The Rudolf Steiner Archive

During the past weeks we have been seeking to understand more and more what it means to say that the present age stands in the sign of the dominion of Michael. Thus we were led last time to show how the karma of a human being may work itself out in reality. We showed how difficulties of karma may even go so far that a human being cannot find the way between death and a new birth to live through all that is necessary for the weaving of karma by partaking in the events of the starry world.

So long as our conception is really limited to what happens here in the physical life on earth it is of course difficult for us to receive what we must receive if we are to take the idea of karma in real earnest. But we are living in the age of great decisions and great decisions must take place to begin with in the spiritual field. And in the spiritual field they will be rightly prepared, if out of the deeper anthroposophical spirit, single human beings have the courage to take their study of the spiritual world in real earnest—so much so that they can receive what is brought from the spiritual world and make use of it to understand the phenomena of the outer, physical life.

Hence for a number of months past I have not recoiled from bringing to you detailed facts out of the spiritual life, facts well fitted to enable you to understand the spiritual configuration of the present time.

To-day I will bring forward a few more things as it were to illustrate what I shall then have to say next Sunday, probably in conclusion, showing the whole karma of the spiritual life of the present time in its connection with the tasks and aims of the Anthroposophical Movement.

To begin with, however, I shall bring forward to-day certain facts whose connection with our main subject you will not at once perceive. Nevertheless you will recognise at once how deeply they characterise the spiritual life of the past. Many of these things will seem strange and far-fetched, but life in its totality bears many a paradox, seen from an earthly point of view.

The examples I shall choose to-day are not ordinary ones. For as a rule, a succession of earthly lives is not a continuous succession of historic personalities. It is not generally such that the continuous chain would be visible at all to superficial observation. Nevertheless there are certain successive earthly lives such that if we describe them one after another, we are at the same time giving descriptions of history.

It is seldom the case in such a high degree. But if we do find individualities for whom it is the case, if we can point to the several incarnations as to historic personalities, such an individuality enables us to learn a very great deal about karma. I have already given isolated cases of this kind as you know.

To-day I will tell you about a personality who lived at the end of the first Christian century. Already at that time he was a philosopher. As a philosopher he was most evidently one of the Sceptics, that is to say, he was one of those who really think nothing in the world is certain.

He belonged to that sceptical School which though it already saw the dawn of Christianity, stood altogether on the ground that it is impossible to gain certain knowledge, and above all that it is quite impossible to say with certainty whether a Divine Being could assume a human form or the like.

This individuality—his name in that incarnation is of no great importance, he was a certain “Agrippa”—this individuality in his incarnation in that time, gathered up into himself as it were, the whole of Greek Scepticism. Indeed if we use the word not in a contemptuous sense, but as a technical term, he was one whom we should even call a Cynic. I mean a Cynic not in his conception of life, for in that he was a Sceptic, but a Cynic in his way of taking things. For he was really very fond of making light and joking about most important things that met him in the world. In that life Christianity passed him by, leaving no trace. But a certain mood remained with him as he passed through the gate of death. This mood was not so much a result of his scepticism, for that was his philosophic conviction, a thing that one does not carry very far after one's death. But it lay in the deeper habits of his soul and spirit as an easy-going way of taking important events of life, a certain mischievous delight when things in the world which look important turn out to be not quite so important. This fundamental mood he carried with him into the life after death. Now as I told you yesterday, having passed through the gate of death, man first enters a sphere which leads him by and by into the region of the Moon, where there is the colony of the primeval wise Teachers of mankind. They had once lived on Earth though not in a physical body, nor had they taught in the way we conceive the teaching of later times. They had wandered over the Earth in an etheric body only. And their teaching was such that one man or another who was to receive instruction from them in the Mysteries felt it like an indwelling of these wise Beings of primeval times. He had the feeling: the wise Being has been with me just now. And as an outcome of this indwelling he then felt an inner inspiration. Such was the manner of the teaching given to a human being in those times.

We are referring to the most ancient time of earthly evolution, when the great primeval Teachers wandered upon Earth in their etheric bodies. Then, if we may put it so, they followed the Moon which had already separated as a heavenly body from the Earth. And it is their region which the human being passes, like the first station in his cosmic path of evolution after death. It is they who explain the laws of karma to him, for they have to do with all the wisdom of the past.

Now when the above-mentioned personality, the philosopher“Agrippa,” came into that region, it happened that there dawned upon him most intensely, the meaning of a former incarnation. The characteristic of that former incarnation which now made so great an impression on him as he looked back after death, was this, that in it he had still been able to see a very great deal of how the cults of Asia Minor and Africa proceeded out of the ancient Mysteries.

Now in this Christian time in his super-sensible life, this individuality went once more, with great intensity, through all that he had once undergone on earth in connection with many a decadent system of the Mysteries in Asia Minor. And so it came about that he now saw supersensibly, how in the ancient Mysteries the Christ had been expected (you must remember what I said, that in his life on earth he had not been touched by Christianity).

Now the Mysteries which he had witnessed—I mean the cults that proceeded from the Mysteries—had already grown external. He had in fact received the impressions of cults and religious institutions which were transmitted in the first centuries A.D., in a Christianised metamorphosis of course, to Roman Christianity. Please observe very carefully what I now mean. The point is that in this region after his death, there was prepared in this individuality an understanding for the external features of the cults and clerical institutions which had formerly been Pagan but were arising again in the first Christian centuries and passing over into the clearly defined Roman cult and ceremony with all the ecclesiastical conceptions that were connected with it.

Now this brought about in him a very peculiar spiritual configuration. In the further course of the life between death and a new birth we see him again, elaborating his karma most especially in the region of Mercury, so that he is able to see many things, not in an inward sense but in the sense of being gifted with outward intelligence. He gains a wide sweep of vision for many facts and relationships.

As we follow this individuality further, we find him again on earth. We find him as the Cardinal who carried on the Government of Louis XIV when Louis XIV was still a child, Cardinal Mazarini. We may study the Cardinal in all his greatness and splendour and with the external conception of Christianity into which he finds his way so readily, so naturally, under the woman who was Louis XIV's guardian.

He absorbs of Christianity all the external institutions, the Christian cult, the Christian pomp and grandeur. For him all these things are surrounded, as it were, with an Eastern glamour as of Asia Minor. Indeed we may say he rules Europe like one who in a former incarnation had strongly absorbed the character of Asia Minor.

But in this life Cardinal Mazarini did indeed have occasion to be more powerfully touched by the facts and circumstances. You need only remember that it was the time of the Thirty Years' War. Remember all the things that took place proceeding from Louis XIV. There was indeed a peculiar quality in this Cardinal Mazarini. He was a great statesman with a wide sweep of vision, yet on the other hand in the midst of a certain noise and confusion. We might say that he was intoxicated by his own deeds so that they seemed deeds of magnificent skill, but not coming out of the depths of the heart.

Now this life took a peculiar course in passing through the time between death and a new birth. We can actually see how in passing again through the region of Mercury, all that this personality had done was dissolved as in a cloud of mist. But there remained with him the ideas he had absorbed about Christianity and all he had undergone by way of scepticism in relation to knowledge. These things were transformed in his life between death and a new birth.“Science can never lead us to the final truths.” An intense feeling for knowledge of which there was a suggestion already in his former passage through Mercury, came and passed away again. And there was karmically developed in his life a peculiar mentality. It was a mentality which held fast with great tenacity to penetrating ideas which he had passed through before. But while he held fast to them, he could evolve for his next life on earth very few concepts with which to master and express them. As this personality passes through the life between death and a new birth one has the feeling: Whatever will he try to do in his next incarnation? Is there anything with which he is really united? One has the feeling: he may be more or less intensely united with all kinds of things and yet again with nothing. All the antecedents are there: the preceding life of scepticism, followed by his intense life in a Christianity with all its external details along the paths by which one becomes a Cardinal. All these things are deeply embedded in him. He will become a man rich in knowledge, yet able to come forward with concepts by no means profound. Moreover the map of Europe which he once ruled over is as though blotted out. One does not know how he will find his way to it again. What will he do with it? He will be altogether at a loss with it.

Yes, my dear friends, we have to enter into such things as these; we have to study what was undergone in passing through the life between death and a new birth in order that we may not err; in order that at length exact and true knowledge may be the outcome.

This personality is re-born in the approaching age of Michael, showing, if I may put it so, a strangely double countenance. He cannot be quite a statesman, nor quite a cleric, but is drawn strongly in both directions. I am referring to Hertling, who became Chancellor of the German Reich at a great age. In karmic sequence he had to use up in this way the remnants of his Mazarini nature. All the peculiar qualities with which he came to Christianity, and entered into it, came forth again in his Christian professorship at the present time.

By this example you may see in what strange ways the men of the present time built up their present individualities in past existences.

Anyone who did not research, but merely thought things out, would of course come to absolutely different conclusions. But we only understand karma when we can take these most extreme cases and connections, seeming almost paradoxical in the world of sense. They are there none the less in the spiritual world, even as that other fact is there, which I have often mentioned—I mean that Ernst Haeckel, who so violently fought against the Church, is the re-incarnation of Abbot Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory the Great. Here we see how indifferent a matter is the external content of a man's belief or theory in earthly life, for all these things are his thoughts. But if you study Haeckel, especially in connection with what he was as Abbot Hildebrand, as Gregory—(I believe he too is included among these pictures from Chartres)—you will see that there is in fact a real dynamic sequence.

I chose the above example in order that you might see how present individualities carry the past into this present time.

If you will afterwards observe the features of the Monk Hildebrand, who became Gregory the Great and whom you know from history, you will see how wonderfully the soul-configuration of Haeckel is contained in this countenance of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great.

I will now take another example, which will probably be of great and deep value to you all. Though I almost shudder to speak of it in any easy way, yet I cannot but choose it, for it leads so infinitely deeply into the whole spiritual texture of the present time.

I will now mention another personality, of whom as I said, I almost shudder to speak in this way. And yet he is infinitely characteristic of all that is carried from the past into the present and of the way in which this happens. I have often referred—and it will be known to you from external history—to the Council of Nicæa, which was held in the 4th century, where the decision was made for Western Europe as between Aryanism and Athanasianism, and Aryanism was condemned.

It was a Council in which the important personalities were imbued with all the high scholarship of the first Christian centuries, and brought it forth. They did indeed dispute with deep and far-reaching ideas. For in that time the human soul still had quite a different mood and constitution. It was as a matter of course for the human soul to live directly within the spiritual world. And they were well able to dispute with real content and meaning as to whether Christ was the Son, of the same essence with the Father, or only of like essence with the Father. The latter was the standpoint of Aryanism. To-day we will not go into the dogmatic differences of the question. We will only bear in mind that it was a question of immensely deep and sharp-witted controversies, which were, however, fought out with the peculiar intellectualism of that time. When we to-day are clever and sharp-witted we are so as human beings. Indeed to-day, as I have often said, almost all men are clever. They are really dreadfully clever—that is to say, they can think. Is it not so? It is not saying much, but it is a fact that they can think: I may indeed be very stupid and still be able to think ... but the fact is the men of to-day can think. In those times it was not so. It was not that men could simply think, but they felt their thoughts as inspiration. He who was sharp-witted felt himself gifted by the grace of God, and his thinking was a kind of clairvoyance. It was still so even in the 4th century A.D., and those who listened to a thinker still had some feeling of the living evolution of his thought. Now there was present at the Council of Nicæa a certain personality who took an active part in these discussions, but at the end of the Council he was in a high degree disappointed and depressed. His main effort had been to bring forward the arguments for both sides. He brought forward weighty reasons both for Aryanism and for Athanasianism. And if things had gone as he wished, undoubtedly the result would have been quite different. Not a wretched compromise, but a kind of synthesis of Aryanism and Athanasianism would have been the outcome.—One should not construct history in thought, but this may be said by way of explanation.—It would probably have been a very much more intimate way of relating the divine in the inner being of man to the divine in the universe. For, in the way in which Athanasianism afterwards evolved these things, the human soul was very largely separated from its divine origin. Indeed, it was thought heretical to speak of the god in the inner being of man.

If, on the other hand, Aryanism alone had won the day, there would of course have been much talk of this god in the inner being of man. But it would not have been spoken of with the necessary depth of reverence, and above all, not with the necessary inward dignity. Aryanism alone would indeed have come to regard man at every stage as an incarnation of the god who dwells within him. But the same may be said of any animal, indeed of the whole world, of every plant, of every stone. This conception only has real value if it contains at the same time the active impulse to rise ever higher and higher in spiritual development, for then only do we find the god within. The statement that there is a divine within us at any and every stage of life can have a meaning only if we take hold of this divine in a perpetual upward striving of the self, by whom it is not yet attained.

But a synthesis of the two conceptions would undoubtedly have been the outcome if the personality to whom I now refer had been able to gain any decisive influence at the Council of Nicæa. He failed. Deeply dissatisfied, he withdrew into a kind of Egyptian hermitage, lived a most ascetic life, and was deeply imbued at that time in the 5th century with all that was the real spiritual substance of Christianity during that age. Indeed he was probably one of the best informed of Christians in his time, but he was not a wrangler. This is evident from the very way in which he came forward at the Council. He spoke as a man who quietly weighs and judges all aspects of the question, and is yet deeply enthusiastic for his cause, though not for this or that one-sided detail. He spoke as a man who—I cannot say was disgusted, that would not be the true expression—but as a man who felt his failure with extraordinary bitterness, for he was deeply convinced that good would only come for Christianity if the view for which he stood won its way through.

Thus he withdrew into a kind of hermitage. For the rest of his life he became a hermit, following however, in response to the inner impulses of his soul, a quite definite course of the inner life. It was that of investigating the origin of the inspiration of thought. His mystic penetration was in the effort to perceive whence thinking receives its inspiration. It became one great longing in him to find the source of thinking in the spiritual world, until at length he was filled through and through with this longing. And with this longing he died, without having reached any real conclusion, any concrete answer during that earthly life. No answer was forthcoming. The time was after all unfavourable.

Then, passing through the gate of death, he underwent a peculiar experience. For several decades after his death he could still look back upon his earthly life, and he saw it forever coloured by that element to which he had come at last. He saw it forever in the atmosphere of that which, looking backwards, came immediately next his death. He saw the human being thinking.

Still this was no fulfilment of the question. And this is most important. There was as yet no thought in answer to the question. But though there was no answer, he was able, after his death, to look, in marvellously clear imaginations, into the cosmic intelligence of the universe. The thoughts of the universe he did not see. He would have seen them if his longing had reached fulfilment. He did not see the thoughts of the universe, but he saw in pictures the Thinking of the universe.

Thus there lived through the journey between death and a new birth an individuality who was as in a state of equilibrium between mystic imaginative vision and his former sharp-witted thinking—a thinking, however, in perpetual flow, that had not reached its conclusion.

In the elaboration of the karma, his mystic tendency won the day to begin with. He was born again in the Middle Ages as a visionary, a woman, who unfolded truly wonderful insight into the spiritual world. For a time, the tendency of the thinker fell entirely into the background; the quality of spiritual vision was in the foreground. For this woman had wonderful visions, while at the same time she gave herself up mystically to the Christ. Her soul was penetrated, with infinite depth, by a visionary Christianity. They were visions in which the Christ appeared as the leader of peaceful hosts, not quarrelsome or contentious, but like the hosts of peace, who would spread Christianity abroad by their very gentleness—a thing which had never yet been realised on earth. It was there in the visions of this nun. It was a deep, intensive Christianity, but it found no place at all in what afterwards evolved as Christianity in its more modern form. Nevertheless during her life this nun, the seeress, came into no conflict with positive dogmatic Christianity. She herself grew out of it and grew into a deeply personal Christianity, which was afterwards simply non-existent on the earth. And thus, if I might put it so, the whole universe then faced her with the question: how should this Christianity be realised in a physical body in a new incarnation? And at the same time, long after the seeress had passed through the gate of death, there came over her again the echoes of the old intellectualism, the inspired intellectualism. The after-echoes of her visions were now, if I might put it so, idealised through and through, filled with ideas.

Then, seeking for a new human body, this individual became the individuality of Solovioff, Vladimir Solovioff.

Read the writings of Solovioff!—I have frequently described the impression they make upon a modern man and have said it again in my introduction to the German edition of his works. You may well try to feel it in his writing. You will feel how much there lies between the lines, how much of a mysticism which we may often feel even sultry and oppressive. It is a Christianity quite individual in its forms of expression. It shows quite clearly how it had to seek for a pliable, in all directions supple body, such as can be obtained only out of the Russian people.

Looking at these examples, I think one may indeed preserve the holy awe and reverence before the truths of karma, which should indeed be held sacred and virginal in the inmost depths of life. For one who has a true feeling for the contemplation of the spiritual world, these deep truths are, verily, not unworthily unveiled. I mean this in the sense of what is so often said about the sacred veils of truth, of which people say that they should never be drawn aside.

Anthroposophy has been reproached again and again, notably in theological circles, for drawing aside the veil of sacred mystery from secret and mysterious truths, and thus making them profane. But the more deeply we enter into the esoteric portions of the anthroposophical conception, the more do we feel that there can truly be no talk of profanation. On the contrary the world itself will fill us with a holy awe when we behold the lives of man one after another in the marvellous working of former into later lives. We must only not be profane in our inner life or in our way of thinking and then we shall not make such objections.

Read the writings of Solovioff against the background of the previous nun, with her wonderful visions and infinite devotion to the Being of Christ. See that ancient personality going forth with deep and bitter feelings from the Council where he had brought forward such great and important things. Discover in the soul and in the heart of this individual what I may call the twofold background of Christianity, now in its rationalistic, but inspired rationalistic form, and now again in its visionary form of seership. See all this in the background, and of a truth the lifting of the veil will not profane the secret.

A German romanticist once had the courage to think differently from all others about the famous saying of Isis:“I am that which was, that which is, and that which is to come, and my veil has no mortal yet lifted.”—To which the German romanticist replied: Then we must become immortal, that we may lift the veil!—While others all took the saying as it stood.

When we discover the truly immortal within us, the divine and spiritual, then may we draw near to many a secret without profaning it, to many a secret to which, with a lesser faith in the divine in our own being, we might indeed not draw near.

And this indicates the spirit which should go abroad ever more and more under the influence of such studies as our last and as this present one. For these spiritual studies are meant to work upon the life and action of those who bear their karma, in the way I have described, into the Anthroposophical Society.

My dear friends! The call to self-knowledge, which the soul of man can take up, when it listens impartially to all the beings and events of life, in nature and in the life of the spirit, we will once again, at the beginning of our lesson, allow to pass before our souls.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.

You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?

Does it sound weaving through time Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

We are in the midst, my dear brothers and sisters, of our souls finding the answer to this question, having gone quite far in its contemplation, along the way to the Guardian of the Threshold, to the abyss of existence. We were infused with the instruction of the Guardian of the Threshold along the way. What had stood there previously dark and dull, a person knowing that it nevertheless held his being, that it held the source of his existence, what had been before him dark and dull started to lighten, and then became bright, quite bright. Then in the brightness we heard the Guardian’s call.

See the ethereal iris’s
Light-abundant round.
Through your eyes’
Light-forming force
Let your “I” penetrate through the arc,
And then behold from yonder watch,
Color flooding the world’s chalice.

And the Angels, Archangels, and Archai allow their voices to resound upon this word of the Guardian of the Threshold, as they focus on human souls.

Sense our thoughts
Color breathing living
In the chalice's flood of light;
We carry the sensory-semblance
Into spirit-being-realms
And turn ourselves world-infused
To the service of higher spirits.

And so we see how there, through the flooding light of the world chalice, with which we became acquainted in the last lesson, the beings of the Third Hierarchy become irradiated and illuminated. We see droves of these high beings of Angels, Archangels, and Archai going forth in service to the higher spirits, to the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kryriotetes. And we become witness to the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes speaking to the beings serving them, implementing what these serving beings require for humanity.

And so the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes speak:

What you have taken up,
Enlivened from dead sensory-semblance,
We wake it in existence;
We add it to the rays of light,
So that the emptiness of matter
Will bear spirit nature
And manifest endowed with love.

And then, urged on by what is within us, we then must turn our gaze to the highest spirits, to the First Hierarchy, turning to them as they turn themselves in blessing to human beings. From there we hear:

In your worlds of will
Feel our world-wide impact;
Spirit shines in matter,
When we are thinking working;
Spirit works in matter,
When we are living willing;
World is I-willing spirit-word.

We bear witness to what beings of the higher worlds discuss among themselves, to what the highest beings pour into human souls as world-words, to what inundates human hearts, and so we must feel ourselves within this dominion-over-all, moving-through-all world light, within which we ourselves live and move.

And now we come upon a truth, perceived there where disembodied spirit-beings live their lives, where spirits think their truths, where spirits are adorned in their beauty, where the work of spirits takes spirited effect. And we come upon the grand, the all-encompassing, the spirit-world-interwoven truth: that spirit is all that is. For we appear, we live, we move in spirit. We embrace spiritual existence.

And now we think about how spirit, within which we now live, is all that is. And now we know that there also where we otherwise are in life, there also in the world of sensory show is simply spirit. Spirit is alone, is all that is. This stands now before our souls as unwavering, almighty truth: that spirit is all. And it is good for us to envision this truth in imagery before the soul. [It was drawn in red.] That, illustrated in the image, is spirit. It is only spirit. [While speaking the word “is” was written within the red drawing in various places.]

That which appears here, is. It is spirit. And what is outside this red area, is nothing. That stands before our souls. And the spirit-world says to us, here it is, here it is, here it is, here it is. Everywhere the spirit is, is something.

[Presently while speaking on, the word “nothing” was written at various places between the areas drawn in red, and further away the words “minerals”, “plants”, and “animals.”]

And where there is no spirit, is nothing. And we are duly impressed, that that is the truth. Everywhere spirit is, is something, and where spirit is not, is nothing. And yet we ask ourselves, how does it appear to us, all that seems to show itself in the world of sensory appearance, out of which we have gone forth over the Threshold here into the spiritual world, where we find the truth of existence, the spirit, emplaced before our souls? Back over there we saw what here is drawn in red as nothing. We are too weak over there, concerning what is drawn in red, to see. What remains over there residually? Nothingness! What we see over there is nothingness, whether it is called minerals, it is a sort of nothingness, whether called plants, a second sort of nothingness, whether called animals, a third sort of nothingness, and so forth.

We perceive nothingness because we are too weak to see what is something. And this nothingness we talk about as the realm of nature. That is the grand beguilement, or as we say, the grand illusion. There are only various sorts of nothingness around us, before our eyes, as we gaze about embodied in corporeality. And we have the deeply felt impression that we are living there, and giving names to what fundamentally is nothing, to what is a grand illusion. And what appears to us presently, what lives over there as nothing and to what we give names, it appears to us as a summation of names, names that we give to the state of nothingness. For in their true state all beings are simply in existence, here where we have entered, here in the spiritual world. Names assigned to nothingness over there are wasted on what is bereft of being. And beings not from the realms of gods, to which we belong, and to which we rightfully belong, such beings can take possession of the names we have wasted on the nothingness. And henceforth they bear these names.

When we are not clear about this, that here upon the earth we give names to what has no real existence, we lapse with our names into a stark, strong illusion. We must know that we are giving names to what is intrinsically nothing. That stands out presently before our souls, while we are living and moving here within the light, so that it can be felt deep, deep, deeply by the spirit-craft of our hearts, which has remained with us in crossing over. Now we know that we have drawn out of the realm of illusion into the realm of truth. Earnest solemnity, sacred earnest solemnity in regard to truth begins to have dominion in our souls.

And now we look back at the trustworthy Guardian of the Threshold, who stands at the abyss of existence. He is not speaking just now. He spoke out of the darkness. He spoke as we were just feeling the luminosity. He spoke while the luminosity grew into brilliance. Now as we stand in the brilliance astounded by the grand truth that there is only spirit, he presently does not speak, he now silently indicates how on high the beings of the higher hierarchies are speaking among themselves. And we think for a moment in regarding the spirit, that down there in life on earth we have been struck with the impression minerals, plants, animals, and physical human beings have made on us, at what the clouds have to say, at what the mountains say, at what the gushing springs are doing, at the power of lightning, at the rolling thunder, at the stars whispering world mysteries. That was what we met with along the way down there. That was our experience. Now all is silent on this side of the abyss of existence. Presently we are witnesses as the gods speak with one another, as the whole choir of angels begins to speak.

Still looking upward, we see this choir turning to the higher spirits, turning to the spirits of the Second Hierarchy in service. We gaze at the loving, serving behavior of the Angels, Archangels, and Archai as they turn to the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. We have the impression of the gathering of the Third Hierarchy in service.

We have the impression of the gathering of the Second Hierarchy in world-creating, in world-dominion, in world-illumination, and we hear what these beings, inwardly spirit illuminated, godlike in willing, and willing all that is godlike, what these beings are saying one to another.

We hear the Angels, as they allow their word to resound. Out of their care in guiding human souls they allow their word to resound.

Human beings are thinking!

That is carried by the Angels. That is what they are concerned with, in how they should be guiding human souls, for they note that there is thinking going on among human beings. They turn in supplication to the Dynamis, in order to obtain the force by means of which they can properly guide human beings in thinking.

Angels:
Human Beings are thinking!
We need the light from on high,
That we may shine in thinking.

The Dynamis from the realm of illumination, dominion, and action answer full of love, full of benevolence:

Receive¹ the light from on high,
That you may shine in thinking,
When human beings think.

And the flooding light, the force of illumination in thinking, streams forth from the Dynamis to the Angels. What the Angels receive, without human beings knowing it, illuminates within human thinking. Now we are aware of what works and moves within human thinking: the illumination of Angels! But the force of light belonging to this illumination, they have received it from the Dynamis. [The first part of the mantra was now written on the board.]

I) Angels:

There is thinking going on among human beings! That is their concern. That is what they put forth as their words of concern.

Human Beings are thinking!

Now they turn in their concern to the Dynamis:

We need the light from on high,
That we may shine in thinking.

The Dynamis answer:

Dynamis: Receive the light from on high,
That you may shine in thinking,
When human beings think.

Our spiritual gaze goes further. We see the gathering of Archangels turning in service to the spirits of the Second Hierarchy. Now they turn to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes, to these two categories of spirits of the Second Hierarchy. Angels have turned to the Dynamis, and Archangels have turned to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes. And their concern is that there is feeling among human beings. They appeal to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes for what they need for the feeling-life of human beings, in order to guide them.

Archangels:
Human beings are feeling!
We need the warmth of soul,
That we may live in feelings.

They must breathe life into feelings. And with mighty voice, since two choirs are answering, the answer from the Kyriotetes and Exusiai resounds in the spiritual world-all.

Receive the warmth of soul,
That you may live in feelings,
When human beings feel.

[The second part of the mantra was now written on the board.]

II) Archangels:
Human beings are feeling!
We need the warmth of soul,
That we may live in feelings.

It is answered.

Kyriotetes and Exusiai:
Receive the warmth of soul,
That you may live in feelings,
When human beings feel.

And we turn to the third gathering of the Third Hierarchy, to the gathering of the Archai. Their concern is that there is willing among human beings, the third concern of the Third Hierarchy.

We feel the Angels turning to the Dynamis, then we felt the Dynamis in action, far up in the heights, so that the light from on high is garnered and given to the Angels in their concern for human thinking. And we felt all that is encompassed by world-warmth is garnered by Exusiai and Kyriotetes, and is handed over to the Archangels, so that they can lead in feelings in human beings. And deep below, where the spirits and gods of the deep rule, from the abysses in which rules much that is evil, from there deep forces of goodness must be obtained. There all the gods of the Second Hierarchy pull together, for in their concern for human beings willing the Archai need the strength of the depths. And so they speak:

Human beings are willing!
We need the strength of the depths,
That we may work in willing.

And in answer to this, in mighty formidable cosmic voice, the mighty voices of the mighty spirits of the Second Hierarchy ring forth together, all three together, three choirs gathering into one choir, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai, three choirs in one:

Receive the strength of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

[The third part of the mantra was now written on the board.]

III.) Archai
Human beings are willing!
We need the strength of the depths,
That we may work in willing.

It is answered by Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai together:

Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai:
Receive the strength of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

That is the world, the world present in the sacred creator-words, the resounding of which we become witness to in spiritual worlds, as we are witness to what goes on in mineral and plant-like realms here on the earth.

And we take it in, as it comes to us on our way, as it becomes our experience.

Human Beings are thinking!
We need the light from on high,
That we may shine in thinking.

Receive the light from on high,
That you may shine in thinking,
When human beings think.

Human beings are feeling!
We need the warmth of soul,
That we may live in feelings.

Receive the warmth of soul,
That you may live in feelings,
When human beings feel.

Human beings are willing!
We need the strength of the depths
That we may work in willing.

Receive the strength of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

We grow into the spiritual world. Instead of what surrounds us here on this sensation-laden earth, surrounding us there are the choirs of the spiritual world. And we become witnesses to what the gods are saying, to what the gods are saying in their concern for the human world, in their caring works concerning the human world.

Only when our meditation undergoes this full disengagement from what we are here on the earth, and we feel engaged with a world the gods there in their divine speech allow to exist, only then do we experience true reality. And just when we have this reality, we also have what is really around us here between birth and death. For behind all that lives here between birth and death in apparency, is what comprises the true reality we live in between death and a new birth.

People of earlier times lived upon the earth, but in a dull, dream-laden clairvoyant state of existence. Their souls were filled with a sort of dream-laden pictures that spoke of the spiritual world. Imagine before us such a man of olden times. Then, when not working, even though the sun still stood in the heavens, when putting his work aside to rest awhile, then he might have paused for reflection, to bring up the pictures he was able to experience in his soul, which reminded him of what he had experienced in pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world. But he did not understand the connection of his earth existence with the other existence, the one that glowed there within in his clairvoyant dreams. But the teachings of the adepts, the initiates, were there to make it clear. They brought clarity at first to their students, and through their students to all people, about what the connection is. And so one lived in the earth-world by means of memories of pre-earthly existence.

In life on earth today, the memory of the pre-earthly existence has been lost. Initiates can no longer bring clarity about the connection of life on earth with pre-earthly existence, for people have forgotten what they experienced in pre-earthly existence. Such a clarification is simply not possible. Cosmic memory does not need to be brought into clarity, for today it is simply not there.

But what must be heard through initiation science, is what the gods are saying there behind sensory existence. Then people must experience it. And increasingly the time will come in which people, having gone through the portal of death, will only be able to understand the spiritual world, into which they have entered, when they can say the following:

When the person has stepped through the portal of death into supra-earthly existence and then finds himself in the reality of the spiritual world, within the world of Angles, Archangels, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, when he experiences all this, then what he experiences there after death should not remain incomprehensible and dark for him, for then he must remember the things that he went through by means of initiation knowledge.

And it will be important, immeasurably important to the understanding of what can be experienced there in the life between death and a new birth, to have already heard it as such, for otherwise it cannot be understood, other than through a memory of having heard, back on earth, such as what resounds over there.

Human Beings are thinking!
Receive the light from on high.

Human beings are feeling!
Receive the warmth of soul.

Human beings are willing!
Receive the strength of the depths.

Those are the words, my brothers and sisters, that properly belong in the esoteric school today. They should ring forth there, by means of the instruction through which the power of the Age of Michael is channeled through the esoteric school. It can then be as follows. In the esoteric school the first to be heard within life on earth will be the voice of the Angels:

Human beings are thinking!

The answer of the Dynamis:

Receive the light from on high.

The voice of the Archangels is heard.

Human beings are feeling!

The answer of the Kyriotetes and Exusiai:

Receive the warmth of soul.

The words of the Archai:

Human beings are willing!

All three ranks of the Second Hierarchy answer, the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes:

Receive the strength of the depths.

Having heard this in esoteric schools, and on hearing them ringing forth again after having gone through the portal of death, people will hear both together, the esoteric school here and the life between death and a new birth there. They will understand what there resounds.

Or people may remain dull and unwilling to hear what the esoteric schools have to say about preparedness through Anthroposophy in general. They may not take up what can be gently heard through initiation knowledge from the higher realms. Then they go through the portal of death. There they hear what they should have heard earlier. They will not understand the incomprehensible ringing, the simple reverberation, the noise of worlds resounding in the words of power of the gods speaking among themselves.

The gospels speak of this. Paul speaks of it, that people should attend to the guiding wisdom of Christ before death brings them into the land of the spirit. For death in spirit-land comes also, at the same time, when we go through the portal of death and do not understand what resounds there, when instead we are only able to hear incomprehensible noise, instead of the understandable words of the gods. This is because what has befallen us, instead of life of the soul, is death of the soul. That the soul might live, for this reason there is initiation knowledge. That the soul remains alive when it passes through the portal of death, for this reason there are esoteric schools. This should permeate us thoroughly

And now let us recall the path we have been walking along in the spirit. Let us recall how we approached the Guardian in order to become acquainted with how someone might cross over the abyss of existence. And let us look just now upon the impressions that from over there have worked on our souls, let us take up into our souls what can parade before our souls as the inner drama of self-awareness.

We have gone down the path. Standing there in a certain way are three tablets. Presently we stand before the third, after we have taken up into our souls all the depths of the divine call. From the first tablet, a short time after having come to the abyss of existence, there it would peal forth:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.

You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?

Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

Now the Guardian of the Threshold approaches us. The second tablet looms. On it is written:

First come to know the earnest Guardian,
Who stands before the gates of spirit-land,
Denying entry to your sensory force
And to your intellect’s might,
For in weaving of sense
And in forming of thought
Out of space’s absence of being,
Out of time’s illusory powers
The truth of your own self
You must first forcefully master.

Then when we have arrived on the other side, passing by the earnest Guardian, standing there, we would hear a dialogue such as this:

Human Beings are thinking!
Receive the light from on high.

Human beings are feeling!
Receive the warmth of soul.

Human beings are willing!

Receive the strength of the depths.

From there we gaze back over here on the sensory world. From there we feel the words concerning this sensory world:

I walked within this world of sense,
Thinking’s heritage guiding me,
A god’s power having ushered me in.
Death, it stands at journey’s end.
I will feel Christ’s presence.
In matter’s death spirit-birth wakes,
So in spirit I’ll find the world
And in world-becoming know myself.

• 1. empfanget

My dear friends,

With this lesson, I would like to restore to the Free School for Spiritual Science as an esoteric institution the task which it has been in danger of being deprived of during the past years. In this introductory lecture, I will not go further into explaining that situation, but I wanted to stress the importance of this moment by indicating the seriousness with which our movement—which is daily being endangered and undermined—must be imbued, especially in this School. This is no unnecessary observation, for such seriousness has not been apparent everywhere.

A kind of preparatory introduction will be given today, my dear friends. And I would like to emphasize that in this School spiritual life is to be revealed in its true meaning, so that you will be able to consider this School as an institution which can provide for the revealed spiritual needs of our times. This spiritual life can be deepened in all its aspects. But a center must exist from out of which this deepening derives, and the Center can be seen by those who wish to be members of the School to be the Goetheanum in Dornach.

Therefore, I wish to begin the School today, with those members for whom it has so far been possible to issue the membership card, to begin in a way that will make you conscious of the fact that every word spoken within this School is based on the full responsibility towards the spirit revealed to our times—that same spirit which has been revealed to humanity throughout the centuries and millennia, but revealed in each epoch in a special way. And this spirit will only give to humanity what it is able to receive.

We must be clear from the very beginning that it is not animosity towards what the sense-world has accomplished for humanity when in a School for Spiritual Science we attend to the revelations of the spirit. We must also clearly recognize that the sense-world has provided necessary, practical revelations to humanity and this fact should not cause us to undervalue those contributions in any way.

But it is nevertheless important that the spiritual revelations are received with all earnestness. For this—I must say it at the outset—much prejudice and obstinacy, which is deeply ingrained in the School's members, will have to go. It will be necessary to investigate how one finds the path to his own obstinacy, which hinders understanding what the School should be. For many still don't think correctly about the School. This must be gradually corrected. For it is only possible for those to be in the School who take it in all earnestness.

The matter itself demands this. And on the other hand, we must follow a difficult path in face of the opposition and undermining forces which are increasing day by day. The members of the School are by no means sufficiently attentive to this. All this, my dear friends, must be kept in mind.

The first and foremost thing to be observed in this School must of course be what it is possible for the spirit to give us. It will however be demanded of the members of the School that they accompany us on the difficult path strewn with obstacles and attempts at undermining it.

I have gone into these things in our weekly periodical, What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society, and have also explicitly differentiated there between the General Anthroposophical Society and this School. And it is necessary that this difference be felt in all its explicitness by the members of the School, so that eventually only those persons are members who really want to be representatives of anthroposophy in all aspects of life. I say this now in order to emphasize the seriousness of the matter.

First of all, I would like to present to your hearts and to your souls what should stand over our School as a kind of engraving. That we really identify with what emerges from the life of the spirit onto our soul's ear and our soul's understanding. We shall begin with the words:

Where on earthly ground, color on color
Life is manifest in creation;
Where from earthly matter, form on form,
The lifeless is given shape;
Where sentient Beings, strong in will
Warm themselves in joy of existence;
Where you, O man, your bodily being
derive from earth and air and light.

There your true being enters
Deep, night-enveloped, cold darkness;
You ask in the dark sweeping expanse
No longer, who you are and were and will be.
For your own being the day grows dimly
To the soul's night, to spirit-darkness;
And you turn with angst of soul
Toward the light that from darkness streams.

I will repeat it:

Where on earthly ground, color on color
Life is manifest in creation;
Where from earthly matter, form on form,
The lifeless is given shape;
Where sentient Beings, strong in will
Warm themselves in joy of existence;
Where you, O man, your bodily being
derive from earth and air and light.

There your true being enters
Deep, night-enveloped, cold darkness;
You ask in the dark sweeping expanse
No longer, who you are and were and will be.
For your own being the day grows dimly
To the soul's night, to spirit-darkness;
And you turn with angst of soul
Toward the light that from darkness streams.

These words tell us that the world is beautiful and glorious and sublime and the endless glow of revelation in all that lives in leaf and blossom flows to our eyes with color on color from the visible universe; it is meant to remind us how the divine is manifested in what is lifeless in earthly matter, in the thousands upon thousands of crystalline and non-crystalline forms at our feet, in the water and air, in clouds and stars; it makes clearer to us that the animal life that frolics in the world and delights in its own existence and the warmth of its existence—that all that is divine-spiritual revelation. And it reminds us that we owe our own bodies to all those shapes, to all that is greening and growing, color on color. And it should also make us conscious of that fact that although all that is beautiful and glorious and grand and divine to the senses, it is futile to ask it what we ourselves are as human beings.

Nature, although it glows to us as grand and powerful in tone and strength and warmth, can never give us information about ourselves, although it does give us a huge amount of information about many divine aspects of the world. So we must evermore repeat to ourselves: what we feel as our innermost self is not woven from what we perceive as the beauty and grandeur and greatness and power of nature. And the question arises: Why does the reality of being all around us, of which we are also a part, remain dim and silent?

And what we might feel to be a kind of privation, we must experience as a blessing, so that we can say in all seriousness and sternness: We must first make ourselves truly human, warm in soul and strong of spirit, so that we, as spirit in humanity, may find the spirit in the world.

For this it is necessary that we prepare ourselves, without levity, to come to the frontier of the sense-world, where the spirit's revelation can rise in us. We must say to ourselves: If we arrive at this frontier unprepared and the full light of the spirit comes upon us at once, then, because we have not yet developed the strength of spirit and the warmth of soul necessary for receiving the spirit, it would shatter us and cast us back to our nothingness.

Therefore, at the frontier between the sense-world and the spirit-world stands that messenger of the gods, that messenger of the spirit, about whom we will hear more and more during the next lessons, whom we will want to know always better and better. That messenger of the spirit stands there and warningly speaks, telling us how we should be and what we must set aside so that we may approach the revelations of the spiritual world in the right way.

And when we have grasped, my dear friends, that the beauty, the greatness and the sublimity of nature is, at first, spiritual darkness for human knowledge, from which the light must be born which tells us what we are and were and will be; then we must know that the first thing to come from the darkness that must be grasped is that Spirit-Messenger who sends us the appropriate warning. Therefore, let this Spirit-Messenger's words resound in our souls, and let the Spirit-Messenger's description shine out before our soul's eye.

And from out the darkness you appear,
(the human being is addressed)
Your likeness manifesting you,
Yet also a parable of you,
Earnest spirit-words in cosmic ether
Heard by your heart, giving strength

To you the Spirit-Messenger, who alone
Can light for you the way;
Before him the fields of sense widen,
Behind him yawn the abyss-depths.

And before his dark spirit-fields,
Hard by the yawning abyss of being,
Resounds his ur-potent creative words:
Behold, I am the only gate to knowledge.

It must be clear to us that we must take seriously all that comes as warning from the Spirit-Messenger before daring to fathom what is found not on this side of the yawning abyss, that is, in the area of the senses, but on the other side spreading out as spirituality. This is veiled at first in darkness for human understanding, and can only be revealed by the countenance of the Spirit-Messenger, who appears at first to be similar to the human being, but transformed into one of gigantic stature. Then, although he is so similar to man, his form is shadowy, as though he were a mere parable of man. He warns that without the appropriate seriousness, no one should seek what lies beyond the yawning abyss. The earnest messenger entreats us to be earnest as well.

And then, when we hear that voice and have grasped it with due seriousness, we should be aware of how at first softly, most softly, and in abstractions, it wishes to give us indications and orientation from the spiritual world about the abyss which yawns before us and from which the Messenger holds us back less we take a careless step. The voice resounds:

From the distant beings in space
Who experience existence in light,
From the stages of the course of time,
which finds expression in creating,
From the depths of heart-felt feeling
Where in the Self the world is fathomed:

They resound in the speech of the soul,
They gleam in the spirit-thoughts,
From divine curative powers
In the cosmic formative forces
The undulating existential words:
O man, know thyself!

I will say it again:

From the distant beings in space
Who experience existence in light,
From the stages of the course of time,
which finds expression in creating,
From the depths of heart-felt feeling
Where in the Self the world is fathomed:

They resound in the speech of the soul,
They gleam in the spirit-thoughts,
From divine curative powers
In the cosmic formative forces
The undulating existential words:
O man, know thyself!

These words can make it clear to us how the secrets of existence must be fathomed from all that acts and works in the depths of space and which from the depths of space manifest how real knowledge must be fathomed from what is revealed in the march of time as creative action, and how all that is revealed of the world in the human heart must be revealed by the soul's honest seeking. For all this can only constitute a basis for what one needs for fathoming one's self, in which the world has planted the sum of its secrets. Thus, they can be discovered through human self-knowledge. Everything man needs in sickness and in health on his journey between birth and death, and what he will also have to use on that other existential journey between death and a new birth.

But all those who consider themselves members of this School should clearly realize that everything that is not acquired in this way is not real knowledge, but only pseudo-knowledge, that what usually passes for science, what man learns before he has acquired an awareness of the Guardian of the Threshold's warnings regarding spiritual knowledge, is all pseudo-knowledge. It doesn't have to stay pseudo-knowledge though. We do not scorn this pseudo-knowledge. But we must realize that it will only emerge from the stage of pseudo-knowledge once it has been transformed by all man can know about that purification and metamorphosis of his being, which he achieves when he understands what the Spirit-Messenger warns at the yawning abyss of knowledge—what the shining spirit warningly calls out from the darkness on behalf of the best spiritualinhabitants of the spiritual world.

Whoever does not acquire the awareness that between the sojourn in the fields of sense—which we must live during our earthly existence between birth and death—and the spiritual fields, a yawning abyss exists, cannot achieve true knowledge. For only by means of this awareness can true knowledge be acquired. He doesn't have to become clairvoyant, although knowledge from the spiritual world comes by true clairvoyance. But he must acquire an awareness ofwhat exists as a warning at the yawning abyss of the secrets of space, the secrets of time, the secrets of the human heart itself. For whether wego out into space, the abyss is there; or if we wander in the turning points of time, the abyss is there; if we enter into the heart itself, the abyss is there.

And these three abysses, they are not three abysses, they are only one abyss. For if we wander out into space so far that we come to where the expanses of space merge, we find the spirit; if we wander in the turning points of time to where they originate at the beginning of their cycles, if we wander into the depths of the human heart, so deep that we can only fathom ourselves: these three ways lead to only one goal, to one last stop, not to three different stops. They all lead to the same divine-spirituality that bubbles from the spring that fructifies and feeds all being, but also teaches man to recognize the ground of existence in knowledge.

In such earnest awareness, we shall stand in thought where the earnest Spirit-Messenger speaks and listen to what he relates about the obstacles relative to our times, which we must sweep away in order to come to true spiritual knowledge.

Obstacles to spiritual knowledge, my dear friends, have existed in all times. In all times the people have had to overcome this and that, put aside this and that according to the warnings of the earnest Guardian of the Threshold to the spiritual world. But there are obstacles peculiar to each age. What proceeds from human civilization is to a large extent not helpful, but rather hindrance for access to the spiritual world. And man must find the particular obstacles that emerge from each earthly civilization, and are implanted in his nature by that very civilization, and which he must put aside before he can cross the yawning abyss.

Therefore, let us now hear the earnest watchful Messenger of the gods speak about this:

Yes, you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bony head, the scrawny body,
His skin is all a dullish blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begat the monster in your will;
Knowledge bravery alone will overcome it.

Behold the second beast, it bares
Its teeth in a warped face, scornfully it lies,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begat this weakling in your feeling;
Your flame for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begat this ghost within your thinking;
Your creative knowledge must make it yield.

Only when you've defeated the three
Will wings sprout upon your soul
To fly the abyss over,
Which separates you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires
to consecrate itself in healing.

I will read it again:

The Guardian speaks:

Yes, you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bony head, the scrawny body,
His skin is all a dullish blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begat the monster in your will;
Knowledge bravery alone will overcome it.

Behold the second beast, it bares
Its teeth in a warped face, scornfully it lies,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begat this weakling in your feeling;
Your flame for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begat this ghost within your thinking;
Your creative knowledge must make it yield.

Only when you've defeated the three
Will wings sprout upon your soul
To fly the abyss over,
Which separates you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires
to consecrate itself in healing.

These, my dear friends, are the three greatest enemies of knowledge for contemporary humanity. The human being of today is afraid of the spirit's creativity. Fear sits deep in his soul. And he would like to conjure it away. So he dresses his fear in all kinds of pseudo-logical arguments by which he tries to refute spiritual revelations.

You will hear, my dear friends, from this or that side arguments against spiritual knowledge. It is sometimes dressed in clever, sometimes in sly, sometimes in foolish logical rules. Never, however, are the logical rules the reason why spiritual knowledge is refuted. Rather is it the spirit of fear that lives and works deep into humanity's inner life which, when it rises to the head, translates into logical reasons. It is fear!

But it is not sufficient to say: I am not afraid. Everyone can of course say that. We must first comprehend the nature and the seat of this fear. We must tell ourselves that we were born and educated according to the present time, in which the Ahrimanic side has installed spirits of fear, and that we are tainted by these spirits. And conjuring them away doesn't mean that they really go. We must find the ways and the means—and this School will provide guidance—to bravery and knowledge against those spirits of fear which reside as monsters in our will. For it is not what often leads people to knowledge nowadays—or what they say does—that can provide true knowledge, but rather only courage, the inner courage of soul which provides the strength and the capacity to follow the path that leads to true, real, light-filled spiritual knowledge.

And the second beast, which creeps into the human soul from the spirit of the times to become an enemy of knowledge, this beast lurks everywhere we go—in most of the literary works of the day, in most of the art galleries, in most sculpture and art in general and music. It wreaks its havoc in the schools and in society. In order to avoid having to confess its fear of the spirit, it resorts to mocking spiritual knowledge.

This mockery is not always openly expressed, because people are not conscious of what is within them. But I would say that only a thin wall, the thickness of a spiderweb, separates what is in people's consciousness and what is in their hearts wanting to mock true spiritual knowledge. And when the mockery is open, it is only when the more or less conscious impertinence of modern man is able to suppress the fear. But basically, everyone today is vaccinated against the spirit's revelations. And the mockery is manifested in the most unusual ways.

The third beast is lazy thinking, the kind of thinking that would make the whole world a movie, because then no one is required to think—everything is reeled out and all one has to do is follow what is reeled out. Even science would like to follow the world's phenomena with passive thinking. Man is too lazy and comfortable to activate his thinking. Humanity's thinking nowadays can be compared to someone who wants to pick something up from the floor and stands there with his hands in his pockets and thinks he can pick the thing up that way. But he cannot. And existence cannot be comprehended by thinking with its hands in its pockets. We must move our arms and hands if we want to grasp something from the floor. We must activate our thinking if we want to grasp the spirit.

The Guardian of the Threshold characterizes the first beast, which lurks as fear in your will, as a beast with a crooked back and a bony face and scrawny body. This beast, with its dull blue skin, is verily what rises from the abyss and stands alongside the Guardian of the Threshold for today's humanity. And the Guardian of the Threshold makes it quite clear to the humanity of today that this beast is actually in you! It rises from out of the yawning abyss which lies in front of the knowledge fields, and reflects what lurks in your will as an enemy of knowledge.

And the second beast, which is connected to the desire to mock the spiritual world, is characterized by the Guardian of the Threshold in a similar way. It emerges alongside the other monster, but its whole attitude is one of weakness and sleepiness. With this sleepy posture and gray-greenish body, it bares its teeth in a warped face. And this baring of teeth is meant to indicate laughter, but lies, because to mock is to lie. So it grins at us as the reflection of the beast that lives in our own feeling and, as the enemy of knowledge, hinders our search for knowledge.

And the Guardian of the Threshold characterizes the third beast, which will not approach the world in spirit, as emerging from the abyss with cloven muzzle, dull glassy eyes, slouching posture and dirty-red form. Such is the doubt which speaks through the cloven muzzle and doubt in the power of spirit-light which expresses itself in the dirty-red form. This is the third of the knowledge enemies that lurks in us. They make us earthbound.

If we approach spirit-knowledge accompanied by them, ignoring the Guardian of the Threshold's warning, we encounter the yawning abyss. One cannot pass over it earthbound, nor with fear nor mockery, nor with doubt. One can pass over it by grasping in thought thespirituality of being, by experiencing in feeling the soul of being, by strengthening the activity of being in the will. Then the spirit, the soul and the activity of being give us wings of release from the weight of earth. Then we can cross over the abyss.

The steps of prejudice are threefold and will cast us into the abyss if we fail to acquire courage, fire and creative knowledge. If, however, we do acquire creative knowledge in thinking and we want to activate thinking, if we do not wish to approach the spirit in dreamy lassitude, but receive the spirit with inner heartfelt fire, and when we have the courage to really grasp the spirit as spirit, not merely letting it approach us as a materialistic picture, then will the wings grow which will carry us over the abyss, where every human heart that is honest with itself today desires to go.

That is what I wish to bring before your souls, my dear friends, by means of this first introductory lesson, with which this School for Spiritual Science begins.

In closing, let us review once more the beginning, middle and end of the experiences with the Guardian of the Threshold.

Where on earthly ground, color on color
Life is manifest in creation;
Where from earthly matter, form on form,
The lifeless is given shape;
Where sentient Beings, strong in will
Warm themselves in joy of existence;
Where you, O man, your bodily being
derive from earth and air and light.

There your true being enters
Deep, night-enveloped, cold darkness;
You ask in the dark sweeping expanse
No longer, who you are and were and will be.
For your own being the day grows dimly
To the soul's night, to spirit-darkness;
And you turn with angst of soul
Toward the light that from darkness streams.

And from out the darkness you appear,
(the human being is addressed)
Your likeness manifesting you,
Yet also a parable of you,
Earnest spirit-words in cosmic ether
Heard by your heart, giving strength

To you the Spirit-Messenger, who alone
Can light for you the way;
Before him the fields of sense widen,
Behind him yawn the abyss-depths.

And before his dark spirit-fields,
Hard by the yawning abyss of being,
Resounds his ur-potent creative words:
Behold, I am the only gate to knowledge.

From the distant beings in space
Who experience existence in light,
From the stages of the course of time,
which finds expression in creating,
From the depths of heart-felt feeling
Where in the Self the world is fathomed:

They resound in the speech of the soul,
They gleam in the spirit-thoughts,
From divine curative powers
In the cosmic formative forces
The undulating existential words:
O man, know thyself!

Yes, you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bony head, the scrawny body,
His skin is all a dullish blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begat the monster in your will;
Knowledge bravery alone will overcome it.

Behold the second beast, it bares
Its teeth in a warped face, scornfully it lies,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begat this weakling in your feeling;
Your flame for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begat this ghost within your thinking;
Your creative knowledge must make it yield.

Only when you've defeated the three
Will wings sprout upon your soul
To fly the abyss over,
Which separates you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires
to consecrate itself in healing.

As to what we will experience when we have passed the Guardian of the Threshold, what is necessary in feeling, willing, thinking to experience in order to pass by the Guardian's light, and enter into the darkness from out of which that light shines in which we recognize the light of our own humanity, and thus arrive at “O man, know thyself!”—which calls out, which manifests from the spirit that enlightens the darkness. About all that, my dear friends, next Friday during the next lesson of the First Class.

First - without taking notes - let us be reminded of the admonition which directs human beings to the ancient holy words of knowledge:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the cosmic-word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it vast in spirit.

Who speaks so vastly cosmic?
Who speaks so deeply heartfelt?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Is it you yourself who
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

*

We can, my dear friends, look up to the distant stars and let our vision rest upon what radiates down to us from the universe in the forms the constellations possess. When we immerse ourselves in the sublimity of what the vast universe offers, we will gain enhanced inner strength. And especially for the strength to hold the soul separate from the body, we need to inwardly direct our gaze toward the heavenly bodies. By “inwardly” is meant the following: We have seen the stars so often and have stored the vision in our hearts and minds so that we no longer need to even look up at the heavenly bodies in order to make the powerful image of the star-embedded heaven's vault effective in our inner consciousness. If this picture arises from our own inner being, if the soul empowers itself to create it, then it will be able, through this empowered force, to liberate itself from its corporeality.

And we can also observe all that radiates down and streams through us from the planets which circle the earth, and in their circling directly affect the earth's wind and weather. And when we again create a picture in our hearts of all this, the sensation of being integrated in the movement of the circling constitutes the second experience.

And then when we are conscious of all that binds us to the earth, that we are heavy bodies among other heavy bodies. In other words what lives in us as a feeling of being bound to the earth becomes a facet of our soul, and it is the third aspect.

And from these three inner experiences: what we have gained in luminous, radiant, living thought derived from the stars; and then when we merge with the path of our earth in the universe, merge with what the planets say to us meaningfully from space by their movements - so that having felt ourselves to be at rest in respect to the stars, now we feel ourselves to be set in movement through the cosmos itself. And thirdly, if we then feel ourselves bound to the earth by the force of the earth itself, then we will gradually and harmoniously be more and more able to make a beginning at entering into the spiritual world. And today everyone can make this beginning.

This leads to the question: Why is it then that so few do so? The answer to this must be: most people don't want to experience things so intimately in order to enter into the spiritual world. They disdain experiencing so intimately. They prefer titillating experiences such as the spiritual world approaching them with all the characteristics of the sensory world.

It would be easy to convince people about the spiritual world if for example a table from the spiritual world were to approach them. But there are no tables in the spiritual world, there are only spiritual beings in the spiritual world, and they must be perceived with what is spiritual in man. But spiritual is what we can read in the stars, what we can feel in the movements of the planets, what we can experience in the forces which hold us to the earth and make us people of the earth. Therefore whoever desires to understand in the right way must do so inwardly. With common sense we can understand all of anthroposophy, but to understand inwardly means to transfer more and more what is understood to inner life. Whoever wishes to do this must decide to undertake a really intimate exercise of these three sensations - or experiences, it doesn't matter what we call them.

And now, my dear sisters and brothers, what is flowing to you from the spiritual world through this School wishes to speak to you about how by means of an intimate exercise you can become more aware of the connection of humanity with the world than you are accustomed to through normal consciousness.

Firstly, we humans should in later life be more like we were to a great extent when we were children. As children we are almost all sensory organs: eyes, ears. The child experiences everything that happens in its environment as though its whole body were a sense organ. That's why he imitates everything, because everything continues to vibrate within him; and in the same way in which it vibrates within him, it seeks to emerge by means of the will.

The child retains this characteristic only as long as we protect it from doing with its senses what we as adults do with them. The child develops this inner sensory capacity only as long as we carry it, protecting it so that it is not yet exposed to the forces of the earth. And it is really wonderful how the growing child's sensory-being is protected from the effects of the earth forces as long as this sensory-being is especially vital and alive.

At the moment when the child stands on its feet and begins to move about is when its movements become susceptible to the earth's forces and it must find its own equilibrium, at that moment the intimate sensory-being ends. The human being of course does not remember back to this first stage of infancy, and therefore does not know what it means to feel his whole being as a sensory-organ. But we must, if we want to experience the human in us more and more, be able to feel and experience our whole human being as such a sensory organ.

You grasp something, my dear sisters and brothers. It presses on you. You perceive the pressure. Or you perceive the texture of the surface you are touching. But in reality, you are continually touching in that you place your whole body from top to bottom on the earth and feel the earth under the soles of your feet. Only you are so used to it that you don't notice. When you begin to notice it, then you will first feel yourselves as human beings standing amidst the earth's forces. Therefore, the admonition at the threshold to the spiritual world.

[written on the blackboard:]

O man, touch and sense in your body's being
How earth forces support your existence.

[Certain essential words are underlined later, as described in the text. Trans.]

Thus, we let the first stage of this inner experience work in us.

Now we can feel ourselves as the ones touching, sensing. We can experience this touching, feel inwardly as the person doing the vibrant touching. When we advance enough to feel this touching itself, we are then not perceiving earth forces, but we begin to feel the vibrating water forces in us, the fluid forces which as blood and other liquids course through our bodies. And in these forces, we feel how all the fluids which course through our bodies are connected to the ether in the universe.

[writing on the blackboard:]

O man, experience in the whole round of your touch
How water-beings are the framers of your being.

If we only had earth forces to touch in our whole being, we would be constituted as something continually crumbling away. The water forces in us shape the form of the human body from the cosmic ether. Only the earth has influence over what is solid in us. But the whole wide world of ether has influence over the liquids in us .

But then during the third stage we can immerse ourselves in what lives and weaves in the fluidity. We can feel it dimly, inwardly. When we feel our breathing, for example, we will realize how we are continually nurtured by the essence of breathing and of the air. We would be helpless children if we weren't continually nurtured by the forces of breathing flowing through us.

[writing on the blackboard:]

O man, feel in the whole weaving of your life
How the powers of the air nurture your existence.

And now if we have advanced to the third stage of inner experience, we can come to the fourth, if we feel inner warmth, and are attentive to our own fulfilling warmth which is in breath, which lives in everything air-forming within us. For only through what is air-forming in us is our warmth created.

But what lives in us as warmth can be reached with thoughts. And here we have a most important secret of human nature.

My dear sisters and brothers, you cannot reach with thought, but only with the sense of touch, how earth forces act on you and support you. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner experience, how the water forces are your formative builders. You cannot reach with thought, but only with inner feeling, how the airy powers in you are your nurturers. You can be thankful for this nurturing, you can love these nurturers, but you cannot directly reach them with thought. But what man can reach by thought, by meditating on his warmth, is to experience himself as a being of warmth.

The physician comes with a thermometer; he measures warmth from without. Just as warmth can differ on different places of the body, it is also different in the individual inner organs. You can direct your thoughts down to the individual organs and will find that the whole inner warmth-organism is differentiated. One can reach his own warmth organism with thought.

But then, having done that, you have a specific feeling. This feeling, my dear sisters and brothers, will now be revealed to your souls. Imagine that you have achieved it, that in thought you have descended into your organism, reached the differentiating warmth - the warmth of the lungs, the warmth of the liver, the warmth of the heart, which are all God-spirit created entities within you. You achieve this with thought. Now for the first time you know what thought is. Before you didn't know what thought is. You know now that thought, by descending into what was before only warmth, turns the warmth into flame, into fire. For in ordinary life thought appears to you in its imperceptible inwardness as abstract thought. When you sink it down into your own body, the thought appears to you as luminous, radiantly penetrating into the lungs, into the heart, into the liver. Just as the light which goes out from your brow stretches downward, so does thought illumine the inner organs, differentiating itself into various nuances of color.

One cannot merely say: I think through to the differentiations of my warmth; one must say: I enlighten myself by thinking through to the differentiations of my warmth.

[writing on the blackboard:]

O man, think in the full flow of your feeling
How the fire-powers are your helpers in being.

Everything in these eight lines can be summarized by letting what has been intimately worked through be summed up in your souls with the words:

[On the blackboard each element is placed after the corresponding mantra-phrase.]

O man, see yourself in the kingdom of elements.

Elements:

Earth Water Air Fire

Thus, do you measure yourselves, radiate, strengthen yourselves in respect to the body. But note how this strengthening, this measuring of the mere physical extends to the moral:

Here we have the support of man, the physical support. [In the first mantra sentence “support” is underlined.]

Here we have the formative forces. [In the second mantra sentence “formers” is underlined.] Still somewhat physical, but permeated with the etheric.

Here we have nurturer. [In the third mantra sentence “nurture” is underlined.] It already has a certain morality. Then as we ascend from water to air we feel that the beings who are in the air are permeated with morality.

And in the fire, we have not only nurturer, but also helpers, [“helpers” in the fourth mantra sentence in underlined], comrades, beings similar to us.

Just as we feel through to our bodies, we can also feel through to our souls. For this we must not concentrate on the elements, rather must we concentrate on what pulls the planets that circle the earth and pulls the air and sea currents along with it. We feel our physicality in our spirituality when we measure the body as has been explained; but we directly experience our soul-life.

[written on the blackboard:]

O man, let act in the depths of your soul
The cosmic powers that guide the planets.

It can also be summarized in the sentence:

O man, through the cosmic circling renew yourself.

We realize and experience the spiritual in us when we elevate the spirit to the stars, which reach us in their groupings and formations and become like a celestial script to us. If we preserve what is thus written in the starry heavens we will become aware of our own spirituality, that spirituality which doesn't speak about man personally, but about the entire universe.

[written on the blackboard:]

O man, retain in your spirit's creativity
The constellations' cosmological words.

Summarizing:

O man, recreate yourself through celestial wisdom.

Not by vague generalities, not by vague sensations are we able to gradually extract our souls from our physical bodies and pass over to the universe, but rather by grasping the elements in the specified way, by the movement of the planets, by the meaning in the stars. We unite with the universe when we do this.

And we will note that once the first part of the exercise is accomplished we feel a life in us, the life of the universe.

[Alongside the first eight lines of the mantra is written:]

Life

Once we have finished the second part of the exercise we feel love towards the whole world.

[Alongside the tenth and eleventh lines is written:]

Love

Once we have finished the third part we feel a sense of piety in us.

[Alongside the thirteenth and fourteenth lines is written:]

Piety

And it really is an ascension from life through love to piety, to a truly religious cosmic sense which can be undergone through such mantric words.

But if it is really undergone, if we really end up being pious through such an exercise, then the world ceases to be physical for us. Then we say to ourselves with total certainty: the physical in the world is only semblance, maya; the world is everywhere through and through spirit. As humans we belong to this spirit. And if we feel ourselves as spirit in the spirit-world, then we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world.

Then, however, once we are beyond the threshold to the spiritual world, we sense how here, on this side, our body holds thinking, feeling and willing together through its own bodily force; how at the moment we are body-free in our experiencing, thinking, feeling and willing are no longer one, but threefold. Then it is as though by binding ourselves to the earth-powers in water, air, fire, earth, that by sending our will to the earth we become one with the earth through our will.

Furthermore, because we feel love in our souls for the movements of the planets, that is, for the spiritual beings who live therein, it is so that we experience the Powers circling cosmic space as feeling. And if we can say: the sun moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mercury moves in the feeling of cosmic space, Mars moves in the feeling of cosmic space, then we have grasped feeling in its cosmic being separated from thinking and separated from willing.

And if we are able to grasp thinking in such a way that thoughts are freed from physical existence, it is as though our thinking were to fly out to the [resting] stars and rest there themselves.

[Translator's Note: in German the stars themselves can be referred to as “resting” stars, in contrast to the “wandering” or “moving” stars: the planets. In this lecture there is much play on words between the two concepts, which is necessarily lost in translation.]

And we say to ourselves when we have arrived on the other side of the threshold: my thinking rests in the resting stars; my feeling moves in the wandering stars [planets]; my willing unites with the earth forces. So thinking, feeling, willing are separated in the cosmos.

And they must be again joined together. Here on the earth man does not need to bind thinking, feeling and willing together, because they already are so due to the physical body being a unity. Thinking, feeling and willing would be constantly falling apart if they were not held together by the physical man, without his intention or awareness. Now though, on the other side of the threshold, they are divided so that thinking rests above with the stars, feeling circles with the planets, and willing unites with the forces of the earth. And with strong inner determination, with our own forces, we must bring them back together as a unity.

In doing this we must experience thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that we can communicate to thinking, which has gone to the stars, something of feeling and willing; to feeling, which is circling with the planets, communicate something of thinking and willing; to willing, which is bound to the earth, something of thinking and feeling. This something we indeed can do using such a mantric formula.

We must look up to the stars and with devotion say to ourselves: there is where your thinking lies. But I will bring the starry sky into movement; just as feeling likewise does for the planets, in spirit I will slowly move the starry sky. I feel myself attracted to the starry sky; I want to go up there and be at one with that star-filled heavens. Thus have I incorporated feeling and willing into thinking, which is bound to the stars.

Then I look up to the planets and feel: In these planets [Ger. wandering stars] my own feeling wanders. But I will attempt to fix the moment as the stars [Ger. fixed stars] are fixed in place. And through my rhythmic system - to which heart and lungs belong - I will become as one with the entire planetary system. Then I have assigned thinking and willing to feeling.

And when I become aware of how, through this mantric formula, I am bound to the earth as a human being, then I should add feeling and thinking to this being bound to the earth. In thought I should set the earth in motion so that like a planet I accompany it on its rounds without perceiving its weight: bound to it as if I were guiding the earth through cosmic space. Feeling is combined with willing. I add thinking to the mixture when I accompany the earth's movement in thought, but can bring it again to a standstill, thus making the earth itself a [fixed] star by my own meditating force of thought.

When I carry out such a meditation again and again, I gradually come to feel myself as a human being outside my body in the cosmos. For this, my dear sisters and brothers, this mantric formula can work on the soul with special force.

[written on the blackboard:]

Bring to thinking life
What as pure contemplation

(that is: as meditation, as contemplation)

in the soul light-filled
shine:
Feeling and willing
And you are spirit
Among pure spirits.

Secondly:

Bring to force of feeling
What as noble love
Through the soul warmly
weave:
Thinking and willing,
you are soul
In the realm of spirits.

Thirdly:

Bring to the Powers of will
What as spiritual impulse
For the soul actively
live:
Thinking and feeling,
And you shall see yourself
As body from spiritual heights.

Only seen thus does the human body appear in its true form.

What is gleaned from the spiritual world, what the initiate experiences in the spiritual world, if it is expressed in words, they are mantric words, and he who experiences them will be led into the spiritual world.

Therefore, if you let the words work on your soul, they are a true guide to the spiritual world:

Bring to thinking life
What as pure contemplation
On the soul light-filled
shine:
Feeling and willing,
And you are spirit
Among pure spirits.

Bring to force of feeling
What as noble love
Through the soul warmly
weave:
Thinking and willing
And you are soul
In the realm of spirits.

Bring to the Powers of will
What as spiritual impulse
For the soul actively
live:
Thinking and feeling,
And you shall see yourself
As body from spiritual heights.

Then, my dear sisters and brothers, when what lies in these mantric words is clearer and clearer to you, then when you come again and again to these lessons it will be with greater understanding, that is, with ever greater cosmic experience that you will hear these words:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the cosmic-word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it vast in spirit.

Who speaks so vastly cosmic?
Who speaks so deeply heartfelt?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Is it you yourself who
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

Blackboard Texts for the Ninth Class Lesson

Life

O man, touch and sense in your body's being

How earth forces support your existence. Earth

O man, experience in the whole round of your touch

How water-beings are the framers of your being. Water

O man, feel in the whole weaving of your life

How the powers of the air nurture your existence. Air

O man, think in the full flow of your feeling

How the fire-powers are your helpers in being. Fire

O man, see yourself in the kingdom of elements.

Love

O man, let act in the depths of your soul

The cosmic powers that guide the planets.

O man, through the cosmic circling renew yourself.

Piety

O man, retain in your spirit's creativity

The constellations' cosmological words.

Bring to thinking life What as pure contemplation On the soul light-filled shine: Feeling and willing, And you are spirit Among pure spirits. Bring to force of feeling What as noble love Through the soul warmly weave: Thinking and willing And you are soul In the realm of spirits. Bring to the Powers of will What as spiritual impulse For the soul actively live: Thinking and feeling, And you shall see yourself As body from spiritual heights.

My dear friends,

The call to self-knowledge, which the human soul can hear when it objectively pays attention to all the beings and events in nature and spiritual life, will pass before our souls again at the beginning of our considerations.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

On the path to the answer which the soul can find to this question, my dear sisters and brothers, we have followed the path leading to the Guardian of the Threshold, to the abyss of being. We have progressed to where the Guardian of the Threshold instructs us so that what was previously dark and gloomy—although we knew that it contained the source of our being—expanded and became light. And then, in the increasing light, we heard the Guardian's call:

See the ether-rainbow arc's
Light teeming round,
Let the light creating force
Pass through your eyes,
Your I penetrate the circle,
Observe from the other side's vantage point
Color flooding the cosmic bowl.

And the voices of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai are intoned with these words as they are directed to the human souls:

Sense our thoughts
Breathing the colors of life
To the light-flooded bowl;
We carry the mirage of the senses
To spirit's domain of being
And turn, by the world inspired
To serve the higher spirits.

And we see how through the flooding light in the cosmic bowl, which we met in the last lesson, the beings of the third hierarchy illuminate and are illuminated; we see the multitudes of these beings, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, turn to the higher spirits, which they serve, to the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; and we are witnesses to how the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes tell their serving spirits to fulfill the needs of human beings.

The Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes speak:

What you have received
From dead illusion made live:
We waken it to existence;
We give it to the rays,
Who manifest with love
The nothingness of matter
In the spirit's essence.

And then—impelled from within—we must turn our gaze to the highest spirits, the first hierarchy, who now turn to humanity in blessing. From them we hear:

In the willing of your worlds
Feel our world working:
Spirit glows in matter
When, thinking, we create.
Spirit creates in matter
When we live in willing:
World is the I-willing Spirit-Word.

As witnesses to how the beings of the higher worlds speak to each other, so penetrated with what the highest beings let stream into human souls as the cosmic-word so that the human heart may resonate with it, we must feel ourselves to be within the all-moving, all-pervading cosmic light in which we ourselves live and move.

And now we come to a truth, which is perceived where the non-embodied beings live, where the spirits live their lives, where the spirits think their truths, where the spirits radiate their beauty, where their spiritual acts take place. And we recognize the greatness, the all-pervading, weaving truth in the spirit-worlds: spirit is. For we are, we live, we act in spirit. We perceive spiritual being.

And now we realize that spirit, in which we now live, alone is. We now know that even here, in the world of sensory illusion, is only spirit. Only spirit is. This stands before our souls as unshakable, all-pervading truth: spirit is. And we do well to place this truth before our souls in picture form.

[Drawing on the blackboard: red]

What is expressed here in the drawing is spirit. It is spirit alone.

[While continuing to speak, Rudolf Steiner inserts the word “Ist” in the red lines of the drawing—barely visible here.]

What is here: Is— is spirit. And what is outside this red is nothing. This is placed before our souls. And the spirit-world tells us [pointing]: here Is, here Is, here Is. Everywhere that spirit is, Is something.

[As he continues to speak, Rudolf Steiner writes the word Nichts (nothing) in various places between the read lines, then the worlds Mineralien (minerals), Pflanzen (plants), Tiere (animals).]

And where there is no spirit, there is nothing. We are profoundly impressed by this truth: Everywhere where spirit is, is something, and where there is no spirit, is nothing. And now we wonder: How did all this seem to us there in the world of sensory illusion, which we left to enter the spiritual world, where we find true being, the spirit revealed to our souls. Over there we did not see what is drawn here in red. We are too weak there to see what is drawn here in red. What remains there then? Nothing. Over there we see Nothing, call it minerals, one kind of Nothing; call it plants, a second kind of Nothing; call it animals, a third kind of Nothing, and so forth.

We see Nothing because we are too weak to see Something. And we call the Nothings the kingdoms of nature. That is the great deception, the great illusion. Over there only variations of the Nothing are visible when we look out from the body. And we feel deeply the impression, as we live over there and give names to what is fundamentally Nothing, that it is the great illusion. And what is Nothing, and what we give names to now appears to us as the sum of names which we give to Nothingness. For in their reality all beings are only present in the spiritual world that we have now entered. Names dedicated to Nothing we have wasted on the non-existent. And beings—not those from the domains of the gods to which we belong and to which we should belong—can take possession of the names which we have wasted on the Nothings. And they keep these names from now on.

If we are not clear about the fact that here on earth we give names to nullities, we fall with our nullities into the greatest illusion. We must know that we are giving names to the nullities. It is now clear to us, because over there [in the spirit-world] we live and move in the light, and the spiritual strength of our hearts has remained there, we can feel deeply, deeply, deeply: We now know that we have gone from the kingdom of illusions to the kingdom of truth. Earnestness, holy earnestness in respect to the truth begins to act in our souls.

And now we look back at the faithful Guardian of the Threshold, who stands at the abyss of being. He doesn't speak now. He spoke from out of the darkness. He spoke when we first felt the brightness. He spoke when the darkness [in the stenography “brightness”—possibly an error.] was brightening for us. Now, as we stand shaken by the great truth “only spirit is”, he stands there speechless, pointing above to where the beings of the higher hierarchies speak to each other. And with presence of mind we think for a moment: Below in earthly life we perceived the impression made on us by minerals, by plants, by animals, by physical human beings; we heard what the clouds say, what the mountains say, how the fountains ripple, how the lightning flashes, how the thunder rolls, what the stars whisper about cosmic secrets. That was our experience down below. Now beyond the abyss of existence all that is silent. Now we are witnesses to the gods speaking to each other. The whole choir of Angeloi begins to speak.

We look up and see how the choir turns to the spirits of the second hierarchy, which they wish to serve. We observe the loving, serving gestures of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, who turn to the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. We view the serving multitudes of the third hierarchy.

We view the multitudes of the second hierarchy in world-creation, in world-dominion, in world-illumination, and we hear what the spiritual-illuminating, divine-willing beings speak to each other.

We hear the Angeloi intoning their words of concern for the guidance of human souls. Their words resonate:

The human beings think!

This weighs on the Angeloi. They are concerned as to how they should guide human souls, because humans think. Then they turn to the Dynamis for the force needed to guide human beings in their thinking.

Angeloi:

The human beings think!
We need the light from the heights
That we may illuminate their thinking.

From the realm of radiance, dominion, acting, the Dynamis lovingly and benevolently reply:

Receive the light from the heights,
So you can illuminate thought,
When human beings think.

And the flooding light, the force of illumination in thought, streams over from the Dynamis to the Angeloi. What the Angeloi receive enlightens, without our knowing, human thinking. Now we realize what acts and weaves in human thinking: the illumination of the Angeloi. But the light force for this illumination they receive from the Dynamis.

[The first part of the mantra is written on the blackboard. Italics indicate writing.]

I) Angeloi:

“Human being think!”: their concern is expressed in their words.

Human beings think!

They turn to the Dynamis with their concern:

We need the light from the heights
That we may illuminate their thinking.

The Dynamis reply:

Dynamis:

Receive the light from the heights,
So you can illuminate thought,
When human beings think.

Our spiritual view goes farther. We see the multitude of Archangeloi turning to the second hierarchy. They turn to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes, to two categories of spirits of the second hierarchy. (The Angeloi had turned to the Dynamis: Archangeloi turn to the Exusiai and Kyriotetes.) Their concern is for human beings' feeling. And they request from the Exusiai and Kyriotetes what they need in order to guide human beings in their feeling.

Archangeloi:

The human beings feel!
We need warmth of soul,
That we may live in feeling.

They must breathe life into feeling. And with powerful voices, because two choirs are answering, Kyriotetes and Exusiai voices ring out in the spiritual cosmos:

Receive warmth of soul
That you may live in feeling
When human beings feel.

[The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

II) Archangeloi:

The human beings feel!
We need warmth of soul,
That we may live in feeling.

The reply:

Kyriotetes and Exusiai:

Receive warmth of soul
That you may live in feeling
When human beings feel.

We turn to the third multitude of the third hierarchy, to the Archai. They have concern for the will of the human being, the third concern of the third hierarchy.

We feel: when the Angeloi turn to the Dynamis, then the Dynamis act way up in the heights in order to give the light they create from the heights to the Archai for their concern for human thinking. And we feel: everything in the compass of cosmic warmth is created by the Exusiai and Kyriotetes, and it is given over to the Archangeloi so that they can guide human feeling. And deep below, where the spirits and gods of the depths prevail, and where from the abysses—in which much evil moves—the good forces of the deep must be drawn up high, so all the gods of the second hierarchy pull together; for in their concern for the human being's will, the Archai need the forces of the deep. They speak:

The human beings will!
We need the forces of the depths,
That we may work in willing.

And the powerful spirits of the second hierarchy answer with a mighty cosmic voice in the combined voices of all three together, the three choirs forming one choir—Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai—three choirs in one:

Receive the force of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

[The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

III) Archai:

The human beings will!
We need the forces of the depths,
That we may work in willing.

Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai answer together:

Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai:

Receive the force of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

This is the world, existing in the holy words of creation, of which we will be witnesses in spiritual worlds, as we are witnesses of the events in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms here in earth.

And we hear, in that it becomes our experience:

The human beings think!
We need the light from the heights
That we may illuminate their thinking.

Receive the light from the heights,
So you can illuminate thought,
When human beings think.

The human beings feel!
We need warmth of soul,
That we may live in feeling.

Receive warmth of soul
That you may live in feeling

The human beings will!
We need the forces of the depths,
That we may work in willing.

Receive the force of the depths,
That you may work in willing,
When human beings will.

We grow into the spiritual world. Instead of what surrounds us here in the sensory earth, the choirs of the spiritual world surround us. And we become witnesses to what the gods say in their creative concern for the world of humans.

Only when in our meditation we go on to the complete elimination of what we are here on earth, and to having a feeling for the world the gods are forming with their divine speech, do we experience true reality. And only when we possess this reality, do we also know what really surrounds us between birth and death. Because behind the appearances in life between birth and death is the reality of what we experience between death and rebirth.

In earlier times people living on earth had a dull, dreamlike clairvoyance. Their souls were filled with dreamlike pictures, spoken [sic] from the spiritual world. Let us imagine a person from olden times. When he was not working, and was resting—although the sun was still in the sky—and was thinking back, pictures arose which he experienced in his soul and which reminded him of what he had experienced in pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world. But he didn't understand the connection between his earthly existence and that existence which shone into his clairvoyant dreams. But the initiates and their teachings were there. They explained the connection, first to their students, and through their students to all the people. So they lived in the earthly world experiencing the memories of pre-earthly existence.

Nowadays in earthly life the memory of pre-earthly existence has been extinguished. Initiates cannot explain the connection between earthly life and pre-earthly existence, because humans have forgotten what they experienced in pre-earthly existence. Such an explanation is not possible because the cosmic memory no longer exists.

Nevertheless, what the gods are saying behind sensory being must be heard by means of initiation-science. Human beings must experience it. And soon the time will come—it's approaching more and more—when a person who passes through the gate of death will only be able to understand the spiritual world into which he enters if he realizes that when a person enters heavenly existence through the gate of death, and finds himself in the reality of the spiritual worlds, within the world of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—if he experiences all this, if what he experiences after death it is not to remain incomprehensible and dark to him, then he will have to remember what he experienced here on earth through initiation-science.

And what is extremely important in understanding what can be experienced in life between death and a new birth—if it has been heard, otherwise it cannot be understood—is remembrance of what is still heard on earth, and which resounds as follows:

The human beings think!
Receive the light from the heights.

The human beings feel!
Receive warmth of soul.

The human beings will!
Receive the force of the depths.

These, my sisters and brothers, are the words that should be heard today in the esoteric schools. They should resound through the instructions of those who lead the esoteric schools with the force of the Michael age. Then it can be thus:

In the esoteric schools the voice of the Angeloi are first heard within the earthly sphere:

The human beings think!

The Dynamis' reply:

Receive the light of the heights.

The voice of the Archangeloi is heard:

The human beings feel!

The reply of the Kyriotetes and Exusiai:

Receive the warmth of soul.

The Archai's words:

The human beings will!

All three members of the second hierarchy, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, answer:

Receive the force of the depths.

Those people who have heard those words in esoteric schools will go through the gate of death, where they will again hear all these words resounding together: the esoteric schools here, life between death and a new birth there. They will understand what is resonating there.

Or they will be dull and unwilling—after preparation by general anthroposophy—in respect to what is said in the esoteric schools. They do not perceive what can be heard through initiation-science from the realm of the heights. They go through the gate of death. They hear there what they should already have heard here. They don't understand it. When the gods speak to each other with powerful words, it sounds to them like incomprehensible ringing, mere sounds, cosmic noise.

Paul speaks about this in the Gospel—that through the teachings of Christ men should protect themselves from death in the spirit-land. For death soon comes in the spirit-land if we go through the gate of death and don't understand what is resonating there, if we can only hear the incomprehensible sounds instead of the understandable words of the gods, because we have been overcome by the soul's death instead of the soul's life. There is an initiation-science because souls are alive. There are esoteric schools so that souls may remain alive when they go through the gate of death. This we must feel deeply. [In a previous paragraph leading up to these words, Rudolf Steiner says: “And soon the time will come—it's approaching more and more—when a person who passes through the gate of death will only be able to understand the spiritual world into which he enters if …” (Und immer mehr wird die Zeit kommen…) which seems to indicate that this means sometime in the future. {Ed./Trans.}]

And now let us consider the path we have taken in spirit, how we approached the Guardian in order to learn how the human being crosses the abyss of existence. And let us also consider how the impressions there acted on our souls; let us take into our souls the inner drama of self-knowledge.

We have traveled the path. Three tablets stood there, so to speak. We are now standing before the third one, after we have taken into our souls all the profundities of divine speech. On the first tablet, long before we arrived at the abyss of existence, resonated:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

Then we approached the Guardian. The second tablet stands there. On it stands:

Recognize first the earnest Guardian,
Who stands before the gates of spirit-land,
Denying entrance of your sensory force
And your power of understanding,
For in your sensory weaving
And in creation of your thoughts,
From space's emptiness,
From the illusion of time's might,
You must first forcefully seize
The truth of your own being.

We have arrived on the other side, passing the earnest Guardian, and have heard a conversation such as this:

The human beings think!
Receive the light of the heights.

The human beings feel!
Receive the warmth of soul.

The human beings will!
Receive the force of the depths.

We look back to the world of senses and we feel about this sensory world the words:

I entered in this world of senses,
Bearing with me thinking's legacy,
A godly force led me in.
Death stands at the path's end.
I will to feel the being of Christ.
In matter's death he wakens spirit-birth.
Thus in spirit I find the world
And know myself in world-becoming

Blackboard texts in German:

Up to now we have given an outer description of what was experienced by those growing-up about the turn of the nineteenth century, by considering the trend of man's spiritual culture. Today, in order to find the bridge to a true self-knowledge, we will study the human being more from within. When we consider the externals of spiritual evolution, especially in the West, we are led back to the first third of the fifteenth century; in an inward study we find ourselves led back to the fourth post-Christian century. A date indicating some important moment would be the year 333 A.D., yet this date is of course only approximate. It is not a date from which to make calculations, but as pointing approximately to weighty matters affecting a large proportion of European humanity.

Let us look into the soul of a man who before this date lived into the culture of Southern Europe, or in certain districts of Northern Africa. These districts come into prominence when we try to gain an idea of what gave the tone to the cultural life of the time. The souls of these human beings were still so constituted that they were conscious that human thought was not simply a head process, but that it was revealed, either directly to the individual, or, where the human being was not able to receive such revelation directly, through the confidential communication of other human beings. The prevalent feeling among the educated today—and among the uneducated—is that their thoughts are worked out in their own heads—this feeling did not then exist. It was a period of actual transition. In the Middle East outstanding spiritual personalities were concerned with how thoughts came to humanity from spiritual realms. In Southern Europe and in Northern Africa doubts crept in as to whether the human being possessed the faculty of receiving thoughts by revelation. These doubts were only faint at first, there was still an overwhelming feeling: When I have a thought, this thought has been put into me by a God either indirectly or transmitted by way of human heredity, that is, through tradition, not natural heredity. Thought can enter earthly evolution only as revelation.

The first Westerners to feel strong doubts in this direction were those who had come from the Northern peoples and entered the civilization of the South. They were of Germanic and Celtic blood and had moved with the various migrations from the North to the South. These people, had they grown up only out of their own forces, might have reached the point of saying: Thoughts are something we work out for ourselves. This feeling, however, was dulled down by what they found as the Graeco-Latin culture, as the culture of the East. These cultures were extraordinarily intermixed up to the fourth century; every possible trend was working within them. Yet in the migrations southwards it was realized that thoughts can be grasped only by drawing them down into the world of the senses from a super-sensible world.

We have, my dear friends, only an external history, we have no history of feeling, no history of thought, no history of the soul. Hence such things do not come to our notice; we do not notice how the whole disposition of soul changes from one century to another. There was a tremendous swing round in man's inner perception in the fourth century. We find then something that for the very first time caused man to reflect upon the origin of thought; so that what previously had been accepted without question, namely, the fact that thoughts were revealed, gradually came to a point where a theory was needed to prove that they were the result of revelation. But these people were by no means convinced that the human being could create his thought-world out of himself.

Now consider the great difference here between the souls of the present day and the souls of that time. I am speaking of some souls only. What I am describing to you was naturally present in various shades. For one part of humanity matters were as I have described them; for another, there was still an invincibly strong, intense belief that soul-spiritual Beings descending into the human organism communicated thoughts to man. It was, if I may put it, only the “elite” among humanity who at that time grasped thought in such a way that they had to ask: Where do thoughts come from? The others knew very little about thoughts; for them it was quite evident that thoughts were given.

Now take the souls born approximately after the year 333. These souls were no longer able, out of a natural feeling, to give a matter-of-course explanation of the origin of thought. Thus a period followed in which theorists, philosophers and philosophical theologians argued as to the significance of thoughts in the world and there arose the struggle between Nominalism and Realism. The Nominalists were those in the Middle Ages who said: Thoughts live only in the human individuality; they are only a summing-up of what exists outside in the world and within the separate individuals. The Realists still had a vivid recollection of ancient times when men regarded thoughts as having substance, as something substantial that was revealed. They conceived thoughts so that they said: It is not I who think the thought; it is not I who, for instance, sum up all dogs into the general concept dog; but there exists one general thought “dog” and this is revealed out of the spiritual world, just as a color or tone is revealed to the senses. It was a struggle to understand rightly the nature of thought which had, as it were, alighted as an independent possession into the human soul. It is of extraordinary interest to steep oneself, from this point of view, in the spiritual history of the Middle Ages.

As we approach the fifteenth century, we discover with what intensity human beings strove to come to terms with what is revealed through thought in man. Whereas mankind before the year 333 really had the idea: There is a divine weaving streaming around the earth just as in the physical world the atmosphere streams round it; and in this streaming, Beings reveal themselves to man and leave behind in him thoughts. They are, so to speak, the footprints of the divine world surrounding the earth, which are graven into men as thoughts. Whereas those souls who before the year 333 considered that in the thought-world a feeling of their connection with the spiritual world existed, we find the Middle Ages permeated by the tragedy of still seeking to connect thought in some way with the divine-spiritual.

Now why did those souls who, up to the fifteenth century thought about thoughts, if I may put it so—why was it that they strove so vigorously to connect thoughts with what is divine-spiritual in the cosmos? It was because they felt an inner impulse which they were unable to express in clear concepts, but which was present in them as a definite experience of soul. This originated from all the souls who were born to play a leading part, from the fourth to the fourteenth century, being reincarnations from the time before the year 333 from the souls who had argued vehemently as to the real or merely nominal character of concepts, having lived previously at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Mystery of Golgotha took place in comparative isolation in Western Asia. But that was only the external manifestation of a spiritual event which took place in the physical world. Something happened in the souls who had reached a certain degree of maturity. When we consider those actually fighting over the reality or unreality of thoughts we find personalities in whom were reincarnated souls whose previous incarnation had taken place during the first three Christian centuries. Essentially, however, civilized mankind was made up of souls reincarnated from the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. Out of the real connection between the human soul and the divine spiritual world which expressed itself in the acceptance of thought being received through revelation—out of this experience which souls living in the Middle Ages had in an earlier earth-life many centuries before, arose the impulse to dispute about the reality or unreality of the thought-world.

For what is it that is known as Scholasticism at the beginning of the new era in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth centuries? What actually filled the souls of the Scholastics? It is the following—the decisive moment had arrived in the evolution of man; it was not given utterance but was felt by outstanding souls of that time. The Gods had forsaken the sphere of human thought, as if man only had thoughts that were wrung dry.

When we observe the souls who lived from the fifteenth century on into later times, we find them to be those who in their previous incarnation had lived not long after the year 333. Up to the eighth, [or] ninth post-Christian centuries, at least those who were teachers still had the feeling that human thought was a gift of the Gods. And the men who in their previous earth-life had already felt the world of thought to be forsaken by the Gods were those—naturally I am speaking only of a part of humanity—destined to be born again about the turn of the nineteenth century.

When, therefore, we observe not only external destiny, but the inner destiny of the human soul, we must pay no heed to that which wells up out of our childhood from the depths of the soul. We must look to the time in which souls were incarnated who could no longer hear from their teachers that thoughts were Beings permeated, imbued by the divine. There-by the inner feeling arose to flee from thought, that something warmer, more saturated with substance should be found. This arose because already in a previous incarnation the divine character of thought had become subject to the gravest doubts, or had indeed been entirely lost. It was at the turn of the nineteenth century that what shines through with the greatest intensity out of the previous earth-life was experienced as tragedy.

Since the first third of the fifteenth century the receiving of thought from the divine-spiritual world was already lost to man. Because he could no longer receive thoughts out of the divine-spiritual world, they were grasped out of external observation. External observation and the art of making experiments reached such a height just because the taking in of things inwardly was replaced by gleaning them from the external sense world.

In the development of world-history, however, what is solely dependent on external conditions does not immediately become apparent. For even if since the fifteenth century man has lost the faculty of perceiving thought from within as a revelation from the divine-spiritual world, souls were not yet there able to feel the full tragedy of being forsaken by revealed thought. In those who had lived their former life on earth before the sixth or seventh century, particularly before the fourth post-Christian century, there lived the feeling: Yes, we must admit that we receive our thoughts from the external world, but in spite of this our soul tells us that even the thoughts received from the external world are given us by God. We no longer know how thoughts are God-given, but our inner being tells us that this is so.

A truly brilliant spirit who had such a mood of soul was Johannes Kepler. Johannes Kepler was as much a natural scientist of an earlier time as of a later one. He drew his thoughts from external observation, but in his inner experience he had an absolute feeling that spiritual Beings are there when man is receiving his thoughts from Nature. Kepler felt himself to be partly an Initiate, and for him it was a matter of course that he experienced his abstract building up of the universe artistically.

It is extraordinarily valuable, from a scientific point of view, to immerse oneself in the progress human thought has made through such a man as Kepler. But one is more deeply stirred when one steeps oneself in Kepler's life of soul, in that soul-life which in later times did not work with such intensity and inwardness in any other natural scientist, certainly not in any authoritative teacher of mankind at large. For between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries the feeling was entirely lost that through thought the human soul is brought into connection with the divine-spiritual.

Those who do not merely study the course of time in an unimaginative fashion just taking in the content, but are able to experience something in the course of events, have remarkable things revealed to them. I do not wish here to talk of how Goethe's special way of thinking about Nature has become an impossibility for later science. I mean for the external science of the times following his; for science did not realize where the difference lay between external science and that of Goethe. But I do not want to speak about this. You need only look at certain scientific books of the first third of the nineteenth century, those that gave the tone to the later mode of thought; you need only look, for instance, into the physiological works either of Henle or Burdach which absolutely belong to the first third of the nineteenth century, although they may have been written later, and you will note in them all a different style. There is still something of the spirit which wells up directly out of the soul when, let us say, they speak of the embryo or of the structure of the human brain; there is still something of what has since been entirely lost.

In this connection it is significant to bring to mind a personality still actively working during the last third of the nineteenth century. He was already subject to the forces driving out the spirit from science, nevertheless he still retained the spiritual life in his own soul. Just let the anatomy of Hyrtl work upon you; he hardly belonged to the last third, chiefly to the second third of the nineteenth century. These books are written in the style of later anatomists, but one can see that it was difficult for Hyrtl. He writes chapter after chapter, always restraining the impulse to allow his soul to flow into his sentences. Occasionally it peeps up through the style, occasionally even through the content. But there is, one might say, the iron necessity to stop the soul and spirit welling up from the man's inner being whenever natural processes are described. Today we can barely imagine what can be experienced when, let us say, we go back from a contemporary anatomical book to Hyrtl or Burdach. One feels as if charged with a certain amount of warmth in one's scientific feeling on going back to the second third, but particularly to the first third of the nineteenth century. Certainly at that time science was not at its zenith. But that is only of secondary importance and need not be considered further. I am speaking of what was experienced in science. And about that one can say: Through studying the path taken by the scientific soul, we can verify what Spiritual Science reveals to us, namely, that at the end of the nineteenth century more and more souls arose in whom there no longer lived from their previous earth-life the impulse that thought is God-given—I mean that there was no longer even an echo of this. For although the sense for the individual past earth-life had been lost, its echo still lived on long afterwards.

Thus felt those who still had a living warmth within them, who had not become dried up by the prejudice that in science one must be objective—in its usual sense; actually what is striven for by Spiritual Science is the truly objective science, but not in the scientists' meaning of the word. These souls not dried up through striving after objectivity asked: What is there in us still bound up with the divine-spiritual (they did not ask this consciously but subconsciously) from which we were torn in our previous earthly incarnation? Rising to the surface of consciousness was the feeling that man had lost his connection with the divine-spiritual world. On the other hand, it is a feeling that man dare not lose this connection, for without even this faint consciousness there is no life for his soul. Hence an intense yearning aroused, the strong inclination to that undefined longing for the Spirit, and yet the incapacity to reach it.

It is characteristic of the generation growing up about the turn of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth that it should ask the older generations: Can we discover the Spiritual in our earthly environment? And the leaders who were asked unconsciously by youth: How can we find the Spiritual in Nature, how can we find it within human life itself?—these leaders condemned as unscientific this bringing the Spirit into the study of Nature and of human life.

Thus in the second half of the nineteenth century a dreadful thing happened—the slogan “Psychology, science of the soul without a soul” arose. I lay no special stress on how certain philosophers said that we need a soul-science without soul. What the philosophers say has no great influence, but it is symptomatic of what figures very widely as feeling and of how one deals with the younger generation. True, only a few philosophers actually said: We need a psychology without soul. But the whole age said: We older people wish to teach you mineralogy, zoology, botany, biology, anthropology, even history, in a way to make it appear to you as if at the most there are experiences of the soul, but not a soul as such. And the whole world, in so far as it is observed scientifically, must be experienced as having no soul. Those who were first to bring with them out of their previous earth-life the tragedy of experiencing soullessness were compelled to ask with the utmost insistence: Where can we look to fill the soul with Spirit? And from what their age considered of greatest value—in other respects rightly so—they gleaned the least information.

Those who in the last third of the nineteenth century wrote that one can gather the nature of their soul-life from their books were, even in the nineteenth century, a vanishing minority. In general the people who wrote these books were not the most brilliant. Among those who do not write books there are distinctly cleverer people than among those who do write them. In the last third of the nineteenth century profounder natures were living in the midst of the superficial ones content with a science bereft of Spirit. And when one looks into these profounder natures, which is possible through Spiritual Science, one finds in the last third of the nineteenth century a wrestling with deep problems. Those who had this inner life were no longer listened to; they no longer found the opportunity to become leaders.

Many people foresaw clearly what the microscope was bringing in its wake in the second half of the nineteenth century. They were to be found among those who, participating in the cultural life, did not really penetrate into it because they felt dissatisfied with a culture devoid of Spirit, and therefore had their thoughts inwardly silenced in face of the growing scientific conceptions, yet asking with deep feeling: How can microcosmic evolution be brought into relation with macrocosmic evolution? This problem became increasingly pressing in their feeling life.

There were also men who, as a result of their education, followed the scientific tradition that continued to become ever emptier and emptier of spirit. They hoped, for instance, for always greater scientific results from the further development of the microscope; they hoped with its help to see smaller and smaller objects. But others of a deeper nature looked with disturbed feelings upon the further development of the microscope, particularly upon the views which followed in its train. The highest hope of one group was, by examining ever smaller and smaller objects, to penetrate into the nature of what is living. But others felt that this whole business would bring the world to naught, that the use of the microscope sucked the soul dry.

I trust you will not think that I am indulging in satire in a mystic, fantastical fashion on the use of the microscope. That would never occur to me. I am naturally fully aware of the services rendered by the microscope, and I would never wish to put a spoke in any scientific wheel. I am simply recounting facts relating to the life of soul.

The number of these solitary spirits steadily decreased. Fortlage, who lived as Professor in Jena at the end of the nineteenth century, was one of them. He spoke somewhat as follows: One can look more and more thoroughly into the microscope and go on discovering ever smaller things, but in this minuteness one loses what is substantially true. If you want to see what is being sought with the aid of the microscope—which, with ever greater perfection, allows one to penetrate further and further into the minute—then turn your gaze out into the infinite space of the universe. From the stars there speaks what you are seeking within the minute. You talk of the secrets of life, and seek for them from what is minute, and ever more minute. But there one loses life, not for reality, but for knowledge. Life is lost in this way. You can find it again when you understand how to read the stars.

Some have said: Life is brought down from the cosmos. But they sought for a material means, possibly in the meteor-showers flying through cosmic space and bringing germs out of other worlds down to the earth. But when one gazes from the earth out into limitless space, it is not limitless at all. For the mechanistic-mathematical way of perception, the firmament was done away with by Giordano Bruno: but for more intimate perception it is again there in the sense that one cannot simply draw a radius from the earth and prolong it into infinity. This radius has in fact an end, and at this end there is everywhere, at the inner periphery, life to be found and not death. From this world-periphery life radiates in from all directions.

I only wish to indicate to you by these examples the nature of those inner problems of experience which confronted the soul at the turn of the nineteenth century. Out of the dullest experience of soul the question really was put: Where can we rediscover the Spiritual?

You see, this question must set the mood if any phase of the youth movement is to find a right content—Where can I find the Spiritual? How does one experience the Spiritual? The really important thing is that side by side with all yearning expectation there shall also be found among the young, single ideals striving towards an inner activity of the soul. I should like to preface what I have to say tomorrow by the following.

In what I have named Anthroposophy, in fact in the foreword to my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, you will meet with something which you will not be able to comprehend if you only give yourself up to that passive thinking so specially loved today, to that popular god-forsaken thinking of even a previous incarnation. You will only understand if you develop in Freedom the inner impulse to bring activity into your thinking. You will never get on with Spiritual Science if that spark, that lightning, through which activity in thinking is awakened does not flash up. Through this activity we must reconquer the divine nature of thinking.

Anthroposophical literature demands that one shall think actively. Most people are only able to think passively, finding active thinking impossible. But active thinking has no room for sleepy nor for intellectual dreaming. One must keep in step with it and get one's thinking on the move. The moment thinking is set in motion one goes with it. Then what I should like to call modern clairvoyance ceases to be anything miraculous. That this clairvoyance should still appear as something particularly miraculous comes from people not wishing to develop the energy to bring activity into their thinking. It often drives one to despair. One often feels when demanding active thinking of anyone that his mood is illustrated by the following anecdote: Somebody was lying in a ditch without moving hand or foot, not even opening his eyes; he was asked by a passer-by: “Why are you so sad?” The man answered: “Because I don't want to do anything.” The questioner was astonished at this, for the man lying there was doing nothing and had apparently done nothing for a long time. But he wanted to do even more “doing nothings” Then the questioner said: “Well, you certainly are doing nothing,” and got the answer: “I have to revolve with the earth and even that I don't want to do “

This is how people appear who do not wish to bring activity into thinking, into what alone out of man's being can bring the soul back into connection with the divine-spiritual content of the world. Many of you have learnt to despise thinking, because it has met you only in its passive form. This, however, is only head-thinking in which the heart plays no part. But try for once really to think actively and you will see how the heart is then engaged; if one succeeds in developing active thinking the whole human being in a way suited to our present age enters with the greatest intensity into the spiritual world. For through active thinking we are able to bring force into our thinking—the force of a stout heart. If you do not seek the Spirit on the path of thought, which although difficult to tread must be trodden with courage, with the very blood of one's heart, if you do not try on this path to suck in that spiritual life which has flowed through humanity from the very beginning, you will create a movement where the infant would believe himself able to draw nourishment out of himself and not from his mother's breast. You only come to a movement with real content when you find the secret of developing within an activity which enables you to draw again out of cosmic life true spiritual nourishment, true spiritual drink.

But that is pre-eminently a problem of the will, a problem of the will experienced through feeling. Infinitely much depends today upon good-will, upon an energetic willing, and no theories can solve what we are seeking today. Courageous, strong will alone can bring the solution.

Let us devote the next few days to the question of how to find this good-will, this strong will.

From what has been said during the last few days it will be clear that nowadays one human being meets another in a different way from what was the case in the past, and this is of quite recent date—in fact, it entered human evolution with the century.

In poetical language no longer suitable for today, former ages foretold what in this century has come for the whole of humanity. Former ages spoke of how, at the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called Dark Age would have run its course, how in a new age there must come quite new conditions in human evolution, conditions difficult to attain because at first man is not accustomed to them. And in spite of the fact that we have now entered an epoch of light, much will seem more chaotic than what was brought by the long, gloomy Age of Darkness.

We must not merely translate into our language what was formerly presented in a picture derived from ancient clairvoyant vision: if so, we should be understanding only the old again. We must learn to perceive it anew with the spiritual means of today. We must permeate ourselves deeply with the consciousness that in this epoch for the first time human ego meets human ego in an intercourse of soul that is free of all veils.

Were we to go back to the first epoch after the great Atlantean earth-catastrophe, to the seventh or eighth millennium before Christ, we should find that fully grown men actually confronted one another as today only the child confronts grownups, with comprehension of the complete human being as I characterized it yesterday, a comprehension where soul and spirit are not found separated from the body but where the physical body is perceived as being of the nature of soul and spirit. In the epoch I have called the ancient Indian, which followed immediately upon the Atlantean catastrophe, the human being did not consider soul and spirit in the abstract way that we do today, with a certain justification.

It is precisely expressions used in this most ancient epoch which seem to us entirely spiritual which are misunderstood today. We misunderstand them if we believe that in the first post-Atlantean epoch of culture men overlooked all they saw in the outer world and were only willing to concentrate on what existed outside the world of the senses. This was by no means the case. They had a much fuller perception of, let us say, a human movement, or of the play of expression on a countenance, or of the way young people grow in five years, or of the plastic development of new leaves and blossoms in a plant, or in an animal of the way the whole of its forces pour into the hoof and other parts of its leg. Men did direct their gaze into the world we call that of the senses, but in the material processes they saw the Spiritual. For them what in the material world presented itself to their senses was at the same time spiritual. Naturally, such perception was only possible because over and above what we see in the sense-world, they actually perceived the Spiritual. They saw not only the meadow carpeted with flowers but over the flowers they saw in a vibrating, active existence the cosmic forces which draw forth the plants from the earth. In a certain way they saw—it seems grotesque to modern man but I am telling you facts—how the human being bears on his head a kind of etheric, astral cap. In this etheric, astral cap they experienced the forces underlying the growth of the hair. People today are prone to believe that the hair grows out of the head simply by being pushed from inside, whereas the truth is that outer Nature draws it forth. In olden times men saw the reality of things which later as an artistic copy shed their light into civilization. Just think of the helmet of Pallas Athene for instance which quite obviously belongs to the head. Those who do not rightly experience this helmet think of it as placed upon her head. It is not placed upon the head. It is bestowed by a concentration of raying cosmic forces that are working around the head of Pallas Athene and densifying, so that in olden times it would have seemed impossible to the Greek to form the head of Pallas Athene without this covering. They would have felt as we do today about a scalped head. I am not saying that this was the case among Greeks of later times.

In ancient times men were able to experience the sense-world as having soul and spirit, because they experienced something of an etheric and soul-spiritual nature. But these men did not ascribe any great importance to the soul and spirit. People readily believe that in the oldest Mysteries the pupils were principally taught that the sense world is semblance and the spiritual world the only reality, but this is not true. The strivings of the Mysteries were directed to making the material world comprehensible to the human soul by the roundabout way of comprehending what is of the nature of soul and spirit.

Already in the epoch of the first post-Atlantean culture, the Mysteries were striving to understand man as a being of soul and spirit, and particularly inwardly—not theoretically—to feel, to interpret any manifestation of the physical man in terms of the spirit. For example, it would have been impossible for them to have given a mechanistic explanation of walking, because they knew that when man walks he has an experience with every step, an experience which today lies deep beneath the threshold of consciousness. Why do we walk? We walk because when we stretch our leg forward and put down our foot, we come into a different relation to the earth and to the heavens, and in the perception of this change—that we place one foot into a different degree of warmth from that in which the other foot has remained—in the perception of this interchanging relation to the cosmos there lies something that is not only mechanical but distinctly super-dynamic.

This was the perception in more ancient times; the gaze of the human being even then was directed to man's external form, to his external movements. And it would never have occurred to the men of that time to imagine that what they saw as dumb show in Nature—the growth and configuration of plants, the growth and configuration of animals—was to be interpreted in the way that we scientifically do today. In the human heart and mind there was something altogether different; a man, belonging to the old Indian civilization to which I referred yesterday, felt it as entirely natural that during a certain period of the year the earth breathes in the being of the heavens, and during another period of the year she does not breathe in but works within herself by shutting out the heavens. It was natural for it to be different in ancient India because climatic conditions were different. But were we in imagination to extend our own climatic conditions we should have to say: During the summer the earth sleeps, gives herself up to the heavenly forces, receives the power of the sun in such a way that this power of the sun pours into the earth's unconsciousness. Summer is the sleep of the earth. Winter is her waking. During the winter the earth thinks through her own forces what during the summer in her sleeping and dreaming she has thought in relation with the heavens. During the winter the earth works over in her own being what during the summer has come to her through the in-working of the forces and powers of the cosmos.

Nowadays little is known of these things—in practical knowledge, I mean—as when the peasant out in the country puts potatoes into the ground during the winter. But nobody thinks about the fate of these potatoes because men have lost the faculty of getting right into the being of Nature. It would never have occurred to human beings who felt in this way to look out into Nature at animals, plants and minerals shining and sparkling in their color, to imagine that in this there is one single reality, a dance of atoms—that would have seemed utterly unreal. “But man needs this dance of atoms for his calculations about Nature.” Yes, that is just it, people believe they need the dance of atoms to be able to make calculations about Nature. Calculations in those days meant being able to live in numbers and magnitudes and not having to attach these numbers and magnitudes to what is only densified materiality. I do not want to raise objections against the service densified materiality renders today, yet one must mention how different the configuration of souls was in that more ancient age.

Then another age came in my book Occult Science. I have called it the old Persian; everything was built upon the principle of authority. People preserved during the whole of their life what is today experienced in a dull, repressed form between the seventh and fourteenth years. They took it with them into later life. It was more intimate but at the same time more intense. In a certain sense human beings looked through the external movement, through man's external physiognomy, or through a flower. They looked at something that was less outwardly objective. What they saw gradually became only a revelation of what exists as true reality. For the first post-Atlantean epoch of civilization the whole external world was simply reality, spiritual reality. The human being was spirit. He had a head, two arms and a body, and that was spirit. There was nothing to deter the ancient Indian from addressing the being he saw standing on two legs, with arms and a head, as spirit. In the next epoch men already saw more deeply into things. It was more in the nature of a surface behind which something more etheric was perceived, a human being more in a form of light. Man had the faculty of perceiving this form of light because atavistic clairvoyance was still present.

And then came the epoch of the third post-Atlantean culture. One felt the need for penetrating still further into the inner being of man or of Nature. The outer had become clearly perceptible and man is beginning to look through the outer perceptible to the spirit and soul within. The Egyptians, who belong to this epoch of the third post-Atlantean culture, mummified the human body. In the epoch of the old Indian culture, mummification would have made no sense; it would have been a fettering of the spirit. A distinction had arisen between body and spirit by the time mummification was practised. Formerly men would have felt they were imprisoning the human spirit, no distinction having been made yet between body and spirit, if the body had been embalmed as mummy.

Then among the Greeks—and actually into our own time—there was already a clearly established separation between the body and the spirit and soul. Today we can do no other than keep these two apart, the bodily and the soul-spiritual. Thus in earlier epochs man really saw the ego through sheaths.

Imagine the ancient Indian. He did not look at man's ego. His language was such that it really only expressed outwardly visible gestures and outwardly visible surfaces. The whole character of Sanscrit, if studied according to its spirit and not only according to its content, is of the nature of gesture, of surface; it expresses itself above all in movement and contour. The ego was therefore seen through the sheath of the physical body, in the next epoch through the sheath of the etheric, in the third epoch through the sheath of the astral man, man's ego still remaining indefinite, until in our epoch having cast off its veil it enters into human intercourse.

No one can adequately describe the impulse that has entered modern evolution, unless he draws attention to the relationship of ego to ego, free from the sheaths, which is emerging in a totally new way, though slowly, today. I shall not speak in the usual sense of our age being an age of transition. For I should like to know which age is not! Every age is an age of transition from the preceding one to the one that follows. And as long as one simply says—Our age is an age of transition—well, it remains just a hollow phrase. There is something to grasp only when one describes what makes a transition. In Our age we are going over from experiencing the other man through sheaths, to direct experience of the other man's ego.

And this is the difficulty in our life of soul; we have to live into this quite new relation between man and man. Do not think that we must learn all the teachings about the ego. It is not a question of learning theories about the ego. No matter whether you are a peasant on the land or someone working with his hands, or a scholar, it holds good for all of you that at the present time, in so much as we have to do with civilized men, their egos meet without sheaths. But that gives its special coloring to the whole of our cultural development.

Try to develop a feeling for how in the Middle Ages there was still much that was elementary in the way in which one human being experienced another. Let us imagine ourselves in a medieval town.

Let us say, a locksmith meets a town councilor in the street. Now what was experienced was not just that the man knew the other to be a town councilor; it was not exhausted by the locksmith knowing—we have elected that man. It is true there existed a link which gave the men a certain stamp. One belonged to the tailors' guild, one to the locksmiths' guild. But this was experienced in a more individual way. And when one as locksmith met a town councilor, he knew from other sources than from the directory: That is a town councilor. For the man walked differently, his look was different, he carried his head differently. People knew that he was a town councilor from things other than documents, the newspaper or things of the sort. One man experienced the other, but experienced him through his sheaths.

But in the sense of modern evolution we must increasingly experience human beings without sheaths. This has gradually arisen. But in a certain sense men are afraid of it. If we had a cultural psychology then it would describe, in connection with recent centuries, men's fear of being obliged to consort with human beings whose egos are unsheathed. It is a kind of terror. In the form of a picture, one might say that those people who in the last century really experienced their own times have frightened eyes. These frightened eyes, which you would not have been able to find either among the Greeks or the Romans, make their appearance in the middle of the sixteenth century, especially in the sixteenth century. Then we follow up these frightened eyes in literature. For instance, one can form a clear mental picture on reading the writings of Bacon of Verulam. We can glean from his writings with what kind of eyes he looked out at the world. Still more so with the eyes of Shakespeare. They can be pictured quite clearly. One need only supplement the words by the descriptions which circulated of Shakespeare's appearance. And so we must picture the people of recent centuries who lived most deeply in their own times as having frightened eyes, an unconsciously frightened look. At least once in their lives they had this frightened look. Goethe had it. Lessing had it. Herder had it. Jean Paul never got rid of it to the day of his death. We must have an organ for perceiving these subtleties if we want to develop any understanding of historical evolution.

Men who want to find their way livingly into the twentieth century should realize that those who represented the nineteenth century can no longer represent the twentieth.

It goes without saying that books about Goethe written in the nineteenth century by the philistine Lewes, or the pedant, Richard M. Meyer, can give no real conception of Goethe. The only literary work of the last third of the nineteenth century which can give some idea of Goethe is at best the Goethe of Herman Grimm. But that is a nightmare to those suffering from the great cultural disease of modern times, philistinism. For in this vast volume on Goethe you find the sentence: “Faust is a work that has fallen from heaven.” Just imagine what the commentators who pull everything to pieces have said; and imagine someone comes along and says that this should not be pulled to pieces. This may not seem important, yet we must notice such things in speaking about cultural phenomena. Read the first chapter of Grimm's Raphael and you will have the feeling: this must be an abomination to every orthodox professor, nevertheless something of it can be taken over into the twentieth century, for the very reason that for the orthodox professor nothing in it is right.

Thus man was seen within sheaths. Now we must learn to see him as an ego-being without sheaths. This alarms people because they are no longer capable of perceiving what I have described as the sheaths in which, for insurance, one could have seen our town councilor. It is no longer possible, at any rate not in Middle Europe, to give people outer representations of the sheaths. For outer representations, the sheaths still had a connection with the spiritual content existing in medieval councilors. Today—I must confess—it would be difficult for me to distinguish by their outer sheaths between a councilor and a privy councilor. In the case of a soldier, in the days when militarism was supreme one could still do it. But one had studiously to learn to do it, to make it a special study. It was no longer connected with basic human experience.

So there existed a kind of terror, and people made themselves indifferent to it by means of what I described yesterday as the web of intellectualism that spreads itself around us, and within which all are caught. In the centers of culture which have retained something of the East, the inner is still brought into a relation with the outer, the basic with the intellectualistic. Those of you who come from Vienna will sense that in the last century this was still very much so. For in Vienna, for instance, a man who wore spectacles was known as “doctor.” People did not bother about the diploma; they were concerned about the exterior. And anyone who could afford to take a cab was an aristocrat. It was the exterior. There was still a feeling of wanting to live within what can he described in words.

The great transition to this newer age consists in man meeting man free of his sheaths—according to his inner disposition, to what the soul demands; but the capacities for this untrammeled encounter have not yet been acquired; above all we have not yet acquired the possibility for a relation between ego and ego. But this must be prepared for by education. That is why the question of education is of such burning importance.

And now let me tell you quite frankly when the great step forward in educational method can first be made towards the individual ego-men of the new age. But I beg you not to use what I am going to say to impress other people who are of an opposite opinion, for if you do so the only result will be a volley of abuse against Anthroposophy. We shall work rightly in education only when we have learned to feel a certain bashfulness about speaking about it at all, when we feel abashed at the idea of talking about education. This is astonishing but it is true. The way in which education is being talked about will be regarded as shameless in future. Today everyone talks about it and about what he considers right. But education does not allow itself to be tied down in formal concepts, nor is it anything we come to by theorizing. One grows into education by getting older and meeting younger human beings. And only when one has grown older and has met younger people, and through meeting younger people and having once been young oneself we penetrate to the ego—only then can education be taken quite naturally.

Many suggestions about education today seemed to me no different from the content—horrible dictum—of the book of the once famous Knigge, who also gave directions as to how grownup people should be approached. It is the same with books on good breeding. Therefore what I have said and written about education, and what is attempted practically in the Waldorf School, aims only at saying as much as possible about the characteristics of the human being, in order to learn to know him, not to give directions: “You are meant to do this in such-and-such a way.” Knowledge of man—that is what must be striven for, and the rest left to God, if I may use this religious phrase. True knowledge of man makes the human being a teacher. For we should really get the feeling that we are ashamed to talk about education. But under the cultural conditions of today we have to do many things that ought to make us ashamed. The time will come when we shall no longer need to talk about education. Today these ways of thinking are lacking, but only for a little more than a hundred years.

Now read Fichte or Schiller thoughtfully. You will find in their writings what to modern people appears quite horrible. They have spoken, for example, about the State and about organizations to make the State into what it should be. And they have spoken about the aim of the State, saying: Morality must be such that the State becomes superfluous, that human beings are capable out of themselves of becoming free men, capable through their morality of making the State superfluous.

Fichte said that the State should be an institution which gives over the reins and gradually becomes entirely superfluous. It would hardly be possible to demand this of our contemporaries nor would they take it seriously. Today it would make a similar impression as the following incident on a troupe of actors.—A play had been performed for the fiftieth time by a traveling company when the director said: “Now that we have performed this for the fiftieth time, the prompter's box can be dispensed with.” But the actors were quite terrified at the idea. Finally one of them pulled himself together and said: “But, sir, then one will see the prompter!” This is about what would happen with our men of the present day. They do not see that the prompter, too, can be dispensed with. Thus it is today. The State will have found its best constitution when it makes itself superfluous, but the government officials and the Chancellors and the Privy Councilors—what would they all say to such a thing?

Now in practical everyday life we must be right within this great revolution going on in the depths of modern souls if we are to reach an outlook where there is as little talk about education as there was in older cultural epochs. Education was not talked about in earlier days. The science of education first arose when man could no longer educate out of the primal forces of his being. But this is more important than is supposed. The boy or girl, seeing the teacher come into the classroom, must not have the feeling: “He is teaching according to theoretical principles because he does not grasp the subconscious.” They want a human relation with the teacher. And that is always destroyed when educational principles are introduced. Therefore if we are to get back to a natural condition of authority between young and old it is of infinite importance, and an absolute necessity, that education shall not be talked about so much, that there should be no need to talk or think about it as much as is done today. For there are still many spheres in which education is conducted according to quite sound principles, although they are beginning to be broken through.

You see, theoretically it is all quite clear, and theoretically people know how to handle the matter, just as it is handled by the academic opinion of the present-day. But in practice it is quite good if there should happen to anyone what happened to me. A friend had scales by his plate and weighed the different foods so as to take the right quantity of each into his organism. From the physiological point of view this was correct—quite definitely so. But picture this transposed into the realm of education. Unfortunately it does happen, though in a primitive way and only in certain connections. But it is more wholesome when this happens intuitively, if parents, instead of buying some special physiological work on nourishment, judge how to feed their children through the feeling of how they themselves were once fed. And so in Pedagogy one must overcome everything which lays down rules as to how much food should be taken into the stomach, and of striving in the sphere of education for real insight into the nature and being of man. This insight into the nature of man will have a certain result for the whole of human life.

You see, whoever comes to an understanding of the human being in the way I have been describing during these days, and thereby imbues his knowledge with artistic perception, will remain young. For there is some truth in this—once we have grown up we have actually become impoverished. Yet it is of the greatest importance that we should have forces of growth within us. What we have in us as a child is of the utmost importance. But to this we are led back in inner experience through true knowledge of man. We really become childlike when we acquire the right knowledge of man and thereby qualify ourselves to meet those who are young and those who are still children in the right way.

There must be a striving that says, not in an egoistical sense as often happens today: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” We must seek for this even in practical life. Unless we were imbued with an active human force which worked in us during childhood, we could never be educators. Pedagogics is not enough if it makes the teacher or educator merely clever. I do not say that it should make him empty of thought. But in this way one does not become empty of thought. Pedagogics that makes the teacher merely clever is not of the right kind; the right kind of pedagogics makes the teacher inwardly alive and fills him with lifeblood of the soul which pours itself actively into his physical life-blood. And if there is anything by which we can recognize a true teacher or educator, it is that his pedagogical art has not made him a pedant.

Now, my dear friends, that you can find a pedant working in some place is perhaps only a myth or a legend. If teachers are pedants, if these myths and legends are founded on truth, then we may be sure that pedagogy has taken a wrong road. To avoid giving offense I must assume these legends and myths to be hypothetical and say: If pedants and philistines were to be found in the teaching profession it would be a sign that our Education is going under. Education is on the ascent only when, in its experience and whole way of working, pedantry and philistinism are driven right out of men. The true teacher can be no philistine, can be no pedant.

In addition to this, so that you may be able to check what I have been saying, I ask you to consider from what vocation in life the word pedant is derived. Then, perhaps, you will be able to contribute to the recognition of the reality of what has been indicated; I do not want to enlarge upon it because already much that I have said is being taken amiss. It is only on the assumption mentioned that we can have a right Pedagogy, otherwise it would have to become a Pedagogy in accordance with what I have been giving you in these lectures. Thus in the lecture tomorrow I will attempt to bring these talks to some conclusion.

The essential purpose of the lectures I have been giving here for some weeks past was to show how through his spiritual life man partakes in what we may call the world of the Stars, just as through his physical life on Earth he partakes in earthly existence, earthly happenings. In the light of the outlook acquired through Anthroposophy we distinguish in man the forces that lie in his physical body and in his etheric or formative-forces body, and those that lie in his Ego and his astral body. You know, of course, that these two sides of his being are separated whenever he sleeps. And now we will think for a short time of a man while he is asleep. On the one side the physical body and the etheric body lie there in a state of unconsciousness; but the Ego and the astral body are also without consciousness.

We may now ask: Are these two unconscious sides of human nature also related during sleep?—We know indeed that in the waking state, where the ordinary consciousness of modern man functions, the two sides are related through thinking, through feeling and through willing. We must therefore picture to ourselves that when the Ego and astral body plunge down, as it were, into the etheric body and the physical body, thinking, feeling, and willing arise from this union.

Now when man is asleep, thinking, feeling, and willing cease. But when we consider his physical body we shall have to say: All the forces which, according to our human observation belong to Earth-existence are active in this physical body. This physical body can be weighed; put it on scales and it will prove to have a certain weight. We can investigate how material processes take their course within it—or at least we can imagine hypothetically that this is possible. We should find in it material processes that are a continuation of those processes to be found outside in Earth-existence; these continue within man's physical body in the process of nutrition. In his physical body we should also find what is achieved through the breathing process. It is only what proceeds from the head-organization of man, all that belongs to the system of senses and nerves, that is either dimmed or plunged in complete darkness during sleep.

If we then pass on to consider the etheric body which permeates the physical, it is by no means so easy to understand how this etheric body works during sleep. Anyone, however, who is already versed to a certain extent in what Spiritual Science has to say about man will realize without difficulty how through his etheric body the human being lives, even while asleep, amid all the conditions of the ether-world and all the etheric forces surrounding existence on Earth. So that we can say: Within the physical body of man while he is asleep, everything that belongs to Earth-existence is active. So too in the etheric body all that belongs to the ether-world enveloping and permeating the Earth is active.

But matters become more difficult when we turn our attention—naturally our soul's attention—to what is now (during sleep) outside the physical and etheric bodies, namely, to the Ego and astral body of man. We cannot possibly accept the idea that this has anything to do with the physical Earth, or with what surrounds and permeates the Earth as ether. As to what takes place during sleep, I indicated it to you in a more descriptive way in the lectures given here a short time ago, and I will outline it today from a different point of view. We can in reality only understand what goes on in the Ego and astral body of man when with the help of Spiritual Science we penetrate into what takes place on and around the Earth over and above the physical and etheric forces and activities.

To begin with, we turn our gaze upon the plant-world. Speaking in the general sense and leaving out of account evergreen trees and the like—we see the plant-world sprouting out of the Earth in spring. We see the plants becoming richer and richer in color, more luxuriant, and then in autumn fading away again. In a certain sense we see them disappear from the Earth when the Earth is covered with snow.

But that is only one aspect of the unfolding of the plant-world. Physical knowledge tells us that this unfolding of the plant-world in spring and its fading towards autumn is connected with the Sun, also that, for example, the green coloring of the plants can be produced only under the influence of sunlight. Physical knowledge, therefore, shows us what comes about in the realm of physical effects; but it does not show us that while all the budding, the blossoming and withering of the plants is going on, spiritual events are also taking place. In reality, just as in the physical human organism there is for example the circulation of the blood, just as etheric processes express themselves in the physical organism as vascular action and so forth, and just as this physical organism is permeated by the soul and spirit, so also the processes of sprouting, greening, blossoming and fading of the plants which we regard as physical processes, are everywhere permeated by workings of the cosmic world of soul and spirit.

Now when we look into the countenance of a man and his glance falls on us, when we see his expression, maybe the flushing of the face, then indeed the eyes of our soul are looking right through the physical to the soul and spirit. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise in our life among our fellow-men. In like manner we must accustom ourselves also to see spirit-and-soul in the physiognomy—if I may call it so—and changing coloring of the plant-world on our Earth.

If we are only willing to recognize the physical, we say that the Sun's warmth and light work upon the plants, forming in them the saps, the chlorophyll and so forth. But if we contemplate all this with spiritual insight, if we take the same attitude to this plant-physiognomy of the Earth as we are accustomed to take to the human physiognomy, then something unveils itself to us that I should like to express with a particular word, because this word actually conveys the reality.

The Sun, of which we say, outwardly speaking, that it sends its light to the Earth, is not merely a radiant globe of gas but infinitely more than that. It sends its rays down to the Earth but whenever we look at the Sun it is the outer side of the rays that we see. The rays have, however, an inner side. If someone were able to look through the Sun's light, to regard the light only as an outer husk and look through to the soul of it, he would behold the Soul-Power, the Soul-Being of the Sun. With ordinary human consciousness we see the Sun as we should see a man who was made of papier-maché. An effigy in which there is nothing but the form, the lifeless form, is of course something different from the human being we actually see before us. In the case of the living human being, we see through this outer form and perceive soul-and-spirit. For ordinary consciousness the Sun is changed as it were into a papier-maché cast. We do not see through its outer husk that is woven of Light.

But if we were able to see through this, we should see the soul-and-spirit essence of the Sun. We can be conscious of its activity just as we are conscious of the physical papier-maché husk of the Sun. From the standpoint of physical knowledge we say: ‘The Sun shines upon the Earth; it sparkles upon the stones, upon the soil. The light is thrown back and thereby we see everything that is mineral. The rays of the Sun penetrate into the plants, making them green, making them bud.’—All that is external. If we see the soul-and-spirit essence of the Sun, we cannot merely say: ‘The sunlight sparkles on the minerals, is reflected, enabling us to see the minerals,’ or, ‘The light and heat of the Sun penetrate into the plants, making them verdant’—but we shall have to say, meaning now the countless spiritual Beings who people the Sun and who constitute its soul and spirit: ‘The Sun dreams and its dreams envelop the Earth and fashion the plants.’

If you picture the surface of the Earth with the physical plants growing from it, coming to blossom, you have there the working of the physical rays of the Sun. But above it is the weaving life of the dream-world of the Sun—a world of pure Imaginations. And one can say: When the mantle of snow melts in the spring, the Sun regains its power, then the Sun-Imaginations weave anew around the Earth. These Imaginations of the Sun are Imaginative forces, playing in upon the world of plants. Now although it is true that this Imaginative world—this Imaginative atmosphere surrounding the Earth—is very specially active from spring until autumn in any given region of the Earth, nevertheless this dreamlike character of the Sun's activity is also present in a certain way during the time of winter. Only during winter the dreams are, as it were, dull and brooding, whereas in summer they are mobile, creative, formative. Now it is in this element in which the Sun-Imaginations unfold that the Ego and astral body of man live and weave when they are outside the physical and etheric bodies.

You will realize from what I have said that sleep in summer is actually quite a different matter from sleep in winter, although in the present state of evolution, man's life and consciousness are so dull and lacking in vitality that these things go unperceived. In earlier times men distinguished very definitely through their feelings between winter-sleep and summer-sleep, and they knew too what meaning winter-sleep and summer-sleep had for them. In those ancient times men knew that of summer-sleep they could say: During the summer the Earth is enveloped by picture-thoughts. And they expressed this by saying: The Upper Gods come down during the summer and hover around the Earth; during the winter the Lower Gods ascend out of the Earth and hover around it.—This Imaginative world, differently constituted in winter and in summer, was conceived as the weaving of the Upper and the Lower Gods. But in those olden times it was also known that man himself, with his Ego and his astral body, lives in this world of weaving Imaginations.

Now the very truths of which I have here spoken, show us, if we ponder them in the light of Spiritual Science, in what connection man stands, even during his earthly existence, with the extra-earthly Universe. You see, in summer—when it is summer in any region of the Earth—the human being during his sleep is always woven around by a sharply contoured world of Cosmic Imaginations. The result is that during the time of summer he is, so to speak, pressed near to the Earth with his soul and spirit. During the time of winter it is different. During winter the contours, the meshes, of the Cosmic Imaginations widen out, as it were. During the summer we live with our Ego and astral body while we are asleep within very clearly defined Imaginations, within manifold figures and forms. During winter the figures around the Earth are wide-meshed and the consequence of this is that whenever autumn begins, that which lives in our Ego and astral body is borne far out into the Universe by night. During summer and its heat, that which lives in our Ego and astral body remains more, so to speak, in the psycho-spiritual atmosphere of the human world. During winter this same content is borne out into the far distances of the Universe. Indeed without speaking figuratively, since one is saying something that is quite real, one can say: that which man cultivates in himself, in his soul, and which through his Ego and astral body he can draw out from his physical and etheric bodies between the times of going to sleep and waking—that stores itself up during the summer and streams out during winter into the wide expanse of the Cosmos.

Now we cannot conceive that we men shut ourselves away, as it were, in earthly existence and that the wide Universe knows nothing of us. It is far from being so. True, at the time of Midsummer man can conceal himself from the Spirits of the Universe, and he may also succeed in harboring reprehensible feelings of evil. The dense net of Imaginations does not let these feelings through; they still remain. And at Christmastime the Gods look in upon the Earth and everything that lives in man's nature is revealed and goes forth with his Ego and astral being. Using a picture which truly represents the facts, we may say: In winter the windows of the Earth open and the Angels and Archangels behold what men actually are on the Earth.

We on Earth have gradually accustomed ourselves in modern civilization to express all that we allow to pass as knowledge in humdrum, dry, unpoetic phrases. The higher Beings are ever poets, therefore we never give a true impression of their nature if we describe it in barren physical words; we must resort to words such as I have just now used: at Christmastime the Earth's windows open and through these windows the Angels and Archangels behold what men's deeds have been the whole year through. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies are poets and artists even in their thinking. The logic we are generally at pains to apply is only an outcome of the Earth's gravity—by which I do not at all imply that it is not highly useful on Earth.

It is what lives in the minds and hearts of men as I have just pictured it, that is of essential interest to these higher Beings; the Angels who look in through the Christmas windows are not interested in the speculations of professors; they overlook them. Nor, to begin with, are they much concerned with a man's thoughts. It is what goes on in his feelings, in his heart, that in its cosmic aspect is connected with the Sun's yearly course. So it is not so much whether we are foolish or clever on Earth that comes before the gaze of the Divine-Spiritual Beings at the time of Christmas, but simply whether we are good or evil men, whether we feel for others or are egoists. That is what is communicated to the cosmic worlds through the course of the yearly seasons.

You may believe that our thoughts remain near the Earth, because I have said that the Angels and Archangels are not concerned with them when they look in through the Christmas windows. They are not concerned with our thoughts because, if I may use a rather prosaic figure of speech, they receive the richer coinage, the more valuable coinage that is minted by the soul-and-spirit of man. And this more valuable coinage is minted by the heart, the feelings, by what a man is worth because of what his heart and feeling contain. For the Cosmos, our thoughts are only the small change, the lesser coinage, and this lesser coinage is spied out by subordinate spiritual beings every night. Whether we are foolish or clever is spied out for the Cosmos every night—not indeed for the very far regions of the Cosmos but only for the regions around the Earth—spied out by beings who are closest to the Earth in its environment and therefore the most subordinate in rank. The daily revolution of the Sun takes place in order to impart to the Cosmos the worth of our thoughts. Thus far do our thoughts extend; they belong merely to the environment of the Earth. The yearly revolution of the Sun takes place in order to carry our heart-nature, our feeling-nature, farther out into the cosmic worlds.

Our will-nature cannot be carried in this way out into the Cosmos, for the cycle of the day is strictly regulated. It runs its course in twenty-four hours. The yearly course of the Sun is strictly regulated too. We perceive the regularity of the daily cycle in the strictly logical sequences of our thoughts. The regularity of the yearly cycle—we perceive the after-effect of this in our heart and soul, in that there are certain feelings which say to one thing that a man does: it is good, and to another: it is bad.

But there is a third faculty in man, namely, the will. True, the will is bound up with feeling, and feeling cannot but say that certain actions are morally good, and others morally not good. But the will can do what is morally good and also what is morally not good. Here, then, there is no strict regularity. The relation of our will to our nature as human beings is not strictly regulated in the sense that thinking and feeling are regulated. We cannot call a bad action good, or a good action bad, nor can we call a logical thought illogical, an illogical thought logical. This is due to the fact that our thoughts stand under the influence of the daily revolution of the Sun, our feelings under the influence of its yearly revolution. The will, however, is left in the hands of humanity itself on Earth. And now a man might say: ‘The most that happens to me is that if I think illogically, my illogical thoughts are carried out every night into the Cosmos and do mischief there—but what does that matter to me? I am not here to bring order into the Cosmos.’—Here on Earth, where his life is lived in illusion, a man might in certain circumstances speak like this, but between death and a new birth he would never do so. For between death and a new birth he himself is in the worlds in which he may have caused mischief through his foolish thoughts; and he must live through all the harm that he has done. So, too, between death and a new birth, he is in those worlds into which his feelings have flowed. But here again he might say on Earth: ‘What lives in my feelings evaporates into the Cosmos; but I leave it to the Gods to deal with any harm that may have been caused there through me. My will, however, is not bound on Earth by any regulation.’—

The materialist who considers that man's life is limited to the time between birth and death, can never conceive that his will has any cosmic significance; neither can he conceive that human thoughts or feelings have any meaning for the Cosmos. But even one who knows quite well that thoughts have a cosmic significance as the result of the daily revolution of the Sun, and feelings through the yearly revolution—even he, when he sees what is accomplished on the Earth by the good or evil will-impulses of man, must turn away from the Cosmos and to human nature itself in order to see how what works in man's will goes out into the Cosmos. For what works in man's will must be borne out into the Cosmos by man himself, and he bears it out when he passes through the gate of death. Therefore it is not through the daily or the yearly cycles but through the gate of death that man carries forth the good or the evil he has brought about here on Earth through his will.

It is a strange relationship that man has to the Cosmos in his life of soul. We say of our thoughts: ‘We have thoughts but they are not subject to our arbitrary will; we must conform to the laws of the Universe when we think, otherwise we shall come into conflict with everything that goes on in the world.’—If a little child is standing in front of me, and I think: That is an old man—I may flatter myself that I have determined the thought, but I am certainly out of touch with the world. Thus in respect of our thoughts we are by no means independent, so little independent that our thoughts are carried out into the Cosmos by the daily cycle of the Sun. Nor are we independent in our life of feelings, for they are carried out through the yearly cycle of the Sun. Thus even during earthly life, that which lives in our head through our thoughts and, through our feelings in our breast, does not live only within us but also partakes in a cosmic existence. That alone which lives in our will we keep with us until our death. Then, when we have laid aside the body, when we have no longer anything to do with earthly forces, we bear it forth with us through the gate of death.

Man passes through the gate of death laden with what has come out of his acts of will. Just as here on Earth he has around him all that lives in minerals, plants, animals and in physical humanity, all that lives in clouds, streams, mountains, stars, in so far as they are externally visible through the light—just as he has all this around him during his existence between birth and death, so he has a world around him when he has laid aside the physical and etheric bodies and has passed through the gate of death. In truth he has around him the very world into which his thoughts have entered every night, into which his feelings have entered with the fulfilment of every yearly cycle ... “That thou hast thought; that thou hast felt.” ... It now seems to him as though the Beings of the Hierarchies were bearing his thoughts and his feelings towards him. They have perceived it all, as I have indicated. His mental life and his feeling-life now stream towards him.

In earthly existence the Sun gives light from morning to evening; it goes down and night sets in. When we have passed through the gate of death, our wisdom rays out towards us as day; through our accumulated acts of folly, the spiritual lights grow dark and dim around us and it becomes night. Here on Earth we have day and night; when we have passed through the gate of death, we have as day and night the results of our wisdom and our foolishness. And what man experiences here on this Earth as spring, summer, autumn and winter in the yearly cycle, as changing temperatures and other sentient experiences, of all this he becomes aware—when he has passed through the gate of death—also as a kind of cycle, although of much longer duration. He experiences the warmth-giving, life-giving quality (life-giving, that is to say, for his spiritual Self) of his good feelings, of his sympathy with goodness; he experiences as icy cold his sympathy with evil, with the immoral. Just as here on Earth we live through the heat of summer and the cold of winter, so do we live after death warmed by our good feelings, chilled by our evil feelings; and we bear the effects of our will through these spiritual years and days. After death we are the product of our moral nature on Earth. And we have an environment that is permeated by our follies and our wisdom, by our sympathies and antipathies for the good.

So that we can say: Just as here on Earth we have the summer air around us giving warmth and life, and as we have the cold and frosty winter air around us, so, after death, we are surrounded by an atmosphere of soul-and-spirit that is warm and life-giving in so far as it is produced through our good feelings, and chilling in so far as it is produced through our evil feelings. Here on Earth, in certain regions at least, the summer and winter temperatures are the same for all of us. In the time after death, each human being has his own atmosphere, engendered by himself. And the most moving experiences after death are connected with the fact that one man lives in icy cold and the other, close beside him, in life-giving warmth.

Such are the experiences that may be undergone after death. And as I described in my book Theosophy, one of the main experiences passed through in the soul-world, is that those human beings who have harbored evil feelings here on Earth, must undergo their hard experiences in the sight of those who developed and harbored good feelings.

It can indeed be said: All that remains concealed to begin with in the inner being of man, discloses itself when he has passed through the gate of death. Sleep too acquires a cosmic significance, likewise our life during wintertime. We sleep every night in order that we may prepare for ourselves the light in which we must live after death. We go through our winter experiences in order to prepare the soul-spiritual warmth into which we enter after death. And into this atmosphere of the spiritual world which we have ourselves prepared we bear the effects of our deeds.

Here on Earth we live, through our physical body, as beings subject to earthly gravity. Through our breathing we live in the surrounding air, and far away we see the stars. When we have passed through the gate of death we are in the world of spirit-and-soul, far removed from the Earth; we are beyond the stars, we see the stars from the other side, look back to the world of stars. Our very being lives in the cosmic thoughts and cosmic forces. We look back upon the stars, no longer seeing them shine, but seeing instead the Hierarchies, the Spiritual Beings who have merely their reflection in the stars.

Thus man on Earth can gain more and more knowledge of what the nature of his life will be when he passes through the gate of death. There are people who say: ‘Why do I need to know all this? I shall surely see it all after death!’—That attitude is just as if a man were to doubt the value of eyesight. For as the Earth's evolution takes its course, man enters more and more into a life in which he must acquire the power to partake in these after-death experiences by grasping them, to begin with in thought, here on the Earth. To shut out knowledge of the spiritual worlds while we are on the Earth is to blind ourselves in soul and spirit after death. A man will enter the spiritual world as a cripple when he passes through the gate of death, if here, in this world, he disdains to learn about the world of spirit, for humanity is evolving towards freedom—towards free spiritual activity. This fact should become clearer and clearer to mankind and should make men realize the urgent necessity of gaining knowledge about the spiritual world.

In the course of our present studies I should like it to become increasingly clear that man does not belong to the Earth alone, to Earth-existence alone, but also to the Cosmos, to the world of Stars. Much of what there is to say in this connection I have, as you know, already said. I want now to begin with a brief remark in order that misunderstandings may be avoided.

Anyone who speaks of man's connection with the world of the Stars is probably always liable to be accused of leanings towards the superficial form of Astrology that is so widely pursued nowadays. But if what is said on this subject is rightly understood, the immense difference will at once be apparent between what is meant here and the amateurish interpretations of ancient astrological traditions that are so common today.

When we say that man, between birth and death, is a being connected with the Earth and earthly happenings, what do we mean by this? We mean that man owes his existence between birth and death to the fact that, in the first place, he takes the substances of the Earth into his metabolic system as nourishment and digests them; further, that through his breathing, and through the inner processes connected with his breathing, he is related in still another way to the Earth—that is to say, to the atmosphere surrounding the the Earth. We also say that man perceives the outer things of the Earth by means of his senses, perceives indeed reflections of what is extra-terrestrial—reflections which are, however, of a much more earthly character than is generally supposed. So that in general one can say: Man partakes of earthly existence through his senses, through his rhythmic system, and through his metabolic system, and has within him the continuation of the processes set in operation through this Earth-existence itself.

But equally there takes place in man a continuation of cosmic, extra-terrestrial processes. Only it must not be supposed, when it is said that an influence from the Moon, or Venus, or Mars, is exercised upon man, that this is to be understood merely as if rays of light are sent down from Mars or Venus or the Moon, and permeate him. When, for instance, it is said that man is subject to the influence of the Moon, this must be taken as an analogy of what is meant by saying that man is subject to the influences of the substances of the Earth. When someone passes an apple-tree, let us say, picks an apple and eats it, it can be said that the apple-tree has an influence on him; but we should not construe this so literally as to say that the apple-tree had sent its rays towards him. Or, if you like, when a man passes a meadow where there is an ox, and a week afterwards eats its flesh, we shall not at once form the idea that the ox has exercised an influence upon him. Neither must we picture so literally what is said about the influence upon man of the world of the Stars. The relation of the world of the Stars to man and of man to the world of the Stars is for all that just as much a reality as the relation of the man to the ox he passes in the meadow and the flesh of which he afterwards eats.

Today I have to speak of certain connections which exist between man and the worlds both of Earth-existence and of extra-earthly existence. If we again turn our attention to how man lives in the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping, we must first be clear that it is in the waking state that his reciprocal relationship to earthly substances and earthly forces is actually established. During waking life he perceives through his senses; during sleep he does not. Moreover he eats and drinks only when awake—though possibly some people would like to do so in sleep as well! The breathing process and the process that is connected with the breathing, i.e. the circulation of the blood, as well as the other rhythmic processes—these alone continue in man both in the waking and sleeping states. But they differ in the two states. I will speak later of the difference there is between breathing during waking life and breathing during sleep. To begin with we will confine ourselves to the fact that man is related to the outer world during the waking state through his senses and through his metabolism. We will consider this at first in connection only with things that are common knowledge.

Let us then start from the fact that during his waking state man takes foodstuffs into himself from the outside world, inner activity being promoted by the process of digestion. But it must not be forgotten that while, in the waking state, after the food has been taken, inner physical and etheric activity proceeds under the influence of the intaken foodstuffs, this physical and etheric organism of man is permeated by his Ego-organization and astral body.

It is also the case that during the waking state, man's Ego and astral ‘being’ take command of what goes on in the physical and etheric bodies in connection with the process of nourishment. But what thus takes place under the influence of the Ego and astral being does not continue during sleep. During sleep the physical and etheric bodies of man are worked upon by forces that issue, not from the Earth but from the cosmic environment of the Earth—from the world of the Stars.

It might be said—and not in a figurative sense for it has real meaning—that by day man eats the substances of the Earth and by night takes into himself what the Stars and their activities give him. In a certain sense, therefore, man is bound up with the Earth while he is awake and removed from the Earth while he is asleep; heavenly processes take their course in his physical and etheric bodies during sleep.

Materialistic science thinks that when a man is asleep, the substances he has consumed simply activate their own forces in him, whereas in reality, whatever substances a man takes into himself are worked upon during his sleep by the cosmic forces in the environment of the Earth. Suppose, for instance, we consume white of egg—albumen. This albumen is only fettered to the Earth through the fact that during the waking state we are permeated by our soul and spirit—our astral body and Ego. During sleep this albumen is worked upon by the whole planetary system from Moon to Saturn, and by the world of the fixed Stars. And a chemist who wished to study the inner processes taking place in man during sleep would have not only to be versed in earthly chemistry but also in a spiritual chemistry, for the processes then are different from those that take their course during waking life.

The Ego and astral being of man are, as you know, separated from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep and are not directly related with the world of the Stars; but they are directly related with the Beings of whom the Sun, Moon and Stars are the physical mirror-images—namely, with the Beings of the Hierarchies. Man asleep is a duality; his Ego and astral body—I could equally well say, his spirit and soul—become subject to the spiritual Beings of the higher kingdoms of the Universe. His bodies, the physical and etheric bodies, are subject to the physical reflections, the cosmic-physical mirror-images of these higher Beings.

Aware of himself as an earthly being, man has become more and more a materialistic philistine under the influence of intellectualism. Almost as aptly as the modern age is called the epoch of intellectual and scientific progress, it could be called the epoch of materialistic philistinism. For man is not conscious that he is dependent on anything else than sense-impressions coming from the Earth, the rhythmic processes set going in him by earthly processes, the metabolic processes also occasioned in him by earthly conditions. Hence he does not know his real place in the Universe. The factors in operation here are of tremendous complexity. As soon as the veil that is spread before man in order that he may see only the sense-world and not the spiritual world behind it, is drawn aside, life becomes extraordinarily complex.

It is found to begin with that man is influenced not only by those Beings and their physical reflections, the Stars, which can be directly observed, but that within earthly existence itself, supersensible Beings akin to those of the world of Stars have so to speak set up their abode in the earthly realm.

You know that the people of the Old Testament worshipped Jehovah—who was an actual Being, connected with what manifests in the physical world as Moon. It is of course more or less a figure of speech to say that the Jehovah-Being has his dwelling in the Moon, but at the same time there is reality in the expression. Everything pertaining to this Jehovah-Being is connected with the Moon.

Now there are Beings who ‘scorned’—if I may so express it—to make the journey to the Moon with the Jehovah-beings when the Moon separated from the Earth, and who remained in the earthly realm. So that in a way we can divine the existence of the true Jehovah-beings when we look at the Moon. We can say: that is the outer physical image of everything that participates in a regular way in the World Order in connection with the Being known as Jehovah. But when we learn to know what takes place inside the surface of the Earth—whether in the solid or the watery states—we find beings there who have disdained to make their home on the Moon, and have in an irregular way made the Earth their dwelling-place.

Now the Moon-beings, as I will call them, have helpers. These helpers belong to Mercury and Venus, just as the Moon-beings belong to the Moon. The Venus-beings, the Mercury-beings and the Moon-beings form a kind of trinity. The so-called regular beings of this kind in the Universe belong to these Stars. But both in the solid and the watery constituents of the Earth, we find beings belonging, it is true, to the same category, but—one might say—to a different epoch of time. They are beings who did not share in the Earth's cosmic evolution.

These beings have an influence upon sleeping man just as the regular cosmic beings have; but their influence is pernicious. I must characterize it by saying: when a man goes to sleep, then in the condition between falling asleep and waking, these irregular Moon, Venus and Mercury-beings approach him and set about persuading him that evil is good and good evil. All this takes place in man's unconscious condition, between going to sleep and waking.

It is a shattering experience connected with initiation that beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness things by no means without danger to humanity are encountered. People holding the materialistic view of life have no idea to what man is exposed between going to sleep and waking. He is actually exposed to these beings who persuade him in his sleeping state that good is evil, and evil good. The moral order on Earth is bound up with the human etheric body, and when man sleeps, he leaves his moral achievements behind him on the bed. He does not pass over into the state of sleep armed with his moral qualities.

Natural Science today is everywhere touching the fringe of things which need to be explained by Spiritual Science. You may recently have seen in the newspapers some interesting and thoroughly well-founded statistics. It was stated that criminals in the prisons have been found to have the soundest sleep of all. Really hardened criminals are never tormented during their sleep by bad dreams or the like. This only happens when they dip down again into their etheric bodies, for it is there that the moral qualities lie. It can much more easily happen to one who is striving to be moral, that through the constitution of his etheric body, he carries over something into his astral body and is then tormented by dreams as the result of comparatively trifling moral lapses. But generally speaking it is a fact that man does not carry over at all, or only to a very slight extent, the moral constitution he acquires during earthly existence but is exposed during sleep to the beings just referred to.

These beings are identical with those I have always designated as Ahrimanic. They set themselves the task of keeping man on the Earth by every possible means. You know from the book Occult Science that the Earth will one day pass over into the Jupiter condition. That is what these beings want to prevent. They want to prevent man from developing in a regular way together with the Earth and then passing over into the Jupiter condition in a normal way. They want to preserve the Earth as Earth and mankind for the Earth. Hence these beings work unceasingly and with great intensity to achieve the following.—You must remember that these are things that take place behind the scenes of existence—real processes that have been going on ever since there has been a human race on the Earth.—Man passes into the state of sleep in his Ego-being and astral-being. These Moon, Venus and Mercury-beings who are living unlawfully on the Earth, now endeavor to give man an etheric body composed of the Earth's ether whenever he is asleep. They hardly ever succeed. In rare cases of which I will speak at some later time, they have succeeded; but this hardly ever happens. Still they do not give up the attempt for over and over again it seems to them that their efforts might succeed, that they might surround, permeate a man while he is asleep and has left his etheric body behind, with another etheric body built up from the Earth's ether. That is what these beings desire.

If an Ahrimanic being of this category were actually to succeed in bringing a complete etheric body stage by stage into a man every time he slept, such a man would be able after death, when living in his etheric body, to maintain himself in that body. Otherwise, as you know, the etheric body dissolves in a few days. But a man to whom the above had happened would be able to continue existing in his etheric body and after a time there would arise a race of etheric humanity. That is what is desired from this side of the spiritual world, and then it would be possible by such means to preserve the Earth.

Within the solid and the fluid components of the Earth there are in very truth a host of such beings. Their desire is to make mankind into pure phantoms, etheric phantoms, until the end of the Earth's evolution, so that the normal goal of Earth-evolution could not be attained. And in the night-time these beings by no means lose courage; over and over again they believe that their efforts may succeed.

Now man today has quite a passably good intellect which has developed considerably at the present time when philistinism is on the increase. Man can certainly pride himself upon possessing intellect. But this intellect is not even remotely on a par with the intellect of those higher beings who desire to achieve what I am now describing to you. Let nobody say: ‘These beings must be fearfully stupid.’ They are certainly not stupid. Seeing that they work only upon human beings in sleep, there is nothing to deter them from believing that they might succeed before the end of Earth-evolution in preventing a large portion of the human race from reaching their future destinations—destinations bound up with the Jupiter embodiment of the Earth.

But one who is able to see behind the scenes of physical existence can perceive that these beings do sometimes lose courage, are disappointed. And the disappointments they experience are not experienced in the night, but by day. One sees, for instance, how these Ahrimanic beings suffer disappointments if one comes across them in hospitals.

Now of course the illnesses that befall men have one aspect that calls upon us in all circumstances to do everything we possibly can to heal them. But on the other side we must ask: how do the illnesses suffered by men arise out of the dark sources of natural existence?

Those illnesses which are not the result of external influences but arise out of the inner constitution of man, are connected with the fact that when the Ahrimanic beings have almost succeeded in making a man assume an etheric body that is not his normal one, then, instead of bringing the lawful working of the etheric forces into his physical body and into his own accustomed etheric body on waking, such a man bears into himself causes of illness. Through these causes of illness the true Venus, Mercury and Moon-beings protect themselves against the harmful influences of the irregular beings. Indeed if a man did not at some time or another get this or that illness, he would be liable to the danger of which I have just spoken. In any illness his body breaks down, collapses, in order that there can be ‘sweated out,’ if I may use the expression, whatever irregular etheric processes he has taken into himself through the Ahrimanic influences.

And a further reaction called forth in order to prevent man from falling a victim to this Ahrimanic influence, is the possibility of error. And a third thing is egoism. Man is not fundamentally intended to be ill, to fall a prey to error, or to be egoistic to an exaggerated degree. Egoism as such is again a means of holding man to the evolution proper to the Earth instead of being torn out of it by the Ahrimanic beings. This, then, is one order of beings which can be discovered behind the scenes of ordinary sense-existence.

One can form an idea of another order of beings by knowing that not only Moon, Mercury, and Venus have an influence upon man but that an influence is also exercised from beyond the Sun—from Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

You know from the lectures I gave in the so-called ‘French Course’^NoteNum that the Moon is the physical reflection of those beings who bring man into the physical world. Saturn is the physical reflection of those beings who bear him again out of the physical world. The Moon draws man down to the Earth; Saturn draws him again into the Universe and then into the spiritual world.

Just as the Jehovah-Moon-God has Venus and Mercury-beings as helpers, so Saturn has Jupiter and Mars-beings as helpers in bearing man into the Cosmos and into the spiritual worlds. These influences and the influences connected with the Moon-beings work upon man in exactly the opposite way.

The influences of Moon, Venus, and Mercury upon us are predominant until our 17th or 18th years. Then later on, when we have passed our 20th or 21st year, an influence from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn becomes particularly active; only in later years does this come to the point of leading us out of earthly existence into the spiritual world. The inner constitution of man is, in fact, dependent upon this transition, as one might say, from the inner planets to the outer planets. Until our 17th or 18th years, we are dependent, for instance, upon the major blood-circulation which affects the whole body. Later in life we are dependent upon the minor blood-circulation—but these are matters which must be left for future lectures. At the moment we must pay attention to the fact that just as the irregular beings of Moon, Venus, and Mercury have their habitations in the solid and fluidic components of the Earth, so the irregular beings of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have the conditions for their existence—or, to speak pictorially, their habitations—in the warmth and in the air surrounding the Earth.

These beings have a great influence upon man during his sleeping state. But their influence works in exactly the opposite direction. The aim of these beings is to make man into a moral automaton—if I may so express it—into a moral automaton of such a nature that in his waking state he would not listen to his own instincts, his desires, or the voice of his blood, but would spurn all this and hearken only to the inspiration of these irregular Mars-, Jupiter-, and Saturn-beings. He would then become a moral automaton, without any prospect of a future state of freedom. That, then, is what these beings desire; and their influence too is strong, exceedingly strong. It is they who every night want to induce man to take the influence of the world of Stars into himself and never again the influence of the Earth. They would fain carry man right away from earthly existence. They desire—and have desired this ever since the human race first arose on the Earth—that man shall spurn the Earth, that he shall not awaken to freedom on the Earth—where alone this is possible. They desire that he shall remain a moral automaton as he was in the preceding metamorphosis of the Earth, in the Old Moon.

And in the middle, between these two hosts, of which the one sets its camp in the element of warmth and that of air, and the other in the elements of earth and of water—between these two opposing cosmic hosts stands Man. Life in his physical body conceals from him the fact that a fierce battle is waged in the Cosmos for possession of his being.

Today man must consciously find his way to such knowledge for it concerns him deeply and essentially. His very existence as a human being is constituted by the fact that forces are everywhere active around him, forces from the spiritual world. It is important for man today to have knowledge of his real position in the Universe.

A time will come when people will be far more justified in holding a poor opinion of our dark, materialistic knowledge compared with what will be known in the future about the spiritual reality behind the physical, than we are justified in saying that the scientific knowledge possessed by the Greeks was puerile, that they were mere children, whereas we have made splendid progress! In philistinism we certainly have made splendid progress and we shall have much more right to criticise when we can speak with full knowledge of this battle that is waging on the Earth for possession of man's being.

There are signs that a knowledge of these things must begin to spread in our time. It is certainly true that what I have told you today about the battle of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings in the Cosmos for the being of man is still hidden from the majority of people in the dark recesses of their inner nature. But these battles are now beginning to send their waves into that realm of existence of which men are clearly conscious. And today, if we are not to lead a sleepy existence in our civilization, we must know how to recognize the first waves that beat in upon us from those regions of the spiritual world which I have just characterized.

These two hosts—the Luciferic in the warmth and airy element of the Earth, the Ahrimanic in the solid and watery—these two hosts send their waves into our cultural life today. The Luciferic hosts are making their influence felt above all in outworn theology. In our cultural life, as an outflow of this Luciferic power, we encounter statements endeavoring to make Christ into a myth. The Christ descended to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha as a real Being, and that is naturally a truth that cuts right across the intentions of the beings who would like to make man into a moral automaton, without freedom. Therefore: Do away with the reality of Christ. Christ is a myth! You can discover in the literature of the 19th century, how clever and ingenious were the hypotheses of theologians like David Frederic Strauss, Kalthoff and those who merely echoed them, or better said, apish babblers like Arthur Drews! Everywhere the view is advanced that Christ is a mythological figure, a mere picture which has impressed itself upon man's imagination.—There will be many more attacks from these hosts—but this is the first.

The first waves coming from the Ahrimanic host in the solid and watery elements of the Earth press home the opposite view. In this case, Christ is denied and validity allowed only to the ‘simple man of Nazareth,’ to Jesus as the physical personality. Here again is a tit-bit presented by theology!

Making Christ into a myth—a purely Luciferic activity. Making the One who went through the Mystery of Golgotha into a mere man—even if endowed with every possible quality—a purely Ahrimanic activity. This, however, does not succeed at all easily, for the many testimonies and traditions have to be eliminated before producing this ‘simple man of Nazareth.’ Nevertheless this other tit-bit of theology is evidence of the onrush of the Ahrimanic breakers into human culture.

If these things are to be rightly assessed we must be able also to detect them behind the scenes of our ordinary existence on Earth. Otherwise, if men are not willing to turn their attention to what can be said today out of the spiritual world, they will become less and less able to judge such phenomena correctly, and these phenomena will then take effect in the sub-consciousness. It will become increasingly dangerous for men to surrender to the subconscious. Clear, thoughtful observation of what actually exists—a feeling for reality—that is the growing need of humanity.

Perhaps we can trace most definitely where this clear thoughtfulness, this sense of reality, must be applied, when we perceive the increase of such extraordinary phenomena as the theology which on the one hand denies Christ, and on the other hand makes Christ a myth. Such phenomena will become more and more prevalent, and if they are not to lead to corruption, humanity must acquire a clear, unswerving perception of the spiritual influences that are exercised upon the physical world, and particularly upon man himself.

I told you once before of the two men who found a piece of iron bent into a certain shape. The one said: “A good horse-shoe! I will shoe my horse with it.” The other said: “Not at all. It is a magnet and can be used for quite different purposes than shoeing a horse!” “I see nothing like a magnet about it,” said the other man. “You are crazy to say that there are invisible magnetic forces in it. It's a horse-shoe—that's its use!”

This is rather like the people today who are not willing to receive the knowledge that comes from the spiritual world. They want to “shoe horses” with everything in the world—if I may so express myself—because they will not acknowledge the reality of the supersensible forces. They want to shoe horses—not to make anything in which the magnetic forces are put to use. There was once a time—nor does it lie very far behind us—when a piece of iron so shaped would have been used for the shoeing of horses. But today this is no longer possible.

A time will come when in ordinary social life too, men will need what can be communicated from the spiritual world. Of this we must be mindful, and then Anthroposophy will penetrate not only into the intellect—that is of less importance—but above all into the will—and that is of great importance. Upon this we will ponder more and more deeply.

• NoteNum. Printed under the title: Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion. An abbreviated version of ten lectures given by Dr. Steiner in Dornach, 6th-15th September, 1922.

My dear Friends,

Suppose that we observe an animal during the course of a year. We will find that its life follows the cycle of the seasons. Take for example an insect: according to the time of year it will form a chrysalis (pupate), at another season it will emerge and shed its chrysalis-form, at another time lay its eggs, and so on. We can follow the course of nature, follow the stages of such an insect's life, and find a certain connection between them, for the animal organizes its life according to its natural surroundings.

If we then go on to consider people—say, the people of one of the larger human communities during earlier stages of the earth's evolution—we find that they too experienced, more or less instinctively, the Life of nature. But as humanity developed further, those instincts, which enabled people to experience their natural surroundings so directly, largely died out. Among more advanced humanity, therefore, we will not find that spontaneous harmony—a harmony between what arises from the human side and the immediate setting or natural surroundings. That has to do with the fact that humanity itself is undergoing a development, which constitutes its history, and which will form a whole within the long planetary development of the earth.

Returning to our example of a lower animal, in insect, where these matters are revealed most clearly, we find that its experience spans a comparatively short space of time—a year. Then the cycle repeats itself. With regard to mankind, a certain law of development is found to run like a thread through long ages of our earth's planetary evolution, as we have repeatedly observed during our historical studies. We have become familiar, for instance, with the type of instinctive clairvoyance belonging to earlier peoples. Their pictorial consciousness gradually diminished during an intermediate period of human development, eventually giving place to modern consciousness which is intellectual, conceptual. Our own historical time, dating from the first third of the fifteenth century, is the time of the developing Consciousness Soul. It is that time when man will step fully into his capacity of intellectual thinking in its narrower sense, which will then bring him fully to free consciousness of the Self.

If we consider a longer space of time from this point of view, we begin to find certain observable laws in the development of humanity. We can compare these developmental laws with those which, say, an insect experiences during the course of a year. Now in ancient times people still instinctively lived together with their natural surroundings and with the cycle of nature but these instincts have more or less died away, and nowadays we live in a time in which conscious inner life must replace them. What would happen nowadays if a man were to give himself up entirely to chance! Suppose he were not to adopt any inner guiding principles or rules, or that he did not tell himself at a certain moment: ‘This is how you should orientate yourself’—suppose that he were not to arrive at any such inner orientation but lived his life though, from birth to death, as chance directed. Man who by virtue of his higher soul development is ranged above the animals would sink because of the manner in which he handled his soul-life, below the animal level.

We may say, therefore, that the insect has a certain direction in its life through spring, summer, autumn and winter. It does not give its development up to chance, placing itself as it does within certain laws in each succeeding phase of its life. Mankind, however, has left behind the age of instinctive co-existence with nature. In his case it was more ensouled than that of the animals, but still instinctive. His life has taken on a newer, more conscious form. Yet we find that man, in spite of his higher soul-life and capacity to think, has given himself over to a more chaotic life. With the dying away of his instincts he has fallen, in a certain way, below the level of the animals. However much one may emphasize man's further steps forward, towering above the animals, one must still concede that he has lost a particular inner direction in his life. This directing quality of his life could be found once more by seeing himself as a member of the human race, of this or that century. And just as, for a lower form of life, the month of September takes its place in the course of the year, so does this or that century take its place in the whole development of our planet. And man needs to be conscious of how his own soul-life should he placed historically in a particular epoch.

This is an idea to which man needs to grow accustomed so as to step even further into the development of the Consciousness Soul. A man should be able to say to himself: ‘I live in this or that epoch. I am not man in the full sense of the word if I give myself over to chance. Chance has deposited me into earthly life through birth. But to give myself up to change as far as my consciousness is concerned would be simply to abandon myself to karma. I am only man, in the full sense of being man, if I take account of what the historical development of humanity asks from my soul-life, belonging as I do to this particular epoch.’ An animal lives within the cycle of the year: man must learn to live as part of the earth's history.

We have placed as the most vital event in the earth's history the Mystery of Golgotha. And we have often considered what it meant to live before the Mystery of Golgotha, or at some point after it. We have here a kind of fulcrum in historical development, from which vital, historical deed one can reckon backwards and forwards. But to do justice to such reckoning we must keep in mind the particular tasks awaiting the human soul in each historical age. The kind of presentation of the past which is customary cannot lead to such an understanding of each particular age. We may be told in bald terms, how Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman history unfolded, but that leaves us without any key to the position of each in the whole regular historical development of our planet—in the whole regular way an animal stands within the course of the year. Now, in order to gain a concept of what we need to arouse in our own soul-life in this age, we have had to consider the various ages of history from many points of view. Life is rich and diverse, and if one wants to reach some reality concerning our life on earth, we shall have to look at human life from ever-differing points of view, from which the particular tenor of soul-life in our own time.

If we look back to ancient times in human history we shall find, scattered about the inhabited earth, what are know as the Mysteries. We find that various groups of people, living their lives scattered about the earth, develop under the influence of the Mysteries. They do so outwardly—but more particularly in regard to culture and the life of the soul. We find that individuals are accepted into the Mysteries, according to their degree of maturity. There they undergo further development, which is to lead them to a particular grade of knowledge, of feeling, and willing. Then, when they have advanced in knowledge, in higher feeling, and higher willing, they step out again and move among the majority of mankind, giving guidance for the details of daily life, for the strengthening of the soul's inner work and of their will, their actual deeds. With regard to past ages of man, the best place in which to study such guidelines is actually the training of those preparing for initiation in the Mysteries.

Though not of course in the abstract, intellectual manner of today, the pupils in the Mysteries were led to know the world about them. Most importantly, they learned to know the so-called three kingdoms of nature and all that lives in them. In the lowest classes of our schools we learn, by way of all sorts of concepts and pictures, how we stand within the three realms of nature. Through concepts and ideas we learn to know mineral, plant and animal. We then seek there the key to understanding human life itself. Such concepts, with the intellectual soul-content imparted to people these days, did not exist among those working for initiation in the ancient Mysteries. Concepts did exist then; but they were not won, as today, through the exercise of observation and logic. Rather, people had to exercise their souls inwardly, so as to arrive eventually at inner pictures of mineral, of plant, and animal. These people did not absorb the abstract concepts of today but experienced pictures—pictures that intellectual modern man might find fantastic but, nevertheless, pictures. And man knew from direct experience that what he discovered, when he experienced these pictures, actually yielded him something that lived in the mineral, plant or animal—of what grew there, took form, and unfolded within them. This he knew: and he knew it from those pictures which to modern man would appear fantastic myths.

Ancient man knew that reality expressed itself in things which today are considered mere mythology. He could certainly say: ‘The animal before me has firm visible outlines.’ But these firm outlines were not what he tried to grasp or understand. He tried rather to follow the flowing, mobile, fluid quality of its life. He could not do this, however, in sharp outlines, in sharply defined concepts. He had to teach in pictures that were fluid, metamorphosing, changing. And thus it was taught in the Mysteries.

But when, on the basis of this Mystery-knowledge, a man was to rise to self-knowledge, he underwent a significant crisis in his soul. According to the type of knowledge available in those ancient times, early man obtained pictures of mineral, plant and animal. With his dreamlike consciousness, he could then see, as it were, into the inner realms of nature. From the content of the Mysteries he also received the guiding principles of self-knowledge, much as he did in later times. ‘Know Thyself’ has been an ideal in all civilizations, in all ages of human cultural development. But in progressing from his kind of imaginative, natural knowledge towards knowledge of himself, ancient man underwent an inner crisis of the soul. I can only describe the nature of the crisis by saying that when he learned to look at the nature of the mineral as it was spread before him man found fulfillment in his soul-life. He bore in himself the effects of physical-mineral processes. He bore in himself pictures of interweaving vegetative life, and also of animal life. In his world he was able to bring all these together: mineral, plant and animal. Looking back from the vantage point of the world around him into his own inwardness, he had, in his primitive type of memory, an inner picture of mineral, plant and animal, and of how they worked together.

Undertaking to obey the injunction ‘Know Thyself’, however, he found himself suddenly at a stand. He had a world of inner pictures, varied, richly diverse in form and colour, and sounding with inner music—this was his experience of his earthly surroundings. Yet he felt that this world of forms, diversity, and constant flux, this world that trembled with glowing colour and radiance and musical tones, let him down when he made the attempt to know himself. The pictorial way in which he tried to grasp the nature of man itself baffled him in his attempt. He was able to attain pictures of man too: but even while experiencing them he knew that the reality of man's being, the source of his human dignity, escaped him—it was not there.

In his Mystery-initiation man lived through this crisis. Yet out of it, arising from the impotence of self-knowledge, something else developed: a particular conviction about Life, a conviction on which every ancient civilization was based. It meant that really enlightened people in those ancient times could say: ‘Man does not reveal his true nature here on earth. The minerals, plants and animals all achieve their end here on earth; they can reveal themselves fully in the pictures which I have of them.’ This is at the root of all ancient civilizations: this living conviction that man does not belong to the earth in the same sense as do the other realms of nature. His home is elsewhere than on the earth. His home lies essentially in the super-sensible world. And this belief was no arbitrary figment. It was achieved through a crisis of the soul—after gaining the knowledge available at that time about the world external to man. And a solution to the crisis was only possible because people still had the capacity to turn their minds to life before birth, and from there to life after death. Everyone then knew instinctively of life before birth. It was part of earthly life, like a pre-natal memory. And they learned about life after death on the basis of life before birth.¹

On the basis of those capacities which he then had, man learned that after crossing the threshold of death the moment would come when he would not only have around him the natural world, external to man, but his own being would arise before his soul. For it was characteristic of the more ancient stages of human development that, between birth and death, man developed an exclusively pictorial consciousness. I have often spoken about this. He did not yet possess the intellectual consciousness which we have today. In those days this was only developed immediately after death. And people retained it then, after death. It is a peculiarity of man's progress that, in ancient times, man's consciousness after death was an intellectual one; whereas we experience a purely pictorial panorama of our life during the three days after death. There lies the peculiarity, that in ancient times men had a dreamy pictorial consciousness on earth, whereas nowadays we have an intellectual consciousness. Then after death, they grew into an intellectual consciousness which enabled them, once free of the body, to gain freedom. In ancient times man became an intellectual and free being after death.

On being initiated into this fact, the pupil in the Mysteries would be told that he could win knowledge of the world external to man through his picture-consciousness. If however he obeys the imperative ‘Know Thyself’, and looks back upon himself, he will not find his full human dignity there. He will not find it in earthly life before death. He will only become fully human when he has crossed the threshold of death, and pure thinking becomes his; for with pure thinking he can become a free being. It is a strange thing that this type of consciousness occurred after death in past ages of human development, whereas today after death we have the panorama of past life spread out before us. In a sense this consciousness has entered man's life in a counter-stream. It has moved from the life after death into his actual earthly life. And what we have gained, particularly since the first third of the fifteenth century, has trickled into earthly man from post-earthly man. The pupil in the ancient Mysteries knew clearly that the essence of man could only be found in super earthly life, after death. This has now taken its place in life on earth. A real super-sensible stream has entered into our life on earth. This sets up an opposition to the direction of our human life, moving from ‘before’ to ‘after’, the super-sensible stream moving from ‘after’ to ‘before’. Thus, as modern people, we take part in super-earthly life. We have undertaken to become worthy—worthy of what has been drawn from super-sensible into sensible existence. We now have to win our freedom by inner right. We must recognize fully the import of the super-sensible for the development of the Consciousness Soul.

For the people of ancient times, when the injunction ‘Know Thyself’ loomed before them, their response had to be that there is no self-knowledge on earth: for the essence of humanity is simply not fulfilled here on earth. Man reaches it only when he has gone through the threshold of death into the super-sensible world.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and for centuries afterwards, man as he lived on earth was still called, in the language of ancient Mystery wisdom, the ‘natural man’. And it was considered that this natural man was not the real human being. The natural man was clearly differentiated from the spiritual being which bore the essence of man. The view then was that one only became spiritual man with the laying aside of the physical body. Only after crossing the threshold of death did one become spiritual man and, as such, ‘fully human.’ Initiation in the ancient Mysteries led to great humility with regard to earthly consciousness. Earthly man could not be made arrogant through Mystery-initiation. For whilst on earth he did not even feel that he was man in the fullest sense. He felt that he was more a candidate for humanity, and that he needed to use his life on earth in such a way that, after death, he could become fully man. So, according to Mystery-wisdom, man, as he went about his business on earth, was not a revelation of full humanity.

Now we must come to ancient Greece, and the time when Greek culture was widely influential. For it was then that people began to be aware, with their intellect and in freedom, that the true being of man was pouring from the sphere of after-death into man's earthly being. In Greek civilization the individual on earth was not regarded as entirely fulfilling his humanity. Men saw the work of the super-earthly, as it was drawing into the earthly. They saw in the detail of man's physiognomy, his way of going about, his shape—in all this they beheld with reverence, the super-earthly streaming into the earthly.

With the recent development of humanity all that has changed. Now man says: My great task is to become aware of my humanity. My task on this earth is to reveal, at least to some degree, man's being in its fullness. I too stand under the banner of the exhortation ‘Know Thyself’. I can compose my soul for freedom, because I have gained intellectual consciousness. I can lay hold of the inner strength of pure thinking in the act of self-knowledge. Before the eye of my soul man can appear. Not that man should grow proud in the partial fulfillment of this injunction ‘Know Thyself’. He should realize how at every moment this freedom of his has to be wrestled for. He should realize how, in his passions, emotions, feelings and sensibilities, he is always dependent on the subhuman. What was seen by that high form of pictorial consciousness in the world around, by ancient humanity, was also this realm of subhuman. They recognized that all their knowledge was of the subhuman realm in those ancient times. That was a significant point. For, they said, true man does not exist on earth. To grasp the intellectual nature of man they would have needed intellectual capacities themselves. With their non-intellectual form of knowledge they could only grasp the subhuman.

I have described in my (Philosophy of Freedom) how the intellectual is further developed into conscious, exact clairvoyance. It then lives in a free inner constitution of the soul. Only then can man know himself and his relation to the other parts of his being, outside his pure thinking and his free will. Through such a higher consciousness—imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness—man may reach in self-knowledge beyond his intellect and know himself as part of the super-sensible world. And then it will be clear to him that although he is fully human, as has become clear to him in his self-knowledge, full humanity requires of him that he perfect it ever more and more.

Thus modern man cannot develop the same sort of humility that he needed in ancient times, which arose when he had to say of himself: ‘Living in a physical body you are not yet fully human, you are only a candidate for humanity, not yet fulfilling your human dignity and worth. All you can do is prepare yourself for consciousness and freedom as they will arise in you immediately after death.’ A more modern man, who has meanwhile lived under Greek conditions in a different incarnation, would say: ‘Take heed that in your fleshly body between birth and death you do not neglect to be fully man. For as a modern man your inner task is the working-out of what has entered earthly life from the realm of the pre-earthly. You can become man on earth, and you must therefore take upon yourself the difficulty of becoming man on earth.’

All this is expressed in the development of man's religious consciousness. On a previous occasion we saw how in earlier times man looked up principally to the Father God, and in Christ he had the Son of God. In God the Father he saw the creative source of substance and the super-sensible origin of divine providence. Of this the earthly, perceptible world is merely an impress. He looked up to the cosmos from the earth; and in religious consciousness he looked up to God the Father. The pupils in the Mysteries had always been conscious that the most they could learn about man would be a preparation for the life after death. Now, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Son of God has united with the earth's life, and man is able to develop an awareness of what St. Paul meant when he said ‘Not I, but Christ in me’. Now man can so direct his inner life as to let the Christ-impulse come to flower in him; he can let Christ's life flow and breathe through him. He can absorb the stream which has come to us from pre-earthly life and bring it to fruition in his life on earth.

A first stage in the reception of this stream consists in man noticing that at a particular point in his life he feels something flowering and coming alive in him. Previously it sat under the threshold of his consciousness, and he notices for the first time that it is there. It rises, filling him with inner light, inner warmth, and he knows that this inner life, inner warmth, inner light, has arisen in him during life on earth. He acquires a greater knowledge of life on earth than was his birthright. He learns to know something which arises within his humanity during his life on earth. And if man is sensible of the light and Life, of the love arising in him, and feels there the flowing, living presence of the Christ, he will receive strength—strength to grasp the fully human, the post-earthly, in the free activity of his own soul. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ-impulse are intimately bound up with the attainment of human freedom, of that consciousness which is able to suffuse with inner life and warmth our mere thinking that is otherwise dead and abstract.

The exhortation ‘Know Thyself—bring your humanity to fruition in your own inner life’ has been addressed to humanity through all time, and is still in force today. But the experience of Christ in man is essential to our own day. It takes its place alongside the injunction ‘Know Thyself’, and must be given its full weight.

This indicates once again the enormous difference between the soul-constitution of the present day and that which prevailed in times past. We learn to consider man over great periods of time. The whole process is compatible with what takes place when the insect is sensitive to the period of summer in the setting of this world. For man should be able to live in the whole history of the earth as an animal lives in the course of the year. The insect ensures that it notices the transition to autumn, and it sets in motion another aspect of its life accordingly, as it did for spring and summer. And man knows: Once upon a time we were instinctively clairvoyant; we were unfree; our consciousness was pictorial; we were unable to obey the injunction ‘Know Thyself’; we know we could fully realize our humanity only on the other side of the gate of death; that time was analogous to spring in the life of the insect. Then came the Greek era, as summer and autumn come round for the insect. This was a bridge to that later era in which we now live. Our soul's work is different. We should be able to know ourselves to a certain degree here on earth, and accordingly be free after death to reach higher stages of development than in previous ages of man. Then one was wholly man only after death. In those ancient times man's task on the earth was to be a candidate for life, becoming fully man after death. In this, our own age, it is man's task to realize himself here in earth, that after death he may rise to higher stages of development than he could in former ages.

In those times the danger was that if he did not live his life on earth properly, man would not arrive at his full humanity. Today we face something different. We have to achieve our full humanity while on earth. If we fail in this, we betray ourselves and in the life after death plunge further down into the subhuman. In ancient days things could be left undone; today destruction follows. Then, not to become a candidate for life was an omission; today a man destroys, through his own humanity, something in the whole human race if he does not strive after full humanity in his own life. In past ages he merely left something undone; by doing so today he betrays mankind.

Thus we must grasp the need to place ourselves consciously in the world on a higher Level of being, as the insect does instinctively, on a lower Level, in its world. Otherwise man delivers himself up to chaos, which the animal instinctively does not do. We must learn through Anthroposophy to be really human, that we may not experience the scandal of being less in the world-order than the animals—despite the Gods having determined us for higher things. The animals do not neglect their part in the cosmic harmony, yet we as mankind turn the cosmic harmony into dissonance. And thus, I may say, we shall heap upon ourselves cosmic scandal, if we do not learn to think in this way and make our consciousness accord with the demands of the age. This we must learn in these days to join our feeling to our intellectual life. We must take in what would follow upon our not striving after that knowledge which makes us fully man. It would be a scandal before the Gods themselves.

• 1. I refer to my remarks in the so-called ‘French Course’.(Published as Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy)