The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As we have gathered here⁵² on the eve of our annual general meeting, and look forward to a stimulating time, it may seem appropriate to open the sequence of meetings with a lecture for visitors from outside Berlin and as well as for our Berlin members. A lecture like this,⁵³ not part of the programme but offered as a free gift, may thus be on a subject that would fit in less well with the normal run of theosophical lectures—something for advanced theosophists and at the same time also for people who are at the very beginning. The latter will however need to find their way into things first. They will need to pay serious and careful attention if they are to be able to follow completely. On the other hand we also offer something for those who want to hear something about the parts of the higher worlds that are accessible to us.

Our theme will be the relationship of the human senses to the outside world, to the physical and the non-physical world around us.⁵⁴ We shall touch on a subject to which we are not yet paying sufficient attention among ourselves—the question as to how we should really see the relationship between the four bodies that make up essential human nature.

One of the first things people learn in the science of the spirit is that the human being consists of a physical body, an ether body, an astral body and a body which we have always been calling the I-body in our discussions. The I-body holds the seeds for our higher development. All this is given in elementary books on theosophy and in the things theosophists gradually come to hear in their first lectures. But people often say that the I-body is the highest of the four bodies, the astral body is less high, the ether body even less high, and the physical body the lowest of them all.

atman
buddhi
manas

kama manas
astral body
ether body
physical body

Anyone can read up about this in my Theosophy. We are interested in the four lower bodies also known as the Pythagorean quadrangle. The one called the ‘I’ or ‘kama manas’ is widely considered to be the highest, followed by the astral body, the ether body and the physical body as lower bodies. That is a fairly biased view, however, and I have often said that it is not correct. In its own way the physical body is the most perfect and also the oldest part of the human being. Consider this physical body in all its parts, study it, using the means given in modern science! You only have to give it some real thought and you’ll have to say to yourself: ‘This physical body is most marvellously constructed in all its parts, filled with the greatest wisdom the world has ever known.’ Nothing in this world—in so far as we are able to investigate it by physical means—is more perfect than the human physical body. You may look at a whole cosmos of stars, or study the most artful mechanism human beings can devise, and you’ll not find anything more perfect than the physical body. If you study the human heart and the functions it has to perform, looking at it as a purely physical apparatus, or just consider a piece of bone with all the marvellous struts inside, you’ll find this to be true. Just take a bit of the thigh bone. It has struts that run like this (Fig. 2):

The cleverest engineer would be unable to produce a structure as perfect as this, a system created by the cosmos to support the upper part of the human body. And it is the same with the human brain and all the organs that are part of the human physical body. You may study the whole of nature—there is nothing to equal this physical body in perfection.

Why is this physical body so perfect? Human beings have not always been the way they are today. They have gone through a long process of development. The human beings you see before you today, consisting of these four elements, have more than just long evolution on this physical planet earth behind them. Another planet, the predecessor of our earth, went before. That was the ancient Moon. This was preceded by the ancient Sun, and the Sun by ancient Saturn. Think of it in terms of a human being going through incarnations. The earth, too, has gone through similar states. We are able to trace four of them. In doing so, we are looking back on immeasurably long periods of time, stretches of time beyond the comprehension of an earthly human being. But something of this human physical body was present even then.

The first beginnings of the physical body existed on ancient Saturn. Nothing was there as yet of our present-time ether body, nor anything of the astral body, let alone the human I. We can see from this that the physical body has gone through four stages. On the ancient Saturn planet it emerged as a simple physical body, a kind of basic supportive structure. It then went through a transformation and entered into a twilight state, a pralaya. The physical body later emerged again on the ancient Sun—which was something very different from today’s sun—but now at a higher level. There the ether body joined it. The ether body is thus very much younger than the physical body. The young ether body developed under the influence of the physical body that already existed, now at its second level of perfection. During that time on the ancient Sun, when the physical and the ether bodies both existed, nothing existed as yet of the astral body. This only joined them during the third earth incarnation, on the ancient Moon. There the human physical body went through its third level of perfection, and the ether body through its second stage. On the Moon, the physical body may have been said to be in class 3, the ether body in class 2, and the astral body in class 1. The I only joined them on earth and had not yet been through anything until then. When the physical body appeared on earth, this was its fourth appearance. The human I-body will have reached the stage at which the physical body is today only after another three planetary stages, the astral body after another two planetary' stages. And the ether body will have reached the level of perfection of today’s physical body when one more planetary stage has been gone through.

Some quite commonplace reflections can convince us that the astral body is much less perfect than the physical body. The physical body in its wisdom would never fall into the kind of crude error the astral body does. Just think of the appetites created by the drives, desires and passions that live in the astral body. The heart has to stay fit for decades in spite of appetites in the astral body that are harmful to it. That is the case, for instance, if we drink coffee or tea, and so on. The heart does not want such stimulants, but the astral body does. The astral body does something that goes against the grain for the physical body at its present level of development. On the planet we call Venus, the astral body will have reached a level where it will be as wise in its behaviour as the physical body is now, unless it is disturbed.

We thus have to see the physical body as the most carefully developed and most perfectly made part of essential human nature. It has learned something every time it has completed another planetary stage, and has become increasingly more perfect. Looking at the physical human body you see that it consists of a number of organs. People do not give much thought to the way these organs have come into existence. In anatomy, in science, the human being is said to consist of such and such organs, having a liver, a heart, a nose for smelling, ears for hearing, eyes for seeing. And these organs are described in detail in modern science. But when people do this they are doing something that can only be compared with the following.

Imagine one were to put an old table and a new table side by side and describe them in a very basic way. One table has four feet, a top, it has such and such a colour, and the other table also has four feet, a top, such and such a colour, and so on. Those descriptions may be perfectly accurate and yet they do not really tell us what matters in this case—that one table is old and the other new. You can describe the eyes and ears in the same way. You can tell people what they look like today. You can describe the auricle, the auditory canal and everything, the acoustic nerves, and so on. You can describe the human eye in the same way. Both descriptions will look good, and it might appear that they are equal in value. But in the highest occult sense they are not. The two are not equal in value because these two organs—eyes and ears—have evolved at very different times.

If you were to go back to ancient Saturn and examine the first beginnings of the human physical body, when there was no question as yet of an ether body, astral body and I, if you were to examine the peculiar physical body that existed in those very early times, you would look in vain for even the first beginnings of eyes. But you would not be able to find them, for even the potential for eyes would not yet exist. You would find the potential for the human ear. This, then, is the age difference, and you can understand it if you realize that the physical body has gone through as many stages of evolution as our planet. At the first stage it went so far as to develop the full potential for the ears. These were already preformed when the human being came to Saturn from other, very different worlds. Human beings already had the potential for hearing when they entered into this particular chain of evolution.

They added the potential for a sense of temperature on that first planet, a feeling for warmth. This is generally called a skin sense. But careful distinction has to be made between two things. In the first place it is the sense of touch, perceiving hard and soft; then it is also the sense of temperature, perceiving hot and cold. This is the sense of temperature we are speaking of. So you have a sequence. First we have hearing and then the feeling, the sense of temperature. This sense of temperature evolved on the earth's planetary incarnation which we call Saturn. Such a sense does of course go through transformations at different stages of evolution. When it first appeared it was very different from the way it will be in its later form.

The ancient sense of hearing which human beings brought with them into planetary evolution was a quite peculiar sense of hearing. The best way of characterizing it is perhaps to say: ‘Basically that the human physical body was just one big ear.’ The human being was all ear at the time of entering into this planetary evolution. As a physical body the human being hardly differed at all from the environment. Man sounded, and everything else sounded as well. In the whole of their bodies, human beings perceived what lived out there as the sounds of the world. Just as a string vibrates when another is plucked or struck, so there was a vibration in the human physical body for every sound that arose in the world. Everything resounded.

The further development of the senses was a matter of specialization. Human beings had been all ear to begin with, and then the sense of temperature arose. Something that had been one before became differentiated into two structures. This also became apparent at the physical level. Organs appeared that would mediate only hearing, others that would mediate only temperature perceptions. The whole human being thus changed each time the physical body reappeared. The senses became specialized, and a simple form gradually grew highly complex.

Human beings thus entered into Saturn evolution with the potential for hearing. On Saturn they acquired a sense of temperature. During the Sun evolution that followed they gained the sense of sight. The potential for a sense of sight which developed during Sun evolution was thus the third stage, with the other senses becoming transformed so that on the Sun the human being was able to hear, feel and, in a way, to see.

Continuing along the line of evolution we come to the Moon. The Sun had first gone into pralaya again. It then rose again as Moon. On the Moon, the sense of taste developed in addition to the other senses. Four of our present-day senses had thus evolved. The others again specialized, distributing themselves among individual organs. You can literally follow the way this physical body opened up to be an organ for the outside world. The sympathetic nervous system had already evolved on the Sun. During life on the ancient Moon, the other organs also evolved in stages, but we’ll just consider the senses here. On the Moon, then, the sense of taste was added and on earth the youngest of the senses, the sense of smell. If you study the senses today, you can tell yourself that the sense of smell is the youngest, having developed last in the human being. The sense of taste was already there during Moon evolution and has been refashioned once. Every refashioning makes the senses more perfect. The sense of smell is the least perfect. The sense of taste has corrected its errors once, the sense of sight twice, the sense of temperature three times. Our sense of hearing is the most perfect, however, for it had already gone through four transformations and is going through the fifth on earth.

You thus have to see the human body as a highly complex entity and realize that much had to happen so that the physical body was gradually able to develop. One has to know their relative ages if one is to form an opinion about different parts of this body. So the senses again have different relationships to other spirits, also as regards their level of perfection. A sense organ which is more perfect, having gone through quite a number of transformations, relates to completely different worlds from those to which a sense organ relates that has only gone through a few transformations.

Let us stay with the sense of hearing for now. It has gone through a whole sequence of stages, for potentially it existed already when the human being entered into this evolution. So what happened? Physical Saturn evolution took the sense of hearing a stage further, and then added the first beginnings of a sense of temperature. Then, during Sun evolution, the ether body was added to the physical body. From Moon onwards the astral body played a role, and from earth evolution onwards the I-body. But this whole scheme of things also meant something else. The I does not yet have an influence on the sense of smell because the sense of smell only joined the other senses on earth and is still wholly caught up in physical evolution. The human ether body has an influence on the sense of taste, the astral body on the sense of sight, and the I-body on the sense of temperature, of warmth, of feeling.

The first beginnings of manas developing in the human being, as the potential for a higher spiritual self, have an influence on the sense of hearing. This principle, which belongs to man’s higher nature, thus only has an influence on the sense of hearing today. None of the things the four lower senses make their own becomes part of our eternal soul. Only the things that can be expressed in words, things we are able to put into words—a word only has to be thought and it will be heard inwardly—are part of the eternal, immortal part of the human being. All thoughts that can be put in words, feelings that are so clear in our minds that we can put them in words, all the impulses to which human beings can put a name and which do not live in them as dim drives but are so clear that they can be put into words—all this belongs to the eternal part of the human being. The word is therefore something that is part of the eternal basis of the human being. And if we start to speak of things eternal at all, we must quite literally speak of the word. At the time when the earth entered into its evolution, when earth evolution began on Saturn, this first potential for the word was there. Now, on earth, this potential has evolved. The statement: ‘In the beginning was the word’⁵⁵ must be taken quite literally. Those gospel words should not be taken as symbolic, but their meaning has to be developed until they can be understood in their literal sense. The word is also the beginning of the eternal part of the human being. Because of this, the word, the audible word, is the first part of the human being that proves useful for developing the future world. Everything the other senses produce is of no use at all for the evolution which the earth must still go through.

Legends and myths often contain profound truths, or do you think legend does not know that anything produced by the sense of smell is of no immediate use in earth evolution? That further planetar evolutions have to be gone through before the principle that lies in the sense of smell will be of use? The father of all obstacles thus is one who leaves a horrible stench behind—the devil is recognized after he’s gone because of the stench he leaves behind. The world of legend holds the deepest truths; one only has to know how to take them literally in the highest sense.

Our study of the senses and the way they relate to the world can take us yet further. Let us take one of the senses, say the sense of sight. It is the middle one of the senses. I’d now like you to follow me into something rather subtle. You know that the astral body, in which man’s inner drives, appetites and passions live, shows itself to the clairvoyant as a light body. In this light body you see all kinds of configurations and colours. Every passion, every drive has a specific colour. All this, and even a person’s basic mood, comes to expression in this light body. Looking at the light body of someone who is rather nervous, you see it pregnant with glittering dots that flash and shine out. It all shines out and vanishes again in a rich play of colour.

If there is a terrible affect, you see rays like this:

Someone with hidden resentment shows figures like snakes:

This is difficult to draw, because it is in constant motion, rather like lightning. The person is feeling anger or resentment or anxiety when the soul is twitching like this inside. That is where a human being inwardly experiences his state of soul. Outwardly this state of soul shows itself in light phenomena to the clairvoyant.

The physical eye sees lights and colours around it. Just as a clairvoyant sees red, blue, yellow and green in the astral body, so does the physical eye see red, blue, yellow and green around it. In both cases the cause is exactly the same. Just as an appetite lives behind the red in the astral body, so there is an appetite behind the red of a flower as the ‘thing in itself’. What the sense of sight does when it goes beyond this point is no different from turning a coat inside out. Whilst man's astral nature comes to expression in his aura, external astral nature lives behind the whole world of colours and light, the world that exists for the sense of sight. There would be never be any colours in the world if all things were not completely imbued with astral spirits. The colours that show themselves in the world come from the astral spirits that show themselves in colours. In turning inside out, the spirit moves from the higher to the lower plane.

You can achieve the following by means of meditation. If you have a green area before you, perhaps the leaf of a plant, and now go outside yourself to look at the matter from the other side, you would see the astral spirit that is behind the green colour and shows itself to be present by means of the colour green.

So you have to see it like this. Looking out in the world and seeing it decked out in colours, you can assume that astral spirits are behind those colours. Just as you let the colours of your aura become apparent to the clairvoyant, so does the tapestry of colour in the world reflect the cosmic aura. All colour in this world is aura turned inside out. If you were able to turn your aura the way you do a coat, the other side your aura would also become physically visible to you. This applies to the sense of sight, and you can see from this that the sense of sight is closely bound up with the astral world.

Taking the sense of feeling, the sense of temperature, this in turn has a universal relationship to the lower parts of the astral world. While the sense of sight relates more to the upper parts of the astral world, the sense of feeling or temperature has the same kind of relationship to the lower parts of the astral world, more to the region where the astral world begins its transition to the ether world. The sense of hearing is directly related to the physical world, and the things you perceive as sense of hearing are oscillations in the physical air.

This is something I would ask you to consider in a most subtle way, in the right way. If you want to see something, an astral spirit must be behind the colour you see. There must also be an astral spirit behind the heat or cold you feel. If you want to hear something, you have fully arrived in the physical world, since the sense of hearing is the most perfect of the senses and you can hear a physical entity. It is thus only in the word that the world of the spirit has rightly descended as far as the physical world.

Starting from the top therefore [on the board], we are able to say that the phenomena of the sense of heating are entirely on the physical plane, those of heat are already somewhat higher up, those of the sense of sight are on the astral plane, and the phenomena we perceive through the least perfect of the senses belong to the higher parts of the spiritual world. Whatever extends down into the physical world is simply the least perfect. Anything the sense of smell is able to perceive, anything it brings down into the physical world, is most incomplete. Where this goes its own way, it separates out from the great scheme of things, from evolution. The phenomena revealed in the sense of smell should only arise in intimate connection with the most sublime worlds today.

Let us then take the spirits which at one time, just when the sense of smell had started to evolve on earth, separated out from evolution and became independent. These are spirits that make themselves known mainly through the sense of smell. And so it is rather nice that legend speaks of fallen angels making themselves known in a most unpleasant way through the sense of smell. Having left the stream of evolution, they have become perceptible to the sense of smell.

If we therefore ask ourselves what really lies outside the skin which encloses the human sense organs, we have to say to ourselves that there we do indeed have the different higher planes and their spirits.

Research at the physical level is in most beautiful agreement here. Just think of how an eye develops. Initially it starts from the outside. A small depression develops in the skin of the creature developing an eye. This gradually deepens,

and after a time it looks like this. This then fills up with a kind of fluid and finally closes up.

And so the eye is indeed pushing in from the outside. The human organs do not develop from the inside but push in from the outside. It is the same for all human and animal organs. The technical term for it is ‘invagination’ or ‘inversion’. In vertebrate animals, a channel first developed, and the spinal marrow integrated itself into this from the outside. That is also how the senses integrate themselves from the outside.

What makes the eye push in like that? This is the work of the spirits that are active in the light. It is the spirits active in the ray of light which create the eye from the organism, spirits that are behind the outer appearance of things, astrally, of which we have said that we would be able to see them if we could turn our conscious mind inside out. They have pushed the eye into the physical organism. The eye is thus created by spirits of light. The other organs are created in the same way by other spirits from the different worlds. When you feel yourself to be inside your skin, you can feel yourself to be in the condition where spirits have worked on your body from different sides. When man arrived on Saturn in his very first evolution, only the most sublime spirits were able to work on his organ of hearing. He was taught to hear by higher and then also by lower spirits until on earth, too, the spirits embodied in the outside air began to share in the work on his organ of hearing. Man hears air in motion with his organ of hearing; that is where sound lies.

If we really take this into our hearts and minds, we shall begin to understand in a very deep sense why air played such a special role in the Genesis story, why it had to be breathed into man, so that it might play this role also with regard to his organ of hearing. ‘The creator breathed the living breath in man, and he became a living soul.’⁵⁶ Man himself is at his highest level created by the word, by sound. This also shows the relationship human beings have to their whole environment through the senses.

Looking at the sense of sight you can say that the spirits which live on the astral plane have worked on the sense of sight. They live in the ray of light. The ray of light has a physical and an astral part. Now imagine it falling on something. It contains the external physical light and also the astral spirits which live in the ray of light. Now make yourself stand in such a way that you stop the ray of light, letting the sun shine on your back. You will stop the physical light but not the astral spirits. An astral spirit will then be in front of you, in your shadow. An astral spirit lives in he shadow which you cast before you. This astral spirit living in your shadow is no more and no less than an image. An image of what? Of the body. And what lives in it takes its form from the soul. This is one of the methods by which one can gradually see one’s own soul. Primitive peoples were not entirely wrong when they said that the soul lived in a person’s shadow. You will find this in countless legends—the soul goes with the shadow. The soul first shows itself to astral vision in the shadow, in its form.

You’ll now also understand the deep significance of Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl, the man who lost his shadow.⁵⁷ Read Chamisso’s short story with this thought about the shadow in mind and you will realize that much, much deeper meanings lie behind many such stories.⁵⁸

You will in fact realize more and more that someone who does not know of these things is going about more or less like a blind Person. Someone who knows nothing of the worlds of spirit does not have the slightest notion of what he is taking along with him in his shadow. All the subtle things that surround us will be opened up again to people through the science of the spirit. The world is very puzzling for someone who wants to respond to it inwardly. When people become aware of the riddles that face them, they will no longer consider the spiritual scientific view to be something superfluous, something dreamt up by people with vivid imaginations, but realize that the reality which exists all around us only opens up for us through the science of the spirit. We should never tire of studying everything around us. Many spirits have had a hand in the complex structure we call the human being. This is also why the structure has so many different levels of perfection. The physical ear only gained the right to hear at the physical level once it had gone through many stages. A chela⁵⁹ who under the guidance of his master goes early to the Venus stage, will also be able to perceive other people on the physical plane in light activity; for then light activity will also extend down to the physical plane.

The process of evolution is quite regular. Just as the sense of hearing has descended to the physical plane, so will the sense of sight descend to the physical plane permitting genuine clairvoyance. The logic of this is quite apparent. Someone who is prepared to think can already see the sense of it, and no one can refute it by mere thinking. That is how it is with all things in the science of the spirit. Only people who do not want to think will fight the science of the spirit, or people wanting to apply their thinking activity only to the things they are used to thinking. Of course someone may come and say: I don’t want to go on a train, but this does not mean we can deny the existence of the railways. So there may also be people who say: There’s nothing in this business of higher worlds. But that does not mean we can deny the existence of the higher worlds. They do exist.

We have spoken of the human sense organs and tried to throw some light on the surrounding world. We have found that the sense organs exist only because other spirits create them. In the same way we could have spoken of the inner spirit that bases itself on the surrounding world. It is not possible to understand these things with a science of the physical world. There it may well be possible to show the structural differences between eye and ear, but not the difference in age between eye and ear. This needs occult science, where it is possible to see behind the surface. We could also have shown that the liver is much younger than the spleen. In that case we would have found that the spleen existed when the ether body joined forces with the physical body, whilst the liver only came with the astral body, with human passions. This is most beautifully shown in the story of Prometheus. The eagle that pecked at the liver of Prometheus who had been chained to a mountain peak is deeply significant.

You might thus consider the great truths to be found in legends in a new way. Ancient legends and myths hold profound wisdom. The myths did not arise from the poetic fantasy of the people, that is an academic superstition. Academics are the most superstitious people in the world. People who believe in ghosts are not as superstitious as are our academics. It is superstition to say that there is a popular fantasy that creates blindly. In reality the great myths come from initiates who knew the things which are now being made accessible again to humanity in the great theosophical truths.

In earlier times, societies where theosophy was taught existed in the part of the world where we are now. Some would go out and tell the things they had heard in their circles to the people, presenting them in myths. Myths thus hold spiritual truths, and anyone who tries can discover these again in the myths. Only lesser myths do not go back to the great initiates. Genuine myths come from them, they are their creation. If you remember this, you’ll see that the myths of different peoples are miraculous writing. Learn to read the myths and look deeply into the souls of peoples that have gone before, peoples that created from inside, as it were. Turn the myths inside out, as we turned the astral plane inside out earlier, and you have modern science, in concept.

In modern science you find the same truths, the evolutional truths to be found in the myths. Hence the strange agreement between the idea of evolution, understood at a deeper level, and the very earliest teaching given to humanity. The elements of mythology are seen from inside, modern science sees them from the outside; but they are the same elements. This brings to mind the remarkable fact that truths found in the earliest religious beliefs come up again in scientific facts that are rightly understood. It need not surprise us to hear that modern science is mythology transformed. It therefore has to be the same in structure as something that existed before.

We have been considering the way the senses relate to the world around us.

Tomorrow at 2 p.m. we'll talk about theosophical matters that do not come from so far away but nevertheless play a role in everyday life.

• 52. The Architektenhaus in Berlin had lecture rooms which could be rented. Rudolf Steiner lectured there from 1903 to 1918, giving a comprehensive introduction to anthroposophy in his longest continuous series of lectures.
• 53. A further set of notes became available for this lecture (19 Oct. 1906). Changes in the text compared to the 1st German edition of 1974 are due to this.
• 54. On this subject, see Steiner R. Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (GA 99), lectures of 1 & 2 June 1907. Tr. M. Cotterell, D. Osmond. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1981. Welt, Erde and Mensch (GA 105), lecture of 3 August 1908 (in German). It seems significant that Rudolf Steiner was considering the subject as preparations were in progress for the Annual General Meeting of the Theosophical Society's German Section. For the same occasion in 1909 he developed a theory of the senses based on the science of the spirit in the lectures he gave on 23-25 Oct. that year, publ. in The Wisdom of Man, the Soul and the Spirit (GA 115). In his own words, this gave the European spiritual scientific movement he was leading a firmer foundation. He intended to publish this theory of the senses in book form, but the work remained fragmentary. Published posthumously as Anthroposophy (A Fragment) (GA 45).
• 55. John 1: 1
• 56. Genesis 2
• 57. Chamisso, Adalbert von (1781–1831). German poet, writer and biologist. Peter Schlemihl published in 1813.
• 58. Changes in the German text compared to the 1974 edition are the result of making comparison with another set of notes.
• 59. Chela (Sanskrit), adept or disciple in the spirit.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

In material science it is customary—with the exception of a few circles who in modern times have come to a different explanation—to represent our present solar system as having developed out of a kind of nebula which embraced a space as far as the orbit of Neptune, that is, as far as the orbit of the outermost planet of our solar system. And then, it is supposed, through a condensing process, our sun and the planets moving round it gradually formed. As we have said, there are now a few exponents -who have a somewhat different view; but they too do not bring forward anything essential for us who take a spiritual view. So our sun and the planets circling round it are supposed to have formed themselves into globes. In connection with this a neat little comparison has always been made use of in the schools, and it is still employed to-day, to show by ocular demonstration how a whole planetary system can originate through rotation. Some oily liquid is taken, which, when placed in water takes a globular form. Then a small disc is cut and inserted through the equatorial line of this oily ball so that it is divided into two halves. This is then rotated by means of a pin stuck through the centre of the disc, and one sees at first one drop separate itself and circle as a separate body round the large globe, then a second and a third drop, and finally a large drop remains in the centre around which many smaller ones revolve. “A planetary system in miniature!” says the experimenter. Then he says: Why should not our solar system originate from that primeval nebula in this way, if we can now imitate it in this miniature solar system? Usually this comparison seems to be extremely illuminating and people now understand how once upon a time Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury separated from that primeval nebula. But the whole affair, not only the comparison but the whole idea, proceeds from the emptiness of all present-day thinking, for the persons in question, otherwise quite learned men, who put for-ward this illustration in such an illuminating manner, forget only one thing, namely, that they themselves are present and turn the pin. Now self forgetfulness is very good in certain realms of life, but in this case, if the experimenter is forgotten, the most important thing is forgotten, for without him the drop of oil would never rotate at all. The learned person who believes in such a superstition—this superstition is called the Kant-Laplace system—should at least be logical in his thinking, he should at least presume that some sort of being must have sat on a gigantic stool in space at that time and set a gigantic axis in motion. But human thought has gradually become so accustomed to consider only the material, that the contradiction in such a comparison is no longer noticed. As a matter of fact, there is a certain truth in this so-called Kant-Laplace system, although the truth is different from the materialistic explanation of the matter. There is a certain truth in it because to spiritual vision everything contained in our present solar system actually appears as having proceeded from such a primeval nebula; only to him who can really investigate historically it is clear that the good in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis comes from occult traditions. This was forgotten when the word “occultism” became something of which one was afraid, as children are of the chimney-sweep. That which really took place did not happen without the influence of spiritual beings and powers. Matter can do nothing unless spiritual beings are behind it.

It would take us too far to-day if, linking on to what was said yesterday, we were to explain the whole of our solar system. Leaving the planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, etc., out of our present study, let us only keep in mind what is of special importance to human life and human evolution.

At one time there was, in fact, such a nebula; and in this all the parts of our solar system were as if dissolved. But, bound up with this nebula, so that they belonged to it, were all the beings mentioned in the course of our observations yesterday. For example, all the beings who passed through the human stage in the twenty-four Rounds were connected with this cosmic nebula. Other beings too were bound up with it. They all dwelt in this nebula which, if not thought of in connection with these beings, is a fantastic abstraction. In the way the materialistic chemist imagines this nebula, it is impossible; it exists only in thought, there is no reality. In reality, the nebula only exists because it is inhabited by a number of spiritual beings. For when this nebula again became visible, there were connected with it all the beings who once inhabited ancient Saturn, who then passed through the various stages of evolution through Sun and Moon right on up to Earth, when after a long intermediate pause the Earth-nebula arose, so to speak. The other beings also with whom we became acquainted on the Sun, were connected with this nebula. It is the whole choir of these beings, who filled the nebula, who produced the movements. For it is beings who create their field of work.

For example, there were beings who needed a dwelling place quite different from that of man if they were to undergo the evolution suited to them. The men who lived upon the ancient Moon as the ancestors of the present men had only physical body, etheric and astral bodies. With these three members of their being they came out of the so-called pralaya again like a plant from the seed. Thus when the entire system began it was unsuitable for the beings who had brought with them the germs for the present man. Had the speed of development been maintained which our solar system had at the beginning when it came forth from the cosmic twilight, man would have been unable to find the path of his evolution. It would have been as if you were now to be born and then in a very short time become old. If the speed of evolution natal to the Sun had been maintained, man would have grown old quickly; he would be unable to take the slow course through the decades which he now actually does; after a short time he would have white hair, he would be old almost before he was a child.

But this was not to be. There were beings who needed a quicker tempo. These only went through a part of evolution with man, then they took out the heavenly body which now stands as the sun in the heavens and made it their dwelling place. They drew out the substance of the sun together with their own being. For the sun which sends its light to us to-day is inhabited by spiritual beings, just as our earth is. With every sunbeam descending to the earth come the actions of those spiritual beings who in the course of the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon had progressed so far that they were able to participate in the rapid development taking place on the present sun. High, exalted beings were connected with this sun existence at the beginning of our earth development. These separated from the earth; and that which then remained you must imagine as if you had mixed together the present moon and earth in a great cauldron, and this mingled earth and moon circled round the sun for a time.

Thus before we reached the point described yesterday as human incarnation, we have first to recognize the separation of the sun from the earth, that is, the present earth plus the present moon. Upon the sun remained the beings who are the spiritual directors of earthly events. When they came over from the ancient Moon there were seven such beings; in Genesis they are called Elohim, Spirits of Light. For a time they went through their evolution together with the earth, then they drew forth the sun so that they could now work upon the earth from the sun. These Elohim, these Spirits of Light, were seven in number. Six of them united their existence with the actual cosmic sun, and one, known in the Old Testament as Jehovah, separated from them and remained at first united with the earth. He guided and directed the earthly evolution from within, while the others worked upon it from without. That was the position for a time. But after what was pointed out yesterday concerning the ancient Moon, you will understand that with the withdrawal of the sun was connected a condensation of all that emerged as earth plus moon. There came a period in the earth's evolution when not only the substance, but all beings, underwent a coarsening. For example, the beings who later became man, who at that time were very soft and delicate, underwent a coarsening through taking on horrible instincts. A coarsening of all life took place.

Evolution could not remain thus if man were to arise. A coarsening would have taken place, everything would have become more and more dense and the human beings would have stiffened into mummies, they would have become mummified. And there would very soon have been a planet upon which some-thing not exactly beautiful, but human-like mummies, statues would have collected. The earth would have become mummified. A different event had to take place. Through the government of Jehovah, as cosmic spirit, that which you now see as the moon as the burnt-out moon-dross in the heavens, was separated from the whole mass of earth plus moon. Not only were the grossest substances separated but also the grossest beings. Hence only through the withdrawal of the sun it was brought about that man did not proceed too quickly in his evolution, and through the withdrawal of the moon it was brought about that he did not develop towards a condition of drying up, densification, or mummification.

Thus the earth was separated from the whole mass, and now the course of human evolution was guided on the earth under the influence of these two heavenly bodies—that is, of course, of their beings, the six sun Spirits and the moon Spirit, who had separated himself for the salvation of man. And it was so guided that on the whole these two forces were balanced. Through the exit of both the sun-forces and the moon-forces, exactly the right tempo for human development was attained.

Now in order to understand this more clearly, imagine a man as if influenced only by the sun. You know that man goes through his evolution upon the earth in many, many incarnations. Man began with his first incarnation, then took on a new body over and over again, until he goes through his last incarnation. He passes through a series of incarnations, as a result of which he develops slowly and rises from one incarnation to the next. Men trod the surface of our earth as true spiritual infants. Since the separation of sun and moon from our earth they have risen to the present stage. All these souls will return in different bodies up to the end of the earth's evolution. Now if man were influenced by the sun alone he would have to pass through in a single incarnation all that he now goes through in so many. The right tempo comes into the many incarnations through the balancing of the forces between the sun and moon from without.

Modern man was gradually shaped during the period which followed the withdrawal of sun and moon; the first germs of the present-day man were then created. That was at a time when man moved upon this earth in quite a different way from that in which he moves now. You must not imagine that when the moon had just gone forth man moved upon this earth in a fleshly form as he does now. There appear again all the forms which had previously been there, as a repetition; and when the earth was liberated from the sun and moon it looked approximately like the old Moon, even softer. And if a being with eyes organized like those of the present day had looked at the earth he would not yet have been able to see man. On the other hand, certain other beings were there who were not sufficiently mature to await a later time. These had to take bodily form while the stage of evolution was still incomplete; so that some time after the moon's departure from the earth certain forms of the lower animals could already be seen physically condensed. Man had not yet descended, nor yet the higher mammals. Man was still a spirit being. He floated as a spirit round the earth and took into himself the finest substances from the environment of the earth. Then gradually he densified so far that he could descend to where the earth had already become solid and islands had formed.

Thus we see that the first human beings appeared comparatively late in the earth's evolution and at that time they had a very different constitution from the present human being. I cannot describe to you the forms of those men which first crystallized, so to speak, out of the spirit. Although you have already heard much that is difficult to believe, you would be greatly shocked if I were to describe to you the grotesque forms of the bodies in which your souls were then incarnated. You would not be able to bear such a description. However, at a later date, when these things which are only now beginning to come to the consciousness of man through Anthroposophy, when they more and more penetrate men's consciousness, this will have to be made known, and it will have a tremendous result, it will be extremely important to the whole life of man. For only when man learns how his body has developed, how the organs he now possesses have gradually developed out of entirely different forms, will he feel that remarkable relationship existing between the organs in the human body which to-day are apparently far apart. He will then see the correspondence between certain organs, for example, between the appendix and the windpipe, which in their earlier form grew together in those remarkably formed beings. All that to-day is man is the previous form unrolled as it were, the previous form unfolded in the most varied ways. Organs which to-day are separated formerly grew together. They have, however, kept their relationship, and very frequently this relationship is manifested in illnesses. It is seen that when a certain organ is diseased another one is of necessity involved. Hence those who really study medicine will have to make many discoveries, of which the present medical age, which is only a collection of notes, does not dream; then only will physicians really learn something about the true nature of man. All this is merely to point out how entirely different was man's earlier form.

The solid parts have only been built into this human form gradually. There were originally no bones in the human body, even when it had already descended. The bones were developed from soft cartilaginous structures which traversed the human body like cords. These in their turn originated from quite soft substances, and these soft substances from fluid substances, these from airy, the airy from etheric and the etheric from astral which had densified from spiritual substantiality. If you trace it back you will find that everything material has originated from the spiritual. Everything is in archetype in the spiritual world. It was only the Atlantean epoch that the bones, formerly merely indicated, actually developed in man.

We must now more closely examine Lemurian humanity in order the better to understand the writer of the Apocalypse. I need only indicate that following the first period, when the moon had separated from the earth and man descended, he was of a very different nature as regards his will power from what he became later. At that time the will of man worked magically—by his will he could work upon the growth of flowers. When he exerted his will he could make a flower shoot up quickly, a capacity which can only be acquired to-day by an abnormal process of development. Hence at that time the natural surroundings depended upon how the will of man was constituted. If it was good it worked soothingly upon the billowing waters, upon the storm and upon the fiery structures which were then all around, for the earth was to a great extent of a volcanic nature. Man worked soothingly upon all this through a good will and destructively through all evil will. Whole islands could be destroyed by evil will. Thus the human will was in complete correspondence with its environment. The tracts of land upon which man then lived were destroyed essentially by the evil will of man, and only a small part of mankind was saved (we have here to distinguish between race-development and soul-development) who lived on into the epoch which we may describe in so far as words can express clairvoyant perception.

After this catastrophe by fire we come to the Atlantean epoch when the human race developed essentially on a continent which now forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, between the present Europe and America. At that time man lived under very different physical conditions. At the beginning of the Atlantean epoch he was a structure which perceived in quite a different way from the present man; we have already indicated this in the first lecture and again later; to-day we shall again point out this different kind of vision of the man of that epoch. He still had a kind of spiritual vision, because the construction of his body was different from what it is now. The etheric body was not yet so firmly bound up with the physical body. The etheric body of the head extended far beyond the physical body. Only towards the last third of the Atlantean epoch did the projecting etheric body draw in and take the form of the present physical human head. Since the form of the ancient Atlantean was so very different from that of present man and his members so differently joined together, his whole life of consciousness, his whole soul life was also different. And here—if we wish to understand the Apocalyptist—we must touch upon a very important, but a very mysterious, chapter.

If you were to enter this ancient Atlantis, you would find that it was surrounded not by such pure air as the present earth but by air saturated with volumes of mist, with water. This air became clearer and more transparent the further Atlantis developed, but the mists were densest where the more advanced Atlantean civilization referred to developed. The thickest mists were there, and from these developed the foundations of the later civilizations. Atlantis was covered far and wide by those mists. A division of rain and sunshine such as we have to-day did not then exist. Hence in ancient Atlantis that which you know as the rainbow could not appear. You might search the whole of Atlantis and you would not find it. Only when the condensation of the water led to flooding, when the great flood spread itself over the earth, could the rainbow originate physically. And this is a point where from Spiritual Science you will gain the greatest respect for the religious records. For when you are told that after the flood, Noah, the representative of those who then saved the human race, sees the rainbow first appear, this is really an historical event. After the flood humanity saw the first rainbow; previously it was not physically possible. Here you will see how profound, how literally true the religious records are. To-day many are distressed when one says that the religious records are literally true. Many quote a saying which is true; it is quoted, however, by lazy people, not as a true statement but from indolence. It is the saying: “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” From this they deduce the right to take no notice at all of what stands in the records, to have no longer the will to recognize what is actually there, for it is the “dead letter” they say. And so they like to let their spirit shine and concoct all sorts of fantasies. These persons may indeed be very clever in their explanations, but that is not the point; the point is that we ought really to see in the records what is contained in them. “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life” has the same significance in mystical language as the saying of Goethe, “He who has not this, this dying and becoming, is but a sad guest upon the dark earth.” This saying does not mean: “If you wish to lead some one to a higher knowledge you must slay him,” but it means that just through the culture of the physical world man must uplift himself to spirituality. So also the letter is the body of the spirit, and we must first have and understand it, then we may say that we can find the spirit in it. The letter, the understood letter, must then die so that the spirit may be resurrected from it. This saying is not an injunction to fancy anything you please about what is contained in the religious records. When we recognize the true significance of this rainbow as we have represented it, something like deep respect for the religious records invades our soul, and we get an idea of how, through the deepening of the understanding by the teachings of Anthroposophy, man first attains to true and real feelings and advances to a true understanding of the religious records by an act of will.

We will now look back into ancient Atlantis. We have already said that man then lived in a different state of consciousness and that his memory was different from what it is now; but the difference is much more considerable. If we go far back not merely into the later period of Atlantis but to the beginning, we then find the human consciousness very different from that which we possess to-day.

Let us once more consider the present consciousness. During the day a person uses his senses. At night he goes to sleep. On the bed lie the physical body and the etheric body; the astral body and the “I” withdraw. The sphere of consciousness darkens. The man of to-day sees nothing and hears nothing. Then again in the morning when the astral body and the “I” re-enter the physical body and etheric body, physical objects again confront him. How was it in the early Atlantean epoch? Let us take the moment when in the morning man plunged into the physical body and etheric body; at that time he did not have a physical world around him such as we have to-day. All the present objects which are now seen with clear outlines were then seen as if surrounded with an aura, with coloured edges, quite indistinct. In ancient Atlantis the appearance was somewhat similar to what is now seen when in the evening there is a dense fog and you cannot see the street lamps clearly, but surrounded by coloured edges. Thus it was in early Atlantis. All objects were seen indistinctly, not with clear outlines and surfaces as to-day, everything was as if enveloped in coloured mist. Only gradually have clear outlines developed. Had we looked at a rose in the first portion of Atlantis it was as if a cloudy structure arose and in the middle something red. Only gradually did the external colour appear to be laid on the surface; only later did objects obtain sharp outlines.

Hence you see that the physical world surrounding man was quite different in ancient Atlantis. It was also different when at night he rose out of his physical body when—shall we say—he went to sleep. Really it was not sleep in the present sense. However, the entire world of the misty physical formations remained below, and a spiritual world arose. Possessing no sharp outlines man lived within a spiritual world. Spiritual beings were his companions. In the first portion of the Atlantean epoch day and night alternated in such a way that when man plunged into his physical body he had only hazy, indistinct pictures of the physical world; but when at night he left the physical body he was able to live spiritually, although somewhat indistinctly, among spirits; he moved among spirits. And above all, man's entire life of feeling was also different in the Atlantean epoch. At that time when he went out of his physical body and etheric body, he did not feel fatigue and the need for rest. Neither did he find rest. He had to enter into the spiritual world; that was then his sphere of activity. On the other hand, when the morning came, he felt the need for rest and sought out his resting-place, which was his own body. There he lay peacefully. He crept into his own body and rested during the day.

Thus in the first period of Atlantis it was entirely different from what it is now. During the Atlantean epoch, man gradually passed from the very opposite conditions into those of the later period. This came about more and more as the etheric body was driven into the physical body. This occurred during the last third of the Atlantean epoch. Before this event man felt himself as a waking being above in the spiritual world; but as yet he did not say to himself “I,” he did not possess self-consciousness. When he withdrew from the physical body and etheric body in order to go into the brilliance of the night, he felt himself to be a member of the spirituality which was above, he felt himself safely hidden, so to speak, in his group-soul. It always became bright around him during the night; but he felt himself dependent. Just as our finger belongs to our “I,” so man felt that he belonged to the group-souls which are seen spiritually as the four heads of the Lion, Eagle, Bull and Man, described in the Apocalypse of John. Man felt himself transposed into one such group-soul. And only when, snail-like, he was in his bodily shell did he feel that he possessed something of his own. For the circumstance that man became an independent being resulted from his being able to envelop himself in his body. He had, however, to pay for this confinement in his body by the gradual obscuration of the spiritual world, until it completely withdrew. In its place the world which he saw below when he was in the physical body became brighter and clearer. In this way it gradually dawned upon him that he was an “I,” that he had self-consciousness within him. He learned to say “I” to himself.

If we wish to characterize what took place at that time we must imagine man creeping out of his “snail-shell,” as it were, into the spiritual world. There he is among spiritually divine beings. There resounds to him from without the name of what he is. One group heard the word which in the original language was the word for that group; another group heard a different word. Man could not name himself from within; his name sounded into him from without. When he thus crept out of the “snail-shell” of his body he knew what he was, because this knowledge was poured into his soul. Now when in his body he learned to perceive the physical environment, he learned to feel himself as “I,” he learned to feel within himself the divine power which previously was poured into him, he learned to feel God within him. The God nearest to him, who pointed to his “I,” he called Jehovah. This God was the “I”-leader, and man felt the power of this God arising within his “I.”

External events were connected with this. When the first Atlantean thus descended into his physical body and looked out into space, he did not see an actual rainbow; in the place where the sun later emerged, he saw something like a circle formed of colour; the sun did not yet penetrate in power, but acted through the mist; though hindered and held back by the fog, its forces influenced the earth. It appeared very gradually. All that we have described as the awakening of external consciousness was connected with the emergence of the sun from the mist. That which was up above where the other six spirits had their abode, who together with Jehovah had to guide the earth evolution, gradually emerged and shone down upon the earth in deeds.

What had taken place in man? When previously he rose out of his body, when it was night, so to speak, his soul and spirit entered into the inner astral brilliance to which the external sun is not necessary. This brilliance surrounded him. It was the same light which later shone down physically from the sun, from mighty spiritual beings. As he gradually enclosed himself in his physical consciousness, the door of inner vision was closed. Darkness surrounded him when at night he left his physical and etheric bodies and entered the spiritual world. To the extent to which he confined himself, to the same extent arose the external light which represents the deeds of the spiritual beings of the sun; the light of the spiritual beings shone externally upon the earth. Man prepared himself to look upon the external light as something material. The light shone in his then darkened inner being, but the light was not then comprehended by his darkness. This is a world-historical event. Man bought his self-consciousness at that time through spiritual darkening. In this way man grew out of the brilliance connected with the group-souls. But it was only the very first dawning of the individuality. It was a long, long time before he really grew possessed of it. The last portion of the Atlantean epoch passed away and the flood came.

The post-Atlantean epoch began. The ancient Indian civilization passed away. True self-consciousness had not yet developed. Then came the Persian and Babylonian-Egyptian ages. Man gradually matured so as to develop self-consciousness within him. At length came the fourth age. At this stage something of tremendous importance took place for which all that had gone before was the preparation. Imagine yourself now uplifted from the earth to a distant star and gifted with spiritual vision, looking down to the earth from that distant star. You would then see that this earth as physical body is not only physical body, but that an etheric body and an astral body belong to it, just as with man. The earth has all this too. You would see the earth surrounded by its aura and from that star you would be able to follow the development of the earth's aura for thousands of years. You would see this earth surrounded by all sorts of colours; in the centre the physical kernel and around it the aura floating in various forms and colours; and in this spiritual atmosphere of the earth you would see the most varied structures. You would see these colours and forms change in various ways in the course of thousands of years; but there would come a moment, a moment of great importance, when the whole aura assumes a different form and colour. Seen from outside the earth then appears in a new light; and this takes place extremely quickly, so that one has to say: From this moment a fundamental trans-formation of the earth has taken place; its aura has changed completely. When is this? It is the moment when upon Golgotha the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer. This moment is an extremely important one, the most important moment in the whole of the earth's evolution! The moment when the blood flows from the wounds of the Redeemer is the same as that in which the aura of the earth shapes itself anew. An entirely new power enters in, the power which gives the most important impulse to the earth's evolution, for which all that we have considered up to now was only the preparation.

To the chemist the blood of Golgotha is the same as any other blood; but in reality it is quite different. It signifies that the substance of the blood flows down to the earth, and that the spirit corresponding to it fills the aura of the earth with new impulses and new forces which have significance for the future evolution of humanity. From there the forces which change the earth stream forth, from there they stream through man. Only a small part of what flowed in at that moment has been realized up to now. Ever more and more man will learn to understand what the earth has become through that moment of Golgotha, and what man can develop towards in that consciousness which he has gained since Atlantis. What, then, has man gained since Atlantis? Two things: the “I”-consciousness and the faculty of sight in the external world. That which previously was open to him, the spiritual world, has been closed. Truly these earlier men saw what the later myths relate—Woden, Mercury, Jupiter, Zeus. They saw all these beings at night; they were then among them. This door to the spiritual beings has closed. In its place man gained the world now surrounding him. The spirits have withdrawn from him; all that he was able to see at that time has disappeared. Formerly he saw the Divine when he slipped out of the snail-shell of his physical body. He had now to see the Divine within the body if it were to appear before him. This means nothing else than that we must receive the Divine in bodily visible shape because human consciousness has become adapted to physical vision, and for this reason the Divine Itself had to assume bodily physical form. Therefore the Divine appeared once on the earth in a fleshly body. It had to appear in this form because man had advanced to this stage of perception it had to be presented in this way to his perception so that he could understand it. And all the appearances which had previously taken place at other stages of evolution had to be united in that greatest event in the earth's history, which will throw light on the whole future and which we shall now unveil from the Apocalypse; in that event which physically looks as if drops of blood stream down to the earth, but spiritually as if something rises up which changes the aura of the earth. The force which then flowed in will work together with the earth throughout the whole future. The earth-soul, the spirit of the whole earth, was then inoculated with something new. The Christ principle united with the earth at that time and the earth has become the body of this Christ principle. So that the statement is literally true, “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot.” When man eats the bread of the earth he eats the body of the earth and this is the body of the earth-spirit which, as the Christ-Spirit, since the event on Golgotha, is united with the earth. And man walks upon the earth-body, he treads this body underfoot. All can be understood literally if only we are able first of all to comprehend the text in the right way.

To such a man as the writer of John's Gospel, all that he knew, all that he could grasp with spiritual vision, was a summons to understand the greatest event in the earth's evolution. Of all that he was able to stream through spiritual vision he said, “I must use it in order to understand Christ and His work.” It was the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse to use all his occult knowledge in order to explain the Event of Golgotha. Whatever he could learn from occult science was regarded by him as a road to wisdom, helping him to understand this event which he has placed before us in such a wonderful way, and regarding which we shall see what it signified for him.

We were able to close our considerations yesterday by touching on the attitude of the individual toward what we may call the description of the super-sensible world and all that arises from the researches, observations and experiences of initiation. Attention was drawn to how easily the opinion may be formed that value and significance for the life of the soul can only result from the experiences of initiation in one who has made the first steps on that path and is therefore able, through his own vision, to penetrate into the experience and observation of higher worlds. It has, however, often been emphasised that this is not so. It is true that one can see, observe, discover and explore what takes place in the higher worlds, but only if one has so transformed one's own soul as to be able to look into those worlds. As we said yesterday, they are indeed quite different from the world of sensory existence, though they are connected with it in various respects and are to be regarded essentially as its foundation.

On the other hand, in what concerns the understanding of these other worlds, you would not be judging correctly if you affirmed that, in order to comprehend, grasp and receive what can be given by those who have taken the first or further steps toward initiation, you had necessarily to experience it yourself. On the contrary, it must be emphasised repeatedly that any man who devotes himself without prejudice to what is vouched for by actual spiritual investigators in super-sensible worlds, any man who will accept their descriptions, experiences and communications without prejudice, letting his unbiased judgement and active understanding hold the field, will really be able to grasp all that he is offered. In the life of the senses it is quite different. We are perfectly justified in saying that there is hardly anyone who could glean an idea of the Sistine Madonna, or of an unknown, distant landscape simply from a description. If you have a lively imagination, you may be able to form some sort of picture from a description, but it is still true to say that only he who can see for himself, can grasp things in sensory existence. So that in this existence understanding must come after seeing. That is by no means the case in higher worlds. Those who seek there, can draw out that for which they seek, put it into the forms and concepts of human ideas, and thus give it to the world. Of course, men may be entangled in materialistic or other dogmas, or they may have no will whatever to give themselves open-mindedly to what is being imparted; in that case it will not be understood. Or it may not be a man's own fault that he cannot understand it because his life and education may not hitherto have given him the facility for open-mindedly receiving these things. But anyone who is in a position to devote himself to these things without prejudice and can gather up all that comes to him by way of sound understanding and sound judgement will at length say, “However incredible these things at first appear, it is just this healthy, comprehensive, all-round thinking that leads to the understanding of them, even though one is quite incapable of seeing anything of the higher worlds.”

As I have been able to tell you in the last few days, anyone who attains to visions of the higher worlds bears images within him of his own inner life and is at first guided by what is in those images. It is the same with the understanding of things in the super-sensible world. Understanding precedes seeing, is in no way influenced by it, nor does it exercise any influence over it. Previous understanding need not in the least affect what brings man to a vision of what is completely unprejudiced and in accordance with truth. On the contrary, previous understanding and grasping of these things with all-round powers of judgement (to which, it must be admitted, there is little inclination among people nowadays) prepare the heart and soul to enter in the appropriate way into the power of vision. Thus, we must continually repeat that true occultism, true science of the spirit with sincere and earnest intention, will never draw back before the demand that we should dispassionately grasp and understand what is said, that we should try to penetrate it with sound human understanding and with powers of judgement that flow freely into every sphere. We shall then find it possible.

A good deal about these matters will be found in my book, A Road to Self Knowledge, where much that is complementary to these lectures is contained. But special mention should be made of how something significant can contribute to the purification and cleansing of the soul when the effort is made by those who seek the way of the science of the spirit out of the darkness of life. Above all, mention should be made of how to understand things and to grasp them objectively with what every man, if only he is willing, can have at his disposal in his sound power of judgement. By this way of sound understanding, by this refusal of all authority and all authorised belief, we gain special light when we come to certain refinements in occult observation.

From the whole spirit and meaning of these lectures, it will have appeared that, as the steps are taken toward initiation, it becomes increasingly a matter of each man being independent, as regards his experience, of everything for which his physical body can serve him as an instrument. He must learn to experience in his higher bodies, in his etheric body, in his astral body, and also in what may be called his ego or thought body. The essential thing at every stage of initiation is this making oneself capable of perceiving in the higher bodies. In this connection, however, it is necessary for a man to do something in order to free himself of his physical sensory body. He must consciously divest himself, strip himself of everything that binds him to the world insofar as in this linking, this binding, the physical body lends itself as a tool.

This, of course, is not possible for everyone, especially in an age as materialistic as this. It is least of all possible for those who today give their opinion about the riddles and phenomena of the universe, those who by the present, peculiar methods of education, are brought up to the belief that already in earliest youth it is possible to attain—not merely to try to do so—considered judgement about world phenomena. Why is it that so much harm is done in the world nowadays by judgements born purely out of passion and emotion? When we look through what appears in print in the world, we see that the book trade is flooded with the most immature productions arising simply out of sympathies and antipathies. Why is this? It may also be asked, “Were there not in former times, too, men who out of the darkness of life confronted the results of super-sensible investigation with hatred and aversion even as today? Were there not men of darkness such as the materialists of today, who availed themselves of every possible method that hatred, ignorance and darkness could suggest?” The answer is that there were always such men, but they never worked in the way they work today. And why? Sometimes we have to pause and make note of such things in our conscience. There have been men who have hated the world and all unprejudiced penetration into higher worlds because this may sometimes bring to light most uncomfortable facts. But such men in the past could often neither read nor write. Their level of education fell short of reading and writing. Those holding such opinions today are able by means of education to read and write, and the public at large has no power of discriminating between the various things that appear in the press nor do they know how to appreciate them at their proper value. There is not much will to develop discrimination so as to come to the realisation that, in this age, there is need for the sifting and purifying intervention of a movement that combines occultism with the science of the spirit.

Men have many difficult things to learn. Simply from the facts revealed by higher worlds, there is much to be learned. For instance, it will have to be learned that even when, through partial schooling or preparation of the soul organism or other organisms, one does penetrate into higher worlds, even then it may be possible for a good deal to remain in respect of the bond with the external world that arises by way of the physical senses. Once the boundary that is so firmly drawn between the life of the senses and spiritual life is crossed by the spiritual seer, all that still remains of certain justifiable weaknesses in sensory existence when experienced in higher spiritual vision enwraps him in darkness, in maya. Only by incessantly taking ourselves to task during the period when we are seeing into the spiritual world can we, as a being there, completely shut out all that we must necessarily have in sensory existence. Only by making sure that during spiritual vision there will be no interplay of what surrounds us in the sensory world shall we be able to see, unadulterated and free of illusion, the spiritual, super-sensible world.

Without alluding to anything in particular, let us take a definite case. Say that someone wishing to pass through the stages of initiation, or having already done so, has a personal relation to someone else based on immediate personal feeling and emotion. Let us suppose that this relation of a spiritual seer, who is about to be initiated or has already made steps toward initiation, is a definite personal relation between two human beings based on mutual attraction such as is awakened in the life of the senses, possibly out of confiding love, so that—and I mean this in a higher sense there is physical interplay between the two. Let us assume something of the kind to be present, and the one who was a spiritual seer was wishing to make investigations about the person toward whom he felt thus attracted during sensory existence. Let us also suppose him to be unable to rid himself of all this love formed in sensory existence for the person in question. It would then be practically impossible for him to learn the truth about the super-sensible being of such a personality. Oh, it is indeed necessary, however much one may love, however close a personal attachment one may feel in sensory existence, to try perseveringly to cast it all aside when trying to observe the super-sensible. It may be that one feels a personal attraction such as this, and does not free oneself from the kind of fondness for the said personality that one would have in sensory existence. Then, before the eyes of the spiritual seer, pictures of the past and future of this personality will appear, for instance, that must unavoidably be false. Complete illusion may ensue. Therefore, anyone having a serious sense of responsibility in face of what is given from the realm of spiritual wisdom cannot be too careful when revealing to the world anything that happens in his own immediate circle, in the circle of those with whom he is familiar. When there are indications of any occult results relating to what concerns the immediate personal circle of the investigator, it is always a safe rule to regard them as in the highest degree doubtful.

This is not said with reference to any particular fact. It is merely said because for every occultist it is an objective fact. With this are connected, however, things that play throughout into higher spheres, one might say. With this is connected the fact that anyone wishing to make investigations into super-sensible worlds is little adapted to get a basic conception of the right kind in relation to religious questions, if with his prejudices and personal feelings he is attached to any particular religious community, if he is more attached to one religious community than to another, or is indeed a propagandist of any religious community. One who has a leaning toward personally prompted propaganda cannot also be an objective occultist! This is a statement that must indeed be made with all severity. There are conditions that we may be allowed to bring into relation with our karma of Western culture. In a certain sense these make it not too difficult for a westerner, when he has made himself a little familiar with the basic demands of super-sensible life, to form an objective judgement as to how we should place into human evolution the great event we call the Mystery of Golgotha. For how is it that so much of the darkness of life, enters into religious life and into the way in which men understand it? Why does all that only wants to be concerned with the passing moment and has no wish to raise itself to the light of the spirit and to all that is eternal enter religious life? Because everything related to religious life is intimately bound up with all that is human egoism—not merely individual egoism, but the egoism of family, race and people. From this point of view, and because there is need that these things should be observed with complete lack of prejudices let me call your attention to a particular phenomenon.

Take an Oriental. What part does his religious life play in regard to the founder of his religion when he considers the connection of his racial or national evolution? Consider whether it is easy for an Oriental, or any other man who is not of the West, to think historically about the course of the history into which he is placed without linking this historical life with men like Krishna, Buddha, Mohammad, or Confucius. Everywhere we see that, quite as a matter of course, what is in religious life is bound up with what takes place in profane external life, and flows into the heart and soul of the people. It is impossible to imagine a Buddhist, for instance, writing a history without making Buddha the central point. This is not said as a criticism but because it is true of the men who belong to such cultural evolutions.

But now let us go to the West and look, not at dogmas, but at facts. I shall pick out a recognised historian of the West, Leopold von Ranke, who is known throughout the world for his objectivity, his calm sense of values, his quite individual way of facing things objectively. Ranke has written many chapters on historical evolution, but one remarkable thing has become known about him. He once, in the presence of a friend, revealed that he had so represented the course of history that he had never taken into account the Christ, nor the facts immediately associated with Him! He went to a good deal of trouble to write a history of the West in accordance with his objective sense without making Christ take part in it. In his old age it caused him many pangs of conscience when he had to ask, “If deeds flow into the actual historical happenings for which there are no documents nor records, can this history be said to be true?” This is not mentioned here to decide whether such a history is true or untrue—I hold it to be supremely justified—but because one of the best histories, by one of the best recognised Western historians, has been so written that Christ has been entirely omitted, that Christ was not included in the course of the history. That is a fundamentally important and significant fact. Wherever has accidental civilisation led us? Western civilisation has brought us to this, that we do not always look up to the Being Who should stand forth as the central figure of all history, had there been the right connection with Him. It is not science that has led us to this. How has it come about? Let us throw light on this matter from another point of view.

Where have the great founders of religion lived, those who were the great initiates and who gave their people what they needed out of their national substance? Is it conceivable, for instance, that Hermes should have worked on his epoch through the substance of any other people, or is it conceivable that Buddha should have worked in any other way than through the particular qualities of the race into which he was placed, or should have sent his forces into them? Now let us turn our eyes to Him Whom we do not call an initiate but know as the Personality through Whom world initiation, cosmic initiation, has worked. Did He belong to any particular nation? He was born in an unknown corner of the world, far removed from great empires, and there the events were played out. Since the Gospels and other records of the New Testament cannot be looked upon as reliable historical records, it may be said that, of all these events, none can be proved by documentary evidence. Those who joined Him as pupils and disciples did so without distinction of family, race or sex. This, then, is the difference, that whereas in former times the people looked to their racial initiates, here they turned to One Who belonged to no people, Who indeed accomplished His greatest deeds of culture among a people with whom He had not lived.

That is the great step forward out of the darkness of life to the light of the spirit that we must not misunderstand if we are in earnest about the evolution of mankind. Those are the things that have really to be considered, things that have to be effectively pointed out by the science that can be drawn from real observation of super-sensible worlds. From much that I have been able to tell you, you will see how essential it is to have some understanding of what was said by the double of Johannes Thomasius in The Guardian of the Threshold, “Thinking has a purifying force.” This purifying force of thinking really works in such a way that it leads us out of our darkness into spirit light. It leads us away from the passing moment into eternity. But it is not willingly admitted that thinking has this purifying force. There is, however, something strange about the occult nature of thinking. A materialistic science imagines that man thinks with his brain; that is simply an error. If you appreciate the whole meaning of what is said in A Road to Self Knowledge, you will also understand that the process and activity of thinking, the combining and working out of ideas, do not take place in the physical body, but in the etheric body.

In truth, in ordinary life, also, man thinks with his etheric body, but the fact that he is in ordinary life precludes his having any knowledge of the activity that takes place within him when he thinks with his etheric body. Fundamentally, man is always thinking; his etheric body is always in motion, and it is this motion that constitutes thinking. But, of all this activity in the etheric body, it is only the reflection that comes into consciousness. You must conceive of a certain relation of the etheric body to the physical body somewhat in the following way. Assume that you were walking down this hall beneath this row of windows, and that mirrors were hanging on the walls between each window. As you pass the first mirror you see your face; where there is no mirror you do not see your face, but, as you go on you again see it for there is another mirror that throws its image back to you. Your face is there all the way along, but you only see it when it is reflected. The etheric body is in a perpetual flow of thought, but it only becomes perception when the brain in the physical body reflects what is going on in the etheric body. This etheric body is there all the time, but a man ordinarily knows nothing of it. It is reflected by the brain, which is to be regarded as an instrument of reflection, and whenever life is reflected it becomes conscious. That is why the physical body must be there, so that the etheric body, which actually does the thinking, may know something of this thinking. The brain itself, however, does not think, nor does the physical body. This thinking has its seat in the etheric body, and what a man perceives in his brain is just as little his thinking as what appears in the mirror is you. When a man wishes to take the first steps toward initiation, it is in truth as if you passed before all the mirrors trying all the time to be inside yourself, and then became capable of experiencing what your form was like, so that you would perceive yourself outwardly actually from within.

Such is the ascent from life in the senses to spiritual life. Whereas man can ordinarily only perceive what is going on in his instrument of reflection—what as a reflection he sees in his brain—by means of initiation he comes to direct experience and perception in his etheric body. Then, on reaching this inner experience and perception, he comes into touch with quite another world, that of essential being. His own being, his experience, his perception, widen out beyond the objective world. What he then experiences is a world of spiritual being that he may also experience in sensory existence, as far as the periphery of what is experienced is concerned. But only then can he rise to grasping something in spiritual existence that is here only present for us as physical image. Then he can understand that the impulses of initiates did not merely flow from earthly wisdom, but that great initiates have come to their greatest impulses, moral impulses, and so forth, and work with such mighty power because all they have is not merely taken from the earth; it is received by them from what is far beyond the earth. For as soon as man gets beyond the earth, he there comes to what is bound up with earthly existence.

If through initiation he passes from earthly existence to cosmic existence, then he comes to experiences—if he is studying an initiate such as Buddha, for instance—when he can say, “He has lived on earth as Bodhisattva through many incarnations.” Whoever has learned to understand Buddhism in this connection, must of necessity become as believing as a Buddhist; he will know that in the personality of Gautama Buddha this individuality lived for the last time in a physical body. In this incarnation, however, he became Buddha and has now ascended for spiritual work in spiritual worlds, so that the spiritual vision can be directed to the passing of the Buddha individuality from earthly life to spiritual life, to association in spiritual existence. If you then trace this individuality back, you will see how, as a Bodhisattva, he passed through many incarnations. At length, however, you come to an earlier time when you can no longer say, “We are here dealing with an individuality living on the earth, “ because then you have to follow him to an earlier abode, and the change in this outstanding individuality is so represented that he grows right out beyond earthly existence. Then, at a certain time, we see the Buddha descending from another planet of our solar system, wherein he previously worked; we see him at work there, preparing himself for his earthly course. We follow him on through this course on earth as Bodhisattva, and at length as Buddha, to the point when, from being a Bodhisattva, he becomes a Buddha. We find that, whereas during his earthly incarnations his activity had indeed grown together with the earth, yet at the same time he was growing into a great cosmic whole. We see him ascend to yet another planet of our planetary system, to Mars, there to undertake a new mission closely united with his mission on earth. It is wonderful to follow how a totality appears in this way. First we see Buddha active on another planet; then he comes down to earth, and we must say, “This individuality of the initiate, Gautama Buddha, worked for a while on earth; after that, however, if we would follow him further, we must ascend to another planet.” In this way we get an unbroken line. It is thus possible to say of Buddha that he came down from another planet and, after working on earth, again ascended to a different planet, inhabited by a people who have little understanding of earthly mankind. There he continues to work, because this further work is of great significance.

Thus, in the case of many initiates, we should find how they carry into the earth from the cosmos what in the earth itself is connected with the cosmos; by means of this we should keep in view how the initiates go through cosmic wanderings. So when we try to get to the root of things everywhere, at the same time we see what irradiates our darkness, and we see how, by looking at things in an occult way, the darkness becomes filled with light.

It is curious how sometimes some people ask, “Isn't it unjust that such an Individuality as the Christ should have brought something special into the world? If that is the case, those who have lived after Christ have had some special advantage over their predecessors.” Even anthroposophists have sometimes asked this! But the souls living after Christ's appearance on earth are the same as those who were there before, so that there can be no question of injustice. We can only point to one exception in this respect, and this seems to be Buddha. He went through an incarnation in pre-Christian times, and therefore took no share in any way in what came to earth through the event of Golgotha. If we now turn our attention to where we only find darkness, to the difficulty of understanding how a soul takes leave of the earth at a certain point of time (whoever has heard my earlier lectures will know that this soul had experience in other worlds, and that it is here a question of experience on earth), if we keep all this before our mind's eye and follow it up, then it becomes apparent that Buddha was sent to the planet where he carried on his pre-earthly planetary activity by the central Individuality of the whole planetary system, by the Spirit of its central point, by Him Whom we call the Cosmic Christ. In primeval times Buddha had been sent to work on another planet, and then, as a consequence of this work, he was sent to work on earth. Whereas the earth is the planet that became the scene of the Mystery of Golgotha, Mars is the planet on which, after his work on earth, Buddha had to accomplish a similar event.

These things lie far afield and may appear inconsistent with the statement that all that is derived from initiation can be grasped with sound human understanding. We ought, however, to take what history offers, look at it together with all its connections, and it will be seen that the external course of history can here corroborate everything. If anyone denies this, it is because he has not made sufficient use of his sound judgement. This applies today to many people. By all that has been said in this course of lectures, I have wanted to call up in a picture, and also to show through the Plays, how different, powerful and mighty are the worlds we enter when we pass through the gates into super-sensible worlds. I wanted to evoke a more comprehensive picture than is possible by means of mere theories and dogmas. I wanted to represent and describe many things, not merely in words but by calling forth feeling for what is behind the Threshold where the Guardian stands.

When we survey present-day spiritual life, perhaps what sinks most deeply into the soul is all that may be said about the Guardian of the Threshold. He stands there because the human soul in ordinary existence is not sufficiently mature to live through and experience all that takes place in super-sensible worlds. He stands there for our protection. That is just as true as that the human soul, living on into the future, will have to experience more and more about super-sensible worlds. The reason why the Guardian stands there is because, were the human soul to pass into super-sensible worlds before it was ready, which can never happen on an authentic occult path, this soul would feel that it had fallen into what was infinitely fearful, infinitely terrible. This is because in their pettiness and immaturity, in their love of sensory existence and dependence on it, men could never bear all that is connected with the entrance into super-sensible worlds. Why, one cannot even approach those who want to be progressive, with all that our modern life demands! From the place from which, up to now, we have been allowed to reveal super-sensible truths, we have been obliged to point out how, in the course of the twentieth century, a super-sensible event will come to pass in the human super-sensible body when man, as if through a natural occurrence, will find the risen Christ. So much we were able to point out. But this reappearing Christ will not sail the sea in ships, nor travel in trains, nor airships. He will go into the individual being of man, into what passes from human soul to human soul. There, according to how these souls are constituted, He will be recognised by the means given in the etheric. What thus we are allowed to tell of the manner in which the risen Christ will be revealed seems feeble as compared with what will actually come to the soul of man, straight from the super-sensible world because men would like to see with physical eyes the Mighty Being Who is to come. They would like to picture Him going by airplane or travelling by sea. They would like to be able physically to touch and glorify Him Who should come. The reason is that they dread coming into actual contact, with the super-sensible.

When these things occur, they present themselves to the occultist as disguised fear and dread of truth. This is said quite dispassionately, merely as an objective statement. The occultist who recognises the Guardian standing at the boundary between physical existence and spiritual life, can see how those outside in ordinary life cannot even grasp the necessity of making a start on the path into super-sensible worlds. In truth, such personalities are all in a state of fear. They are not aware of their fear because it is disguised as a particular kind of sense of truth, as a materialistic sense of truth. But, by those confronted by the knowledge of the super-sensible world and of its super-sensible beings, it appears as a certain hatred, a state of anger, a kindling of pettiness toward that other, super-sensible world. So it may happen that, on the one side, stand those who want to have knowledge of the super-sensible worlds and, on the other, those who would know nothing of them, or who would say that objective science tells nothing about such worlds because they cannot be proved. It is the popular followers of science who deter others from approaching the Guardian of the Threshold when they say they reject super-sensible worlds by reason of their own sense of truth, their personal scientific conviction. In reality, however, it is their fear that does not let them come to the Guardian of the Threshold. The whole strength of this fear is masked behind the fight that would like to break out today in opposition to all that should come as spiritual light out of spiritual worlds into the darkness of life.

That is the representation that can be appreciated by anyone who knows the Guardian at the Threshold of spiritual existence, anyone who knows what significance super-sensible knowledge has for the whole of present-day spiritual life. The reason why you are now sitting here is that a ray of spiritual light has found its way into your souls, telling you that in all human souls super-sensible knowledge must take its hold. Because the message of this ray of spiritual light becomes ever more living, the spectators and audiences at our plays and lectures become increasingly numerous. If free play be given for the light of the spirit to speak naturally to human souls, it will then be able to stream its rays into them. But if the victory be outside with the opponents of super-sensible knowledge, then, perhaps, the light of the spirit may have for a time to be darkened; it may be obliged to withdraw; that is to say, it must be withdrawn, if I am to use such a foolish expression. Then, for awhile the world will have to go without any connection between the darkness of life and spiritual light. It is certainly necessary for those who should know something of spiritual light to learn something else again, which is to learn to observe with sincerity what is offered here in the external world by the spiritual world. Those today who still let themselves be blinded by all that is said for and against super-sensible knowledge, those who do not seek in their own souls the sure impulse that can only come from super-sensible worlds, will never be able to find this impulse.

As I have often said, what we have at present in the way of literature, what has been permitted to be given in a number of literary works by the grace of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling, contains basically what we may say has been allowed to be imparted to men by act of grace. If from this moment I could no longer either speak or write, were men only to build further upon what they already have—I myself being no longer present—if men looked for the meaning in all they have been given, they would find all that is needed.

If now at the close of these lectures, I may be permitted to speak of the connection of personal karma with the karma of this spiritual movement, we have here the possibility that, in a certain respect, all that has come into the world as objective occultism—not as the “Steiner way of thought,” for there is no such thing, but as objective occultism—can never be extinguished. No matter how much opposition may arise, it cannot mean the extinction of occultism for the future; what is here will remain. I can see proof of this in the need of our age for a spiritual movement, and in the fact that a short space of time has been granted for this spiritual treasure to be brought down into the physical world through the grace of our spiritual Guardian. So let opponents come! What is necessary may be done through their very opposition! Many people who today willingly receive the spiritual treasure of anthroposophy and are made happy by it, in face of what they should be seeing at the present time, are quite oblivious of it; in fact, they have their night-caps on! Many do not feel themselves bound to the truth, to distinguishing what should be the sole truth. Perhaps by a little harmless persecution, some of those who have their night-caps down, not only over their heads but right over their eyes and ears, will be induced to take them off. Perhaps even that may be necessary.

Yet, however things may go, now that we have reached the end of these lectures from which so much that is in truth vexatious has come to us and has been forced on us out of necessity, let us now, as usual, remember that once again we have received something from the spiritual life.

Now we are going on our several ways, one here, one there, but the light of the spirit for which we are striving and seeking in our darkness, will enable us to be together no matter where we are nor how far we may be separated in space. May the souls present here feel this communion when afterwards they meditate upon what they have heard or when they live over again the mutual love that has been shown. We have been together physically, but this will not always be so. We are together super-sensibly. Let us learn so to be together super-sensibly, that we may bear forcible witness to the existence of the super-sensible, of the super-physical world! If after having been so long together we can take such feelings away with us, our souls will then be taking with them the best that anthroposophy can give to man the love that proceeds from spiritual truth itself. If between now and the occasion when we hope to be together again, something may happen to prevent it, nevertheless one thing is always possible, that through this separation in space our being together physically may be transformed into true spiritual communion, so that in us the spiritual treasure may work and live and prosper. We have had among us men of the most varied shades of thought, but men of whose presence we are always glad even when they bring contrary opinions into our midst. It is not a matter of opinion or of contrary opinion, but rather of an honest and sincere sense of truth, and of, I would say, pledging ourselves here in sensory existence to truthfulness and honesty. Do not regard my saying this as something that must necessarily follow from the subject of these lectures. But the essential is that we should have been able in many spheres to experience the search for truth in our time.

In whatever way we may be assembled next year, and however things may turn out, let us grasp the reunion of this year as the seed of something of which, no matter what may perhaps be ahead of us, we can never be deprived. At this time I would appeal to all that your souls can feel out of spontaneous inner experience, as an echo, when you look back to these days in Munich. In farewell, I heartily greet the individual soul of each friend, looking forward to a further meeting in the sense in which those who have learned to know and therefore to love each other will always find themselves together in due season, and will always meet again.

When people gradually become interested in the various branches of anthroposophical knowledge, there are many points regarding which they are quite justified in wishing for further information. Let us, therefore, spend part of our time today in asking ourselves questions which might thus arise. In answering such questions one is often obliged to go more deeply into the connection of cosmic facts in so far as the spiritual world affects these facts, and particularly into the connection between these facts and the nature of man. One question may arise in a person's mind when he gradually sees the importance and great significance of what we call reincarnation. He may ask: “How is it that in his ordinary life today man has no recollection of preceding earth-lives?” Clairvoyant consciousness can actually expand the memory to such an extent that recollections of former earth-lives rise to its surface; but in the ordinary life of present-day humanity this does not occur. If the question is put from the standpoint of clairvoyant investigation, however, it takes the following form. It is then realized that the force required for clairvoyant investigation arises from the innermost part of man, from the very soul itself. One must develop from the ordinary human standpoint to the clairvoyant standpoint.

The forces by means of which we look back later at our former earth-lives must naturally exist in every human being. The question, therefore, is: “What becomes of these forces? What does man's nature do with these forces which are present in him, which are born with him, but which he cannot bring to the point of helping him to a retrospective memory of his former earth-life?” If we investigate this clairvoyantly we find ourselves obliged to look for them in very early childhood. There only do we find those forces at work which can be used in clairvoyance for the retrospective vision of former lives. In present-day man they are used to construct the human larynx and all that appertains to it; and especially in all which enables that organ to be used later for speech These forces are in every man, for the purpose of enabling him to look back into earlier earth-lives. But at the present day they are so largely used in constructing man's organ of speech that, under normal circumstances, he cannot in later life have that memory of the past. There were earlier times when man had this retrospective memory and this was the case almost all over the world, but this was because the said forces were not all used in building up the larynx; some were kept back. The development of humanity was such, however, that speech gradually assumed a form which in our present cycle depends more upon the forces of the etheric body than was formerly the case. At the present time, therefore, man fails to observe the forces which remain behind after the greater proportion have been used in building the larynx. If he were to do so, as the clairvoyant must, he would be able to look at his earlier earth-lives. That is the reason for the fact which I indicated in the public lecture: If a man gets so far as to develop that activity of the etheric body which is otherwise only developed for the need of the organ of speech, and releases that from the larynx; if he is gradually able to listen inwardly without speaking, and to develop this feeling more and more, the exercise of that force can really reproduce the memory of past lives. Modern man pays no attention to the surplus forces of his speech-organ which are capable of being used for the retrospect into earlier earth-lives. This is one of those cases in which through clairvoyant investigation one can indicate the place occupied in normal life by those forces which are otherwise used to enable man to have insight into the spiritual life.

This applies also to the forces used by man today in the creation of the so-called grey brain-substance, which principally constitutes the organ of thought. Thinking is, of course, not actually accomplished by the brain; but we need the brain as an instrument of thought. And those thought-forces which, if they were wholly at his disposal, would enable man to grasp with ease what is to be found in my Occult Science, are used by the normal man for the construction of his grey brain-substance. This grey brain-matter was by no means so highly organised in the humanity of ancient Greece in the fifth or sixth century as it is in the average man today. In this respect the nature of man alters much more quickly than is supposed. Thus to the Greeks of the prehistoric times, of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries B.C., it was quite natural that, at a certain time of life, all that is now again being given out by Spiritual Science should appear to him clairvoyantly. We must, therefore, use those forces which still remain to us after having constructed our grey brain-substance, in endeavouring, in the manner prescribed, to acquire a clear idea of what is described in Occult Science. What is the reason that these things are so described in that book? The descriptions given therein are not too difficult for the man of today to understand; one might almost say that it is a wonder that many people have not of their own accord attained knowledge of them. One might wonder that these descriptions meet with so much antagonism, for it really is not difficult, comparatively speaking, to attain the necessary degree of clairvoyance wherewith to observe them. All one need do is the following: although the saying in Faust may well be applied here: “True 'tis easy; yet what seems easy is still difficult!” The development of the brain is most actively carried on during the early years of human life. Clairvoyantly one sees the etheric and astral bodies actively at work then in constructing and forming the brain. This work lasts for a comparatively long time. It is not too much to say that, although in later years this work proceeds more slowly, yet man becomes cleverer and cleverer through the experience of his life, and work is always going on in his brain-substance. The following is, however, not observed, nor can it be.

If at a definite age man decides to discontinue for a while a mental occupation dear to him (this applies to external matters, because through them the grey brain-substance is moulded, but, of course, one can always study Anthroposophy as long as one does not study it like any other science)—if a man decides to cease studying something which has been his favourite pursuit for many years and strictly compels himself to leave it off, and then in quiet meditation tries to arouse the forces economised in this way—which forces would have been spent in the continued activity, but can now be used otherwise—it will be comparatively easy to attain, at any rate, a high degree of self-knowledge of the things described in my Occult Science. The reason that so few people do so is that this is very seldom carried out; for a man who really has an occupation to which he is devoted will seldom have the power of self-denial deliberately to give it up for seven whole years. You see, then, that part of what is now being given out might be acquired with comparative ease.

If you consider our modern civilization with all its amazing external activities, you cannot wonder that a large amount of the forces belonging to the etheric body has to be employed in the working of man's brain; for, indeed, almost all external culture is the result of the working of the human brain. All the forces are used in working the brain. Many might say: “Well, I have taken no part in this work; I have nothing to do with it!” A man might really deceive himself in this respect, for that is not the case. It is hardly possible to find a spot on earth, however isolated, where external civilisation does not so far penetrate as to compel one to take part in it with one's thoughts, and that will suffice to divert our forces from what we might call the acquisition of clairvoyant consciousness. Of course, someone might say: “Well, but savages take no part in what thus works in the brain, yet one cannot say that the savages develop any special clairvoyant forces in this direction!” That is because of the ruling of a very special spiritual law, which ordains that what may be thus acquired clairvoyantly must have been prepared in a particular way. The savage might perhaps develop completely different clairvoyant forces, but the forces required to see what is described in my Occult Science could not be developed by him, because he has not been prepared for them, for these forces must be the transmutation of other forces.

You may perhaps say: “Well, but many people have never had what you call a favourite occupation. Why, then, have they not become clairvoyant?” The reason is that the development of the clairvoyant forces does not come out of the void, but from the transmutation of what already exists. One must have already developed one's forces in a certain direction, and have acquired the tendency to the particular intelligence which belongs to our modern civilisation. If, then, one renounces the using of these forces for a time, they become, in a sense, transmuted; and one is thereby enabled to follow clairvoyantly the facts Described in Occult Science; for in so doing the same forces are employed which in man's normal development enable him to use the higher forces of the brain. On the other hand, the transmutation of other human forces and faculties lead, not to the great universal viewpoints described in Occult Science, but rather to separate detailed circumstances. For instance, one may acquire the power of looking back into earlier earth-lives by holding back in the same way certain forces otherwise used in forming the organs of speech. Certain forces, which as a rule are not noticed, tend more than all the rest to hinder man from pressing on into the spiritual worlds.

I have now mentioned two kinds of forces which enable man to see into the spiritual worlds: namely, those which are used today in the forming of the grey brain-substance which enables man to see into the spiritual worlds, and those concerned with the formation of speech, which enable him to look back into his former earth-lives. But besides these there are others more adapted to enable man to see in detail what the individual human soul does there; this is described in general in Occult Science, but that is quite different from really seeing into the spiritual world, which necessitates quite other forces, forces hardly noticed during life. There is one thing in life for which man must use many forces, and that is the acquiring of the power of standing upright in early childhood, instead of going about on all fours all his life long. The forces which enable man to assume a vertical position are of such a nature that one who has penetrated into the spiritual world is filled with special reverence for them. To behold how a child learns to walk is a wonderful mystery, as seen by one who undertakes spiritual investigation. From the forces used in childhood when learning to stand upright there remain those which enable us to look into the world between death and a new birth, but these are too little observed. If we can get so far as to remember how we learnt to walk and the efforts we made, we can discover in ourselves the forces we saved up in our etheric body, for that body had especially to exert itself. (There are other methods of discovering these forces, but this is one way.) If we can discover in ourselves the forces we then saved—which still exist in us all—we can thus bring to the surface much which enables us to go back into the life spent between our last death and our last birth. You may ask: How is this done? If we have the good fortune to be able to carry on our Anthroposophical Movement, we shall have made a start towards bringing out these forces. If all goes well, these usually begin to stir after a period of seven years. A beginning has now been made, and this will work on in the nature of man; but as a rule they are unnoticed.

We can generally promote the discovery of these forces in ourselves by practising a certain kind of natural dancing. Not quite a year ago, in certain circles, the movements of the etheric body began to be studied according to certain basic rules, and this art we call Eurhythmy. This does not merely lead to nothing particular, like ordinary dancing, but movements are practised which are in complete accord with the movements of the etheric body. Through practising these movements we become gradually aware of the forces that still remain in that body, and which are brought to light by the free dance movements. In this way means are gradually created by which we can really perceive the undiscovered forces in man which can awaken in him an insight into the spiritual worlds in which he lived between his last death and his birth. In such ways Anthroposophy can really work practically upon human culture. You may be sure that it will not stop at merely teaching a few abstract truths, for it will influence mankind in such a way that it will learn that the forces slumbering today can be aroused, and that man can really raise himself to a realisation of spiritual life. These are curious things, but they must be said, for they are true.

When a man discovers the forces that remain over from his learning to walk, they will enable him to become clairvoyant, and to see into the worlds we inhabit between death and a new birth. This can also be done through meditation, which must, however, be carried so far as to merge into feeling; but feeling is the hardest of all things to acquire through meditation.

Those forces must be found which enable a man to look into the world between death and rebirth, forces by means of which he can contemplate what happened a long time before birth. In this domain there is a great deal which enables one to understand life as never before.

For instance, suppose we meet with misfortune; at first we only have the feeling that it is, indeed, a misfortune, one we find difficult to bear. But if we know why it is that this misfortune has come upon us, by reason of our having ourselves arranged, some decades or even some centuries before our birth, that it should be so, we shall find it easier to bear. We shall know that it was a trial, a means of making us more perfect. Other things, too, are experienced when we are able to look back at that portion of the spiritual worlds in which we undergo the preparation for our present life. I will not now describe the general conditions there; you will find these in my books. But I should like to show, by means of a few examples, how life before birth influences the subsequent life.

Strange as it may sound, w hen we have passed the middle of our prenatal life—which generally lasts several hundreds of years—the inner experience of the soul is chiefly centred on the earth; and when we turn back to that time, the impression We get is full of what was going on in the earth below, and what the human beings on earth thought and felt. Every soul receives impressions peculiar to itself. For instance, a soul may live back into the second half of the spiritual life, when rebirth was drawing near, and see himself looking down more and more on those below, the spiritually active one, preparing for a future age. Some of these may seem to the soul above specially to be admired; indeed, it may occur that the soul above fixes his attention particularly on one or two figures active on the earth below

Suppose a man was born in the second half of the nineteenth century and was therefore in the spiritual worlds at the beginning of that century and end of the preceding one. From thence he looked down at the important persons who influenced our civilization during that time. Among these are a few whom he particularly admired and who were dear to him; for it is one of our experiences thus to look down at the persons developing here. In so doing we actually influence them, not in such a way that we actually interfere with their freedom, but rather so that a feeling arises in their soul that they are being gazed upon by someone in the spiritual world. Thus human beings on earth are stimulated to be active and creative by the souls who are to be born later than they and who are now looking down at them. This may occur in intimate as well as wider matters.

I know a case of a soul, living in the spiritual world at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, who took as his ideal a prominent personage on earth and resolved after his birth to imitate him. One can see clairvoyantly the books written by the person he wished to imitate, as he looked down with a certain yearning, a certain inner longing, from heaven to earth; and, though of course with a somewhat different feeling, one looks back as a living being to the other side, to the Heavens. There is, however, this very considerable difference between the two experiences. The vision of the earth-dweller looking up to Heaven, without having any knowledge of Spiritual Science, is apt to remain more or less indistinct; whereas the soul living in the spiritual world can see earth-conditions very clearly, he sees the human soul whom he admires so much and the books he wishes so much to read, with great distinctness. In short, in the second half of the spiritual existence between death and s new birth one may become acquainted with a human soul, even down to minute details, for one can gaze into that soul. We ourselves in our present life can become aware that, living above in the spiritual world, there are souls expecting to be born in the next decade or so who are looking into our own souls with longing eyes; for they see there what they need for their preparation for the earth-world, At this period of their spiritual lives they see our souls with great clearness, even as the earth-man on his part sees his Heaven with great indistinctness. This is merely a picture, but it will serve to show how, if we have only a slight knowledge of the spiritual world, we can really become aware that we are being observed, as indeed we are, in manifold ways. The gaze of the spiritual beings, and more particularly of those shortly to be incarnated, is turned upon our souls. We see by this that Spiritual Science cannot but do good, for it tends to make people more worthy of those in the spiritual worlds who as yet are not born. When clairvoyant investigation examines all this it certainly experiences remarkable and often staggering things, and amongst the most surprising of these is the vision of the souls on the way to birth, gazing down to earth and looking for those who may become their parents. In olden times this was even more remarkable than now, but the observation of such souls is still one of the most impressive experiences, and one carries away a wealth of impressions. I will describe one of these at first hand!

A soul preparing for incarnation knows that he will need for his next incarnation a particular sort of knowledge, which must be acquired in early youth; looking down he sees possibilities, here and there, of gaining it. It may occur, however, that in order to do so he must renounce the particular parents who, in other respects, could give him the happiest of lives, and finds himself obliged to take his natal flight to other parents, who cannot make his life happy. If he were to select the other father and mother, he would not be able to gain the most important experiences. We must not imagine that all the conditions of the spiritual life differ absolutely from our own. For instance, a soul who, before his birth, was thus dreadfully torn in his mind and undecided, may say to himself: “Perhaps I shall be dreadfully mismanaged in childhood by rough and rude parents.” Should this doubt exist, it sets up a dreadful conflict within him. One sees many a soul in the spiritual world having this to go through when preparing for birth. We must realise that souls are faced with these struggles with themselves in the spiritual world, and that such difficulties serve in a sense as a sort of external world to them.

What I am now describing is not only an inner soul-conflict, not only a battle of the inner feelings, but it is projected externally, and is, so to speak, all around one. One can see in visible imagery the imaginations depicting how such souls go down to their new incarnations, inwardly divided as it were. When we see all these circumstances unfolded before our eyes we can well understand why so many people do not like Spiritual Science; for most people prefer to believe that as soon as they die they enter eternal bliss for all eternity! This, however, is not the case, and it is well that things are as they are, for under existing circumstances the world will eventually reach its destined stage of perfection.

The power of investigating one's own life, or that of another, in the spiritual world, can be acquired—curiously enough—through the forces left over in the etheric body from our learning to walk. Practical clairvoyance shows us that these forces, when really developed, have certain advantages over the clairvoyant forces developed for the purpose of looking back into former lives. I want you to pay particular attention to this difference between them, for it may throw light in many respects on various things. There is no way in which a dangerous clairvoyance is more easily developed than by using the forces which exist in present-day man for developing the organs of speech, and which, if kept back, enable him to see into his former earth-lives; for they are mostly connected with the lower instincts and passions in man's nature. In no other way is one brought so near to Lucifer and Ahriman as by developing these forces, for although they certainly lead one to the height of being able to look back into one's own and other people's past lives, yet they lead to the powers of illusion; and if not rightly developed the clairvoyant may, under their influence, fall morally low, rather than rise to the heights. Thus these forces are among the most dangerous of all, and should only be developed if at the same time the teacher is determined to develop the purest morality in his pupils. For this reason an experienced teacher will not easily allow himself to be persuaded systematically to develop the forces which enable a man to see former incarnations. It is just as rare to find the forces developed objectively, in the right way, i.e. by only using the speech-forces for this purpose, as it is common to find a certain lower clairvoyance which can see into the spiritual worlds and give descriptions of certain spiritual regions. That is why other means are generally used when it is desired to lead persons to see their earlier incarnations, and here we reach an interesting point—showing how necessary it is to pay attention to things which are generally disregarded. It is but seldom that anyone is able through his spiritual teaching to look back at his earlier earth-lives by developing the speech-forces only; that is a very rare occurrence, yet there are many persons at the present time who can do so. This has generally been reached by other means, one of which may strike one as strange, but it rests upon a profound truth. Suppose that a man is well advanced in years; it would need too much of an effort, and perhaps lead to too much temptation, were he to look back karmically at his former lives by developing the speech-forces. Therefore the spiritual forces have recourse to another means, which many suppose to be merely accidental. He may meet a man who calls him by a special name, or mentions a certain time, or a certain people. This works externally upon his soul in such a way that as a result he may develop the necessary forces to serve as a support for clairvoyance etc. will then notice that the name he was called by, or the words mentioned, will, without any knowledge of this on the part of the speaker, lead to a retrospective view of his past lives. This is a case of outer means being resorted to. The man in question hears a name or an era or a nation mentioned, and is thereby stimulated from outside, as it were, to see his former earth incarnations. Such external stimuli are sometimes of' great importance to a clairvoyant observation of the world. One has what seems to be an entirely accidental experience, but from this rays forth a stimulus for clairvoyant forces which one otherwise possesses only in rudimentary form.

These are a few aphoristic indications which I wished to give you as to the way the spiritual world interpenetrates the earth-world; it is really a very complicated matter. We see, therefore, that looking back into former earth lives is a more or less dangerous proceeding, because the forces of temptation are connected with it; but, on the other hand, there are very few men who, having developed their clairvoyant forces for, the purpose of seeing the life spent in the spiritual world before birth, would be liable to the temptation of misusing them. As a rule only souls of a certain purity, of a certain natural morality, can look back with a measure of certainty into the life spent in the spirit before their present earth-lives. That is because the forces used as clairvoyant forces for the purpose of looking into the prenatal time are the child-forces, those economised when learning to walk. They are the most sinless forces in the nature of man. These innocent forces—I beg some of you to note this—are also those through which, when a man develops them, he is able to see into the life preceding his birth. This, too, is the reason why a little child is so enchanting and satisfying because it is surrounded in its aura by the forces the greater part of which are used in learning to walk—forces which are also able to illuminate what took place before birth. In this respect to the clairvoyant experience a child in whose countenance is expressed innocence and inexperience of the world expresses in its aura something a great deal more interesting than what can be seen in the aura of many a grown-up person. The struggles and conflicts it went through in the spirit-land before birth, and which determined its destiny, make what surrounds the child as its aura something immeasurably great and filled with wisdom. That wisdom is often much greater than a human being can put into words in later life. The countenance of the child may as yet be undefined, but the clairvoyant who sees it can learn immeasurably from the child if his vision is able to perceive what surrounds it as aura. And if the forces belonging to childhood are later on developed clairvoyantly one can perceive the concrete circumstances which precede human birth. It may perhaps be a personal satisfaction to be able to look into that world, but it is more particularly of interest to one who is anxious to understand the whole connection. A search into the Akashic Records concerning certain personalities of the world's history not only consists in reading what is therein inscribed about their lives on the physical plane, but also shows us how they are preparing their next lives on that plane, while living as souls in the spiritual world between death and rebirth.

Now the forces which can throw light on former incarnations, if we keep them pure, are not so much saved over from childhood as from that age in a human being when the passions (and often the lowest and worst) are developed. These forces which have quite different tasks in the nature of man are developed long after those connected with speech-formation. They hang together with all that develops in man as feelings of sensual love and everything connected with it. There is a special relation between all that leads to sensual love and all that leads to speech; and this is, indeed, expressed in the nature of man in the breaking of the voice, the change of voice. From that age in particular many of these forces are stored up, and if we keep them pure they lead to a retrospective vision of our former earth-lives; but if they are not kept pure they can be brought out as the sensual instincts of man, and may then lead to the greatest occult depravity. These clairvoyant forces, economised from that particular time of life, are the most subject to temptation.

Thus you understand the whole connection, my dear friends. The clairvoyant who is willing to talk about the time spent between death and a new birth (and some of you may have noticed that there is but little talk about that), has developed in himself the forces economised from early childhood. But one should mistrust the clairvoyant who talks a great deal—mostly nonsense—about people's former incarnations, and this happens very frequently, for some people dish up such information on a salver as it were. We should mistrust such persons, because in this domain forces may be drawn upon which are most of all open to temptation. The forces that may be economised for this are saved from the time when sensual love develops, while man does not yet stand outwardly in social life. Sometimes these forces lead to great nonsense, and particularly to occult nonsense, because these, more than any others, are subject to delusion after delusion in the realms of the spiritual world.

Why, then, is the information of clairvoyants who are subject to these particular forces so frequently unreliable? Because among these arise at the same time out of man, like a mist, the lower instincts and impulses; and then Ahriman and his Ahrimanic spirits approach, and out of what thus arises they form phantoms which can be seen, and are then regarded as belonging to former incarnations.

The right sort of clairvoyance through which to describe circumstances such as are given in Occult Science can be easily developed by economising the forces which can only be economised in later life—after the age of twenty to twenty-five. The forces developed then are usually such as are connected with the life of the intellect, and during this time life can be regarded with a certain calm common sense. Thus the investigations in this domain are least of all subject to error and illusion.

We see, therefore, that the great world-relations, the great spiritual world-relationships, can be ascertained through those forces in human nature which work at the development of the brain.

The vision of former earth-lives can be acquired by cultivating those forces which are economised in youth, when they are no longer required for developing the speech and rule the realm of sense desires and their organs.

The spirit-land proper, which is specially interesting because there the new life is being prepared, can be investigated through those forces which can be economised in earliest childhood, when the child is learning to walk.

The above are, indeed, remarkable facts, but if we wish to penetrate the spiritual world we must accustom ourselves to accept many new conceptions which at first must appear paradoxical. But the spiritual world does not exist simply to present a continuation of the physical sense-world—indeed, in many respects it is exact opposite of the latter. Man himself appears as a very important being in the universe when we look on the one side at all he goes through in his earth-life, his destiny, his capacities, and his activities. On the other hand, through having learnt to understand the spiritual, we see the very different life lived by him between death and a new birth. Then only do we contemplate man in his full significance and destiny.

In these two lectures I wished to give you an idea, a description of various things in the spiritual world. I wanted to do so in a more aphoristic way, because we have met here for the first time, and because you will know most of the systematic presentations from my books and writings, and I wished to add a little here and there to what I have already given out. It seemed to me that this would be more useful to our friends in this town than if I had selected a more connected chapter of Spiritual Science. If you will allow me to say so, at the conclusion of, to me, such a happy union here, I should like as much as possible of Spiritual Science to flow into the hearts and souls of men at the present time. This is important for two reasons.

First, because when we consider the life around us and observe the facts of that life, and how, even through the greatest acquirements of culture man becomes more and more materialistically minded, we see how more and more necessary it is that he shouldst have Spiritual Science, how much he needs it, just because this outer life makes him so materialistic. Just because the great facts of external life must make man materialistic, he needs the counterbalancing of Spiritual Science. It is a necessity in the earth-life of humanity, and must become more and more so in the near future. Anyone who reflects how, even through the greatest achievements of civilisation, external life must gradually descend deeper and deeper into materialism and gradually decay and die out, will feel the longing within him to see Spiritual Science entering the hearts and souls of mankind. Our civilisation must become greater and greater and make more progress; but although we need our railways and steamboats, telephones, airships, and all that civilisation can bring us, yet, just as the singing-birds are driven away by our smoky chimneys, so will the joy and freshness and harmony of our soul-life disappear under the influence of this material culture, unless Spiritual Science leads man to spirituality. Therefore he who is able to see the circumstances clearly must have the deepest longing to make Spiritual Science more widely known: it is a necessity.

On the other hand, there is another fact, namely, that on account of this materialistic culture, never has mankind rejected Spiritual Science so strongly, nor hated it so much, as today.

Today we are confronted by these two unavoidable facts, Necessity and Misunderstanding—they face us like two pillars between which we have to pass, if we wish to bring Spiritual Science into the world. For us, who wish to make our souls ripe for Spiritual Science, there will be on each pillar a challenge, a stern request—to do everything in our power which will bring ourselves and all those persons who long for it, to Spiritual Science.

I wished to address you from this standpoint the first time I spoke in this town, and from this same standpoint I wish to say my parting words; so that something of what I have been allowed to say may pass into your hearts and souls and not only into your minds. You may thereby feel yourselves more closely united with us and with all those who would like to carry this movement out into the world more actively than they have hitherto done.

As we cannot remain together in space as we have just been—for the first time—I should like to feel that this visit will draw our souls together more closely than before. With this wish, my dear friends, I take my leave of you and your beautiful town; in the full consciousness that when such a meeting has taken place our union in space has given a stimulus to a union which depends on neither space nor time. With these words I give you greeting and take my leave of you. May the fact of our having been thus together in space provide a stimulus for a permanent, enduring union in the spirit.

In 1913 on the hill in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, construction had begun on the building then known as the Johannesbau and later to be called the Goetheanum, the central headquarters of the anthroposophical movement. Members of the Anthroposophical Society from all parts of the world had been called upon to work on the building, and they were joined by a growing number of others who moved to Dornach, either permanently or temporarily, on their own initiative. Thus a unique center of anthroposophical activity developed in Dornach, a center that was, understandably enough, burdened with the shortcomings and problems unavoidable in such a group.

In the summer of 1914, these difficulties escalated when World War I broke out, since people from many different nations, including those at war, had to work together and get along with each other. Isolation from the rest of the world and, last but not least, both local and more widespread opposition to the building and the people it attracted, further complicated the situation. In spite of all obstacles, however, the building continued to grow under the artistic leadership of Rudolf Steiner, who was well-loved as a teacher and felt by all to be a bulwark of constancy. But in the summer of 1915 all this changed as a result of incidents that threatened to test the Dornach group, and thus the Anthroposophical Society as a whole, to the breaking point.

Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas of 1914 had provoked not only general gossip, but also some bizarre mystical behavior on the part of a member named Alice Sprengel¹ Heinrich Goesch (see below) and his wife Gertrud seized upon her strange ideas and made use of them in personal attacks on Rudolf Steiner. Since this was done publicly in the context of the Society, Rudolf Steiner asked that the Society itself resolve the case. This resulted in weeks of debate, at the end of which all three were expelled from the Society. Rudolf and Marie Steiner did not take part either in the debates or in the decision to rescind their membership.

The documents that follow reconstruct the events of the case in the sequence in which they occurred.

Alice Sprengel (b. 1871 in Scotland, d. 1949 in Bern, Switzerland) had joined the Theosophical Society in Munich in the summer of 1902, at a time when Rudolf Steiner had not yet become General Secretary for Germany. She joined the German Section a few years later. In a notice issued by the Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society in the fall of 1915 informing members about the case, Miss Sprengel is described as having undergone unusual suffering in her childhood. At the time of her entry into the Society, she still impressed people as being very dejected. In addition, she was unemployed at that time and outwardly in very unfortunate circumstances. For that reason, efforts were made to help her.

Marie Steiner, then Marie von Sivers, sponsored her involvement in the Munich drama festival in 1907 and arranged for her to be financially supported by members in Munich. In order to help her find a means of supporting herself in line with her artistic abilities, Rudolf Steiner advised her on making symbolic jewelry and the like for members of the Society. It was also made possible for her to make the move to Dornach in 1914. She, however, interpreted this generous assistance to mean that she had a significant mission to fulfill within the Society. Having been given the role of Theodora in Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas fed her delusions with regard to her mission, as did the fact that toward the end of the year 1911, in conjunction with the project to construct a building to house the mystery dramas, Rudolf Steiner had made an attempt to found a “Society for Theosophical Art and Style” in which she had been nominated as “keeper of the seal” because of her work as an artist. She imagined having lived through important incarnations and even believed herself to be the inspirer of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual teachings. In addition, having been asked to play Theodora gave rise to the delusion that she had received a symbolic promise of marriage from Rudolf Steiner, and she then suffered a breakdown as a result of Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas 1914. Her letters to Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner, reproduced below, clearly reveal that she was deeply upset.

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner
(undated; received December 25, 1914. Cf. p. 159.)

“Seven years now have passed,” ² Dr. Steiner, since you appeared to my inner vision and said to me, “I am the one you have spent your life waiting for; I am the one for whom the powers of destiny intended you.”

You saw the struggles and doubts this experience occasioned in me; you knew that in the end my conviction was unshakable—yes, so it is. And you waited for my soul to open and for me to speak about this. Yet I remained silent, because my heart was broken. Long before I learned of theosophy, but also much more recently, I had had many experiences that made me say, “I willingly accept whatever suffering life brings me, no matter how hard it may be. After all, I have been shown by the spirit that it cannot be different.” But this is something that seems to go beyond the original plan of destiny; I lack the strength to bear it, and so it kills something in me, destroys forces I should once have possessed. These experiences were mostly instances of people deliberately abusing my confidence, and all in the name of love. But I had the feeling that this was not only my own fault; it seemed as if the will of destiny was inflicting more on me than I could bear.

I had some vague idea of why that might be so. Once, some years ago, I heard a voice within me saying, “There are beings in the spiritual world whose work requires that human beings sustain hope, but they have no interest in seeing these hopes fulfilled—on the contrary.” At that point I was not fully aware of what we were later to hear about the mystery of premature death, of goals not achieved, and so forth.

Then, however, I bore within me a wish and a hope that seemed like a proclamation from the spiritual world. This wish and this hope had made it possible for me to bear the unbearable; they worked in me with such tremendous force that they carried me along with them. My soul was in such a condition, however, that it could neither relinquish them nor tolerate their fulfillment, or, to put it better, it could not live up to what their fulfillment would have demanded of it. Thus I could not come to clarity on what the above-mentioned experience meant for me as an earthly human being. Neither the teaching nor the teacher was enough to revive my soul; that could only be done by a human being capable of greater love than any other and thus capable of compensating for a greater lack of love.

I can no longer remain silent; it speaks in me and forces me to speak. Years ago I begged you for advice, asked for enlightenment, and your words gave me hope and comfort. I am grateful for that, but today I would no longer be able to bear it. Why did you say to me recently that I looked well, that I should persevere? Did you think I was already aware of the step you are taking now, and that I had already “gotten over it”? I was as far from that as ever.

In conclusion, I ask that you let Miss von Sivers read this letter.

Alice Sprengel

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner

Dear Dr. Steiner,

This will probably be my last letter to you; I will never turn to you again, neither in speaking nor in writing. I only want to tell you that I see no way out for myself; I am at my wits' end. As the weeks gone by have showed me, it is inconceivable that time will alleviate or wipe out anything that has happened; it will only bring to light what is hidden. Until now I have more or less managed to conceal how I feel, but I will not be able to do so indefinitely. I feel a melancholy settling in on me; being together with others and feeling their attentiveness is a torment to me, but I also cannot tolerate being alone for any length of time. I feel that everything that was to develop in me and flow into our movement through me has been buried alive.

My life stretches ahead of me, but it is devoid of any breath of air that makes life possible. And yet, in the darkest hour of my existence, I feel condemned to live—but my soul will be dead. Desolation and numbness will alternate with bouts of pain. I cannot imagine how the tragedy will end. It is likely, though, that I will show some signs of sorrow in weeks to come, and it may well be that I will say and do things that will surprise me as much as anyone else. I do not have the feeling that my words will arouse any echo in you. I feel as if I were talking to a picture. Since that time early on in those seven years when I stood bodily in front of you and you appeared to me as the embodiment of the figure that had been revealed to my inner vision, you have become unreal to me. Then, your voice sounded as sweet and comforting as my own hopes. You restored my soul with mysterious hints and promises that were so often contradicted in the course of events. And when my soul wanted to unfold under that radiant gaze of yours in which I could read that you knew what had happened to me, something looked at me out of your eyes, crying “This is a temptation.”

The most terrible thing was to have what stood before me in visible human form become unreal to me. And yet, I had the feeling that there was something real behind all this. I do not know what power makes your essential being a reality for me. You know that I have struggled for my faith and will continue to do so as long as there is a glimmer of life in me. You also know how I have pleaded with that Being whose light and teachings you must bring to those who suffer the terrible fate of being human, pleaded that whatever guilt may flow on my account may not disturb you in your mission, and I have the feeling that I have been heard. Nevertheless, the shadow of what has happened to me will fall across your path, just as it will darken my future earthly lives. That shadow will also fall across the continued existence of our movement and upon the destiny of our building. If the mystery dramas are ever performed again, you will have to have another Theodora, and since I will never be able to come to terms with what has happened, the very doors of the temple are closed to me in future. I wonder if, under these circumstances, there will ever again… I do not need to finish the sentence.

I sense that, on an occult level, this is a terrible state of affairs. Is there no way out?

Only a miracle can help in this case.

I am well aware that deliverance is possible, and if it were not to come, it would be terrible, and not only for me.

Let me tell you a story by way of conclusion, the story of the “soeur gardienne.” ³

During the preparations for the plays during the summer of 1913, I noticed that you were not satisfied with me, and when it was all over I felt like a sick person who knows the doctor has given up on her. That feeling never left me from then on, and I could tell you of many instances, especially in recent months, when I felt a deathly chill come over me although your words actually sounded encouraging. The feeling grew stronger whenever I encountered anyone who knew what lay ahead. Why do I feel as if someone had slapped me in the face? Don't they all look as if they were part of a plot? That's what came to mind on many occasions, but I was relatively cheerful then and put it out of my mind. But all this is just a digression.

Two summers ago, shortly before the rehearsals began, I read La Soeur Gardienne. I had always assumed that Miss von Sivers would play the title role. On reading it, however, I began to doubt that the role would suit her; in fact, it seemed to me that she would not even want to play that part. And then I noticed how the figure came alive within me—it spoke, it moved in me. It was my role. If only I were allowed to play it! I saw what it would mean to me, and it was too beautiful to be true. Then invisible eyes looked at me, and I heard, “They will not give you that part, so resign yourself.” In my experience, that voice had always been correct. In view of the existing situation, I said to myself, “Dr. Steiner knows as well as I do that I had this experience; he must have good reasons for arranging things this way in spite of it—and as far as Miss von Sivers is concerned, I must have been mistaken—the whole thing must simply be another one of the incomprehensible disappointments that run like a red thread through my life.”

My soul collapsed; I behaved as calmly as I could, but that did not seem to be good enough. Your behavior as well as Miss von Sivers' was totally incomprehensible to me. They were looking everywhere for someone, anyone, to take the title role, and no one seemed to think of me; anyone else seemed more desirable. And yet people were making comments about how strange it was that I had nothing to do in that play. I held back, because at one point I was really afraid I would have to play a different role. Performances have been more or less the only occasions in my life where I could breathe freely, so to speak, where I could give of myself. But that was only true when I played parts that lived in me, like Theodora and Persephone. But when a role didn't sit well with me, it increased the pressure I was living under for quite some time. That is why I was not as unconcerned about these things as others might be; for me it was a matter of life and death. In the midst of all this tension something befell me that I had already experienced countless times before in many different situations and against which I have always been defenseless. My soul crumples as soon as it happens. Once again, “it” looked at me and said, “This is a lesson for you!” (or sometimes it said “a test” or “an ordeal”).

I felt the effects in my soul of countless experiences, repeated daily, hourly, going back to my earliest childhood. I do not know why my surroundings have always been tempted to participate wrongfully in my inner life. Only here and only very recently have I been able to ward this off, but it has forced me into complete isolation. What my foster parents, teachers, playmates, friends, and even strangers used to do to see what kind of a face I would make or to guess at how I would react! And much more than that. As I said, these experiences were so frequent that I could not deal with them; they suffocated me. Mostly I took it all calmly, thinking they didn't know any better. Now, however, in the situation I described, these semi-conscious memories played a trick on me—and I was overcome by anger. And then this summer, a year later, I had to relive the whole thing. And it occurred to me that I should have told you about what went before it.

As I said, those words “This is a lesson for you” always made me stiffen and freeze. When I look back on my life, it seems as if a devilish wisdom had foreseen all the possibilities life would bring to me in these last few years, and as if this intelligence had done its utmost to make me unfit for them. I could watch it at work, and yet was powerless to do anything. Much could be said about why that happened. But nothing in my own soul or in any single soul could ever help me over this abyss. Only the spark leaping from soul to soul, the spark that is so weak now, so very weak, can make the miracle happen now…

February 5

I have just read over what I wrote, and now I wonder, is it really all right for everything to happen as I described? That is how it would have to happen if everything stays as it is now. But don't we all three feel how destiny stands between us? Can it really be that there is one among us who does not know what has to happen next? That will bring many things to light; the course of events to come depends on what had been one person's secret. This is truly a test, but not only for me. What was hidden shall be revealed.

I still have one thing to say to you, my teacher and guide: even though the tempter looks out of your eyes, there have been times when I experienced with a shudder that what was revealed to me also meant something to you, something that has not been given its due. However, this must happen and will happen—you know that well, and so does

The Keeper of the Seal

Excerpt from a letter from Alice Sprengel to Marie Steiner
(undated; received on August 21, 1915. Cf. p. 139 and p. 160.)

I know that people who have “occult experiences” are a calamity as far as the people in positions of responsibility in our movement are concerned, and understandably so, but still, that is what our movement is there for—to come to grips with things like that.

The relationship between you and Dr. Steiner is not the point right now; no, it is the relationship between you and myself. However, your civil marriage unleashed a disaster for me, one that I had feared and seen coming for years—not in its actual course of events, you understand, but in its nature and severity. That is to say, for years I had seen something developing between my teacher and me, something to which we can indeed apply what we have heard in the last few days, though not for the first time. It has a will of its own and laws of its own and cannot be exorcised with any clever magic word. As I said, I had sufficient self-knowledge to know what had to come if nothing happened to prevent it.

Three years ago, like a sick person seeking out a physician, I asked Dr. Steiner for a consultation. There was something very sad I had to say during that interview, and I have had to say it frequently since then: Although I could follow his teachings, I could not understand anything of what affected me directly or of what happened to me. I must omit what brought me to the point of saying this, since I do not know how much you know about my background and biography. I was not able to express my need, and Dr. Steiner made it clear that he did not want to hear about it. The following summer, however, we were graced with the opportunity to perform The Guardian of the Threshold; in it a conversation takes place between Strader and Theodora, a conversation that reflected in the most delicate way the very thing that was oppressing me. Perhaps Dr. Steiner did not “intend” anything of the sort; nevertheless, it is a fact. Perhaps it was meant as an attempt at healing. I do not understand…

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.

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.

I am very glad that we can meet here today and take a break, so to speak, for a while from the work on our new building in Dornach.¹ But I thought it would be impossible to gather here so near our building without also discussing anthroposophical matters. I hope we can do this more often in the course of the year; otherwise our friends working on the building will not have as many opportunities to attend such meetings as they do when they are not working on our building.

Let us start with some thoughts on the life of the spirit that might be useful in considering what meaning spiritual science and living with anthroposophy can have for us, for our soul. People new to anthroposophical thinking, feeling, and perception may think we should not worry about the life of the spirit, about the spiritual world, since we enter the spiritual world anyway after death (even a materialist might say this) and will there learn all we need to know about it. Why should we not be satisfied in this life between birth and death simply to do what is necessary for life in the physical world; why is it wrong when we just fulfill our duties in the physical world, and leave matters concerning the spiritual world in the realm of the uncertain and indefinite? One could hear these words often during the time when the tide of materialism engulfed human development, especially in the last third of the nineteenth century. And it was by no means the most morally reprehensible souls who said: While on earth, let us concentrate on our tasks here and leave the rest for the world we enter after death.

Now, let us talk about something that can be grasped immediately by anyone who begins to concern himself with—I do not even want to say spiritual science—but with truly logical thinking. We actually spend only part of our time between birth and death in the physical world, namely, our waking time. And even people who have not yet thought much about the spiritual world, but who can think logically, would have to admit that with our conscious mind we know as little about life in sleep as we do about life after death. And certainly no one can deny that we continue to live in sleep—unless such a person were prepared to accept that we really die every evening and are created anew each morning. That is unlikely, but the truly logical person will be equally unable to accept that the whole human being is really present in a sleeping body lying in bed.

The fact that we sleep regularly should at least make people think. And then they will be motivated to reflect on what spiritual science has to offer. In particular, the natural sciences will more and more realize that our soul is not present in our physical body when we sleep. In fact, they will reach this conclusion on their own before the end of this century of scientific development. Then they will look to spiritual science for answers to their questions. They will be forced by their own conclusions to realize that our soul-spiritual being is really not connected with our physical body when we are sleeping. It will then become ever more important for people in the twentieth century to know something about sleep. Therefore let us begin today and get an idea of what people in our century will have to know about the nature of sleep.

We know from our studies in spiritual science that when we fall asleep, two members of our being, the ego and the astral body, leave the physical and etheric bodies. Where are the ego and the astral body when we are asleep? To begin with, we can say they are in the spiritual world. Of course, we are always in the spirit realm, because the latter is not separated from the physical world, but surrounds us just as air envelops us everywhere. We are always in the spiritual world, even when we are awake.

However, we inhabit it in a different way when we are asleep than when we are awake. Now, it may be sufficient for the immediate needs of spiritual science to describe this situation by saying that in sleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric bodies. But then we would actually be telling only half the truth. It is the same as saying the sun sets here at night; because the sun in fact sets then only for us in Europe. We know this does not apply to all the inhabitants of the earth. Fundamentally, the ego and astral body leave our physical and etheric bodies properly, we might say, completely, only after death. In sleep they actually leave only the blood and nervous system. But when the “sun” of our being, namely, the ego and astral body, sets in relation to our blood and nervous system, which they penetrate during the day, it rises for the other half of our being, that is, for the other organs.

Our ego and astral body do just what the sun does, which shines here during the day and when it sets for us, it rises for the people on the other side of the earth. When ego and astral body “set” for our blood and nervous system, they rise for the other organs and are linked all the more strongly with them.

These other organs, to which our ego and astral body are connected when we sleep, have been constructed out of the spirit, as has everything else in the world. And the remarkable fact is that while we are sleeping, we strongly influence these other organs of our body with our ego and astral body. During the day, our ego and astral body work strongly upon our blood and nervous system, but they influence our other organs, all those not part of the blood and nervous system but which affect the blood from the nerves, when we are asleep.

From this follows that it is of some consequence how we enter sleep with our ego and astral body. Materialists will not care much about what happens in sleep to their ego and astral body, which they never mention anyway. However, those who understand these things will know that the organs that are not part of the blood and nervous system and do not manifest in our conscious existence are dependent on those aspects of our ego and astral body that are active in sleep.

Let me illustrate this with an obvious example. As we know, people today are haunted by a fear we can compare with the medieval fear of ghosts. It is the fear of germs. Objectively, both states of fear are the same. Both fit their respective age: People of the Middle Ages held a certain belief in the spiritual world; therefore quite naturally they had a fear of spiritual beings. The modern age has lost this belief in the spiritual world; it believes in material things. It therefore has a fear of material beings, be they ever so small. Objectively speaking, the greatest difference we might find between the two periods is that ghosts are at any rate sizable and respectable. The tiny germs, on the other hand, are nothing much to write home about as far as frightening people is concerned. Now of course I do not mean to imply by this that we should encourage germs, and that it is good to have as many as possible. That is certainly not the implication. Still, germs certainly exist and ghosts existed also, especially as far as those people who held a real belief in the spiritual world are concerned. Thus, they do not even differ in terms of reality.

However, the important point we want to make today is that germs can become dangerous only if they are allowed to flourish. Germs should not be allowed to flourish. Even materialists will agree with this statement, but they will no longer agree with us if we proceed further and, from the standpoint of proper spiritual science, speak about the most favorable conditions for germs. Germs flourish most intensively when we take nothing but materialistic thoughts into sleep with us. There is no better way to encourage them to flourish than to enter sleep with only materialistic ideas, and then to work from the spiritual world with the ego and the astral body on those organs that are not part of the blood and the nervous system. The only other method that is just as good is to live in the center of an epidemic or endemic illness and to think of nothing but the sickness all around, filled only with a fear of getting sick. That would be equally effective. If fear of the illness is the only thing created in such a place and one goes to sleep at night with that thought, it produces afterimages, Imaginations impregnated with fear. That is a good method of cultivating and nurturing germs. If this fear can be reduced even a little by, for example, active love and, while tending the sick, forgetting for a time that one might also be infected, the conditions are less favorable for the germs.

These issues are not raised in anthroposophy merely to play on human egotism, but to describe the facts of the spiritual world. This concrete case demonstrates that in real life we cannot avoid dealing with the spiritual world, because it is the basis for our actions between going to sleep and waking up. If people were given thoughts that lead them away from materialism and spur them on to active love out of the spirit, it would serve the future of humanity better. Then infinitely more productive work could be achieved than through all the preparations now being developed by materialistic science against germs. In the course of this century, the insight has to spread more and more widely that the spiritual world is by no means irrelevant to our physical life, but is of essential importance to it because we are in the spiritual world between going to sleep and waking up, and continue to affect the physical body from there. Even if this is not immediately obvious, it is nevertheless true.

Now, we will have to get used to the fact that the direct healing powers of spiritual science have to work through the human community if we are to see these matters in the right light. What does it mean that some individual here or there enters the spiritual world in sleep with thoughts turned toward the realm of the spirit, while all around other people nourish and nurture the germ world with their materialistic thoughts, materialistic feelings, and with fears, which are always connected with materialism? What is the real nature of germs? Well, here we come to a subject essential for human life. When we see the air around us filled with different species of birds and the water filled with fishes, when we observe the life forms that creep along the earth and others frolicking on it and revealing themselves to our senses, we are looking at beings we can correctly describe as creatures of the developing Godhead in one form or another, even if they are occasionally harmful. But in the case of germ-like creatures resident and active in other living beings, in plants, animals, or humans, we are dealing with creations of Ahriman. To understand the existence of such creatures correctly we must know that they express spiritual facts, namely the relationship between human beings and Ahriman. This relationship is established through a materialistic attitude and purely egotistical states of fear. We see the conditions allowing the existence of such parasitic beings correctly if we realize that they are a symptom of Ahriman intervening in the world.

Clearly, then, it is not a matter of indifference whether we take materialistic or spiritual ideas with us into the spiritual world when we fall asleep. As soon as we realize this, we can no longer claim it is irrelevant whether or not we know of the spirit in this world. We have to start at a specific point if we really want to understand the great importance of spiritual scientific research for our life between birth and death.

It will become increasingly clear to us how this earthly life is connected with spiritual life. We rely on nature, which is on a lower level than we are, for our nourishment. For some time after death, the dead derive their nourishment from the ideas and the unconscious emotions that we here on earth take into sleep with us. Those who have died perceive a tremendous difference between people who in their waking life are filled only with materialistic feelings and ideas and also take them into sleep, and others who are wholly filled with spiritual ideas while awake and who continue to be filled with them in sleep. The two types of people are as different in their effect on the dead as a barren region where no food can grow, where people would starve, and a fruitful area that offers nourishment in abundance. For many years after death, the dead draw a vitality from the souls sleeping here on earth filled with spiritual content, a vitality that is similar, only transposed into the spiritual realm, to what we draw in our physical life from the beings of the kingdoms of nature below us. We literally turn ourselves into fruitful pastures for the dead when we fill ourselves with the ideas of spiritual science. And we turn ourselves into barren ground and starve the dead if we take only materialistic ideas and attitudes into sleep.

It is not out of the enthusiasm that leads to the establishment of many other associations and societies that we speak of spiritual science in these times. Rather, the urge to speak about it comes out of necessity and the heartfelt realization that in the twentieth century people will need it. Regardless of outer circumstances, those who fully understand how much the world needs spiritual science cannot help but talk about its results and share it with their fellow human beings. The power of the words at our disposal seems much too weak to meet the necessity of making spiritual science ever more available to those who would otherwise sink deeper and deeper into materialism.

Let us think about the nature of our relationship to the dead we were connected with in life, whom we can clearly visualize, and of whom we often think. What is our relationship to those who have died, apart from offering them spiritual nourishment by taking spiritual thoughts into sleep? What is our relationship with the dead in waking life?

If the dead draw nourishment from the content of our souls in sleep, then every thought that enters the spiritual world and is concerned with it and its beings can be perceived by the dead. On the other hand, if we do not cultivate such thoughts, the dead are deprived of them. Ideas related only to the material world, to things in nature, live in our souls in such a way that the dead cannot perceive them. These ideas, however scholarly or wise, are meaningless for the dead. As soon as we have thoughts about the spiritual world, not only the living but also the dead have immediate access to them. That is why we have often recommended that our friends read silently to an individual with whom they were closely connected and who has passed on to the spiritual world. One forms an image of the person and then, while thinking about him or her, one reads on a subject related to the spiritual world. The dead can then participate in the process, which is important. Although the dead are in the world we know through spiritual science, thoughts about the spiritual world must be produced on earth. The dead must perceive more than the spiritual world around them; they need the thoughts of those who live on earth, thoughts that for them are like perceptions.

The most important and the most beautiful thing we can give the dead is to read to them in the way I have just described. We can give something to the dead by reading on a spiritual subject. And if you doubt that this is useful, since the deceased is in the spiritual world anyway, just think that we can be surrounded by things and beings in the physical world, yet may not understand them. The understanding has to be acquired. Thus, although the deceased is in the spiritual world, thoughts from earth have to flow to him. Illuminating thoughts must flow up to those regions where the dead dwell, just as rain streams down from the clouds as a blessing to the physical world.

All these examples show that it is infinitely important even for the physical world to experience the spiritual world in thought. Obviously, we cannot wait until after death for knowledge about the spiritual world. In truth, a thorough study of the spiritual world shows us that we are not on earth for nothing; we are here to learn something that can be learned only on earth—a possession of such value that the living can give it even to the dead.

The close connection between our earth existence and life immediately after death also manifests in many other respects, but it is difficult to talk about this connection in concrete terms, because the words can so easily be misunderstood. People are greatly inclined to prejudice, and whenever a subject, such as the spiritual world and its beings, is discussed, certain motives of the heart provoke misunderstandings. When I tell of an individual case where there is this or that connection between a person's life here on earth and after death, people all too easily jump to the wrong conclusions out of a very understandable self-centeredness and apply the description of a particular case to themselves. They are tempted to think that things are quite different in their case; therefore, they will not experience something this beautiful after death. Instead of deriving satisfaction from the events described, the listeners out of egotism feel that their experience will not be equally exceptional after death.

As soon as we do more than just speak in general terms and deal with specific cases, we must develop selflessness so we can observe someone else's destiny without drawing conclusions about our own life. Then we will not worry that if the same does not happen to us, we are missing out on what is being described. These and similar reactions provide grounds for misunderstandings, which I want to avoid.

A short time ago, a very dear friend of ours died, and many of us attended his cremation.² He would have celebrated his forty-third birthday tomorrow, on May 6. In the final years of his life, he suffered much. I would like to tell here, parenthetically as it were, a wonderful story from his last years as his wife told it to me.³ During his great suffering, our friend fought not against admitting to himself that he had to suffer, but against saying that he was ill. He was not ill, he said. He suffered, yes, but he was not ill, and he was adamant that such a statement should not be taken as quibbling but as something meaningful. This definition, “I suffer, but I am not ill,” arose from his awareness that what he carried within him as spiritual science, what supported and carried him inwardly, defeated all attacks of illness. He was aware that he suffered, but the health of his soul is so great that, when he compared it to his physical condition, he could not call himself ill. This definition is very important and well-suited to permeate our soul as a feeling.

Anyway, we saw how the person concerned spent his last years on earth in a sick body, in a suffering body. Yet he did not see himself as sick but only as suffering. If we compare that with the spiritual life that has now begun for our friend, we will have a worthy image of what connects our earth existence with life after death. It is a fact of the spiritual world that a series of Imaginations was prepared in his body, a body that showed the symptoms of illness. A series of Imaginations, powerful Imaginations, lived, so to speak, in the sick limbs. He was completely filled with the content of the spiritual worlds. They lived in him in such a way that they worked on all those organs we are usually not as aware of as we are of our brain and nervous system, that is, organs we experience on a more subconscious level. These powerful Imaginations lived in these organs, and all the more so, the more outwardly ill these organs became. They prepared themselves and now face the soul of the deceased as a mighty tableau of the spiritual world. Now he is living in the images that were trapped in his sick organs, especially in his final years. They prepared themselves in such intensity that they now surround him as his spiritual world.

It is impossible to see more beautiful worlds, or to see the spiritual cosmos more perfectly and more beautifully, than those that blossom and unfold in spiritual art, which cannot be observed better anywhere else than through such a situation. Here, on the physical plane, an artist can create in beauty a piece of the world, so that the image on canvas or in marble lets us see more of the world than we do on our own. All of this, however, pales into insignificance in comparison to the spiritual world seen as it is and also as it arises and blossoms forth from the soul of the deceased who has been prepared by his karma in the way I have described. How he was prepared will be clear from his poetic works, which are now being printed and will appear soon.⁴ His poetry reveals that this kind of spiritual life and passage into the spiritual world after death are intimately connected with what we have for many years called the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse, in the sense spiritual science speaks of it, is beautifully alive in our friend's poetry.

In this connection I want to add something that can truly lead us to feel the relationship between the world of our earthly life and the one we pass through between death and a new birth. I will not present this connection with abstract thoughts, but so you can grasp it at the level of feeling. You see, one can be either stupid or clever here on the physical plane; one can even be a scholar—in the life after death it is of little importance whether one was stupid, clever, or learned if all these qualities relate only to the things of the physical world. Our thoughts about the material world may be ever so clever; they will be of no use to us once we have passed through death. They will then no longer have any meaning. After death we need thoughts, ideas, and feelings that do not relate to the physical world, because only those have meaning then.

Now, I would like to put this in a somewhat grotesque, paradoxical way. Do not be put off by the paradox; what I want to say will become clear immediately. Let us assume that someone refuses to have any thoughts that are not called forth by sensory perception. As soon as anything impinges on him and thoughts begin to develop, he says: I do not want you. I proceed only on the basis of what my eyes see and my ears hear. That is what I want to think about. Stop bothering me with anything else; I will not bother with it ... Such a person does not accumulate any strength that can be used after death. He is blind when entering the world between death and new birth.

Let us assume now that someone else has a lively imagination, but cannot be bothered to approach spiritual science and learn things slowly and gradually. He finds it much easier to develop ideas about the spiritual world from his imagination, to fantasize about the spiritual world. This person has ideas concerning the sense world as well as all kinds of fantasies about the realm of the spirit. Such an individual would not enter the spiritual world as a blind person, but will have soul forces that will enable him to see in the spiritual world. However, such people will be as we are when our vision in the physical world is impaired and we see things inaccurately as a result. Such inaccurate vision is a lot worse in the spiritual world than on the physical plane because there it leads to confusion at every turn. What I have just said, even if it seems grotesque at first, shows us that we need ideas reaching beyond the life of the senses if we really want to become citizens of the spiritual world, as we must. And unless we get our bearings from beyond the sense world, we will live in the spiritual world in a crippled state, as do those who take in only ideas related to the sensory realm and those who allow their imagination to run wild.

Various founders of religions appeared throughout history to prevent people from having thoughts triggered purely by physical objects or by fantasies about the spiritual world. If we look at these personalities and the teachings they gave humanity, we find that the aim of all these religious founders was to offer people ideas about the super-sensible world that would allow them to enter it healthy and whole, not crippled. The founders of our religions provided ideas that met the needs of their particular time and culture.

Our age is different from the past and requires us to grow up into mature human beings. Please do not take this in a superficial, merely external sense, but in a deeply inward one. We have to reach maturity and find the path into the spiritual world through our souls. The ancient founders of our religions spoke to a humanity that was not yet mature. They addressed people at a stage through which all our souls have also passed. These ancient religious leaders knew their times, and also knew that they could not speak in the same way to a humanity moving further toward the future. For humanity must develop toward maturity and independence.

If people of ancient times had either restricted themselves to sense impressions or had reached for the products of their imagination, in both cases they would have entered the spiritual world crippled or at the very least in a confused state. At that point a leader appeared, bringing true ideas from the spiritual world. People then said that they themselves did not gain access to the spiritual world through sensory perception or use of the imagination, but rather through Zarathustra, Buddha, or Krishna, who stimulated thoughts in them that allowed them to enter the realm of the spirit.⁵ In our time human beings must come of age, regardless of whether the ego causes confusion or blindness. The Mystery of Golgotha took place so that we can find the way into the spiritual world as independent beings. Religious leaders no longer appear in history as they did in earlier times.

Those who compare Christ to the ancient religious teachers do not understand anything about him. In the first place, Christ worked through a deed, the ancient religious leaders through their teachings. To describe him merely as a teacher of humanity means not knowing at all who Christ is. The essential thing about him is the deed he performed, which began as a consequence of his baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion on Golgotha. What was done there for humanity is spiritually all-important. What happened there is what can permeate human souls ever since then, namely, the experience St. Paul described as “Not I, but Christ in me.” Indeed, Christ has become the path into the spiritual world because he brought it into this world. He brought us the spiritual world we need if we are not to be crippled or blind after death.

It is quite possible these days to deny Christ and claim that there is no evidence that Christ lived in the physical world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, people have even produced evidence showing there was no historical Christ. But with that they merely prove that they missed the point. If Christ had chiseled into a rock for all future generations, “I was here,” then those future generations would have known he existed from the sensory world, and they would not have needed to believe it. His deep significance, the possibility of redemption, is precisely that this was not the case, that we cannot comprehend him through our senses but have to accept him with the forces of the spirit. Seen in this light, we find Christ intimately connected with those things that even here on earth lift human beings beyond the sense-perceptible world into the spiritual realm. None of this exists for those who cannot raise themselves to the spiritual world, because they cannot escape their doubts.

In this context it can be a great relief for someone fully involved in modern culture, in science and art, to come across a view of Christ that is appropriate to our modern civilization, namely the anthroposophical view of Christ presented in spiritual science. Much can be learnt from it, for example, how to view the physical world correctly. Oh, the physical world—where is it headed these days? I hinted at some of these things recently in a public lecture, but now I can be more explicit.⁶ Of course, we have to admire materialist civilization and all the achievements of technology, industry, and so on. An immense amount of intellectual energy has flowed into these things; they have taken up a great deal of human energy. But who benefits from these intellectual efforts? Insofar as they satisfy the material needs of modern humanity, they serve Ahriman. Christ Jesus experienced the temptation by Ahriman. Ordinary human souls could certainly not survive the sudden shock of such an experience. For us the temptation has to be diluted. But as a consequence of this dilution of temptation, Ahriman can say to us: Yes, think only with the power of your science, with all those things you can discover through science applied to technology, industry, and so on. Use only those things for your thinking and apply them to nothing but physical experience; that suits me fine. It fits in well with my aims, says Ahriman, if you are unable to see me. You might well despise reason and knowledge, the supreme achievements of human beings; thus you are absolutely mine—at least as long as you do not see me. I will instill the drive in you to use reason and knowledge only for earthly things!

Something else is required to counterbalance the service we render Ahriman. It is therefore important that we gather everything modern technology and so on can accomplish to build something with it that is not to serve our outer existence, but only our spiritual life.

In ancient times, people presented sacrifices to the gods, the first fruits of the field and of the herd. I do not intend to talk about the meaning of sacrifice today, but you can see what it could signify presented in a form appropriate to modern times. When the first fruits had been sacrificed to the gods, the people partook of the remainder. Spiritual science is certainly not based on false asceticism. It will not be guilty of the absurdity of ranting and raving against modern culture with all its material blessings. On the contrary, it recognizes their value. But if it wants to avoid serving only Ahriman, it has to sacrifice something of the first fruits of this external material culture to the gods.

So you see, there is a profound thinking underlying the building that is growing outside on the hill at Dornach: We want to offer the first fruits of modern civilization to the gods. Everything is different now from the way it was in the times our souls passed through in previous incarnations. And we have to understand the nature of our current task just as we understood what we had to do in our earlier incarnations when we were guided by spiritual luminaries. That is especially difficult now because we have to take into account not only the nature of our time but also our soul qualities. In addition, we can no longer rely on the external authority that supported the founders of religions; we have to work with quite different forces. Christ was the Word; in the same way true spiritual science wishes to work only through the word and must not use any other means.

Such reflections give us an insight into the connection between the spiritual world and our world here on earth. And no matter where we begin, we see the Mystery of Golgotha radiating toward us as the heart and soul of such reflections. But we must not forget that we have to become mature, truly mature, so that we can understand what spiritual science is meant to be. We must never forget that it must exist because humanity must come of age.

It is completely true that humanity descended from higher spiritual regions and has moved away from the old atavistic clairvoyance by developing a world view based on reason and systematic thinking. We have to take this progress in evolution seriously. We must realize we live at a time when it is our mission to develop our thinking, to advance through our thinking, and to learn through studying. Spiritual science is our basis, our point of departure. We must try to immerse ourselves in these ideas so that they stimulate within us what our souls need in the future. What spiritual science offers can be understood by everyone. Those who claim one cannot understand the contents of spiritual science, but must believe it, speak without knowing how these things really are.

We must not be misled when we meet people who have not advanced by means of intellectual understanding, but have certain psychic abilities that seem to appear spontaneously. Based on our understanding of the mission of spiritual science, we know that souls can now think only because the clairvoyance of an earlier age has been suppressed. People with natural clairvoyance, which was not acquired through inner effort, must be seen as persons who have remained at an earlier evolutionary stage and who should therefore receive special care in our Society, rather than be considered particularly advanced. It would be an incorrect judgment if we were to consider such souls particularly mature, as having experienced particularly high incarnations. People with a natural gift of clairvoyance have gone through far less than those who are thinkers nowadays. These things have to be properly understood in our Society. Then it would be possible (and it is my duty to say this) for our Society to be a place where such souls with psychic powers can find care and be guided on the right path. Our Society could give them what they cannot get anywhere else: order in their soul. But to make that possible most of the members of our Society must have a profound inner knowledge of the mission of true spiritual science in the present. If that happened, then the case that so saddened us in recent days could not recur. I am referring to a member, who joined in the belief our Society would care for clairvoyant psychic forces, but then found here a captive audience and took on the role of a prophet. Such an event opens the door to all those things that, if they were to prevail, would turn our Society into the exact opposite of what it should be according to the intentions of the spiritual forces supporting it.

Unfortunately, we have had to suffer the case of ..., who came from a country in the north. He might have become a good member if he had worked quietly on developing his psychic powers. Instead, he was immediately surrounded by a kind of aura. He presented himself everywhere as a healer in a way we can only consider regrettable. It became necessary to announce that he could no longer be considered a member of our Society. For it would be turned into the exact opposite of what it should be if we failed to carefully draw attention to psychic phenomena that are not imbued with true spiritual power, which, after all, is the true power of Christ. Christ, not psychic powers, must work in us. These circumstances must be handled so as to make it clear that our Society will have nothing to do with this. It knows no other sanction than the one used in the last few days. Unfortunately, a step had to be taken we otherwise oppose in principle: a member had to be expelled.

This cannot be separated from a serious and worthy concept of the mission of the Anthroposophical Society. And certainly you will understand that it is only with great sorrow one lives through the events that had to be lived through here in the last few days. We are in principle opposed to all expulsions and yet could not avoid expelling someone in such a case. It will happen less and less frequently if our dear friends continue to take to heart the things that have been said so often and that were also the subject of tonight's talk. With that I will conclude my remarks, my dear friends, and entrust them to your souls.

• 1. Work on the construction of the first Goetheanum in Dornach. Started in 1913, it was destroyed by arson on New Year's Eve 1922/23.
• 2. Christian Morgenstern May 6, 1871 – March 31, 1914. See Lecture Two, note 8.
• 3. Christian Morgenstern, Alles um des Menschen Willen: Briefe, (Munich, Germany: Piper, 1962), letter of January 22, 1914, to a young girl, p. 398.
• 4. Morgenstern, Wir fanden einen Pfad. See Lecture Two, note 9.
• 5. Zarathustra, 628–551 B.C. Persian religious leader. Buddha, Siddharta Gautama, 563–483 B.C. Founder of Buddhism. Krishna, Indian deity, appears in Bhagavad-Gita as teacher of Arjuna.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner, “Homunkulus,” public lecture, Berlin, March 26, 1914, in Geisteswissenschaft als Lebensgut, vol. 63 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1959).