The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We cannot fully estimate the nature of man's being, as it appears at present, without fixing our eyes on extended periods through which he has passed in the course of his evolution. This will become evident when considering the facts described by me during recent days. Our souls undergo repeated earth-lives that are always separated from one another by the life between death and a new birth. In this manner our souls have passed through the most manifold periods of human evolution. By reflecting on these things, we shall clearly recognize that the nature of the human being can be comprehended only when we consider extended periods during which our souls have repeatedly lived on earth.

These matters have been discussed by me in previous Kristiania (Oslo) lectures, dealing with the sequence of evolutionary epochs, such as those that preceded and those that followed the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I wish to discuss this subject from a particular standpoint.

Mankind has undergone great changes in the course of its evolution. This fact is not sufficiently appreciated. People know that a Greek period existed, an Egyptian period, and other earlier periods. But, although they are aware of evolving culture-impulses, they believe that human beings in regard to their soul-life were just the same (at least, in historic ages) as they are today. This is not true. At a certain stage we come to a stop in this historic retrospect. We come to a long pause leading to a period which present-day scientists are very fond of describing as that of man's supposedly ape-like ancestors.

Mankind's evolution, however, was not in the least as people now imagine it. In order to understand the changes it has undergone, let us envisage the relatively great dependency, existing in the present age during the human being's first years of life, of the spirit and soul organism on the physical-bodily one.

You need only to consider the stage of early childhood until the change of teeth, and the extensive transformation accompanying the change of teeth which must strike every unprejudiced observer. The child's entire soul-constitution becomes different. We then find another life period lasting until puberty. We all know that at this age the development of spirit and soul is dependent on the development of the body. And, if we observe these things without prejudice, we notice the same dependence of spirit and soul on the body also at a later age lasting until the twenties, although today, in the time of youth movements (this is not said in a critical sense) it is just the young people who do not like to emphasize this dependence. Naturally, they consider themselves, at sixteen or seventeen, fully developed young women and young men; and those vaunting unusual mental faculties write newspaper articles at twenty-one. These young people would thus like to hush up the fact that their spirit and soul is greatly dependent on their bodily organism. At any rate, the present-day human being becomes more or less independent of the body once he has reached a certain age. A man in his twenties is an adult who does not feel himself as dependent upon his body as would a child were it to pass in full consciousness through the stages between change of teeth and puberty.

There was still a feeling in comparatively recent ages that the human being matured gradually. It was then clearly realized that the so-called apprentice had to be treated differently from the journey-man; and a master's rank could not be attained until relatively late in life.

As regards present-day man, however, it can be asserted that after a certain age, his spirit and soul are no longer greatly dependent on his body. Of course, on reaching a venerable age, we notice a renewed dependence on our physical organism. When the legs become shaky, when the face becomes wrinkled, when the hair becomes grey, we cannot then deny the influence of the body. This, however, is not ascribed to a genuine parallelism of body and soul. People of today feel that, even though the bodily forces decline, soul and spirit remain, and must remain, more or less independent of the bodily-physical. Yet this was not always the case. If we go back to earlier epochs of mankind's evolution, we find the human being even in his old age remaining as intensely dependent on his body as does a child's soul today remain dependent on its body between the change of teeth and puberty. And if we are enabled—not by external history, but by spiritual science—to go back to the first period of evolution after the great Atlantean catastrophe which caused a new configuration of the earth's continents, we come to what I called in my Occult Science the primeval Indian epoch. The human being then felt himself, even after having reached his fifties, to be just as dependent on the physical as the child's soul is dependent on the change of teeth, and the youthful person's soul on puberty. This means: Just as we experience today during childhood the ascending line of growth, so ancient man experienced, in his fifties, the descending line within spirit and soul. Then things happened in such a way that a man, on reaching his fifties, matured inwardly just by becoming older, in a similar manner as modern man matures on attaining puberty. And at that time, seven or eight thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings eagerly looked forward, during their whole life, to this stage of existence. For everyone could say to himself: Something will be revealed to me out of my bodily constitution that I could not experience in younger years, before I became forty-nine or fifty. Naturally, such an idea is bound to shock modern men most profoundly. You only need to think of a present-day man who is absolutely sure of being a finished product after reaching the twenties. What could be said if he had to wait until the age of maturity revealed something to him which he could not know before, which he could not feel, and experience before!

In ancient India, however, man's bodily constitution enabled him to feel, already in his fifties, something like a gradual separation of the physical body from spirit and soul. He felt more and more how the physical approximated, as it were, the corpse-like. And he felt in this estrangement of the physical body, in this approach of the physical body to the earth-elements, a liberation of spirit and soul. By considering the body merely as a garment, he felt its relationship to the earth, to all that would belong to earth after death. It was less amazing to ancient than to modern men that the body had to be discarded, delivered to the earth-forces. For ancient man passed slowly and gradually through this process of discarding the body.

This sounds paradoxical, because it implies the terrifying conception of having a physical body that is slowly becoming a corpse. Ancient man, however, did not think of his body as a burdensome object passing, as it were, into a kind of putrefaction. Instead, he thought of it as an independent sheath or shell which, even though becoming earth-like, was yet full of life. Yet the physical body, at the age of fifty, assumed a sheath-like, shell-like character.

This gradual becoming similar to the earth taught ancient man something that can be known today only through abstract science. The inner nature of metals, for instance, became known to him. At the age of fifty, he was instinctively able to differentiate between copper, silver, and gold. He felt the resemblance of these metals to his own organism gradually turning to earth. A rock-crystal called forth in him other feelings than furrowed soil. By aging, man gained wisdom concerning terrestrial matters.

This fact influenced primeval civilization. The young, looking up to the old, said to themselves: These ancients are wise. Once I have become as old as they are, I shall also be wise. Such an attitude caused a profound veneration and a tremendous respect for old age.

In those ancient days of mankind's evolution (the epoch of primeval India), a lofty civilization, connected with a wondrous veneration, a wondrous respect for old age, existed in a certain part of the world (not in that part, however, inhabited by men with receding foreheads, such as are excavated today by anthropologists). And we must ask ourselves: How did it actually happen that men passed through these experiences?

It did happen, because primeval man lived less intensively in his physical body than we do. Today man crawls into the very core of his physical body, the experiences of which he shares. Thus he feels himself to be identical, at one with his physical body. And we must undergo a common destiny with whatever is felt to be at one with us. Because, in those ancient times, men felt themselves more self-dependent within the physical body; because their thinking was more imaginative; because their feeling was like an inward weaving and living in the world of reality—for all these reasons their physical body from the beginning seemed to them like a sheath in which they were encased. This sheath began to harden as life drew near its end. A man in his fifties could feel how the body developed increasingly in accord with the outer world, thus becoming a mediator that could instill in him wisdom concerning the outer world.

The situation changed when civilized mankind of those days passed into the next age, called by me in my Occult Science the primeval Persian. Then a man in his fifties could no longer experience this dependence of his physical body upon the earthly. Instead, the aging physical body exerted a different influence on those still in their forties, from the forty-second or forty-third year to the forty-ninth or fiftieth. During these years, they participated intensively in the change of seasons. They experienced spring, summer, autumn, winter within their body. As it were, their body began to bud and blossom during spring and summer, and went into decline during autumn and winter. Human life took part in the seasons, the changing air-currents ...

And this perception of the changing air-currents, the changing seasons, was connected with another thing. Man felt that his speech was being transformed into something no longer belonging essentially to him. Just as the primeval Indian felt that, once he had attained the fifties, his whole physical body did not really belong to him, but more or less to the earth, so the primeval Persian felt that the body, by producing speech, belonged to the people around him. At fifty, a member of primeval Indian culture no longer said: I am walking. If expressing his own feelings, he would say: My body is walking. He did not say: I enter through the door; but instead: My body carries me through the door. For he experienced his body as something related to the outer world, to the earth. And, five or six millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, a member of the Persian civilization felt that speech came forth by itself, that he had it in common with his whole surroundings. At that time, people all over the world did not live in such an international way as today, but as members of definite folk communities. They felt how speech became alienated from them; how, if expressing their real feelings, they could say: “It is speaking within me.”

It was really the case that people after attaining the forties expressed the following in a certain, very respectful sense: Divine-spiritual forces are speaking through me. And the human being also felt as if his breath did not belong to him any longer, but was dedicated to the surrounding world.

On reaching his late thirties, a member of the Egypto-Chaldaean culture—which lasted from the third or fourth millennium until the eighth or ninth pre-Christian century—had a similar feeling with regard to his thoughts, his mental images. The Egyptian or Chaldaean felt in his thirty-fifth year as if his mental images were connected with heavenly forces, the course of the stars.

As the primeval Indian, at the end of his life, felt the connection of his body with the earth, as the primeval Persian felt the connection of his speech, his breath, with the seasons and the surrounding world, so a member of ancient Egyptian, of ancient Chaldaean culture felt that his thoughts were directed by the course of the stars. And he felt how divine star-powers were interwoven with his thoughts.

In Egypto-Chaldaean culture, the human being felt this dependence of his thoughts upon heavenly powers until his forty-second or forty-third year. Subsequently no new element entered into human development. The primeval Persian, too, felt as if his thoughts had been given to him by the stars; but he attained, moreover, in his forties the relationship to speech that I have described. Likewise, the primeval Indian, from his thirty-fifth year, possessed this relationship to the star-powers. Therefore he considered astrology as something self-evident. In his forties, he also attained the dependence of speech upon his surroundings. In his fifties, moreover, he experienced how his physical body became objective, became shadow-like. He accustomed himself, as it were, to the dying, because dying had approached him already in his fifties. The soul was less firmly joined to the body. Hence outer conditions could bring forth these bodily changes. This fact was perceived by the soul, experienced by the soul. And thereby man, as he grew older, merged himself more and more with the world.

Then came the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted from the eighth pre-Christian century until the fifteenth post-Christian century, for until then, the echo of Graeco-Latin culture still resounded in all civilized countries. This marked the age when man felt himself until his thirties still dependent upon his physical body, but no longer dependent on the stars, the seasons, the earth. He felt himself firmly entrenched within his physical body. The Greek felt a concord, a harmony between the soul and spirit element and the bodily-physical. Only this bodily-physical element no longer separated itself from him. This is all very difficult to express, for we are prevented, by the customary and totally inadequate historical teaching given to us in school, from forming a conception of these changes in mankind's evolution.

There then came the time when the human being became connected with his physical body in such a way that his physical body was committed no longer to participate in the course of the universe directed by spiritual laws. Now man was completely bound to his physical body. Mankind did not reach this stage until the eighth pre-Christian century.

Thus a great transformation of mankind's whole evolution occurred in as far as it concerned civilized mankind. Although the human being on reaching the thirties felt himself still at one with his physical body, he no longer was separated from it. He felt himself united with his physical body. It could no longer unveil to him the world's mysteries. During this period, therefore, mankind attained an entirely new relation to death. At an earlier time, when the human being prepared himself for dying, as it were, by undergoing a separation from his physical body, this dying signified for him nothing but a transformation in the midst of life; for, in his fifties, he became familiar gradually with the process of dying. He experienced dying as a process which merged him, in a wisdom-filled and blissful way, with the universe. He experienced death as something guiding him into a world in which he had already lived during his earth-life. Death at that time was something entirely different from what it became later. It might be said: More and more the human being was confronted by the possibility that soul and spirit might participate in death.

Let us compare Hellenism with the primeval Indian epoch. In primeval India, the body gained independence. The individual was aware of being something else besides his body which became independent and sheath-like. He could not have possibly conceived the thought that death might be the end. Such a thought did not exist among human beings of the primeval Indian period. Only by degrees, and most decisively in the eighth pre-Christian century, did man say to himself (still out of an unconscious feeling, because he was unable to think about these things in a rationalistic way): My body dies; but, with regard to soul and spirit, I am at one with my body. No longer did he notice the difference between the bodily and the spirit and soul element.

The human being became dominated by a thought that terrified him when it first arose out of dark spiritual depths in the ninth or eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was the thought: Might not my soul pursue the same path as my body—die, as my body dies?

This thought which in the primeval Indian epoch would have been totally inconceivable now came more and more to the fore. Out of this mood emerged words like those famous ones of the Greek hero: Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

This was the time when mankind nurtured a mood that grew in the right way towards the Mystery of Golgotha. For, what brought forth in ancient human beings the ability to preserve a freshness of soul which made it impossible for them to conceive that the soul might take the same path of death as the body?

This freshness of soul, this independence of soul with regard to feeling, was given to ancient man by this knowledge: I have had a life—for he could look into this life—which was pre-earthly; through it I passed with my soul and spirit before I descended to the physical world. While dwelling in this higher world, I was united with the exalted Sun-Being.

The ancient Mysteries had evolved a teaching which pointed out that man, in his pre-earthly existence, was united with the spirit of the sun, just as in earth-life his body is united with the physical light of the sun.

The teachers in the ancient Mysteries told the following to their pupils who, in their turn, told it again to others (they did not designate the exalted Sun-Being as the Christ, but He was the Christ, and we may therefore be permitted today to use this name): The Christ is a Being Who shall never descend to the earth. You, however, dwelt in your pre-earthly existence, before descending to earth, within spiritual worlds in communion with the Christ. And the force of the Christ has given you the faculty of making your soul independent of the body.

This instinctive memory of a pre-earthly existence was lost through the soul's increasing identification with its physical body. And, in the Greek epoch, earthly man could employ his instinctive consciousness-forces only by looking at physical life. The Greek was able to live such a harmonious earth-life, because his outlook into the divine worlds of the spirit had faded away. He was so successful in subduing the sensible-physical that the spiritual vanished more or less from his life's horizon. No longer did civilized men have a consciousness of the fact that before descending to earth, they dwelt in the presence of the exalted Sun-Being Who was later called the Christ. Now darkness encompassed those who looked at pre-earthly, prenatal existence. And thus arose the mystery of death.

What happened henceforth must be envisaged as something concerning not only mankind but also the gods. The divine-spiritual powers who sent the human being down to earth gave him the impulses towards the development that I have just described. Since his spirit and soul became increasingly merged with the physical body; since, as it were, his spirit and soul became identical with the physical, and since, therefore, the mystery of death confronted also the spirit and soul, the divine-spiritual powers who had sent the human being down to earth were threatened with the danger that he might be lost to the gods, that his soul, as well as his body, might die.

Yet man would never have become a free, independent being, had he not grown into his body during this epoch. Man could only become free in evolution if his view of the pre-earthly was dimmed. He was obliged to stand on earth—totally forsaken, as it were—within his physical body's abode. Thus his independent ego could radiate and gleam up.

For this shining forth of the independent ego can be best accomplished by the human being entering completely into his physical body. When man grows upward into the worlds of spirit and soul, his ego retreats; he is being merged with the objective element of spirit and soul. Man could become a free ego-being only if given the impulse by the gods to merge himself more and more with his physical body. He was thus, however, confronted by the mystery of death; for the physical body was bound to be claimed by death.

Now, if man's vision had not been awakened in another way, all of mankind on earth would have become more and more convinced that the soul and physical body were both dying together. And, if nothing else had happened; if history had continued its course in a straight line, all of us today would have come to the common conviction that the soul as well as the body are doomed to be laid in the grave.

At this point, the divine-spiritual powers decided to send down on earth the exalted Sun-Being, the Christ, in order that men, who no longer had any knowledge of their communion with the Christ during pre-earthly existence, could gain consciousness of their communion with the Christ after He had descended on earth and had shared on Golgotha and in Palestine their human destiny in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The God descended into the earthly world at the moment of mankind's world historic evolution when men had lost their feeling of communion with the Sun-Being beyond the earthly world.

Why did the Christ come down on earth? Because human beings, having fought their way to the attainment of complete ego-consciousness, needed Him on earth. Men had to experience the presence of a victor, who could die and resurrect himself—be the vanquisher of death.

In the course of history, this mystery had to be set before mankind at a time when man, no longer able to look back into pre-earthly existence, was granted a view of his communion with the giver of man's immortality, with the Christ. It is a divine event, and not merely for mankind, that the Christ was sent down on earth from higher worlds. For the human race would have fallen away from the gods, had they not sent down upon earth the loftiest among them, in order that He undergo a human destiny, a human existence, thus interweaving a divine event with earthly-human events and mankind's entire world evolution.

The Mystery of Golgotha cannot be comprehended unless we regard it not only as a human event, but also as a divine event. The fact must be grasped that something which could be envisaged previously only in the divine worlds could now be envisaged in the earthly world.

Possibly you might raise the objection: Not all men have become followers of the Christ; many do not believe in the Christ. Must all these have the opinion that at death their soul would be laid in the grave with the body?

This, however, is not the way in which the Mystery of Golgotha may be interpreted. It is valid through all the centuries preceding ours that the Christ, in His infinite compassion overflowing with grace, died not only for His immediate followers, but for all men in all ages, everywhere on earth.

All men on earth have been redeemed from the riddle of death by the Christ. At first, this deed did not touch human consciousness. It is natural, however, that some men were found who could consciously grasp the grandeur and significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet the Christ did die and did rise as much for the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus as for the Christians.

Just because since the fifteenth century human evolution must increasingly regard intellectualism as its highest soul-force, and just because this intellectual impulse will become more and more powerful in the future, have we approached an epoch when it is incumbent upon the earth's entire population to grasp, with its ever growing consciousness, what was brought forth by the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus it will become necessary that the Mystery of Golgotha be penetrated by a knowledge that can be really understood by all men on earth.

In preceding centuries, Christianity developed in a way that still conformed to the peculiarities of ancient ethnic religions. Christian development had not yet attained universality. The Christian missionaries who went among the followers of other religions found little or no understanding, because the Christ was presented as a separate god who had the same qualities as those possessed by the ancient heathen folk deities. This was the manner in which Christianity had been disseminated. Why had Constantine, why Chlodvig, accepted Christianity?—Because they believed that the Christian god would be a more powerful helper than their former gods. They exchanged, as it were, their former gods for the Christian god. Hence the Christ had to take on many qualities of the ancient folk deities. These qualities have adhered to the Christ through the centuries.

In this way, however, Christianity could not become a universal religion. On the contrary, it had to retreat more and more before intellectualism. And we have seen, particularly in the nineteenth century, many a theological development which understood nothing whatsoever of the Christ-event in its super-sensible aspect. Here the desire was to speak only of Jesus, the man, although conceding that as man he towered above all other men. Yet, henceforth, the desire was only to speak of Jesus, the man, and not of Christ, the God.

We must, nevertheless, be able to speak again of Christ, the God, because this Christ, while undergoing His destiny through the Mystery of Golgotha, manifested to men on earth what He had formerly signified to them, before they had descended to earth from the high heavens.

Hence, we must state that the ancient folk religions were primarily local religions. People prayed to the god of Thebes, to the god on Mount Olympus. They were local deities who could be worshipped only in near-by places. Thus, from the beginning, these ancient faiths were bound to certain territories.

Later the local gods, who had their abode in a definite spot, were replaced by gods bound to the personalities of single men, of the guiding folk heroes. Yet a people's god was either a still living folk hero or his surviving soul, the ancestral folk soul. All religious faiths had a restricted character.

With Christianity, however, there appeared a world religion which bestowed a spiritual element upon the whole earth, just as the sun bestows a physical element upon the whole earth. The climate in the vicinity of Mount Olympus is different from the climate in the vicinity of Thebes; the latter, in its turn, is different from the climate in the vicinity of Bombay. If a religious faith nestles close to a locality, it cannot spread beyond this locality. The sun, however, sheds its light on all the earth's localities, shines upon all men as the same sun.

When, however, the human form was taken on by that God Whose physical reflection shone forth in the sun's radiance, then the human race received a God who could be accepted as God by all men on earth. If the possibility is found of penetrating the being of this Christ-Divinity, we shall be able to represent Him as the God acceptable to all mankind. Today we stand only at the beginning of anthroposophical teachings. As it were, we are still stammering the language of Anthroposophy. Yet Anthroposophy will continue to develop more and more. And a part of this development will consist in its capability of finding words to describe the Mystery of Golgotha—words of a kind that spiritual science can bring to the Hindus, the Chinese, to all men on earth; and which will elucidate the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that the Hindus, the Chinese, the Japanese will be unable to reject what is told them concerning the Mystery of Golgotha.

For this purpose, we must attach a genuinely serious significance to all that represents Christian tradition. Throughout the centuries, people have subjected themselves more or less to the words of the Gospels. They have studied these Gospels in a way commensurate with their understanding of these ancient books. We have certainly no intention of speaking against the validity of the Gospels. Our cycles on each of the Gospels attempt to penetrate, by means of special anthroposophical interpretation, into the deeper meaning of these Gospels. Yet one thing must be said: Why is the passage at the end of one Gospel taken so lightly? There it is written: 1 have still many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. And why are the words of another Gospel not taken more seriously: And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles? For the Christ spoke the full truth. He could have said to men other things than those recorded in the Gospels. Only those Christ-words are recorded in the Gospels, for the understanding of which the men of that epoch—few in number—were ready. But mankind must become more and more mature in the course of earthly evolution. From the Mystery of Golgotha on, the Christ dwelt among men as the Living Christ, and not as the dead Christ. And He is still present among us. If we learn to speak His language, we shall recognize His presence; we shall recognize the truth of His words: And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles. And the anthroposophical world view desires to speak His language, His spiritual language. The anthroposophical world view desires to speak in such a way of nature, of all the beings on earth, of the starry sky and the sun that, by means of this language, the Mystery of Golgotha may be understood; that the Christ may be experienced as the One Who is ever present.

And, also after the Mystery of Golgotha, we may regard as Christ-words all that we have gained from the spiritual world; aided by that power which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, descended from heaven to earth. If as men we speak of the spiritual worlds, we may make true the word of St. Paul: Not I, but the Christ in me. For today we have entered an age in which we cannot even emulate the Greeks who, although feeling themselves still at one with their physical body, yet felt this physical body as something harmonious and independent. Today we penetrate at a still earlier age than the Greeks into that which underlies our physical body, thus separating ourselves from the spiritual around us. We can deepen our being only by seeking the union with the God Who descended from heaven to earth. And we can feel ourselves united only with that God Who entered the earthly sphere, because men on earth could no longer enter the heavenly sphere with their immediate and ordinary consciousness. By finding the Christ, we also find anew the approach to the super-sensible world; not now, however, by means of the physical body (this was the case in ancient times), but by means of heightened soul-power. And today, when the parallelism between the development of body and soul lasts only up to the age of twenty (later on it will last a still shorter period), this heightened soul-power can be attained alone by immersing ourselves, in the midst of the sensible events of earthly evolution, into the knowledge of a super-sensible event: the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything on earth took place in a sensible way. Only in the Mystery of Golgotha something super-sensible mingled with earthly events. And this can be understood only out of a super-sensible knowledge.

Hence the union with the Christ awakens in our human souls the powerful faculty of attaining a relationship to the super-sensible world—a relationship formerly attained by human beings through being connected with their physical body in such a way that the body could become sheath-like. Thus, feeling the approach of death before physical death occurred, they merged themselves with the spirit prevailing in their surroundings.

We must attain by means of the soul what could be attained, in earlier days, through the mediation of the body. For, although we admire in the highest degree what has been preserved of Indian writings—which did not originate, however, from the earliest primeval Indian epoch, but from a later period—although we admire what has been bequeathed to us through the glory of the Vedas, the grandeur of the Vedanta-philosophy, the radiant splendor of the Bhagavad-Gita, we must, nevertheless, recognize the fact that this could be attained in ancient times only because the body reflected to the human being, as he grew older, a certain spirituality. Ancient man was compensated for the waning of his physical existence, which set in after the thirty-fifth year, by having, as it were, the spirit pressing out of his body, as the latter became hard, withered and wrinkled. And this spirit was perceived by the human being. The great philosophical poems of ancient times were not composed by youths, but by patriarchs who had acquired wisdom. It resulted from what was given by the body. In the present stage of human evolution, which differs from the ancient ones, we must receive from the soul, as it grows more powerful, what was formerly contributed by the body. Our body becomes old. We must remain united with it. We cannot let the spirit emerge from this body, because we have utilized it since early childhood.

If we did not do this, we could never be free men. This must be accepted as our rightful earthly destiny. One fact, however, must be made clear to us: Our soul has to gain strength. Since the spiritual strength formerly corresponding to the waning body flows to us no longer we must attain it by strengthening our soul through our own effort. And we shall experience this strengthening of the soul by looking, in a genuine and living way, toward a great and powerful event: The divine event that took place as the Mystery of Golgotha in the midst of earthly life. In beholding the Mystery of Golgotha and becoming conscious that its after-effect is still dwelling among us, is still existing in the spiritual-super-sensible sphere, our spirit and soul become strengthened and approach the spiritual world anew.

The Christ has descended to earth in order that men, who no longer see Him in heaven by means of their memory, may be permitted to see Him on earth. Seen from today's viewpoint, this is what rightly places the Mystery of Golgotha before our spiritual eye.

The disciples, who had preserved a remnant of ancient clairvoyance, could still have the Christ as their teacher when He dwelt among them after the resurrection in the spiritual body.

Yet this power gradually fell away from them. And its complete disappearance is symbolically represented through the Festival of the Ascension.

The disciples sank into profound sadness, because they were forced to believe that the Christ was no longer among them. They had taken part in the event of Golgotha. Now, however, they had to believe that the Christ had moved away from their consciousness, that the Christ was no longer on earth. Thus they were plunged into deep sorrow, for they had seen the Christ-figure disappear in the clouds, that is, move away from their consciousness.

But every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never born out of joy. True, profound knowledge is born out of suffering. And out of the suffering, which encompassed the disciples of the Christ at the Festival of the Ascension, out of this deep soul-anguish arose the Mystery of Pentecost. The disciples could no longer view the Christ by means of their outer, instinctive clairvoyance. But the force of the Christ unfolded within them. The Christ had sent to them the spirit enabling their soul to experience the Christ-existence in their innermost depths.

This experience gave meaning to the first Festival of Pentecost occurring in human evolution. The Christ, Who had disappeared from the outer, clairvoyant view still clinging to the disciples as a heritage of ancient evolutionary periods, appeared at Pentecost within the disciples' inner experience. The fiery tongues signify nothing but the arising of the inner Christ in the souls of His pupils, the souls of the disciples. Out of inner necessity, the Festival of Pentecost had to follow the Festival of the Ascension.

My dear friends! Today we will reconnect to what was spoken of in the previous lesson, in part in order to maintain continuity, but also in part for new members, or at least for members who were not here last time, but who are here today. Today's lesson should therefore begin with a short recapitulation of what was brought before our souls in the previous lesson.

We made our way in thought, to where just in the normal course of life and connecting to the sense-perceptible world with normal awareness and with the power of reasoning, to where a human being can feel himself confronting the supersensible, confronting, moreover, that part of an individual’s being that is related to his own true being. And we will first cultivate this mood, these inner feelings, before we enter into the mysteries of the life of the spirit, which we will certainly get to the next time.

This initial demeanor should lead us to an awareness of how a person, normally constituted in soul, regards the world of the senses around about himself, which cannot give him any inkling about his own true being. And if with certain justice there resounds to people throughout time, affording noble possibilities, the admonition "Know yourself!", then it is also true that a person can find no answer, can find no satisfaction, if under the inscribed words "Know yourself!" he merely gazes at what is spread out before his senses in the context of the external world. So a person is led by this suggestion to something other than what is in the sensory world, this world external to man.

In regard to this perception, which a person can have when he looks back with the question of his own nature upon the expanse of world existence-awareness, when we with this perception broach in thoughts supersensory existence-awareness, which is identical to the inner nature of humankind, then the corresponding demeanor will once again be given with the words, the words that that I already have placed before your souls at the last lesson:

Where on grounds of earth , color upon color,
Life stirring reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures , strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man , derive
Bodily existence from earth and air and light,

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness.
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are, and were, and will become.
For your true existence the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,

We have before us, we feel it in our souls, the impression, presenting itself before us, that in spite of our perceiving the absolute beauty, immensity, and grandeur of the world around us, as we get a sense of all the surrounding immensity, grandeur, and beauty in this world, that we just cannot find our own true being in this world. For the person striving after the spirit, it is necessary ever and again to bring up this feeling in soul. For the experience of this feeling, its deep experience, as we gaze out on the world outside of ourselves, that in this world there is no answer to the question of what we ourselves are, brought up ever and again in one’s soul, this impression forces the very impulses to emerge from our souls that can carry us over into the spiritual world. But directly because we perceive this, that through such feelings we will be carried over into the spiritual world, we must also bring up in our souls that someone in customary awareness, in customary life, is unprepared to enter into the very world that is certainly the world of his own being.

Therefore, right at the boundary between the sensory world and the spiritual world stands the Guardian, who with all seriousness warns a person about crossing over unprepared. It is always so, my friends, and we must be aware of it, that standing in appropriate holiness at the threshold of the spiritual world, for the unprepared person, stands the Guardian. We will get to know him more and more in times to come. Always it is so, that we must time and again reactivate this inner state of awareness, and so come to the feeling of meeting this Guardian and so making quite clear to ourselves, that a very special condition of soul is needed in order to achieve real knowledge, real insight.

If this insight, which can indeed come in this materialistic age, I might add, to every person on the street, if this true knowledge were present in a person, it would be a shame, for he would receive it wholly unprepared. He would approach it without the proper inner state of being, which certainly must be present, a properly prepared inner state of awareness. Therefore, it is so, that we must also direct ourselves properly and bring up before the soul a second sort of demeanor, which speaks to us, ever and again, of how we must present ourselves before the Guardian::

And from darknesses clarifies itself
(Revealing you in counterpart,
Yet also portraying you as parable,
Earnest spirit-word in ethereal realm,
Audible to your heart, forcefully effective),¹
The bringer of spirit-premonitions to you,
He who alone can illuminate your way;
Before him spread the sensory fields,
Behind him yawns the deep abyss.

And from his fields spirit dark,
Hard by the yawning chasm of existence,
Rings forth the ancient might of his creator-word;
See, I am the only door to inner knowing.

The Guardian himself begins to speak while we are still more or less in the sensory fields. He instructs from a realm, where still, for us, as we approach, impenetrable darkness holds sway, and he holds forth in the darkness. But it grows lighter, forming up before us through spirit-awareness, and initially only he himself emerges from it and forms up, and so coming forth from this apparent darkness, from this maya of darkness, he then speaks:

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:

There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

Whoever can inwardly accept with sufficient depth the word resounding from the mouth of the Guardian, will become aware, as he gazes back upon himself, of how the backward gazing, the taking hold of truth in the backward gazing becomes the beginning of self-awareness. Moreover, it is self-awareness that is preparatory for real entry into true proper self-awareness. True self-awareness encloses us in spiritual world-awareness, in the being that is one with our true human essence. And so awareness arises, which can be obtained while still on this side of the threshold of spiritual existence, just so awareness arises, which those impure in thinking, feeling, and willing of course hold in terrible awe, even though the images appear to protect. Awareness then arises of the three emerging from the chasm, from the yawning abyss. Appearing out of the yawning abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world are rearing beasts.

What we should feel at the chasm of existence, between what is maya, mere appearance, and true being in the world of true reality, this should be placed before our souls in the fourth declamation:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin.
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

My friends, one must clearly place in one’s soul this idea, that at first courage, courage in becoming aware, does not rule in the soul, but in the most thorough manner cowardice rules in the soul, cowardice, which in fact is strongly held onto by most people in these times, as a matter of course, even while approaching insight into the spiritual world.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
Your fire of knowing must tame it.

This is the second that we carry in us, which sows all the doubts in our souls, and which plants all manner of feelings of uncertainty concerning the spiritual world in our souls. It lies in feelings, in feelings that are weak, in feelings that cannot soar in spirited flight, in enthusiasm. Genuine experience must indeed emerge from lowly outward enthusiasm, which twines itself around all possibilities of outer life. A simple entwining! Inner enthusiasm, inner fire, the fire of awareness, is the very thing that vanquishes the second beast.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

We must find the courage and the fire to bring activity into our thinking. If we plod along in our usual state of awareness, we work in whims, in caprice, we deal with what really signifies nothing at all. When we prepare ourselves in a manner corresponding to creative thinking, however, the spiritual world streams into our creative thinking. And then a real entrance into the spiritual world is born, out of courage in knowledge, out of fire in knowledge, and out of living work in knowledge.

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

These mood-songs of demeanor can carry us quite far, so that we may feel properly what should be made to rule in us, so that as human beings we can enter the spiritual world properly, genuinely, and truly alive. It is also true, that in normal life, the most banal things often lead a person to realize that life is really serious, and not just a game. The very things that should lead us to an existence-awareness, however, do not make as strong an impression as does outer life. Outer life, when made active in the soul, can all too easily be made into a game. A person learns by himself, by playing it as a game, that it is serious. And if he makes endeavors of the spirit into a game, he will thereby embarrass himself and others enormously. He will be embarrassed, even if he deals with them only slightly in anything other than the most absolutely serious manner.

Of course, one does not need to maintain such a serious attitude to the point of becoming sentimentally attached to it. That is not the point, for the serious quality of life can be brought to light even in humor. But then even the humor becomes serious. The very manner portrayed here, which may be serious or playful, is not sentimentality, false piety, or untruthful flirtatious gaming, but rather it is the possibility of really going all out in endeavors of the spirit, and really living in endeavors of the spirit, with persistence, steadfastness, and tenacity..

Concerning the gravity of the words I am now speaking, my dear friends, to really understand their significance, it would be really, really good for striving after knowledge, if all of us, who as friends are sitting here, especially those who have been involved in anthroposophical endeavors for a somewhat longer time, would consider the following question: How often have I undertaken to do this or that as a function of anthroposophical life, and how often after a short time have I simply no longer thought about it? Perhaps I would have done it, had I thought about it, but I just did not think any further about it. It is simply gone, as a dream is gone from my life.

It is not unimportant and insignificant to consider such a question straightaway. And perhaps it might not be totally unimportant if a great number of our friends would place before their souls something actually happening at this time.

The Christmas Conference should have initiated real esotericism in the larger stream of the anthroposophical way of looking at the world, as it will be carried by the Anthroposophical Society in the future, all-inclusive. How often, and many questions could similarly be entertained, how often have I just forgotten what I held in glorious utter certainty during the Christmas Conference, how often have I just forgotten it, and how often have I thus maintained my thoughts and my realizations in the manner formerly present, as if the Anthroposophical Society were continuing as it had before Christmas. And perhaps if a few of you say to yourselves, such is not the case for me, it might be necessary just then to ask yourself this question. Am I not fooling myself, about it not being the case for me? Have I seen, in all acts pertaining to Anthroposophy, have I really seen that with Christmas a new phase of the Anthroposophical Society has begun? Entertaining these questions right away as questions concerning awareness is of very special significance. For then the proper seriousness will be inscribed in the soul.

You see, it would be good for this sort of attitude to be connected with the lifeblood of the Anthroposophical Society, and henceforth also with the lifeblood of each member who has sought admittance into the class. This attitude should be connected, it is imperative that it be attached to everything that impacts strongly on one's life. Hence, it would be good for each and every one who wishes to belong to the class to say to himself: Is there anything that I can do, now that the Anthroposophical Society has been re-founded, that is different from what I was doing earlier? Is there something new that I can take up in my life in devotion to Anthroposophy? Is there some way that I can work differently than before, so that I can bring in something brand new?

Actually, it would be tremendously significant, if this were to be taken seriously by each individual belonging to the class. Through this, the possibility would emerge, my friends, of the class continuing its work without the burden of heavy chains, for each person who continues in the old jog-trot really burdens the progress of the class accordingly. It might not be much noticed, but it is true nevertheless. It is not possible to forge ahead in esoteric life while walking along the hum-drum path that otherwise has dominion in life, on the path of lies, lies portrayed as truth. But if someone tries to work in esoteric life, vague portrayals are not effective, but rather truth is effective. You can certainly make colorful vain constructs, but colorful conceits make no impression on the spiritual world. The unvarnished, the simple unvarnished truth is what works effectively in the spiritual world.

You may conclude from this that spiritual realities are very different, as they continue to work under the surface of existence, from what is displayed today in outer life, which is so many lively lies just patched together. Uncommonly little of actual genuine worth lives between people today. And this should be brought before the soul ever and ever again, right at the beginning of the inner striving of the life of this Class. For only out of awareness built in this way can we find the inner strength that must be used, in the things which we will unravel more and more from lesson to lesson, which will be laid more and more before our souls, and through which we will find our way into the spiritual world.

You may conclude from this that spiritual realities are very different, as they continue to work under the surface of existence, from what is displayed today in outer life, which is so many lively lies just patched together. Uncommonly little of actual genuine worth lives between people today. And this should be brought before the soul ever and ever again, right at the beginning of the inner striving of the life of this Class. For only out of awareness built in this way can we find the inner strength that must be used, in the things which we will unravel more and more from lesson to lesson, which will be laid more and more before our souls, and through which we will find our way into the spiritual world.

And rooted deep within our human nature is all that hinders true cognition, to begin with in thinking. The usual human thinking plays itself out in the thought specter of the third beast, the very third beast whose gestalt has been depicted as follows:

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;

And this is the picture of the way most people usually think. This type of human thinking looks out over the details of the external world, and does not become aware that these details of the external world constitute a corpse. Where has such a person been living? He has been living on the corpse of this conventional thinking.

Today, my friends, we are all thinking in just this way, in our ever-present human civilization, as it is so called in our present age. From waking in the morning until falling asleep at night, we are thinking under the guidance received in our normal schooling and in our normal living. We are thinking, but in such a way that our thinking is corpse-like. Thinking is dead. It was living once, but when? It was alive once, but where?

It was present before we were born. It was present in our souls in actuality in pre-earthly existence. Now just imagine, my friends, that a person lives on the physical earth, and his soul-nature stirs within his physical body, and that until his death he moves his physical body about by means of the activity of his soul-nature. For external appearance, however, this active soul-nature is invisible, and all that remains visible is the corpse, the dead corpse. Imagine that this dead structure is all that lives in this human frame during life, and so you must imagine, that thinking lives just so. A living, organic, enmeshed, and intrinsically awake reality was present before the person stepped into earthly life. Then it becomes a corpse, it becomes the grave of our true head, the tomb of our true brain. And just as if a corpse in the grave were to assert, "I am a man," just so is our thinking, as if it were in the brain of a corpse, lying entombed, and considering only things of the external world. It is a corpse. It may be depressing for someone to be a corpse, but it is actually true, and esoteric knowledge must stand by truth.

This lies, however, in the continuation of the address of the Guardian of the Threshold. For as soon as our souls have gone beyond the earnest warning concerning the third beast, then the Guardian speaks again. He speaks, as the words so far intoned rest in our hearts.

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad² contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

I will recite it once again:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

Thinking, with which we have to accomplish so much here in the fields of sensory life, is to the gods of the world a mere corpse of our being of soul. We have, while we have been treading the earth, during our time on earth, become dead in our thinking. The death of our thinking was in preparation already before the year 333 AC. By the middle of this fourth post-Atlantean period in 333, the ground had been prepared for thinking to be dead. Vitality still poured forth in thinking before this, inherent from pre-earthly existence. The Greeks formerly felt alive, the Orientals formerly felt alive within their thinking, within their thinking that meshed effectively with the work of the spirit, with spirit work. The Orientals, the Greeks of old, they knew that in their thinking, that in each thought, God was living. Such has been lost. Thinking has become dead. And we must abide by the earnest warning of the times, given to us by the Guardian.

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

This era began 333 years after the onset of Christianity, in the fourth century, after the first third of the fourth century had gone by. And such thinking today, among all sorts of thinking in the world, this thinking clearly arises out of forces of death, not out of living forces. And the dead thinking of the 19th century became encrusted on the surface of human civilization's dead materialism.

It is otherwise with feeling. In the same manner, mankind’s great Ahrimanic enemy, Ahriman himself, cannot yet put feelings to death inwardly in the way he has put thinking to death. Feelings still live on in worldly human ways at the present time. For the most part, however, people have tucked feelings out of full awareness into semi-unconsciousness. Feelings do surge up in the soul, but who has it under control, as one has thinking under control? To whom is it clear, what lies in feelings, as clear as it is, what lies in thinking?

Simply take one of the saddest things, specifically, in the eyes of the spirit, the saddest appearance of our time, my dear friends. If people think clearly about it, they are citizens of the world, and they know quite well that thinking makes a man a man, even though thinking is fairly dead in the present age of the world. Today in feelings, however, people are separated into nations and tribes, and directly due to this they allow certain unconscious feelings to rule, to the detriment of all. Everywhere strife arises on the stage of today's world, growing out of these undistinguished feelings, by means of which a person feels himself to be affiliated with only one particular group of human beings.

World karma of course places us into particular human groupings, and it is something that we feel, that is earned in the working process of world karma, that we are situated in this or that clan, class, or culture. It is not in thinking that we become so situated. Thinking, unless it becomes colored by feelings and willpower, is the same in all parts of the world, but feelings form up in particular ways characteristic of particular regions of the world. Feelings may seem to rest in semi-consciousness, but they really live in the unconscious. So the Ahrimanic spirit, that otherwise has no influence on the life of feelings, has acquired the possibility of mucking about unconsciously in feelings. This mucking about in feelings is somewhat limited, limited to confounding truth with error, so through Ahrimanic influences, through Ahrimanic impulses in us, our feelings become colored with prejudice.

Our feelings, if we wish to gain entrance into the spiritual world, must ascend fully into our souls. In regard to self-awareness, we must be fully able to incorporate our feelings. We must be able to say, by continually reexamining our own being, just what sort of people we are, as feeling human beings. We do not attain this easily. In regard to thinking, it will be comparatively easy for us, as we go about gaining clarity about ourselves. Naturally, we don't always do it, but at least we are more likely to admit to ourselves that we are not exactly geniuses, or that we fall short of clear thinking in this or that respect. It is the height of conceit or opportunism not to allow ourselves to come in this way to having at least some sort of clarity about our thinking.

Concerning our feelings, however, we simply cannot come to the point of really placing them clearly before our souls. We may certainly have persuaded ourselves that almost always our streaming feelings are appropriate. Immediately we must sweep our souls, intimately, thoroughly, if we as feeling human beings wish to be on the right track in our self-characterization. Whatever the case, we must just do it. We lift ourselves up only by what we by ourselves as feeling human beings from time to time conscientiously place before ourselves, we lift ourselves up only in this way over every obstacle that the second beast erects before us on the path into the spiritual world.

Instead of this however, if we do not cultivate this sort of self-awareness in ourselves from time to time, then certainly, inevitably, this mocking apparition will be intertwined in us when we regard the spiritual world. We ourselves will become mockers, and if we do not become aware of our sick feelings, we also will not be aware that in regard to the spiritual world we are indeed mockers. We dress up the mockery in all possible ways, but we alone are certainly mocking the spiritual world. Concerning this, which I was impelled to speak about previously, those who are not in earnest are mockers. Sometimes they feel ashamed to carry any sort of mockery inwardly, within their thoughts, but they are mocking nonetheless, in regard to the spiritual world. For how could someone be flippant and playful in regard to the spiritual world, if he were not mocking it? About such things the Guardian of the Threshold speaks.

The second beast, the mocking face,
It is the bad contrary-force
Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable³ soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast is the mirror image of our will. This mirror image of our will certainly shows us just what is living in our will. And the will certainly does not merely dream. It does not live in mere semi-consciousness. It lives wholly in the unconscious.

This has been presented to you many times, my dear friends, that the ways and means of the will lie deep in the unconscious. And in the life of customary awareness a person seeks the paths of his karma deep in the unconscious. Every step during life that a person takes by way of his karma is certainly measured out, but the person knows nothing of this. It all happens out of awareness. Former lives on earth are woven effectively into karma. Karma carries us to the situations of our life, to the circumstances of our life, to the uncertainties of our life. Such is the error-fraught state of the individual person, of the person who solely for his own individual self seeks for pathways in the world. In thinking, a person seeks the path that all people seek. In feeling, a person seeks the path that his social group seeks. In feelings one certainly knows whether a person's origins are in the north, west, south, or eastern parts of Europe, or in the middle but originating from the west, the south, or the east. And a person must be ready to enter the unconscious impulses of the will, just in order to maintain in himself, not just a generic person, not just a member of a specific group, but a specific unique human individual. So works the will. But please take note, willfulness works in this way in the very depths of the unconscious. The first beast points to this error-fraught state of the will.

And the Guardian speaks of this in earnest warning:

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

In our will, mighty spirits are working which actually wish to rip our body away from us during our conscious earth-existence, and in this way wish to carry off a piece of our souls. This would enable the building of an earth existence, during Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, that should not be developed, but would instead be a departure from divine intentions regarding the earth. The earth would be estranged, the earth would be dispossessed, after a certain time in the future. In this sort of world robbed of gods, a person would be bound to certain powers working in his will, which is where he seeks his karma.

The first beast, appearing within as a mirror image, appropriately shows what is effectively working within the will, with its bone-locked head, withered body, dull blunt blue skin, and crooked back. Such is the Ahrimanic spirit that holds sway in the will for all seeking after karma, and it can only be vanquished through courage in knowledge. And just so, as I have been leading up to, just so the Guardian of the Threshold speaks about this first beast:

I will read it once again.

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

In these words, sounding forth from the mouth of the Guardian of the Threshold, the admonition is expounded, and called out to those seeking insight, to human spirits seeking knowledge.

Let these words live in our souls, my friends, with truly genuine intensity, and often and again hearken unto the following, spoken by the Guardian:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

You must ever and again comparatively grasp the similarities in these verses. [The first section of the mantra was now written on the board.]

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

Feel initially what the section engenders in you.

Next the second section, which alludes to feeling: [The second section of the mantra was now written on the board.]

The second beast, the mocking face,
It is the bad contrary-force

As a "counter-force" it is no longer merely a sort of thinking, a counter-type of thinking, but now is a "force!" [Both words were underlined twice, and then the writing continued.]

Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

Feel next, here [in the first section] "denies", and here [in the second section] "hollows-out" [Both words were underlined twice.], and feel starkly the coloring coming through the verses, in which the first time there is the word "denies" and the second time "hollows-out".

Then the words of the Guardian, in which he addresses the will:

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

[This third section was now written on the board.]

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might

Now there is not “type”, not “force", but rather "might.” [The word "might" was underlined twice.] You must feel the progression.

Of willing, that estranges suitable body

And here we have the progression, first of something intellectual in "denies", then something lurking within in "hollows-out", and then something that directly takes a person off the inner path in "estranges.” [Estranges was underlined twice, and then the writing continued.]

From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

Feel however, how through all three verses, through all three dictums, how "bad" resounds. [In each section the word "bad" was especially emphasized at this point with vertical boundary lines and underlined three times.]

And when you inwardly feel yourself accepting these dictums at each stopping point, given in progressive steps in the distinctions between thinking, feeling, and willing, [These three words were underlined.] and when you truly come to feel how all three may be bound together by the same ever-present badness, then for you, my dear friends, each of the verses becomes a mantra, a mantra in its inner sense, and they will be able to become a guide for you into the spiritual world, on each of three stepping stones, that of the third beast, that of the second beast, and that of the first beast. [The words "third", "second", and "first" were at the same time underlined on the board.] And when you unfailingly keep in mind this concordance, and unfailingly bind these three together with the definitive word into an inner soul-organism, when you unfailingly bring these three verses into motion within yourself in this way, then these three verses will be your guide, my friends, along the way into the spiritual world, as you come upon the Guardian of the Threshold.

Whom we will get to know better in the next class.

• 1. The lines in parentheses were clarified later as a Zwischensatz.
• 2. böse: The German word übel is the same as the English word evil, which carries a high degree of conceptuality, but what is used here is böse, a word any small child can understand, for böse is bad. It is bad contrary confused dead thinking, bad contrary angry heartless feelings, and bad vicious defiant willfulness.
• 3. eigne: In regard to eigne (intrinsic, suitable, appropriate) as opposed to deine (your own), die eigne Seele ward erleuchtend suggests that spiritual worth was illuminating a well-suited soul before its earth-existence. And in the third stanza, den eignen Leib is not “your own” body, but “suitable” body.

Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of anything for today?

Mr. Burle asks about the theory of relativity and how it is viewed today. He says that people used to read a lot about it, especially in the past. Now it may have been forgotten again; at least he doesn't hear as much about it as he used to.

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, the matter of the theory of relativity is a difficult one, and today you will probably have to be very careful and in the end you will have to say that even if you are careful, you are not familiar with it. But that is the case with many people who talk about the theory of relativity today. They talk about it in such a way that they often praise it as the greatest achievement of our time, but do not understand it. I will try to explain it as popularly as possible. As I said, it will be difficult today, but next time we will come to more interesting things.

Einstein's theory is based on the motion of a body. You know that bodies move by changing their position in space. So if we want to record a motion, we say: a body is at a location A and moves to another location B. If you are standing somewhere outside and see a train passing by, you will have no doubt at all that the train is rushing past you, moving, and you are standing still. But you can easily come to doubt it, at least for the moment, of course, if you are not thinking deeply, if you are sitting somewhere in a railway compartment and are asleep at first, then wake up and look out the window: a train is passing by. You have the distinct feeling that a train is passing by. That does not necessarily mean that it is true, however. Before you fell asleep, your train was stationary, and while you were sleeping, your train itself began to move. While you were sleeping, you did not notice that your train was moving, and the other train appears to be passing by. If you look more closely, the train standing outside is completely still, while your train is moving. So while you are moving, you believe that you are at rest, and the other train, which is really at rest, is moving. You know, it can also happen that you look out the window and believe that you are sitting quietly in the train you are currently on, while the whole train is moving in the opposite direction. That's how it looks to the eye. You can see that what we humans say about movement is not always true. You wake up and form the judgment: the train that is outside is moving. Immediately afterwards, you have to correct yourself: that is not true at all, it is standing still; I am moving!

Such a correction of judgment occurred once in a major way, or even more than once, in world history. We need only go back six or seven centuries, when everyone was of the opinion that the earth was stationary in space and that the entire starry sky was moving past. This view was corrected, as you may have heard, in the 16th century. Copernicus came along and said: All that is wrong; the sun, the fixed stars are actually stationary, and we with our Earth fly at breakneck speed through space. We believe to be at rest on Earth - just as one previously believed to be at rest in the railroad car and the other train was driving and have now corrected that. Copernicus corrected the whole of astronomy, saying: It is not true that the stars move; they are stationary. But the Earth, with people on it, rushes through space at a tremendous speed.

You have given the possibility that it is not immediately possible to tell from observation what is actually correct with regard to motion: whether one is at rest oneself and a passing body is really in motion, or whether one is in motion oneself and a body that one believes is passing by is at rest.

Don't you think so? When you consider this, you will say to yourself: Yes, a correction may be necessary for everything we recognize as movement. Take, for example, how long it took for all of humanity to correct its judgment regarding the Earth. That took thousands of years. When you sit in a train, it may take only a few seconds for you to correct your judgment. So it varies how long it takes to correct such a judgment.

This has led people like Einstein to say: We cannot know whether what we see in motion is really in motion, or whether we, who are standing still, are not somehow mysteriously in motion and the other in rest. So we draw the final conclusion from this uncertainty.

Well then, gentlemen, it could be like this: let us assume there is a car here (a picture is shown). In this car, one drives from Haus Hansi up to the Goetheanum. But who can say for sure that the car is really driving up? Who can say that with certainty? The car could be standing still, the wheels could be turning, and the whole Goetheanum that one is approaching could be moving in the opposite direction. We would only have to experience something like this for the Earth as Copernicus did for the Earth! (Laughter.)

Einstein took such things and said: We can never be certain whether one or the other body moves. We only know that they move in relation to each other, that they change their distances; that is the only thing we know. Of course, we know that when we travel to the Goetheanum, because we come closer to the Goetheanum; but whether we come to it or it comes to us, we cannot know. Now, you see, what we can say is that it is in real rest or real motion, that is absolute. So what is an absolute rest or an absolute motion? That would be a rest or motion of which one could say: In the universe, the body is at rest or the body is moving. But of course this is always a fatal thing, because at the time of Copernicus, it was still believed that the sun was stationary and the earth was moving around it. In relation to the earth it is correct, but in relation to the sun it is not correct, because the sun moves very fast, rushing at a tremendous speed through the starry universe, which is in the constellation of Hercules – and of course we are all with it. On the one hand we revolve around the sun, but with the rotation around the sun we rush with it through space. So we cannot say that the sun is at absolute rest in space either. And so Einstein and those who shared his view said: You cannot say at all whether something is at absolute rest or in motion, but you can only speak of things being in relative rest - relative, that is, with respect to each other - it appears to one to be at rest or in motion.

You see, gentlemen, during a course that was held in Stuttgart, someone once believed that we anthroposophists know nothing of note about the theory of relativity. And so, because he was or is a fanatical supporter of the theory of relativity, he wanted to make it clear to people in a very simple way how the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of relativity, really applies. What did he do? He took a matchbox and said: “Here is a match. Now I hold the box very still and move the match towards it. It catches fire. But now I'm going to do a second experiment. Now I'm going to hold the match very still and move the box towards me. It catches fire again. The same thing happens. What has happened is that fire has been created, but the movement I have made is not absolute, it is quite relative. One time, when the box is there and the match is there, I move the match this way, the other time I move the box. For fire to occur, it does not matter whether the box or the match moves, but only whether they move relative to each other, in relation to each other.

But this can be applied to the whole world. You can say for the whole world: the thing is that you don't know whether one or the other moves, or whether one moves more strongly or weakly, or whether the other moves more strongly or weakly. You only ever know how they move in relation to each other, whether they come closer or further away from each other; you don't know more than that. And you don't know whether one body moves faster or slower than the other. Imagine you are traveling in an express train rushing by terribly fast, and a passenger train passes by outside, you look out the window. You can't judge what is actually going on, because at the moment when you are traveling in the express train and the passenger train is traveling in the opposite direction, you have the feeling that your express train is traveling much slower than it used to. Just try it. At that moment you have the feeling that now the train is moving slowly. In perception, so much of the speed is taken away from the fast as it approaches you. So you get a completely false judgment about the speed of the movement in your own train. If, on the other hand, someone is traveling more slowly next to you, you feel as if your train is traveling faster. So you never have a judgment when you see two movements and how they actually relate to each other, but you only ever get a judgment about how the two bodies relate to each other in terms of their distances.

Now you can stop at this point and say: Gosh, Einstein was a clever guy, he finally realized that in the universe we cannot talk about absolute motion at all, but only about relative motion. That is clever, and as you can see, it is also correct for many things. Because no one can say that when he sees a star at rest, it is a star at rest. If you move at a certain speed, the star appears to be moving in the opposite direction; but it could also be moving towards you. So you can't possibly conclude from looking at it that the star is at rest or in motion. It is necessary to know this, because the fact that we finally know this today means that we would have to change the entire terminology used in certain sciences. I will show you this with an example.

How do you get knowledge from the stars at all? You see, you can't get knowledge from the stars if you have the same view as the prince who went to the observatory. The astronomer naturally had to show him the observations he made of the stars because the prince was the ruler of the country. Well, he also let the prince look through the telescope, and they observed a star. When you point the telescope somewhere, you don't see anything at first. Then you wait a little; then the star comes into the telescope, as they say, and then it comes out on the other side. The prince watched this. Then he said: Yes, now I understand quite well that you know something about the stars, that you know where the stars are and how they move, I can see that quite well now. But how you, when you are so far away, come up with what the stars are called, I still can't understand. — With such views, of course, one cannot pursue astronomy. But how does it happen when you observe stars? There is the telescope; the astronomer sits there, and he looks in with his head from above, and there are crosshairs here; and when the star appears to move like this, you don't see anything yet, and when it is here, you see the star. If it is visible exactly where the threads cross, then you determine the location of the star.

Now, it was always thought that when observing, one could say: either the Earth moved, or the telescope was moved forward and the lens – that's what the glass that is far away is called; the glass that is close is called the eyepiece – was moved so far that the stationary star can now be seen inside. In the past, people believed that the star was moving. Today we have to say: We know nothing about the rest or motion of the star. We can only say: In the viewfinder, the crosshairs of my telescope coincide with the view of the star; the two overlap. We can say nothing more than what we have directly in front of us. We would be uncertain about the whole world as a result.

This has far-reaching consequences. It is important for our view of the motion not only of the heavenly bodies, but even of the bodies on our earth. And the conclusions that Einstein and those who think as he does drew from it are very far-reaching. They said, for example: Yes, if motion is only relative, if it is not absolute, then one cannot say anything real about anything at all, not even about simultaneity or different times. If, for example, I have a clock in Dornach and another in Zurich and the hands are in the same position, I am still not at all sure that, because they are far apart, in reality there is only one erroneous observation; perhaps there is no simultaneity at all!

So you see, the most far-reaching conclusions have been drawn from this. And the question arises: can we not get out of this at all? Can we not say anything at all today about the things themselves when they move? That is the important question. It is quite certain that nothing can be said from the observation of the movements. And in the broadest sense, it is also true that if I drive up to the Goetheanum in my car, it may just as well be that the Goetheanum comes towards me.

Yes, but there is one thing, gentlemen, that does happen. Even the example I gave you with the matchbox is not quite right. Because, you see, I would have liked to shout to the gentleman who made it so finely: “Why don't you nail the matchbox to the table and then try to move it back and forth!” You have to apply at least a great deal of force if you have to drive with the whole table back and forth. — So there must be a catch somewhere.

You can recognize this catch if you only approach the matter attentively. Suppose you drive from Dornach to Basel, and now you could say: It is not true that the car moves; rather, the car remains stationary, only turning the wheels, and Basel comes towards it. — Fair enough. But there is one thing that speaks against this: the car will be ruined after a few years. And the fact that the car is ruined can only be attributed to the fact that it is not the road that moves, but the car that moves and is ruined by what happens inside it. So if you don't just look at the movement, but look inside the body itself to see what the movement does, you will come to the conclusion that you cannot fully grasp Einstein's conclusion. So you can notice that the car is actually being ruined, not just the wheels, because they are turning. Now someone might say: Yes, they would of course also turn if a mountain were to come towards you or Basel were to come towards you, or otherwise the thing would wear out. But you can still say: maybe that's the way it is. With inanimate bodies, the matter cannot be decided at all, and for inanimate bodies one can only say that it is uncertain which way the one or the other moves. But the living organism! Imagine you are walking to Basel and someone else remains standing here in Dornach, remains standing for the whole two hours while you walk to Basel. Now, if it were not you who had moved but Basel who had come to meet you, you would have done almost no differently than the person who remained standing. But you became tired; a change took place in you. From this change that takes place within yourself, you can see that you have moved. And in the case of living bodies, it is possible to determine from the changes that take place within them whether they are really in motion or only in apparent motion, at rest.

But this is also what must lead us to recognize that we cannot form a theory from the external observation of the world, not even from something as clear as movement. Instead, we must form our theory from the internal changes. Well, there you have it again: with the theory of relativity, too, one must say that he who looks only at the outward side of things comes to nothing at all. One must look at the inner side. It is precisely this theory of relativity that leads one to at least begin with spiritual science, with anthroposophy, because anthroposophy points out everywhere that one must look at the inner side.

Einstein's theory has led to some extraordinarily strange consequences. The matter becomes particularly interesting, for example, when Einstein gives his examples. He gives an example in which he wants to prove that the change of location has no significance at all. Because it cannot be determined from the point of view whether a body changes its location or not, the change of location cannot have any significance. That is why Einstein says: If I hurl a clock that has a certain hand position out into space, so that it flies out at the speed of light and then turns around and comes back, this movement has had no significance for the inside of the clock. The clock comes back unchanged. That is how Einstein makes his examples: whether a body moves or not, we cannot decide. The clock is the same whether it is at rest or moving, it is the same for it. - Yes, but, gentlemen, you should just be invited to look at a clock that flies out into space at the speed of light and comes back again! The clock, yes, you won't see it at all anymore. It will be so pulverized that you won't see it.

But what does that mean? It means that you cannot think that way at all. You come to thoughts that are thoughtless. And so you find on the one hand that Einstein is a terribly clever person and that he draws conclusions and makes judgments that are terribly captivating to people. Not true, the ordinary people who are not very good mathematicians, they don't understand much of Einstein's theory; and then they start reading about Einstein's theory in some popular book, read the first page, then yawn; read half of the second page, then stop. And then they say: It must be something terribly clever. Because if it wasn't something terribly clever, then I would have to understand it. Besides, a lot of people say that it's something terribly clever. –That's where the judgment about the theory of relativity comes from. But there are also people who understand it. And it is among such people that Einstein finds his following, and that following grows larger every day. It is not, as Mr. Burle says, forgotten. A few years ago, when you spoke with university professors, they did not want to know anything about Einstein's theory. Today, everything is full of the erudition of Einstein's theory of relativity.

But people also come up with some very strange ideas in the process. For example, I once had a debate with university professors about Einstein's theory. Yes, you see, as long as you stay in the area that I have also discussed with you, Einstein's theory of relativity is correct; there is nothing you can do about it: it is like that with the train, with the solar system, with the movements of the whole world. So far it is quite correct. But now the gentlemen extend it to everything and say, for example: Relative is also the size of a human being; he has no absolute size, but only relative. That seems to me only that he is so high. He is so high in relation to — well, if we are here —, in relation to the chairs or in relation to the trees, but one cannot speak of an absolute size. You see, that applies as long as you remain a mathematician, as long as you are only concerned with geometry. The moment you stop being concerned with geometry, when you enter life, that's when the pleasure stops, that's when it's different! You see, if someone has no feeling, then he can carve a head out of wood that is a hundred times as big as your head. Then he has it. Yes, the one who has a feeling for it will never do that because he knows that the size of a human head is not relative, but is conditioned in the whole of space. It can be a little larger or a little smaller, but if someone is a dwarf, it is an illness; if someone becomes a giant, it is also an illness. It is not just relative, but the absolute is already visible. Within certain limits, of course, human height fluctuates. But in the universe, a person is definitely intended for a certain height. So again, one cannot speak of relativity. One can only say that man gives himself his own size through his relationship to the universe. There was only one of the college of professors with whom I had the debate who admitted that. The others were so twisted in their heads by the relativity theory that they said that human size is also only relative because we look at it that way.

You know, if you have a picture, it can be large; if you go further, it gets smaller and smaller according to the perspective. The size of this picture that you see is relative. The relativists believe that human size is only as it is because it is always seen against a background. But that is nonsense. Human size has something absolute about it, and a person cannot be much taller or much shorter than he is predetermined to be.

Now, people think all this up because they generally do not form any opinion about what is involved in a process or in a thing that happens on earth in our environment. From what I have already told you, you will be able to deduce the following: there is the earth; on the earth is some human being. Now you know, however, that the human being is not only dependent on the forces of the earth, but he is dependent on the forces that come from the universe. Our head, for example, reflects the whole universe. We have discussed this. If it did not matter how tall a person is, what would have to be there? Suppose Mr. Burles' head, Mr. Erbsmehl's head, Mr. Müller's head is formed from the universe. Yes, gentlemen, if the heads are three or four times different from each other, there should be an extra universe for each one. But since there is only one universe, which does not grow or shrink because of the individual human being, but is always there, remaining the same, the heads of people can only be approximately the same. It is only because people do not know that we live in a common world that also has a spiritual effect that people can believe that it is irrelevant how big a person's head is, that it is merely relative. It is not relative, but it is dependent on the absolute size of the universe.

So we come back to having to remind ourselves: it is precisely when you think correctly in relation to the theory of relativity that you enter into spiritual science, not into materialistic science.

And if you then look more closely at people, you see that people who think like Einstein run out of ideas when they come to life or to the spiritual. You see, when I was a boy, I was able to take part in the lively debates that took place about gravity. Gravity - when a body falls to the earth, it is said to be heavy. It falls down because it has weight, because it is heavy. But this force of gravity is everywhere in the universe. The bodies attract each other. If there is the earth and there is the moon (see drawing), then the earth attracts the moon, and the moon does not fly away, but moves in a circle around the earth, because the earth, when it wants to fly away, always pulls it back towards itself. Now, in the past, when I was a boy, there was a lot of debate about what this force of gravity is actually based on.

The English physicist Newton, whom I have told you about before, simply said: bodies attract each other, one body the other. That is not a very materialistic view, because if you imagine that a person should just touch something and draw it towards them, all sorts of things besides matter are needed to do so. If now the Earth is to attract the Moon, then this cannot be reconciled with a materialistic view. But materialism flourished precisely in my youth. One could also say that it dried up people, it withered, but one could also say that it flourished. So people said: That's not true, the Earth cannot attract the Moon, because it has no hands to attract it. That's not possible. So they said: the world ether is everywhere (see drawing). So what I am drawing in red here is the world ether; it also consists of nothing but tiny little grains. And these tiny little grains, they bump into each other here, bump into each other there, but bump more strongly there than they do in the middle. Now, when there are two bodies, the Earth and the Moon, and the impact from the outside is stronger than from the inside, it is as if they were attracted to each other. So the force of attraction, the force of gravity, was explained by the impact from the outside.

I cannot begin to tell you how much cognitive pain this caused me at the time. From the age of twelve to eighteen, I really agonized over whether the Earth attracts the Moon or the Moon is pushed to the Earth. Because, you see, the reasons given are usually not exactly stupid, but clever. But there is already a certain relativity theory in that. One wonders: is there anything absolute in it, or is everything relative? Is it perhaps really immaterial whether one says that the Earth attracts the Moon or that the Moon is pushed towards the Earth? Perhaps one cannot decide anything at all. Well, you see, people have thought about this a lot. And what I actually want to say is: At least they came up with the idea that there is an ether in addition to the visible substance. They needed the ether, because what is supposed to push if not the grains of ether! When Einstein first established his theory of relativity, everyone still believed that the ether had to exist. And Einstein then thought of everything he had described as relative motion as taking place in space, which is filled by the ether. But then he realized: Gosh! If motion is only relative, it is not at all necessary for the ether to be there. Nothing needs to push, nothing to pull. We cannot decide anything about this. So space can also be empty.

And so, over time, there are actually two Einstein theories. Of course, they are united in one person. The earlier Einstein described everything in his books as if the whole space of the world were filled with ether. Then his theory of relativity led him to say: space is empty. Only, the theory of relativity is not about saying anything about ether, because we don't even know if it is so. The examples he gives sometimes become quite grotesque. For example, Einstein says: If there is the earth, and there is some tree, I climb up; here I slip, fall down – this is an occurrence that you have probably also experienced; at least as a boy I very often experienced it when I climbed up a tree, that I slipped and fell down – then you say: Well, the earth is pulling me. I have a weight. This comes from gravity, otherwise I would have remained in the air, otherwise I would be wriggling if the earth were not pulling me. — But Einstein says you can't say any of that, because think of the following: There is the earth again, and now I am up there on a tower, standing; but I am not standing in a vacuum, surrounded by free space. Rather, I am standing in a box that is suspended at the top. If I were to fall out of the box from the tower, my relationship to the walls would always remain the same. I don't notice any movement, the walls go with me. Yes, by golly, now I can't tell whether the rope from up there, on which my box is hanging, will be lowered and I will arrive at the bottom of the box because someone is lowering me from above, or whether I can arrive, whether the box will slip because the earth is attracting me. I can't decide that. I don't know whether I'm being lowered or whether the earth is drawing me towards it.

But with this example, which Einstein chooses, it is just the same as with the other comparison that is always used in schools. There the children are already told how a planetary system is formed, that there is a nebula at first, out of this nebula the planets separate. In the middle, the sun remains. They say: That can easily be proven. You take a small oil droplet that floats on water, in the middle a sheet of card through which a pin is stuck, you put that in the water, start to turn it. Then small droplets split off from the large one, and a tiny planetary system is there. That's how it must be out there. Once there was a nebula; the planets split off, the sun remained in the middle. Who could possibly disagree with this, if you still see it in the fat droplet today! Yes, but one little thing has been forgotten, gentlemen: that I have to stand there and turn when I am the teacher in front of the children and show that! If I don't turn: nothing forms from a small fat planet system! So — the teacher would have to tell the children — there must be a great teacher, a giant teacher out there who once turned the whole story. Then the example is complete. And so Einstein, if he were to think in complete accordance with reality – if he even gets around to formulating such a thought – would have to assume that someone is directing the rope up there. That is necessary right away. Otherwise you cannot say: It makes no difference to me how I come down, whether someone lets me down or whether I tumble; there must be someone up there. So if Einstein were to elaborate on this example, he would immediately have to consider: who is there to hold the rope? He does not do this because contemporary materialism forbids it. Therefore, he devises examples that have no reality, that cannot be imagined, that are impossible to think.

And there is something else connected with this. Imagine, gentlemen, there is a mountain. There is Freiburg im Breisgau. On the mountain I set up a cannon so that you can still hear the shot in Offenburg on my account. But you hear the shot later. If someone notes on a clock when they heard the shot in Freiburg and when someone heard it in Offenburg, they will see that the times on the two clocks differ. The sound took some time to travel from Freiburg to Offenburg.

Now, you see, this story has also been used for the so-called theory of relativity. Because it is said: Let us now assume that I am not standing in Offenburg listening to when the sound arrives, but that I am initially standing in Freiburg. There I hear the sound simultaneously as it arises. Now I am traveling by train in the direction from Freiburg to Offenburg. Because I am traveling ahead, a little way from Freiburg, I hear the sound a little later than it occurs. Even further towards Offenburg, a little later again; even further towards Offenburg, a little later again.

But this only lasts as long as you drive slower than the speed of sound. If you drive just as fast as the speed of sound from Freiburg to Offenburg, what happens then? If you drive just as fast, at the same speed as the speed of sound: you arrive in Offenburg, and there it runs away from you, you still don't hear it. If you travel at the same speed, you will never hear it, because by the time you are supposed to hear it, it will have gone. You are supposed to hear it, but by then it is no longer there. Now people say: Gosh, that's right, you can't hear sound if you're moving as fast as sound itself! And if you move even faster than sound, what happens then? If you go slower, you hear it later; if you go just as fast, you don't hear it at all. If you move faster, you hear it earlier than it sounds! People say that this is quite natural, that this is quite correct. So if you hear the sound in Offenburg two seconds later when you move slower than the sound, you don't hear the sound at all when you move at the same speed as the sound. But if you move faster than the speed of sound, then you will hear it two seconds earlier than when it is released in Freiburg! I would just like to invite you to listen, really listen to the sound before it is released in Freiburg! You can see for yourself whether you hear it earlier, no matter how fast you are moving.

The other objection is that I would then like to ask you what you look like when you move so fast or even faster than sound.

What follows from this? It follows that you can think anything if you don't stick to reality. With this theory of relativity, you end up with the idea that you hear the sound earlier than the shot is released! (Laughter.) You can think of it quite well, but it can't happen. And that, you see, is the difference! People who do science today mainly want to think logically; and Einstein thinks wonderfully logically. But the logical is not yet real. You have to have two qualities in your thinking: first, the things have to be logical, but second, they have to be real. You have to be able to live in reality. Then you don't think up this box that is pulled up and down on a rope. Then you don't think of the clock that flies out into space at the speed of light and back again. Then you don't think of the guy there who moves faster than the sound and therefore hears the sound earlier than the shot takes place. Much of what you read in books today, gentlemen, as such considerations, is very nicely thought out, but none of it is in reality.

And so we can say: Einstein's theory of relativity is clever and it also applies to a certain part of the world, but you can't do anything with it when you look at reality. For from the theory of relativity one never comes to understand why a person tires so terribly when he goes to Basel, since he cannot say whether he is going into Basel or whether Basel is coming to meet him. The fatigue could not be explained if Basel were to come to him, and why I fiddle with my feet when I walk; I could stand still, wait for Basel to come to me! You see, all these things show nothing other than that it is not enough to think correctly and intelligently, but that something else is needed: one must be immersed in life and must judge things according to life.

That is what I can tell you about the theory of relativity. It has caused a great stir, but, as I said, people understand it only a little, otherwise they would already be thinking about these things.

So, see you next Saturday.

Good morning, gentlemen! Now let us try to finish, at least for the time being, what we have begun to consider. You see, an understanding of life comes only from the fact that one begins to observe the sleep of man, as I have already mentioned to you several times. When one is immersed in life from morning to evening, one usually has the opinion that sleep gives one strength, removes fatigue and so on. But sleep actually does much more. You just need to think about it. Think back to your life, the dreams you have had in your sleep, you don't always remember them. Dreams are something you soon forget, as you all know. Only at most you may remember that you had a dream here or there that you often told. Then you remember it by telling it. But the dreams that you don't tell are quickly forgotten. If you remember your life back to your childhood, you will remember some memories from your childhood up to later in life. But these memories are always interrupted. When you think back today, there is the time during which you slept. That is a break, and you do not remember it. The memory starts again only yesterday evening and goes until yesterday morning. Then there is another break. So that actually, when you remember back, you do not have your whole life, but in this remembering back, what is in the night is actually always left out. If you draw a line of retrospection, a period of time flows from evening to morning without retrospection, then again from morning to evening, then again a pause from evening to morning, and so on. We actually only remember our lives in such a way that we do not remember a whole part of our lives at all. That is quite clear. That is the time that we have slept through.

Now let us consider a person who cannot sleep. You know, some people complain that they cannot sleep. But many of these complaints should not be taken so seriously, because some people tell you that they never sleep at all during the night. And when you ask them how long they have not slept at night, they say: Yes, not for ten years already. Well, anyone who couldn't sleep for so long would have been dead long ago. People do sleep, but because they have such vivid dreams while sleeping, it seems to them as if they had been awake. You should tell such a person: just lie down for once, you don't need to sleep; just lie down. He is already asleep, and even if he is not aware of it, he is asleep. I just wanted to tell you this so that you can see that a person really does need sleep for life. Sleep is more necessary for life than food. And those who cannot sleep cannot live.

Now, how much of our lives between birth and death do we oversleep? Yes, gentlemen, you see, this oversleeping lasts longest in very young children. When a child is born, it is almost always asleep. Then gradually the time spent awake decreases, and sleeping becomes less and less. And when you get a little older, if you count back, you have to say that you have actually slept a third of your life. That is also healthy. You have actually slept a third of your life.

This has been known for quite a long time. But today people don't like to remember such things that have been known for a long time. Even in the 19th century, at the very beginning, people who wrote about this said: Man should work for 8 hours, be alone for 8 hours and sleep for 8 hours. That leaves 16 hours of wakefulness and 8 hours of sleep, so 3 times 8 = 24 hours.

So that gives us a third of 24 hours for the time of sleeping. That was also a very correct observation. A person needs a third of his entire life to sleep. Now, people don't care about how important sleep is for life because today they don't care at all about what soul and spirit are. They only care about what the person experiences with his body when he is awake, but not what soul and spirit are. That is just how people often say in their daily lives today: God, yes, sleeping, that's all very well, but you don't need more than the necessary heaviness in bed. And so they drink so and so much beer in the evening so that they can sleep. But what matters is not having the necessary heaviness in bed, but realizing the great importance of sleep.

And now let us try to understand what sleep actually means. You see, gentlemen, basically people like themselves very much. This is particularly evident in the case of sick people. Sick people show how much they like themselves, because when something hurts them, they take terrible care of themselves and so on. That is all very well, but it shows that people like themselves very much. What does a person actually like when he likes himself? Yes, he likes his body. And that is the great secret of life, I would say, that a person likes his body. And the love that a person has for his body shows when that body is not quite right.

But there are also snags with this love of the body. The body moves all day long. The body works hard all day long. And the soul and spirit within it, without the person knowing it, grows less and less fond of the body as the day progresses. That is the strange thing, and one must know that. While the human being lives in the day and must constantly be active, the soul-spiritual aspect grows less and less fond of the body. That is why a child sleeps so much. It loves its body very much and always wants to enjoy its body. When you see a child, you can always see how it enjoys its body. Just think about what it is like when the child has drunk its milk and falls asleep. In this sleep, the child has the pleasant feeling of digestion. It enjoys what is going on in its body. And only when it gets hungry does it wake up. Because what happens when it is hungry, it likes less. Then it wakes up again. So you see, the child still wants to enjoy its body even during sleep. You can make the most beautiful observations. Only the scholars do not do that because they do not have the ability to do so.

Observe a herd of cows in a meadow, eating and then lying down comfortably, enjoying their digestion. They enjoy what is happening in their body.

That is what you need to know: that a person actually wants to enjoy his body. But in humans it is somewhat different than in cows, and in the adult human it is somewhat different than in the child. The little child does not work yet, so he enjoys his body while sleeping. The cows do everything out of instinct, so they also enjoy their digestion while sleeping. The human being does not even get to enjoy his digestion. A person actually becomes so that when he uses his body all day, by evening he is no longer sympathetic to his body. He no longer loves it. And you see, that's why he sleeps. He sleeps because he no longer likes his body. The antipathy that a person develops towards his body throughout the day makes him fall asleep at night, and he sleeps until he has overcome this antipathy in his soul, and he wakes up again when he feels sympathy for his body again. This must be understood first of all, that waking up depends on the person developing sympathy for his body again. And this sympathy exists for all the individual organs of the body. Therefore, when a person wakes up, he slips into his organs, so to speak.

Just think of how dreams are when you wake up. When you wake up, you dream of snakes, for example. You slip into your intestines and dream of snakes. The snakes represent the intestines.

So when a person wakes up, they slip into their body out of sympathy with their body and their soul and spirit. People have to have this sympathy, otherwise they would always want to leave their body.

And now imagine: the person has died, he has laid down his body; the body is no longer with the person. The first thing that happens, I have told you, is that the person has his thoughts as a memory of his whole life. And these are then lost after a few days already. They are scattered all over the world. But then he is left with the sympathy for what his body has experienced. And this sympathy with what his body has experienced, he must now gradually lose. This is what we first go through after death, that we must lose our sympathy with our body.

How long does it take to restore this sympathy with the body if we live one day? It takes a third of the day. Therefore, the loss of sympathy after death also takes a third of a lifetime. If a person has, let's say, reached the age of thirty, it takes about ten years for him to get rid of the whole body, to have no more sympathies with the world and life at all - this is, of course, an approximation. So that after death a person first has a few days when he has a memory back, and then he has this breaking off, I would say, of memory back, which takes a third of the whole life he has spent on earth. Now, that is true on average for the individual person, but it is longer for one person and shorter for another because one person has more sympathy for his body, likes himself more, the other likes himself less and so on. So after death we go through something that could be called: the human being gets used to all the things that hold him together with his body.

But now you may say: What you are telling us is still somewhat theoretical. How can you know that a person still has something to him when he has discarded his physical body? How can you know that? — Yes, for that, gentlemen, you have to study how a person develops in life.

There is the first period of life in which the human being develops, the first period of life; this is until the human being gets the second teeth. First he has the milk teeth, then he gets the second teeth. Yes, you see, you can say that the human being has the milk teeth from heredity. But the second teeth, he no longer has them from heredity. The second teeth come from his ether body. The ether body is active in him and gives him the second teeth. So we have the physical body, as I already wrote to you the other day; it gives the first teeth. Then there is the ether body; it gives the human being the second teeth, the teeth that then remain.

Now one must just acquire the ability to see — today people only acquire the ability to think abstractly, to develop theories, but not to see what I have just described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. If you really look at the child as it gradually gets its second teeth, you can see this supersensible work of the etheric body. And this is the same body that a person retains when they die, retains for a few days, and then disperses throughout the world. So if you study what gives a person their second teeth, you find out that after death, a person still has their etheric body for a few days and then throws it away a few days later, that is, it disperses throughout the world.

Now he still has his astral body and his ego. This astral body is what always craves the physical body. With the ego inside, it always craves the physical body. So we can say: the human being develops - I have already told you this recently - the need in his astral body. The astral body develops all needs. The needs are not in the physical body. When the physical body is a corpse, it no longer has any needs.

So we can say: What gives the human being false teeth is also gone a few days after death. What remains now? Here one must again study what now begins to be particularly active in man from the moment he has his second teeth until the moment he becomes sexually mature. That is again an important period of human life. Our present-day science cannot study such things because it does not pay any attention to them at all.

You see, from the moment the child gets its second teeth until the moment it reaches sexual maturity, something supersensory is at work in the child. And what does this supersensory element want? This supersensory element wants to gradually take hold of the whole body. It is not yet inside when the child has its second teeth and begins to get this astral body into its whole body so that it permeates it. Then the child becomes more and more mature. And when the astral body is completely inside the body, then the child is sexually mature. That is the important thing to know: the astral body is the one that brings sexual maturity to the child.

Of course, these things cannot be studied in the way that today's scholars would like to study them. Today's scholars only want to study what is tangible. They do not observe human life. But anyone who has really learned to observe what it is that works its way into the body from the second teeth to sexual maturity knows that this is the astral body. It is the source of all needs. Of course, a child already has needs before the second teeth come in, because the astral body is present in the head; but later it spreads throughout the entire body. You can see this very clearly in boys, how the astral body spreads. The boy changes his voice, and with that he also becomes sexually mature. This is the penetration of the astral body into the whole physical body. In the case of a woman, you can observe it by the development of the secondary organs of sexual life, the breasts and so on. This is the penetration of the astral body. And this astral body the person retains after death if he has already discarded the etheric body.

You see, it is this astral body that wants to enter the physical body again every morning. Because while a person sleeps, he has no needs, neither sexual nor other needs. These arise when he is awake. They arise when the astral body wants to enter the physical body in the morning. And so, in life, this astral body is always striving to enter the physical body every morning. Of course, it wants to do the same after death, and it must first unlearn this habit.

If someone is thirty years old, how long has he been in his physical body? He has been in it for twenty years, he has not been in it for ten years. The ten years that he was not in his physical body, he slept through, and after death he wants to be in it again. And that is why he works in his astral body for a third of his life after his death, which he has gone through here on earth. After this time the astral body is satisfied. Then the human being only lives in his ego. So that after spending about a third of his lifetime after death, the human being only continues to live in his ego.

But this ego, this actual spiritual part of man, needs an enormous amount if it is to continue to live. You see, it is not without reason that I have been telling you that reason, the intellect, thoughts about the world are actually spread out. I have told you how everything in the world, when properly studied, is actually intelligently arranged. I have made it clear to you in the animal world. This whole world is such that we should not believe that our mind is the only one, but the mind that we have is only as if scooped out of the mind spread throughout the world. Mind is everywhere. And the one who believes that his mind is the only one is as foolish as the one who believes: “I have a glass of water here, this glass of water was empty at first, then it became full, that is, the water grew out of the glass.” - One must first draw the water from the well, from the whole body of water. And so one must also first bring the mind that one has out of the whole world mind.

We just don't realize any of this during our lifetime. Why not? Because our body does it. Gentlemen, if you should ever know – I have made this clear to you – what your body does with a very small piece of sugar that you have swallowed, how this small piece of sugar is not only dissolved in the body but also transformed into all kinds of other substances, if you knew what is going on there, then you would be amazed. You are amazed after I have told you only the very basics of what goes on in the human body. But no matter how much of what goes on in the human body is observed, it is always only a small part. You breathe in. The breath you inhale must be used throughout your entire body. Just think, you breathe in about eighteen times a minute. What you breathe in must be used throughout your whole body. This requires a tremendous amount of reason, a truly tremendous amount of reason.

Well, our body does all that. Our body, it really works for us with tremendous cleverness. It is quite admirable what one must feel when one realizes what the human body actually accomplishes in terms of cleverness. It is quite enormous. So it takes a lot out of us during our lifetime.

But now, after death, we no longer have it. Now we no longer even have the etheric body. We do not have the astral body, not even a longing for the physical body. So we only have the ego at all, and the ego now realizes that it does not have the body and now begins to familiarize itself with everything that is necessary for the body.

And that is where the mighty thing that must be understood begins. Today's science makes it particularly easy for itself. Today's science says: Where does man come from? Well, man comes from what has arisen as fertilization, as a fertilized germ in the mother. So science says: There is the fertilized germ, and in there, well, somehow man is already predisposed. If you don't know anything, you say: there is a predisposition; that's where the whole person comes from. Yes, you see, people have been aware of this for a long time, but in their own way, that is, they have been unclear about it.

Just imagine that this is the mother egg (it is drawn) from which you yourself emerged. So you would have been inside it, would have been inside it, so to speak, as a small human being. But this mother egg was in turn born of a mother egg. So the little human being must have been in the womb again, and the mother egg, that is, the mother, must have been in the grandmother again, and further up to the great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, to Eve. And you come to the strangeness that in the great-mother Eve, the whole of humanity was inside, but so nested. Mr. Miller, he was inside the egg, which in turn was inside the egg with all the other human eggs, it was just nested that way. The whole human race was in the original mother Eve. This theory, which was also called the theory of evolution back then, later became known as the nesting theory.

So at the beginning of the 19th century, people came to the conclusion that the story of the egg containing the whole human race, with each individual contained within the next, and then so many of them, was not acceptable. And so they adopted another theory. They then said: No, in the egg there is actually nothing yet; but when this egg is fertilized, all the external conditions, wind and weather and sun and light and everything possible, can get to it. And from the influence of all of nature on this egg, man comes into being.

Yes, gentlemen, that is something that does materialism a great deal of good, if it can imagine something like that. But it does not stand up to closer scrutiny. Because just think what we become when the whole of nature is constantly working on us. We become what people today call nervous. Those who are sensitive to every breath of air and every ray of light do not become real people, but rather a bundle of nerves. We become just that from the surrounding nature. So that can't be it either.

A proper study shows us something completely different. A proper study shows that there is absolutely nothing inside this egg. Before it is fertilized, it is still, I would say, halfway so that you can see all kinds of things inside. It has a shape. So in the unfertilized egg, you can still see all kinds of threads and so on. But when the egg is fertilized, those threads are destroyed and the whole egg is nothing but a real 'mess', if I may express myself so. In more scientific terms, it is a chaos. It is a completely disordered substance.

You see, such a substance, which is completely disordered, is not found anywhere else in the world. All substances are in some way internally ordered, arranged. If you take the most arbitrary substance, if you just take a grain of dust and look at it through the microscope, you will see how finely and artfully it is constructed inside. The only thing that is completely chaotic inside is the fertilized egg. And the substance must first become completely chaotic; it must no longer be anything in itself if a human being is to develop from it. People are always thinking about the egg white, for example. They always want to study how the egg white is formed internally. Yes, the egg white is internally configured as long as it is not fertilized. When it is fertilized, it is just what I have called a “mess”, that is, a chaos, an absolutely disordered substance. And out of this comes the human being. Even in the Primordial Mother Eve, if she existed at all, the whole human race was not present, nor somehow in an egg germ that was later fertilized, but the egg germ is completely chaotic, disorderly, and was also disorderly in the Primordial Mother Eve. And if a human being is to arise out of this egg germ, then this must be brought about from outside, that is, the human being must enter into this egg germ. A proper scientific study shows, in turn, that the human being must enter this egg germ from the outside. That is to say, the human being comes from the spiritual world. He does not come from the material. The material must first be destroyed.

This is already the case with plants. In plants, you have the earth and in the earth the plant germ. Now, people are not properly studying what happens to the plant germ in the earth. It must first be destroyed, and then the new spring causes the new plant to arise from the destroyed material from outside in a spiritual way. This is how it is with animals, and especially with humans. It is only that it is easier for the plant. The whole universe forms its shape. In the case of the human being, the whole universe does not initially form his shape. He must actually form it himself. The human being must actually enter into this destroyed matter, otherwise no human being could arise from this destroyed matter. The human being must therefore first come from the spiritual world and enter into this destroyed matter. The whole process of fertilization is only there to ensure that the human being, who wants to enter the world, is confronted with a destroyed substance, that he has a destroyed substance. He could not do anything with an undestroyed substance. He cannot enter the world like a plant, because then he could only become a plant. He must really form the whole universe within himself. And he does form it. It is truly wonderful how man forms the universe within this destroyed substance.

I will show you an example of how the human being now forms the universe into this destroyed substance. If you have the earth's surface here (it is drawn), then we can just show it, because if you just look at a piece of earth, it looks even. The sun comes up in the morning, goes up to a certain height, then goes down again. That is a certain angle up to which the sun rises. It is very interesting that the sun always rises up to a certain angle and then goes down again. The angle is of course a little higher in summer than in winter, but up to a certain angle the sun rises. This angle is therefore an inclination of the sun to the earth.

We find this angle elsewhere, too. You see, when light enters our eye, where the optic nerve enters from the brain into the eye – I have drawn the eye for you – there is what is known as the blind spot. You cannot see there. You see most clearly only at points that are somewhat away from this blind spot, where the optic nerve enters. And that is where the interesting thing is: the same inclination that the sun has to the earth in its orbit, this point, where we perceive most brightly in our inner being, has the same inclination to the blind spot.

And something else. If you take the heart, it is also slightly tilted. It has the same inclination as the sun to the earth. I could show you countless such things, from which you would see: Everything that is out there in the universe, we somehow carry it within us. We carry the inclination of the sun in the inclination of our eye and in the inclination of our heart. We are formed entirely out of the reason of the universe.

Oh, gentlemen, that is where you start, when you gradually get some knowledge, to really tell yourself how actually man is a whole small world. Everything in the world outside is recreated in man. Center Just imagine if you were given this “mess”, this destroyed matter, and you were supposed to recreate it inside! You would not be able to do that. You see, when the ego is alone after death, it has to learn from the whole world how to recreate the whole world. So that after the person has shed the sympathy with the body during this third of the previous life, he now begins to learn from the whole universe how to become a human being again. And that takes longer than life on earth lasts, because on earth, things are such that one can learn a lot or a little. Actually, most people today learn very little. And however strange it may seem, scholars learn the least of all, because what they learn is all useless. It is only good for understanding what a corpse looks like, but not how a living body is affected. But the ego must learn this after death. It must learn the secrets of how a body is built from the whole world. And one can point to this time, which the ego now spends learning from the whole world how a person works and lives internally.

You see, when a person, through the exercises I have described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, brings themselves to remember the time when one would otherwise not remember, when one was a very small child, then one comes to understand what this actually consists of, this life of the infant, who as yet knows nothing of the world, who only uses his body, only wriggles, only lives in his eyes, lives in his ears, but does not yet understand anything of all this. In ordinary life, a person does not think of looking back. They say: Oh, what do I care about my childhood; I'm here now. But if you look back into this short time, which you otherwise do not remember, in terms of knowledge, you realize what you actually did there. Yes, you actually get a terribly uncomfortable feeling when you think about it. Because this fidgeting of the very young child consists of trying to forget all this knowledge of the universe. You give it to the body, and it knows it afterwards. Therefore, it can take it over during life.

The small child gives the body the whole wisdom of the world. It is so terribly painful, so terribly sad that today's science has no idea of what is going on in life, how the small child gives the body the wisdom of the world that it has acquired, how it gradually grows into the eyes, into the hands. Gradually it grows into it, giving all the wisdom of the ego to the body, while the ego actually used to possess all the wisdom of the world.

It may seem strange to you, but it is actually true: if you really have mastered anthroposophy, how can you tell people something about the universe? You can tell something about the universe simply because you remember back to the first days of childhood, when you still knew everything from the experiences you had before you entered the body. And anthroposophy actually consists of the fact that you gradually get all this world wisdom out of the body that you gave up to the body.

Yes, gentlemen, for that, ordinary science today gives no guidance. It gives no instruction at all on how to find the knowledge that one has put into the body oneself. It leads people to experiment, and they should only learn what they experience externally; whereas the right thing would be to guide people into the living body. Our students are guided to the dead body, which is already a corpse, and learn nothing about the living human being. That would admittedly be a more difficult study, because there the human being must practice self-knowledge, must look into himself, because there the human being is to become more perfect. But that is precisely what the modern person does not want: he does not want to become more perfect, he wants the school to train him a little, and then he wants to stop there, does not want to become more perfect. Man does not want this because, in the education he enjoys today, I would say he is already far too proud to somehow admit that he should perfect himself.

Well, with that I have, I would say, told you a little bit about the self. But we will talk about these things more in the coming hours, so you will hear much more and gradually find everything more understandable.

You see, I have told you a little about what the self has to do during the time until the human being comes down to earth again. But there are people who say: Oh, I'm not interested in what the self has to do afterwards! You can wait until after you die and then you'll see.

Yes, gentlemen, that would be just as if the germ, after it has emerged and been fertilized, and the human being has hatched, would say in the mother's body: Oh, I don't like living in the mother's body, I'll leave sooner. — Yes, but if he doesn't want to live his proper nine months in the mother's body, he cannot become a human being. He must go through with it first. Nor can the ego experience anything after death if it does not live here in such a way that it is stimulated to do so. Therefore it is quite wrong when someone says: I'll wait until death has occurred, then I'll see if I am something or nothing, and so on. People are not very logical. People today are actually as logical as the one who swore that he did not recognize any God, and he swore: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” That's more or less how people are today. They repeat the old sayings. Quite unconsciously they repeat the sayings, even when they contradict them. And so people believe: You can wait, then you will see whether I am still something or nothing. Isn't it true that people say to themselves: Do I believe in immortality, or do I not believe in immortality? Yes, if I don't believe in immortality and there is one after all, then I could be in a bad way. But if I believe in immortality and there is none, then it doesn't do any harm. So in any case it is better if I believe in immortality.

But, you are not supposed to play with the idea, instead it is important to really become clear about the facts. And so one must say: Here on earth, man must receive the stimulus that his ego can truly penetrate into the world after death. And today's science thoroughly dispels this stimulus, if at all, when people are no longer made aware of the facts. It is not admitted, but actually today it is in the interest of keeping people as stupid as possible, so that after death they sleep and have no idea how to penetrate the secrets of the whole universe in order to become truly human again.

You see, gentlemen, if humanity continues to live as it does today, merely concerning itself with outward things, then in the future people will be born who will no longer be able to lift a finger because they have not learned anything until the next life.

We will come back to how lives repeat themselves. Today I just wanted to give you some ideas so that you can see that it is not just a careless assertion about what the ego is like after death, but that one can point out from knowledge itself that the human being in turn descends and has to form his life from the confused material. This is really recognized on the basis of objective facts.

That is what this is about. It is just not going so fast, but I will answer the question in full when one takes together what is known about the end of human life, how man gradually loses his etheric body and his astral body, and how then the ego must descend to form its astral body and so on. Then one comes to understand how man repeatedly descends. And then, in the course of time, one also comes to understand when man will be liberated from his entire earthly life, when he will no longer have to descend. The question of when he once began will also be answered then. He must once have begun as a kind of plant. For that he does not need to be human. I have also described to you how the earth was once a large plant, and we will see how the earth will once again become a plant, and man will then be freed from his humanity.

I will then deal with the whole question again from a different angle. You will, of course, have to have the patience not to say after the first few lessons: I can't go along with this. You will see that the more detailed it becomes, the more it will seem plausible to you.

Question regarding earthquakes.

Dr. Steiner: You probably mean the earthquakes that are happening in America now? Of particular importance with regard to such questions are always those volcanic phenomena that, I might say, do not occur so intensely, not so powerfully at the same time, but which show in detail that something is happening over time in the earth's environment. And here I would like to draw your attention to something else, which is perhaps less noticeable, but which many people can relate to more than these individual phenomena, which of course had a terrible effect on those who were nearby, but which are of less significance for the greater part of humanity. And then you just remember that in the last few years people could talk about the fact that extraordinary weather conditions prevail. We cannot deny that in recent years there have not been any really proper, lasting summers, especially not in our areas. But that is spreading across a large part of Europe and further afield.

Now, when something like this is mentioned, people usually talk about how large icebergs float in the northern seas and how so-called cold spells then emanate from these mighty floating icebergs. You may also remember that during last year's so-called cold spell, it was reported by ships that if they took even a slight northerly course, these huge floating icebergs could be found everywhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

But we must realize that the things that occur in this way do not come from the earth alone, but are connected with the whole evolution of the world. And here we must ask ourselves: What about the distribution of warmth and cold on our earth?

I would like to draw your attention to something that I may have mentioned before, but in a different context, which can be important for us when considering this question. You may have heard that particularly in northern Siberia, in Asia, there are very special conditions in the ground. To give you an idea, I would just like to note the following. If we have the map of Europe like this (it is drawn), here is Norway, here is the north coast of Germany, here it goes over to Holland and so on, there would be Ireland, England, and there we would come over the large peninsula to Asia. There is the border between Asia and Europe. There is Russia. Here we come over to Asia and have Siberia. Over there is the so-called Arctic Ocean. That is just drawn to help you orient yourself. Now, elephant-like animals have been found in this area of Siberia a long time ago, which no longer exist today, and which therefore existed on Earth a very, very long time ago. And you also know that elephant-like animals no longer live up there at the Arctic Ocean. Elephant-like animals belong in much warmer areas. But the strange thing is that these elephant-like animals, which are deep in the ground, in the icy ground, were so fresh that you could still have eaten the meat if you like to eat elephant meat. These animals were in the icy ground just as if someone had wanted to eat the meat and had stored the animals in the ground for that purpose. So these animals in northern Siberia were simply preserved, as they say, their meat was kept fresh, for many, many millennia.

Now, you see, gentlemen, it is impossible that this could have happened slowly over time. Because if the animals had lived up there, simply died and gone into the ground, they would have rotted away long ago, and at most you would have found the remains of bones, as you would find anywhere else. But here you find whole fresh animals. This is only possible if these animals once lived there and an ice wave came very quickly, covering these animals, sealing them in, so that they could be preserved in the same state with the fresh meat for thousands of years. So you can see: there must have been a time when a mighty blast came from the south and blew water up into the ice region. The water froze instantly, and these animals were instantly frozen in this enormous Siberian ice cellar, where they remained for thousands of years.

Now you will all admit, of course, the earth has no reason to suddenly do something like that. Because where should the forces come from in the earth itself, that it could carry out something like that? These things can only come from the extraterrestrial stellar influences. So if you imagine that there is the earth (it is drawn), “since here the southern regions are the equatorial regions – only south in relation to the north, of course – then such a stellar constellation must have existed here once, which simply threw the water up again. So, through the constellation of the stars, through the position of the heavenly bodies, this water was thrown up, immediately froze and buried these animals. You can see from such things that the constellation of the stars has a powerful influence on the distribution of land and water and ice on Earth.

Now, I recently explained to you how volcanoes also originate from that which is outside of the earth, how that which is under the earth is, so to speak, brought out from the interior of the earth. So we can also say that when, for example, the mighty Etna erupts, things are not hurled out from below; rather, a stellar constellation acts from above downwards, and this brings these fiery masses out of the interior of the earth.

From this we see that today very many things interact, and this causes, on the one hand, that we have these cold spells. The cold spells are therefore also caused by the extraterrestrial. The fact that we have these volcanic eruptions and earthquakes also stems from the extraterrestrial. But now one can never fully assess such an occurrence if one is not clear about the fact that man himself is intimately connected with all these extraterrestrial conditions.

You see, you have probably already heard of so-called haemorrhages, where a person's blood no longer takes the right path, so that it spews out of the mouth instead of being distributed throughout the body. This is called a haemorrhage. Such haemorrhages occur particularly easily when a person is at certain stages in life. We must ask ourselves: What is the actual relationship between a hemorrhage and what is happening outside? — Now, if you remember that man does not consist only of his physical body, which we can touch with our hands, but that man consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I-body, then you will have to say to yourself: Of course, we can shed the physical body. It is heavy, it is heavy mass, it is connected with the earth. But the etheric body is connected with the environment. And when we look at things in the human being, it is the case that the moon has a huge influence on the human being. But the moon does not have such an influence on people as it does now; rather, we are led back to very ancient times. In ancient times, the moon had an extremely strong influence on people. People had to do something specific during the waxing moon, something specific during the waning moon, and so on. And in particular, in those older times, the reproduction of the human race was entirely based on the moon. It is so interesting to see how people who still have traditions from ancient times think about these things. They definitely think that it is of great importance whether a person is conceived in the waxing moon or the waning moon, for example. This is a very important thing in ancient traditions. And the moon then also exerts its influence on the whole development of the person, but in such a way that the person carries these lunar influences within them. So it is not that it has a direct influence on the person when there is a full moon or something like that; but we see the moon waxing and waning; that once had an influence on the person, and that has remained and continues. So it is not the current phase of the moon that has a great influence, but something that is similar to the old moon phase and is an old heirloom has a great influence. And so you could say that the moon has a certain influence.

But we wouldn't have any blood in our heads at all if it weren't for the moon. We would all walk around with very pale faces, terribly pale faces, if it were not for the influence of the moon. The moon draws our blood up from our body to our head. That is the influence of the moon, that the blood is willing to go to the head at all. This is extremely interesting. The blood only goes up into the human head because of the influence of the moon. Otherwise, the blood would always go down. Now, when a person becomes so weak in his entire body that he can no longer sufficiently resist these forces of the moon that draw the blood up, the blood rushes too strongly into the human head, and that is how a hemorrhage occurs. We must always have this influence, but when it becomes too strong, the blood rushes too strongly to the human head and that is how blood comes out.

And you see, what the hemorrhage is in the individual human being is something like water bursting out [pointing to Siberia] or erupting from a volcano in the great outdoors outside. Only there it is not the influence of the moon, but the influence of the more distant stars. You must imagine that when we simply develop as human beings, we are continually exposed to other influences. I will illustrate this to you. Imagine once again, here would be the earth (it is drawn), here the moon goes around the earth. I will draw it as it looks. So the moon goes around the earth, and it has its greatest influence on people first. But outside of the moon are the other stars, Venus, Mercury, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and so on, and then the fixed stars. Now you must be aware that it is different whether, let's say, Mars is behind the Sun or whether Mars has already moved on and is already next to the Sun. When Mars is behind the Sun, it has less effect on Earth because the Sun covers its effect. When Mars is in this position [next to the Sun], it has a stronger effect on Earth. And so it always depends on the position of the stars how strongly the earth is affected. This science of the position of the stars is almost not developed at all today, and so people only look at what is happening on earth, icebergs and so on, but they do not look at the stars.

Now one cannot investigate these things from the earth either, but one must be clear about the fact that one must investigate these things from the human being. These things must be investigated from the human being.

Now I would like to tell you something: if you go through the development of humanity in modern times, you will indeed find huge changes in this development of humanity. We do not want to go back very far, but let us go back, say, six hundred years. If we go back six hundred years – today is 1923 – we come to 1323. You have to bear in mind that if you had lived then, you would not have known that there was such a thing as America or Australia. People did not know any of this, they only knew about Europe and Asia and a small part of Africa, very little of Africa. So six centuries before our time, imagine, people only knew about a small part of the world. And above this earth they saw the moon rise and set, the sun rise and set, the stars, and everything was such that all life took place only in a small space. Yes, gentlemen, in those days people knew little about the earth and had no idea about the movement of the stars. But they knew something about the spiritual influences of the stars. This is connected with the fact that people lived in small circumstances. People got their influence from these small circumstances.

Well, you know, it didn't take long: in 1492, Christopher Columbus of Genoa set out with a small number of ships, and he was of the opinion that one could travel around the world. Christopher Columbus did not want to discover America at all, but he was given the idea that the earth must be spherical. Before that, people thought the earth was flat. Now he was given the idea that the earth must be spherical. And so he equipped himself with a number of ships. There was resistance, but he still got these ships from the government, equipped them, and believed that he could sail around the world. At least that's what he thought. He said to himself: if we go from Europe over there to the east, we'll find (pointing to the drawing) Asia, down there is Hither India, there is Farther India. — So he knew that if you go over there by land, you come to India. Now he wanted to go around the globe of the earth from Spain and come to India from the other side. That was what Columbus wanted. He wanted to travel around the world because he hoped, so to speak, to make the first practical use of the roundness of the earth. He wanted to travel around and discover India from the other side. Now he set out and came across America, and thought: This is the other side of India. — That is why this area was also called the West Indies, as it is still called in part today.

So you see how, through the thinking of people, the spherical shape of the earth has actually been gradually conquered for knowledge, how it was only gradually realized that one had come to the other side of America and realized that this was not India, but a new country. So 1492, that's only 431 years ago that people discovered America at all.

But the discovery of America means something completely different. And if you want to understand what the discovery of America means, then please consider the following. You see, in 1492, I told you, Christopher Columbus set out first and discovered America. In 1543, Copernicus came on the scene and was the first to put forward the world view that the sun stands still and the earth moves around the sun like the other planets. So what every child learns at school today has only been around since that time. Do you realize how many years that is? It's only 380 years! It is only since that time that people have had any idea at all of what is already taught in elementary school today. Before that, people knew nothing about any of these things. But they thought about it all the more, about what influence the moon has on people. People knew what I have told you now, that the moon drives the blood to the head. People recognized this influence on people.

Now you have to consider what the discovery of America actually means. You see, people talk so thoughtlessly and history presents it that way: discovery of America, people have possessed genius after all! - Yes, gentlemen, but you have to imagine it quite differently. What kind of people do you think lived in America at the time when Columbus came across it? Well, not even five hundred years ago, the copper-red Indians lived over there, and these Indians did not think like you do today in Europe. They knew a lot about the influence of the stars. So there lived in all of America at the time a population that knew an extraordinary amount about the influence of the stars. They oriented themselves entirely to the influence of the stars. And then the Europeans came, civilized humanity. Now, you see, as late as the 19th century, the Indians said that the Europeans always brought something strange with them, something white, with little ghosts on it. But these were very harmful ghosts, terribly harmful ghosts, and the Europeans would use them to conjure the Americans. At least that's what the Native Americans thought. And do you know what it was that the Native Americans feared so much, what they thought made the Europeans such terrible guys who caused so much havoc? It was the books, the white sheets of paper with the letters on them! The Native Americans looked at them, thought they were magic and said: “These people are using them to cast spells on us.

And so the people came together. And then the extermination of the Indians began. But where did the people who exterminated the Indians come from? They came from Europe! And if the people who still lived in Europe in 1323 had come over there, their beliefs would have been much more similar to those of the Indians. Because these people in 1323 in Europe still knew about the influence of the stars. They could have understood each other much better. But the people who came over did not understand the Indians at all, they could only exterminate them. And on the spot where the exterminated Indians were, European humanity developed. You just have to bear in mind that the Americans who developed there are, after all, Europeans. Isn't it true that the ideas that people often have based on what they learned at school are really quite stupid sometimes.

I would just like to point out one thing to you. Today people talk so much about the French. But around Nuremberg, the people are still called Franks today. The French are just the immigrated Germanic people who then adopted the Latin language in a modified form. So everything that is talked about, when one does not know how things came about and rages because it is presented that way in history, is sometimes so boundlessly foolish, so boundlessly stupid. And so it is boundlessly stupid there too. They don't even consider that the people of Europe who migrated to America had developed in Europe over the last three hundred years. The main immigration only happened much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries. That's when America was first settled. And what kind of people came over then? Well, the illiterate ones also came over, but they didn't have much influence. Those who came over and had a great influence were those who had been educated in Europe, especially in science, who had learned the Copernican doctrine, who had completely different views about the stars.

Imagine how this all fits together in world history. On the one hand, the spherical shape of the earth is proven by the fact that one can travel around the earth at all, and on the other hand, that it is not the sun that rises and sets, but that there is space all around and the earth goes around the sun, that the earth is not a plane, that the sun does not sink into the water in the evening, but that the earth goes around the sun.

You see, people do not think about what the actual connection is between the discovery of America, which took place in 1492, and 1543, when Copernicus came up with his new view of the stars. There is a close connection. Don't think that what happened could have happened without the influence of the stars on people. Columbus did not think: “Now I will go over to the West” without the influence of the stars. You only have to consider how foggy it was. He did not know that he was discovering America. He just wanted to sail around the world. It's like a blind hen finding a grain of corn. You can't say that it was his own mind, but that people are driven by influences. And what drives them are the stellar influences. So we also have to ask ourselves: Why did Copernicus think the way he did about the stellar influences? — then we ourselves have to look for the causes in the stellar influences.

We have a time in the Middle Ages - I told you, it was still like this six hundred years ago - when people still have concepts that relate to a very small world. Then suddenly they get concepts that go all around on the earth and all around in the sky. All concepts diverge. Yes, gentlemen, you really have to think a little deeper about what is going on in people. One must penetrate into these things with real science. One must therefore study man. Now I have already told you many things about man. I will now tell you a well-attested fact again, so that you can see how things are.

There was an Austrian poet, Robert Hamerling, who was transferred to Trieste as a secondary school teacher at a certain time, in 1855, and he took a great interest in everything that was going on. At the time, Robert Hamerling was also very interested in how all sorts of swindlers passed through Trieste, but so did some people who produced anomalies, so-called mediums. He liked to visit all such gatherings, but he was not at all superstitious. He really saw how most of these things were fraudulent. But once he thought to himself, when he saw a person with a particularly strange medium: now I want to see for myself. Now Hamerling had known a young girl in Graz, where he lived before coming to Trieste, who died very soon afterwards and from whom he had received a lock of hair. He had this lock of hair from the young girl made into a small wreath, tied it together, pinned it on a small piece of paper and then put it in a little box. He kept this as a souvenir. It had become particularly valuable to him after the person in question had died. He took it with him to Trieste among his other things. Nobody knew anything about it. He never told anybody anything about it – he remembered that very clearly – and never showed the box to anybody. Besides, the circumstances were such that he would not have liked to show it anyway. It was something that embarrassed him a great deal. So he had a secret box, so to speak, that contained this. He took it with him when he went to the meeting to see the medium. And with this medium it was the case that people gave all kinds of objects, which they put in envelopes or boxes; the medium took it in his hand, touched it and then said what was in the box. Now, such things are very often interspersed with fraud; you have to keep an open mind about these things.

For example, I was once at a meeting where a medium was brought in, and the man they call the impresario went around the audience and had all kinds of things written down on pieces of paper. He took these, but stopped walking. The medium was blindfolded. And while he was still standing there – he just said: Tell me, what do I have in my hand? – the medium immediately said what he had in his hand. So if someone wrote down his own name, he gave it to the impresario, who read it and then crumpled up the piece of paper. The medium could not see anything, but then said what was on it. Now, you see, the people at the table where I was sitting at the time were terribly curious – because the people were terribly amazed – and they said that now someone should write something down where the guy was not clever enough, where he could not communicate, because they all believed that he communicated with the medium through all kinds of signs. Well, I wrote down the name Spinoza and a work by Spinoza, the “Ethics”, because people believed that the impresario naturally did not know who Spinoza was. But he took over Spinoza and the “Ethics” just as well, and the medium answered correctly. People were terribly amazed. But, you see, the matter was very simple. The impresario was a ventriloquist and the medium only pretended to answer, while the impresario spoke from the medium's mouth. So one must not be taken in. I must always emphasize that one must not be taken in by these things. That is precisely the difference between superstitious, gullible people and those who can judge these things.

But Hamerling took the little box with him and no one knew anything about it. Then he sent this little box, the contents of which no one knew about, down among the other objects. The medium was sitting in front of a table. He sent up the box. Well, first the other things were determined. The medium did that fairly quickly. And the moment she came to his box, she took it in her hand and flung it away. Now Hamerling thought: now it is the case that this is of course agreed with all the others; with me it cannot be an agreement, the medium does not come to that and flings it away! - So he went and said that he still wanted to know what was in it. The box was picked up again. The medium flung it away again. It was picked up again. Then the medium said, very stammeringly: a lock of hair and a piece of paper! Now, of course, he was amazed. Any fraud was out of the question, absolutely out of the question. Then he asked why she kept throwing it away. She said: because it comes from a dead person. Now, that was even more surprising. So that is a case where – I am not mentioning other cases except those that you can find in the literature, otherwise I could mention hundreds of others – any deception is out of the question. And what is the underlying cause? The medium must not know what is there at that moment, but must seek it out from the unconscious. There is a very specific influence at work here.

I once told you that sometimes the influence of buckwheat groats down in the cellar can still be felt on the third floor. Do you remember how I told you that? Such an influence, which only manifests itself in the head, is the underlying cause. And the medium then says what is in there – why? Because the medium is a person in whom the blood is more subject to the influence of the moon than in other people. It does not have to be so strong as to cause a hemorrhage – it could also occur in a medium who is not subject to giddiness – but the blood is drawn to the head more than in other people. This results in a strong influence, and this kind of influence can be present.

If you consider this, you will say to yourself: Yes, the powerful influences of the stars, of course, they are constantly affecting people. And everything that Europe has experienced together with America and the whole earth for four hundred years is under the influence of the stars. But what is this star influence like? Well, gentlemen, you have to imagine the following. Imagine that here is the Earth (it is being recorded). There was the piece of earth that people used to know only. Somehow the stars are above it, I am of course only drawing it schematically for you. People are under the influence of these stars. This is the time before the discovery of America. People have firmly established ideas. If you look at the pictures and portraits of the old councilmen, you will see that people have their fixed ideas and that they stand with both feet firmly on the ground. This is because in those days there was a constellation of stars where the stars were very close together. Since then, we have had a different star constellation. When the earth is there, the stars are, so to speak, much more oblique, of course again drawn very schematically. If you were to draw it in detail, each one would naturally stand out, so to speak. You will say: But the fixed stars have not changed? — But they have changed too, although not to such an extent. So you can see from this: the spaces between them became larger in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. The concepts have dissolved. And now there is again a time coming when the spaces become smaller, when the stars again contract. This is only very little with the fixed stars, but it is still the case. Even when one records the fixed stars, one sees that the fixed stars have to shift. And now men are exposed to the fact that they have acquired ideas through the influence of stars that were far apart. But now they have to get concepts under the influence of the stars that are close together again. There is a completely new star constellation in the world. This can be seen if one has lived awake from the previous century into this century. You see, I was born in 1861, so I consciously experienced the time in the seventies, eighties, nineties and now the 20th century. Yes, in my childhood it was quite different from today! In my childhood people simply thought quite differently than today. Everything has changed now, and in one area in particular it has changed completely. When I was a little boy of twelve, I didn't have much money back then to buy books, but every year we were given a school program; it contained the most important physical terms of the time. Well, I spent a lot of time chewing over those. They were hard to grasp. Even back then, I had to learn differential calculus to understand the concepts. But I know what the physical concepts were back then.

But today it is quite different. When someone studies physics at university today, he learns something completely different from what we learned as boys. And from what happened then, we can see that the physical concepts have disintegrated. Today, no physicist knows which concepts to use. In the past, we spoke of space and time as two different things. Today, the physicist speaks of four dimensions, taking the first, second, and third as dimensions of space and the fourth dimension as equivalent to time. Most people have no idea what teaching is like today. People who are outside of schools still live with the concepts that I learned as a boy. But in actual physics today, they are already talking about something completely different. This shows that the concepts have become completely mixed up. Today, the physicist knows least of all what he is supposed to do. Everything has become mixed up.

Yes, gentlemen, it shows you in the human mind that there is a different star constellation. For the story is that today's people all have more blood in their heads than people through all the centuries have had in their heads, because the moon is supported by the stars, which in turn are closer together. So if you study human evolution, you find that a wave of blood has gone up to the head through the star constellation. But this wave is not only happening in man, but on the whole earth. And it is this same influence that once threw the cold from south to north and buried the mammoths, which are still fresh meat in Siberia today, as if in a large ice cream factory. Just as it was thrown up then, just as blood is driven up into the head by the moon, so today these volcanic eruptions are thrown up by the stars. Thus we have today the effect of a star constellation coming from the other side of the Earth. It passes through North America, through Greenland, and throws cold air over here, so that today, as a result of the star constellation, large masses of cold air are continually being thrown from west to east.

And now I have told you: If you go to Italy, you only need to light a piece of paper on certain parts of the ground and it will smoke from below. It is not that the earth throws up the smoke, but that I make the air above warm and thin, causing these vapors to rise. Now the star constellation throws these air masses from west to east. We are exposed to them here, which is why we now have this climate. Here it goes from west to east. But this causes the ground below to throw out its masses, its fire masses. First they were thrown out over America by the huge volcanoes and the huge earthquakes. Now it is moving further and further east. Etna and Vesuvius are all beginning to erupt because the wave is flowing over there, and down below it is becoming elastic. It is not pushed up from below, but is brought to the surface by the star constellations. In the human being, blood is pushed into the brain, and on Earth, masses of air are thrown over and fiery masses of gas are thrown out from under the Earth and transported to other places. It is the same story. It all starts with the stars.

If people understood why they think differently now, they would also understand why Etna is spitting fire. But for that to happen, the human being must first know that he is not something that can be considered in isolation, but must be considered in connection with the whole universe. That is precisely it. And people have completely forgotten how to consider things in the universe. It is really quite interesting how animals, in this respect, as I have also told you before, are much cleverer than humans. Animals usually even migrate before a volcanic eruption or something like that occurs, while people stay put. Why do animals migrate? Yes, when the other influence comes, the other star influence, then it is like this with the animal: the animal is built so that it has its legs there (see drawing $. 138), its backbone, the vertebrae, its head there. When the stars move across it, the entire spine is continuously exposed to the stars, vertebra by vertebra exposed to the stars, and they belong together, they belong so closely together that we have 28 to 31 vertebrae in our back and the moon takes 28 to 31 days to go around. It is so closely related.

But man walks upright. With him only the head, this little piece of the head, is exposed to the starry sky. He has his spine lifted out. So that with man only the blood is exposed to the influence of the stars, not the nervous system. But with animals the nervous system is exposed to the influence of the stars. That is why the animal notices the influence of the stars much sooner than man and migrates when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. Man stays put. The mere fact that the animal can migrate and thus shows us that the star influence is acting on the animal, that in itself is proof that we are not dealing here with random waves coming from the earth, but that the star influence is acting from outside. That is what shows us this whole interesting connection with the whole universe. Man is not merely an earthly creature, but man is a being placed in the entire world of the stars.

Now, of course, this also leads us to understand that after people have forgotten their old knowledge of the stars, they have to get it again. So, I would like to say: It is indeed the case that with anthroposophy, we have to give humanity what it needs in a new way, otherwise humanity will remain confused. Because the stars, which are arranged more closely together, no longer fit the concepts from other times; only the concepts that anthroposophy can bring fit again.

Now I have already been given four questions today. We will see if we can make progress next time. I may have to be away on Wednesday. I will let you know when we will have the next session.

How does one come to see the spiritual world?

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study for people who would want to approach this study immediately and finish it in a certain period of time, I would begin—after the necessary natural scientific background had been acquired—with a discussion of the various functions in the human organism. I would feel bound to begin with a kind of anatomical-physiological study of the foodstuffs as they are worked through from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin to that of being worked on by the pepsin and then taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the general act of digestion in the narrower sense, I would pass on to discussion of the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. I would then discuss everything connected with the human kidney system. The kidney system must then be discussed in relation to the entire nerve-sense apparatus—a relationship not recognized at all today. Then I would lead on to the system of liver, gall, and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of how things are arranged in the human organism, a vista that would be needed in order to build up the knowledge that it is the task of an anthroposophical spiritual science to develop. Then, with the light that would have been shed upon the results of sense-perceptible empirical research, it would be possible to pass on to therapy.

In the few days at our disposal, it is only possible, of course, for me to give a few hints about this wide and all embracing domain. A great deal of what I have to say, therefore, will be based upon a treatment of empirical evidence that is not customary today, but I think it will be quite accessible to anyone who possesses the requisite physiological and therapeutic knowledge. I shall have to speak differently from the way people are accustomed to, but I will really present nothing that cannot in some way be brought into harmony with the data of modern sense-oriented empirical knowledge, if these data are studied in all their connections.

Everything I say will be aphoristic, merely hinting at ultimate conclusions. Our starting point, however, must be the sense-perceptible empirical investigations of modern times, and the intermediate stages will have to be mastered by the work of doctors everywhere. This intermediate path is exceedingly long, but it is absolutely essential because, as things are today, nothing of what I present to you will be fully acknowledged if these intermediate steps are not taken—at least in relation to the most important phenomena. I do not believe that this will prove as difficult as it appears at present, if people will only submit to bringing the preliminary work that has already been done into line with the general conceptions I am trying to indicate here. This preliminary work is excellent in many respects, but its goal still lies ahead.

In the last lecture I tried to show you how broadening ordinary knowledge can give us insight into the human being. And now, bearing in mind what I have just said, let me add the following. To begin with you may find it offensive to hear it said in anthroposophy that the human being, as he stands before us in the physical world, consists of a physically organized system, an etherically organized system, an astrally organized system, and what characterizes him as an ego organization. You do not need to take offense at these expressions. They are used merely because some kind of terminology is necessary. By virtue of this ego system, the human being is able to develop that inner soul cohesion, the inward soul life, that cannot be found in animals. This cohesion reveals itself on the one hand in the fact that the human being can unify his inner experience in an ego-point, if I may use that expression, from which all his general organic activity rays out in a certain sense, at least in the conscious state. It reveals itself on the other hand in the fact that during his earthly evolution the human being has a different relationship to sexual development from that of the animal organization. Though of course there are exceptions, the animal organization is such that sexual maturity represents a certain point of culmination. After this, deterioration sets in. This organic deterioration may not begin in a very radical sense after the first stage of sexual maturity, but there is a certain organic culmination. On the other hand, the physical development of the human being receives a certain impetus at puberty. Even in the outer empirical sense, then, if we take all the factors into account, there is already a difference between the human being and the animal.

You may say that it is really an abstract method of classification to speak of physical, etheric, astral, and ego organizations. This objection has been made by many people, especially from the side of philosophy. We take the functions of the human organism and differentiate them, and—since differentiations do not necessarily point back to any objective causes—people think that it is all an abstraction. This is not so. In the course of these lectures we will see what really lies behind this classification and division, but I assure you they are not merely the outcome of a desire to divide things into categories.

When we speak of man's physical organization, this encompasses everything in the human organism that can be dealt with by the same methods we adopt when we are doing experiments and investigations in the laboratory. We encompass all this when we speak about the physical organization of the human being.

Regarding the human etheric organization, however, which is incorporated into the physical, our mode of thinking can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws that apply when we are doing experiments and making observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organization of the human being as revealed by super-sensible knowledge—without needing to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic methods in any way—it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question that would be the subject of lengthy study in the curriculum that I sketched earlier) that the etheric organization as a whole is involved in the fluid nature within the human organization. You need only think of this as a structure of functions that can be grasped directly in this fluid nature. The purely physical mode of thinking, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the human organization, to the solid state of aggregation. We understand the human organization properly only when we conceive of what is fluid in this organization as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids—not merely as the fluids we have in outer, inorganic nature. This is the sense in which we say that the human being has an etheric body.

We do not need to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life but merely to understand what is implied, for example, by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold—mechanistic, idealistic, spiritualistic, or the like—when we say that the cell is permeated with life, as the crass empiricist also says, then what is revealed to direct perception yielded by the methods I have referred to here shows that the fluid nature in the human being is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying that the human being has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid, and here we already have a contrast: we apply all the ideas and laws derived in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells—the smallest organisms present in the human being—as living but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Furthermore, when we come to the airy nature of the human being, it appears that the gases filling his being are in a state of perpetual interchange with each other. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic interchange nor merely a process of interchange mediated by the solid organs, but that an individual lawfulness controls the inner interchange of the gases in the human being, the vortex formed with the interworkings of the gases. Just as there is an inner lawfulness in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a lawfulness within the airy or gaseous organism—if I may use this expression—a lawfulness that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy designates this lawfulness that directly underlies the airy or gaseous organism as the astral lawfulness, the astral organization. This lawfulness would not be there in the human being if his airy organization had not permeated the solid and fluid organizations. The astral organization does not penetrate directly into the solid and the fluid. It does, however, directly lay hold of the airy organization. This airy organization directly takes hold of the solid and fluid, so that in the airy human being there is now an organized astral organization by which this airy organization has a definite inner form, which is naturally fluctuating.

By ascending through the aggregate states, we thus arrive at the following conclusions: when we consider the solid substances in the human being we do not need to assume anything other than a physical organization. In the case of the living fluidity that permeates the solid, physical organization, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted by the physical lawfulness, and here we come to the etheric organism, which is a self-contained system. In the same sense I give the name astral organization to that which does not directly lay hold of the solid and fluid but first of all penetrates the gaseous organization. I do not call this the astral lawfulness but rather the astral organism, because it is again a self-contained system.

And now we come to the ego organization, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth man. The ego organization penetrates directly into this warmth man. The ego organization is, of course, something super-sensible and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the ego organization has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in the rest of the organism through the warmth working upon the airy, fluid, and solid organizations.

In this way the human organism becomes more and more transparent. Everything that I have been describing expresses itself in the physical human being as he lives on the earth. What in a certain way can be called the most intangible organization of all—the ego-warmth organization—works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid, and solid organizations, and the same is true of the others. Thus the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the human organization, and known through sense-oriented empirical observations, will find expression in any solid system of organs verifiable by outer anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ systems, we find that only the physical organ system is directly related to its corresponding lawfulness, the physical-solid lawfulness; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth most distantly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation through mediation.

All these things—and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions—can be confirmed by an extended empiricism simply from the phenomena themselves. Due to the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organization we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by food up to the point when it reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region and is then absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense up to this point of absorption into the blood and lymph. If we limit ourselves to this realm, we can get on quite well with the not entirely mechanistic mode of observation that is adopted by natural science today. An entirely mechanistic mode of perception will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the lawfulness observed externally in the laboratory and characterized by natural science as inorganic lawfulness is always playing into the living organism in the digestive tract. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we pay heed only to the fact that the outer, inorganic lawfulness is immersed in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on quite well, as far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves to what can be observed merely within the physical organization of the human being. But then we must be absolutely clear that a remnant of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied by a different means of observation. But as far as the limited sphere is concerned, the best we can do to begin with is to study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. Then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but that is nonetheless a truth, resulting indeed from modern science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to pursue these matters scientifically and then to show from the sense-perceptible empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food the food is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world?

We take in food from the mineral kingdom—you may dispute the expression “food,” but I think we understand each other—we take in food from the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. What we take in as food belongs originally to the mineral, plant, and animal organizations. The substance most nearly akin to the human organization is, of course, the milk that the suckling baby receives from the mother. The child receives it as soon as it has left the human organization. The process enacted within the human organism during the absorption of nourishment is this: through the absorption of the food into the various glandular products, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organization itself makes it possible to engage in the purely natural scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In fact, human chyle comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing from the intestines into the lymph and bloodstream. The human being finally obliterates the external properties that the chyle still possessed until this moment. He wants to have it as similar as possible to the inorganic organization. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent; the excretory products are different for the animal. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to the outer organization, to the vegetable and animal organizations, than is the case with the human being. They proceed on into the bloodstream still in accordance with their external form and with their own inner lawfulness. The human organization has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become as close as possible to the inorganic. The purely physical human being actually exists in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the heart-lung organization, if I may express myself in this way.

It is at this point that our way of looking at things first becomes heretical to orthodox natural science. The entire heart-lung tract—the vascular system—is the means whereby the foods that have now become entirely inorganic so to speak, are led over into the realm of life. The human organization cannot exist without providing its own life. In a more encompassing sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of protein, let us say, are transformed into organic; into living protein, when dead protein becomes living protein. Here again we do not need to enter into the question of the inner being of man but only into what is continually being said in physiology. Due to the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories about how the plant produces living protein, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, that is responsible for transformation of the protein into something living after the chyle has become as inorganic as possible.

We can therefore say that the system of heart and lungs is there so that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organization. The system of heart and lungs therefore brings about a vitalizing process whereby the inorganic is drawn into the organic, is drawn into the vital sphere through the process that takes place in the heart-lung system. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in our physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organization. The chyle's being drawn into, transformed into an etheric organization could not take place within the sphere of earthly lawfulness unless other factors were present. Angels would be able to perform this, but if they did then they would fly around having merely a mouth, an esophagus, and then finally a gastrointestinal system, which would then stop and disappear into the etheric. Thus such digestive tracts would float around and would be carried by invisible etheric angel-beings.

What I am describing here could not take place in the physical world at all. That would be impossible. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system is drawn down, as it were, into the physical, is incorporated into the physical. This happens as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breathing. Therefore man is not an angel but can walk around physically on the earth, can walk around because his angelic aspect is physicalized through the absorption of oxygen. The entire etheric organization is projected—but projected as something real—into the physical world; the whole is then fulfilled as a physical system; that which otherwise could be only of a purely super-sensible nature comes to expression as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realize that just as carbon is the basis of the animal, plant, and human organizations (though in the human organization in a less solid way than in the plant) and “fixes” the physical organization as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organization in so far as this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which the formed, the vitally formed protein is primarily composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the proteinaceous cell, the cell itself. We simply extend the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic study for the microscopic study of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes that form the connection between the digestive tract and the heart-lung tract. We observe then in an inner sense, seeing the connection between them, perceiving how an etheric organization is drawn in and “fixed” into the physical as a result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we would have a being that existed in the physical world possessing merely a digestive organization and an organization of heart and lungs. Such a being would not yet be an ensouled being; the element of soul could occur only in the super-sensible, and it is still our task to show how what makes the human being a sentient being incorporates itself into his solid and fluid nature, permeating the solid and fluid organizations and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. Only when we are able to trace the ensouled aspect can we perceive man as an ensouled being. The entire organization in which oxygen plays a role is now within the human being due to the fact that we bind the etheric organization into the physical body by oxygen.

The ensouled organization cannot come into being unless there is a direct point of attack, as it were, for the airy man, with a further possibility of access to the physical organization. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern ways of thinking. I have told you that oxygen takes hold of the etheric through the organization of heart and lungs; the astral makes its way into the organization of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs—that is to say, from the airy organization that is bound up with these solid organs. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organization in the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organization radiates out, makes man into an ensouled organism, permeates all his organs with soul, and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organization of the human being. This is the kidney system, which is regarded primarily as an organ of excretion. Its excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later, for I have yet to speak of the relationship between the kidney excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but in addition to this, in their underlying airy nature, they are the radiating-organs for the astral organism which now permeates the airy nature and from there works directly into the fluids and the solids in the human organism.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis permeates us with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like—in short it permeates us with an astral organism. Sense-perceptible, empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you penetrate what you can see and observe of these functions with a certain instinctive inner perception, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys—remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. What the kidneys excrete arises through the function of the kidneys. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient system, this is expressed even in the various kinds of excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend that you do experiments with a more sensitive individual and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will provide results. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what a difference there is in the renal excretions of a person thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also do the experiment by asking someone to think objectively and putting a warm cloth around his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be prepared in an orderly way. ) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been applied to his feet. You can conduct experiments that are entirely sense-perceptible and empirical that will provide you with evidence.

The reason that there is so little concern with such inquiries today is that people have an aversion to entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell division, the allantois and the amnion are not studied carefully. These discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of human development the accessory organs in embryonic development must be studied much more exactly than the processes that arise from the division of the germ cell itself. Our underlying task here, therefore, is to establish starting points for rational research. This is of the greatest significance, for only in this way will we reach the point of having insight into the human being so that we have before us not a visible but an invisible giant cell.

Today we do not describe the cell as we describe the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am describing here, wonderful things come to light, for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point with the microscope, but then there is no possibility of further research into the more complicated life processes. Ordinary, sense-oriented empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with spiritual science you can follow the facts further. You now look at the human being in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this you can proceed to learn how the purely physical organization is in every way connected with the structure of the carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organization is connected with the structure of oxygen. If you now make exact investigations into the kidney system, you will find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus you have to study carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and in order to trace all the roles played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of very precise experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Precise study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will provide definite evidence that the astral permeation of the human being proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions play a role, for example if we find blood corpuscles in the urine. The kidney system radiates the astral organization into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organization but of the airy organization that is bound up with it. If nitrogen did not play a part, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as we would be merely etheric beings if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that the human being can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element connected with this.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of spiritual science. This is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. You will see that this is so when you receive your first results. If you study the kidney system and do your experiments as accurately as you possibly can, examining the urea and uric acid excretions under different astral conditions, step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will you be able to penetrate the constitution of the human organism.

We can therefore say that everything entering the human being through the absorption of food is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the ego organization. All this is received into the ego organization primarily as a result of the working of the liver-gall system. The warmth structure and the warmth structure in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that the human being is permeated with the ego organization, and this is bound up with the differentiation of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to adapt your methods of investigation as precisely as possible to what I have said. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an ego organization in the psychological sense. With these you will not find a developed liver, and still less any bile. These things develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the ego organization appears. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the ego organization unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of human life. You will gradually discover the connection of the ego organization to the functions of the liver in the human being.

You need only observe particular pathological conditions that are lethal—certain childhood illnesses, for example—in order to find out how certain psychological phenomena, tending not toward the life of feeling but toward the ego, are connected with the secretion of bile. This might form the basis of an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations that can be derived to some extent out of what our sense-oriented, empirical science provides. You will see that the ego organization is connected with hydrogen in the same way that the physical organization is connected with carbon, the etheric organization with oxygen, and the astral organization with nitrogen. You will be able to relate all the differentiations of warmth—I can only hint at this—to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen, in combination with other substances, of course. And so, as we ascend from the sense-perceptible to the super-sensible and make this super-sensible a concrete experience by recognizing its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole human being as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most approachable with the most remote and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called “occultists” of the modern type will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox natural science. Natural science itself leads you to recognize truths that can be perceived only supersensibly but that indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You yourselves can certainly discover the methods; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief train of thought. I am giving it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant that grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. Now relate these phenomena that you observe in the annual plant with other things you can observe—above all the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not remain fit to eat. Investigations have proven that what originates from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth is contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. Warmth conditions and light conditions are at play dynamically under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the aftereffects of summer are actually contained within the earth. Summer surrounds us outside the earth's surface. In winter, the aftereffects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year, for the plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. (I have to make rather large leaps, of course, but these things can all be verified easily through empirical observations.) This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we can arrive at a botany that really corresponds to the whole physiological process only if we do not confine ourselves to the dynamic forces of warmth and light and the light conditions during the year when the plant is growing. We must rather take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain elements that are thrust out from the earth and those that work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The coloring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old—it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural conditions that follow one another in two consecutive years. (What the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life.) Do a series of experiments concerning the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will see that what you first thought to be an element of the plant belonging to the present year must be related to the sun forces of the previous year. You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer undergoes, devouring the plant the whole time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the structure of the substances found in the petals and leaves, for instance, is of an essentially different character from the structure of the substances found in the root or even the seed itself. There is a tremendous difference, and this leads to the distinction between a tea prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. You will find that this difference is the basis for the other differences, so that the effect of a tea prepared from petals or leaves upon the human digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organization of the human being to the surrounding world, and everything you discover can be verified through purely physical, sense-perceptible methods. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the transition of the chyle into the etheric organization, as it is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by the leaves; everything connected with the digestive tract is influenced essentially by a tea derived from petals. An extract of roots and seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. In this way you will discover rationally the connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I will have to continue this subject, showing you that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the human nerve-sense organization and the organization of his digestive tract.

What I have been saying about the boundaries of man's knowledge of Nature should have given some indication at least of the difference between the cognition of higher worlds, as we call it in Spiritual Science, and the cognition of which we speak in our ordinary, everyday consciousness or in ordinary science. In everyday life and in ordinary science we let our powers of cognition remain at a standstill with whatever we have acquired through the ordinary education that has brought us to a certain stage in life, and with whatever this education has enabled us to make out of inherited qualities and out of qualities possessed by mankind in general. What is called in anthroposophical Spiritual Science the knowledge of higher worlds depends upon a man himself deliberately undertaking further training and development; upon the realisation that as life continues on its course a higher form of consciousness can be attained through self-education, just as a child can advance to the stage of ordinary consciousness. And it is to this higher consciousness that there are first revealed the things we otherwise look for in vain at the two boundaries of the knowledge of Nature, at the boundary of matter and at the boundary of ordinary consciousness.

It was of consciousness enhanced in this sense, through which realities at a level beyond that of everyday reality became accessible to men, that the Eastern sages spoke in ancient times, and through methods of inner self-training suited to their racial characteristics and stage of evolution, they strove to achieve this higher development. Not until we realise what it is that is revealed to man through such higher development can the meaning of the records of ancient Eastern wisdom be discerned.

In characterising the path of development adopted by those sages, we must therefore say: It was a path leading to Inspiration. In that epoch, humanity was, so to speak, adapted by nature for Inspiration. And in order to understand these paths of development into the higher realms of knowledge, it will be a useful preparation to form a clear picture of the essentials of the path followed by the sages of the ancient East. At the very outset, however, let me emphasise that this path cannot be suitable for Western civilisation, because humanity is evolving, is advancing. And those who in their search for ways of higher development see fit to return—as many have done—to the instructions given by ancient Eastern wisdom are really trying to turn back the tide of evolution, as well as showing that they have no real understanding of human progress.

With our ordinary consciousness we live in our world of thought, in our world of feeling, in our world of will, and through acts of cognition we bring to apprehension what surges up and down in the soul as thought, feeling and will. Moreover, it is through outer perceptions, perception of the things of the physical world, that our consciousness first awakes in the real sense.

The important point is to realise that for the Eastern sages, for the so-called Initiates of the ancient East, a different procedure was necessary from that followed by man in ordinary life in regard to the manner of dealing with perceptions, and with thinking, feeling and willing.

Some understanding of the ancient path of development leading into the higher worlds can be acquired by considering the following. At certain ages of life we develop the spirit-and-soul within us to a state of greater freedom, greater independence. During the first years of infancy it works as an organising force in the body, until with the change of teeth it is liberated, becomes free in a certain sense. We then live freely with our Ego in the element of spirit-and-soul, which is now at our disposal, whereas previously it was occupied with harmonising and regulating the body inwardly. But as we grow on into life there arise those factors which in the sphere of ordinary consciousness do not, to begin with, permit the liberated spirit-and-soul to develop to the point of penetrating into the spiritual world. As men in our life between birth and death we must take the path which places us into the outer world as beings qualified and fit for life in that world. We must acquire the faculties which enable us to establish our bearings in the physical world, and also those which can make each of us a useful member in the life of social community with other men.

Three faculties come into the picture here. Three faculties bring us into the right connection and regulate our intercourse with the outer world of men: speech, the capacity to understand the thoughts of our fellow-man, and perception of the Ego of another person. In speaking of these three faculties: perception of the sounds of speech, perception of thoughts, perception of the Ego of another human being, we are expressing something that appears to be simple but is by no means found so by earnest and conscientious seekers for knowledge.

In the ordinary way we speak of five senses only, to which one or two inner senses are added by modern psychology. External science presents no complete system of the senses. I shall be speaking to you some time on this subject¹ and will now say only that it is an illusion to believe that understanding of the sounds of speech is implicit in the sense of hearing, or in the organisation which is supposed by modern physiology to account for hearing. Just as we have a sense of hearing, we have a sense of speech—a sense for the sounds of speech. By this is meant the sense which enables us to understand what is perceived in the sounds of speech, just as the auditory sense enables us to perceive tones as such. And if some day we have a really comprehensive physiology, it will be known that this sense for the sounds of speech is entirely analogous to the other, that it can rightly be called a sense on its own. It extends over a larger area within the human organism than several of the other, more localised senses, but for all that it is a definitely circumscribed sense.

We also have a sense, extending over nearly the whole of our bodily frame, for perception of the thoughts of another person. What we perceive in the word itself is not yet the thought it conveys. We need other organs, an organic apparatus different from that required for the perception of the word as such, when we want to understand through the word the thought which the other person is communicating to us.

We are also equipped with a sense that extends over the whole of our body: we can call it the sense for the perception of the Ego of another person. In this connection even philosophy has become childish in the modern age, for to-day one can, for example, often hear it argued: We meet another person; we see that he has a human form like our own, and because we know that as human beings we are endowed with an Ego, we conclude, as it were by subconscious inference, that he too must have an Ego within him. This is quite contrary to the psychological reality. A genuine observer knows that it is a direct perception, not an inference drawn from analogy, through which we perceive the Ego of the other person. There is really only one man—a friend or associate of the Göttingen school of Husserl, Max Scheeler by name—who has hit upon this direct perception of the Ego of another person.

Above and beyond the ordinary human senses, therefore, we have to distinguish three others: the sense for the sounds of speech, the sense for another person's thoughts, the sense for another person's Ego. It is primarily through these three senses that we establish intercourse with the rest of mankind. They are the means whereby we are introduced into social life among other human beings. But the path connected with the functions of these three senses was followed differently by the ancient sages, especially by the ancient Indian sages, for the purpose of attaining higher knowledge. In this quest for higher knowledge the soul of the sage did not endeavour to understand through the words the meaning of what another person was saying. The forces of his soul were not directed to the thoughts of another person in such a way as to perceive them, nor to the Ego of another in such a way as to perceive and experience this Ego. All such matters were left to everyday life. When after his efforts to attain higher knowledge the sage returned from his sojourn in spiritual worlds to everyday life, he used these three senses in the ordinary way. But when he was endeavouring to cultivate the methods for acquiring higher knowledge, he used them differently. In acts of listening, in acts of perceiving the sounds of speech, he did not allow the soul's force to penetrate through the word in order to understand what the other person was saying, but he remained with the word as such, without seeking for anything behind it. He guided the stream of soul-life only as far as the word itself. His perception of the words was thereby intensified, and he deliberately refrained from attempting to understand anything else through the word. With his whole soul he penetrated into the word as such, using the word or the sequence of words in such a way that this penetration was possible. He formulated certain aphoristic sayings, simple but impressive sentences, and tried to live entirely in the sound, in the tone and ring of the words. With his whole soul he followed the ring of the words which he repeated aloud to himself.

This practice then led to a state of complete absorption in the aphoristic sayings themselves, in the “mantras,” as they were called. The “mantric” art, the art of becoming completely absorbed in these aphoristic sayings, consisted in this. A man did not understand only the content and meaning of the words, but he experienced the sayings themselves as music, made them part of his own soul-forces, remained completely absorbed in them and by continually repeating and reciting them, enhanced the power of his soul.

Little by little this art was brought to a high stage of development and was the means of transforming into something different the faculty of soul we otherwise possess for understanding the other person through the word. Through the recitation and repetition of the mantras, a power was generated which now led—not to the other person, but into the spiritual world. And if working with the mantras had brought the soul to the point of being inwardly aware of the weaving flow of this power—which otherwise remains unconscious because attention is focussed entirely upon understanding the other person—if a man had reached the point of feeling this power to be an actual power of the soul in the same way as muscular tension is felt when the arm is being used for some purpose, then he had made himself fit to grasp what is contained in the higher power of thought. In ordinary life a man tries to find his way to the other person through the thought. But with this power he grasps the thought in quite a different way—he grasps the weaving of thought in external reality, penetrates into that external reality and rises to the level of what I have called “Inspiration.”

Along this path, instead of reaching the Ego of the other person, we reach the Egos of individual spiritual Beings who are around us just as are the beings of the material world. What I am now telling you was a matter of course for a sage of the ancient East. In his life of soul he rose to the perception of a spirit-realm. In a supreme degree he attained what can be called Inspiration and his organic constitution was suitable for this. Unlike a Western man, he had no need to fear that his Ego might in some way be lost during this flight from the body. And in later times, when owing to the advance in evolution made by humanity a man might very easily pass out of his body into the outer world without his Ego, precautionary measures were used. Care was taken to ensure that the individual who was to become a pupil of the higher wisdom should not enter this spiritual world without guidance and succumb to that pathological scepticism of which I have spoken in these lectures. In very ancient times in the East the racial character was such that this would not, in any case, have been a matter for anxiety, but it was certainly to be feared as the evolution of humanity progressed. Hence the precautionary measure that was strictly applied in the schools of Eastern Wisdom, to ensure that the pupil should rely upon an inner, not an outer, authority. (Fundamentally speaking, what we understand by “authority” today first appeared in Western civilisation.) The endeavour in the East was to develop in the pupil, through a process of natural adaptation to prevailing conditions, a feeling of dependence upon the leader, the Guru. The pupil perceived what the Guru represented, how he stood firmly within the spiritual world without scepticism, indeed without even a tendency to scepticism, and through this perception the pupil was able, on passing into the sphere of Inspiration, to maintain such a healthy attitude of soul that he was immune from any danger of pathological scepticism.

But even when the spirit-and-soul is drawn consciously out of the physical body, something else comes into consideration as well: a connection—a still more conscious connection now—must again be established with the physical body. I said in the lecture this morning that if a man comes down into his physical body imbued only with egoism and lacking in love, this is a pathological condition which must not be allowed to arise, for he will then lay hold of his physical body in a wrong way. Man lays hold of his body in the natural way by implanting the love-instinct in it between the ages of 7 and 14. But even this natural process can take a pathological course, and then there will appear afflictions which I described this morning as pathological states.²

It might also have happened to the pupils of the ancient Eastern sages that when they were outside the physical body they found it impossible to connect the spirit-and-soul with the body again in the right way. A different precautionary measure was then applied, one to which psychiatrists—some at any rate—have again had recourse when treating patients suffering from agoraphobia. This precautionary measure consisted in ablutions, washings, with cold water. Expedients of an entirely physical nature were used in such circumstances. And when you hear on the one hand that in the Mysteries of the East—the Schools of Initiation that were to lead men to Inspiration—the precautionary measure was taken of ensuring dependence on the Guru, you hear on the other hand of the use of all kind of devices—ablutions with cold water, and the like.

When human nature is understood in the way made possible by Spiritual Science, customs that otherwise seem very puzzling in these ancient Mysteries become intelligible. Man was protected from a false feeling of space, due to a faulty connection of the spirit-and-soul with the physical body—a feeling that might cause him to have a morbid dread of public places, or also to seek social intercourse with other human beings in an irregular way. This is indeed a danger, but one that every form of guidance to higher knowledge can and must avoid. It is a danger, because when a man is seeking for Inspiration in the way I have described, he does in a certain sense by-pass the paths of speech and of thinking, the path leading to the Ego of the other person, and then, if he leaves his body in an abnormal way—not with any aim of gaining higher knowledge but merely owing to pathological conditions—he may fail to cultivate the right kind of intercourse with other men.

In such a human being, a condition which through properly regulated spiritual study develops normally and profitably, may develop in an abnormal, pathological form. The connection of spirit-and-soul with the body then becomes one which causes the man to have such an intense feeling of egotism in his body—because he is too deeply immersed in it—that he reaches the point of hating all intercourse with others and becomes an utterly unsocial being. The consequences of a pathological condition of this kind can often take a truly terrible form. I myself have known a remarkable example of this type of person. He came from a family in which there was a tendency for the spirit-and-soul to be loosened from the physical body in a certain way and it included individuals—one of whom I knew very well indeed—who were seeking for the path leading to the spiritual worlds. But in a degenerate member of this family the same tendency developed in a pathological form, until he finally came to the point where he would allow nothing whatever from the outside world to contact his own body. He was naturally obliged to eat, but ... we are speaking here among grown-ups ... he washed himself with his own urine, because any water from the outside world put him into a panic. I will not describe what else he was in the habit of doing in order to shut off his body entirely from the outside world and make himself into an utterly anti-social being. He did these things because his spirit-and-soul was too deeply immersed in his body, too strongly bound up with it.

It is entirely in keeping with Goetheanism to contrast the path leading to the highest goal at present attainable by us as earthly men with the path leading to pathological phenomena. Only a slight acquaintance with Goethe's theory of metamorphoses is needed to realise this. Goethe is trying to detect how the single parts of the plant, for example, develop out of each other, and in order to recognise the process of metamorphosis he has a particular preference for observing the states arising from the degeneration of a leaf, or of a blossom, or of the stamens. Goethe realises that precisely by scrutiny of the pathological, the essence of the healthy can be revealed to a perceptive observer. And it is also true that a right path into the spiritual world can be taken only when we know where the essence of man's being really lies, and in what diverse ways this complicated inner being can come to expression.

We see from something else as well that even in the later period of antiquity men of the East were predisposed by nature to live in the word itself, not to penetrate through the word to what lies behind it. An illustration of this is afforded by the sayings of the Buddha, with their many repetitions. I have known people in the West who treasured those editions of the Buddha's sayings in which the repetitions had been eliminated and the words of a sentence left to occur only once. Such people believed that through this condensed version they would get at the essentials of what the Buddha really meant. This shows that Western civilisation has gradually lost all understanding of the nature of Eastern man. If we simply take the literal meaning of the Buddha's discourses, the meaning which we, as men of the West, chiefly value, we are not assimilating the essence of these teachings; that is possible only when we are carried along with the repetitions, when we live in the flow of the words, when we experience that strengthening of soul-force induced by the repetitions.² Unless we acquire a faculty for experiencing something from the constant repetitions and the rhythmical recurrence of certain passages, we do not get to the heart of what Buddhism really signifies.

Knowledge must be gained of the essence and inner nature of Eastern culture. Without this knowledge there can be no real understanding of the religious creeds of the West, for when all is said and done they stem from Eastern wisdom. The Christ Event itself is a different matter—it is an accomplished fact, and present as such in earth-evolution. During the first Christian centuries, however, the ways and means of understanding what came to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha were drawn entirely from Eastern wisdom. It was with this wisdom that the fundamental event of Christendom was first of all understood. But everything moves on, and what had once existed in the Eastern primeval wisdom, attained through Inspiration, spread across to Greece and can still be recognised in the achievements of Greek culture.

Greek art was, of course, bound up with experiences different from those usually connected with art to-day. Greek art was still felt to be an expression of the ideal to which Goethe was again aspiring when he spoke of the deepest urge within him in the words: He to whom Nature begins to unveil her manifest secrets, longs for her worthiest interpreter—art. The Greeks still regarded art as an initiation into the secrets of world-existence, as a manifestation not merely of human imagination but of what comes into being through interaction between this faculty and the revelations of the spiritual world received through Inspiration. But the spiritual life that still flowed through Greek art grew steadily weaker, until finally it became the content of the religious creeds of the West. Thus we must conceive the source of the primeval wisdom as a spiritual life of rich abundance which becomes impoverished as evolution proceeds, and when at last it reaches the Western world it provides the content of religious creeds. Therefore men who by then are fitted by nature for a different epoch can find in this weakened form of spiritual life only something to be viewed with scepticism. Fundamentally speaking, it is the reaction of the Western soul to the now decadent Eastern wisdom that gradually produces in the West the atheistic scepticism which is bound to become more and more widespread unless it is confronted by a different stream of spiritual life.

As little as a living being who has reached a certain stage of development—a certain age, let us say—can be made young again in every respect, as little can a form of spiritual life be made young again when it has reached old age. Out of the religious creeds of the West, which are descendants of the primeval wisdom of the East, nothing can be produced that would again be capable of satisfying Western humanity when this humanity advances beyond the knowledge acquired during the past three or four centuries from the science and observation of Nature. Scepticism on an ever-increasing scale is bound to develop. And anyone who has insight into the process of world-evolution can say with assurance that a trend of development from East to West is heading in this direction. In other words, there is moving from East to West a stream of spiritual life that must inevitably lead to scepticism in a more and more pronounced form when it is received into souls who are being imbued more deeply all the time with the fruits of Western civilisation. Scepticism is simply the outcome of the march of spiritual life from the East to the West, and it must be confronted by a different stream flowing henceforward from the West to the East. We ourselves are living at the point where this spiritual stream crosses the other, and in the further course of these studies we shall see in what sense this is so.

First and foremost, however, attention must be called to the fact that the Western soul is predisposed by nature to take a path of development to the higher worlds different from that of the Eastern soul. The Eastern soul strives primarily for Inspiration and possesses the racial qualities suitable for this; the Western soul, because of its particular qualities—they are qualities connected less with race than with the life of soul itself—strives for Imagination. To experience the musical element in mantric sayings is not the aim to which we, as men of the West, should aspire. Our aim should be different. We should not keep particularly strictly to the path that comes after the spirit-and-soul has emerged from the body, but should rather follow the later path that begins when the spirit-and-soul has again to unite consciously with the physical organism.

The corresponding natural phenomenon is to be observed in the birth of the love-instinct. Whereas the man of the East sought his wisdom more by sublimating the forces working in the human being between birth and the 7th year, the man of the West is better fitted to develop the forces at work between the time of the change of teeth and puberty, inasmuch as the being of spirit-and-soul is now led to new tasks in keeping with this epoch in the evolution of humanity. We come to this when—just as on emerging from the body we carry the Ego with us into the realm of Inspiration—we now leave the Ego outside when we plunge down again into the body; we leave it outside, but not in idleness, not forgetting or surrendering it, not suppressing it into unconsciousness, but allying it with pure thinking, with clear, keen thinking, so that finally we have this inner experience: Your Ego is charged through and through with all the clear thinking of which you have become capable. This experience of plunging into the body can be very clear and distinct. And at this point it may perhaps be permissible to speak about a personal experience, because it will help you to understand what I really mean.

I have spoken to you about the conception underlying my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. This book is a modest but real attempt to achieve pure thinking, that pure thinking in which the Ego can live and maintain a firm footing. Then, when this pure thinking has been achieved, we can endeavour to do something else. This thinking that is now left in the power of the Ego, the Ego which now feels itself a free and independent spiritual being—this pure thinking can then be achieved from the process of perception, and whereas in ordinary life we see colour, let us say, and at the same time imbue the perception with the mental concept, we can now lift the concepts away from the process of elaborating the perceptions and draw the perceptions themselves directly into our bodily constitution.

That Goethe had already taken the first steps in this direction is shown by the last chapter of his Theory of Colours, entitled “The Sensory and Moral Effects of Colour.” With every colour-effect he experiences something that at once unites deeply, not with the faculty of perception only, but with the whole man. He experiences yellow, or scarlet, as active colours, as it were permeating him through and through, filling him with warmth: while he regards blue and violet as colours that draw one out of oneself, as cold colours.³ The whole man experiences something in acts of sense-perception. The perception, together with its content, passes down into the organism, and the Ego with its thought-content remains as it were hovering above. We detach thinking inasmuch as we take into and fill ourselves with the whole content of the perception, instead of weakening it with concepts, as we usually do. We train ourselves in a particular way to achieve this by systematically practising something that came to be practised in a decadent form by the men of the East. Instead of grasping the content of the perception in pure, strictly logical thoughts, we grasp it in symbols, in pictures, allowing it to stream into us, so that in a certain sense it by-passes our thoughts. We steep ourselves in the richness of the colours, in the richness of the tone, by learning to experience the images inwardly, not in terms of thought but as pictures, as symbols. Because we do not permeate our inner life with the thought-content, after the manner of association-psychology, but with the content of perception expressed through symbols and pictures, the living forces of our etheric and astral bodies stream out from within and we learn to know the depths of our consciousness and of our soul. It is in this way that genuine knowledge of the inner nature of man is acquired. The obscure mysticism often said by nebulous minds to be a way to the God within leads to nothing but abstraction and cannot possibly satisfy anyone who wishes to experience the fullness of his manhood.

So, you see, if it is desired to establish a true physiological science of man, thinking must be detached and the picture-forming activity sent inwards, so that the organism reacts in Imaginations. This is a path that is only just beginning in Western culture, but it is the path that must be trodden if the influence that streams over from the East, and would lead to decadence if it alone were to prevail, is to be confronted by something equal to opposing it, so that our civilisation may take a path of ascent and not of decline.

Generally speaking, however, it can be said that human language itself is not yet sufficiently developed to be able adequately to characterise the experiences that are here encountered in a man's inmost life of soul. And it is at this point that I should like to tell you of a personal experience of my own.

Many years ago I made an attempt to formulate what may be called a science of the human senses. In spoken lectures I did to some extent succeed in putting this science of the twelve senses into words, because there it is more possible to manipulate the language and ensure understanding by means of repetitions, so that the deficiency of our language—which is not yet equal to expressing these super-sensible things—is not so strongly felt. But strangely enough, when I wanted many years ago to write down what I had given in lectures as pure Anthroposophy in order to put it into a form suitable for a book, the outer experiences, on being interiorised became so delicate and sensitive that language simply failed to provide the words, and I believe the beginning of the text—several sheets of print—lay for some five or six years at the printer's. It was because I wanted to write the whole book in the style in which it began that I could not continue writing, for the simple reason that at the stage of development 1 had then reached, language refused to furnish the means for what I wished to achieve. Then came an overload of work, and I have still not been able to finish the book.

Anyone who is less conscientious about what he communicates from the spiritual world might perhaps smile at the idea of being held up in this way by a temporarily insurmountable difficulty. But one who feels a full sense of responsibility and applies it in all descriptions of the path that Western humanity must take towards Imagination knows that to find the right words entails a great deal of effort. As a path of training it is comparatively easy to describe, and this has been done in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But if one's aim is to achieve a definite result such as that of describing the essential nature of man's senses—a part, therefore, of the inner make-up and constitution of humanity—it is then that the difficulties appear, among them that of grasping Imaginations and presenting them in clear contours by means of words.

Nevertheless, this is the path that Western mankind must follow. And just as the man of the East experienced entry into the spiritual world through his mantras, so must the Westerner, leaving aside all association-psychology, learn how to penetrate into his own being by reaching the world of Imagination. Only so will he acquire a true knowledge of humanity, and this is essential for any progress. Because we in the West have to live in a much more conscious way than men of the East, we must not adopt the attitude which says: “Whether or not humanity will eventually master this world of Imagination through natural processes can be left to the future.” No—this world of Imagination, because we have passed into the stage of conscious evolution, must be striven for consciously; there must be no coming to a standstill at certain stages. For what happens then? What happens then is that the ever-increasing spread of scepticism from East to West is not met with the right counter-measures, but with measures ultimately due to the fact that the spirit-and-soul unconsciously has united too radically, too deeply, with the physical body and that too firm a connection is made between the spirit-and-soul and the physical body.

Yes, it is indeed possible for a man not only to think materialistically but to be a materialist, because the spirit-and-soul is too strongly linked with the physical body. In such a man the Ego does not live freely in the concepts of pure thinking. And when he descends into the body with perceptions that have become pictorial, he descends with the Ego together with the concepts. And when this condition spreads among men, it gives rise to the spiritual phenomenon well known to us—to dogmatism of all kinds. This dogmatism is nothing else than the translation into the domain of spirit-and-soul of a condition which at a lower stage is pathological in agoraphobia and the like, and which—because these things are related—shows itself also in something which is merely another form of fear, in superstition of every variety. An unconscious urge towards Imagination is held back through powerful agencies, and this gives rise to dogmatism of all types. These types of dogmatism must be gradually replaced by what is achieved when the world of ideas is kept firmly in the sphere of the Ego; when progress is made towards Imagination and the true nature of man becomes an inner experience.

This is the Western path into the spiritual world. It is this path through Imagination that must establish the stream of Spiritual Science, the process of spiritual evolution that must make its way from West to East if humanity is to achieve real progress. But it is supremely important at the present time for humanity to recognise what the true path of Imagination should be, what path must be taken by Western Spiritual Science if it is to be a match for the Inspiration and its fruits that were once attained by ancient Eastern wisdom in a form suited to the racial characteristics of the people concerned. Only if we are able to confront the now decadent Inspiration of the East with Imaginations which, sustained by the spirit and charged through and through with reality, have arisen along the path to a higher spiritual culture, only if we can call this culture into existence as a stream of spiritual life flowing from West to East, are we bringing to fulfilment what is actually living deep down in the impulses for which mankind is striving. It is these impulses which are to-day breaking out in cataclysms of the social life because they cannot find other expression.

In the next lecture we will speak further of the path of Imagination, and of how the way to the higher worlds is envisaged by anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

• 1. See, for example, The Study of Man (14 lectures) (Anthroposophical Publishing Co.); also Anthroposophy, Psychosophy, Pneumatosophy (in typescript only).
• 2. Dr. Steiner had referred to agoraphobia, claustrophobia, astrophobia.
• 2. From the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, revised edition, 1958, p. 158: “The many repetitions in the sayings of the Buddha are not comprehensible to people of our present evolutionary stage. For the esoteric student, however, they become a force on which he gladly lets his inner senses rest, for they correspond with certain rhythmic movements in the etheric body. Devotional surrender to them with perfect inner peace, creates an inner harmony with these movements, and because the latter are an image of certain cosmic rhythms which also at certain points repeat themselves and revert to former modes, the individual listening to the wisdom of the Buddha unites his life with that of the cosmic mysteries.”
• 3. See Goethe's Theory of Colours, Part VI. Translated by Charles Eastlake, F.R.S. (published by John Murray, 1840).

Yesterday I tried to show the methods used by Eastern spirituality for approaching the super-sensible world. I pointed out how anybody who wished to follow this path into the super-sensible more or less dispensed with the bridge linking him with his fellows. He preferred to avoid the communication with other human beings that is established by speaking, thinking and ego-perception. I showed how the attempt was first of all made not to hear and understand through the word what another person wished to say, but actually to live in the words themselves. This process of living-in-the-word was enhanced by forming the words into certain aphorisms. One lived in these and repeated them, so that the soul forces acquired by thus living in the words were further strengthened by repetition.

I showed how in this way a soul-condition was attained that we might call a state of Inspiration, in the sense in which I have used the word. What distinguished the sages of the ancient Eastern world was that they were true to their race; conscious individuality was far less developed with them than it came to be in later stages of human evolution. This meant that their penetration of the spiritual world was a more or less instinctive process. Because the whole thing was instinctive and to some extent the product of a healthy human impulse, it could not in ancient times lead to the pathological disturbances of which we have also spoken. In later times steps were taken by the so-called Mystery centres to guard against such disturbances as I have tried to describe to you. What I said was that those in the West, who wish to come to grips with the spiritual world, must attempt things in a different way.

Mankind has progressed since the days of which I was speaking. Other soul forces have emerged, so that it is not simply a matter of breathing new life into the ancient Eastern way of spiritual development. A reactionary harking back to the spiritual life of prehistoric times or of man's early historical development is impossible. For the Western world, the way of initiation into the super-sensible world is through Imagination. But Imagination must be integrated organically with our spiritual life as a whole. This can come about in the most varied ways: as it did, after all, in the East. There, too, the way was not determined unequivocally in advance. To-day I should like to describe a way of initiation that conforms to the needs of Western civilisation and is particularly well suited to anyone who is immersed in the scientific life of the West.

In my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have described a sure path to the super-sensible. But this book has a fairly general appeal and is not specially suited to the requirements of someone with a definite scientific training. The path of initiation which I wish to describe to-day is specifically designed for the scientist. All my experience tells me that for such a man the way of knowledge must be based on what I have set out in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I will explain what I mean by this.

This book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, was not written with the objects in mind that are customary when writing books to-day. Nowadays people write simply in order to inform the reader of the subject-matter of the book, so that he learns what the book contains in accordance with his education, his scientific training or the special knowledge he already possesses. This was not basically my intention in writing The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. For this reason it will not be popular with those who read books only to acquire information. The purpose of the book is to make the reader use his own processes of thought on every page, In a sense the book is only a kind of musical score, to be read with inward thought-activity in order to be able of oneself to advance from one thought to the next. This book constantly expects the reader to co-operate by thinking for himself.

Moreover, what happens to the soul of the reader, when he makes this effort of co-operation in thought, is also to be considered. Anybody who works through this book and brings his thought-activity to bear on it will admit to gaining a measure of self-comprehension in an element of his soul-life where this had been lacking. If he cannot do this, he is not reading The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in the right way. He should feel how he is being lifted out of his usual concepts into thoughts which are independent of his sense-life and in which his whole existence is merged. He should be able to feel how this kind of thinking has freed him from dependence on the bodily state. Anyone who denies experiencing this has fundamentally misunderstood the book. It should be more or less possible to say: “Now I know through what I have achieved in the thought-activity of my soul what true thinking really is.”

The strange thing is that most Western philosophers utterly deny the reality of the very thing that my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity seeks to awaken in the soul of the reader. Countless philosophers have expounded the view that pure thinking does not exist, but is bound to contain traces, however diluted, of sense-perception. A strong impression is left that philosophers who maintain this have never really studied mathematics, or gone into the difference between analytical and empirical mechanics. The degree of specialisation required to-day will alone account for the fact that a great deal of philosophising goes on nowadays without the remotest understanding of mathematical thinking. Philosophy is fundamentally impossible without a grasp of at least the spirit of mathematical thinking. Goethe's attitude to this has been noticed, even though he made no claim himself to any special training in mathematics. Many would deny the existence of the very faculty which I should like readers of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to acquire.

Let us imagine a reader who simply sets about working through The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity within the framework of his ordinary consciousness in the way I have just described. He will not of course be able to claim that he has been transported into a super-sensible world; for I intentionally wrote this book in the way I did so as to present people with a work of pure philosophy. Just consider what advantage it would have been to anthroposophically orientated science if I had written works of spiritual science from the start. They would of course have been disregarded by all trained philosophers as the amateurish efforts of a dilettante. To begin with I had to concentrate on pure philosophy: I had to present the world with something thought out in pure philosophical terms, even though it transcended the normal bounds of philosophy.

However, at some point the transition had to be made from pure philosophy and science to writing about spiritual science. This occurred at a time when I had been asked to write about Goethe's scientific works, and this was followed by an invitation to write one particular chapter in a German biography of Goethe that was about to appear. It was in the late 1890's and the chapter was to be concerned with Goethe's scientific works. I had actually written it and sent it to the publisher when another work of mine came out, called Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age. This book was a link between pure philosophy and philosophy based on Anthroposophy. When this came out, my other manuscript was returned to me. Nothing was enclosed apart from my fee, the idea being that any claim I might make had thus been met. Among the learned pedants there obviously was no interest in anything written—not even a single chapter devoted to the development of Goethe's attitude to natural science—by one who had indulged in such mysticism.

I will now assume that The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has already been studied with one's ordinary consciousness in the way I have suggested. We are now in the right frame of mind to guide our souls in the direction briefly indicated yesterday—along the first steps of the way leading to Imagination. It is possible to pursue this path in a form consonant with Western life if we simply try to surrender ourselves completely to the world of outer phenomena, so that we absorb them without thinking about them. In ordinary waking life, you will agree, we are constantly perceiving, but in the very act of doing so we are always permeating out perceptions with concepts. Scientific thinking involves a systematic interweaving of perceptions with concepts, building up systems of concepts and so on. In acquiring a capacity for the kind of thinking that gradually results from reading The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, we become capable of such strong inner activity that we are able to perceive without conceptualising.

There is something further we can do to strengthen our soul-forces so that we are enabled to absorb perceptions in the way I have just described: that is, by refraining from elaborating them with concepts in the very act of absorbing them. We can call up symbolic or other kinds of images—visual images, sound images, images of warmth, taste, and so on. If we thus bring our activity of perception into a state of flux, as it were, and infuse it with life and movement, not in the way we follow when forming concepts, but by working on our perceptions in an artistic or symbolising manner, we shall develop much sooner the power of allowing the percepts to permeate us in their pure essence. Simply to train ourselves rigorously in what I have called phenomenalism—that is, in elaborating the phenomena—is an excellent preparation for this kind of cognition. If we have really striven to reach the material boundaries of cognition—if we have not lazily looked beyond the veil of sense for metaphysical explanations in terms of atoms and molecules, but have used concepts to set in order the phenomena and to follow them through to their archetypes—then we have already undergone a training which can enable us to keep all conceptional activity away from the phenomena. And if at the same time we turn the phenomena into symbols and images, we shall acquire such strength of soul as to be able, one might say, to absorb the outer world free from concepts.

Obviously we cannot expect to achieve this all at once. Spiritual research demands far more of us than research in a laboratory or observatory. Above all an intense effort of will is required. For a time we should strive to concentrate on a symbolic picture, and occupy ourselves with the images that arise, leaving them undisturbed by phenomena present in the soul. Otherwise they will disappear as we hurry through life from sensation to sensation and from experience to experience. We should accustom ourselves to contemplating at least one such image—whether of our own creation or suggested by somebody else—for longer and longer periods. We should penetrate to its very core, concentrating on it beyond the possibility of being influenced by mere memory. If we do all this, and keep repeating the process, we can strengthen our soul forces and finally become aware of an inner experience, of which formerly we had not the remotest inkling.

Finally—it is important not to misunderstand what I am going to say—it is possible to form a picture of something experienced only in our inner being, if we recall especially lively dream-pictures, so long as they derive from memories and do not relate directly to anything external, and are thus a sort of reaction stemming from within ourselves. If we experience these images in their fullest depth, we have a very real experience; and the point is reached when we meet within ourselves the spiritual element which actuates the processes of growth. We meet the power of growth itself. Contact is established with a part of our human make-up which we formerly experienced only unconsciously, but which is nevertheless active within us. What do I mean by “experienced unconsciously?”

Now I have told you how from birth until the change of teeth a spiritual soul force works on and through the human being; and after this it more or less detaches itself. Later, between the change of teeth and maturity, it immerses itself, so to speak, in the physical body, awakening the erotic impulse—and much else besides. All this happens unconsciously. But if we consciously use such soul-activities as I have described in order to observe how the qualities of soul and spirit can penetrate our physical make-up, we begin to see how these processes work in a human being, and how from the time of his birth he is given over to the external world. Nowadays this relation to the outer world is regarded as amounting to nothing more than abstract perception or abstract knowledge. This is not so. We are surrounded by a world of colour, sound and warmth and by all kinds of sensory impressions. As our thinking gets to work on them, our whole being receives yet further impressions. When unconscious experiences of childhood come to be experienced consciously, we even find that, while we were absorbing colour and sound impressions unconsciously, they were working spiritually upon us. When, between the change of teeth and maturity, erotic feelings make their first impact, they do not simply grow out of our constitution but come to meet us from the cosmos in rays of colour, sound and warmth.

But warmth, light and sound are not to be understood in a merely physical sense. Through our sensory impressions we are conscious only of what I might call outer sound and outer colour. And when we thus surrender ourselves to nature, we do not encounter the ether-waves, atoms and so on which are imagined by modern physics and physiology. Spiritual forces are at work in the physical world; forces which between birth and death fashion us into the human beings we are.

When once we tread the paths of knowledge which I have described, we become aware of the fact that it is the outer world which forms us. As we become clearly conscious of spirit in the outer world, we are able to experience consciously the living forces at work in our bodies. It is phenomenology itself that reveals to us so clearly the existence of spirit in the outer world. It is the observation of phenomena, and not abstract metaphysics, that brings the spiritual to our notice, if we make a point of observing consciously what we would otherwise tend to do unconsciously; if we notice how through the sense-world spiritual powers enter into our being and work formatively upon it.

Yesterday I pointed out to you that the Eastern sage virtually ignores the significance of speech, thought and ego-perception. His attitude towards these activities is different, for speech, perception of thoughts and ego-perception tend at first to lead us away from the spiritual world into social contact with other human beings. We buy our way into social life, as it were, by exposing our thoughts, our speech and our ego-perception and making them communicable. The Eastern sage lived in the word and resigned himself to the fact that it could not be communicated. He felt the same about his thoughts; he lived in his thinking, and so on. In the West we are more inclined to cast a backward glance at humanity as we follow the path into the super-sensible world.

At this point it is well to remember that man has a certain kind of sensory organisation within him. I have already described the three inner senses through which he becomes aware of his inner being, just as he perceives what goes on around him. We have a sense of balance, which tells us of the space we occupy as human beings and within whose limits our wills can function. We have a sense of movement, which tells us, even in the dark, that we are moving. This knowledge comes from within and is not derived from contact with outside objects that we may touch in passing. We have a “sense of life,” through which we are aware of our general state of health, or, one might say, of our constantly changing inward condition.

It is just in the first seven years of our life that these three inner senses work in conjunction with the will. We are guided by our sense of balance: and a being that, to begin with, cannot move about and later on can only crawl, is transformed into one that can stand upright and walk. When we learn to walk upright, we are coming to grips with the world. This is possible only because of our sense of balance. Similarly, our sense of movement and our sense of life contribute to our development as integrated human beings.

Anybody able to apply laboratory standards of objective observation to the study of man's development—spirit-soul as well as physical—will soon discover how those forces that form the human being and are especially active in the first seven years free themselves and begin to assume a different aspect from the time of the change of teeth. By this time a person is less intimately connected with his inner life than he was as a child. A child is closely bound up inwardly with human equilibrium, movement and processes of life. As emancipation from them gradually occurs, something else is developing. A certain adjustment is taking place to the three senses of smell, taste and touch.

A detailed observation of the way a child comes to grips with life is extraordinarily interesting. This can be seen most obviously, of course, in early life, but anybody trained to do so can see it clearly enough later on as well. I refer to the process of orientation made possible by the senses of smell, of taste and of touch. The child in a manner expels from himself the forces of equilibrium, movement and life and, while he is so doing, draws into him the qualitative senses of smell, taste and touch. Over a fairly long period the former are, so to speak, being breathed out and the latter breathed in; so that the two trinities encounter each other within our organism—the forces of equilibrium, movement and life pushing their way outward from within, while smell, taste and touch, which point us to qualities, are pressing inwards from without. These two trinities of sense interpenetrate each other; and it is through this interpenetration that the human being first comes to realise himself as a true self.

Now we are cut off from outer spirituality by speech and by our faculties of perceiving the thoughts and perceiving the egos of others—and rightly so, for if it were otherwise we could never in this physical life grow into social beings. [See previous lecture.] In precisely the same way, inasmuch as the qualities of smell, taste and touch wax counter to equilibrium, movement and life, we are inwardly cut off from the last three—which would otherwise disclose themselves to us directly. One could say that the sensations of smell, taste and touch form a barricade in front of the sensations of balance, movement and life and prevent our experiencing them.

What is the result of that development towards Imagination of which I spoke? It is this. The oriental stops short at speech in order to live in it; stops at thought in order to live in it; stops at ego-perception in order to live in it; and by these means makes his way outward into the spiritual world. We, as the result of developing Imagination, do something similar when we absorb the external percept without conceptualising it. But the direction we take in doing this is the opposite to the direction taken by an oriental who practises restraint in the matter of speech, thought-perception and ego-perception. He stays still in these. He lives his way into them. The aspirant to Imagination, on the other hand, worms his way inward through smell, taste and perception; he penetrates inward and, ignoring the importunities of his sensations of smell, taste and touch, makes contact with the experiences of equilibrium, movement and life.

It is a great moment when we have penetrated the sensory trinity, as I have called it, of taste, smell and touch, and we stand naked, as it were, before essential movement, equilibrium and life.

Having thus prepared the ground, it is interesting to study what it is that Western mysticism so often has to offer. Most certainly, I am very far from decrying the elements of poetry, beauty and imaginative expression in many mystical writings. Most certainly I admire what, for instance, St. Theresa, Mechthild of Magdeburg and others have to tell us, and indeed Meister Eckhardt and Johannes Tauler; but all this reveals itself also to the true spiritual scientist. It is what arises if one follows an inward path without penetrating through the domain of smell, taste and touch. Read what has been written by individuals who have described with particular clarity what they have experienced in this way. They speak of an inner sense of taste, experienced in connection with the soul-spiritual element in man's inner being. They refer also to smell and touch in a special way. Anybody, for instance, who reads Mechthild of Magdeburg or St. Theresa rightly will see that they follow this inward path, but never penetrate right through smell, taste and touch. They use beautiful poetic imagery for their descriptions, but they are speaking only of how one can smell, taste and touch oneself inwardly.

It is indeed less agreeable to see the true nature of reality with spiritually developed senses than to read the accounts given by a sensual mysticism—the only term for it—which fundamentally gratifies only a refined inward-looking egotism of soul. As I say, much as this mysticism is to be admired—and I do admire it—the true spiritual scientist has to realise that it stops half-way. What is manifest in the splendid poetic imagery of Mechthild of Magdeburg, St. Theresa and others is really only what is smelt, tasted and touched before attaining to true inwardness.

Truth can be unpleasant, perhaps even cruel, at times. But modern man has no business to become rickety in soul through following a vague incomplete mysticism. What is required to-day is to penetrate the true mysteries of man's inner nature with all our intellectual powers—with the same powers that we have disciplined in the cause of science and used to effect in the outer world. There is no mistaking what science is. It is respected for the very method and discipline it demands. It is when we have learnt to be scientific that we appreciate the achievements of a vague mysticism at their true worth but we also discover that they are not what spiritual science has to foster. On the contrary, the task of spiritual science is to reveal clearly the true nature of man's being. This in turn makes possible a sound understanding of the outer world.

Instead of speaking in this way, as the truth demands of me, I could be claiming the support of every vague, woolly mystic, who goes in for mysticism to satisfy the inward appetite of his soul. That is not our concern here, but rather the discovery of powers that can be used for living; spiritual powers that are capable of informing our scientific and social life.

When we have come to grips with the forces that dwell in our senses of balance, life and movement, then we have reached something that is first of all experienced through its transparency as man's essential inward being. The very nature of the thing shows us clearly that we cannot penetrate any deeper. What we do find is quite enough to be going on with, for what we discover is not the stuff of vague mystical dreams but a genuine organology. Above all, we find within ourselves the true nature of balance and movement, and of the stream of life. We find this within ourselves.

When this experience is complete, something unique has taken place. In due course we discover something. An essential prerequisite is, as I have said, to have worked carefully through The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The Philosophy is then left, so to speak, on one side, while we pursue the inward path of contemplation and meditation. We have advanced as far as balance, movement and life. We live in this life, balance and movement. Parallel with our pursuit of the way of contemplation and meditation, but without any other activity on our part, our thinking in connection with The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has undergone a transformation. We have been able to experience as pure thought what a philosophy such as this has to offer; but now that we have worked upon ourselves in another sphere, our inner soul life; this has turned into something quite different. It has taken on new dimensions and is now much more full of meaning. While on the one hand we have been penetrating our inward being and have deepened our power of Imagination, we have also lifted out of the ordinary level of consciousness the fruits of our thinking on The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Thoughts which formerly had a more or less abstract existence in the realm of pure cerebration have now become significant forces. They are now alive in our consciousness, and what was once pure thinking has become Inspiration. We have developed Imagination; and thinking has been transformed into Inspiration.

What we have attained by these two methods in our progress along this road has to be clearly differentiated. On the one hand we have gained Inspiration from what was, to begin with, pure thought. On the other hand, there is the experience that comes to us through our senses of balance, movement and life. We are now in a position to unite the two forms of experience, the outer and the inner. The fusion of Inspiration and Imagination brings us to Intuition.

What have we accomplished now? I can answer this question by approaching it from the other side. First of all I must draw attention to the steps taken by the Oriental seer, who wishes to advance further after being trained in the mantras and experiencing the living word and language. He now learns to experience not only the rhythms of language but also, and in a sense consciously, the process of breathing. He has, as it were, to undergo an artificial kind of breathing by varying it in all kinds of ways. For him this is one step up; but this is not something to be taken over in its entirety by the West.

What does the Eastern student of yoga attain by consciously regulating his breathing in a variety of ways? He experiences something very remarkable when he breathes in. As he does so, he is brought into contact with a quality of air that is not to be found when we experience air as a purely physical substance, but only when we unite ourselves with the air and so experience it spiritually. A genuine student of yoga, as he breathes in, experiences something that works upon his whole being, an activity that is not completed in this life and does not end with death. The spiritual quality of the outer air enters our being and engenders in us something that goes with us through the gate of death. To experience the breathing process consciously means taking part in something that continues when we have laid aside our bodies. To experience consciously the process of breathing is to experience both the reaction of our inner being to the drawing in of breath and the activities of our soul-spiritual being before birth: or let us say rather that we experience our conception and the factors that contribute to our embryonic development and work on us further within our organism as children. Breathing consciously means realising our own identity on the far side of birth and death. Advancing from the experience of the word and of language to that of breathing means penetrating further into an inspired realisation of the eternal in man. We Westerners have to experience much the same—but in a different sphere.

What in fact is the process of perception? It is only a modification of the breathing process. As we breathe in, the air presses on our diaphragm and on our whole being. Brain fluid is driven up through our spinal column into our brain. This establishes a connection between breathing and cerebral activity. Breathing, in so far as it influences the brain, works upon our sense-activity in the form of perception. Drawing in breath has various sides to it, and one of these is perception.

How is it when we breathe out? Brain fluid descends and exerts pressure on the circulation of the blood. The descent of brain fluid is bound up with the activity of will and also with breathing out. Anybody who really makes a study of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity will discover that when we attain to pure thinking, a fusion of thinking and willing takes place. Pure thinking is fundamentally an expression of will. So it comes about that what we have characterised as pure thinking is related to what the Easterner experiences in the process of breathing out.

Pure thinking is related to breathing out, just as perception is related to breathing in. We have to go through the same process as the yogi, but in a more inward form. Yoga depends on the regulation of breathing, both in and out, and in this way comes into contact with the eternal in man. What should Western man do? He can transform into soul-experience both perception on the one hand and thinking on the other. He can unite in his inner experience perception and thinking, which would otherwise only come quietly together in a formal abstract way, so that he has the same experience inwardly in his soul and spirit as he has physically in breathing in and out. Breathing in and out are physical experiences. When they are harmonised, we experience the eternal.

We experience thought-perception in our everyday lives. As we bring movement into our soul life, we become aware of rhythm, of the swing of the pendulum, of the constant movement to and fro of perception and thinking. Higher realities are experienced in the East by breathing in and out. The Westerner develops a kind of breathing process in his soul and spirit, in place of the physical breathing of yoga, when he develops within himself, through perception, the vital process of transformed in-breathing and, through thinking, that of out-breathing; and fuses concept, thought and perception into a harmonious whole. Gradually, with the beat of this rhythmical breathing process in perception and thinking, his development advances to true spiritual reality in the form of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.

In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I indicated as a philosophical fact that reality is the product of the interpenetration of perception and thinking. Since this book was designed to deal with man's soul activity, some indication should also be given of the training that Western man needs if he is to penetrate the spiritual world. The Easterner speaks of the systole and diastole, breathing in and out. In place of these terms Western man should put perception and thinking. Where the Oriental speaks of the development of physical breathing, we in the West say: development of soul-spiritual breathing in the course of cognition through perception and thinking.

All this should perhaps be contrasted with the kind of blind alley reached by Western spiritual development. Let me explain what I mean. In 1841 Michelet, the Berlin philosopher, published Hegel's posthumous works of natural philosophy. Hegel had worked at the end of the eighteenth century, together with Schelling, at laying the foundations of a system of natural philosophy. Schelling, with the enthusiasm of youth, had built his natural philosophy in a remarkable way on what he called intellectual contemplation. But he reached a point where he could make no further progress. His immersion in mysticism produced splendid results in his work, Bruno, or concerning the Divine and Natural Principle in Things, and that fine piece of writing, Human Freedom, or the Origin of Evil. But for all this he could make no progress and began to hold back from expressing himself at all. He kept promising to follow things up with a philosophy that would reveal the true nature of those hidden forces at which his earlier natural philosophy had only hinted.

When Hegel's natural philosophy appeared in 1841, through Michelet, the position was that Schelling's expected and oft-promised philosophical revelations had still not been vouchsafed to the public. He was summoned to Berlin. But what he had to offer contained no spiritual qualities to permeate the natural philosophy he had founded. He had struggled to create an intellectual picture of the world. He stood still at this point, because he was unable to use Imagination to enter the sphere of which I have been speaking to you to-day. So there he was at a dead end.

Hegel, who had a more rational intellect, had taken over Schelling's thoughts and carried them further by applying pure thinking to the observation of nature. That was the origin of Hegel's natural philosophy. So Schelling's promise to explain nature in spiritual terms was never fulfilled, and we got Hegel's natural philosophy which was to be discarded by science in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was not understood and was bound to remain so, for there was no connection between phenomenology, or the true observation of nature, and the ideas contained in Hegel's natural philosophy. It was a strange confrontation: Schelling travelling from Munich to Berlin, where something great was expected of him, and it turned out that he had nothing to say. This was a disappointment for all those who believed that through Hegel's natural philosophy revelations about nature would emerge from pure thinking. The historical fact is that Schelling reached the stage of intellectual contemplation but not that of genuine Imagination; while Hegel showed that if pure thinking does not lead on to Imagination, it cannot lead to Inspiration and to an understanding of nature's secrets. This line of Western development had terminated in a blind alley.

There was nothing—nothing permeated with the spirit—to set against Eastern teaching, which only engendered scepticism in the West. Anyone who has lovingly immersed himself in the true Schelling and Hegel, and has thus been able to see, with love in his heart, the limitations of Western philosophy, should turn his attention to Anthroposophy. He should work to bring about an anthroposophically orientated Spiritual Science for the West, so that we come to possess something of spiritual origin to compare with what the East has created through the interaction of systole and diastole.

For us in the West, there is the spiritual-soul rhythm of perception and thinking, through which we can rise to something more than a merely abstract science. It opens the way to a living science, which on that account enables us to live in harmony with truth. After all the misfires of the Kantian, Schellingian and Hegelian philosophies, we have come to the point where we need something that can show, by revealing the way of the spirit, how truth and science are related. The truth that dwells in a spiritualised science would be a healing power in the future development of mankind.

Dr. Steiner: I have a few things to add to what I recently said. The question concerns pictures in the music rooms. Clearly, we cannot decorate music rooms with paintings of figures. A music room is best decorated with sculpture or, if you have to use paintings, use ones with harmonious colors, paintings that are effective through pure colors. In other words, paintings in which pure colors are active.

Then, we also need to consider the pictures for the eurythmy room. I differentiate them from the music rooms, although there may be conflicts in our case. Under certain circumstances, we may teach music in the eurythmy room, but that would be only temporary. We should decorate the eurythmy room with themes that form the dynamic of the human being, including the dynamics of the soul. The pictures should present the expressive human being in an artistic way.

It is important that we carry that over into the gymnasium, but direct it more toward the world. For eurythmy, it is important to find an artistic way to express the dynamics of the soul, but in gymnastics we should connect more with the human being’s relationship to the world of balance and movement. You could, for example, have a picture of someone valiantly poised at the edge of a cliff, or such things. In the gymnasium, pictures should depict the relationship to the world.

For the handwork rooms, you should use pictures of interiors that particularly express feeling.

Now, that leaves only the shop. As much as possible, we should fill that with themes of practical life and possibly crafts, so that what hangs on the walls reflects what we do in the rooms.

I think we should decorate the faculty room in a way that is harmonious with the soul of the teacher. So, we would not have any particular rules for the faculty room, but would reflect our tastes in agreement with the teachers themselves. It should reflect the particularly intimate connections, but in an artistic way. In spinning, the same applies as for shop.

For music, it is better to leave the room quite plain than to add pictures that have no psychological connection with the essence of music.

The frames should fit the pictures. The color of the frames should be some color in the picture and the picture should also determine the form.

A teacher asks about the room for the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: I will give another service, and the pictures should be appropriate to that.

We should also decorate the remedial classroom, but we can discuss that at our next meeting.

We should place the eurythmy figures in a glass case in the eurythmy hall. In the hallways you should see to it that you place something similar to what is in the class to the left and right of the door. That is, something connected with the classroom.

A teacher asks about the physics and chemistry rooms.

Dr. Steiner: We have such major problems there that I cannot answer that today. Next time, we also want to begin discussing medical aspects, something we have long wanted to do.

Let’s turn our attention to creating an administrative committee.

A teacher: The committee we elected last meeting proposes three teachers. They would take over some of the administration previously done by the school administrator. They would be responsible for representing the school internally and to the outside world, with the exception of the custodial work, business, and finance.

In connection with school functions, they would do the following things:

1) Preparation and minute taking for the faculty meetings;
2) Naming specific faculty for specific areas, for example, the question of student boarding or decorations in the classrooms;
3) Prepare and oversee a yard duty schedule;
4) Assigning classrooms;
5) Supervise the use of school rooms for events from outside.

They would also take over the following things related to the outside:

1) Correspondence and communication with school officials, initialing all communications to the Department of Education;
2) Everything connected with enrollment (introductions and tests) and leaving school (school reports);
3) Yearly reports;
4) Visitors;
5) Public relations, in particular, working with the Union for Independent Cultural Life in the struggle against the Elementary School Law;
6) Gathering information about salaries and administering specific gifts.

Those are all the specific areas that we can remove from the present administrator and that a group can accomplish.

Dr. Steiner: First, we want to discuss this in principle. I would like you to say whether you are in agreement or not, or to speak in general about what has been presented.

The present administrator: It seemed to me that we should give this committee everything I did that should involve the entire faculty, and that all the economic and technical things would remain with me. We would thus rest secure that the work would be done to the satisfaction of the whole faculty. Those were my basic thoughts.

A teacher: I would like to propose Mr. L. as an additional member of the administrative committee.

Another teacher: We should use Mr. L. for more artistic work and not include him in the administration.

Dr. Steiner: The committee proposed three members, and now we have a proposal for a fourth.

A teacher: If he agrees that he would like to work with it, there should be no problem.

Mr. L.: I would be happy to do that if it would be useful.

Dr. Steiner: If I understand things correctly, we designated a preparatory committee. We cannot leave everything in the air. This committee proposed an administrative committee of three people. And now Mr. Y. is proposing that Mr. L. be included. The preparatory committee, though, proposed three people. Something official needs to move along with some precision. If you are proposing that Mr. L. join as a fourth member, what we have is that the recently elected preparatory committee proposed three and Mr. Y. makes a counterproposal to include a fourth person. Who wishes to say something further?

A teacher: I would like to give my support to that proposal.

Dr. Steiner: Does someone from the committee have something to say?

One of the three teachers proposed: I would like to say that we would be happy to work with Mr. L.

Dr. Steiner: The first question is the creation of the administrative committee. The proposal of the preparatory committee was three men. Then we have here from the faculty those three men and, in addition, Mr. L.

A teacher: I don’t see why we shouldn’t add an additional person to the committee.

Dr. Steiner: If we had only the proposal of the committee, we would need only to agree to or reject that proposal. Now we have two proposals, and we will have to have a debate about them. If there is another proposal, it should also be made. We created this preliminary committee with a great deal of pain. We believe it made its proposal only after mature consideration. Taking our trust in them into account, we now need to either verify or reject the proposal. The question is whether someone has something to say that is germane to the proposal. Is there perhaps a third proposal? Now the question is whether there is something to be added or whether a third proposal will be made.

A teacher supports the addition of Mr. L. because of his nature.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else have something to say?

A teacher: I would like to ask Mr. L. himself what he thinks about it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you would accept the position.

Mr. L.: I would if people think it is appropriate.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is thus: The administrative body should arise from the faculty, taking into consideration what we recently discussed. Recently I said that I could, according the way we created the Waldorf School, name the members of the committee myself, but I do not want to do that because of past experiences. Rather, I want the administrative body to arise from the will of the faculty. We have given the responsibility of preparing a proposal to the committee because we assumed that a preparatory committee could make better proposals than those who simply speak off the top of their heads. We must learn to become accustomed to saying things with some responsibility. Recently, we elected the members of this committee, and we now need to assume that the committee made proposals only after due consideration and in recognition of their responsibility. That is the basis of this discussion. At present, there are two proposals.

This could be very depressing. It is important that we do not work with illusions. What is happening now is very depressing. We have agreed that a committee should present us with some proposals, and we certainly do not want to simply throw those out the window. We would do that if a counterproposal is made now and the faculty gives a vote of distrust. If Y.’s suggestion is accepted, that would be a vote of no confidence against the committee. I’m telling you that the acceptance of Y.’s counterproposal means a vote of no confidence. There have been some sharp words used about the administrative body in the last days. All of those expressions could be used against the faculty if you think a vote of no confidence regarding an elected committee has no significance.

I have asked for honesty in the discussion. I have repeatedly requested your comments and have delayed closing this discussion in order to enable a discussion of the counterproposal. I once again request that you say what you have to say about this question.

The following remarks were not recorded.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Y., do not interpret the words I have said in leading the discussion. I cannot say I am presenting a counterproposal at the same time I declare that I agree with the first proposal. I would request that you suppress nothing. If you do not agree with something, please admit that, but this system of hiding things cannot continue.

At present we have three proposals: The proposal from the committee, the proposal by Mr. Y., and a third proposal by B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and go on to the agenda. The proposal from B. and S. is more extreme, since it would skip Y.’s proposal and simply go on to the agenda.

Mr. Y.: I support the suggestion from B. and S.

Dr. Steiner: This is where understanding simply stops. Either you have a reason to make a counterproposal, or you do not. If the committee presents a proposal, and you suggest a counterproposal, then I cannot see any degree of seriousness in your proposal if you yourself are in favor of skipping the proposal and going on to the agenda. If we continue on in this way about important things.... Simply because we need to decide the matter....

Marie Steiner: Mr. Y. had suggested L. because of his good nature.

Dr. Steiner: But that can only mean complete distrust.

A teacher: I understood Y.’s proposal as the beginning of a debate.

Dr. Steiner: The work of the committee ends today. Of course, a counterproposal can be made, but distrust arises because of the desire to vote for the four by acclamation without further ado. It would, of course, show no distrust in the committee if the four were chosen. However, the way things are going now, it would be a vote of distrust if the committee’s proposal was simply thrown out without any further discussion. The distrust arises because we formed a committee with the assumption that they would check into everything and make a proposal in full awareness of their responsibility. Then, a counterproposal was made. Now, we are voting on all four people. What that means is that we take one of our own actions with very little seriousness. To be rid of the matter, we simply vote for all four, and that constitutes a distrust in the committee. To handle the matter so that we can create an illusion that we are harmonious and united constitutes a distrust in the committee.

We need to honestly speak our minds. It is important that everyone has their own well-founded opinion. The way the Waldorf School was founded, it was based upon the blood of our hearts, and now so much is moving toward this terrible system of not taking matters seriously. That is even coming into the faculty. It is significant whether the faculty is united in accepting a proposal or not. That is something that goes straight to our hearts. I would like to emphasize that we may not take such matters lightly. I have no illusions about the fact that there are things in the background here. When such proposals are made, then something is playing in the background. In the realm of anthroposophy, honesty, not intransigence, should rule. That is what I am asking you to do, at least here at the seat of the Waldorf School, to begin for once to seriously stand upright, so that we do not fall into an atmosphere where we shut our eyes to the disharmony, but, instead, honestly say what we have to say.

Is it so impossible that people say they have one thing or another against you, but that they nevertheless still like you and are still ready to work together? Why couldn’t you say the truth in private and, in spite of that, still respect and value one another? Difficult things need to be done when there is reason for doing them. Now that there are two proposals, we first have to vote on the third proposal, or we would have to handle the two proposals in parallel.

The fact is that you demanded to be included in the discussions with the committee. I found that to be a first vote of distrust.

A teacher: I would like to ask if Mr. Y. could give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I also think that when a counterproposal is made, there should be reasons given.

Y. attempts to give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I can assure you that I do not allow anything that goes through my hands to be in any way imprecise. I do not skip over a situation when one arises. We have before us the proposal of the committee, and separate from that, a proposal by Mr. Y. They represent two opinions. Now that we have these two opinions, and the committee has come here with the intention of proposing a threeman group, after they had already decided not to propose a fourman group, there is an even greater contradiction when Mr. Y. proposes that. It is not our problem that Mr. Y. did not hear the matter. There is, in any event, a precise fact before us that the committee did not think they should propose a four-man group. Mr. Y.’s proposal is significantly different from that of the committee.

The debate we now have concerns the proposal of B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

The motion has been made to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

Who is in favor of concluding the debate…. The discussion is closed.... We now come to the proposal that three men are to form the administrative committee. We now come to a vote about that motion. Now that the motion is before us, I would like to ask you formally whether you desire to vote on the motion by acclamation or by secret ballot.

A teacher: I suggest by acclamation.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to speak to the motion to vote by acclamation? No one wishes to speak, so we can now vote on whether to accept the motion to decide by acclamation.... I request that those in favor of creating the administrative committee with these three men, raise their hands.

I have always attempted to maintain a friendly tone, and it may be that we can return to that again. However, these kinds of discrepancies that are not said aloud cannot remain. Aside from that, it is not bad if we occasionally use parliamentary procedures so that we gain some precision in our work. That is something we must have here.

We now come to the other proposals of the committee. The committee proposed that the administrative committee should take over certain areas of representing the school. The proposal was to leave certain tasks with Mr. Y. and remove others. What we are dealing with here is that the following things should be removed from the administrator: First, the preparation and minute taking of the faculty meetings. Second, requesting colleagues to take over certain areas of work, the yard-duty plan, the distribution of the classrooms, usage of schoolrooms by people outside the school. These are the things connected with the inner administration of the school.

I would ask you to say what you have to say regarding these points. Do you agree that the administrative committee take over these areas? Those in agreement, please raise your hands. It is accepted.

In regard to the external representation of the school, the committee would take over correspondence and communications with the authorities as proposed, and, aside from Mr. Y., the member of the committee who is active at the time would countersign. A teacher: Requiring a countersignature makes things more difficult than they were. It would cause delays.

Dr. Steiner: If a member of the committee assumes that it cannot always be done, then I would like to know why we have the committee in the first place. We must always be able to do this. There can be no question of a difficulty. A bureaucracy depends upon attitude, not upon authority. If you imagine you can fight bureaucracy by installing chaos in its place, you have an incorrect picture, and that, of course, cannot be done.

A teacher moves to close the debate.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone want to say something about the motion to close the debate? Then I ask those who are in favor of closing the debate… . The motion is accepted.

We now need to vote on whether the administrative committee should take on the activities of interaction with the officials, countersigning documents and so forth. I ask those who are in favor to raise their hands.

Dr. Steiner then asks for discussion about each of the various points concerning external representation of the school, and a vote is taken upon each point.

Dr. Steiner: You have all agreed to each of the specific points. I would now like to have a vote on the question as a whole with the exception of the public relations work and the relationship to the Waldorf School Association. I want you to vote on the question as a whole, that is, about all the areas we have discussed. Passed. Dr. Steiner now enumerates all the individual functions for which the present school administrator will continue to be responsible.

Dr. Steiner: Now that you have heard all these points, is there anything you would like to say?

A teacher asks about enrolling students.

Dr. Steiner: We have decided that that will be done by the administrative committee. If what we are doing is to have any meaning at all, then we cannot remove such an important matter from the administrative committee. We need to eliminate this bureaucratic way of thinking. If you think we should remove important discussions with parents from the administrative committee, then you are thinking bureaucratically. The administrative committee should participate from the very beginning, from the beginning of the enrollment of the student. The administrative committee should also be aware that it cannot let its duties slowly slide.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to speak about the whole thing so that it will become clearer for us.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is that over time I have been made aware of things from many different people, that the faculty wanted such a group. From my perspective, I could answer such questions by saying that I thought it was necessary. I have a certain satisfaction in knowing it is now happening, but I also think it should happen with all seriousness. Is there still some argument about the matter?

I could ask, perhaps, that this committee include what we have voted upon as a kind of addition to our by-laws exactly how we will divide the agenda, then we can make a final decision about that at our next meeting. The activities we have now decided upon should be taken up as quickly as possible.

I would now like to ask for some discussion about how long the members of the committee should be in office, and about the rotation.

A teacher proposes a longer period of rotation, two to three months, otherwise the continuity would be continually disrupted.

Dr. Steiner: What you mentioned, that a person does not receive a reply, could also happen with a longer period of rotation. In any event, an orderly transfer of activities is necessary. I think a period of two months would be appropriate. We need to be careful that the work does not become a burden, and it seems to me that a period of two months would be appropriate.

A teacher: I would like to ask if the current executive would work alone or whether all three would work together.

Dr. Steiner: When not actually in the executive position, the activities of the others would be advisory. That is clear from the situation itself. However, the executive should ask the advice of the other committee members. What we are now deciding is something else. What we now need to decide is the relationship of the faculty to the administrative committee. I think two months would be the right amount of time. Would you like to have that extended or shortened? Is anyone against two months? Then we will do it that way. The administrative committee will begin tomorrow and the first period of rotation would be February and March, that is, two months. In what order should the members rotate?

A teacher: I would suggest alphabetical order.

Dr. Steiner: We can now go on to the question of public relations and our relationship to the Waldorf School Association.

Concerning public relations, you have made a connection with the Union for Independent Cultural Life, namely, a fight against the Elementary School Law. The way the situation is, I do not think it is a good idea if the Waldorf School as such takes a position for or against normal public questions, as they are generally trivial. We can move forward much better when we energetically work upon our own concerns and positively present what we are doing with Waldorf pedagogy. We should not involve ourselves with questions formulated from outside. I often had a bitter taste in my mouth when one of us gave a lecture about the Elementary School Law. We should be involved in the situation. The things we should present should represent our own concerns. In that way we can accomplish much more than when people who want to learn about the Elementary School Law ask us about our position. Of course, we are against it, but we should not be involved in discussions about mundane daily questions.

How do you envision working against the Elementary School Law? Certainly, we must handle these things practically—I usually say “real” instead of “practical.” The world should have the impression that people from the Waldorf School handle such questions practically.

If you look at the essays that have been published as weekly reports in Anthroposophy, they certainly look as though they were written without any understanding of the relationship between the parliament and the executive and the bureaucracy and so forth. The way they are written, those people active in everyday life will have a feeling that they are impractical, and then that opinion is hung around the neck of an Independent Spiritual Life or the Movement for Threefolding. By doing that, we increasingly foster the opinion that we are an impractical group of people. That is something that must cease. I am not speaking about our opponents, but about those insightful people who stand with us in the Threefold Social Movement.

If we include the Union for Independent Cultural Life in our work here at the Waldorf School, it is important that we do not fall prey to the same error the union itself does, namely, that we don’t fall into a kind of theorizing. What I mean is that it is important that any work we do in public relations stand upon a sound foundation. Certainly, we can work with the union, but when we do something, we should be aware that it must be practical, for instance, when we present the Waldorf School pedagogy as a contrast to the Elementary School Law. The more widespread the Waldorf School pedagogy becomes, the less possible such terrible laws will be. We don’t need to base our work upon the politics of the beer hall. All this is a question of tact. We should actually not participate. That is something we should never have done. That is the main problem with the Movement for Threefolding, we should never have become involved in mundane daily questions.

I have given special consideration to this area because I think it is particularly important that we take a higher position. For years I tried to form a World School Association that would not work toward handling pedagogical questions in some mundane manner, but would try to present them to the public from a higher position. That would be the difficult task of such a world school association.

A teacher: Couldn’t we have some evenings for discussing pedagogical questions to which we can invite some people, and also officials?

Another teacher: It is apparent that some leading school officials would like to know more, but are afraid to take the first step.

Still another teacher: Perhaps we could create something here at school so that we co

Dr. Steiner: That would make sense only if such meetings with people from outside were the result of public announcements in which we invited others to attend. It would make sense only if the Waldorf School started such things and then people came to us with their requests. Otherwise, all we would have would be the normal blather.

A teacher: I am thinking about the question of final examinations, that will certainly be important a year from this Easter.

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, a task that does not actually belong in the school administration, but is more connected with the work of the Waldorf School. As soon as we would want to decide about such things, nothing would happen. That is a question that belongs among the general tasks of the Anthroposophical Society and is the task of everyone who is in any way concerned about the flourishing of the Waldorf School pedagogy. Actually, the answer should be apparent from the question itself. It is difficult to arrange anything in that regard because it needs to be handled individually so that we can take everything into account. We should take every opportunity to put the Waldorf School in the best light. On the other hand, we need to say that those who want to learn could also learn in England if they were there. So, it should really not be so difficult for someone who wants to learn about the Waldorf School to find out about it.

A teacher says something.

Dr. Steiner: What you just said is not serious. People are not happy about things, but as soon as you go beyond the general level of dissatisfaction and want to say something particular, they turn away. What ruins things is our participation, in any degree, in that turning away. We need to stand upright upon our foundation. We need to do everything that properly represents the Waldorf School pedagogy and not allow ourselves to make compromises. Such illusions are most detrimental to our goals. From what I have heard about these things, and such opinions come up all the time, we should have no illusions about them. We need to follow our own path and not treat these cases bureaucratically. If each of us recognizes our responsibility to do what we can, it may be better to teach these officials than to arrange things so that people could attend who would prefer to enter unseen through the back door. We went through all this when the union was formed in July 1919. There, we discussed pedagogical things. We held meetings where it was dark but nothing came out of it because people did not stay, not even the teachers. At the moment when things become serious—remember how people said they are dissatisfied, but that they have a wife and child. Do not misunderstand me. Work as uprightly as possible and use each individual connection, but do not believe that if you hold a meeting you can expect something from it.

We can best resolve the question of final examinations if we attempt to prepare the students as well as possible and then go to the examiners in question. The others will have forgotten it by then. In general, personal discussions are useful, but it depends upon how. We certainly cannot treat questions in the way you did today at the beginning, by deciding to allow the nicest person to take care of some particular problem. If that would work, then I would suggest that those people who are less gracious should take lessons from the others.

Marie Steiner: You prefer the Austrian form of charm.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to ask you to be personally involved. That is certainly something we need. I would certainly offer to fail every professor of botany in botany if that is what it took.

If you have some old connections and you could find out a little from those who have more experience, then your old connections would be more useful than if you brought others without such connections. The other thing is that you are a woman, and these are male examiners. If it is a female examiner, then see to it that you bring a man. Things need to be done individually. You should not believe that the impression you make will continue when you drag other people in.

The relationship to the Waldorf School Association does not seem to me to be resolvable except by a change in the statutes of the association. Of course, it should not be that the person who is the executive should not have a seat and a voice in the Waldorf School Association.

A teacher: Now, every teacher is a regular member of the Waldorf School Association.

Dr. Steiner: That does not fit with these regulations. This regulation requires that the faculty send a representative who will have that position for five years. We must clearly express that the person taking care of the administration here will also sit in the Waldorf School Association for two months. The by-laws have been changed so often that we can easily do that. That is something the Waldorf School Association must do. Is that all right with you? Thus, the current administrator would be our representative for two months and would sit in the council of the Waldorf School Association and have a vote. That person would not simply be one of the members, but would be on the council, and, in that way, the relationship would be self-regulating. So now we have taken care of this question. The necessary change in the by-laws should be made at the next meeting of the Waldorf School Association. Of course, for the time being, the representative of the faculty could be at the next meeting of the association. Are there any other remarks?

A teacher: Should we send a donation to the people in the Rhineland? It would be important for us if you could give us some information about the situation.

Dr. Steiner: It is not so easy to discuss the general situation now because the situation is as I described it quite clearly while I was giving the lectures about threefolding here, namely, that something needs to be done before it is too late. Today, it is too late to accomplish anything in the area of what people have called European politics. The only suggestion I made was to transform the old Threefold Association into the Union for Independent Cultural Life. I made that suggestion out of the recognition that we could do something for the future of Europe and for present Western civilization by supporting cultural life as such. That is where everything else must begin. The economic things that have been done by the present government as well as all political impulses are useless now. It is only possible to support spiritual life and hope that something will happen. What is important is to collect everything we are doing in that direction under one roof. At one time I quoted something Nietzsche said in one of his letters from 1871 about the fact that the German spirit has been exterminated in favor of the German empire. Today, it is important to achieve the opposite, namely, to restore the German spirit in spite of the decay of all political institutions. In that way, we can move forward, but we must stand firmly upon that basis. Everything else needs to be decided case by case.

The Rhineland occupation should be handled from the perspective that it is being done by a drowning man. A hysterical policy is being created from the drowning and thrashing. The tragedy is that the death throes are causing so much suffering. For that reason, I favor sending a donation if possible. It is a humanitarian deed. We can neglect all the nationalism and consider the question from a purely human perspective. I am in favor of all such things to the extent that they are purely human situations.

Today, we stand before the abyss of European culture, and we must prepare to jump over that abyss. I have long since stopped writing articles about it. I wrote the last one at the time of the Genoa conference, drawing attention once again to the whole situation. When I give lectures to the workers in Dornach, they no longer want to hear anything about politics. They are interested in things about science because they understand that all political talk today no longer has any sense to it.

If you think you could make a collection, you should probably be aware that it will not be much. It could be very little.

A teacher: I have divided the 8b class into two groups.

Dr. Steiner: I will have to agree to that until I can see it.

A teacher: The Latin class is a double period. I have the impression it is not very good.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to discuss such questions without having a meeting about purely pedagogical questions that could perhaps provide an ideal toward which we can work. Today, I have heard quite a bit about your class. Normally, I try to look at a number of things. Recently, I have been paying more attention to the question of the extent to which individual students have reached the learning goals and how many are falling behind. I cannot say I am convinced there are greater differences in the students you had today than in those in the geography class.

We will need to take care of this in the next meeting when we will be able to handle pedagogical questions more completely, because I noticed that the differences in ability and capability are quite large in that class.

(Speaking to another teacher) In contrast, I noticed when I taught the class myself that your class was much more homogenous. The differences are not so large. That is how the classes differ. We will discuss such questions and how to proceed at another time.

Today, we will begin by talking about the intentions of the personalities participating in this course and how to develop an attitude towards our tasks.

If you want to fulfill the intentions associated with this course, you will go out in the near future to work for the impulse of threefolding in the world. This work is eminently necessary in our time. And we must start from this conviction that it is a necessity. We must be clear about the fact that it is basically high time to work for this impulse of threefolding, which we must consider as the unconditional demand of the civilization of the present.

We must, however, from the outset, take a position that excludes any kind of scepticism in our hearts towards the impulse of threefolding, while we are informing ourselves about the conditions of this work during these days. Because you will not be able to work if you are still somehow sceptical about the matter today. In the course of this course, we will be able to see how not only what we say or do has an effect in the world, but how certain imponderables, unspoken things, must accompany our speaking and our actions if we want to have an effect.

Furthermore, we must be clear about the fact that all the old forces of civilization, which are in a state of decline, are revolting against this impulse of threefolding, developing antagonisms, and that we have a great deal to struggle with if we want to bring this impulse of threefolding to bear with our strength. And we will have all the more to struggle with the more we have a certain success on the other side. Such success does not make the struggle any less, but sharpens it more and more. And you will have to arm yourselves against the very thing that asserts itself as struggle. Of course, I do not mean to say that we should prepare ourselves for struggle to any great extent; that is not what could advance us. But we must be aware of how strongly this fight will unfold in the near future, especially if we manage to get through it.

What I would like to say today will, so to speak, be individual psychological starting points. Of course, the only thing to be discussed here is to characterize the factual basis for your work. I would like to emphasize from the outset that this cannot be a guide to political-social or other oratory, but rather to creating the positive foundations for working in the spirit of the impulse of the threefold social organism. And here you may initially feel that I am putting it in rather general terms, if I start with some very general rules, which, however, will be of extraordinary importance for us if we think them through in a very concrete way.

You will only succeed in what you want to achieve if you act from two basic forces in your soul, and since today it is an extraordinarily serious matter that must permeate our cause and inspire our work , then we must first become fully aware, fully conscious, that we will not get ahead without developing these two basic powers of our soul: first, to speak out of a real love for the cause, and second, out of an insightful love for our fellow human beings. Be clear about this: if these two conditions are not present or if they are replaced by others, say by ambition or vanity, then no matter how logical your judgments are, you will be unable to achieve anything. The conditions for working through the word are basically not something that lies in the formation, in the shaping of the word alone. You need only start from the way in which effects are most often achieved by the word in our present day, and you will understand what I have told you.

Just imagine: two speakers appear before an audience. One of them is an unknown person with extraordinary insights, with a penetrating power of speech, and with full justification of the matter, and another speaker would appear before the same audience, as things are now, and he has held some public position for a long time, be it as the representative NN, the statesman NN, the well-known industrialist NN or the scholar NN. He will work with far less urgent motives, with a cause that is far less justified. What makes an impact is something that is added to the content of the spoken word. But we cannot base our work on such things as I have just characterized them.

But there are also other things that must characterize our speech, and these are precisely the two soul qualities of which I spoke: real love for the cause, which alone can carry inner conviction, and love for humanity. Of course, these two soul forces cannot replace what the content of the spoken word is. The content of the spoken word must, of course, be unimpeachable. But it has no effect if it is not supported by the two soul forces that I have mentioned. Therefore, today, when we are more inclined to dismiss, I would say, the formalities, it must be said that we must bear in mind the extent to which we have these two forces present in our souls. If we come to the conclusion that we do not have them, then it might be better not to participate in the important action that is to be undertaken, because it would be wasted strength, wasted labor. And one would be convinced that the effect of something that arises from other impulses could not be great, while the effect of something that arises from love for the cause that carries the conviction and from love of humanity may initially be directly small, but it will nevertheless be there.

My dear friends, the truth chooses all manner of paths, which are unobservable at first, in order to come among people, and it just so happens that where the two imponderables, love for the cause and love for humanity, are present, there must also be an effect, even if it does not initially come to light. We can be sure of that.

But other things must be added. There must be full insight into what we are speaking about today when we present such a matter as the impulse of threefolding to the public. We must not have any illusions about the state of mind of the people to whom we are speaking, about the conditions that are given by the fact that we have to speak to the people of the present. Among these people of the present age there are by no means a few who are quite capable of absorbing what we have to say to them. But it is particularly true of the majority of the leading personalities of the present age that the forces of those people who would be capable of absorbing the impulse of threefolding are initially suppressed, and quite brutally at that.

Let us dwell as little as possible on generalities and go straight to the details. The most common thing people say when you approach them with something like the impulse of threefolding is something like this: Yes, especially in Central Europe, the need and misery are there first. We have to fight for the dry crust. It is the economic interests that we must take into account first. What use are lofty ideals? What use is what is presented from spiritual backgrounds? You will hear this objection in all keys. And one cannot deny that it arises from the oppressed souls of the present. At first glance, it has a certain justification. But if we let the most important questions of the present, which could become the foundations for our work, pass before our souls, we will see that this view, that today it can only be about solving economic questions, is based on a complete illusion. For it assumes another question, or rather the answer to another question, as if it were self-evident; but it is not self-evident. The starting point, namely, is the assumption - and we shall be discussing this matter in great detail shortly - that it is not the fault of human beings, not this or that human being, but of human beings in general, that the civilized world has ended up in its present situation.

When we consider the world economy spread across the whole earth – and it must be considered today – then we have to say to ourselves: nature gives us no less today than at any other time, if we can properly wrest its results from it and if we can distribute these results in the right way among people – as a whole of humanity, of course. That people today are in a greater state of emergency than they were before is not caused by physical factors, but is caused precisely by the spirit of people. If people are in need today, it is because of wrong spirituality, wrong thinking. Therefore, there can be no other way out of this emergency than to replace wrong thinking with right thinking. It is not nature, nor some unknown forces that have brought humanity to its present situation, but it is people themselves who have brought these things about. When there is hardship, it is people who have brought about this hardship; when people have nothing to eat, it is people who do not let this food reach them. Therefore, it is important not to start from the wrong premise: some unknown forces have caused the hardship, and one must first remove this hardship before one can start thinking in the right way – but to make it clear: because the hardship is caused by people's wrong thinking, only right thinking can remove this hardship.

We must look at this superstition from every conceivable angle. It says that we can provide bread for humanity, and then, when they have enough bread, they will also come to better thinking. This is a terrible superstition. And nothing beneficial will ever be able to penetrate into today's civilization unless people decide to discard it and replace it with the right faith, which consists of a reversal, a re-education of thinking about the things of this world itself. This is also what must gradually enter a sufficiently large number of human minds.

But we shall only find the opportunity to speak to these people if we first rid ourselves of any illusions about two things. The first is the fact that at present there is, to a great extent, no sense of the productivity of intellectual life. The silliness with which, not so long ago, the phrase “the road to success is open to the brave” was coined – not the word, but the way the word was coined – was a silliness that should be thoroughly eradicated from people's minds in view of the facts that prevail in today's civilization. For the facts of today's civilization are such that they, by their very nature, always carry a selection, a selection of the unfit, to the top.

We live today in a time that particularly favors the unfit. We will also talk about this in detail and will have to seek the forces that lead to this selection of the unfit in particular in our time. Today, I would like to start by saying just one thing. But I do ask that we take into account the following: we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the outset here, in that we are aware that we are talking among ourselves and creating the conditions for our work, we must stand firm from the By standing on this ground, we will be able to see what I am about to say now not as an immodesty or the like, but as something that is factually related to the conditions of our work in general.

Take the “Key Points of the Social Question”. Consider the way in which it is often understood today, look at the things that are put forward by the opponents, and then try to judge what the opponents are saying from. You will only be able to get to the bottom of these issues through a psychological approach, through psychological observation. The opponents usually talk past the content of these “key points” – I am of course referring to the book. As a rule, there is hardly any reference in what they talk about to what the content of the “key points” actually is. For example, I recently discussed the content of the “key points” in Bern. Afterwards, the economist from the university spoke for three quarters of an hour. In not a single sentence did he succeed in addressing the content of the “key points” themselves. This can be proven. And he certainly did not address the content of the lecture. He was completely unprepared because he did not know the “key points”, did he?

So what do people feel when they approach the ideas of the threefold social order? Why do they form things out of the depths of their souls that don't fit at all? Because they feel something very special. They sense, without being aware of it, what is active in them. They sense that if the impulse for threefolding, as set forth in the Key Points, were to take root in the world, it would bring about a selection of the able, and the unworthy would be pushed down from their pedestal. For the impulse that lies in the threefold social organism is one that takes effect in the most real way as soon as it is carried into humanity in some way. But it works unconditionally to exclude the incapable from being effective. This is what people feel in the subconscious. Of course, they cannot say this, so they come to what they do say. If a psychologist makes an effort to understand what people are saying, especially if he makes an effort to analyze the way they work, then he will certainly come to a confirmation of what I have just said. And in the end, all this is based on the fact that in the present day there is actually no sense of spiritual productivity. People have become too accustomed to letting the spiritual be carried by the impersonal or by the personal, which is not itself spiritual: by the state or by state personalities who do not primarily have the living spirit as such in mind.

You only have to look at things in detail, you only have to ask yourself: What do the theological faculties want? Today, in the theological faculties, the aim is much less to get behind the secret of the spiritual primal forces of the world than to create useful religious officials in the service of the state or the denominations. In jurisprudence, the aim is not to seek the reasons and essence of the law, but to teach people what is customary in a particular state, what has been established by those who did not want to create the essence of the law either, but who, out of some interest, made this or that into a law. And so one could go through all the things that ultimately become leading in spiritual life, and one would see everywhere that there is hardly any sense in the present for the productive element of the spirit, which must actually carry civilization, for the living influence of the spirit into human souls.

People have gradually been educated to a lameness of intellect, to mere thinking without this thinking being imbued with the will. People are absorbed in a merely contemplative thinking. You will see this first hand as an experience when you give your lectures. You will be able to experience it again and again, that the people who listen may even be satisfied by one or the other thing they hear; the words rush to the ear, enter the soul; people have a certain voluptuousness about the thoughts; they feel satisfied in them; they would most like to hear just that which fills them with a certain inner voluptuousness. But inwardly they are always somewhat annoyed when one expects of them that the words should not remain words, but that the whole person should be filled with them and energetically, from the point of view that the words open up, must now intervene in life, if the words are to have any consequence. For centuries people have been accustomed to a certain way of receiving the word. When they listened to the preacher in the pulpit, they sat in the pew, and the sermon should be “beautiful,” should draw them inward with a certain warmth, though it was usually a philistine warmth. They wanted to feel a certain inner voluptuousness, and also have a certain inner yearning of the soul satisfied, so that the satisfaction comes from outside. But then, when you had left the sermon, you didn't want what was offered in the sermon to really penetrate your life. Of course, people said that often enough, but basically it never happened for a long time. You are well aware of how things stand today in this regard with other things that are said. It cannot be said that in most cases young people today enter the university doors with a certain inner passion to go through their hours, that they have an enormous inner warmth and cannot wait to hear what the teacher will say tomorrow based on what he said today. There seem to be more cases where people just sit out their hours because it's their duty to do so – or maybe many don't even sit them – and where they are then glad to have crammed in what is necessary for the exam, which which really does not determine whether one is an able and capable person, but rather whether one has what it takes to become a good theological or legal official, that is, to fit into any state structure in an appropriate way.

Under these conditions, we shall see what factors were at work in the last centuries, but especially in the 19th century, the sense of the living work of the spirit in humanity was gradually lost. Think what truly effective religions would have become if they had not proceeded from this sense of the living spirit. All religions that have become religions at all did not start from what our present-day intellectual life starts from, namely, that everything we carry in our minds is basically just an ideology, a sum of abstractions. Rather, the religions started from the premise that the objective spirit present in the world has revealed itself through certain personalities, that it has worked as such, that the spirit is something real, a real power. Most people who are involved in today's spiritual life hardly understand anything about this.

Recently, I was extremely interested to learn the following. Based on the idea expressed in the first chapter of my book Kernpunkte, I said that, from the spiritual side, an essential part of the proletarian question is that the modern proletariat regards all spiritual life, customs, law, art, religion, science, and so forth, as an ideology, and that it is this conception of the spiritual life as an ideology that forms the basis for the desolation of souls, which then, by virtue of their instincts, arrive at what in many respects is today the social movement. I have explained this in my “Key Points”. I recently hinted at it in a lecture, and a professorial debater understood the matter so well that he said, roughly: Yes, it was stated that the proletariat lives in a kind of ideology in spiritual terms; but that cannot be stated, because all classes, all estates, all of humanity lives in ideology all the time; it is quite natural that everyone lives in ideology! The good man has absolutely no concept of what is meant here, because he has completely lost the concept of the reality of spiritual life. It was a matter of course for him that what fills our spirit and our soul is an ideology. As a good bourgeois, he could not grasp anything other than that one lives quite justifiably within the ideology; so if the proletariat lives in it, that cannot be the reason for the social impulses of the present!

You see, these things are so thoroughly ingrained in those who are “the educated” today that one must speak of it: people have no sense of the productivity of the spiritual life. We must give the people of the present age a concept of this productivity of the spiritual life, of the creative spirit, of the power of the spirit. That is the first thing that is needed. This is the one thing about which we must have no illusions, for otherwise we would not know how to speak to the people of the present age.

The second issue is that, basically, the sense of the needs of other human beings has been lost due to the particular form of social life that has emerged in recent centuries. But without this sense of the needs of other human beings, there can be no shaping of economic life at all. Economic life can only be shaped by people who, in their thoughts about economic life, can initially disregard their own needs and who have a feeling for the needs of some other people and thus learn to feel for humanity. What is needed in economic life is insightful understanding of what can be called the consumption of humanity.

Economic life consists of production, circulation of commodities, and consumption. But it is not primarily the business of economic life to control production and to ensure that the right amount of energy goes into production. You can see this from the “key points”: capital is first put into circulation by the spiritual member of the social organism. The way in which one produces is a purely spiritual question. The question of consumption is essentially an economic question. Of course, those who are members of economic associations must have the opportunity to control and organize production on the basis of intellectual life; but one only learns about the intensity of production, the nature of production, if one has a sense for the needs of other people and not only for one's own, not even as a group.

But what has emerged in more recent times? In those talking shops that we call parliaments – it is, after all, a literal translation, and a very apt one at that – the custom of forming interest groups has become widespread. Federation of Industrialists, Federation of Farmers, and so on. In the Austria that was the basis for the outbreak, there were initially four economic interest groups at the starting point of chatterism. So, just the opposite of what leads to real economic understanding has actually been at work recently. Interest groups, that is, people were there who said from the outset: I decide what I think is right, depending on whether I am interested in the matter. However, in economic life, decisions can only be made if one can abstract from one's own interests and has a sense of the interests of others.

I had already expressed this years ago in a series of articles entitled “Theosophy and the Social Question”. There I formulated with a certain certainty what I am saying now. But you see, with such things I always meant something that should not just be talked about, otherwise one could also say it in parliament, in the chatterbox, but with such a thing I always meant something that concerns all of humanity, that should evoke a response. I stopped doing it back then because no one cared about it. Of course, theoretically some people may have taken an interest. But for a long time now, it is no longer enough to be interested only in theory. For the social forces that arose in humanity in earlier centuries have passed away. Today we need words that can also have an immediate social impact. What I mean by this may become clear to you if I say the following. Take the most radical socialists, the communists, the Leninists, the Trotskyists and so on, take them all. Do they start from a fundamental principle of social life? No, they take a framework, something that is already there. Even Lenin and Trotsky do not take something objective as a basis, but the existing state, from which they start. So the Communists do not take some objective thing either, some territory with a coherent economic life and the like, but they take existing frameworks and start from them because they do not dare, however radical they may otherwise be, to create frameworks first. They do not dare to start from the beginning.

Look around you in another area: today, even the educated flock to Roman Catholicism in droves. A Young Catholic Party is now being formed, which will probably take on very strong dimensions. Why? Because people today do not dare to search for the beginnings of an intellectual life in their souls, because they do not dare to start from something original. They want to lean on something that already exists. They want to run into what is already there. Because people do not want strong inner activity that draws from the original. They do not dare to do that. But that is precisely what we need. To achieve this, we have to awaken a sense of purpose in people. And that is what we need now. It is high time that European civilization came to an understanding in a sufficiently large number of people. That is what we need: to start from principles of origin, and not to lose ourselves in abstractions.

In that essay, “Theosophy and the Social Question,” I said that social life can only become healthy through people who start from the interests of others. In response to this, the abstract thinkers usually say something like, “That's nothing new, it's been said long ago.” If you then ask them where it was said, you learn: by Schopenhauer. He said quite correctly: “It is easy to preach morals; it is difficult to establish morals”; namely, morals must be based on compassion. Yes, you see, there you have the abstraction! In Schopenhauer you find an empty abstraction, which as such is quite correct. Because if you want to be abstract, you can say: to have a sense of the interests of others is to have compassion. But you have transformed the concrete fact that leads you to intervene in life into a shadowy abstraction. And with these shadowy abstractions, something is given with which people are very satisfied. If you come to people with something very concrete, as has just been attempted in the literature of threefold social order, then the opponents come and say: Yes, that is all already there! If you then look into what they mean, they mean some shadowy abstraction. One person finds that everything I have just pointed out is already contained in Schopenhauer's doctrine of compassion, another perhaps even in Kant's categorical imperative, and so on. This is a point to which we must look very carefully so that we can find the possibility of taking up the essential.

And so it is necessary that we do not speak out of some prejudice about what is right, but that we constantly let ourselves be dictated to by what we notice around us, that we let ourselves be taught by what people have and, above all, by what they do not have. But for that we need to really familiarize ourselves with what is happening in the present.

You see, it is of course right to defend oneself against the attacks that are now coming from all sides against anthroposophy and also against the threefold social order. But defense alone is not enough. We must be fully aware of that. No matter how well we defend ourselves against certain currents in the present day from which the personalities who attack us come, there is not much that can be done with defense. Take, for example, the type of religious Dadaist who recently wrote in the “Tat”, his name is Michel. A real religious Dadaist, that is what actually characterizes him. And no matter how much you defend him, you cannot deal with such a person. You will never be able to deal with him. Because what emanates from anthroposophy, what emanates from the threefold social order, he does not understand even in a subordinate clause. Such a person has the feeling, for example, that he should only write nouns when he writes. Although he is always speaking of “grace” and of what Catholicism has given him, in his feelings and in his way of perceiving things, which of course comes from the standpoint of a religious Dadaism, he is quite materialistic in his outlook. If he senses that in order to think spiritually about the spiritual, one must dissolve the nouns, then he calls it a “lack of style”. From his point of view this is quite understandable. But naturally you will never be finished discussing or defending it. Of course one can point out such impurities, that is all well and good, but one cannot achieve anything through these defensive measures alone.

And we must become fully aware of this if we want to be effective: today it cannot be a matter of merely defending ourselves against the attacks. That may be necessary sometimes. But what is at issue is that we get to know the currents of the time, the directions that are there, and characterize them ruthlessly before the world. It is not really about the spirit of Michel or something similar, but about this particular kind of religious Dadaism. It must be characterized before the world. It is not Mr. Michel who is of interest, but this particular kind of religious impotence, which is becoming a current. We must present it in such a way that, as it were, from the mirror in which we show such currents to people, those people who are also there and still have a healthy feeling can see what it is about. Of course, this is much more difficult than mere dialectical defense. But this is especially necessary. We must familiarize ourselves with what is in the undercurrents of our contemporary civilization. Then we will grasp it at the root and place it before the present.

In this respect, a great deal is contained in the material that is simply available from the lectures I have given since April 1919. In these lectures, I have always tried to point out the so-called intellectual and economic currents at work in the present day, and to characterize individual personalities as they had to be characterized. But most of these things have been buried. They lie there. They have certainly been read. But further work must be done. The ideas must be taken up and developed.

That is what is at stake. Then, gradually – now we no longer have much time to do so, the “gradually” could take a long time – then, gradually, something will emerge in our movement for the threefold social order that is a positive, fruitful critique of contemporary civilization as a whole. And it is on the foundation of a thorough critique of contemporary civilization that we must build up the positive ideas that are to enter into hearts and minds. People must realize how fragmented what is present in the current trends is, and that much of it is only a rehashing of something old. For when they see how it is splitting up, they will be inclined to accept the positive things we have to say, because the leading personalities are actually living in illusions everywhere. Until something catastrophic comes from one corner or another, people will continue to deny any danger. That is the characteristic of the present time.

So every day we have to make a new effort to show people how the illusions they are shrouded in must shatter. From this point of view, it is extremely interesting to study how the fear of the leading personalities initially worked when we started our threefolding movement in 1919. At first, for a few weeks, there was still a general atmosphere of fear. In the first few weeks, one could see quite clearly how, among certain industrial and commercial people, the question arose, half grudgingly and half reluctantly, which they naturally understood in their own way: How are we to get along with the Socialists? How are we to do this or that? And they deigned to talk about such things, even if they mostly did so with caricatures of socialization issues. Then a few weeks passed, the socialists did one foolish thing after another, and then the leading personalities of the old days were back on top.

This is an interesting movement that could be observed, because it showed how strong the tendency is not to simply move on to inner activity, but to devote oneself to what already exists, to work from what already exists and not to realize at all that one is basically dancing on a volcano. Even now, it is quite true that people are unsuspecting. It is therefore necessary to create understanding in the broadest circles for the fragmentation of our civilization in all areas. In these lectures, we will discuss how one finds this. Today, I wanted to emphasize the formal aspects and show where we should focus our thoughts first. After all, these days you cannot effectively represent a cause through external things alone.

For a long time, the education of humanity was entirely theoretical. And today, every person – especially the so-called practitioners, whose practice is basically just routine – has the theorist breathing down their neck. They have some theoretical phrases that they “implement in reality”. This is why so-called reality, so-called practice, is so unreal today. It is indeed completely unreal because people are educated to be theorists. Our entire school system was designed to intellectualize people, to turn them into theorists. And that is what we must come to: that we stop representing anything theoretically, — that every word is an inner deed,

It is extremely interesting, for example, to study the debates that have taken place in political economy regarding the idea that only physical labor productively creates goods, but that intellectual labor does not, that intellectual labor is unproductive. In the literature on political economy you will find extensive discussions of this. And two of the most important leading figures in political economy in the 19th century, in particular, started from this principle as from an axiom: Karl Marx and Rodbertus. Both take the view that intellectual work does not create goods, that only physical labor creates goods. This view is to be understood historically. But the way it is put forward is based on the idea that, for example, manual labor exhausts a person when it is performed, and the exhausted strength must then be compensated and replaced by nutrition; but an idea does not exhaust itself when something has been invented, when thousands and thousands of things are imitated according to the template. This is an argument that has been put forward very often. But it is nonsense. If one were to calculate how much energy is needed to find an idea, one would see that the energy expended on ideas, which must be replaced, is by no means less than that expended in physical labor, because what is done in thinking is just as much dependent on the will as what is done with the hand. You can't separate them at all. It is the greatest nonsense to distinguish between mental and manual labor in reality. But things have gradually become a cliché because there has been a tendency, especially in recent decades, to create clichés out of what used to be actual reality.

If you have experience in these matters, you can follow this step by step. I remember, for example, hearing a lecture that the socialist leader Paul Singer gave to proletarians. There were some among them who began to speak disparagingly of the “souls of writers”. They should have seen how the old Singer, in all his corpulence, protested and argued that he would not put up with it, that if you do intellectual work, it should not be treated the same as any other kind of work. But that was back in the early 1890s. Since then, one could clearly observe the process of becoming a cliché in the socialist world as well.

Such observations are important to find our way into life and to speak out of life. Of course, this cannot be done to a great extent overnight. But one must have a sense for it. And if one has the sense, then certain imponderables come into our speech. And then our speech will be such that it bears fruit.

That is what I wanted to say to you at first, as a formal introduction.