souls have appeared repeatedly on earth in new incarnations, during which human vision has become increasingly shut off from the spiritual world and at the same time ever more restricted to the outer world of the senses. We thus see that our souls actually come with each new incarnation into new conditions from which something new can always be learned. What we can gain from Kali Yuga is the possibility of becoming established in our I-consciousness. This was not possible previously, because the human being had first to absorb the I into himself.

When souls have neglected in a given incarnation what that particular epoch has to offer, it is very difficult to make up for the loss in another epoch. They must then wait a very long time before it becomes possible to make good the loss in a certain way, but we certainly must not depend on this chance. Let us, therefore, remember that something essential took place at the time when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were made fast. That was the period in which John the Baptist worked, as well as the Christ. It was essential for this time, which had already witnessed the passing of 3,100 years of the Dark Age, that the people living then had all incarnated several times, or at least once or twice, during this Dark Age. I-consciousness had become firmly established, memory of the spiritual world had already evaporated, and, if human beings did not wish to lose all connection with the spiritual world, they had to learn to experience the spiritual within the I. They had to develop the I in such a way that this I, within its inner being, could at least be sure that there is a spiritual world, that man belongs to this spiritual world, and that there are also higher spiritual beings. The I had to make itself capable of inwardly feeling, of believing in, the spiritual world.

If, in the time of Christ Jesus, someone were to have expressed what was indeed the truth in that period, he might have said, “Once upon a time human beings were able to experience the kingdom of heaven outside of their own I's, in those spiritual distances they reached when they emerged from their lower selves. The human being had to experience the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual world, at a distance from the I. Now this kingdom of heaven cannot be so experienced; now the human being has changed so much that the I must experience this kingdom within itself. The kingdom of heaven has approached man to such an extent that it now works into the I.” John the Baptist proclaimed this to humanity, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that is, approaches the I. Previously, it was to be found outside of man, but now man must embrace in the very core of his being, in the I, a kingdom of heaven now come near at hand.

Precisely because in this Dark Age, in Kali Yuga, man was no longer able to go forth from the world of the senses into the spiritual world, the divine being, the Christ, had to come down into the physical, sensible world. This is the reason that Christ had to descend into a man of flesh, into Jesus of Nazareth, in order that through beholding the life and deeds of Christ on the physical earth, human beings in physical bodies might gain a connection with the kingdom of heaven, with the spiritual world. The period when Christ walked upon earth thus fell in the midst of Kali Yuga, of the Dark Age, when human beings who comprehended their time and did not live in it in a dull and unenlightened way could say to themselves, “It is necessary that the God should descend among human beings in order that a connection with the spiritual world that has been lost can be won again.”

If there had been no human beings at that time capable of understanding this, capable of establishing an active soul connection with the Christ, all human connection with the spiritual world would gradually have been lost and human beings would not have accepted into their I's the connection with the kingdom of heaven. If all the human beings living at such a crucial time had persisted in remaining in darkness, it might have happened that this significant event would have passed by them unnoticed. Then human souls would have become withered, desolate, and depraved. To be sure, they would have continued to incarnate for a time without the Christ, but they would not have been able to implant in their I's what was necessary for them to regain their connection with the kingdom of heaven. It might have happened that the event of the appearance of Christ on earth could have been overlooked by everyone, just as it passed unnoticed, for example, by the inhabitants of Rome. Among these it was said, “Somewhere in a dingy side street lives a strange sect of horrid people, and among them lives a detestable spirit who calls himself Jesus of Nazareth and who preaches to the people, inciting them to all kinds of heinous deeds.” That is how much they knew of Christ in Rome at a certain period! You are perhaps also aware that it was the great Roman historian, Tacitus, who described Him in some such way about a hundred years after the events in Palestine.

Indeed, it is true, not everyone realized that something of the utmost importance had taken place, an event which, striking into the unearthly darkness as divine light, was capable of carrying human beings over Kali Yuga! The possibility for further evolution was given to humanity through the fact that there were certain souls who comprehended that moment in time, who knew what it meant that Christ had walked upon the earth.

If you were to imagine yourselves for a moment in that period, you could then easily say, “Yes, it was quite possible to live at that time and yet know nothing of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the physical plane! It was possible to dwell on earth without taking this most significant event into one's consciousness.” Might it not then also be possible today that something of infinite importance is taking place and that human beings are not taking it into their consciousness? Could it not be that something tremendously important is taking place in the world, taking place right now, of which our own contemporaries have no presentiment? This is indeed so. Something highly important is taking place that is perceptible, however, only to spiritual vision. There is much talk about periods of transition. We are indeed living in one, and it is a momentous one. What is important is that we are living just at the time when the Dark Age has run its course and a new epoch is just beginning, in which human beings will slowly and gradually develop new faculties and in which human souls will gradually undergo a change.

It is hardly to be wondered at that most human beings are in no way aware of this, considering that most human beings also failed to notice the occurrence of the Christ event at the beginning of our era. Kali Yuga came to an end in the year 1899; now we must adapt ourselves to a new age. What is beginning at this time will slowly prepare humanity for new soul faculties.

The first signs of these new soul faculties will begin to appear relatively soon now in isolated souls. They will become more clear in the middle of the fourth decade of this century, sometime between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will be especially significant. Faculties that now are quite unusual for human beings will then manifest themselves as natural abilities. At this time great changes will take place, and Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for the souls who are sojourning on earth and also for those who are no longer within the physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering entirely new faculties. Everything is changing, but the most significant event of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in the soul faculties of man.

Kali Yuga has run its course, and now human souls are beginning to develop new faculties, faculties that—because this is precisely the purpose of the age—will cause souls, seemingly out of themselves, to exhibit certain clairvoyant powers that were necessarily submerged in the unconscious during Kali Yuga. There will be a number of souls who will have the singular experience of having I-consciousness and at the same time the feeling of living in another world, essentially an entirely different world from the one of their ordinary consciousness. It will seem shadowy, a dim presentiment, as it were, as though one born blind were to have been operated on and had his sight restored. Through what we call esoteric training, these clairvoyant faculties will be acquired much more readily, but because humanity progresses they will appear, at least in rudimentary form, in the most elementary stages, in the natural course of human evolution.

It might easily happen in our epoch (indeed, more easily than has ever been the case before) that human beings would not be able to comprehend such an event that is of the utmost significance for humanity. It could be that they would fail to grasp that such a thing is an actual glimpse into the spiritual world, though still only shadowy and dim. There might, for example, be so much wickedness, such great materialism on earth that the majority of humanity would not show the slightest understanding but would consider those people who had this clairvoyance as fools and would clap them into insane asylums along with others whose souls develop in a muddled fashion. This epoch could pass by humanity without notice, as it were, although we are letting the call sound forth today, even as John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, and Christ Himself once let it resound: A new age is at hand, in which the souls of human beings must take a step upward into the kingdom of heaven!

It could easily happen that this great event might pass by without the understanding of human beings. If, then, in the years between 1930 and 1940, the materialists were to triumph and say, “Yes, there have indeed been a number of fools but no sign of the great happenings that were anticipated,” it would not disprove what we have said. If they were to triumph, however, and if humanity overlooked these events, it would be a great misfortune. Even if they were unable to perceive the great occurrence that can take place, it will nonetheless occur.

The event to which we refer is that human beings can acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric realm—a certain number of human beings to begin with, followed gradually by others, because humanity will have 2,500 years in which to evolve these faculties increasingly. Human beings must not miss the opportunity offered in this period. To let it pass unheeded would be a great misfortune, and humanity would then have to wait until later to make up the loss, in order ultimately to develop this faculty. This ability will enable human beings to see in their surroundings something of the etheric world, which up to now they have not normally been able to perceive. The human being now sees only man's physical body; then, however, he will be able to see the etheric body, at least as a shadowy image, and also to experience the relationship of all deeper events in the etheric. He will have pictures and premonitions of events in the spiritual world and will find that such events are carried out on the physical plane after three or four days. He will see certain things in etheric pictures and will know that tomorrow, or in a few days, this or that will take place.

Such transformations will come about in human soul faculties, resulting in what may be described as etheric vision. And Who is bound up with this fact? That being Whom we call the Christ, Who appeared on earth in the flesh at the beginning of our era. He will never come again in a physical body; that event was unique. The Christ will return, however, in an etheric form in the period of which we have been speaking. Then human beings will learn to perceive Christ, because through this etheric vision they will grow upward toward Him Who no longer descends as far as into a physical body but only into an etheric body. It will therefore be necessary for human beings to grow upward to a perception of Christ, for Christ spoke truly when He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” He is here; He is in our spiritual world and those who are especially blessed can perceive Him always in this spiritual-etheric world.

St. Paul was convinced through such perception in the event of Damascus. This same etheric vision will be cultivated as a natural faculty by individual persons. To experience an event of Damascus, a Paul event, will be an increasing possibility for human beings in the coming period.

We thus comprehend spiritual science in a completely different sense. We learn that it imposes a tremendous responsibility upon us, since it is a preparation for the concrete occurrence of the reappearance of Christ. Christ will reappear because human beings will be raising themselves toward Him in etheric vision. When we grasp this, spiritual science appears to us as the preparation of human beings for the return of Christ, so that they will not have the misfortune to overlook this great event but will be ripe to seize the great moment that we may describe as the second coming of Christ. Man will be capable of seeing etheric bodies, and among these etheric bodies he will also be able to see the etheric body of Christ; that is, he will grow into a world in which the Christ will be visible to his newly awakened faculties.

It will then no longer be necessary to prove the existence of Christ through all sorts of documents, because there will be eye-witnesses to the presence of the living Christ, those who will experience Him in His etheric body. Through this experience they will learn that this being is the same as the One Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era and that this is the Christ. Just as Paul was convinced near Damascus that this was the Christ, so there will be human beings who will be convinced through experiences in the etheric realm that Christ truly lives.

The greatest mystery of our time is this one concerning the second coming of Christ, and it takes on its true form in the way I have described. The materialistic mind, however, will in a certain way usurp this event. What has just been said, namely, that all genuine spiritual knowledge points to this time, will often be proclaimed in the coming years. The materialistic mind today corrupts everything, however, and so it will come about that this sort of mind will be unable to imagine that the souls of human beings must advance to etheric vision and with it to Christ in the etheric body.

The materialistic mind will conceive of this event as another descent of Christ into the flesh, as another physical incarnation. There will be a number of persons who in their colossal conceit will turn this to their own advantage by letting it be known among human beings that they are the reincarnated Christ. Accordingly, the coming period may bring us false Christs. Anthroposophists, however, should be people who will be so ripe for spiritual life that they will not confuse the second coming of Christ in a spiritual body, perceptible only to a higher vision, with such a reappearance in a physical body. That will be one of the direst temptations that will beset humanity. To help humanity overcome this temptation will be the task of those who learn through spiritual science to raise themselves to a comprehension of the spirit—of those who do not wish to drag the spirit down into matter but to ascend into the spiritual world themselves. It is in this way, therefore, that we must speak of the second coming of Christ and of the fact that we raise ourselves up to Christ in the spiritual world by acquiring etheric vision.

Christ is always present, but He is in the spiritual world; we can reach Him if we raise ourselves into that world. All anthroposophical teaching should be transformed in us into the strong wish to prevent humanity from letting this event pass by unnoticed but rather, in the time remaining at our disposal, gradually to educate a humanity that may be ripe to cultivate these new faculties and thereby to unite anew with the Christ. Otherwise, humanity would have to wait a long time for such an opportunity to be repeated—indeed, until another incarnation of the earth. If humanity were to ignore this event of the return of Christ, the vision of Christ in the etheric body would be limited to those who, through esoteric training, prove themselves to be ready to rise to such an experience. But the momentous event—the possibility that these faculties might be acquired by humanity in general and that this great event might, by means of these naturally developed faculties, be understood by all human beings—would be impossible for a long time to come.

We thus see that there is indeed something in our epoch that justifies the existence and the activity of spiritual science in the world. Its aim is not merely to satisfy theoretical needs or scientific curiosity. Spiritual science prepares human beings for this event, prepares them to relate themselves in the right way to their period and to see with the full clarity of understanding and cognition what is actually there but that may pass human beings by without being brought to fruition. This is its aim!

It will be of utmost importance to grasp this event of Christ's appearance, because other events will follow upon this. Just as other events preceded the Christ event in Palestine, so, after the period when Christ Himself will have become visible again to humanity in the etheric body, will those who previously foretold Him now become His successors. All those who prepared the way for Him will become recognizable in a new form to those who will have experienced the new Christ event. Those who once dwelt on earth as Moses, Abraham, and the prophets will again become recognizable to human beings. We shall realize that, even as Abraham preceded Christ, preparing His way, he has also assumed the mission of helping later with the work of Christ. The human being who is awake, who does not sleep through the greatest event of the near future, gradually enters into association with all those who, as patriarchs, preceded the Christ event; he unites with them. Then appears once more the great host of those toward whom we shall be able to raise ourselves. He who led humanity's descent into the physical plane appears again after Christ and leads man upward to unite him once more with the spiritual worlds.

Looking far back into human evolution, we see that there is a certain moment after which humanity may be said to be descending even further from its fellowship with the spiritual world and entering more and more into the material world. Although the following image has its material side, we may nevertheless use it here: man was at one time a companion of spiritual beings, his spirit dwelt within the spiritual world and, by reason of the fact that he dwelt in the spiritual world, he was a son of the gods. What constituted this constantly reincarnating soul, however, participated increasingly in the outer world. The son of the gods was then within man, who took delight in the daughters of the earth, that is, in those souls who had sympathy for the physical world. This, in turn, means that the human spirit, who had previously been permeated by divine spirituality, sank down into the physical world of the senses. He became the mate of the intellect, which is bound to the brain and which entangled him in the sense world. Now this spirit must find the path by which he descended and, climbing upward again, become once more the son of the gods. The son of man, which he has become, would perish here below in the physical world if he were not to ascend once more as son of man to the divine beings, to the light of the spiritual world, if he were not in the future to find delight in the daughters of the gods. It was necessary for the evolution of humanity that the sons of gods should unite with the daughters of men, with the souls that were fettered to the physical world, in order that, as son of man, the human being would learn to master the physical plane. It is necessary for the human being of the future, however, that, as the son of man, he shall find delight in the daughters of the gods, in the divine-spiritual light of wisdom with which he must unite himself in order to rise once again into the world of the gods.

The will shall be enkindled by divine wisdom, and the mightiest impulse toward this will arise when, for him who has prepared himself for it, the sublime etheric figure of Christ Jesus becomes perceptible. The second coming of Christ will be, for human beings who have developed clairvoyance naturally, the same as when the etheric Christ appeared to Paul as a spiritual being. He will appear once more to human beings, if they come to understand that these faculties that will arise through the evolution of the human soul are to be used for this purpose.

Let us use spiritual science so that it may serve not merely to satisfy our curiosity but in such a way that it will prepare us for the great tasks, the great missions of the human race for which we must grow ever more mature.

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Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions in Connection with the Preceding Lecture

When things are spoken of such as those we have discussed today, when we attempt to shed light upon the more intimate mysteries, let us not regard them thoughtlessly as one is likely to listen to certain things today, but let us be quite clear that anthroposophy should become for us something totally different from mere theory. Of course, the teaching must be there; how would one be able to rise to such thoughts as have been uttered here today if it were not possible to absorb them in the form of teaching? What is essential, however, is that it should not remain teaching but rather be remolded in our souls into traits of feeling (Gemuet) and character, into an entirely different disposition, and that it should thus make totally different human beings of us. It should guide us in making the right use of our incarnations, so that we may be able during their course to develop into something entirely different.

In trying to say not a word too much nor a word too little, I have not made more than fleeting reference to important subjects. What was said, however, is significant not only for those souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane in the period between 1930 and 1940 but also for those who will then be in the spiritual world, between death and a new birth. We must realize that souls in the spiritual world have an influence on the world of the living, though the latter may be quite unaware of it. Through the new Christ event, however, this relationship between those who are embodied here on the physical plane and those who are already in the spiritual world will become increasingly conscious. Cooperation between physically embodied human beings and spiritual beings will then be possible. This should already have been implied in our having visualised the reappearance of the prophets to human beings on earth.

Therefore, you must picture to yourselves that, when these great moments arrive in the future of humanity, human beings will work together with one another more consciously in the physical and in the spiritual worlds. Today this is not possible because of the lack of a common language. People here in the physical world use in their speech words descriptive only of physical things and physical conditions. Human beings between death and a new birth, however, live in a world quite different from the one immediately surrounding us, and they speak a different language. Of all that is spoken in our world, the dead can receive only what is spoken in spiritual science. Thus, in anthroposophy, we are concerned with something that will be increasingly intelligible to the dead. What we say in this province also benefits those who are between death and a new birth.

Humanity is ripening toward a time when the influences of the spiritual world will be felt ever more widely. The tremendous occurrences of the coming period will be discernible in all worlds. Even the human beings between death and a new birth will have new experiences in the other world as a result of the new Christ event in the etheric world. Unless they have prepared themselves on earth to do so, however, they will no more be able to understand these events than will the human beings now incarnated on earth; they must have prepared themselves rightly to receive the events of this important moment. It is essential for all the souls now incarnated (regardless of whether or not they will still be embodied then) that they shall have prepared themselves for these significant coming events by taking up anthroposophical truths. Should they fail to do this, they will have to wait. If they have not received with their earthly consciousness what anthroposophy or spiritual science has to give, they will have to wait until they are again incarnated to have the possibility of receiving corresponding teachings here on earth. There are things that can be learned or experienced only on earth. One could say, for example, that in the spiritual world it is impossible to gain any knowledge of death, and a God had to descend to the physical world to be able to die. One cannot in any other world learn what the Mystery of Golgotha actually is in the same way as here in the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world to acquire what can only be acquired here. Christ descended among human beings because only here in the physical world could He give evidence to them, by causing them to experience something in the Mystery of Golgotha, of what was to bear far-reaching fruit in the spiritual world. The seeds, however, must be sown here in the physical world.

At the General Meeting last year you heard a course of lectures on Anthroposophy. This year I shall deliver a series entitled, Psychosophy, from a similar point of view, and later on it will be necessary to give a third course on Pneumatosophy. In this way the three cycles will combine and form a bridge connecting the three worlds in which we live. This will close the circle that takes us in a roundabout way back to our starting point.¹

Psychosophy is intended as a study of the human soul starting with what it can itself experience here in the physical world, but then ascending to higher realms in order to show that the life we encounter and can observe in the physical world leads up to glimpses of a higher soul life, from which the light of theosophy will come to meet us, as it were. A variety of considerations will occupy us during these lectures. Beginning with apparently simple matters, we will ascend to a contemplation of those phenomena of the soul life that we call attention, memory, passions, emotions. We will consider the realms of the true, the good and. the beautiful. Then we will examine the phenomena that affect human life beneficially or harmfully, out of which arise actual causes of sickness that at the present time intervene and influence our soul lives. This will bring us to the point where the psychic element enters our physical life, our daily work. We shall have to study the interaction of bodily weal and woe, and the forms of the soul life. Our observations will lead us up to the high ideals of human society, and we will consider phenomena of our daily life, such as the origin of means for passing the time and how these, in turn, affect the soul life and reveal themselves in manifold concatenations. Then the curious effects of boredom and much else will be presented, as well as remedies for poor memory, lack of forceful thinking, and the like.

You will readily understand that a detailed exposition of the soul life calls for consideration of the adjacent realms. Theosophy, of course, has provided you with ready mental images for relating the soul life of man to other realms. You are familiar with the organization of the nature of man as body, soul, and spirit, from which it is natural to infer that the soul life comes in contact on the one side with the bodily life and on the other with the spiritual life. This is the step that leads up from anthroposophy to psychosophy, and at some future time we must ascend from psychosophy to pneumatosophy.

If we would study this soul life by itself, within its two boundaries, we must ask what it is. Well, all that we are accustomed to call the outer world, all that we see before and about us—animals, plants, minerals, clouds, rivers—whatever we encounter on the physical plane, we do not include in our soul life, no matter what mental pictures we may add to our perceptions.

A rose, when encountered on the physical plane, is not a part of our soul life, but when the rose gives us pleasure, when it stimulates something like gratification in our soul, this fact then pertains to our soul life. To meet a person and to form a conception of his hair, his expression, etc., is not a function of the soul life, but to take an interest in him, to feel love or antipathy for him, that is an experience of the soul. That is the way in which matters pertaining to the soul must be characterized.

Now let us turn to something different. Suppose we are watching a man carrying out some action that induces the feeling in us of a good deed, morally laudable. A psychic experience of that sort comprises something more. Here it is not a question of how the action arose, nor even of whether we were moved by love or hate in estimating it; we find something beyond what has thus far been characterized. As soon as we judge an act to be good or bad, higher interests play a part. When we call an act good, we know that it would be wrong for this quality to depend upon our verdict. We must dissociate our personality from the question of whether an act is good or bad. True, the verdict must arise in us, but independent of ourselves. Nothing in the outer world can tell us that the act is a good one; the verdict must come about within ourselves, but uninfluenced by love or hate. In all such inner experiences that nevertheless have a significance independent of our inner frame of mind, so that it is immaterial whether we pass judgment or not—in all such experiences the spirit plays a part in the human soul. Thus we have characterized the relation of the soul to the outer world by reviewing these three cases precisely from the outer world.

Summing up, first, we observe something as pertaining to the outer world: the rose. Second, we experience something in connection with it: pleasure. Third, something arises in us, but something that must be independent of us: judgment (good or evil). The outer world must reveal itself to the soul by way of the body. Soul experiences take place wholly within us, and the spirit declares itself within the soul. The point is to keep firmly in mind that the soul flows and ebbs in inner facts.

It now remains to find something through which the character of our soul life is brought to our consciousness from within as well. Thus far we have considered the soul life as it is bounded from without. Now we shall see how it can be characterized from within, disregarding what is adjacent, and clearly expressing in a conception what we mean by the pure soul principle. We must acquire a mental picture of the nature of the soul as it has its being on the physical plane.

The basic character of pure soul, of pure psychic experience, can be described in two ways. Speaking accurately in regard to earthly conditions, and indicating the inner phenomena of the soul life exactly as far as its boundaries, there are in the first instance two conceptions that we can apply to man's pure soul experiences and to nothing else. The inner phenomena of the soul life—its inner fluctuation—clearly indicate its boundaries, and the attributes of these boundaries must be mentioned. My next task will therefore be to characterize these inner phenomena of the soul life, and this, as I said, can be done in two ways. We will devote today's lecture to gathering conceptions, but never mind; it will greatly help us to understand phenomena that concern us intimately. It is a matter of gleaning hints that are extraordinarily important in connection with the soul life, whether healthy or diseased.

One conception by which the pure soul principle can be characterized is reasoning. Reasoning is one activity of the soul, and all remaining psychic experiences can be summed up in what we may call the inner experiences of love and hate.

Rightly understood, these two conceptions—reasoning, and love and hate—comprise the entire inner soul life. Everything else denotes something that derives from without through the body or from within through the spirit. We shall see how fruitful a careful study of the two psychic activities can become. Everything pertaining to the soul, then, is either reasoning or living in love and hate; at bottom these two conceptions are the only pure soul activities. Reasoning on the one hand, loving and hating on the other—these are the forces of the soul life exclusively pertaining to it.

If we are to understand each other aright with regard to these two basic forces of the soul, it behooves us to visualize clearly first, the significance of reasoning within the soul life, and then, the role played in the soul life by love and hate. I refer to reasoning not from the standpoint of logic, but of the activity comprising the inner soul process of reasoning; not judgment, but the activity, reasoning.

If you are led to concede that the rose is red, you have reasoned; the activity of reasoning is involved. If you are inwardly constrained to say that the rose is red, that man is good, the Sis-tine Madonna is beautiful, that steeple is high, you are dealing with activities of the inner soul life that we designate as reasoning.

Now, how about love and hate? A little introspection will show you that we do not pass by the outer world in such a way that our soul remains untouched by the majority of external phenomena. Passing through a landscape you see cloud-capped mountain peaks, and you experience joy in your soul. What underlies this is that you love what you experience through this landscape. Whatever exists of joy or horror in an experience, that is love or hate. If love or hate hides in many kinds of soul experiences, that is merely because these accompany us incessantly from morning to night. If you see someone committing an evil deed and are repelled by it, you have a hidden experience of hate, exactly as you have when you turn from a malodorous flower. Love and hate accompany the soul life continually and so does reasoning.

If we now observe an important concomitant of reasoning, we can learn to know the phenomena of the inner soul life better still. It is this, that all reasoning has an effect in the soul life, and this fact is the key to the soul life. By forming the judgment, “the rose is red,” “that man is good,” you retain a result in the soul. It can be characterized this way: When you have given the verdict, the inference is the conception, “the red rose,” “the good man.” The verdict “the rose is red” has been transformed into the conception “the red rose.” As a being endowed with soul, you then continue to live with this conception. Every judgment is a confluence of conceptions. Here we have, on the one hand the rose, on the other, red. These flow toward each other and combine in the conception “the red rose,” which you carry with you in your further soul life.

This may sound dry, but it is indispensable for an understanding of the soul life. Neither the soul life nor its relation to the higher planes could be accurately comprehended without the knowledge that judgments converge into visualizations.

Experiences of love and hate, on the other hand, do not give rise to the question of how do they converge, but rather as to where they arise. In the case of reasoning, the question is, Whither? and the answer is. Toward the conception. But with regard to love and hate the question is. Whence? We will always find one impulse in soul experiences themselves that gives rise to love and hate, an impulse that breaks into the soul life from another quarter, as it were. All love and hate can finally be traced back to what within the soul life we call desire. Entering from another direction and underlying love and hate, as these manifest themselves in the soul, desire can always be found streaming into our soul lives. Into one side of it flows desire, manifesting itself in love and hate. On the other side the activity of reasoning leads to visualization.

Desire is something you can easily recognize as arising naturally out of the inner soul life. The external cause of it may not at all be known to you, but you do know that it appears in your inner soul life, and that invariably love and hate result. In like manner you realize that your verdict “the rose is red” arises in the soul, but when this verdict has culminated in a visualization, the latter must have external validity. Reasoning takes place in the soul; it arises out of the inner life. We can put it this way: primarily, desire—for reasons not known to us today—manifests itself in the soul and expresses itself in love and hate. But in the same way—also for unknown reasons—the soul is impelled to permit judgment to enter from the wellspring of its own being, and provided the verdict has been arrived at in a certain way, the visualization must be valid for the outer world.

It will seem strange to you that I should be so prolix in expounding the elementary concepts of the soul life. You may think that these matters could be skipped over more rapidly, and indeed, they could, but just because these relationships remain largely unnoticed in scientific circles, error after error is committed. I will mention one prime error common today. By drawing far-reaching conclusions, those guilty of this error become entangled in misconceptions; they start from entirely false premises. In many books on physiology you can find the statement that the raising of a hand or leg is brought about by the fact that we have two kinds of nerves. Those that run from the sense organs to the brain or the spinal cord and that transmit messages to the brain, so to speak, are supposed to be contrasted with another set, called motor nerves, as against the sensory or perceptive nerves. According to this theory, when an object is seen, the message of the sense organ is first carried to the brain, where the stimulus thus exerted is supposed to stream out into a nerve that leads to a muscle, and only then does the impulse arise that entails motion. According to spiritual science, however, that is not the case. What is called the motor nerve does, in fact, exist as a physical unit, but it does not serve to instigate the motion. It serves only to enable us to perceive the motion ourselves, to check up on it, to bring our own movement to consciousness. Just as the optic nerve, through which we perceive an external event, is a sensory nerve, so the muscle nerve leading to the hand is also a sensory nerve, whose function is to keep track of the movement of our hand. This example of faulty scientific thinking is a prime error that has poisoned all physiology and psychology.

Our task is clearly to understand the role played by these two elements of the soul, reasoning, and love and hate. They play an enormous role, for the entire soul life runs its course in manifold combinations of these two elements. We should misconstrue this soul life, however, if we failed to allow for extraneous forces, not properly psychic, that constantly enter in across the border. The first example that occurs to us, to be met with everywhere in daily life, around which, indeed, our everyday soul life is built, is that of sense experiences. These are the various experiences brought about by the ear, the eye, the tongue, the nose, etc. What we experience through our sense organs we take into our soul, in a way, and there it lives on. With this in mind we can actually speak of our soul reaching as far as a certain boundary, which is the boundary of the sense organs. We have posted sentinels, as it were, at the boundaries of our soul life, and what these sentinels report of the outer world we take into our soul life and carry further.

We can now ask about those impressions in the soul that we experience through our sense organs. What is represented within the soul life by what we experience through the ear as tone, through the eye as color, through the nose as smell? Well, the study of these sense experiences is as a rule pursued in a lopsided manner. Science fails to face the fact that the processes taking place at the boundaries of the soul life are composed of two factors, two elements. One element is perception, our immediate experience of the outer world. You hold the tone, the color, the smell, and so forth—that is, the impression of these—only as long as you are in contact with the external stimulus. The impression, the interaction of inner and outer factors, ceases at once when you turn away, close your eyes, or the like.

What does that prove? If you consider the immediate perception in conjunction with the fact that later you know something (you know the tone, the color, etc.), it proves that you have retained something of your experience of the outer world, even though the experience has ceased. What does this imply? That something has completely entered your soul life. Something that has become part of your soul life must inevitably run its course there because you carry it with you. If it were part of the outer world you could not carry it with you. You can continue to hold the impression of color, the perception of the color impression, only if it has remained within your soul.

It is necessary to distinguish between a sense perception proper and what you continue to carry in the soul, what you detach from the outer world. The experience you thus derive from objects we will call perception, and what you continue to carry in the soul, sensation. As a foundation, then, for subsequent expositions, keep in mind the sharp distinction between sense perceptions and what we retain as sensation (sentience). The perception of color ceases when you turn away; the sensation of it remains. Ordinarily such fine distinctions are unnecessary, but for these four lectures they are apposite.

So we continue on our way, carrying these sensations about with us in our soul. We now ask if it could be that these sensations, derived from external objects, constitute a new element of the soul life, as opposed to reasoning and the phenomena of love and hate, which we termed the exclusive elements? If that were the case I should have been guilty of omitting to name something that also constitutes an inner experience, namely, sentience. But that is not the way matters stand; sentience is not a separate element of the soul life.

If you have sensed the color red, the color red is not an inner soul experience, for it is the object that is red. If “red” were an inner soul experience your whole color-perception of red would avail you nothing. The quality “red” did not originate in your soul life. What did arise there was the activity in which you engaged for the purpose of carrying away with you something of the red. What you did while confronting the rose, that is inner soul life. This activity of your inner soul is in reality nothing more than a fusion of what I have described to you as the two basic elements of the soul life.

But then we must consider the following. If what I have told you of the two elements is true—if love and hate, deriving from desire, and reasoning lead to visualization—then what was characterized as sentience would have to be related to those two elements in the case of a sense experience as well. A sense experience must be accompanied by love and hate, and reasoning. Imagine you have a sense experience of color, and observe closely what happens:

Desire and reasoning flow to the boundary of the outer world and become visualization of the material object.

Above the heavy line is the outer world, below it the world of the soul. The line is the boundary. When at this boundary an object makes an impression upon the sense organs and induces an experience—for instance, of color, this experience must be met by the result of love and hate and of reasoning, emanating from the soul as visualization. Nothing else can flow out of the soul.

Note, however, an important distinction that can exist between different kinds of desire, different kinds of reasoning. As an example, let us assume that while you are waiting for a train, day-dreaming, the visualization of a disagreeable past experience appears in your soul life, and side by side with this appears another, namely, everything unpleasant that has happened to you since then as a result of that experience. Then you can sense how these two visualizations combine into a more intensive visualization of that distressing event. During this process nothing related to it has occurred in the outer world. A judgment has been reached that remains wholly within psychic experience. Nevertheless, love and hate appeared in the soul life; they amalgamated with the visualization, as it were. As you sit there dreaming, your environment need show nothing of all this; your surroundings are of no consequence; yet something occurs. A visualization comes about through love and hate, and reasoning, without any stimulus from without.

That is quite a different thing from confronting a sense experience. When we perform such an inner act—let judgments arise, provoke love and hate—we remain within the sea of our soul life. But when a sense experience arises we must advance to the boundary of the outer world, and there it is as though the currents of the soul life were directly stopped by the outer world.

Whenever a sense experience is involved we are stopped by the outer world. Desire, love and hate, flash to the boundary; the capacity for judgment flows there too, and both are obstructed at that boundary. The result is that reasoning and desire are checked. They are there, but the soul does not perceive them, and the sense sensation is brought about by this flowing to the boundary and there being stopped. The sense sensation is nothing but a phenomenon of love, hate and reasoning that remains unconscious, though these are obstructed and held fast from without (cf. previous diagram).

We can put it this way. Ebbing and flowing in the sea of our soul life, psychically substantial, is what can be designated love and hate, and reasoning. This manifests itself in various ways.

When a judgment is reached within the soul itself, the soul is aware of the activity of reasoning as visualization.

When the soul directs the activity toward the outer world, it must stop at the boundary and it perceives the outer world: perception.

When, however, the soul directs the activity toward the outer world but stops before it is reached, sensation arises. Sensation is the confluence of desire and reasoning within the soul life.

If we consider what the soul life ordinarily comprises, we find that our inner experiences really consist, as a rule, of what we have carried away with us from sense experiences. A little introspection will convince you of this. If you want to create higher visualizations for yourself, you will notice how helpful it is for your inner soul life to try to substantialize what is not of the senses, to imagine it pictorially, to clothe it in a garb that is faintly a sensation of color or tone. Speech itself could teach us how extensive is the soul's need to express higher things in such a way as to symbolize them in sense sensations. As a rule, the symbol is a necessity, though people usually have no inkling of the fact, because in symbols the likeness is shadowy, nebulous.

Try, for a moment, to imagine something without the aid of a symbol—a triangle, for example; a triangle without color or any link with any sense sensation. Just try it, and you will see how difficult it is to visualize a triangle un-symbolized, that is, a visualization not associated with any sense picture. Most people are quite incapable of accomplishing this. Symbols alone provide the possibility of rising to higher visualizations. Even language is aided by symbolization. Observe how we are forced at every turn to symbolize speech. I said that a symbol must be verknüpft (linked) with the visualization of a triangle: what a crude conception, knüpfen!¹ Even words themselves disclose the prevalence of symbols, and we see to how great an extent the soul life consists of products of sensations.

We have just one conception that cannot be directly classed as an outer sense experience, although it keeps recurring as an inner soul experience and we must continually relate it to the outer sense experiences: the conception of the ego. If we face the purely psychic state of affairs, we must concede that man lives largely in a world of sense sensations. In this world the conception of the ego keeps bobbing up and crowding forward, but this ego is not always present as a conception. It would be foolish to assume that the ego conception could be present continually or for a prolonged period. Fancy what it would be like to keep saying to yourself, to keep visualizing incessantly, I, I, I ...! No, that is not what you do. You have other conceptions, such as red, blue, tone, large, small. Nevertheless you know that your visualizing occurs in your ego, that your ego must participate whenever a sense experience takes place. What we call soul experience is in a sense at the same time ego experience. You know that soul experiences—desire, reasoning, etc.—must always be opposed by the ego, but no matter how insistently visualizations are stimulated by the outer world, the conception of the ego can never possibly be created merely through the outer world. It does not enter from without. True, the ego sensation, the ego conception, invariably accompanies these sense conceptions that originate in the outer world, but it does not itself arise there. It emerges from the sea of the soul life and, as a visualization, joins the other visualizations, as it were.

Out of the sea of soul experience the other sense experiences emerge as well, but only when outer causes are in question. In this fact is to be seen primarily the sole difference between the ego sensation and sensations consequent upon sense perception. A significant phenomenon thus confronts us. In the midst of our soul life there appears a conception that joins the others coming from without. How is this to be explained?

Among present-day philosophers and psychologists, even outside the anthroposophical movement, there are some who point out the importance of the ego conception, but strangely enough these psychologists, no matter how well-meaning, invariably overshoot the mark. The French philosopher, Bergson, was one who emphasized the significance, the distinctive character, of the ego conception. From this the philosophers infer a permanence of this ego conception, or at least, that it points to something permanent, and they substantiate this view as follows. The ego differs from all other experiences of the senses and the soul by participating, as it were, in the other experiences and conceptions in such a way as to lend them their true form; ergo, it must be of a permanent nature.

Here, however, a grave error appears, and a certain objection that must be raised against Bergson's argument proves quite fatal for his inference. Let us assume that the ego conception yielded something that constitutes the soul within itself. The question would then necessarily arise as to what happens to this during sleep at night. The ego conception ceases entirely, of course, during sleep.

All these concepts concerning the participation of the ego in visualizations apply only to our waking life. They merely appear anew every morning. If the ego conception were to prove anything concerning the permanence of the ego, it would have to remain present during sleep. From the absence of the ego conception during the night it follows that after death it need not necessarily be present either. Thus there is no testimony available for the permanence and the immortality of the ego. It might be lacking, for it disappears every day.

Hence we must keep in mind that, on the one hand, the presence of the ego conception without external stimulus is significant, but that, on the other, this presence in no way proves the permanence of the ego, as the latter is away during sleep. In this way we have today reached an inference upon which we shall build further.

We have seen that two elements emerge from the surging sea of the soul life: reasoning, leading to visualization, and love and hate, deriving from desire. At the boundary of our soul life is the confluence, of which we are not aware, of desire and reasoning. An ego conception appears without external stimulus, but it shares its destiny with the other visualizations of the soul life; just as tone, color, and so forth, come and go, so does the ego conception emerge and disappear.

In the following lectures we will examine the connection of this ego conception, this soul center, with the other conceptions of the soul life—sensation, desire, reasoning, love and hate.

• 1. A transcription by Dr. Steiner of Goethe's youthful poem. The Wandering Jew, referred to by Frau Marie Steiner toward the end of her Preface, was recited at the beginning of this lecture, following a few explanatory remarks. The original is little known in Germany and entirely unfamiliar to American or English readers, and it is unthinkable that Dr. Steiner's transcription of it could have any meaning for those unacquainted with the original. The extraordinary experiment, however, is so fully explained in the course of the lecture that both the object and the method are wholly clear, even without a knowledge of the poem in either version. Since Frau Marie Steiner was herself in doubt about the advisability of having it appear in the published version of the cycle, she would surely approve of omitting it in the translation.
• 1. Knüpfen means literally to knot together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have been considering the whole law of evolution of the post-Atlantean humanity, and we have tried to understand why the founding of Christianity should have taken place just at a particular moment in this period of evolution. Yesterday at the close of our lecture, we observed that an understanding of important questions in the Gospel of St. John and in the whole of Christianity depends upon our keeping well in mind this evolutionary law in its esoteric, Christian sense. Only in this way shall we be able to gain a complete understanding of the meaning of the words “Holy Spirit,” “ Father and Mother of Jesus.” Above all we must remember that in the course of the last lectures, it was made clear that the post-Atlantean humanity falls into seven sub-divisions. It is, in fact, that humanity to which, strictly speaking, we, ourselves belong and which developed after the Atlantean Flood. I intentionally avoided the idea of “sub-races,” because the concept “race” does not fully coincide with the idea we are considering. What we are considering are cultural periods of development and what we still experience as racial laws in our present humanity is, in fact, an echo of the Atlantean evolution. The human evolution which preceded the Atlantean Flood, which took place for the most part upon a continent lying between present Europe and America, upon ancient Atlantis, can also be divided into seven successive groups. To these seven groups the expression “racial evolution” is applicable, for these seven successive stages of humanity upon ancient Atlantis differed widely from each other bodily, both internally and externally. We include in the external body also the inner configurations of brain, blood and other fluids. But it cannot be said that the earliest humanity of the post-Atlantean age, the Indian, differed sufficiently from ourselves for us to be able to employ the expression “race” for it. We must always hold fast to the continuity of Divine Wisdom, therefore it is often necessary to form a connection with this ancient concept of the race. Yet false ideas can very easily be created by this word “race” through our failing to see that the reason for the division of humanity of the present is something of a much more inner character than the idea usually attached to the word race. Race can no longer be used for the culture that will replace our own after the seventh subdivision, because then humanity will be divided according to quite different fundamental laws.

From this point of view we must consider the division of the post-Atlantean period into the following epochs: 1st the ancient Indian epoch; 2nd the ancient Persian; 3rd the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian; 4th the Greco-Latin; and 5th, the epoch in which we now live. Our epoch will be replaced by a 6th and that by a 7th evolutionary epoch. We are now in the 5th post-Atlantean cultural epoch and say to ourselves:—Christianity entered into human evolution in its full profundity and significance in the 4th epoch. It has had its influence on the humanity of the 5th epoch to a marked degree and we shall now forecast prophetically what its further effect will be, as far as this is possible out of Spiritual Wisdom. We indicated yesterday that the mission of Christianity was prepared in the 3rd epoch. The Egyptian civilization belongs to the 3rd epoch, and out of its womb the adherents of the Old Testament directed the development of Hebrew culture in such a way that Christianity was born, as it were, coming fully into the world in the 4th epoch, in the person of Christ Jesus. We may say that humanity experienced a certain spiritual influence in the 3rd epoch of the post-Atlantean age. This worked on into the 4th Epoch, concentrating in the person of Christ Jesus, then continued on into the 5th, our own, and from thence it will work on over into the 6th epoch which will follow ours. Now we must clearly understand how all this has occurred.

Let us call to mind that in the course of human evolution, the various constituent parts of the human being have experienced their own evolution. Let us recall how it was in the later Atlantean period. We have described how the ether head sank into the physical body and how at that time people developed the rudimentary capacity for saying “I AM” to themselves. When the Atlantean Flood occurred, the human physical body was permeated by the power of the “I AM;” this means that human progress had advanced far enough to have prepared the physical instrument for the ego or for self-consciousness. By this we understand quite clearly that if we were to go back into the middle of the Atlantean period, we should find no human being in the position to develop a self-consciousness in which it was possible for him to speak the words, “I am an I” or “I AM,” out of himself. That could only occur after that part of the ether head, of which we have spoken, has united with the physical part of the head. Up to the time of the submersion of Atlantis by the Flood, the human being had developed the rudiments of the physical brain, which was to become the bearer of this self-consciousness, and the germs of the other configurations of his physical body. Up to the time of the Atlantean Flood, the physical body was being made ready to be the bearer of the ego. We may ask: What was the mission of Atlantis? It was to implant the ego in the human being, to imprint it upon him, and this mission then reached out beyond the Flood—described as the Deluge—over into our age. In our post-Atlantean epoch, however, something else had to enter; gradually and by degrees, Manas or Spirit-Self had to enter into the human being. The influence of Manas or Spirit-Self begins with our post-Atlantean age. We know that after we have passed through various embodiments in our sixth or seventh epochs, Manas or Spirit-Self will have overshadowed us to a certain degree. But a longer preparation is needed for the human being to become a fit instrument for this Manas or Spirit-Self. Before that, he will first have to become a true bearer of the “I” or ego, even though it take thousands of years. He will not only have to make his physical body an instrument for the ego, but the other members of his being as well.

In the first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, the human being for the first time made his ether body into a bearer of the ego, just as he had previously done with his physical body. This was the ancient Indian civilization. In this epoch, the human being acquired the ability to develop not only a physical instrument for the ego, but also a fitting ether body. Therefore in the following table, the first epoch, the ancient Indian civilization is indicated as having an ether body.

If we now wish to consider the further evolution of these cultural epochs in relation to the human being, we must not, merely superficially, consider the soul as the astral body, but we must proceed more accurately and take as a basis the membering of the human being which you will find in my book “Theosophy.” You know that there we distinguish, in general, not only the seven human members, but the middle part we again divide into Soul Body, Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul—and then we have the higher members, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. Usually only seven members are to be distinguished. The fourth member which we summarize under the name “Ego,” we must again divide, because in human evolution it is thus divided. What was evolved during the ancient Persian period is the actual Astral or Soul Body. It is the bearer of the actual human active forces, therefore the transition from the Indian to the Persian periods consisted in passing over from a state of inactivity to one of activity in the material world.

The movement of the hands and everything that was connected with it, the transition from inactivity to physical work is what characterized this epoch. To a much greater degree than is supposed, the inhabitants of ancient India were disinclined to bestir the hands, but in contemplation were much more inclined to lift themselves above the material existence into higher worlds. They had to penetrate deeply into their inner being when they wished to call to memory those earlier states. Therefore the Indian Yoga, for example, consisted in general in giving special care and cultivation to the ether body.

Now let us proceed further. In the culture of the ancient Persian epoch, the ego had sunk into the Soul Body. In that of the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian epoch, the ego mounts into the Sentient Soul. You inquire, what is the Sentient Soul? It is the means by which the sensitory human being directs himself outwardly, whereby the perceiving human being by means of his eyes and other senses becomes aware of the ruling spirit in outer nature. Consequently in that epoch, the eyes were directed toward the material things spread out in space, toward the stars and their courses. What was spread out externally in space acted upon the Sentient Soul. In the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian period, very little existed as yet of what can be called an inner, personal and intellectual human culture. We of the present can no longer really imagine what constituted the Egyptian Wisdom of that epoch. It was, in fact, not at all a matter of thinking, a matter of speculation as was the case later on; but when the Egyptian turned his glance toward the outer world, he inwardly experienced the law which he read in the physical world with the physical senses. It was a reading of the laws, a science of perception, a science of feeling, not a science of concepts. If our scholars would only reflect—I am using a harsh expression—then all that has just been said would be pointed out to them, as it were, with fingers, with spiritual fingers. For if the Egyptian did not think with the true, inner forces of the intellect, that means nothing more nor less than that there could not have been, at that time, a real science of thought or of logic. It is true, there was none. History points out to you that the real founder of logic was Aristotle. If there had previously been a logic, a science of thought, it would have been possible to inscribe it in a book. A logic, which is in itself a process of reflection in the ego, in which ideas are united and separated within the ego, in which one forms judgments logically and does not gather them from the things themselves, first appeared in the fourth cultural epoch. Therefore we call this fourth epoch the epoch of the Intellectual Soul, and we ourselves are now in the epoch of the appearance of the ego in the Consciousness Soul. Humanity entered into this epoch about the middle of the Middle Ages, beginning with the 1oth, 11th, and 12th Centuries. It came as late as that. The ego first entered the Consciousness Soul about the middle of the Middle Ages.

This can be very easily proven historically, and light could be thrown into every corner were there time to point out much that might come into question. At that time a very definite concept was implanted in mankind, the concept of individual freedom, of individual ego-capacity. If you consider the early part of the Middle Ages, you will still find everywhere that the value of the individual, in a certain sense, depended upon his position in the community. A person inherited his standing, his rank and position from his father and his kinsmen, and in accordance with these impersonal things, which are not consciously connected with the ego, he acted and worked in the world. Only later, when commerce expanded and inventions and modern discoveries were made, did the ego-consciousness begin to extend itself, and we can see arising everywhere in the European world the external reflection of this Consciousness Soul in very definite forms of municipal government, municipal constitution, etc. From the history of this city of Hamburg, for example, it can easily be proven how these things have developed historically. What in the Middle Ages was called the “free city” is the external counterpart of this breathing of the ego-conscious soul through humanity. And if we now allow our glance to sweep into the future, we may say: We are now about to develop this personal consciousness within the Consciousness Soul. All the demands of the modern age are nothing but the demands of the Consciousness Soul which mankind is unconsciously expressing. But when we look still further into the future, we see spiritually something else. The human being then rises in the next cultural epoch, to Manas or Spirit-Self. That will be a time when men will possess a common Wisdom in a very much greater degree than at present; they will be, as it were, immersed in a common Wisdom. This will be the beginning of the feeling that the innermost kernel of the human being is at the same time the most universal. What is looked upon as the possession of the individual, in the present sense of the word, is not yet so on a higher plane. At present there is a notion, closely linked with the individuality, with the human personality, that human beings must contend with one another, must have different opinions. Men say: if we could not have different opinions we would not be independent human beings. Just because they wish to be independent, they must hold different opinions. That, however, is an inferior point of view. Men will be most peaceful and harmonious when they, as separate persons, become most individualized. As long as men are not yet fully overshadowed by Spirit-Self there will be opinions which differ from each other. These opinions are not yet experienced in the true, innermost part of their being. At present there are only a few forerunners of things experienced in the depths of the soul, and these are mathematical and geometrical truths. These cannot be put to the vote. If a million people were to say to you that 2x2=5 and you perceive in your inner being that it is 4, you know that this is true and that the others must be wrong. It is as though someone were to maintain that the sum of the three angles of a triangle does not amount to 18o degrees.

It will be Manas-Culture when more and more the sources of truth are experienced within the strengthened human individuality, within the human personality, and when, at the same time, there is an agreement between what different people experience as higher reality, just as now there is an agreement between what they experience as the truths of mathematics. Men agree upon these mathematical truths at present everywhere, because they are the most elementary truths. In respect of other truths, men contend not because there can be two different right opinions about the same subject, but because they have not yet reached the point of recognizing and fighting down the personal sympathy and antipathy that divides them. Were personal opinions still to come into consideration in simple mathematical truths, many housewives might then, perhaps, agree that 2x2=5 and not 4. For those who see more deeply into the nature of things, it is quite impossible to disagree about their higher nature; there is only one possibility for those who disagree: that of developing themselves to perceive more deeply. Then reality discovered in one soul will coincide exactly with that in another, and there will be no more strife. That is the guarantee for true peace and true brotherhood, because there is but one Reality and this Reality has something to do with the Spiritual Sun. Just think how orderly the plants grow; each plant grows toward the sun and there is only a single sun. When in the same way, in the course of the sixth cultural epoch, that Spirit-Self draws into human beings, a Spiritual Sun will actually be present, toward which all men will incline, and in which they will become harmonized. That is the great perspective which we have in prospect for the sixth epoch. Then in the seventh, Life-Spirit or Budhi will, in a certain way, enter into our evolution. This is the far distant future toward which we, only divining, can turn our glance.

But we now see clearly that an epoch will come, the sixth, which will be a very important one; important, because it will bring Peace and Brotherhood through a common Wisdom. Peace and Brotherhood, because not only will the Higher Self sink down into its lower form as Spirit-Self or Manas in certain chosen human beings, but also in that part of humanity passing through a normal evolution. A union of the human ego, as it has been gradually evolved with the higher, the unifying Ego, will then take place. We may call this a spiritual marriage and the union of the human ego with Manas or Spirit-Self was always so called in Esoteric Christianity. However, things of the world are bound closely together and men cannot stretch out their hands, as it were, and draw this Manas or Spirit-Self into themselves. They must reach a very much higher stage of evolution in order to be able to help themselves in respect of these things. In order that the human being in the post-Atlantean age may unite with the Higher Ego, men had to have help in their evolution. When something is to be accomplished, there must be a preparation. If a child is to develop into something special at fifteen years of age, something must be done to that end as early as his sixth or seventh year. Everywhere, evolution must prepare its impulses. What is to happen to mankind in the sixth epoch must be slowly and gradually prepared. The power and force of what is to take place within mankind in the sixth epoch has to come from without.

The first preparation was something still wholly external, operating from the spiritual world, something that had not yet descended into the physical world. That has been pointed out in the great mission of the Hebrew people. When Moses, an Initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, received those instructions from the Spiritual Guidance of the World which we were able to characterize with the words: “When thou speakest unto them of My laws, tell them that My Name is the ‘I AM,’” he was charged in these words: “Prepare them by pointing to the formless, invisible God. Point out that, while the Father-God is still active in the blood, the ‘I AM’ who is to descend even to the physical plane is prepared for those who can understand.” This was prepared, as it were, in the third cultural epoch. Out of the Hebrew people we see streaming forth the mission to deliver to humanity the God who then descended deeper into matter and appeared in the flesh. First He was prophesied, then later He appeared to the physical eyes in the flesh. Thus came to expression in the right sense what had been prepared by Moses.

Let us keep this point of time clearly in mind: the spiritual prophecy through Moses, and the conclusion of this prophecy in the appearance of the prophesied Messiah in the Christ. From this time onward—which we can designate as the first division in the history of Christianity—the real Impulse was implanted in human evolution for unity and brotherhood which will eventuate in the sixth epoch. It is like a force that, having sunk down deeply into an object, continues to be active there until gradually results emerge. In a similar way, this spiritual force has been active up to our present time which we must describe as an age in which humanity has wholly descended into matter with all its intellectual and spiritual powers. The question may be asked: Why did Christianity have to come to the world as a direct forerunner of the most deeply materialistic epoch?

Just imagine, for a moment, that humanity had entered into this most deeply materialistic age without Christianity. It would then have been impossible for it to find again the impulse upwards. Think away the Impulse that has been implanted in mankind through the Christ, then the whole of humanity would have had to fall into decadence, would have had to be bound forever to matter. As it is expressed in occultism, it would have been “seized by the force of gravity in matter” and would have been thrown out of its evolution. Thus we must imagine that in the post-Atlantean epoch, mankind made a movement downward into matter, and that before the lowest stage was reached, there came the other Impulse which impelled it again upward in the opposite direction. This was the Christ Impulse. Had the Christ Impulse been active earlier, humanity would never have come to a materialistic development at all. Had it fallen in the ancient Indian epoch, mankind would certainly have been permeated with the spiritual element of Christianity, but it would never have descended deeply enough into matter to have been able to produce all that we call today an outer physical culture. It may seem extraordinary to say that without Christianity there would never have been any railroads, any steamships etc., but for anyone who knows things in their relationship, it is a fact. Never would these means of culture have arisen out of the ancient Indian civilization. There exists a mysterious connection between Christianity and all that is today the so-called pride of mankind. Because Christianity waited until the right moment of time for its appearance, an external culture became possible, and because it entered just at the right moment, it became possible for those who unite themselves with the Christ Principle to be able to rise again out of materiality. However, since Christianity has been received without understanding, it has become very greatly materialized. Because it has been so greatly misunderstood, it has itself been materialistically interpreted. Thus, in a certain way, it is a very distorted, materialistic form which Christianity has assumed in the course of that period which we have just been following right up to our own times, and which we may designate as a second division of Christian history. Instead of the Last Supper, for example, being apprehended from its higher spiritual aspect, it has become materialized and has been represented as a transubstantiation of gross physical substance. And we could instance hundreds and hundreds of examples of the fact that Christianity as a spiritual phenomenon has not been understood.

We have now almost reached the moment when this second period ends, when men must of necessity form a connection with the spiritual aspect of Christianity, with what Christianity really should be, in order that its true spiritual content may be drawn forth. This will come about through the Anthroposophic deepening of Christianity. By applying Anthroposophy to Christianity, we are following the universal historic necessity of preparing the third Christian epoch which directs its life toward the in-streaming of Manas in the sixth epoch. That will be, as it were, the third chapter. The first chapter is the period of the prediction of Christianity up to the time of the appearance of Christ Jesus and a little beyond. The second chapter is the deepest possible immersion of the human spirit in matter and the materialization of Christianity itself. The third chapter will be a spiritual understanding of Christianity by means of a deepening of the soul through Anthroposophy. That such a document as the Gospel of St. John has not, up to our own age, been understood is due to our whole materialistic evolution. Such a materialistic culture as has gradually developed could not fully understand this Gospel. The spiritual culture which must begin with the Anthroposophic Movement will understand this document in its truly spiritual form and prepare what will then lead over into the sixth epoch.

For those who have attained a Christian or a Rosicrucian initiation—even for those who have attained any initiation whatsoever—an extraordinary phenomenon makes its appearance. Things which take place acquire for them a double meaning; one which is enacted in the outer physical world, another, by means of which things enacted in the physical world become indications of great, comprehensive spiritual happenings. You will, therefore, understand if I now attempt to describe somewhat the impressions of the writer of the Gospel of St. John on one particular occasion.

An extraordinary event took place during the life of Christ Jesus and this event occurred upon the physical plane. The one who is describing it, according to the Gospel, does so as an initiate. Accordingly, the event represents to him simultaneously the perceptions and the results that accrue during the process of initiation. Picture to yourselves the end of this act of initiation.

During three and a half time periods, which in ancient times, as we have already pointed out, were represented by three and a half days, the candidate for initiation lay in a lethargic sleep. Each day he experienced something different in respect of the spiritual world. On the first day he had definite experiences which presented to him events in the spiritual worlds; and on the two subsequent days he had still other experiences. Now in this particular passage of the Gospel, the person we are considering had shown to him what is always spiritually presented to the clairvoyant faculty, that is, the future of mankind. If we know the impulses of the future, we can then inject them into the present and thereby lead the present over into the future.

Picture to yourselves the seer of that age. He experienced the spiritual meaning of the first of the three chapters I have described from the time when the command resounded: “Say unto your people, I am the ‘I AM,’” to the descent of the Messiah. As second chapter he experienced the descent of the Christ into matter, and as third chapter he experienced how gradually mankind is being prepared to receive the Spirit or Spirit-Self (Manas) in the sixth epoch. He experienced all this in an astral prevision. He experienced the marriage of humanity with the Spirit. That is an important experience which mankind can only impress upon the outer world through Christ having entered into time, into history. Previously mankind had not lived in this kind of brotherliness, brought about by means of the spirit unfolding within the inner being, in which peace exists between man and man. Prior to this, there was only the love prepared physically through the tie of blood. This love develops gradually into a spiritual love which then descends upon earth. As final result of this third chapter of initiation, we may say that humanity celebrates its marriage with Spirit-Self or Manas. This can only happen when the time for it has arrived, when the time has matured for the full realization of the Christ Impulse. So long as the time has not yet come, so long will the relationship which is based upon the kinship of blood obtain, and so long will love be an un-spiritual form of love.

Wherever in ancient documents numbers are mentioned, the hidden aspect of numbers is meant. When we read, “On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,” every initiate knows that with this “third day,” something very special is meant. What is meant? The writer of the Gospel of St. John points out that it is not alone a matter of an actual experience, but that it is, at the same time, a great, an overpowering prophecy. This marriage expresses the great marriage of humanity which occurred on the third day of initiation. On the first day there occurred what took place in the transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch; on the second day, what took place in the transition from the fourth to the fifth epoch and on the third day what will occur when mankind passes over from the fifth to the sixth epoch. These are the three days of initiation. The Christ Impulse has been compelled to wait until the third epoch. Before that, the time had not come when it could operate. The Gospel of St. John points to a special relationship between “me and thee,” between “us two.” That is what is really said, not the absurd “Woman, what have I to do with thee.” When the Mother asks the Christ to make a sign, He answered: “My time is not yet come” to be active at marriages, that is, to bring people together. That time is yet to come. What is based upon the blood-bond still works on and will continue to be active; hence the reference to the relationship between mother and son at the Marriage of Cana.

When we consider the documents in this way, all that is really external stands out in bold relief against a significant spiritual background. We gaze into the abysmal depths of the spiritual life when we penetrate into what has been bestowed upon mankind by such an initiate as the writer of the Gospel of St. John, into what he was able to bestow upon it, because the Christ had implanted His Impulse within human evolution.

Therefore we have seen that these things must be explained by the astral reality which the initiate experiences, not by empty allegory or symbolism. We are not dealing with a symbolic interpretation only, but with the narration of the experiences of the initiate. If this were not so, then one might feel that those who stand outside are right when they say that Spiritual Science offers nothing but allegorical interpretations. If we apply to this passage the spiritual-scientific interpretation, as we now understand it, we learn how, through three cosmic days, the Christ Impulse works upon humanity, from the third cultural epoch over into the fourth, from the fourth to the fifth and from the fifth into the sixth. And viewing this evolution from the standpoint of the Gospel of St. John, we are now able to say: The Christ Impulse was so great that mankind of the present has understood but very little of it, and only in a later age will it be wholly comprehended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The connection between life and death is mostly misunderstood. In theosophical writings one often finds the remark that man's soul and spirit-being could completely disappear. It is stated, for example, that through a certain amount of evil with which the soul burdens itself the human soul could disappear in the course of evolution. It is further emphasized that black magicians who have wrought much evil will encounter this fate.

Those who have already shared in our aims for a longer period will know that I have always opposed such statements. Above all, we must hold fast to the fact that what we term death on the physical plane has no meaning in the super-sensible world. This is even the case for the region of the super-sensible that immediately borders upon our world. I will deal with this matter from a certain aspect.

The science that deals with the physical world has arrived at a number of laws and connections within the physical realm. These laws when applied to the outer phenomena of nature can only tell us something about the structure of external sense perceptible reality. A flower, for example, investigated by means of natural science, will tell us certain facts about the physical and chemical laws operating within the plant, but life itself always eludes such scientific observation. It is, of course, true that in recent times a few specially imaginative scientists have constructed a body of hypotheses to explain how plant life arises from mere dead substances. Such attempts are rapidly recognized as erroneous because in science it remains merely an ideal to grasp the reality of life. Ever more knowledge is accumulated about chemical laws and so forth, but nothing about life itself. The investigation of life is for the natural scientific method a mere ideal because it is something that streams out of the super-sensible realm into the physical world and within this world its laws cannot be fathomed.

Now, similarly, what is true for life in the physical world obtains for death in the super-sensible world, except that there it is a question of the will. In the super-sensible world an act of will, a will impulse, can never lead to what we know on earth as death. At most, a longing for death may arise in the super-sensible world but never death itself. Death does not exist in the realms beyond the physical. This fact is particularly moving for the human soul when it realizes that all the beings of the hierarchies can never know death. It can only be experienced on earth.

Just as the biblical saying is justified that tells that the angels conceal their countenances from beholding the mysteries of physical birth, so it is also correct to say that they hide their faces from beholding the mysteries of death. That being whom we know as the One Who has given the mightiest impulse to earth evolution, the Christ Being, is the only being in divine realms Who learned to know death. All other divine-spiritual beings do not know death. They only know it as a transformation from one form into another.

The Christ had to descend to the earth in order to experience death. Christ is the only being among all the super-sensible beings above man who has become acquainted with death through his own experiences. As I indicated, if one views the problem relating to the death experience in connection with the Christ, it is found to be deeply stirring.

Now it is literally true that man, when he has crossed the portal of death, lives in that super-sensible world in which there is no death. He can enter these realms but he cannot annihilate himself because he is received into worlds where there can be no destruction.

There is something of a similar nature to death in the super-sensible world, yet it is quite different from death as we know it. One would have to call it in human language, loneliness. Death can never mean the annihilation of something that takes place in the super-sensible worlds, but loneliness does arise. Loneliness in the super-sensible world is comparable to death here. It is not destruction but it is far more intense than loneliness as we know it on earth. It takes the form of looking back upon one's own being. One only knows what this fully means when it happens, that is, to know nothing except to know about oneself.

Let us take as an example a person who developed on earth what one may call little sympathy for his fellow men, a person who has lived essentially for himself. Such a being encounters difficulties after death, especially in getting to know other human souls. Such a person can live together with others in the super-sensible world without being in the least aware of their existence. He is filled only with his own soul content. He is aware only of what lives within himself.

It may happen that a person who has avoided any form of human love on earth because of an exaggerated sense of egoism is only able to live in the memory of his last earthly existence when he has gone through the gate of death. He is unable to gain any new experiences because he neither knows nor can enter into contact with any being. He is completely dependent on himself because as human beings on earth we do indeed prepare a particular world for ourselves after death.

Here on earth man does not truly know himself. Science teaches us only what we are when we are no longer because it only knows the corpse. The brain thinks but it cannot think itself. We see a portion of ourselves, a larger portion when we look in the mirror, but that is only the outer aspect. On earth man does not live in himself. He lives together with the surrounding world that impinges upon his senses. Through ourselves, through all that we experience here, we prepare to expand into the macrocosmos, to become a macrocosmos, to become all we see around us on earth.

Here we see the moon. After death we expand in such a way that we become the moon, just as on earth we are our brain. We expand into Saturn so that we become Saturn, just as we are now our spleen. Man becomes a macrocosmic being. When the soul has departed from the body it expands into the entirety of the planetary system so that all souls simultaneously dwell within the same spatial area. They interpenetrate one another but without being aware of it. Spiritual connections only determine whether we know about one another or not. A preparation is made during our life on earth to expand into the whole of the universe that we behold here in its physical reflection. But what in fact is our world?

Just as now we are surrounded by mountains, rivers, trees, animals and minerals, so then we live in the universe. The universe becomes our organism. These are our organs and that world is we, ourselves. We behold ourselves from the surroundings. This process begins in the ether body immediately after death. We then behold the tableau of our life.

If it were not for the fact that a man makes connections with other human beings and, as will happen more and more frequently through spiritual science, with beings of the higher hierarchies, he would have no occupation after death apart from continuously beholding himself. This is not meant trivially because it is truly a shattering fact that to behold only oneself through a number of centuries is not a particularly enviable prospect. We have then become a world for ourselves, but it is the connections that we have made on earth that open wider vistas for the self after death. Earthly life is there so that we develop connections and relationships that can be continued after death. Everything that makes us into sociable beings after death must be prepared on earth. Fear of loneliness is the torment that man experiences in the spiritual world. This fear befalls us again and again because we traverse a number of stages between death and rebirth. Even if we experience a measure of sociability at one stage, we may fall into loneliness during the next.

The first period after death is such that we can only establish a good connection with souls who have remained on the earth or with those who have died about the same time as ourselves. Here the closest connections continue to be effective beyond death. Much can be done by the so-called living who have remained on the earth. Because one has a connection with the departed soul he can inform him of his own knowledge of the spiritual world acquired on the earth. This is possible above all by reading to the dead.

We can perform the greatest service to a dead person by forming a picture of him in our soul and softly reading a work of spiritual science to him, instructing him as it were. We can also convey to the departed thoughts we have made our own, always vividly picturing the one who has passed on as we do so. We should not be miserly in this respect. This enables us to bridge the abyss that separates us from the dead. It is not only in extreme cases that we can help the dead in this way. No, it is true in every case. It provides a comforting feeling that can alleviate the sorrow that is experienced when a person whom one has loved passes on.

The deeper we enter into the super-sensible world, the less do particular relationships obtain. We still find individual relationships in the astral world but the higher we ascend, the more we find that what weaves between separate beings no longer continues. Now there are beings everywhere. The relationships among them are of a soul nature. We need these also in order not to be lonely. It is, however, the mission of the earth that we make contacts from man to man because otherwise we remain solitary in the spiritual world.

For the first phases after death our world consists of the relationships; the friendships that we formed with fellow human beings on earth and that now continue. For instance, if the matter is investigated with super-sensible perception, one finds the departed souls in the vicinity of a person whom it can follow on earth. Many people in our time live with those who have died recently or at some earlier period. One also sees how many come together with a number of their ancestors to whom they were related by blood. The seer often comes upon the fact that the departed soul links itself to ancestors that have died centuries ago but this only lasts for a certain period of time. The person would again feel exceedingly lonely if other connections did not exist which, though far off, yet prepare the person to be sociable in the spiritual world. Within our movement we have found a fundamental principle that stems from a cosmic task that has been entrusted to us. It is to form relationships among human beings in the most varied ways. Anthroposophy is therefore not only cultivated by giving lectures. Within the Anthroposophical Society we seek to bring people together so that personal relationships may also form themselves. These connections have their validity also for the super-sensible world inasmuch as a person who belongs to a particular stream in the Society creates connections for the realm beyond the physical.

The time comes, however, when more general connections are necessary. A phase approaches when souls who have gone through the gate of death without any moral soul disposition, without moral concepts, that is, souls who have rejected a moral disposition of soul during their earthly life, feel lonely. People who are endowed with a moral soul disposition are simply of greater value here on earth than people lacking in morality. A moral human being is of greater worth for the whole of humanity in the same way that a sound healthy stomach is more valuable to the whole man than a sick one.

It is not easy to put one's finger on where the value of the moral human being lies for the whole of humanity, and on the harm created by an immoral person, but you will understand what I mean when I put it as follows. A person devoid of a moral soul disposition is a sick member of humanity. This means that through this immoral soul disposition he alienates himself increasingly from other people. To be moral also means to acknowledge that one has a relationship to all men. That is why love of all humanity is self-evident to all men. That is why love of all humanity is self-evident to all moral people. Immoral people feel lonely at a certain phase after death owing to their lack of morality. The torments of loneliness at this stage can only be dispelled by the moral disposition of our soul.

So if we investigate the lives of human beings spread out in the macrocosmos after death, we see that the immoral individuals are in fact lonely while the moral individuals find a rapport with other of like moral ideas. Here on earth men are grouped in accordance with nationality or in some other way. Between death and rebirth people also group themselves, but according to the moral concepts and soul dispositions they have in common.

This is followed by a phase of development such that even those who are endowed with a moral disposition of soul feel lonely if they lack religious concepts. A religious turn of mind is the preparation for sociability at a particular stage of life between death and rebirth. Here we also discover that those people who are unable to enter into religious feelings and connections are condemned to loneliness. We find people of like religious confessions grouped together.

This is followed by a period when it is no longer sufficient to have lived within a religious community. A phase draws near when one can again feel loneliness. This period is a particularly important one between death and rebirth. Either we feel alone even though we experienced togetherness with those of like religious confession, or we are able to bring understanding to every human soul in its essential character. For this communion we can only prepare by gaining an understanding of all religious confessions.

Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha this was not necessary because the experiences in the spiritual world were different then. Now it has become essential, and the correct understanding of Christianity is a preparatory step toward it. We cannot encounter what constitutes the essential being of Christianity in other religious creeds. It is not correct to place Christianity next to other religious creeds. Indeed, perhaps certain Christian confessions are narrow-minded. Nevertheless, Christianity rightly understood bears within it the impulse to grasp all religious creeds and tendencies.

How has the Westerner grasped Christianity? Consider Hinduism. Only those belonging to the Hindu race can be adherents of it. If a racial religion were prevalent in Europe, for instance, we would still have a Wotan cult today that would be the equivalent of an occidental racial religion. But the West has accepted a confession that did not arise out of its own folk-substance. It came from the East. Something was accepted that could only work through its spiritual content. The Christ impulse cannot be sucked up into a racial or folk religion. Actually, the folk among whom the Christ appeared did not acknowledge Him. That is the remarkable fact about Christianity. It contains the seed enabling it to become the universal religion.

One need not take an intolerant attitude toward other religions. The mission of Christianity does not consist in bringing dogma to people. Naturally the Buddhist smiles at a confession that does not even contain the idea of reincarnation. Such a confession must appear to him as erroneous. Christianity rightly understood, however, presupposes that every man is a Christian in his inner being. If you go to a Hindu and say to him, “You are a Hindu and I am a Christian,” it will be seen that you have not understood Christianity. Christianity has been truly understood only if you say of the Hindu, “Inwardly this Hindu is as good a Christian as I am. He has as yet only had the opportunity to become acquainted with a preparatory confession. I must endeavor to show him where his religion and mine correspond.” The best thing would be for Christians to teach Hinduism to the Hindus and then attempt to take Hinduism a stage further so that the Hindu could gain a point of contact with the general stream of evolution. We understand Christianity only if we look upon each individual as a Christian in the depth of his heart. Only then is Christianity the religion that transcends race, color and social position. That is Christianity.

We enter a new age. Christianity can no longer work in the way it did over the last centuries. It is the task of anthroposophy to bring about the new understanding of Christianity that is needed. In this connection the anthroposophical view of the world is an instrument of Christianity. Among the religions of the earth, Christianity has appeared last. New religions cannot be founded anymore. Such foundations belong to the past. They followed one another and brought forth Christianity as the last flower. Today the task is to form and apply the impulse of Christianity. That is why in our spiritual scientific movement we endeavor to consider all the religions of the world more consciously than heretofore, and in loving participation. In this way we also prepare ourselves for the period between death and rebirth when we experience loneliness if we cannot perceive and have no access to other souls within this realm.

If on earth we misunderstood Hinduism, we might only sense the presence of a Hindu in the world beyond but remain unable to gain any contact with him.

You see, this is the phase during life between death and rebirth when we have also expanded our astral body so far as to become Sun inhabitants. We enter into the Sun realm. We do in fact expand into the entire macrocosmos, and reach the Sun Being when we need the capacity for brotherly love. The encounter with the Sun is shown by the following. Firstly, we lost the possibility of having understanding for all human beings unless we have gained a connection to the words, “Wherever two are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of them.” Christ did not mean wherever two Hindus or one Hindu and one Christian are gathered together, there He is in the midst of them, but wherever two are gathered who have a genuine understanding for His impulse, there He is in the midst of them.

This Being was within the Sun sphere until a particular period. His throne was also there. Then He united Himself with the earth. Therefore we must experience the Christ impulse here on earth and thus also carry it upwards into the spiritual world. For if we arrive in the Sun sphere without the Christ impulse we are faced with an unintelligible entry in the Akasha Chronicle. Since the Christ has united Himself with the earth, we have to gain an understanding on earth for the Christ. We have to bring a Christ understanding with us because otherwise the Christ cannot be found after death. As we approach the Sun sphere we understand the entry in the Akasha Chronicle if we have gained an understanding for the Christ on earth. For He left this behind in the Sun sphere. That is the important factor—that the understanding of the Christ must be stimulated on the earth. Then it also can be preserved in higher worlds. Things only become clear if they can be viewed in a certain configuration.

Some theosophical circles are unable to realize that the Christ impulse stands as a fulcrum at the center of earth evolution, the point from which the ascending curve begins. To maintain that Christ can appear repeatedly on earth is like saying that the beam of a balance must be supported at two points. But with such scales one cannot weigh. A conviction of this sort is as senseless in relation to the physical world as the statement made by certain occultists that Christ goes through repeated earth lives. One has gained an understanding of the Christ impulse only if one is able to grasp that the Christ is the only god who has gone through death and hence first had to descend to the earth.

For one who has gained an understanding of the Christ down here, the throne in the Sun will not be empty. This also enables him to recognize the nature of a particular encounter that occurs at this stage. The human being meets Lucifer, not as the tempter but as a legitimate power who has to travel by his side if he is to progress in his journey. Qualities of the same nature in the wrong sphere have a destructive effect. The workings of Lucifer in the physical world are evil, but after death, from the Sun sphere onwards, man needs Lucifer as a companion. He must meet Lucifer and Christ. Christ preserves his soul nature with the total assets that his soul has accumulated in previous incarnations. It is the task of the luciferic power to assist man so that he may also learn to apply the forces of the other hierarchical beings in the right manner for his next incarnation.

Irrespective of when the stage that has just been described occurs, man is faced with the necessity of determining what part of the globe and in which country he is to reincarnate. This has to be determined at the mid-point between death and rebirth. In fact, the first thing that must be determined is the location and the country where the soul is to reincarnate.

On earth man prepares for this stage inasmuch as he acquires a connection with the super-sensible world, but he needs Lucifer's support. He now receives from beings of the higher hierarchies forces that guide him to a certain place at a certain time.

Let us consider an outstanding example. Luther's appearance at a specific moment had to be prepared from the ninth century onward. Already at that time forces had to be directed in the appropriate people. Lucifer has to cooperate to this end so that the time and place of our reembodiment may be determined. Through the fact that an individual harbors Christ in his soul, what he has gained by dint of effort is preserved. But man is not yet sufficiently mature to know where his karma can best be worked out and for this, Lucifer's assistance is needed.

A further period of time elapses and then a major matter has to be decided that involves a deeply stirring activity. By means of our everyday language it can only be described as follows. The question now has to be resolved as to how the parents of the soul that is to incarnate at a certain time and place are to be endowed with their own characteristics so as to give birth to that particular being. All this has to be determined long in advance. But this means that the higher hierarchies, supported again by Lucifer, must work in a preparatory way through the whole genealogical stream long before the incarnation of the particular individual. In Luther's case his ancestors had to be determined as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries so that he might have the right parents.

Science believes that a person takes on the characteristics of his ancestors. Actually he influences the characteristics of his ancestors from the super-sensible world. In a certain sense we ourselves are responsible for the way our great-great-great-grandparents were. Obviously, we cannot influence all their characteristics and yet, among others, those must be present that we ourselves later require. What one inherits from one's ancestors one first has oneself instilled into them.

First the time and place of birth are determined; then the ancestry is chosen. Fundamentally, what is called a child's love for his parents is the emergence of a union with a stream in which he has worked for centuries from the super-sensible world. At the moment of conception the individual receives the forces that cooperate in the formation of his own body, namely, of the head and the general bodily form. We must so picture these forces that from then onwards they are mainly active in the deeper structure of the head, less in the hands and feet, less also in the trunk, but going from the head towards the trunk. We lay the foundation for this, and after birth we continue to shape it. First everything is woven into the astral body. The shape of the head is prefigured astrally. This goes so far that actually only at the final stage is the shape of the cranium incorporated into the astral prototype that then unites with the bodily formation. The shape of the head is individual, and the shape of the brain is chiseled out at the last stage. Then what we receive through the hereditary stream is able to unite with what we bring with us out of the super-sensible world. Picture what comes from the super-sensible world as the chalice. The water that fills it is provided by the hereditary substance. The pure stream of heredity provides only the characteristics of the part of our bodily constitution that is more independent from the system of blood and nerves. Whether we have big and strong or weak and fine bones depends more on heredity than on the forces we receive from the preparatory spiritual powers.

The individuality that is to be born at a particular time and place in order to work out his karma may be the child of parents with strong bones or blond hair, and so forth. This is made possible by the hereditary stream. If the theories of physical heredity were correct, men would appear with deformed nervous systems and a mere indication of hands and feet.

Only super-sensible insight is able to lead to matters that are truly meaningful. Let me relate an actual instance. I met a hydrocephalic child who was different in many respects from the rest of his family. Why was he a hydrocephalic? Because the council of higher powers together with Lucifer had decreed that that particular individuality should be born in a particular place and his parents were the best available for him. But he was unable to work rightly into the ancestral line so he could create what would result in the appropriate substance in order that his head might harden in the right way. Only during his lifetime would he be able to adapt his brain to its general structure. Such an individuality did not find the right conditions enabling him to influence his ancestry so that his head could harden in the appropriate way.

These matters are of considerable importance and also show the technique that has to be adopted in order to go out into the world at large. When the time comes in which such questions will be rightly understood by science, the workings of the higher worlds, also, will be felt.

If we continue our journey with Lucifer and Christ we acquire the right relationship to the progressive stream in evolution.

In conclusion, during life after death one first has to overcome the dangers of loneliness by means of one's relationships to other human beings, by means of moral and religious connections. Then one fashions the new man that is to incarnate in the future. One now has a task that involves facing oneself instead of facing the world.

If a human being goes through the stages during which he could have been sociable but was condemned to loneliness, a longing arises in him after death. He longs for a condition of unconsciousness. But consciousness is not lost; one merely becomes lonely. In the higher worlds matter no longer exists. Everything there is a question of consciousness. This is true of souls who lack a connection to other souls. Death does not exist in the world beyond.

As here we live rhythmically between waking and sleeping, so in the other world life alternates between withdrawal into ourselves and sociable intercourse with other souls. As I have described above, our life in the higher worlds depends on how we have prepared ourselves here on earth.

Dr. Steiner gave the following answer to the question of whether one also could read to children who have died at birth or in early childhood.

One is a child only here on earth. Supersensible vision frequently reveals that a person who dies at an early age is less childlike in the spiritual world than many who cross the portal of death at eighty. The same criterion therefore cannot be applied.

On a previous occasion I have spoken of how we are to understand occultly the painting known as “The School of Athens.” Recently I came to know an individuality who died an early death. My connection with him enabled me to become aware of Raphael's original intention in relation to this painting. This being explained that on the left near the group in the foreground a part had been painted over. It is the spot where something is being written down. Today we find there a mathematical formula. Originally there was a gospel passage. So you see that a “child” can be a highly evolved individuality able to guide one to things that can be discovered only with great difficulty.

I would say therefore that one also can practice reading to children who have died young.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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