The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[See GA 259 for Rudolf Steiner's introductory words given immediately before this lecture concerning the burning of the first Goetheanum. —rsarchive.org]

In my last lecture, I said that one root of the scientific world conception lay in the fact that John Locke and other thinkers of like mind distinguished between the primary and secondary qualities of things in the surrounding world. Locke called primary everything that pertains to shape, to geometrical and numerical characteristics, to motion and to size. From these he distinguished what he called the secondary qualities, such as color, sound, and warmth. He assigned the primary qualities to the things themselves, assuming that spatial corporeal things actually existed and possessed properties such as form, motion and geometrical qualities; and he further assumed that all secondary qualities such as color, sound, etc. are only effects on the human being. Only the primary qualities are supposed to be in the external things. Something out there has size, form and motion, but is dark, silent and cold. This produces some sort of effect that expresses itself in man's experiences of sound, color and warmth.⁵²

I have also pointed out how, in this scientific age, space became an abstraction in relation to the dimensions. Man was no longer aware that the three dimensions—up-down, right-left, front-back—were concretely experienced within himself. In the scientific age, he no longer took this reality of the three dimensions into consideration. AS far as he was concerned, they arose in total abstraction. He no longer sought the intersecting point of the three dimensions where it is in fact experienced; namely, within man's own being. Instead, he looked for it somewhere in external space, wherever it might be. Thenceforth, this space framework of the three dimensions had an independent existence, but only an abstract thought-out one. This empty thought was no longer experienced as belonging to the external world as well as to man; whereas an earlier age experienced the three spatial dimensions in such a way that man knew he was experiencing them not only in himself but together with the nature of physical corporeality.

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The dimensions of space had, as it were, already been abstracted and ejected from man. They had acquired a quite abstract, inanimate character. Man had forgotten that he experiences the dimensions of space in his own being together with the external world; and the same applied to everything concerned with geometry, number, weight, etc. He no longer knew that in order to experience them in their full living reality, he had to look into his own inner being. A man like John Locke transferred the primary qualities—which are of like kind with the three dimensions of space, the latter being a sort of form or shape—into the external world only because the connection of these qualities with man's inner being was no longer known.

The others, the secondary qualities, which were actually experienced qualitatively (as color, tone, warmth, smell or taste,) now were viewed as merely the effects of the things upon man, as inward experiences. But I have pointed out that inside the physical man as well as inside the etheric man these secondary qualities can no longer be found, so that they became free-floating in a certain respect. They were no longer sought in the outer world; they were relocated into man's inner being. It was felt that so long as man did not listen to the world, did not look at it, did not direct his sense of warmth to it, the world was silent. It had primary qualities, vibrations that were formed in a certain way, but no sound; it had processes of some kind in the ether, but no color; it had some sort of processes in ponderable matter (matter that has weight)—but it had no quality of warmth. As to these experienced qualities, the scientific age was really saying that it did not know what to do with them. It did not want to look for them in the world, admitting that it was powerless to do so. They were sought for within man, but only because nobody had any better ideas. To a certain extent science investigates man's inner nature, but it does not (and perhaps cannot) go very far with this, hence it really does not take into consideration that these secondary qualities cannot be found in this inner nature. Therefore it has no pigeonhole for them. Why is this so?

Let us recall that if we really want to focus correctly on something that is related to form, space, geometry or arithmetic, we have to turn our attention to the inward life-filled activity whereby we build up the spatial element within our own organism, as we do with above-below, back-front, left-right. Therefore, we must say that if we want to discover the nature of geometry and space, if we want to get to the essence of Locke's primary qualities of corporeal things, we must look within ourselves. Otherwise, we only attain to abstractions.

In the case of the secondary qualities such as sound, color, warmth, smell and taste, man has to remember that his ego and astral body normally dwell within his physical and etheric bodies but during sleep they can also be outside the physical and etheric bodies. Just as man experiences the primary qualities, such as the three dimensions, not outside but within himself during full wakefulness, so, when he succeeds (whether through instinct or through spiritual-scientific training) in really inwardly experiencing what is to be found outside the physical and etheric bodies from the moment of falling asleep to waking up, he knows that he is really experiencing the true essence of sound, color, smell, taste, and warmth in the external world outside his own body. When, during the waking condition, man is only within himself, he cannot experience anything but picture-images of the true realities of tone, color, warmth, smell and taste. But these images correspond to soul-spirit realities, not physical-etheric ones. In spite of the fact that what we experience as sound seems to be connected with certain forms of air vibrations, just as color is connected with certain processes in the colorless external world, it still has to be recognized that both are pictures, not of anything corporeal, but of the soul-spirit element contained in the external world.

We must be able to tell ourselves: When we experience a sound, a color, a degree of warmth, we experience an image of them. But we experience them as reality, when we are outside our physical body. We can portray the facts in a drawing as follows: Man experiences the primary qualities within himself when fully awake, and projects them as images into the outer world. If he only knows them in the outer world, he has the primary qualities only in images (arrow in sketch). These images are the mathematical geometrical, and arithmetical qualities of things.

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It is different in the case of the secondary qualities. (The horizontal lines stand for the physical and etheric body of man, the red shaded area for the soul-spirit aspect, the ego and astral body.) Man experiences them outside his physical and etheric body,⁵³ and projects only the images into himself. Because the scientific age no longer saw through this, mathematical forms and numbers became something that man looked for abstractly in the outer world. The secondary qualities became something that man looked for only in himself. But because they are only images in himself, man lost them altogether as realities.

As few isolated thinkers, who still retained traditions of earlier views concerning the outer world, struggled to form conceptions that were truer to reality than those that, in the course of the scientific age, gradually emerged as the official views. Aside from Paracelsus,⁵⁴ there was, for example, van Helmont,⁵⁵ who was well aware that man's spiritual element is active when color, tone, and so forth are experienced. During the waking state, however, the spiritual is active only with the aid of the physical body. Hence it produces only an image of what is really contained in sound or color. This leads to a false description of external reality; namely, that purely mathematical-mechanistic form of motion for what is supposed to be experienced as secondary qualities in man's inner being, whereas, in accordance with their reality, their true nature, they can only be experienced outside the body. We should not be told that if we wish to comprehend the true nature of sound, for example, we ought to conduct physical experiments as to what happens in the air that carries us to the sound that we hear. Instead, we should be told that if we want to acquaint ourselves with the true nature of sound, we have to form an idea of how we really experience sound outside our physical and etheric bodies. But these are thoughts that never occurred to the men of the scientific age. They had no inclination to consider the totality of human nature, the true being of man. Therefore they did not find either mathematics or the primary qualities in this unknown human nature; and they did not find the secondary qualities in the external world, because they did not know that man belongs to it also.

I do not say that one has to be clairvoyant in order to gain the right insight into these matters, although a clairvoyant approach would certainly produce more penetrating perceptions in this area. But I do say that a healthy and open mind would lead one to place the primary qualities, everything mathematical-mechanical, into man's inner being, and to place the secondary qualities into the outer world. The thinkers no longer understand human nature. They did not know how man's corporeality is filled with spirit, or how this spirit, when it is awake in a person, must forget itself and devote itself to the body if it is to comprehend mathematics. Nor was it known that this same spirituality must take complete hold of itself and live independently of the body, outside the body, in order to come to the secondary qualities. Concerning all these matters, I say that clairvoyant perception can give greater insight, but it is not indispensable. A healthy and open mind can feel that mathematics belongs inside, while sound, color, etc. are something external.

In my notes on Goethe's scientific works⁵⁶ in the 1880's, I set forth what healthy feeling can do in this direction. I never mentioned clairvoyant knowledge, but I did show to what extent man can acknowledge the reality of color, tone, etc. without any clairvoyant perception. This has not yet been understood. The scientific age is still too deeply entangled in Locke's manner of thinking. I set it forth again, in philosophic terms, in 1911 at the Philosophic Congress in Bologna.⁵⁷ And again it was not understood. I tried to show how man's soul—spirit organization does indeed indwell and permeate the physical and etheric body during the waking state, but still remains inwardly independent. If one senses this inward independence of the soul and spirit, then on also has a feeling for what the soul and spirit have experienced during sleep about the reality of green and yellow, G and C-sharp, warm and cold, sour or sweet. But the scientific age was unwilling to go into a true knowledge of man.

This description of the primary and secondary qualities shows quite clearly how man got away from the correct feeling about himself and his connection to the world. The same thing comes out in other connections. Failing to grasp how the mathematical with its three-dimensional character dwells in man, the thinkers likewise could not understand man's spirituality. They would have had to see how man is in a position to comprehend right-left by means of the symmetrical movements of his arms and hands and other symmetrical movements. Through sensing the course taken, for example, by his food, he can experience front-back. He experiences up-down as he coordinates himself in this direction in his earliest years. If we discern this, we see how man inwardly unfolds the activity that produces the three dimensions of space. Let me point out also that the animal does not have the vertical direction in the same way as man does, since its main axis is horizontal, which is what man can experience as front-back. The abstract space framework could no longer produce anything other than mathematical, mechanistic, abstract relationships in inorganic nature. It could not develop an inward awareness of space in the animal or in man.

Thus no correct opinion could be reached in this scientific age concerning the question: How does man relate to the animal, the animal to man? What distinguishes them from one another? It was still dimly felt that there was a difference between the two, hence one looked for the distinguishing features. But nothing could be found in either man or animal that was decisive and consistent. Here is a famous example: It was asserted that man's upper jawbone, in which the upper teeth are located, was in one piece, whereas in the animal, the front teeth were located in a separate one, the inter-maxillary bone, with the actual upper jawbone on either side of them. Man, it was thought, did not possess this inter-maxillary bone. Since one could no longer find the relationship of man to animal by inner soul-spirit means, one looked for it in such external features and said that the animal had an inter-maxillary bone and man did not.

Goethe could not put into words what I have said today concerning primary and secondary qualities. But he had a healthy feeling about all these matters. He knew instinctively that the difference between man and animals must lie in the human form as a whole, not in any single feature. This is why Goethe opposed the idea that the inter-maxillary bone is missing in man. As a young man, he wrote an important article suggesting that there is an inter-maxillary bone in man as well as in the animal. He was able to prove this by showing that in the embryo the inter-maxillary bone is still clearly evident in man although in early childhood this bone fuses with the upper jaw, whereas it remains separate in the animal. Goethe did all this out of a certain instinct, and this instinct led him to say that one must not seek the difference between man and animal in details of this kind; instead, it must be sought for in the whole relation of man's form, soul, and spirit to the world.

By opposing the naturalists who held that man lacks the inter-maxillary bone Goethe brought man close to the animal. But he did this in order to bring out the true difference as regards man's essential nature. Goethe's approach out of instinctive knowledge put him in opposition to the views of orthodox science, and this opposition has remained to this day. This is why Goethe really found no successors in the scientific world. On the contrary, as a consequence of all that had developed since the Fifteenth Century in the scientific field, in the Nineteenth Century the tendency grew stronger to approximate man to the animal. The search for a difference in external details diminished with the increasing effort to equate man as nearly as possible with the animal. This tendency is reflected in what arose later on as the Darwinian idea of evolution. This found followers, while Goethe's conception did not. Some have treated Goethe as a kind of Darwinist, because all they see in him is that, through his work on the inter-maxillary bone,⁵⁸ he brought man nearer to the animal. But they fail to realize that he did this because he wanted to point out (he himself did not say so in so many words, but it is implicit in his work) that the difference between man and animal cannot be found in these external details.

Since one no longer knew anything about man, one searched for man's traits in the animal. The conclusion was that the animal traits are simply a little more developed in man. As time went by, there was no longer any inkling that even in regard to space man had a completely different position. Basically, all views of evolution that originated during the scientific age were formulated without any true knowledge of man. One did not know what to make of man, so he was simply represented as the culmination of the animal series. It was a though one said: Here are the animals; they build up to a final degree of perfection, a perfect animal; and this perfect animal is man.

My dear friends, I want to draw your attention to how matters have proceeded with a certain inner consistency in the various branches of scientific thinking since its first beginnings in the Fifteenth Century; how we picture our relation to the world on the basis of physics, of physiology, by saying: Out there is a silent and colorless world. It affects us. We fashion the colors and sounds in ourselves as experiences of the effects of the outer world.

At the same time we believe that the three dimensions of space exist outside of us in the external world. We do this, because we have lost the ability to comprehend man as a whole. We do this because our theories of animal and man do not penetrate the true nature of man. Therefore, in spite of its great achievements we can say that science owes its greatness to the fact that it has completely missed the essential nature of man. We were not really aware of the extent to which science was missing this. A few especially enthusiastic materialistic thinkers in the Nineteenth Century asserted that man cannot rightly lay claim to anything like soul and spirit because what appears as soul and spirit is only the effect of something taking place outside us in time and space. Such enthusiasts describe how light works on us; how something etheric (according to their theory) works into us through vibrations along our nerves; how the external air also continues on in breathing, etc. Summing it all up, they said that man is dependent on every rise and fall of temperature, on any malformation of his nervous system, etc. Their conclusion was that man is a creature pitifully dependent on every draft or change of pressure.

Anyone who reads such descriptions with an open mind will notice that, instead of dealing with the true nature of man, they are describing something that turns man into a nervous wreck. The right reply to such descriptions is that a man so dependent on every little draft of air is not a normal person but a neurasthenic. But they spoke of this neurasthenic as if he were typical. They left out his real nature, recognizing only what might make him into a neurasthenic. Through the peculiar character of this kind of thinking about nature, all understanding was gradually lost. This is what Goethe revolted against, though he was unable to express his insights in clearly formulated sentences.

Matters such as these must be seen as part of the great change in scientific thinking since the Fifteenth Century. Then they will throw light on what is essential in this development. I would like to put it like this: Goethe in his youth took a keen interest in what science had produced in its various domains. He studied it, he let it stimulate him, but he never agreed with everything that confronted him, because in all of it he sensed that man was left out of consideration. He had an intense feeling for man as a whole. This is why he revolted in a variety of areas against the scientific views that he saw around him. It is important to see this scientific development since the Fifteenth Century against the background of Goethe's world conception. Proceeding from a strictly historical standpoint, one can clearly perceive how the real being of man is missing in the scientific approach, missing in the physical sciences as well as in the biological.

This is a description of the scientific view, not a criticism. Let us assume that somebody says: “Here I have water. I cannot use it in this state. I separate the oxygen from hydrogen, because I need the hydrogen.” He then proceeds to do so. If I then say what he has done, this is not criticism of his conduct. I have no business to tell him he is doing something wrong and should leave the water alone. Nor is it criticism, when I saw that since the Fifteenth Century science has taken the world of living beings and separated from it the true nature of man, discarding it and retaining what this age required. It then led this dehumanized science to the triumphs that have been achieved.

It is not a criticism if something like this is said; it is only a description. The scientist of modern times needed a dehumanized nature, just as chemist needs deoxygenized hydrogen and therefore has to split water into its two components. The point is to understand that we must not constantly fall into the error of looking to science for an understanding of man.

• 52In the night from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day 1922/23 the Goetheanum burned down. It was built in ten years, with the help of various artists from many countries. This primarily wooden building, in which each surface and corner was formed artistically (see Steiner, Ways to a New Style in Architecture [London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. and New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1927]) had been designed in all details by Rudolf Steiner who also managed the construction work through all these years. From the first of January on, the activities had to be transferred into the so-called “Schreinerei,” a building that was used during the construction of the Goetheanum. For the work itself, Rudolf Steiner did not allow any interruption; the afternoon after the fire, the “Three Kings Play” was performed, as was written on the invitations of the ongoing course (see Christmas Plays from Obervfer, trans. A.C. Harwood [London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973]). Rudolf Steiner introduced it with a short address, in which he spoke the following words: “great suffering knows how to keep silent about what it is feeling ... The building that was created in ten years through the love and compassion of innumerable friends of the movement was destroyed in one night. But just today the silent suffering experiences what our friends have put in this work. Since we feel that everything we do in our movement is necessary in our present civilization, we will want to continue whatever we can in the given frame, and therefore even in this hour as the flames outside still burn and rise, although such suffering is present, still perform this play which we promised our participants in connection with our course, and which these participants expect. I also will hold the lecture I offered, here in the ‘Schreinerei’ this evening at 8:00 P.M.” (printed in Ansprachen zu den Weihnachtsspielen aus Altem Volkstum [Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974], GA Bibl. Nr. 274). The beginning of the course's lecture was then devoted to the fire, which is printed in The Younger Generation (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1984).
• 53. One can find the basic reality explained in the chapter “Sleep and Death” in An Outline Of Occult Science and in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 54. Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim: Einsiedein, Kanton Schwytz 1493–1541 Salzburg, Md. Ferrara, Professor in Basel. Accomplished physician, scientist, and philosopher. Wrote about chemistry, medical science, biology, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and theology. The myths about Paracelsus as goldmaker, magician, or charlatan were made up after his death and distorted the picture of his character. Most complete work published by Karl Sudhoff (fourteen volumes). See Riddles of Philosophy.
• 55. Helmont, Johann Baptist van: Brussels 1577–1644. Physician and iatrochemist. He managed the differentiation and separation of gases (hydrogen, carbon). He coined the name “gas” for the airy state.
• 56. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist. Especially see Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15.
• 57. Lecture of April 8, 1911, at the 9th International Philosophical Congress, “The Psychological Foundations of Anthroposophy,” in Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Development, Spring Valley, NY: 1982), pp. 25–55.
• 58. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist.

After the points of business, Rudolf Steiner took the floor:

On the whole, it can be said that many of the outcomes of our goals actually constitute a single phenomenon within a larger framework of facts. Please allow me to make a few comments on this, and especially on the experience we have gathered since founding the Waldorf School.

As you know, we founded the Waldorf School as one part of the effects that were intended to proceed from a spiritual movement that is over two decades old. The Waldorf School would be inconceivable without this spiritual movement. In its particulars, the plan to found the school came from our dear friend Emil Molt at a time when there was a certain interest in great humanitarian questions because it was a time of such great need. Counting on this interest, we began to work in many different directions to try to influence aspects of public life from anthroposophical points of view. We may well say that since that time we have been able to acquire very extensive experience along certain lines.

To begin with, we encountered a certain interest that promised to encompass broader circles. In 1919 humanity had a great interest in working in one or the other direction to enable forces of ascent to replace the forces of decline that were so evident. And today we still see a universal interest in educational issues, not only in Central Europe but all over the world. It is a remarkable fact that this year’s Shakespeare festival in Stratford actually took place under the auspices of educational issues. You know that I myself had to give lectures at this festival, and that the event stood fully under the sign of educational issues. In fact, a committee on new ideals in education organized this event. This summer we will have another opportunity to have a conference, this time at Oxford, where nine out of twelve lectures will deal with educational issues in a narrower sense.¹ This shows that at any rate an interest in educational issues is still present today.

This interest is to be found everywhere. In the widest possible circles today, we definitely find that educational issues are thought to be the most important issues of all. We find numerous people who believe, and rightly so, that any talk of social issues does not rest on firm ground if it does not take educational issues as its starting point. We have come to realize that the chaos that humanity has fallen into and will continue to fall into has essentially been brought about by our failure to place the right value on the spiritual issues of humankind’s evolution.

However, this interest is “thought interest,” if I may put it like that. The way in which this interest manifests clearly shows that we are dealing with some kind of thought interest. People organize conferences on education just as they organize other conferences today. They get together and talk about educational issues, and it cannot be denied that extraordinarily clever things are talked about at these gatherings. People nowadays talk with extraordinary cleverness. A large portion of humanity today is smart, and it is also the case that the majority of these very smart people like to hear themselves talk. This creates the best circumstances imaginable for holding conferences to discuss how to find ways out of these chaotic conditions.

If it depended only on conferences of this sort, we would be well on the way. Ladies and gentlemen, this is something we should consider very carefully. I have often stated that I am convinced that if twelve people or some other number of people would get together to undertake to establish an agenda for educating children in the best way, something extremely clever would come out of it. I say this in complete seriousness. When it comes to establishing an agenda for assembling the best pedagogical principles for dealing with children, the literature available today is excellent. What people are saying today in these conferences is literature. However, it all depends on accomplishing the work that is to be done on the basis of real life. People who establish agendas are never dealing with real life. In real life you deal with a certain number of students and a certain number of teachers; you deal with people. These people will do what needs doing; they will do whatever they can do.

However, in order to actually accomplish what is theoretically possible, we depend on having our hands free to do our work on a humanitarian basis. This brings us to the fact that nowadays the presence of a “thought interest” in great existential issues is much less important than the presence of the will to actually bring about the conditions that make a system of education such as this one possible. The remarkable thing about this is that while there is the broadest possible interest in the thought or the feeling that such and such ought to be, this is not accompanied by any real will interest. That no real will interest accompanies it is the reason why I call what it is our conferences deal with, “literature.” Literature is what it actually is; it is not something that will be transformed into action.

One of the most important facts about the background of the Waldorf School is that we were in a position to make the anthroposophical movement a relatively large movement. The anthroposophical movement has become a large one. This is evident from the fact that difficult anthroposophical books go through many editions.”² Interest springs up everywhere. This is a “thought interest,” or even goes beyond thought interest to the extent that the people who come together in the anthroposophical movement also have a feeling interest in it, an interest of the heart. In all of our modern movements people are coming together with a mere “thought interest” that is transformed into a talking interest in those who are somewhat active. The anthroposophical movement gathers together those people who have an intense human need, a soul need, to make headway with regard to the essence of the human being. This is what things look like when we consider an interest in knowledge, a feeling interest, more theoretically. There are very many people today who realize that there is something here that can satisfy their spiritual interests. That is how it stands today, and I hope that its growth is guaranteed in spite of the scandalous opposition to it.

But what we are lacking are people who are not merely interested in the anthroposophical movement becoming as large as possible and bringing forth as much spiritual content as possible, but who are also interested in making this anthroposophical movement happen, in being co-workers in its coming about. There are extraordinarily few of them. We have many people who listen, many who want something for themselves, but we have extraordinarily few people who are co-workers in the fullest sense of the word.

You know, when our conference in Vienna was being organized, which was not a conference in the same sense as other conferences—the point of our conferences is for people to get together to receive something they can take home, while in other conferences everyone wants to get rid of what they bring from home—in any case, when this conference was being organized, there had to be workers there to get ready for it and bring it about, and there had to be speakers there. There are always a small number of friends who nearly have to run their legs off, work their fingers to the bone writing letters, and empty out their wallets. There are only a small number of them, the Waldorf teachers and a small number of others, and they are thoroughly overworked almost every month of the year because of their involvement. Actually, they are always terribly overworked.

But at the end of a conference such as this, even if it is as successful as the one in Vienna, we experience once again that although all the conditions are in place for our Waldorf system of education to expand, or something of that sort, the way these conditions come about means that the small number of active people get in over their heads. Again and again we have to be on the lookout for new coworkers. Perhaps not all of you will agree with me, but I would like to state my experience quite openly. As things stand today, I believe there would be a possibility of gaining plenty of members. I got the impression in Vienna that it would be possible to attract enough people who would become coworkers in the best sense of the word.

But—and here our general concern coincides with our concern for the Waldorf School—at this point we bump up against the fact that it is not possible to expand our circle of coworkers for the simple reason that we have no money. People everywhere have the means of supporting their coworkers, but this is only possible for us to a very inadequate extent. The main question is always how to offer people the means to exist when we disconnect them from their previous means. That is the fact of the matter. Today, if we want to move forward, we need a large number of coworkers. Those we have are simply not enough. Thus, what needs to be taken care of can be done only by exhausting the strength of the forces we have, and what can be done in this way is at most a tenth of what could be accomplished under conditions at present if we could count on a full complement of coworkers. After the Vienna conference in particular, we could watch the experience I have just described welling up.

Naturally this is not a question of an ordinary appeal to the wallets of those who are already members. That is not the issue. The issue, to put it very strongly for once, is that in recent times whenever we have appealed to the will, the matter in question failed.

In the end, the Waldorf School movement is connected to the threefold movement. The Waldorf School movement is conceivable only within a free spiritual life. The “thought interest” we met with at first has not led to a will interest. When the attempt was made to accomplish the deed of founding the World School Association as our only means of expanding beyond Central Europe, this attempt failed.³ It was to have encompassed the entire civilized world. The attempt to rouse whatever belief people had that the educational system must change, which was what was being attempted in the World School Association, was a miserable fiasco. There is such a terrible feeling of being rebuffed when you appeal to the will. I do not say that I am appealing for money in this case. We are lacking in money, but we are lacking in will to a much greater extent. The interest that exists does not go very deep, otherwise it would extend to the right areas.

We were able to found the Waldorf School. Herr Stockmeyer⁴ read the ruling,⁵ the gist of which was that as of Easter of 1925 we will lose our first grade, and eventually the four lowest classes. We would hardly have been able to open the school at all anywhere else. In founding the Waldorf School, we took advantage of the right moment in which it was possible to do such a thing.

Whenever the educational system is at the mercy of universal schematization, we can point to strongly working forces of decline. We encounter them everywhere. We can point them out wherever what is laid down in the regulations for primary schools is taken to the last stage. In Lunatsharsky’s school system in Soviet Russia, it has been carried through to its conclusion. People there are thinking the way we will think here when this is carried through to its conclusion and the full consequences have been felt. The current misery in Eastern Europe is what comes of it when this way of thinking about non-independent schools finds its way into practice.

I am trying to speak today in a way that awakens enthusiasm, so that people feel the spiritual blood trickling in their souls and a large number of people who realize this will commit themselves, so that public opinion is aroused. Actually, I must say that at any point in the last twenty years when I tried to speak a language that appealed to people’s hearts not only in a theoretical sense, but to the heart as an organ of will, what I felt, first in the Anthroposophical Society and later in other groups, always made me wonder, “Dont people have ears?” It seemed that people could not hear things that were supposed to move from words to action. The experience of the fiasco of the World School Association was enough to drive one to despair.

How do we think when we hear something such as this ruling that was read aloud? We think that perhaps ways and means will be found to push through the lower classes for a few years, after all. Even in more intimate circles, not much more comes of it than thinking, “Well, maybe the possibility will be there for a few more years.” The point, however, is for all of us to stand behind it now. Education must evolve independently, as has been emphasized ever since 1919. There is no other way for this to become a reality than through general acceptance of what is offered by the members of our various associations, who are in full agreement that something like this should exist, and through them being joined by more and more people who will become active members. The will has to develop first!

I would like to tell you how my calculation goes: If numbers speak, we can say that we have no money. Having said that, we then collect money and fill the gap by the skin of our teeth.

However, we will also not get very far by this means. We will get further only by the means I intended in speaking of the World School Association. We must have an active faith that what is being done will really become a factor in public opinion. In order to maintain the Waldorf School and establish additional schools, we need a growing public conviction that continuing in the sense of the old school system will lead only to forces of decline within humanity. This conviction is what we need. We will move forward only when instead of merely establishing schools here and there for the sake of practicing some kind of educational quackery, we can make the breakthrough to deciding to take our educational principles to the public in a way that will make them a matter of inner conviction for parents and non-parents alike.

Please excuse me, but in a certain respect I really cannot avoid saying that I know many people will recognize the truth in what I have just said, but you only really acknowledge the truth of something by doing something about it! By doing something about it! This is why, above all, we must make sure that we do not found schools simply to an extent that lies within our existing means, which come from our branches and from wallets that are already empty. We must try to work for ideas and ideals so that an ever growing number of people is imbued with them.

In this respect our actual experience is just the opposite. The current issue of the newspaper for threefolding has just announced that in future it will be a magazine for anthroposophy. Why? Because the promising beginnings in understanding threefolding have petered out. Because, fundamentally, we must go back to the style we had prior to the threefolding movement. In spite of the fact that a lot has been said about threefolding, this is another case of being driven to despair when you talk with people. We need something to come of this; we need it to enter public opinion. That is what we need above all else if we want to make progress with the Waldorf School.

I must admit that I have been saying this for a long time. But just about anything else strikes a chord more readily than what I have said today. I would like to say that if I see what lives in people’s will as mere faith—well, no one believes that mere faith, the mere faith that humanity can only be helped by having an independent system of education, will accomplish anything. But it would lead people who are still able to do so to support us financially, so that we would not continually be left empty-handed in comparison to other movements.

The anthroposophical movement is the basis of the Waldorf School movement. Even if it is set back by scandalous things such as are happening now,⁶ it has within it the necessary prerequisites for life. A lot of associations are founded that have adequate monetary means but no inherent prerequisites for life. Associations are constantly being founded, and people have money for them, and yet they fail. If all the money that people spend today on unnecessary associations could be directed into our channels, then the reports would look different. Herr Leinhas⁷ would have to report that our reserve fund is so large that we will have to try to invest it fruitfully.

I do not believe at all that the main thing for us today is our lack of money. What we are lacking is the will to assert ourselves in real life, to insist that the portion of spiritual life that we acknowledge as true be given its due in the world. What use would it be if I had claimed that our effectiveness in the past year was satisfactory in some way? But here, in a members’ meeting, it is necessary to speak from this point of view. I am fully convinced that our Waldorf School can get as good as it can, but if we do not find the possibility of imbuing public opinion with our educational impulses, then all of our fancy arithmetic will not help us at all.

The will to convince everyone must be present in an everincreasing number of people. In addition, the conviction must become widespread that for the salvation of humanity, it is necessary for something such as is present in embryonic form in the Waldorf School to keep on growing.

That is what I wanted to have said to that percentage of hearts in which the impulse of will is present. We can get very far if we only think about what it depends on: It depends on us using our will to really get public opinion to where it ought to be. That is what I needed to say.

From the discussion

I must add that a great number of parents have expressed the request that something be done by the Waldorf School to manage the relationship of the faculty to the parent body—what can the parents themselves do for the children? I would like to say that we will very soon be giving careful thought to how we can work in this direction. At parents’ evenings, I myself will try to offer something along the lines indicated by these many signatures.⁷

We will try to do everything possible along these lines in the very near future.

Expanding our circle of coworkers can be achieved only if the circumstances of which I spoke become a reality. Something must first be done to shape public opinion so that more extensive work can be undertaken. Then it will be possible to do many things. But as long as what is growing on our grounds remains the secret of the members, we will not be able to move on.

A question is asked, among others, regarding the official ruling mentioned in the speech.

Dr. Steiner: It would not help us to file a complaint with the authorities. As many people as possible must be won over to the idea that such a school should exist. The authorities are doing the right thing if that is the law. It is a question of opinjons gaining a foothold, becoming an effective force. There is something much deeper at stake. We must decide to interpret things ambitiously, to realize that what we think to be right must become the opinion of the public. The point is to get this idea into as many heads as possible. That must be accomplished so that as many people as possible change their view.

Dr. Steiner (in response to a suggestion). That does not come into question at all. Influencing public opinion is the only possible means of bringing the other methods up for discussion. To win over public opinion is the only practical way for us to go. We have not done so because there are far too few of us who believe in such a thing. I imagined that the World School Association would be promulgated in a certain way. If the monthly contribution could be one franc per member, we would be able to achieve what would have to be achieved by such an association. It would only be a question of individuals working in such a way that enthusiasm is present in their will.

Without doing that, we will get no further; we will simply manage to use up our last reserves. Even if we still find a lot of well-meaning members, it would be impractical to carry out. Even if something like that were to become a reality, we would only use up our last reserves. Our experience has shown most recently that it is necessary to attract the circles that are interested in what we are doing but are being kept away by the fact that the majority of the current membership feels the urge to keep the membership small.

May I still say that although we have established a certain level of contribution for membership, it is very good not to exclude anyone who is simply not in a position to pay the whole amount. Alongside the paragraph in the bylaws, let us remember among ourselves that people can also pay less.

• 1. This international congress on “Spiritual Values in Education and Social Life” at which Rudolf Steiner was invited to speak took place under the patronage of the English Minister of Education and others active in public life in England. From August 16-25, 1922, Steiner spoke on “The Basic Forces of Soul and Spirit in the Art of Education” [Die geistig-seelischen Grundkréfte der Erziehungskunst], 12 lectures, Oxford, 1922, GA 305, 1978], see The Spiritual Ground of Education, Garber Publications, Blauvelt, NY, nd.
• 2. For example, if paperback editions are included, in 1980 7heosophywas in its 30th German edition (164,000), Occult Science in its 29th edition (108,000), How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds in its 21st edition (150,000), The Philosophy of Freedomy/Spiritual Activity in its 14th edition (156,000) and Riddles of Philosophy in its eighth edition (31,000).
• 3. See note p. 119.
• 4. A teacher at the Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart.
• 5. See note p. 95.
• 6. The opposition to Rudolf Steiner and the Goetheanum.
• 7. Chief accountant of the Independent Waldorf School Association.
• 7. The thrust of this request can be gathered from Rudolf Steiner’s presentation on “Issues of School and Home” at the parents’ evening on June 22, 1923. See pp. 190-202 of this volume.

following the discussion after three lectures by Paul Baumann

On the Expansion of the Tone System

It is only really possible to make a few suggestions, because the questions posed by Mr. Stuten alone could be the subject of weeks of discussion if one wanted to answer them exhaustively. And we will see how far we get today. I would like to start with one topic, so that we can then perhaps move on from a center, so to speak. The extension of the tone system has been mentioned, hasn't it, and various speakers have, I believe, been interested in this extension of the tone system; I think there were also musicians and composers among them.

Now, the whole question is connected, as I believe, with another one that is perhaps not as easy to grasp as is usually thought. And here I would like to say first of all: I myself wanted to address a kind of question first to those personalities who have taken part in this discussion about the expansion of the tone system. I will just make a few preliminary remarks and then ask you to express yourself entirely according to your subjective experience.

There is hardly any doubt that with the point in time that Mr. Baumann characterized so well today as the advent of the seventh, a very significant turning point actually occurred in the musical experience of civilized humanity. I believe that we just do not know enough about the earlier musical experience; that is, theoretically, but we no longer experience it in such a way that we feel this change completely clearly and intensely enough. But what has emerged has not yet run its course, and perhaps we are in the midst of a transformation, if I may say so, of people's musical needs. Of course, such things do not happen so quickly that they can be clearly defined; but they do happen, and they can be recognized to a certain extent in the progressive development of humanity.

And here I would like to ask whether the individual previous speakers, when they reflect on what they experience musically, cannot point to something that signifies a kind of turning point in the whole of musical experience. To formulate the question more specifically: I would like to think that today, in musical experience, one could form an opinion about how different people - I will ignore more of the musical aspect for now - experience a single tone differently. Now, that they experience it differently is, of course, beyond doubt; but they experience it so differently that this different experience plays into their understanding of music in some way.

You can clearly perceive, I believe, that today there is a tendency, especially among people who experience music, to go deeper into the sound, so to speak. Isn't it true that you can stay more on the surface with a sound, or go deeper into the sound.

And now I ask the personalities who were previously involved in the discussion whether they can associate any idea with this when I say: the musical experience of the present is increasingly splitting the individual note in its conception, and, as it were, questioning the individual note as to whether it is a melody or not. I mean, whether any kind of idea can be associated with it? Because it is actually hardly possible to talk about the question of expanding the tone system without having a basis from which to talk.

A comment was made earlier about noises. Perhaps the whole discussion about noises can only be answered if such a prerequisite as I have stated here is first settled. Because if I assume, for example – I don't know whether these things are already being experienced very extensively subjectively today – that the gentleman who has been speaking here for some time, who has been talking about sounds, that he is particularly inclined to answer the question of whether a melody can be perceived in a tone can be perceived in the tone, in the broadest sense, then I understand him, then I completely understand how he enters into the individual tones, or into the individual sounds, which the other person merely perceives as a noise, and how, by delving into the depths of the sound, he does indeed find something in the tones that then form the sound that he can pick out, so that something musical comes about that someone who does not delve into these depths of the sound cannot follow.

This morning, Dr. Husemann pointed out that in another respect, too, present-day humanity is in danger of gradually splitting the personality more and more apart. And so it seems that there are already quite a number of people in the present day who simply have a different sound experience of a single note than musicians who have been very sharply trained in one direction or another. And this is connected with the other question, which has also been asked, namely how spiritual science should relate to the whole matter.

Now I would like to ask the precise question of whether any reasonable idea can be associated with it, if one says that under certain circumstances the individual tone can be felt as a melody by going into its depths, by emphasizing partial tones from the tone, so to speak, partial tones whose relationship, whose harmony can then itself be a kind of melody again?

Paul Baumann: It also emerged from my lecture that I associate noise with harmony, that is, with a summarized melody. Can we understand sound noise as something that is a summarized melody, perhaps a harmony, but that we would also feel musically? In reality, every sound is undoubtedly musical, but we do not need to address it as a musical art. We cannot distinguish it, but it can be felt very clearly in timbre that something particularly musical, something of the mobility of things, is speaking here again, that one can clearly distinguish the mere musical tone, which is not heard in itself, from what it very clearly resonates in.

That is not what I mean. What I mean specifically now is to expand the possibility of experiencing sound itself, that is, to go deeper into the depths when experiencing the sound, or, for that matter, to extract something from the sound, so that you actually experience something in the sound itself.

Paul Baumann: I mean the differentiation between what you need in musical art, what resonates, and what you also feel, something that has a musical effect in things.

I don't mean this now, but what you experience in a tone without it somehow contributing objectively. You split the tone itself and synthesize it again. I mean as a pure experience. From time immemorial, the tone was attributed to the spirit of clay. In layman's terms: at a historical performance of the Passau... play from 1250, the devil is introduced as a seducer right at the beginning, before the play even begins; and to make this atmosphere work properly, the devil has to blow into a fire horn; it sounds so shrill that it scares everyone. That is the basis of this sound spirit I am talking about.

Some opinions will still be expressed.

These are all things that do not apply to what I mean, the experience of a sound that appears as a melody. When a note is struck, a melody actually emanates from the note.

Dr. Stein: It seems to me that one must distinguish between the perception of sound and the sensation of sound. I feel something very deeply in my perception, and this feeling then goes deeper when I feel pain or shock.

I don't mean that we should define the things that already exist, but rather: whether we are living in a transitional period with regard to the sound experience, so that it actually becomes something different. I think that it is still understood in musical terms today as a note that is related to others, that is in a melody and so on, but that there is a possibility with the note to go into the depths, perhaps also to look for something below it and then, if one looks at this, only then is a fruitful examination possible.

Further expressions of opinion.

If you listen to a note for a long time, at the beginning of the “Freischütz” overture, for example, you may have a sensation that I can perhaps illustrate figuratively. So, so to speak, the sound would be: half of a bow – that should be a graphical representation – on this half of the bow, I would draw something like small nerves that go out from it, so that one has a sound sensation on this half of the bow, as if as if it were going in there, then going through again on the other side of the bow, then out again at nerves and veins, so that there is a certain inner movement, which is once on one side of this half bow, then once on the other. You could perhaps also express it dynamically, that you put a greater intensity into it and then back out.

Opinions.

The long hold is only to make it more noticeable. The long hold would also make it possible to notice the changes in tone. I am not so much referring to the illustrative curve, which can be drawn in this way, but rather to the one that is actually drawn here vertically on the board.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Further comments:... It's the intensity? That's why I say: go deeper into the sound!

Longer comments from a participant.

Mr. van der Pals describes his experiences with a tone; an upbeat to Jacobowski's poems. A tone, indicated by the poem itself, by the content; one had no desire at all to move away from the tone; the tone was there, could just as well have remained there, was a melody in itself – I only moved away because one couldn't play it for half an hour.

Now that we have talked about this a bit, I would like to point out that things that develop sometimes come out very imperfectly in their first stages. For example, it can be pointed out that some things certainly appear in a really quite contestable way as Expressionist art – but that is not meant as a criticism of all Expressionist art, but only of some things that do not get beyond expressions – but that there is certainly an attempt at something in it that will one day mean a great deal.

And so I believe that, in a similar way to how we try to live with color and create from color in painting, this immersion in sound means something today, such as the beginning of progress in music. And if that occurs here or there and you don't like it, I completely agree. But I would like to know how one can actually understand such musical personalities as Debussy if not as a perhaps very vague forerunner of something future that lies in this direction. If we can admit something like that, we come to the conclusion that a certain possibility is indeed presented to us, namely the possibility that composing will be done in a different way than it is now, namely in such a way that the relationship between composer and reproducing artist becomes much freer, that the player, the reproducing artist, is much less determined, that he can become much more productive, that he has much more leeway. But this is only possible in music if the tone system is expanded, if you can really have the variations that are necessary, if you can really vary widely. And I could imagine that, for example, what the composer delivers would be more suggestive in the future, but that because it would be more suggestive, the reproducing artist would need many more variants, many more tones, to express things. If you find your way into the depths of the tone, you can distribute it in the most diverse ways by setting it out again in neighboring tones. In this way, a more flexible musical life would come about. I can only sketch the matter. One could go on talking all night, but we don't want to do that since we are meeting again tomorrow. But a much more flexible musical life will come about. And one can say: Today, this more flexible musical experience can really stand before us.

This is connected in a certain way with the other question that has been asked again and again, namely, how spiritual science should relate to music. In this question, there is always one thing that I dislike. Please, I do not want to offend anyone with what I say, but there is something about this question that I dislike, namely, it is actually posed in an unartistic way! It is actually always posed theoretically and in an unartistic way, even if the person in question does not mean it. And I feel that in a discussion about art, it is very easy to slip out of the artistic realm altogether and into a wild theorizing. Spiritual science, since it is not something intellectual, is not something that only takes hold of one part of the human being, but something that takes hold of the whole human being, will have an essential influence on the whole human being, on thinking, feeling and willing. Whereas our present materialistic-intellectualistic science basically only has an influence on thinking, on the intellectual element in man. Spiritual science will take hold of the human being fully. And the consequence of this will be that the human being becomes inwardly more mobile, that he comes to a greater variability of his partial experience and thus also to a stronger demand for the harmony of his partial experience. And when this happens, it essentially means an enrichment of the whole musical activity and experience. And then, in the case of such personalities, who are so permeated, so imbued, so vitalized by spiritual science, I might say, what can become reality in the field of music out of spiritual science will arise. There is no use theorizing about this. One should not theorize, one should rather feel today how spiritual science actually makes the human being more mobile and how, through this, the human being can also approach a more intense, more nuanced musical experience.

This can be linked to very big questions. You see, the spiritual science movement has often been criticized: Yes, there are mainly ladies there who are always interested in it, you don't see the men in the anthroposophical meetings. — I don't want to decide now to what extent this is statistically true or not. Some people have a newspaper article ready before they have seen the things, and they can't be dissuaded from it even if they then see the opposite of what they have written down. But on the whole – please, it is really not meant so badly – we can say: Because the male world has participated more in education, in the scientific and increasingly scientific education of the last few centuries, something has occurred for masculinity that could be called a solidification, a hardening of the brain. In women, the brain has remained more flexible and softer. These are, of course, radical expressions for the phenomena, but the phenomenon still exists. And so as not to be unfair, I will say: in men, the brain has become more solidified, and as a result they have become more proficient in the use of logic; in women, the brain has remained more agile, lighter, but they have not participated in the education of the last few centuries, which has so solidified the firm logic within itself, and as a result they have become superficial and so on. — Well, you can't just present things one-sidedly. But there is something in the whole matter that can make us aware of the fact that we urgently need to make what has been achieved in our own organization through the stiffening, drying out education of the last centuries, flexible again, by entering into this stronger handling of the ethereal. But here we are entering the musical element again. Here we are entering a completely musical experience. And that will naturally bear fruit.

But one would be quite inartistic if one wanted to create any kind of theory about what is happening. That always seems to me to be the same as if someone wanted to describe the weather of the day after tomorrow very precisely. I am not saying that there is not a state of consciousness in which one can do so to a high degree. But it has no real significance. It is better to let life live than to theorize about it in such a way.

Now, with this train of thought, the consideration has already been diverted from the musical to the human constitution. And so, in a spiritualized physiology, which in itself will already have something artistic about it, one will increasingly associate the musical with the human constitution.

Just think, there is something very deeply justified in Mr. Baumann's assertion of the connection between melos and breathing. Basically, melos and human breathing are two things that essentially belong together.

But now we must not forget: The breathing process is a process that takes place in the rhythmic system. This middle system of the human organization borders on the nervous-sense system, on the brain system, on the one hand. There is an interaction between the rhythmic system and the nervous-sense system. On the other hand, the rhythmic system borders on the entire limb and metabolic system. And this confluence also expresses itself, I would say, in the physical processes. Just think: when we breathe in, we push our diaphragm down, we push the brain water up to the head, so that with the breathing process we have a continuous up and down of the brain water. This means that there is a continuous interplay between the rhythmic movement of the cerebral fluid and that of the organs of imagination. On the other hand, there is a continuous collision of the cerebral fluid, which is going down again, with everything that is going on in the blood, in the metabolic system. More than one would think, the musical element is connected with this inner experience, thought of in organic terms. And in the following way: to the same extent that breathing approaches the head, the nervous-sensory life, with the interplay, the melodious element comes to the fore; to the same extent that the rhythmic system approaches the limb system, the actual rhythmic element comes to the fore; we have only transferred the word there.

And then, if you bear this in mind, you have a guide to answer, I would say, the whole bundle of questions that Mr. Stuten asked at the end, one by one. So what Mr. Stuten has put forward is correct. I would like to go into the one thing he mentioned about the connections between thinking, feeling and willing. This corresponds, in turn, to what I have just explained in terms of the organs. Then we have already discussed, and Mr. Stuten has repeated today, that what the actual musical forms are corresponds to the whole human being, that is, to the synthetic interweaving of thinking, feeling and willing.

Now he has also raised the question of the relationships between the thematic groups. These are, of course, specifically different, depending on whether they come from this or that composer. And now we can say the following: You were quite right to state that the melody corresponds to the imagination, the harmony to the feeling, the rhythm to the will, and the tone form to the whole person. Now we have a partial human being = thinking, a partial human being = feeling, a partial human being = willing, and the whole human being.

But now we not only have the whole human being in real human life, but the human being also lives all the years between birth and death. This whole human being is often present and continuously present, and changes, metamorphoses. And this is where the succession of thematic groupings comes into play. The human life cycle is something specific. And the underlying secret is this: in our consciousness, we do not know what the future holds, but in our feeling consciousness, we are attuned to how the future unfolds. Please observe purely empirically — one does not usually do this, but these things belong to a finer perception of a true anthropology, which then becomes anthroposophy — how the emotional life changes in a person whom one later learns has died. Of course, there are many things that prevent us from pursuing such things, but at least we can pursue them retrospectively. We can see very clearly in a person who died young how the whole emotional life tends towards death, how the future is already contained in the past life. This is also something that is part of the human life cycle.

All this plays a role when the musician lives out in the succession, in the recurrence of thematic groups and so on. The recurrence itself need not surprise you. For you need only look back over your life, if it has already been going on for some time; in particular, the usual periods, which do not cover the same number for everyone but are nevertheless present, could show you exactly the stages, could tell you: in this year a stage ended that lasted until that year, and so on. If someone experiences a phase of life at the age of forty-five, they will experience it again at the age of fifty-two at the next stage. And one can see the recurrence in human experience very clearly when one experiences something at the age of fifty-two, which does not have to be the same, but which, in its inner character, represents something similar to what happened in one's forty-fifth year.

All these things play a part in what is expressed in a musical work of art. For such a musical work of art is, at least at the moment it is created, always an expression of the whole human being. One can only hint at such things.

Some of the other questions that were asked, such as the relationship between Goethe's theory of sound and spiritual science, would really be too much to cover today. I believe that we can still meet on this or a similar occasion. And answering the question about major and minor, about the meaning of Greek music, would also be too much today.

With regard to the one thing that has been mentioned, the theories about breathing, singing and posture, I would just like to note that such things as described in the book mentioned are not without a certain significance if one knows how to take them sensibly.

It is extremely important to consider the human being as a whole. People who write such books do not usually do this, but they do provide material that can be useful even to the scholar, when it is viewed in the right light.

I also do not want to address the question of singing method today, because it can very easily be misunderstood if it is not developed out of some kind of premise, especially since there are so many different singing methods today. And you can meet people who have learned to sing using five or six different methods, which means they have forgotten how to sing altogether! Then, however, one cannot speak in such a simple way about the different singing methods.

Regarding what has been said about temperaments, about thesis, antithesis, synthesis, I must say that it is a rather unfruitful way of looking at things, because as a rule one can really develop anything from such bloodless abstractions. And just as you can say: Wagner – thesis, Bruckner – antithesis, which may be in principle, and spiritual science – the synthesis, so could another, who just classified differently, perhaps say: Wagner – thesis, Bruckner – antithesis, Mahler – synthesis. That would certainly be said by one or the other if one indulges in such bloodless abstractions.

Yes, I really don't think that we should extend the evening any further today, since we can't stay here overnight after all! Although I am happy to talk in detail about the issues I have noted down at a further get-together.

When at the present time a Madonna, when a goddess addresses us from the stage one can hardly believe one’s ears. Not the faintest attempt is made to set the language apart from the ephemera of common life, and not the slightest effort to attain with the aid of speech to a higher sphere. The spirit is barred every way from admittance to the stage, and not an opening, not even the least pretentious of openings into its alien, inaccessible worlds can be found. Absolutely no one undertakes to allow any light to infiltrate from that hinterland of speech whence celestial forms may shine through. The reality of spirit is a concept cast by the wayside. A washerwoman at her sink is quite up to any one of these Madonnas perched on a pedestal in some miracle-play – and quite devoid of anything divine and spiritual in her language. The speaking is so uncultivated, so rough, so painfully prosaic. It is positively offensive. I do not mean this as a snub to washerwomen and the way they speak, which in their case is quite justifiable. Hard work makes the voice hard and rugged, and her struggling with material tasks must have a coarsening effect unless there happens to be religion or anthroposophy to restore the balance. But a Madonna is hardly likely to be subjected to such physical labours in the heavenly heights: A certain aura should always hedge her about – even on the pedestal. There should be a certain translucence, a luminosity, a spirituality that sounds in her voice. The speaker should be able to produce the effect of a voice sounding from afar, free and floating. The figure thus presented is an image of something that reaches for the heavens and brings us down her gifts, catching us in the effulgence of her beams and the music of the spheres.

And what about the heavenly hosts: Have you ever heard them speak, either on stage or behind the scenes? What about Goethe’s archangels, for instance, or the Lord in the same scene? They sound like a real lot of stay-at-homes, or a chorus of sales executives: dry, dun, getting-down-to-business, quite down-to-earth. As for the spiritual background, the circling tread of the dance, the course of the aeons – all absent.

The sun makes music as of old

Amid the rival spheres of heaven

Of the poetry there is hardly a trace.

Yet this is what we ought to pursue, to capture, today.

We have to feel our way towards it, step by step, listening, responding, continually wrestling, never relenting, until we burst out of our intellectual constraints, the barriers directed by material life across our path; until we transcend our restrictions and emerge into the open on the other side, liberated, saved. Anyone who is “happy discovering earthworms” will never succeed in getting beyond himself, will not make the discovery that he is also a being of air who can master the physical man, and make use of him without being chained to him. For him there will be no encounter with the word’s healing power, its life-giving power, or the power of illumination which enables him to grasp the core of his being and carries him over into the realm from whence he came. Borne on the wings of the word, he can endeavour to seek out his way along these paths. He has a presentiment of them whenever he gives himself over to the primordial powers of the word. The “I” – the vital breath – the divine centre: along such a path may the word lead one back to the beginning.

And let us explore the realms of that less expansive spirituality that opens up for us in poetry. Let us take the elemental world. Does modern art, like a child of the gods, hand us the key to unlock these kingdoms? Not at all! Cleverness, and a dash of temperament, are enough to be going on – absolutely rattling along, with no feeling at all for a wise disposition of aesthetic resources, such as comes from knowledge of our human organization. No knowledge of the laws that are manifestations of divine-creative forces in art, of which for us both man and the world are representations. Should not our ultimate aim be to trace the routes that the gods have taken in creating works of art after their own image, and into which they have breathed the breath of life? Let us embark with our tentative consciousness on those paths, beginning quietly and reverentially by experiencing the breath of life that furnishes the ground of our existence – here, in speech, as there, in creation. It is when we immerse ourselves in the word, when we fathom its being, that we enter upon those paths. What more marvellous prospect could there be?

Only we must begin by learning to spell. We must concern ourselves with the fundamentals, the speech-sounds themselves, and not with projecting our own one-sided personality.

I once saw in Germany a large-scale production of Shakespeare’s Tempest. But of the elemental world and its spiritual nature, there was nothing to be perceived. There was certainly a lot of noise, temperamental outbursts and screaming. The Caliban scenes were exorbitantly overdone, and protracted in the realist manner far beyond anything Shakespeare apportioned them. And Ariel? There was nothing in him of aerial lightness and strength: a heavy, booming voice, hard as bone; the figure thick-set. There was much bouncing up and down and shrieking. But the bouncing did nothing to dispel the heaviness of that little, earth-bound, dumpy figure with its anti-halo of tousled, dishevelled hair. An Ariel! Is not the word itself pure lightness and radiance – a soaring, sounding, hovering delight in the air? Shortly afterwards, I saw the same actress as Salome in Hebbel’s Herodes and Mariamne. It struck me then that she was talented. Her constitution lent support to her in that role: the dark, heavy voice, the hard, watchful, furtive glance; rooted to the earth and stocky in stature, she was the most interesting figure in Hebbel’s darkly-coloured piece, brooding on disaster as Salome-Herodias. Mariamne, on the other hand, seemed too cool and self-conscious, too keenly intelligent and concerned with women’s rights. A Maccabee? – no, a north-German down to the ground.

When will the actors find the escape route from this one-sidedness of the intellect, and reach the sources that will open up for them the culture-epochs, the races, the elements and the spirit-world? Desiccation is the only alternative to finding this way. In extremity, nerves fray. The breathless, consumptive approach soon loses its fascination – and is anyway not productive. If once the practice spreads, it becomes frankly objectionable. It is increasingly being rumoured that the theatre will be ousted by the film.

I once saw an Iphigeneia performance that acquired for me the status of an event. It was something of a turning-point, for things just could not continue like this. They had already been taken to breaking-point. And perhaps it was exactly here, where lay the driving powers behind such excesses as these, that the counter-forces could be evoked. I refrain from saying much about Iphigeneia herself. She was terribly tedious and common-place, expressing the boring and blasé inanities of a salon-lady – the kind who has nothing to do but parade up and down in her park and be pestered by her (solitary) insufferable admirer. Nor will I dwell upon the prize-fighter’s figure of King Thoas, the admirer in this case – though, with a neck like a bull and swinging his bare, muscular arms, he seemed to be saying: Just take my measurements, you won’t find anyone who can size up to me! I do not recall that anything else was conveyed in what he did say; certainly nothing faintly regal.

But then Orestes – Orestes: He was obviously sustained by one idea alone: that of being different from any Orestes that ever was. He was out to excel in triviality. Now if one is supposed to be a tramp, one must have the proper attributes: a skin as red as copper, an unkempt, tangled head of hair (of an indeterminate mousy colour), and a voice that is hoarse and flat, with a tinny ring. Orestes is supposed to be possessed. And so the intellect is set in motion to work out what a possessed person should look like: his thoughts will be incoherent, his nerves sensitive, making him nervous and wary of being touched; he finds everything repellent. Inwardly, such a concocted product of the head’s “realism” possesses about as much truth as a billiard ball that is made to speak. And outwardly it looks like a sort of uncared-for vagabond one might encounter on the highways of Russia ... but wait, that might actually be an inspiration: Tauris – the Crimea – Russia – a possessed vagabond it yields analogies: Modern interpretations are scarcely drawn from farther afield than this. As for Orestes, the accursed descendent of Tantalus, the Greek hero, on the other hand – such ideas are long out of date, far too hackneyed. And the same goes for iambics, for the metres and noble harmony of speech: we got beyond such things years ago.

It is said that Maximilian Harden’s journalistic career began in the following way. The editor of the Monday edition of the Berliner Tagblatt instructed a number of his young employees to “do nothing for the whole week except sit in coffee-houses, read all the papers you can lay hands on, and for next Monday write me an article that is different from everything else you have read on the subject.” Maximilian Harden is said to have done the best job.

If the motive-power behind the player of Orestes was something on the same lines, this might explain his grotesque whim and bad taste – otherwise quite inexplicable. His novelty consisted, in effect, only in pushing the tendencies of intellectualism and naturalism to an extreme, obsessively debasing this culminating achievement of the German spirit by his nervous brand of realism. The noblest, flawless, perfect product of German poetry, the Roman version of Goethe’s Iphigeneia, was quite ruthlessly and brutally trampled upon, and anyone who felt in sympathy with the play felt himself trampled upon too. We came away from the performance with a burden of responsibility: to rescue the most exalted values of the spirit.

It was about this time, as well, that our Shaper of Destinies was taken from us, he who had done so much for art, too, and pointed out the path of recuperation. He spanned the “shimmering arch” which bridges over the spirit-abandoned abyss of modern times to the other side. He was the builder, he did the moulding, he kindled and scattered the sparks, bequeathing us in his work myriads of precious stones. It is with a profound sense of responsibility that we now put together these precious stones from his spiritual wealth.

They will ennoble human beings, and fill them with bliss for thousands of years to come; and they will serve today as a magic key to open closed doors, to revive what is dead and heal what is sick, to atone for what is evil. We must only have good will. All these far-flung gems can become a magic key – even though, as in the case of these transcripts, they lie before our eyes in fragments. The notes of these three splendid lectures are very inadequate, and for all of seven years they lay hidden from the public at large because these deficiencies seemed too obvious. But so much of their richness remains that, on the foundation they lay, a rebirth of the theatre can come about.

Every word that was uttered must indeed be given its full value, and taken in all its interconnections. A foundation must be furnished for an understanding based on the will to an all-round knowledge of man and the world in their cosmic dimensions. Rudolf Steiner refers to what is adumbrated here as being “guiding principles”. With them he has opened new worlds for us.

These lectures can be our signposts to those more subtle reaches of art to which access has presently been lost, barred by materialism. The intimacies of the soul-life, the mysteries of man’s organization in conjunction with the mysteries of the cosmos form the basis of our considerations. They are intended only as points of departure for further advances, which will be achieved through steady work and inner experience. Limitations of time meant that they could be carried out only cursorily; but they may serve as prompters and awakeners to rouse the artist’s powers to independent life. They were given as part of a whole complex of lectures, which were aimed in a single direction: away from the nihilistic forces at work in our age, towards new light and recuperation. This was the deed which Rudolf Steiner performed. And if, to some hostile powers, his life’s work seems to have been checked or even annulled through the crippling of his public activities, the burning of the Goetheanum, his physical death – they are mistaken. The seeds, sheltering the future within them, are there. They are sprouting everywhere, even though external forms may be disrupted.

The task of preparation and re-edification for the future demanded unflagging effort, superhuman strength; and their affirmation could only be achieved through sacrifice. In a lifetime of indefatigable labour, one of the high points of Rudolf Steiner’s work was the opening of the Goetheanum as a Spiritual Scientific University (Hochschule). It was a time of subversive acts, of social dissension and economic collapse. Even though the art work was not entirely finished, the building could be committed to its proper function, the work for which it was intended. For three years the building served this purpose: the spiritual renewal of mankind. Then, on Sylvester Night, it was destroyed by fire. The solemnity of the festival gave way to the act of destruction; the vast framework of the completed year passed over into history. And thus, when it was rent away from earthly effectiveness, the building was impressed like a seal into the cosmos and the course of the ages.

The lectures formed part of the course for this university, and were not to be omitted from their context in the whole opening ceremony, of which they formed an integral part. For Rudolf Steiner the word stood at the foundation of everything that took place. The word was his point of departure, the central and directing force behind every development that unfolded and every seal that was opened. It was not Rudolf Steiner’s way to shroud great words in the secrecy of the occult: he paved the way for them through genuine understanding and inner apprehension. What he laid open to us became a matter of perception, something consciously grasped, an activity consciously undertaken. We were able, under his guidance, to scale the first rungs of the ladder. Then he gave us our freedom. In us his word was to become a courageous venture and accomplishment.

Art was never lacking in any of the projects inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner. We were to approach art with understanding, and practise it with reverence, being mindful of its origin. In the celebration of the cosmic rite, art played a vital role. It sprang from the threefold Logos; it officiated and performed the sacrifice at the altars of truth, beauty and power. In the course of the age of rationalism, it has for the longest time preserved its links with the divine. In the age of triviality, this heaven-born child was sunk in physical nature: the triumph of mechanics tore her away from her spiritual origins and fettered her to the machine. She must be redeemed again!

The House of Speech (as Rudolf Steiner called the Goetheanum) was intended to lead art, science and religion, which had grown apart from their original unity into threefold isolation, back together. Rudolf Steiner saw in a spiritual deepening of art, science and religion and in their mutual fructification an effective remedy for the social ills of mankind. Barbarity might be avoided and, in place of the twilight of European culture that has already been confirmed by science, there might rise out of affliction, misery and delusion the light of a new dawn.

He expressed the object of his strivings in profoundly penetrating words, which allow us to realize the significance he attributed to a spiritualized form of art in the rebuilding of a higher culture for humanity.

The house which served this end, freely and openly bidding welcome to every guest, is no longer standing. But in its place there rises a building made, like a stronghold, in the hard material of our time – concrete. Life from its departed creator was still breathed into it, ennobling it and giving it its special significance. It is there that the Mystery Plays are to be performed. These dramatic creations of Rudolf Steiner, which put man in connection again with the spiritual cosmos and make him once more a “citizen of the universe”, explaining his present personality in terms of his earlier lives an earth – these productions will enable mankind to attain to self-knowledge, self-realization and self-renewal. And there above all, eurythmy must be cultivated: Rudolf Steiner added this new art, where speech-movement takes an externally visible form, to the series of already existing arts; and this leads to the compelling, the imperative demand for a renewal of the art of speech – the word artistically spoken. Concerted interaction between spoken word and eurythmic gesture was what Rudolf Steiner called for and this had to be attained in practice. When the performance corresponded with his demands, he gave us a conscious insight into our actions and shed light on the mysteries of the art of speech and poetry, thereby redeeming us from the insufferable state into which they had degenerated.

We are under no illusion that the world will bring any but a meagre understanding to bear on our endeavours. We shall be understanding, even if some honest student at first casts this book impatiently and despairingly aside. A metamorphosis of consciousness is necessary to pass this way, and art has been held back from any permeation by consciousness. A perceiving, a hearing, a willing consciousness: today these alone can bring us genuine aesthetic experience and wrest the language of poetry away from the abstractive intelligence and mechanization to which it has now fallen prey.

We have grown accustomed to what the modern stage puts before us and thus have little notion of the suffering that can be inflicted when the noblest works of poetic drama are brought before the soul mutilated, maltreated and desecrated, as is only too often the case today.

It is as if the gods have turned away in anger from what we have made of their gifts. They gave us everything, held nothing back. Works of unbelievable stature, purity and perfection of form have come into being. The German language has been moulded into an instrument of subtlest strength and pliancy, to grasp the breadth and profundity of existence, to unfold the inner essences of things. It is still capable of transformation, of pliancy; it still has the ability to grow beyond itself, bearing mankind onward and upward in its progress. But whoever leads it on to its destination resolutely and imperturbably will be stoned – while those who make it banal, who reduce it to the level of the feuilleton will be venerated.

The German language’s potentialities for concrete delineation and for the transcending of conceptual formulations are also to be found in another way: in the plasticity and translucence of its speech-sounds. It is not in the usual sense musical – not superficially. One has to have an ear for it. But it does have so many lights and shades, such capacities for veiling the sound or for brightening, flashing, that with its help we can break through the bounds of the senses. The world beyond sounds through in its modified vowels and its diphthongs, whispers through its clusters of consonants and rings out in the freely-suspended vaulting of its syntax. We do not realise what an artistic experience language can be until we have learnt to listen inwardly, until psychic-spiritual sound has been transposed into tone-formation and soaring movement.

The world of today is sheer intellect rendered actual. It does not go beyond the mechanical and mathematical; it cannot find the way into imagination and the creating of myths. We are unable to produce images any more, because we have grown abstract and hollow. It is much easier to be clever in one’s thinking than it is to form imagery, since the intellectual stems from our personality, while aesthetic creation makes much greater demands an our selflessness. It immerses itself in the object rather than reflecting upon it, lets itself be drawn along rather than seizing hold of it. Through living in intellectualism we lose our real connection with the world. We deprive human beings of their immortal part. The forming of images affects not only the intellect, but the whole man, entering into much deeper strata of the soul-life than does conceptual thinking. In attempting to speak in imagery, we bind the atoms sundered in the course of study, and divided amongst the conventional categories of learning, into a new synthesis. It must all be raised into the sphere of Imagination, where the plasticity of the language is released into movement and its musicality becomes ensouled. In this it draws near to the eternal in the soul which stands behind everything intellectual. Through imaginative, ensouled speech we can lead man to the substantial content of the word, to the super-sensible, to the creative word that flows from the super-sensible. The immortal life of the soul is roused to awakening when we speak artistically, out of the image; immortal life is smothered when we work out of intellectualism.

We placed the image or Imagination of the author of the Apocalypse before our souls yesterday, and I pointed out that it is a vision of Christ which was given by God. Then I pointed out that the letter which was sent to John must be looked upon as an explanation of the Imagination or as something which will help us to understand it.

The way in which the writer of the Apocalypse is then also looked upon as the writer of the letter is in line with the nature of the Mystery and with the way one speaks and thinks out of the Mystery. For it was in keeping with the nature of the Mystery that the writer of such a document did not consider himself to be the author in the way that we look upon the author of a work today, but he felt that he was the instrument of the spiritual writer. He felt that the act of writing the content down was no longer of much importance. This is why John treats the matter as if he were writing down the message of a god by order of the latter. This proceeds from everything that follows in a way that is really oriented in accordance with the Mystery.

One can say that our contemporary world needs an understanding of transitions like the one from the first vision in the Apocalypse to the following seven letters to the individual churches again. For present-day people have completely forgotten how to understand the things which everyone knew about in the mysteries and during the early years of Christianity.

This is another thing which you priests should really develop further. Just consider that what is written down in an inspired way in the Apocalypse is directed to the angel of the church in Ephesus, the church in Thyatira, the church in Sardis, etc. These letters were to be sent to angels. This is something over which modern intellects must stumble right away. But the important thing here is to consider the following.

A man once came to me near the end of his life who was trying very hard to really understand the Anthroposophical or spiritual view of things. You should really know about such things in your priestly work, for they are typical phenomena today. The important thing becomes evident in a striking way in this particular case, but it is something that you will often encounter on your priestly paths. And after all, it's the work on your priest's path which is the important thing. He said to me, “It looks as if Anthroposophists are trying to take the Bible literally.” I said, yes. Then he gave me all kinds of examples to show why he didn't think that the Bible should be taken literally. I said to him, “It's true that there are a great many so-called mystics, Theosophists, etc., who see all kinds of symbols and the like in the Bible and who break it up into a lot of symbols. Anthroposophy doesn't do this. It only tries to understand what the original text is really saying, and it can sometimes do this by proceeding from the symbolic language. And here,” I said “I have never found that one couldn't take the original text of the Bible literally, even though one often runs into misunderstandings which have arisen in the course of time in later translations.”

A literal reading of the Bible is a goal which can be attained. One can really say that anyone who cannot take a particular passage in the Bible literally yet, hasn't understood it yet, either. Of course this is also true of a lot of other things today.

We have come to such a passage here. We're touching upon something here which is' probably a little bit more esoteric than what we've encountered so far; but at some point it should really pass before your meditative eye's. Sometimes things in this or that confession which have remained behind from the old mysteries shoot and spray like volcanic fires from below, I can't say like lightning flashes, because they come from above.

I have often mentioned the pastoral letter of an archbishop which said no less than the following. The question was raised: who is greater, man or God? And although the language which was used was indirect, it nevertheless stated quite bluntly that priests are greater and more powerful than God, because when a priest—this doesn't apply to other people—stands at the altar he can force God to assume an earthly form, in the bread and wine. When a priest consecrates them and carries out a transubstantiation, the god must be present at the altar.

This is an explanation which goes far back to the ancient mystery culture, but it is also an explanation which is still common in esoteric Brahmanism in the orient today, to the extent that this is based on mystery knowledge. The idea that man is a being who includes the godhead is frequently used there, and this agrees with all mystery wisdom. Actually the idea is that man is higher than God. The Brahmanic priests from those times knew that they were the super-personal bearers of the Godhead, as it were, when their soul was in this mood.

This idea which shines in from the ancient mystery culture is a weighty one. But it is one of the things which every priest should meditate on at some point. However, it contradicts everything which has gradually arisen in the consciousness of Protestants. Protestants would say that this pastoral message is foolishness. We will come back to this letter in the course of our explanations of the Apocalypse. The idea here is just an exaggerated version of the idea which we encounter in the Apocalypse at the place I'm referring to.

John writes to the angels of the seven churches on orders from the gods or with divine inspiration. He is in such a state when he writes that he feels that he is the one who should give advice, warnings, a mission, etc to the angels of the seven churches. What is the concrete idea here? To whom does one have to point when the angel of the Christian community in Ephesus or Sardis or Philadelphia is mentioned? Although people can't really understand this today, there were certain individuals at that time, whom we would call educated Christians, who understood what it means when one says that when a prophetic person like John was writing to the angels of the churches while he was in a particular soul mood, he was higher than an angel.

However, the people who understood this would not have been referring to something supersensible when they said “angel.” They knew that Christian communities had been founded and continued to exist. The writer of the Apocalypse directed his letters to future times, when what he has to say about each community will come to pass. He is definitely not speaking about present conditions. He is speaking about future conditions. But those who were conversant with traditional views from the ancient mysteries would have had to point to the leading bishops in the communities who were the recipients of the letters.

On the one hand they were quite aware that the real leader of the community is the supersensible angel. On the other hand, they would have pointed to the bishop or the canonical administrator of the community. For they had the idea that the ranking administrator of a church in Sardis or Ephesus or Philadelphia was the earthly vehicle of a supersensible, angelic being. So that as John writes he actually feels that he is taken hold of by a being who is higher than an angel. He writes to the bishops of the seven churches as people who are permeated by the leading angel of a community, and not just by their own guardian angel—for everyone has one of the latter.

Then he mentions what he wants to tell these churches. And he's definitely pointing to the future. We have to ask: Why were seven letters directed to seven communities? Of course, these seven communities represent the various nuances of heathenism and Judaism from which Christ proceeded. One had a much greater understanding for concrete things in those times than one did later. For instance, there was the church in Ephesus, which had once given birth to the great Ephesian mysteries, and people knew quite well that the latter pointed to the future appearance of Christ in a way that was customary and necessary. The cultic rituals in Ephesus were supposed to mediate between the sacrificing priest, his congregation and divine, spiritual powers, including the coming Christ. The heathen community and cult in Ephesus foretold the coming of Christianity and therefore they stood quite close to it.

This is why the letter to the angel of the Ephesian church refers to the seven candlesticks. The candlesticks are the churches. This is explicitly, stated in the Apocalypse. Precisely the community in Ephesus is and must be taken the way it stands there, for this is its true form. The indication is that the church in Ephesus was more actively involved with Christianity than the other churches, and that this was its first love. For we're told that it left its first love. The Apocalypticer wants to speak about this coming time in his letter. We can see from this warning letter to the church in Ephesus that the Apocalypticer thinks that he should describe the development of the various churches in connection with what the communities experienced in ancient times.

In fact, the individual churches under discussion here represent various nuances of heathen or Jewish peoples, and they had various cults, whereby they approached the divine worlds in different ways. The way each letter begins shows one that the Christianity in each of the communities developed out of heathen rites in a special way.

One should realize that the attitude of soul which people had in the early days of Christianity was quite different from that of present-day Europeans, although this doesn't apply to the Orient as much. However, our view of religious things in a conceptual context or content which one can describe in a logical way was still very foreign to the ancient mystery type of thinking in the first Christian centuries, very foreign indeed. They told themselves: the Christ is one of the manifestations of the mighty sun being. However, the church in Ephesus, the church in Sardis, in Thyatira, etc., must each strive towards him from its cult in its own special way; each one can approach this being in a way which has a particular nuance. And one can find indications everywhere that they acknowledged this. Just consider the following.

Take a church like the one in Ephesus, which had to replace the ancient and profound Ephesian mysteries; it must be different than, say, the church in Sardis. The church in Ephesus had a cult which was completely permeated by the presence of divine, spiritual substances in earthly life. A priest who walked around in Ephesus could have called himself a god just as well as he could call himself a human being. He knew that he was a bearer of a god. The entire religious consciousness in Ephesus was really anchored in theophany or in the visible manifestation of a god in a human being. Each priest in Ephesus represented a particular god. And it was even one of their special tasks to really bring this theophanic element or this physical presence of a god into people's souls.

Let's suppose that the living, human elaboration of Artemis or Diana the moon goddess walked around among the Ephesian priestesses as they celebrated their cultic rites. The priests expected their followers to see the goddess in the earthly, human manifestation, so that they made no distinction between the earthly phenomena and the goddess. The people in public processions and in other ancient events in the mysteries represented gods. Just as one must learn to have adequate concepts about things today, so one had to acquire mental images and feelings in one's soul in order to see the god in the male or female priests.

Hence it is not surprising that after the Apocalypticer took it into his head to speak in the language of the mysteries—as I mentioned before—he turned to the community in Ephesus, where this particular way of thinking, feeling and sensing things was developed most strongly. It was only natural for the community in Ephesus to look upon the seven candlesticks as the most important symbol of its cult. They represented the light which lives upon earth, which however is divine light.

The situation was quite different in a community like the one in Sardis. This church was the Christian continuation, of an ancient, astrological star worship, where one really knew how the movements of the stars and planets are connected with earthly affairs. Where everything which greater or lesser leaders commanded or which happened on earth was read from the stars. The church in Sardis had developed from a mystery culture which really considered the investigation of life secrets and life impulses in the starry skies at night to be important. Before one could speak of the community in Sardis as a Christian one, one had to speak of it as the one which clung to an ancient, dreamy state of clairvoyance the most, for the secrets of the nocturnal macrocosm were disclosed to this clairvoyance; The people, who preserved and made a tradition out of this dreamy clairvoyance didn't think that what the day gives is very important.

The differences between the solar services and teachings in Ephesus and Sardis are really quite interesting to the extent that one can really speak of ancient wisdom in connection with these two places. The sciences were not separated from the mysteries at that time, and what was taught at these centers went out to laymen. The solar teachings in Ephesus separated the five planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury from the sun. and the moon. One set the sun—which we call a fixed star—apart in Ephesus: and one revered it from the time it rose to the time it set because one looked upon the sun as a principle which gives life.

This was not the case in Sardis. There one received its daily radiations rather indifferently, and one was mainly interested in what people in the ancient mysteries called the midnight sun. The nightly sun and the moon were considered to have the same value as the rest of the planets. The sun was really looked upon as a planet which was on an equal footing with the others. In Sardis one enumerated Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun moon. But in Ephesus they had Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury on the one side, and the gods of the day and the night, sun and moon, which are closely connected with life on earth, on the other. That is the big difference. And all the cultic rites in Sardis were based on this.

Thus in these first Christian times an old heathen cult which was only oriented towards Christian principles lived on in the church in Ephesus, whereas an old heathen cult which was oriented towards the kind of astrology which I just mentioned lived on in Sardis. Therefore, it is only natural that the Apocalypticer writes of the one who speaks to the community in Sardis, that he has seven spirits and seven stars; now the featured thing is not the candle sticks which stand on the altar and the light which is connected with the earth, but what stands up there in the macrocosm.

You can see how deeply the writer of the Apocalypse is still involved with the ancient mystery culture if you answer the question: What does the writer of the Apocalypse reproach the community in Sardis with, or what does he tell them to watch out for? He mainly tells them that they should be watchful, and that they should make the transition to the diurnal sun from which Christ came.

One has to take what stands there in a literal sense and to really press forward to the original meaning. The writer of the Apocalypse was just about the last one to speak about and deal with religious life like this on a large scale. Before that Alexander the Great dealt with it in this way when he spread religious life in a model way, and so did all the other people who spread religions in ancient times. No one used dogmas to talk people into things. They let people keep their cults and convictions and they only added as much to them as could be assimilated.

For instance, Buddha's messengers went over to Babylonia and Egypt. After they had done their work there one could hardly distinguish the later time from the earlier one as far as the external cultic rites and the use of words went. But there was certainly a tremendous difference inwardly after they had poured in what the existing cults, sacrificial services and convictions could hold. Something similar occurred in European regions in ancient times. Spreaders of religions connected them with the existing ancient mystery culture, and they didn't try to overpower people with a lot of dogmas.

These are the kind of building blocks one needs in order to be able to read something like the Apocalypse correctly, and to avoid the absurd ideas which people have often come up with in connection with it. For instance, this tolerant addition to existing things led the writer of the Apocalypse to refer several times to “them which say they are Jews, and are not,” which is something that the members of these two communities were thinking in their hearts. This kind of thing has led some people to think that the Apocalypse is a Jewish document and not a Christian one. However, one has to understand how these things proceeded from the way people used to think in ancient times. We will have to go into some of these details more exactly later.

However, we will have to touch upon one of these ideas now. I'm referring to the following. The one who was inspired to write at that time knew that any given reality is only connected with a certain number of typical phenomena or types. Now just look at the wonderfully individual way in which the seven churches were described in the Apocalypse. It's really wonderful; they're all described in such a way that they're clearly distinguished from each other and they each have a special quality. But the writer of the Apocalypse knew that if one had described an eighth community, he would have been describing things which were similar to those which were connected with one of the others: and the same would apply to a ninth one. All of the possible things were already described in these seven nuances. This is something he was well aware of.

This is another wonderful idea which surfaces from the far distant past. I ran into it again recently in a very graphic way when we had our summer course in Torquay, England, and we drove out to where the castle of King Arthur and his twelve brothers once stood. One can still see how important this place was from the vital life that exists there. If one looks at these promontories which still have a few ruins from the old Arthurian castles on them, one sees a large hill in the middle with the ocean on either side. One sees that the ocean ensouls the region in a very peculiar way, for the view is continuously changing.

During the relatively short time we were there, sunshine and rain alternated rapidly with each other. Of course this was also the case in past times, and as a matter of fact, things have quieted down somewhat today in this respect, for the climate there has changed. Now one looks at this wonderful interplay of elemental light spirits, which relate to the water spirits that stream up from below. Other quite special spiritual phenomena exist there when the ocean surges onto the land and then wrests itself loose and is thrown back again, and when the ocean curls up. This is actually the only place on earth where one finds this peculiar living and weaving of elemental, world beings.

What I had the privilege of seeing there was the vehicle for the inspiration of the participants in Arthur's work. They received the impulses for what they did from what was said to them with the help of these ocean beings and air beings. Here again, one could only have twelve people. This struck me there at the time, because one can still perceive what this establishment of the number twelve is based on. When one has to do with world percepts which have been created by elemental beings in this way, one finds that there are twelve nuances or kinds of perception. However, if any one person wants to grasp all 12, they all become blurred. The knights at Arthur's round table arranged things in such a way that each of them grasped one of these 12 nuances. But they were convinced that this gave each of them a sharply differentiated feeling for the universe and for the tasks that it presented them. But there couldn't have been a thirteenth, for this would have had to be similar to one of the 12.

The idea which obviously underlies this is that if people want to share their tasks in the world, there must be 12 people. They form a whole and represent 12 nuances. Whereas if people confront each other in communities or communes one gets the number seven. People knew about these things in those days. The Apocalypticer still had this supersensible knowledge of numbers, and he gives us other indications of this in the Apocalypse. Today I only want to speak about the way one reads the Apocalypse. One of the things that he sees is the seat of Christ or the transfigured son of man, surrounded by 24 elders. Here we have a numerical nuancing which is based on 24. What does this quartoduodeca shading mean?

Communities have a nuancing which is based on 7 and incarnated human beings have a shading which is based on 12. However, we arrive at a different number when it's a question of looking upon man as a representative of human evolution in super-terrestrial life. There were leaders of mankind who had to disclose the things which are written into the world ether or Akashic record to men from one epoch to the next, to the extent that they were ready to receive them. If we take the successive, great revealers of evolving humanity, we can find what they had to give inscribed in supersensible regions.

One should really not just look for Moses's individuality, for instance, for the Moses as he was on earth and not even just in biblical documents as they were on earth, since these have already been entered into the Akashic record; one should look for the individuality who is sitting on Christ's seat. The eternal part of Moses's earth existence, his permanent sub specie aeterni is firmly engraved in the world ether and is sitting there. However only 24 such human activities can be chosen for eternity. For a 25th would be a repetition of one of the previous ones. This is something people knew in ancient times.

If people want to work together on earth, there must be 12 of them. If human communities want to work together there has to be 7. An eighth one would be a repetition of one of the others. However, if the essential and eternal natures of those people who have spiritualized themselves in the course of human evolution and who each represent one human stage, work together, there must be 24 of them. These are the 24 elders.

We have these 24 elders around Christ's seat like the synthesis of all human revelations, although some of these revelations have already become manifest and some of them have yet to come. However, we also have man as a whole before Christ's seat in contrast to the individual human stages. One could say that man as such, as one must understand him, is represented among the four beasts.

A grand Imagination stands before us here. The transfigured son of man in the center, the individual stages of humanity throughout the course of time in the 24 directors of the 24 hours of the great world day on the seat, and spread out over all of this, man himself, amongst the picture of the four beasts, who has to include all the individual stages. Something rather important becomes manifest here.

What happens before the gaze of the Apocalypticer, who gives God's message to the angels of the communities and therewith to all mankind? When the four beasts go into action, that is, as man discovers his relation to the godhead, the 24 directors of the 24 hours of the great world day fall down with their faces to the ground. Here they are worshipping the entire human being or man as something that is higher than the individual stages of humanity which they represent. One really saw this Imagination in very ancient times, and the Apocalypticer placed it before humanity; however, in those ancient times they said that the one who is sitting on the seat will come, whereas the Apocalypticer says: He who sits on the seat has already been here. However, we can only learn to read the Apocalypse correctly and this is what I wanted to speak about today if we can learn to read things by proceeding from the ancient mysteries. We will keep on trying to find our way into the Apocalypse. There are profound secrets in it which you shouldn't just become familiar with, for some of them are secrets which you should carry out, which you should do.

A question was asked about the design that appeared on the cover of the Austrian journal, Anthroposophy, showing the heads of an eagle, a lion, a bull and a man.

Dr. Steiner. Gentlemen, I think we should first bring to a conclusion our explanation of the human being, and then next time consider the aspects of man that these four symbols—the eagle, lion, bull and man—represent. Before we can say anything about them we must build a foundation, and this is something I shall try to do before the end of today's lecture. These four creatures, including man, spring from an ancient knowledge of the human being. They cannot be explained as the ancient Egyptians, for instance, would have done, but today they must be explained differently. One can interpret them correctly, of course, but nowadays one must begin from slightly different suppositions.

I would like now to direct your attention again to the way the human being evolves from his embryonic stage. I would like you to look once more at the very first stage, the earliest period. Conception has occurred, and the embryo is developing in the mother's womb. At first, it is just one microscopic cell containing proteinaceous substance and a nucleus. This single cell, the fertilized egg, actually marks the beginning of man's physical life.

Let us look then at the processes that immediately follow. What does this tiny egg, placed within the body of the mother, do? It divides. The one cell becomes two, and each of these cells divides in turn, thus creating more and more cells like the first. Eventually, our whole body is made up of such cells. They do not remain completely round but assume all manner of shapes and forms.

We must now take into account something I have mentioned before, which is the fact that the whole universe acts upon this minute cell in the mother's body. Nowadays, of course, such matters generally cannot be met with the necessary understanding, but it is nonetheless true that the whole cosmos works upon this cell. It is not at all the same if the ovum divides when, say, the moon stands in front of, or at a distance from, the sun. The whole starry heavens shed an influence on this cell, whose interior forms itself accordingly.

I have said before that during the first few months only the head of the unborn child is developed. (Referring to a drawing.) The head is already formed to this extent, and the rest of the body is really only an appendage. There are tiny little stubs, the hands, and other small protrusions, the legs. As it develops, the human being will transform its little appendages into hands, arms and feet.

How does this come about? How does it occur? The reason lies in the fact that in the earlier embryonic stages the influence of the starry heavens is greater. As the embryo develops and grows during those months in the mother's womb, it becomes increasingly subject to the gravity of the earth. When the world of the stars acts upon man, the emphasis is always on the head. It is gravity that, in time, draws out the other parts. The farther back we go, examining the second or first months of pregnancy, the more do we find these cells exposed to the influence of the stars. As more and more cells appear and millions gradually develop, they become increasingly subject to the forces of the earth.

Here is convincing evidence that the human body is magnificently organized. I would like to make this evident by considering one of the sense organs. I could just as easily take the example of the eye, but today I shall speak about the ear. You see, one of these cells develops into the ear. The ear is set into one of the cavities of the skull bones, and if you examine it properly, you will find that it is quite a remarkable structure. I shall explain the ear so that you can get some idea of it. You will see how such a cell moulds itself while it is still partially under the influence of the stars and partially under the influence of the earth. The ear is formed in such a marvellous way so that man can actually make use of it.

Let us proceed from the outside inward. To begin with, each of you can take hold of your auricle, the outer ear. We have sketched it as seen from the side (1). It consists of gristle and is covered with skin. It is designed to receive the maximum amount of sound. If we had only a hole there, the ear would capture much less sound. You can feel the passage into your ear; it goes into the interior of the so-called tympanic cavity, the interior of the head's bony system. This passage or canal is closed off inside by the eardrum, the tympanic membrane. There is really a thin, delicate, tiny skin attached to this canal, which might be likened to that of a drumhead. The ear, then, is closed off on the inside by the eardrum (2).

I'll continue by drawing the cavity that one observes in a skeleton (3). Here are the skull bones; here are the bones going to the jaw. Inside is a cavity into which this canal leads that is closed off by the eardrum. Behind the outer ear, the auricle, you have a hollow space, which I shall now tell you about. Not only does this canal, this outer passage that you can put your little finger into, lead into the head cavity, but another canal also leads into this cavity from the mouth. In other words, two passages lead into this cavity: one from the exterior that extends inward to the eardrum, and one from the mouth that enters behind the eardrum, which is called the Eustachian tube, though the name does not matter.

Now we come to a strange-looking thing—a veritable snail shell, the cochlea. It consists of two parts. Here is a membrane, and here is a space, the vestibule. Over here is another space, the tympanic cavity. The whole thing is filled with fluid, a living fluid, which I have described to you in another lecture. So within all this fluid is something made of skin that looks like a snail shell. Inside this snail shell, called the cochlea, are myriad little fibres that make up the basilar membrane. This is quite interesting. If you could penetrate the eardrum and look beyond it, you would find this soft snail shell, which is covered on the inside with minute, protruding hair-like fringes.

What, actually, is inside the cochlea? When one approaches the question truly scientifically, one notices that this is really a small piece of intestine that has somehow been placed within the ear. Just as we have the intestines within our abdomen, so do we have a tiny piece of intestine-like skin within our ear. The ear's configuration, then, is such that it contains a little intestine, just as in another part of the body we have a larger intestine. The cochlear duct, which is surrounded by a living fluid called the endolymph, is filled with another called the perilymph. All this is extremely interesting. The cochlea is closed off here by a tiny membrane shaped like an oval window, and here, again, by another little membrane that looks like a round window. Just as we can beat on a drum and make it vibrate, so do the sound waves, coming in from both sides, set into motion this little membrane, the oval window.

The oval window is a membrane set in the middle of the cochlea, and it closes off the inside of the little snail shell, which is filled with the slightly thicker fluid, the perilymph. The fluid on the outside is thinner. Below the oval window is another little membrane called the round window. Here we now approach something marvellous. Two tiny delicate bones sit on the membrane of the oval window. They look like a stirrup and are called the stapes. People also refer to them as the stirrup. So the stirrup sits on the little membrane, protruding in such a way as to resemble an upper and a lower arm on the membrane. Picture such an upper and lower arm of the stirrup and then here, strangely enough, another independent bone, the incus or anvil. The first two bones of the stirrup are connected by a joint; the incus is independent. These tiny bones are all in the ear, and since materialistic science looks at everything superficially, it calls the bone that sits directly on the eardrum, the hammer, this other bit of bone in the middle, the anvil, and this other, the stirrup—or malleus, incus and stapes.

Ordinary science, however, doesn't really know what these bones are. What is found here in the two arms of the stirrup is only a little different from an arm bent at the elbow. See, an elbow joint is the same as this joint of the stirrup above the membrane. And there is a kind of hand, on which sits an independent bone. We don't have such a bone in our hand, but it is comparable to our kneecap. So we can rightfully say that this is also like a leg, a foot; then that would be the thigh, that the knee (sketching), there the foot stands on the membrane, and there is the kneecap.

You see, it is most interesting that in the cavity of the ear we have first a kind of intestine and then a real hand, arm or foot. What is the purpose of all this? Well, imagine that a sound strikes the eardrum and everything in there begins to vibrate. Without being aware of it, the person is determining within the ear what kind of vibration it is. Now think of this, which you may have experienced at some time. You are standing somewhere on a street when something explodes behind you. You feel the explosion inwardly and may feel sick to your stomach from the shock. But this delicate shock that vibrates through the cochlea's “intestine” is felt by the fluid within, which conveys the vibrations that are imparted by the “touching” of the eardrum with a “hand,” as it were.

Now I would like to point out something else to you. What is the purpose of this Eustachian tube leading from the mouth to the inner ear? If sounds simply passed into the ear from the auricle, we would not need it, but to comprehend another's speech we must first have learned to speak ourselves. When we listen to someone else and wish to comprehend him, the sounds we have learned to speak pass through the Eustachian tube. When another person is speaking to us, the sounds come in through the auricle and make the fluid vibrate. Because the air passes into the ear from the outside, and since we know how to set this air in motion with our own speech, we can understand the other person. In the ear, the element of our own speech that we are accustomed to meets the element of what the other person says; there the two meet.

You see, when I say, “house,” I am accustomed to having certain vibrations occur in my Eustachian tube; when I say, “powder,” I experience other vibrations. I am familiar with these vibrations. When I hear the word “house,” the vibration comes from outside, and because I am used to identifying this vibration when I say the word myself, and since my comprehension and the vibration from outside encounter each other in the ear, I am able to recognize its meaning. The tube that leads from the mouth into the ear was there when as a child I learned to speak. Thus, we learned to understand the other person simultaneously as we learned to talk. These matters are most interesting.

Now, things are really like this. Imagine that nothing but what I have just sketched here existed in the ear. Then you could at least understand another person's words and also listen to a piece of music, but you would not be able to remember what you had heard. You would have no memory for speech and sound if the ear had nothing more than these parts. There is another amazing structure in the ear that enables you to retain what you have heard. These are three hollow arches, which look like this (sketching). The second is vertical to the first, and the third, vertical to the second. Thus, they are vertical to each other in three dimensions. These so-called semi-circular canals are hollow and are also filled with a living, delicate fluid. The remarkable thing about it is that infinitely small crystals are constantly forming from it. If you hear the word, “house,” for example, or the tone C, tiny crystals are formed in there as a result. If you hear a different word—“man,” for instance—slightly different crystals are formed. In these three little canals, microscopically small crystals take shape, and these minute crystals enable us not only to understand but also to retain in our memory what we have comprehended. For what does the human being do unconsciously?

Imagine that you have heard someone say, “Five francs.” You want to remember what has been said, so with a pencil you write it into your notebook. What you have written with lead in your notebook has nothing to do with live francs except as a means of remembering them. Likewise, what one hears is inscribed into these delicate canals with the minute crystals that do, in fact, resemble letters, and a subconscious intelligence in us reads them whenever we need to recall something. So, indeed, we can say that the memory for tone and sound is located within these three semi-circular canals. Here where this arm is located is comprehension, intelligence. Here, within the cochlea is a portion of man's feeling. We feel the sounds in this part of the labyrinth, in the fluid within the little snail shell; there we feel the sounds. When we speak and produce the sounds ourselves, our will passes through the Eustachian tube. The whole configuration of the human soul is contained in the ear. In the Eustachian tube lives the will; here in the cochlea is feeling; intelligence is in the auditory ossicles, those little bones that look like an arm or leg; memory resides in the semi-circular canals. So that man can become aware of the complete process, a nerve passes from here (drawing) through this cavity and spreads out everywhere, penetrates everywhere. Through this auditory nerve, all these processes are brought to consciousness in our brain.

You see, gentlemen, this is something quite remarkable. Here in our skull we have a cavity. One enters the inner ear cavity by passing from the auricle through the auditory canal and eardrum. Everything I have described to you is contained therein. First, we stretch out the “hand” and touch the incoming tones to comprehend them. Then we transfer this sensation to the living fluid of the cochlea, where we feel the tone. We penetrate the Eustachian tube with our will, and because of the tiny crystal letters formed in the semi-circular canals, we can recall what has been said or sung, or whatever else has come to us as sound.

So we can say that within the ear we bear something like a little human being, because this little being has will, comprehension, feeling and memory. In this small cavity we carry a tiny man around with us. We really consist of many such minute human beings. The large human being is actually the sum of many little human beings. Later, I'll show you that the eye is also such a miniature man. The nose, too, is a little human being. All these “little men” that make up the total human being are held together by the nervous system.

These miniature men are created while man is still an embryo in the mother's body. All that is being formed and developed there is still under the influence of the stars. After all, these marvellous configurations—the canals that produce the crystals, the little auditory bones—cannot be moulded by the gravity and forces of the earth. They are organized in the womb of the mother by forces that descend from the stars. The cochlea and Eustachian tube are parts that belong to man as a being of earth and are developed later. They are shaped by the forces that originate from the earth, from the gravity that gives us our form and that enables the child to stand upright long after it is born.

You see, if initially one knows how the whole human being originates from one small cell, and how one cell is transformed into an eye while another becomes an ear and a third the nose, one understands how man is gradually built up. Actually, there are ten groups of cells that transform themselves, not just one, but we may still imagine there to be one cell in the beginning. So, at first, just one cell exists. This produces a second, which by being placed in a slightly different position comes under a different influence and develops into the ear. Another develops into the nose, a third into the eye, and so on. None of this proceeds from any influence of the earth. The forces of the earth can mould only those parts that are mostly round, just as in the abdomen the earth organizes the intestinal system. Everything else is formed by the influence of the stars.

We know of these matters today because we have microscopes. After all, the auditory bones are minute. Remarkably enough, these things were also known by men in ancient times, though the source of their knowledge was completely different from that of today. For example, 3,000 years ago the ancient Egyptians were also occupied with a knowledge of man's organization and knew in their way just how remarkable the inner functions of the human ear are. They said to themselves that man has ears, eyes and other organs belonging to the head. If we wish to explain them, we must ask how the ear, for instance, was moulded so differently from the other organs. The ancients said that those organs that are part of the head developed primarily from what comes down to the earth from above. They said, “High up in the air the eagle develops and matures. One must look up into that region if one wishes to observe the forces that form the organs in the human head.” So, these ancient people drew an eagle in place of the head when they were depicting the human being.

When we observe the heart or lungs, we find that they look completely different from the ear or eye. When we look at the lungs, we cannot turn to the stars, nor can we do so in the case of the heart. The force of the stars works strongly in the heart, but we cannot deduce the heart's configuration solely from the stars. The ancient Egyptians knew this; they knew that these organs could not be as closely linked to the stars as those of the head. They pondered these aspects and asked themselves which animal's constitution emphasized the organs similar to the human heart and lungs. The eagle particularly develops those organs that man has in his head.

The ancients thought that the animal that primarily develops the heart, that is all heart and therefore the most courageous, is the lion. So they named the section of man that contains the heart and lungs “lion.” For the head, they said “eagle,” and for the midsection, “lion.”

They realized that man's intestines were again organs of a different kind. You see, the lion has quite short intestines; their development is curtailed. The minute “intestine” in the human ear is formed most delicately, but man's abdominal intestines are by no means shaped so finely. In observing the intestines, you can compare their formation only with the nature of those animals that are mainly under their influence. The lion is under the influence of the heart, and the eagle is under the sway of the upper forces. When you observe cows after they have been grazing, you can sense how they and their kind are completely governed by their intestines. When they are digesting, they experience great well-being, so the ancients called the section of man that constitutes the digestive system, “bull.” That gives us the three members of human nature: Eagle—head; lion—breast; bull—abdomen.

Of course, the ancients knew when they studied the head that it was not an actual eagle, nor the midsection a lion, nor the lower part a bull. They knew that, and they said that if there were no other influence, we would all go about with something like an eagle for our head above, a lion in our chest region and a bull down below; we would all walk around like that. But something else comes into play that transforms what is above and moulds it into a human head, and likewise with the other parts. This agent is man himself; man combines these three aspects.

It is most remarkable how these ancient people expressed, in such symbols, certain truths that we acknowledge again today. Of course, they could form these images easier than we because, though we modern people may learn many things, the thoughts we normally acquire in school do not touch our hearts too deeply. It was quite different in the case of these ancient people. They were seized by the feeling emanating from thoughts and therefore dreamed of them. These people dreamed true dreams. The whole human being appeared as an image to them, and from his forehead they saw an eagle looking out, from the heart, a lion, and from the abdomen, a bull. They combined this into the beautiful image of the whole human being. One can truly say that long-ago people composed their concept of the human being from the elements of man, bull, eagle and lion.

This outlook continued in the description of the Gospels. One frequently proceeded from this point of view. One said that in the Gospel of Matthew the humanity of Jesus is truly described; hence, its author was called “man.” Then take the case of John, who depicts Jesus as if He hovered or flew over the earth. John actually describes what happens in the region of the head; he is the “eagle.” When one examines the Gospel of Mark, one will find that he presents Jesus as a fighter, the valiant one; hence, the “lion.” Mark writes like one who represents primarily those organs of man situated in the chest. How does Luke write? Luke is presented as a physician, as a man whose main goal is therapeutic, and the healing element can be recognized in his Gospel. Healing is accomplished by bringing remedial forces into the digestive organs. Consequently, Luke describes Jesus as the one who brings a healing element into the lower nature of man. Luke, then, is the “bull.” So one can picture the four Gospels like this: Matthew—man; Mark—lion; Luke—bull; John—eagle.

As for the journal whose cover depicts the four figures that you asked about, its purpose is to present something of value that can be communicated from one human spirit to another. So the true human being should be depicted in it. In rendering this drawing, the eagle is represented above, then the lion and bull, with man encompassing them all. This was done to show that the journal represents a serious concern with man. This is its aim. Not much of the human element is present in the bulk of what newspapers print these days. Here attention was to be drawn to the fact that this newspaper or journal could afford man the opportunity to express himself fully. What he says must not be stupid: the eagle. He must not be a coward: the lion. Nor should he lose himself in fanciful flights of thought but rather stand firmly on earth and be practical: the bull. The final result should be “man,” and it should speak to man. This is what one would like to see happen, that everything passed on from man to man be conducted on a human level.

Well, I did have time after all to get to your question after looking at those subjects I started with. I hope my answer was comprehensible. Were you interested in the description of the ear? One should know these things; one should be familiar with what is contained in the various organs that one carries around within the body.

Question: Is there time to say something about the “lotus flowers” that are sometimes mentioned?

Dr. Steiner: I'll get to that when I describe the individual organs to you.

Question: For many years I have suffered from hayfever. Now I have heard that it must be treated early in the year. If injections are administered as early as January or February before a person begins to suffer, they are supposed to be more effective. Should I go along with this remedy?

Dr. Steiner: What you have said is correct, but there is one small catch. You see, the remedy that is in use here is meant to be applied prophylactically; that is, it is meant to work ahead of time. In fact, it should be used weeks before the symptoms of hayfever arise. The problem, however, is that patients come in only when they are already afflicted with the malady. Just today we received an interesting letter about another hayfever remedy. The inventor of this other remedy writes that his medication brings only a little relief to individual hayfever attacks. He believes that our remedy can permanently cure hayfever, especially if it is taken twice at wide intervals. Naturally, we would much prefer patients to be treated in January or February rather than in May or June. Understandably, however, people generally see a doctor only after an illness has been contracted.

Yet, our hayfever remedy works in such a way that if given to the patient even during the external appearance of the illness, which is only the final result of an inner affliction, it protects him from a renewed attack. It is particularly effective if applied again a year later. After that, the application need not always be repeated. Even though the illness affects only one organ, this remedy treats its basis in the whole bodily organization. To explain this, I would like to go into more detail concerning the causes of internal illnesses and how they arise in the first place.

Of course, it is quite simple to comprehend why one becomes indisposed if one breaks a leg or sustains a concussion due to a fall. In these cases the injury is external and the cause easily understood; the cause is externally visible. In the case of internal illnesses, however, one usually does not really consider where they come from and how they suddenly assert themselves. This pertains to another question raised earlier of why one may become infected when in contact with certain people. An external cause also seems to be present here.

Ordinary science offers a simple explanation for this. Bacilli are transmitted from an ill person who has influenza, for example, and then these are inhaled and bring about the disease in another. It is like someone injuring a man by hitting him with a mattock. In this case the injury is caused by a patient bombarding another person with a multitude of bacilli. Matters are not at all that simple, however; they are much more complicated. You will understand this when you realize that in everyday life a man constantly becomes a bit indisposed and then must cure himself. The point is that all of us are really a bit sick when thirsty or hungry, and we cure ourselves by drinking and eating. Hunger is the beginning of an illness, and if it is allowed to continue we can die from it. After all, we can die of starvation and even sooner of thirst. So you see that even in our everyday lives we bear something like the beginning of a disease. Every act of drinking or eating is in truth an act of healing.

We must make clear to ourselves now what in fact happens when we become hungry or thirsty. You see, our body is inwardly always active. Through the intake of food, the body receives nutrients. External substances are absorbed through the mouth and the intestinal passages into some part of the body. Now, you must understand that the human organization immediately rebels against these nutritional substances; it does not tolerate them in their original forms and destroys them. Food substances must actually be disintegrated. In fact, they are annihilated, and this begins in the mouth. The reason for this is that there is continuous, never-ceasing activity in our body. This activity must be observed in the same way as fingers or hands are. Ordinary science simply records how a piece of bread is eaten, dissolved in the mouth, and then distributed in the body, but we must also take into consideration that the human body is continually active. Even if nothing is put into it, if nothing goes into the body for five hours, say, still its activity does not cease. You may even be like an empty sack, but things have not quieted within. You remain in constant inward activity, and things are still bustling around. Only when this internal activity can become occupied with something is it content. That is especially the case after a meal when it can dissolve and disintegrate the food substances; then it is content.

This internal activity that we possess is quite different from man in general, for the human being can become lazy. The internal activity is never lazy, it never ceases. If I don't eat anything, it is as if I had an empty flour sack in which there is activity even if I avoid all tangible substance. This activity—for reasons that I shall tell you later on—is identified in spiritual science as the astral body. It is never lazy, and if it can stay active destroying and dissolving the food substances, it is filled with inward comfort; it then has a feeling of inner well-being. But if I take in no food substances, then the astral body is not satisfied, and this dissatisfaction is expressed as hunger. Hunger is not something at rest within us; it is an activity, a soul-spiritual activity that cannot be stilled. We can truly say that this inner activity is in love with the food substances, and if it does not receive them it is just as dissatisfied as any jilted lover. This dissatisfaction is the hunger, and it is by all means something spiritual.

So the activity that is executed internally consists of disintegrating food substances. What is useful is transmitted into the blood vessels, and the rest is eliminated through urine or feces. This is the healthy, normal and regular activity of the human being in which the astral body works properly to dissolve the food substances. It absorbs into the body what is useful and discharges what is not.

We must assume, gentlemen, that this activity of man is no ordinary activity; rather, it contains something immensely wise. Now, dissolved and transformed food substances are constantly being transmitted through blood vessels to the inner organs, and the nourishment that goes into the lungs is completely different from what goes to the spleen. The astral body is much smarter than the human being. Man can only stuff the provisions into his mouth, but the astral body can distinguish them. It is like sorting two substances, throwing one in one direction to be used there and the other in another direction. This is what the astral body accomplishes. It selects certain substances to dispatch to the lungs, spleen, larynx and other organs. A wise distribution is at work within. The astral body is immensely wise, much wiser than we. The most educated person today would not know how to send the proper substances into the lungs, larynx or spleen; he would not even know what to say about it. But internally man can do this through his astral body.

The astral body, however, can become stupid—not as stupid as the human being can become, but stupid in comparison to its own cleverness. Let us assume that it thus becomes stupid. Man is born with a certain predisposition and is inwardly endowed with certain forces. The activity that the astral body develops for food substances occurs even if somebody sits down all day, immobile like an Oriental idol. His astral body still remains active, but that is not enough. We must also do something externally, and if we have no work to do we must go for a stroll; the astral body demands that we at least walk around. This differs with each individual. One person needs more physical activity, another less.

Let us suppose now that someone has certain predispositions from birth that make him into a sedentary person. It pleases his stupid head—or we could say his stupid ego—to sit around a lot. Now, if he is predisposed to sit around, but the astral body is predisposed to walk about, then his astral body will become stupid. This will also happen if somebody overexerts himself walking. In both cases the astral body will become stupid and will no longer accomplish things correctly. It will no longer properly sort out the food substances and transmit them to the appropriate organs; it will do all this clumsily instead. The astral body becomes too disorganized to send the right substances to the heart or larynx. Substances improperly transmitted to the heart, for example, will remain somewhere else in the body. They are not put in the organ where they belong but, since they are basically useful, neither are they eliminated with the feces. Instead, they are deposited somewhere else in the body. But a man cannot tolerate having something deposited in his body that is not part of its proper activity; he cannot stand that.

So what happens with these improper deposits due to the malfunctioning astral body? What happens to us on account of that? Well, suppose we have in our body certain deposits that should have been directed to the larynx. Because someone's astral body does not function properly, “larynx refuse” is secreted everywhere in his body. The first thing that happens is that his larynx becomes weak. The organ does not receive sufficient sustenance, and thus the person suffers from a weakened larynx. But apart from that, his body contains larynx refuse, which is dispersed everywhere. As I have already told you, the human body is ninety percent water, and the refuse dissolves in this whole fluid organization. The pure, animated fluid that a man requires within him is now polluted. This is what happens so often within ourselves. Deposits meant for certain parts of the body dissolve in our fluid organization, contaminating it.

Say that the refuse of the larynx is dissolved in us and comes into contact with the stomach. It cannot cause damage there, because the stomach has what it needs and was not deprived of anything. But the bodily fluids flow everywhere in the human organism and penetrate into the area of the larynx, which is already weakened. It receives this polluted fluid, this water in which the larynx refuse is dissolved, and specifically from this the organ becomes diseased. The larynx refuse does not affect the other organs, but it does cause the larynx to become afflicted.

Let us now consider a simple phenomenon. A sensitive person finds it pleasant to listen to another person speak beautifully. But if someone crows like a rooster or grunts like a pig, he will not find this so pleasant to hear, even if he understands what is being said. It is not at all pleasant to listen to a person crowing or grunting. Listening to someone who is hoarse is a particularly uncomfortable and constricting experience. Why do we experience such sensations while listening to another? It is based on the fact that in reality we always inaudibly repeat whatever the other is saying. Listening consists not only in hearing but also in speaking faintly. We not only hear what another says but also imitate it with our speech organs. We always imitate everything that someone else does.

Now imagine that you are near a person who is sick with flu, and though you may not be listening to him and inwardly imitating his speech, you feel sorry for him. This makes you quite susceptible and sensitive to him. The flu patient's fluid organization contains many dissolved substances, which contaminate the pure, living fluid I told you about and make it instead unhealthy for him. I even describe the nature of such a contaminated fluid organization.

Imagine that you have a piece of ground where you plant various things. Not everything thrives in every kind of earth, but suppose you want to plant onions and garlic in this particular spot. Should the earth be unsuitable, the onions would be small and the garlic buds still smaller, so you should also add to this soil something that contains sulphur and phosphorus. Then you would have the healthiest onions and garlic buds, and they would smell strong, too!

Now, when a man has influenza refuse within his body, the same substances are dissolved in his fluid organization that had to be added to the ground in order to produce the finest onion and garlic plants, and before long, the sick person begins to smell like these plants. Now, I associate with this, though I may not even be aware that I am sitting in this odour of onion or garlic, because it need not be strong. The odour exuded by a person who is sick with the flu causes the patient's head to feel dull, because a certain organ in the head, the “sensorium,” is not properly supplied with the substance it needs. As a result of having flu refuse within us, an organ in the mid-section of the head is not properly supplied. This odour is always like that of onions or garlic and can be detected by one with a sensitive nose. Just as we tune in on and imitate a shrill and rasping voice, so do we join in with what an ill person evaporates. As a consequence, our own astral body, our own activity, becomes disorganized. This disorder causes a chemical basis that in turn makes us contract the flu. It is like making soil suitable for onions and garlic. At first, then, the illness has nothing to do with bacteria but simply with the relation of one person to another.

If you want to plant predominantly onions and garlic in a garden, and you add to the earth substances containing phosphorus and sulphur, you can now wait and say, “Well, I've done my duty. I want to harvest onions and garlic, and so with some kind of organic fertilizer I have added sulphur and phosphorus to the garden.” But it would be foolish to think that this is all it would take to grow the onions. You would first have to plant the bulbs! Likewise, it would be foolish to maintain that in man's interior, bacteria are already growing in the environment that is being prepared.

They first have to be introduced into it. Just as the onion bulb thrives in soil rich in phosphorus and sulphur, so do the bacilli thrive within a sulphuric environment in the body. Bacilli are not even necessary for one person to catch the flu from another. Instead, by imitating with my fluid organization what is happening in the patient's fluid organism, I myself produce a favourable environment for the bacilli; I myself acquire them. The sick person need not bombard me with them at all.

When we look at the whole matter, we must reply in quite a specific way to the question, “What is it that causes us to be stricken with a certain disease?” We become sick when something injures us, and even in the case of internal illnesses something is actually injuring us. The impure fluid, in which substances are dissolved that should have been digested, injures us; it injures us internally.

Now we can turn our attention to illnesses like hayfever. The incidence of hayfever depends much more on the time of year than on the pollen in the air. More than anything else, what makes a man susceptible to catching hayfever is the fact that his astral body is not properly excreting; it is not properly executing its activity that is directed more to the external surface. As a result, when spring approaches and everything begins to thrive in water, a person makes his whole fluid organization more sensitive and thus susceptible to this illness by dissolving certain substances in it. By dissolving various substances in this fluid organization, the fluids in a man's body always become a little diluted. The fluid organization in a man who has a tendency toward hayfever is always somewhat too large. The fluids are being pushed aside in all directions by what is dissolved in them. That is how a person becomes sensitive to everything that makes its appearance in spring, especially to pollen, those particles from plants that are now particularly irritating.

If the nose were not enclosed, hayfever could be induced by many other irritants. Pollen does enter the nose, however, and it cannot be well tolerated if one already has hayfever. Pollen does not cause hayfever but it aggravates it.

Our hayfever remedy is based on drawing the extended fluid organization in the body together again so that it becomes a bit cloudy and once again secretes what it had initially dissolved. It is really quite simple and based on nothing more than contracting the fluid organism to its normal size. It first becomes a little cloudy, and you have to watch that what is secreted from the fluidity is not later retained in the body. That is why it is beneficial for a person to perspire somewhat after having been inoculated with the remedy; it is good if he can move about and do something that induces perspiration right after the inoculation. The inoculation is always somewhat problematic when given to a person who is suffering from constipation, and the patient should first be asked if he is constipated. Otherwise, if the fluid organization is contracted, things accumulate too much and are not eliminated right away. This, of course, is not good. A person who is constipated should be given a laxative along with the inoculation.

Healing entails not only applying a medication but also adjusting life accordingly, so that the human body reacts in an appropriate manner to what has been given it. This naturally is of tremendous significance; otherwise, the person can be made even sicker. If you inoculate somebody with a remedy that is quite effective, even exceptionally good, but you do not see to it that the patient's digestion functions properly and that everything the remedy brings about is eliminated, you naturally drive him further into the illness.

With truly effective remedies it is important that the doctor know not only what medicine cures what disease but also what questions to ask the patient. The greatest medical art lies in asking the right questions and in being familiar with the patient. This is extremely important. Yet it is strange, for example, that we meet doctors who frequently have not even asked the patient his age, though this is significant. While he may use the same remedies, a doctor can treat a fifty-year old in a manner completely different from the way he treats one who is forty, for example. They should not be so schematic as to say, “This medication is right for this illness.” For instance, it makes a great difference if you want to cure someone who is constantly afflicted with diarrhoea or someone who has chronic constipation. Such remedies could be tested, and here experiments with animals would be much less objectionable than they are in other areas. Regarding constipation or diarrhoea, you can easily learn how some remedy reacts in the general physical organism that men have in common with the animals by giving the same medicine to both a dog and a cat. The dog regularly suffers from constipation, and the cat from diarrhoea. You can acquire a wonderful knowledge by observing the degree of difference in the medication's effect in the dog or the cat. Scientific knowledge really is not attained by university training in how to do this or that with certain instruments. True science results, rather, when common sense is aroused a little; then people know how they must conduct their experiments.

In sum, it is of prime importance to realize that an illness has its basis in the whole human organization. The individual organ becomes afflicted because the activity of the astral body directs substances to it that have been precipitated from within. The development of certain inner diseases like influenza, hayfever and even typhoid fever becomes comprehensible when we understand how substances improperly deposited in our bodies are dispersed in our fluid organism.

We are not only a “material man” but also a “water man,” and, as I have already explained to you, we are also an “air man,” whose form changes every moment. One moment the air is outside, and the next it is within.

Just as the solid substances that we contain within our bodies as refuse dissolve in the water, so does that water itself constantly evaporate within us. Within the muscles of your little finger, for example, are minute evaporations of water. Water constantly evaporates throughout your whole body. Furthermore, what is evaporating in the fluid organism penetrates into what you inhale as oxygen, which is also a vapor or gas. When water on the ground evaporates, it rises up into the atmosphere, and when water constantly evaporates in delicate processes within the fluid man, it penetrates into the air that we inhale. We cannot tolerate solid substances being dispersed in the fluids, and neither can we tolerate fluids evaporating into the air organism.

Take the case of a person whose lungs have become afflicted because something has occurred like the process that I have just described. This person can become afflicted with a lung disease, which can be cured if it arose from the wrong substances being deposited in the water man. But let us assume that the lung's affliction is not pronounced enough to become apparent. After all, the human organs are sensitive. The condition does not reach the point where the lungs become so strongly afflicted that they are inflamed, but they do become a little indisposed. The person can tolerate this slight indisposition, but substances now enter into his fluid organism that really should penetrate the lungs. In this case, the fluids within the lungs have the wrong kinds of substances dissolved in them; and these substances evaporate, especially if the lungs are not completely well.

Thus, in the case of the quite obvious internal diseases, the water man receives something inappropriate from the solid substances, and in this case something inappropriate reaches the point of evaporation and mingles with the oxygen that is inhaled. The fact that water evaporates inappropriately and unites with oxygen damages the nervous system in particular, because the nerves require healthy oxygen, not oxygen that has evaporations in it from the contaminated fluid of the water man. Contaminated fluid evaporates into the lungs, and this fluid may be responsible for their slight indisposition. Something that should not evaporate does, and this is damaging to the nervous system. The person does not become radically ill, but he does become insane.

It can be said that internal physical illnesses are based on something in man that causes improper substances to be dispersed in his fluid organism. But so-called mental illnesses are in reality not mental at all, because the mind or spirit does not become ill. Mental illnesses are based on body fluids evaporating improperly into oxygen and thereby disturbing the nervous system. This can happen when some organ is so slightly impaired or indisposed that it cannot be detected externally. You see, then, that man must continually process substances correctly so that nothing inappropriate disperses in his fluids and that his fluids in turn do not improperly evaporate. But even in everyday life there is a process that causes improper evaporation of water, and this becomes noticeable when we are thirsty. We cure the thirst by drinking; we free our water, so to speak, from what is inappropriately evaporating within it and wash away what is incorrect.

So we can say that in hunger there is actually the tendency to physical illness, and in thirst there is the predisposition to mental illness. If a man does not properly nourish himself, he forms the basis for organic diseases, and if he does not quench his thirst rightly, he may bring about some form of mental illness. In some circumstances, the improper quenching of thirst is difficult to detect, especially if it occurs in infancy. At this stage one cannot clearly distinguish between assuaging thirst and hunger since both are satisfied by milk. Therefore, if through the mother's milk or that of a wet nurse something harmful comes into the organism, this can much later cause the fluid organism to evaporate incorrectly and thus lead to some mental disorder. Or let us say a person is wrongly inoculated. An ill-chosen inoculation with one or another cow lymph or diseased human lymph can afflict the organs that work upon the water, even though the water itself does not become directly diseased. As a result of an inappropriate inoculation, a person's evaporation processes may not function correctly, and later he may be disposed to some kind of mental illness.

You will have noticed, gentlemen, that nowadays a great many people become afflicted with dementia praecox, so-called “youthful insanity,” which extends, however, quite far beyond the years of youth. This illness, in which people begin mentally to deteriorate in their youth, originates in great part from the wrong kind of feeding during the earliest years of childhood. It is not enough merely to examine chemically the baby's milk; one must look into completely different aspects. Because people have ceased to pay attention to feeding in our age, this illness arises with such vehemence.

You will have realized from all this that it does not suffice simply to train doctors to know that a certain remedy is good for a certain illness. One must rather seek to make the totality of life healthier, and for that one must first discover all that is related to a healthy life. Anthroposophy can provide this understanding. It aims at being effective in the field of hygiene and seeks to comprehend correctly questions of health.

The day before yesterday we spoke of how at this point in time humanity is confronted by difficult events. We will be able to understand better why this is so if we consider our times retrospectively in terms of the whole of human evolution and thus bring ourselves up to date regarding many things known and unknown. You know that one of the most significant pronouncements made as the Christ event approached was, “Change the disposition of your souls, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” These are words of the deepest meaning, because they indicate that something most significant took place in man's entire soul development at that time. When these words were spoken, more than 3,000 years had passed since the beginning of what we call Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age. What is the significance of this age? It was the era in which it was normal for man to depend solely upon what was accessible to his outer senses and also to the understanding that was bound up with the instrument of the brain. This was all that man could experience, know, and understand in the dark period of Kali Yuga.

This Dark Age was preceded by an age in which man was not dependent only upon his outer senses and intellect, but he still retained a memory, more or less, of the ancient dreamlike condition in which he was able to feel a connection with the spiritual world. It is of these ancient human times that we wish to create a picture. Not only could man see the mineral, plant, and animal realms, as well as himself within the physical, human realm, but he could also, in a condition between waking and sleeping, see a divine world. He saw himself as the lowest member of the lowest realm in the hierarchical order, above which were the angels, archangels, and so forth. He knew this through his own experience, so that it would have been absurd for him to deny the existence of this spiritual world, just as it would be absurd today to deny the existence of the mineral, plant, and animal realms. Not only did he possess a knowledge of what streamed toward him as wisdom from spiritual realms, but he had the capacity to become completely permeated with the forces of this domain. He was then in a state of ecstasy; his sense of I was submerged, but the spiritual world with its forms really flowed into him. He thus not only had a knowledge, an experience of the spiritual world, but he could, if he were ill, for instance, derive healing and refreshment by means of this ecstasy.

Oriental wisdom refers to those ages in which man still had a direct connection with the spiritual world as Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Dvapara Yuga. In the last age, however, a direct glimpse into the spiritual world was no longer possible but only a remembering that took place in the same way that an old man might remember his youth. Then the doors to the spiritual world closed. Man could no longer frequent the spiritual world in his normal state of consciousness, and the time came when only on the basis of a long and rigorous preparation in the mystery schools could he turn again toward the spiritual world.

During Kali Yuga, however, something did occasionally penetrate into the physical world from spiritual realms. As a rule, it did not come from the good powers but was ordinarily of demoniacal nature. All the strange illnesses described in the Gospels in which people are described as possessed are attributable to demoniacal forces. In them we must recognize the influence of spiritual beings. This lesser Kali Yuga began in about the year 3000 BC and is characterized by the fact that the doors to the spiritual world have gradually been completely closed to man's normal consciousness, so that one must draw all knowledge from the world of the senses. If this process had continued unabated, all possible connection with the spiritual world would have been lost to man. Up until the time of Kali Yuga, man remembered some things that had been retained by way of tradition, but now even these connections have gradually faded. Even the teacher, the preserver of tradition, could not speak to him directly about spiritual worlds, because the receptivity no longer existed. The knowledge of humanity gradually extended only to the physical world.

It this development had continued, man would never again have been able to find a connection with the spiritual world, try though he might; this connection would have been lost had not something occurred from another direction, that is, the embodiment on the physical plane of that divine being to Whom we refer as the Christ.

Formerly, man had been able to raise himself up to the spiritual beings, but now they had to come close to him, to descend fully into his realm, through which he could recognize them with the essence of his I. This moment had been foretold by the prophets of ancient times. It was said that man would be able to find his relationship to God with and in his own I. When this time came, however, it had to be brought forcefully to man's attention that the promised moment had actually come. The one who did this most powerfully was John the Baptist. He announced that the times had changed, saying “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Later this was indicated in a similar way by Christ Jesus, but the most significant sign was given in advance through the many baptisms performed by John in the Jordan and through the teaching itself.

Still, by these means alone the change would not have been possible. A number of human beings would have had to have a much greater experience of the spiritual world through which the conviction could begin to live in them that a divine being would reveal himself. This was achieved by submerging them in water. When a person is about to drown, the connection of the etheric body to the physical body is loosened—the etheric body is even partly withdrawn—and he can then experience a sign of the new impulse in world evolution. From this comes the powerful admonition: “Change the disposition of your soul, for the kingdoms of heaven are near. The disposition of soul is come upon you through which you will enter a relationship to the descended Christ. The times have been fulfilled.”

Christ Jesus Himself expressed the fulfillment of the times in the most penetrating teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, as it is called. This was by no means a sermon for the masses. The Gospels read, “When Christ saw the multitudes of people, He withdrew from them and revealed Himself to His disciples.” To them He revealed that man, in ancient times, could become filled with God during ecstasy. While outside his I, he was blissful and had direct experience of the spiritual world from which he could draw spiritual and health-giving forces. Now, however—so said Christ Jesus to His disciples—a man can become filled with God by permeating himself with the God and Christ impulse and uniting himself as an I with this impulse. In the past, he alone could ascend to the spiritual world who was filled with streamings from the spiritual world. Only such a person, rich in the spirit, could be called blessed. Such a person was a clairvoyant in the old sense, and he was a rare personality. Most people had become beggars in the spirit. Now, however, those who sought the kingdom of heaven could find it through their own I's.

What occurs in such a significant epoch of humanity always affects all people. If only a single member of a man's being is touched, the others all respond. All the members of man's being—the physical and etheric bodies, the sentient, rational, and consciousness souls, the I, and even the higher members of the soul—receive new life through the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. These teachings are in complete accord with the great teachings of primeval wisdom.

To enter the spiritual world in earlier times, the etheric body had to be slightly separated from the physical body, which was thus formed in a special way. Christ Jesus therefore said this when alluding to the physical body, “Blessed are the beggars, the poor in spirit, for if they develop their I-ruled outer bodies in the right way, they will find the kingdom of heaven.” Of the etheric body He said, “Formerly, men could be healed of illnesses of the body and soul by ascending into the spiritual world in a state of ecstasy. Now those who suffer and are filled with the spirit of God can be healed and comforted, and they can find the source, the comfort, within themselves.” Of the astral body He said, “In former times those whose astral bodies were beset by wild and tempestuous passions and impulses could be subdued only when equanimity, peace, and purification streamed to them from divine-spiritual beings.” Now, however, human beings should find the strength within their own I's, under the influence of Christ, to purify their astral bodies. The place in which the astral body can be purified is now the earth. Thus the new influence in the astral body had to be presented by saying, “Blessed and filled in their astral bodies with God are those who foster calmness and equanimity within themselves; all comfort and well-being on earth shall be their reward.”

The fourth Beatitude refers to the sentient soul. He who thoroughly purifies himself in his sentient soul and undergoes a higher development will receive in his I a hint of the Christ. He will notice in his heart a thirst for righteousness; he will become pervaded with godliness, and his I will become sufficient unto itself The next member is the rational or feeling soul (Verstandes—oder Gemuetseele). In the sentient soul the I slumbers dully; it awakens only in the rational or feeling soul. If we slumber with our I in the sentient soul, we cannot find in another person what makes him a true human being, the I. Before a person has developed the I within himself, he must allow his sentient soul to grow into higher worlds in order to be able to perceive something there. When he has developed himself in his rational or feeling soul, however, he can perceive the person next to him. Where all those members previously referred to are concerned, we must bear in mind what was given them in earlier realms. It is only the rational or feeling soul that can fill itself with what streams from man to man. In the fifth Beatitude the sentence structure will have to take on a special form. The subject and the predicate must be alike, since it concerns what the I develops within itself. The fifth Beatitude says, “He who develops compassion and mercy shall find compassion in others.” This is a test of the cross (Kreuzprobe), an indication that we are here dealing with an occult document. Christ has promised everything, harmonized everything, in relation to the single members of human nature.

The next sentence of the Beatitudes refers to the consciousness soul. Through it the I comes into being as pure I and becomes capable of receiving God into itself. If man can therefore elevate himself to such a degree, he can perceive within himself that drop of the divine, his I; through his purified consciousness soul he can behold God. This sixth sentence of the Beatitudes must, therefore, refer to beholding God. The outer physical expression for the I and the consciousness soul is the physical blood, and where it brings itself most particularly to expression is in the human heart, as expression of the purified I. Christ said, therefore, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall behold God.” We are thus shown how in the most intimate sense the heart is the expression of the I, the divine in man.

Now let us advance to what is higher than the consciousness soul, to Manas, Buddhi, and Atman. Contemporary man may well cultivate the three members of the soul, but not until the distant future will he be able to develop these higher members, spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These cannot as yet live in themselves in man; for this to occur he must look up to higher beings. His spirit self is not yet in him; it will flow into him only later. Man is not yet sufficiently evolved to receive fully the spirit self into himself. In this respect he stands at the beginning of his development and is like a vessel that is gradually to receive it. This is indicated in the seventh sentence of the Beatitudes. At first, the spirit self can only weave into man and fill him with its warmth. Only through the deed of Christ is it brought down to earth as the power of love and harmony. Therefore, Christ says, “Blessed are those who draw the spirit self, the first spiritual member, down into themselves, for they shall become the children of God.” This points man upward to higher worlds.

Further on, mention is made of what will be brought about in the future, but it will encounter in ever-increasing measure the opposition of the present time and be fiercely rejected. This is indicated in the eighth sentence of the Beatitudes, “Filled with God or blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for they will be fulfilled in themselves with the kingdom of heaven, with life spirit or Buddhi.” In connection with this, we find references also to the special mission of Christ Himself, in the sentence that reads, “Christ's intimate disciples may consider themselves blessed if they must suffer persecution for His sake.” This is a faint allusion to spirit man or Atman, which will be imparted to us in the distant future.

In the Sermon on the Mount, therefore, the great message is proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In the course of these events the mystery of human evolution was fulfilled in Palestine. Man had reached a degree of maturity in all the members of his being so that he was able with his purified physical forces to receive the Christ impulse directly into himself So it came to pass that the God-man, Christ, merged with the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and they permeated the earth for three years with their united forces. This had to happen so that man would not lose completely his connection with the spiritual world during Kali Yuga.

Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, however, continued until the year 1899. This was a particularly important year in human evolution, because it marked the end of the 5,000 year period of Kali Yuga and the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of humanity. In addition to the old faculties present during Kali Yuga, man would now develop new spiritual faculties. We thus approach a period in which new natural faculties and possibilities for looking into the divine-spiritual worlds will awaken. Before the first half of the twentieth century has passed, some people will, with full I-consciousness, experience the penetration of the divine-spiritual world into the physical, sensible world in the same way as Saul did during his transformation into Paul before Damascus. This will then become the normal condition for a number of people.

Christ will not incarnate again in a physical body as He did at that time in Jesus; nothing would be achieved by it now. It was necessary then because of profound laws of cosmic-earthly evolution; otherwise, people would not have been able to recognize Him. Now, however, human beings have evolved further and have become capable of penetrating into etheric vision through their soul forces. Christ will thus become visible to human beings in an etheric and not in a physical body. From the middle of the twentieth century on, and continuing for the next 2,500 years, this will happen more and more often. Enough people will by then have experienced the event at Damascus that it will be taken as a common occurrence on the earth.

We occupy ourselves with spiritual science so that these newly appearing faculties, which are at first barely perceptible, may not be overlooked and lost to humanity and that those blessed with this new power of vision may not be considered dreamers and fools but may instead have the support and understanding of a small group of people who in their common purpose may prevent these delicate soul seeds and soul qualities from being roughly trampled to death for lack of human understanding. Spiritual science shall indeed prepare the possibility for attaining this development. Recently, I explained that these new qualities give us an insight into the land of Shamballa, through which we may learn to know the significance and true nature of Christ, whose second coming indicates a maturing of humanity's cognition.

Generally speaking, the ages of history repeat themselves, but always in a new way. In spiritual science the beginning of Kali Yuga is seen as the closing of the portals of the spiritual world. After the first millennium of Kali Yuga had passed, there was the first compensation for the loss: in the individuality of Abraham, after his initiation by Melchizedek, it became possible for a human being to recognize God in the outer world through true insight and a proper evaluation of the outer world spread out, as it were, like a carpet before his senses. With Abraham, we see the first dawning of a knowledge of what an I-God is, a God related to man's I-nature. Abraham realized that behind the phenomena of the world of the senses was something that made it possible for the human I to conceive itself as a drop of the infinite, unfathomable world-I.

A second state of this revelation of God was experienced in the time of Moses, when God approached man through the elements. In the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning upon Sinai, He revealed Himself to man's senses and spoke to his innermost being. A third millennium followed in which a knowledge of God was penetrating man, the age of Solomon, in which God revealed Himself through the symbols of the Temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem. The divine revelation thus proceeded in stages. God first appeared to Abraham as the I-God, or the Jahve-God, then to Moses in fire in the burning bush, in thunder and lightning, and then to Solomon in the symbols of the Temple.

What is representative of a particular age repeats itself later in reverse order. The turning point is the appearance of Christ Jesus in Palestine. What immediately preceded that time is the first to reappear. Consequently, the first millennium after Christ is again a Solomon epoch; the spirit of Solomon works in the best human beings of that time so that the Mystery of Golgotha may penetrate. In those early centuries after Christ, Solomon's symbols could be interpreted most readily and inwardly by those who could experience the deed on Golgotha most deeply.

In the second millennium after Christ we can recognize a repetition of the age of Moses. What Moses experienced outwardly now appears in the mysticism of men such as Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and so on. The mystics experienced in their inner beings what Moses experienced outwardly in the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning. They spoke of how the I-God revealed Himself to them when they withdrew into themselves. When they perceived within their souls the spark of their I's, then the I-God, the One God Jahve, revealed Himself to them. This was the case with Tauler, who was a great preacher and could make powerful revelations. To him came the layman who was called, “The Friend of God, of the Mountain,” of whom it was thought that he wished to become Tauler's pupil. He soon became Tauler's teacher instead, however, after which Tauler was able to speak of God from his inner being with such force that a number of pupils and listeners were reported to have fallen prostrate, lying as if dead, as he preached. This is reminiscent of the events that occurred when Moses received the Laws on Sinai.

The centuries up to our present time have been filled by this spirit. Now, however, we are entering an era that recalls and revives the age of Abraham, but in the sense that human beings are being led away from the world accessible to our physical senses. The spirit of Abraham will influence our knowledge so that human beings will renounce the old mentality that only laid store in the sensible world. In contrast to Abraham, however, for whom the spirit of God was only to be found in the world of the senses, we shall now grow beyond the world of the senses and into the spiritual world.

Although human beings knew nothing of all this in the past, one can well say that it has not interfered with our evolution. In the era now approaching, however, we will be placed in circumstances that will require human beings to take their destiny consciously into their own hands. They must know how Christ will be perceptible in the future. The legend is true that after the event of Golgotha Christ descended to the dead in the spiritual world to bring them the Word of Salvation. The Christ event works today in the same way. It is therefore the same whether a person lives in the physical world here on earth or has already passed through death: if he has gained an understanding for the Christ event here on earth, he can still experience it in the spiritual world. This will show that man has not lived upon this earth without a reason. If, however, a person fails to acquire an understanding for the Christ even here on earth, the effects of the event of Golgotha will pass him by without a trace during the period between death and a new birth. He will then have to wait until his next return to the earth, until a new birth, in order to be able to prepare himself.

Man must not believe that Christ will reappear in the flesh, as some false teachings claim, for in that case it would be impossible for one to believe in the progressive evolution of human faculties, and we would have to say that events repeat themselves in the same way. This is not the case however; they do repeat themselves, but on ever higher levels.

In the next centuries it will often be proclaimed that Christ will return and again reveal Himself. False messiahs or Christs will appear. Those armed by the above explanations, however, with a true understanding of Christ's actual appearance, will reject such manifestations. The knowledgeable ones who can see the history of the last centuries in this light will be neither astonished nor exalted by the appearance of such messiahs. As examples, this happened just before the Crusades and also in the seventeenth century when a false messiah, Shabattai Tzevi, appeared in Smyrna. Pilgrims flocked to him even from France and Spain.

At that time such a deceptive belief did not do so much damage. Now, however, when one with more advanced faculties should be able to recognize that it is a mistake to believe in Christ's second coming in the flesh and that it is true that He will reappear in the etheric body—now it is necessary to distinguish such things plainly. A confusion will have serious consequences. An alleged Christ who reappears in the flesh is not to be believed but only a Christ Who appears in the etheric body. This appearance will take the form of a natural initiation, just as now the initiate experiences this event in a special way.

We are thus approaching an age in which man will feel himself surrounded not only by a physical, sensible world but also, according to the measure of his knowledge, by a spiritual kingdom. The leader in this new kingdom of the spirit will be the etheric Christ. No matter what religious community or faith to which people belong, once they have experienced these facts in themselves they will acknowledge and accept the Christ event. The Christians who actually have the experience of the etheric Christ are perhaps in a more difficult situation than adherents to other religions, yet they should endeavor to accept this Christ event in just as neutral a way as the others. It will, in fact, be man's task to develop, especially through Christianity, an understanding for the possibility of entering the spiritual world independently of any religious denomination but simply through the power of good will.

Anthroposophy above all should help us in this. It will lead us into that spiritual land, described in ancient Tibetan writings as a remote fairyland, which means the spiritual world, the land of Shamballa. Not in a trance but in full consciousness man should enter this land under the guidance of Christ. Even now the initiate can and must go often to the land of Shamballa in order to draw from there new forces. Later, other human beings, too, will enter the land of Shamballa. They will see its radiant light, as Paul saw above him the light that streamed from Christ. This light will stream toward them, also. The portals of this realm of light will open to them and through them they will enter the holy land of Shamballa.

The day before yesterday we spoke of how humanity is confronted by difficult conditions. We will be better able to understand why this is so if we consider our times in terms of the whole of human evolution, and thus bring ourselves up to date regarding many things known and unknown.

You know that one of the most significant pronouncements made as the Christ event approached was, “Change the disposition of your souls, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” These are words of the deepest meaning. They indicate that something of a most essential nature took place in man's entire soul development at that time. When these words were spoken, more than three thousand years had passed since the beginning of Kali Yuga or Age of Darkness. What is the significance of this age? It was the era in which it was normal for man to depend solely upon what was accessible to his senses, and also upon his brain-bound intellect. Only such things as were experienced by these means could be known and understood in the dark age of Kali Yuga.

Kali Yuga was preceded by an age in which man was not dependent only upon his outer senses and intellect, but then he still retained a memory, more or less, of the ancient dream-like condition in which he was able to feel a connection with the spiritual world. It is of this primeval age that we wish to create a picture.

Man could see not only the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, as well as himself, within the physical realm, but he could also, in a condition between waking and sleeping, perceive a divine world. He saw himself as a member of the lowest kingdom in the hierarchical order, and above him he perceived the angels, archangels and so forth. He knew this from his own experience, so that it would have been absurd to deny the existence of the spiritual world, just as it would be absurd today to deny the existence of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. Not only did he possess a knowledge of what streamed toward him from spiritual realms, but he had the capacity to become completely permeated with those forces. Then he was in a state of ecstasy. His sense of ego was submerged, but the spiritual world with its forms flowed into him. Thus, he had not only a knowledge, an experience of the spiritual world, but could, if he were ill, for instance, derive healing and refreshment by means of this ecstatic state.

Oriental wisdom refers to the ages in which man still had a direct connection with the spiritual world as Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga and Dwaparu Yuga. In the latter age, however, it was no longer an actual seeing, but a remembering that took place, in the same way that an old man might remember his youth. Then the doors to the spiritual world closed. Man could no longer have converse with it in his normal state of consciousness, and the time came when only by means of a long and rigorous preparation in the mysteries could he turn again toward the spiritual.

During Kali Yuga, however, something did occasionally penetrate into the physical world from spiritual realms. As a rule, it did not come from the good powers, but was of demoniacal nature. All the strange illnesses described in the Gospels, where people are referred to as possessed, are attributable to demoniacal forces. In them we must recognize the work of evil spirits. This Little Kali Yuga began about the year 3,000 B.C. and is characterized by the fact that the spiritual world has gradually become completely closed to man's normal consciousness, so that all knowledge has had to be drawn from the world of the senses. If this process had continued unabated, all possible connection with the spiritual world would have been lost to him. Up until the time of Kali Yuga man remembered some things that had been retained by tradition, but in time even these connections gradually faded. Even the teacher, the preserver of tradition, could not speak to him about spiritual worlds because man no longer had the capacity to understand. His knowledge gradually became limited to the physical world.

If this process had continued, man would never again have been able to establish a connection with the spiritual world, try though he might, had not something occurred from another direction; that is, the embodiment on the physical plane of that divine Being to whom we refer as the Christ.

Formerly, man had been able to raise himself up to the spiritual beings, but now they had to descend into his realm, appear close to him, before he could recognize them with his ego consciousness. This moment had been foretold by the prophets of ancient times. It was said that man would be able to find his connection with God within, and this by means of his own ego. But when the promised time came it had to be brought forcefully to man's attention that that moment had actually arrived. The one who did this most powerfully was John the Baptist. He announced that the times had changed, that “the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.” Later, this was indicated in a similar way by Jesus Christ, but the most significant sign was given in advance through the many baptisms performed by John in the Jordan, and through his teaching.

Still, by these means alone the change would not have been possible. A number of men would have had to have a much greater experience of the spiritual world so that the conviction could be born in them that a divine being would reveal himself. This was achieved by submerging them in water. When a person is about to drown, the connection of the etheric body to the physical body is loosened, even partly withdrawn. Then he can experience a sign of the new impulse in world evolution. From this comes the powerful admonition: “Alter the disposition of your soul, for the Kingdoms of Heaven are near. The disposition of soul is come upon you through which you will enter a relationship with the descended Christ. The times have been fulfilled.”

Christ Jesus Himself expressed, in the most penetrating thoughts, the fulfillment of the times in the Sermon on the Mount, as it is called. This was by no means a sermon for the masses. The Gospels read, “When Christ saw the multitudes of people, He withdrew from them and revealed Himself to His disciples.” To them He disclosed that man, in ancient times, could become God-imbued during states of ecstasy. While outside his ego, he was blissful and had direct experience with the spiritual world from which he could draw spiritual and health-giving forces. But now—so said Christ Jesus to His disciples—a man can become God-imbued who becomes permeated within himself with the God and Christ impulse, and can unite himself as an ego with this impulse. In the past, he alone could ascend to spiritual spheres who was filled with divine streamings from them. Only he, as possessor of the spirit, could be called blessed. Such a man was a seer in the old sense and he was a rare personality. The majority of the people had become beggars in the spirit. Now, however, those who sought the Kingdom of Heaven could find it through their own egos.

What occurs in such an important epoch in world evolution always affects the whole of humanity. If only a single member of a man's being is affected, the others all respond. All the members of his being—the physical and etheric bodies, the sentient, rational and consciousness souls, the ego, and even the higher soul members—receive new life through the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven. These teachings are in complete accord with the teachings of primeval wisdom.

In order for an individual to enter the spiritual world in earlier times, the etheric body had to be slightly separated from the physical body, which was thus formed in a special way. Christ Jesus therefore said in regard to the physical body, “Blessed are the beggars, the poor in spirit, for if they develop their ego-ruled bodies in the right way, they will find the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Of the etheric body He said, “Formerly, men could be healed of illnesses of the body and soul by ascending into the spiritual world in a state of ecstasy. Now those who suffer and are filled with the spirit of God can be healed and comforted by finding the source, the comfort, within themselves.”

Of the astral body He said, “In former times those whose astral bodies were beset by wild and tempestuous passions could only be subdued when equanimity, peace and purification streamed to them from divine spiritual beings.” Now men should find the strength within their own egos, through the in-dwelling Christ, to purify the astral body on earth. Thus, the new influence in the astral body had to be presented by saying, “Blessed and God-imbued in their astral bodies are those who foster calmness and equanimity within themselves; all comfort and well-being on earth shall be their reward.”

The fourth beatitude refers to the sentient soul. The ego of him who purifies himself in his sentient soul and seeks a higher development, will become permeated with the Christ. In his heart he will thirst for righteousness; he will become pervaded with godliness and his ego will become sufficient unto itself.

The next member is the rational soul. In the sentient soul the ego is in dull slumber; it only awakens in the rational soul. Because the ego sleeps in the sentient soul, we cannot find in another man the ego that truly makes him a human being. Before an individual has developed the ego within himself, he must allow his sentient soul to grow into higher worlds to be able to perceive something there. But when he has developed himself in his rational soul, he can perceive the person next to him. Where all those members previously referred to are concerned, we must bear in mind what was given them in earlier realms. It is only the rational soul that can fill itself with what flows from man to man.

In the fifth beatitude the sentence structure will have to take on a special form. The subject and the predicate must be alike, since it concerns what the ego develops within itself. The fifth beatitude says, “He who develops compassion and mercy shall find compassion in others.”

The next sentence of the Beatitudes refers to the consciousness soul. Through it the ego comes into being as pure ego and becomes capable of receiving God into itself. If man can elevate himself to such a degree, he can perceive within himself that drop of the divine, his ego; through his purified consciousness soul he can see God. The sixth sentence of the Beatitudes must, therefore, refer to God. The external physical expression for the ego and the consciousness soul is the blood, and where it brings itself most clearly to expression is in the heart, as expression of the purified ego. Christ said, therefore, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Thus, we are shown how in the most intimate sense the heart is the expression of the ego, the divine in man.

Now let us advance to what is higher than the consciousness soul, to manas, buddhi and atman, or spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. Contemporary man may well develop the three members of the soul but not until the distant future will he be able to develop the higher members, spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. These cannot as yet live in themselves in man; for this to occur he must look up to higher beings. His spirit self is not yet in him; only in the future will it suffuse him. Man is not yet sufficiently evolved to take the spirit self completely into himself. In this respect he is still at the beginning of his development and is like a vessel that is gradually receiving it. This is indicated in the seventh sentence of the Beatitudes. At first, the spirit self can only weave into man and fill him with its warmth. Only through the deed of Christ is it brought down to earth as the power of love and harmony. Therefore, Christ says, “Blessed are those who draw the spirit self down into themselves, for they shall become the children of God.” This points man upward to higher worlds.

Further on, mention is made of what will be brought about in the future, but it will encounter in ever-increasing measure the opposition of the present time and be fiercely rejected. It is said in the eighth sentence of the Beatitudes, “God-imbued or blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, For they will be fulfilled in themselves with the Kingdom of Heaven, with life spirit or buddhi.” Connected with this we find references also to the special mission of Christ Himself, in the sentence that reads, “Christ's intimate disciples may consider themselves blessed if they have to suffer persecution for His sake.” This is a faint allusion to spirit man or atman, which will be imparted to us in the distant future.

Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount the great message that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand is proclaimed. In the course of these events the mystery of human evolution was fulfilled in Palestine. Man had reached a degree of maturity in all the members of his being so that he was able with his purified physical forces to receive the Christ impulse directly into himself. So it came to pass that the God-man Christ merged with the human being Jesus of Nazareth and these united forces permeated the earth for three years with their powers. This had to happen so that man would not lose completely his connection with the spiritual world during Kali Yuga.

Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, however, continued until the year 1899. That was a particularly important year in human evolution, for it marked the end of the five thousand year period of Kali Yuga and the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of mankind. Onto the old faculties present during Kali Yuga man would now develop new spiritual faculties. So we approach a period in which new natural capacities and possibilities for gaining access to divine spiritual worlds will awaken in man. Before the first half of the twentieth century has passed, some people will, with full ego consciousness, experience the penetration of the divine spiritual world into the physical sense world in the same way as did Saul during his transformation into Paul before Damascus. This will then become the normal condition for many people.

Christ will not incarnate again in a physical body as he did in Jesus; now nothing would be achieved by it. It was dictated then by profound cosmic-earthly laws of evolution; otherwise, people would not have been able to recognize Him. But now men have evolved further and possess soul powers with which they can penetrate into the etheric. Thus, in future, Christ will become visible to mankind in the etheric and not in a physical body. From the middle of the twentieth century on, and continuing for the next twenty-five hundred years, this will happen more and more often. Enough people will by then have experienced the event at Damascus that it will be taken to be a common occurrence all over the world.

We study spiritual science so that these faculties, which are at first barely perceptible, may not be overlooked and lost to mankind, and that those blessed with this new power of vision may not be considered dreamers and fools, but may instead have the support and understanding of a group of people who in their common purpose may prevent these delicate soul seeds and soul qualities from being roughly trampled to death for lack of understanding. Spiritual science shall indeed prepare the conditions whereby these faculties can flourish and thrive.

Recently, I explained that these new qualities give us an insight into the Land of Shamballa, so that we may learn to know the significance and true nature of Christ, whose second coming indicates a maturing of mankind's cognition.

Generally speaking, the ages of history repeat themselves, but always in a new form. In spiritual science the beginning of Kali Yuga is seen as the closing of the portals of the spiritual world. After the first thousand years had passed there was the first compensation for it. In the individuality of Abraham, after his initiation by Melchisedek, it became possible for a human being to recognize God in the surrounding world through true insight and a proper evaluation of the external world spread out, as it were, like a carpet before his senses. In Abraham we see the first dawning of a knowledge that enables man to comprehend the true essence of an Ego-God, a God related to man's ego nature. Abraham realized that behind the phenomena of the sense world was something that made it possible for the human ego to conceive itself as a drop of the infinite, unfathomable world ego.

A second stage of God revelation was experienced at the time of Moses, when God approached man through the elements. In the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning upon Sinai, He manifested himself to man's senses and appealed to his innermost being. In the third thousand years in which a knowledge of God was breaking through there followed the age of Solomon. God revealed Himself through the symbols of the Temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem.

Thus, the divine revelation proceeded in stages. God first appeared to Abraham as Ego-God, or the Jehovah God, then to Moses in the burning bush, in thunder, and then to Solomon in the symbols of the Temple.

What is representative of a particular age repeats itself later in reverse order. The turning point is the appearance of Christ Jesus in Palestine. What immediately preceded that time is the first to reappear. Consequently, the first thousand years after Christ are again a Solomon epoch; the spirit of Solomon is active in the best men of that time so that the Mystery of Golgotha may be inculcated. In those early centuries after Christ, Solomon's symbols could be interpreted most readily by those who were most deeply affected by the event of Golgotha.

In the second thousand years after Christ we can recognize a repetition of the Moses epoch. What Moses experienced outwardly, now appears in the mysticism of men such as Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and so on. The mystics experienced in their inner beings what Moses experienced outwardly in the burning bush, in the thunder and lightning. They spoke of how the Ego-God revealed Himself to them when they withdrew into themselves. When they perceived within their souls the spark of their egos, then the Ego-God, the One-God Jehovah appeared to them. This was the case with Tauler, who was a great preacher and made powerful revelations. To him came the layman who was called, “The Friend of God, of the Mountain,” of whom it was thought that he wished to become Tauler's pupil. But he soon became his teacher instead, after which Tauler was able to speak of God with such inner force that a number of pupils and listeners were reported to have fallen prostrate, lying as if dead, as he preached. This is reminiscent of the events that occurred when Moses received the Laws on Sinai.

The centuries up to our present time have been filled by this spirit. Now, however, we are entering an era that recalls and revives the age of Abraham, in the sense that men are being led away from the world perceptible to our physical senses. The spirit of Abraham will influence our knowledge so that men will renounce the old mentality that only laid store in the physical world. But in contrast to Abraham, for whom the spirit of God was only to be found in the world of the senses, we shall now grow beyond the sense world and into the spiritual world.

Even though men knew nothing of all this in the past, we may well say that it has not interfered with our development. In the era now approaching, however, we will be placed in circumstances that will require men consciously to take their destiny into their own hands. They must know how Christ will be perceivable in the future. It is truly related that after the event of Golgotha Christ descended to the dead in the spiritual world to bring them the Word of Salvation. The Christ event is active today in the same way. Therefore, it is the same whether a person lives in the physical world here on earth or has already passed through death. If he has gained an understanding for it here on earth, he can still experience the Christ event in the spiritual world, and that will indicate that man has not lived upon this, our earth, without reason. If, however, a person fails to acquire an understanding for the Christ event here on earth, the effects of the event of Golgotha will pass him by without a trace during the period between death and a new birth. He will then have to wait until his next return to the earth, until a new birth in order then to be able to prepare himself.

Man must not believe that Christ will reappear in the flesh, as some false teachings claim, for in that case it would be impossible to believe in the progressive development of man's faculties, and we would have to say that events repeat themselves in the same way. But this is not so. They do repeat themselves, but on ever higher levels.

In the next centuries it will often be proclaimed that Christ will return and again reveal Himself. False messiahs or Christs will appear. But those armed by the above explanations, with a true understanding of Christ's real coming, will reject such manifestations. The knowledgeable ones who can see the history of the last centuries in this light will be neither surprised nor exhalted that such messiahs appear. As an example, this happened just before the Crusades and also in the seventeenth century, when a false messiah. Shabattai Tzevi, appeared in Smyrna. Pilgrims flocked to him even from France and Spain.

At that time such a deceptive belief did not do so much damage. But now, when man with his more advanced faculties should be able to recognize that it is a mistake to believe in Christ's second coming in the flesh, and that it is in accordance with truth that He will reappear in the etheric body—now it is an absolute necessity to distinguish such things plainly. A confusion of these facts will have serious consequences. We cannot believe in an alleged Christ who reappears in the flesh, but only in a Christ who appears in the etheric body. This manifestation will take the form of a natural initiation, just as at present the initiate experiences this event in a special way.

Thus, we are approaching an age in which man will not only feel himself surrounded by a physical sense world, but also, according to the degree of his development, a spiritual world. The leader in this new world of the spirit will be the etheric Christ. No matter what religious community or faith people belong to, once they have recognized these facts in themselves, they will acknowledge and accept the Christ event. The Christians who have the experience of the etheric Christ are perhaps in a more difficult situation than those who belong to other religions, yet they should endeavor to accept this Christ event in just as neutral a way as the others. It will, in fact, be man's task to develop, especially through Christianity, an understanding for the possibility of entering the spiritual world independently of any special religious confession, but simply through the power of good will.

Anthroposophy should help us above all in this. It will lead us into that spiritual land, described in ancient Tibetan writings as a remote fairyland but meant to be the spiritual world, the Land of Shamballa. Not in a dreamy way but in full consciousness should man enter this land under the guidance of Christ. Even now the initiate can and must go often to the Land of Shamballa in order to acquire new forces. In future, other men, too, will enter the Land of Shamballa. They will see its radiant light, as Paul saw above him the light that streamed from Christ. This light will stream toward them, also. The portals of this realm of light will open to them and through them they will enter the holy Land of Shamballa.

My dear friends!

I would like to combine the two lectures today and tomorrow into one unit, so that today we look up at certain ideas and facts of the spiritual world, which we then want to summarize tomorrow in a certain world view that is particularly important for the present time.

Perhaps it will already be understandable to some today that we are currently living in a time that, for all those who, in one form or another, are participating in and living through this time, means a time that demands the development of the soul in a way approaches the soul in such a way that this way cannot easily be compared with anything we know from before, whether it be through our own human experience or through anything else we have been able to take in. One could say many things. One could express through many symptoms and images what this very special thing about soul development consists of.

Let's start with an image. You know – either you have heard it or read about it in lectures or in cycles of lectures – that over the years in which we have spoken to each other in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I have often referred to the name Herman Grimm, to Herman Grimm as a spirit who, in the most eminent sense, has grown directly out of the development of German culture and has placed himself in this development of German culture and spirit. I can say, my dear friends, that when I spoke of Herman Grimm in the years up to 1914, it always seemed to me as if he were standing beside me spiritually, as if one could have had the thought: What does such a personality say, which - albeit in a completely different form than spiritual science makes possible - has participated intensively in German spiritual life? The feeling that such minds as Herman Grimm's — he died in 1901, at the age of 70 — such a feeling that such minds are standing beside you and quietly asking the question: What do I myself have to say about what is being brought forth from the spiritual life of humanity, be it in one form or another, and thus also in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? This feeling, we have not had it since 1914. That is significant. Today, my dear friends, there is no possibility, from the outside, to ask oneself: How would a personality like Herman Grimm behave in the context of our times and in relation to anything that is taking place in the development of the spirit in the sense of this time? Of course, Herman Grimm would be almost 90 years old if he were still alive, but if he were still alive today, one must imagine that, from the thoughts that such a personality could have, from the way he way of experiencing the present life of humanity, it would hardly be possible for such a personality, to gain a judgment, a position to that, which has gone on in these three years since 1914 over the development of humanity.

Now we can certainly ask ourselves the question differently from our point of view, we can ask ourselves the question like this: How does such a soul, after passing through the gate of death and having lived through almost twenty years in the spiritual world, look down on us and on what is happening here on earth? We come to the conclusion that it does not look down so uncomprehendingly as it actually should have done, considering how alien everything is to what such a personality has felt on earth.

It is not without reason, my dear friends, that I draw your attention to such a thought. We have thus hinted at a thought that, to a certain extent, cannot be completely real to us, cannot be completely real, a thought that asks: How understandingly or unintelligently would a personality like Herman Grimm face the present, the external present? We know very well that this thought has no reality, namely because the soul, when it passes through the gate of death, continues to develop in a completely different way – and that is the reality – in a completely different way than it would have developed if it had remained in the body for years. But to pose the question of how such a personality would face the external present today, to virtually present us with this unreal thought, the unreality of which we can be well aware of, is good material for meditation. Above all, such thoughts have great significance for our spiritual life, and it can be said that they will gain ever greater importance for our spiritual life. More and more, people will have to become accustomed to thinking that takes into account factors such as putting oneself in the place of such a thought: this is how it would have been if such a personality had remained on earth.

It will become more and more necessary for our thinking to become more agile through such thoughts than it unfortunately is in this day and age. For what is around us, my dear friends, what humanity is experiencing with such terror, what makes our feelings so different, is largely connected with the development of thoughts – or one could also say with the lack of development of thoughts in recent times. If I am to correctly supplement the thoughts expressed earlier, I would like to say that since 1914, when I think of Herman Grimm and his school of thought and world view, I feel something as I used to feel when I looked back centuries to a personality who was centuries before us, to a personality who had long since become historical. But, my dear friends, it will only gradually dawn on humanity that these years are now in reality a much longer time than they are in terms of the external, physical course. We have actually - it can be said that it is not an exaggeration - we have actually lived through centuries in these three years. But, my dear friends, we must not be afraid to add something else to the concept that we have acquired over the decades within our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, to the “we have lived through centuries”; we must not be afraid to add: in many, many respects, these times have not only been lived through, but in a certain higher sense they have also been slept through. What do we mean when we say that they have been slept through in a higher sense? These years contain so many possibilities for life and experience that for many souls these possibilities for life and experience pass by in much the same way as the events that take place around a person when he is asleep. They are there when he sleeps, but he does not perceive them.

I would like to speak to you today about some of the conditions of awakening in our time, of being awakened in our time, my dear friends, in these preliminary discussions. It will be necessary for humanity to see many things in a different light than it has been seen before. And so let us point out a basic fact, an important, important basic fact, which can bring our thinking in the direction, in the current, that we need to understand what is already preparing for many in this time. Let us look, my dear friends, at what is being said, thought, and expressed in words from various places around the world. From the outset, one must of course believe that when this or that is expressed in thoughts or in words, these words, these thoughts mean what – yes, I would like to say, what is found in the dictionary as the meaning of these thoughts, these words; one must believe this to be the case from the outset. But in many respects in our time this is not the case. And one should know that in our time it is not the case in many respects.

In our time, many things happen, and many highly significant things happen, that I would characterize as follows: Let us assume that two people come into a difference with each other, and we listen to the one person who is in difference with the other. He tells us: I came into difference with this person, I quarreled with him. We ask him why he has come into difference, why he is in conflict with the person in question. He answers us, “Yes, because this person has a bad character, because he has done this or that.” Of course, sometimes if you look into the facts, you may find something justified. If you are completely honest in looking into the facts today, you will very often not find something justified. The man says that the other man did this or that, or was such and such, and that is why he came into conflict with him. But why does he say that? Not because the other man is like that, but perhaps he says it for the same reason, because he needs to be reassured about the real reason why he came into conflict with him. What could this real reason be? This true reason can simply be that the soul life, the life of experience of this person who is telling us this, has developed in such a way that at a certain point in time it must discharge itself with a certain amount of hatred. Let us hold on to this, my dear friends, that this can simply be a primal fact of the soul of some human individualities. They grow up, they develop, and the soul develops in such a way that at a certain point in time it simply needs a certain amount of hatred. Just as a certain constitution, an abnormal constitution of the organism needs a fever, so a soul needs a discharge of a certain amount of hatred before itself, for the sake of what it has developed within itself. Because this certain amount of hatred is present in the soul, this soul mysteriously seeks someone on whom to discharge this hatred. But you can't say to yourself, without being frightened in a certain sense: I attack the person concerned because I have to discharge a certain amount of hatred. You have a sedative, a kind of anesthetic for the soul. This calming, this numbing of the soul occurs when one describes the other. The description may be true, the description may be false; but what it expresses is in any case not the real reason, but lies in the soul itself in the accumulated amount of hatred that must be discharged.

With this example, I wanted to show that anyone who is truly able to observe the world and makes an effort to do so can see today, wherever they look, how common it is to confuse cause and effect in our judgment of people. It is easy, my dear friends, to agree that in ordinary science, cause and effect are confused at every turn; but this confusion only occurs because in general human life there is a tendency to confuse cause and effect in the way described. Mankind, and I mean all of mankind, must learn to observe life and to live wisely. Without this observation of life, without this wisdom of life, my dear friends, which human beings must strive for, the complicated life that will come upon this earth cannot be lived through by mankind. For only through such striving will one come to feel with the necessary weight that which one needs to live. And in saying this, my dear friends, I may perhaps point out a certain fact that has occurred over the years of our anthroposophical endeavors within our previous considerations.

You can think back many years, a whole series of years, and you will remember that even in public lectures the question was quite often asked: How do repeated earthly lives relate to the increasing population of the earth? After all, the population of the earth is constantly increasing. If the same individuals keep reincarnating, how does this fact fit in with the increasing population of the earth? You will recall that I have given various reasons for understanding the apparent increase in the earth's population despite repeated lives on earth. But you may also remember that whenever this question came up, I always added a sentence to the other reasons I had given. I always added the sentence: “We shall wait, and perhaps the time will soon come when people will realize in a terrible way that the population of the earth will also be reduced in an extremely significant way by horrific events.” Of course, many will be able to remember these sentences. Many things could be remembered, but today I would like to remind you in particular that you will find in the cycle held in Vienna before the war, which dealt with life between death and new birth, how I tried to describe the general possibilities of the disease of social life across the globe. At the time, I even used the expression – it can be read in the cycle – that something like a social carcinoma is going through the world. The expression can be found printed in the cycle.

Such things, my dear friends, have been said to point out that much is going on around us that is as elusive to the ordinary consciousness as the tables and chairs of our bedroom are to us when we are asleep. And many, many passages in the lectures that have been given, they were given with the intention of touching souls, of touching hearts, to point out the utter seriousness of the forces that go through time in one direction or another. Because it does not help us, my dear friends, if we only try to gain, I would say in accessible concepts, some general ideas about the spiritual worlds. What we need, especially if these ideas that we gain are to be fruitfully integrated into our time, what we need is to acquire such concepts, such ideas from the experience of the spiritual world, that can intervene in reality in every area of life. But our present time is altogether poor, tremendously poor, in such concepts that can intervene in reality. And it is a concomitant of materialism, my dear friends, that the concepts that develop in the materialistic age have no power to intervene in reality in a directing, ordering, comprehending way. Man must learn to place himself in the world in a realistic way. This is only possible if spiritual science opens up an understanding for something without which understanding one knows nothing at all: for the relationship of man to the world.

If we are to take up the important things we have to say in this regard and bring them before our soul in the right way and with the utmost seriousness, we must start with three concepts that every religious mind today will inevitably see as the three most important concepts. We must start with the concept of the Father-God, with the concept of the Christ, and with the concept of the Spirit or Holy Spirit. Let us first consider today what spiritual science can say about the relationship of the human being to that which can be expressed by the three concepts of the Father God, the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Today, we are indeed confronted with a world in which materialistic development has led to there being people who do not accept all these three ideas, the three concepts, I will not say, but do not experience them in their full seriousness, in their full depth. They will not be able to doubt, my dear friends, that many people today go through life without dealing with all their soul forces with these three concepts of Father-God, Christ, Holy Spirit.

What then does spiritual science have to say, based on what it can experience, about the just-mentioned lack in human souls, about this inability to deal with these three concepts? If you enter into the full meaning of our spiritual science, you will always be able to understand the following, because in what follows I would like to express a basic phenomenon for the soul's life in words that, I believe, express this basic phenomenon succinctly and precisely. I think that spiritual science can say from its point of view: the denial or misunderstanding of the Father-God is an illness; the denial or misunderstanding of the Christ is a misfortune of fate. Note the words carefully; I am using them in such a way that the matter is expressed very precisely. The denial or misjudgment of the Father-God is an illness; the denial or misjudgment of the Christ is an accident of fate for the soul; and the denial or misjudgment of the spirit is a blindness of the soul. I believe that anyone who combines the right approach with these three characteristics has much of what is needed to understand materialism in our time. I also believe that anyone who understands these three characteristics in the right sense has the key to understanding much, much more in our time.

Let us consider the first characteristic: the denial or misunderstanding of the Father-God is an illness. As an anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientist, I have to say this because, if the totality of the human being is organized in a healthy way according to the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of this being and the person does not physically, mentally or spiritually oppose themselves to allow their whole being to work healthily, then there is no possibility of not recognizing that which can be called the Father God. Every human being with a healthy organization, my dear friends, who does not allow prejudices to stand in his way – prejudices that have such an effect that everything organic no longer works properly – every human being, if he looks at the world in a healthy way and really applies his healthy spiritual power to this healthy view, comes to think of nature and the life of history as imbued with a Father-God. And the strange thing that offends today's materialists – the denial or misjudgment of the Father God – is not possible at all, except that something is not right in the human organization. So one can say: atheism is, under all circumstances, a real symptom of illness for spiritual science; something must be wrong in the human organization when atheism is present.

If people want to develop a relationship to human evolution, if they want to make sense of earthly development, then they have to be able to look at a certain point in time in this earthly development, when the mystery of Golgotha had to take place. But you can't say – just as you can say: that an atheist is actually more or less physically ill, one cannot say that anyone who does not find the Christ is ill. For finding the Christ is really something that is connected with a power to which the name 'grace' is fully applicable. The Christ must be found in such a way that He approaches the human being as an entity, so that the person can find His way to Him. Not to recognize God as such, to be an atheist, means — also in the physical sense — to be ill. But one can be healthy without finding the Christ. Therefore, not finding the Christ is not an illness like not finding God, but not finding the Christ is an misfortune of the soul. It is something that affects us, the failure to find Christ, that plunges the soul into misfortune. You can see this from the deeper meaning of the many discussions that have been held in our field for years: the soul needs the connection with Christ in order to find its way in the overall development of humanity. It was only until the Mystery of Golgotha that it was possible for the human soul to develop its entire life without coming into contact with the Christ. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ must permeate the human soul with His power, the Christ must connect with the human soul so that this human soul can find its way through the entire development of humanity. You can really find this within the development of spiritual life itself.

Just think of what a beautiful flowering of human spiritual life Greek culture was. People today have no real idea of what life was like for the ancient Greeks. And really, sometimes the only way to express one's admiration for Greek culture is to be negative. Spiritual science will first allow us to become positive again with regard to our admiration of Greek culture. Today, people take it for granted that they can read Sophocles or even Aeschylus, or perhaps even recite or act them. And so one is often asked: Is it possible to do anything with Aeschylus in terms of acting or reciting? It is possible if one has the right sense of Greek culture. If you have Aeschylus or even Sophocles as they exist today in modern languages as Aeschylus or Sophocles, then that is a shadow of the matter. Only the full, dense, reality-imbued concepts will be able to lie in the words again, when there will be [true] translations of Aeschylus or Sophocles or when the Greek words are to be understood. We must not forget that those whom we call intellectuals today, in the cultural life to which they go back in reality, only go back to Roman times. Our high school students may learn Greek, but they only learn Latin-Roman ideas. We have Roman law, Roman ideas in other areas of life as well. But Greece is actually a fairy-tale land. But it is deeply, deeply rooted in this Greekness, my dear friends, that we have been handed down the significant word of the Greek hero: Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows. Why? The soul concept of Aristotle answers that. No one has dealt so thoroughly with Aristotle's soul concept as the recently deceased excellent psychologist Franz Brentano. It can be said that spiritual research can agree with what Brentano discovered by philosophical means with regard to the soul and immortality concept of Aristotle, the Greek sage, for the reason that it is the Greek concept, but elevated to philosophy.

Aristotle was not initiated. The initiated Greeks knew something else about the immortality of the soul. But Aristotle was not initiated. He could only rise to that conception of the soul to which an uninitiated wise thinker of the Greeks could rise in the centuries before the entrance of the mystery of Golgotha. What is this conception of the soul and immortality? The ancient Greeks knew, they knew from an experience that people today no longer have, that everything they accomplish in the body as human beings is imbued with soul. The ancient Greeks did not speculate about whether their soul somehow lives, but they knew that when I move my hand, my soul moves with it. The ancient Greeks knew that the soul lives in everything they did, physically and mentally. But he had the idea that soul and body belong together internally. For him, it was a whole: soul and body. That is why Aristotle says: If they cut off one of your arms, then you are no longer a complete human being. If they cut off two of your arms, then you are even less so; if they take away your whole body, as death does, then you are no longer a complete human being. Aristotle speaks of human immortality, but he says, when man has gone through the gate of death, he is no longer a complete human being – he says this as a Greek – because he lacks the possibility of coming into contact with the environment in any way, which is only possible through the body. A person who has passed through the gateway of death is, for Aristotle, a maimed person. Although Aristotle still clings to the idea of immortality, within this immortality the soul lives in such a way that one is an incomplete human being. And that it can actually do nothing but continue this existence, I would say spiritually vegetatively, to reproduce, without coming into any contact with the environment. That is the concept of Aristotle, which could arise before the Mystery of Golgotha, when man was left to his own devices. And now think about what the concept of immortality would look like today if this had been propagated. Something new had to occur in human development to give the human soul the strength to come to the concept of immortality again: that is the Mystery of Golgotha. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of Christ has permeated the evolution of the earth. But it must happen to people in a merciful way that the power of their soul coincides with the power of Christ. Otherwise, misfortune would befall them, and they would know nothing of the soul that has passed through the gate of death except that it is only an incomplete, mutilated human being.

These are only preliminary remarks, my dear friends, who want to explain the word, want to explain the characteristic: misjudgment or denial of the Christ is a misfortune of fate for the soul. You can be healthy, but you must be unhappy in soul if you do not find the Christ. People must be brought to make clear distinctions regarding the most important concepts if life is to go on and what the future will demand of people is to be achieved. But it is precisely such ideas that some people, especially those who are otherwise close to us, shy away from.

You see, for someone who is a humanities scholar, there is a theologian – such as Adolf Harnack, for example – in terms of the inner structure of thought, the Father God, but there is no actual Christ. Harnack does, of course, introduce the concept of Christ, but it is not organically connected with what he thinks. And what Harnack says about Christ are basically only the attributes of God the Father. The most important attributes Harnack presents about Christ and His nature are only attributes of God the Father. It will be a fundamental requirement of our time that humanity finds the way to the real Christ, that the confusion between Christ and God the Father ceases. Otherwise, some might believe that they have the Christ, when in fact they only have God the Father. We only need to remember that some Christian mystics of the Middle Ages claimed that they had found the Christ by delving into their souls. There is no reason for them to say that they have found the Christ – they have only found the Father God. One can find the Father God in this way, but not the Christ. Take the term that I initially developed as a characteristic. When our soul appears healthy for the organism, when it properly comprehends itself in the whole person, then it says “Ex Deo nascimur” – “I am born of God”. This saying “Ex Deo nascimur” should be nothing more than an expression of the complete health of human nature. So just living your life in the right way, living a completely healthy life, allows this life to culminate in the recognition of the Father God: “Ex Deo nascimur”.

The good fortune of being able to connect one's own soul with the power of Christ brings the gracious possibility to know oneself beyond death, not as a mutilated human being, but on the contrary, not only as a whole human being, but as a human being illuminated in the illuminated spiritual world. Therefore, “In Christo morimur” – “In Christ we die”.

But in order not to recognize the spirit, blindness of the soul is necessary; this is now more than ever characteristic of materialism. For if the soul really sees all that is around her, if she does not pass by in sleep but sees what is around her in an awakened state, she is therefore not blind but sees awakened, then she sees the spirit at work in all things. Therefore, it must be said that to fail to recognize or to deny the Spirit is blindness of the soul. I particularly want you to grasp this distinction: Not being able to see the mysterious working of the Spirit in world events when the soul is blind comes from not being able to see the Spirit. Being unhealthy in oneself, so that the soul does not fully experience itself, causes atheism, the non-recognition of the Father-God. The recognition of the Father-God therefore comes from the healthy inner being, the recognition of the spirit comes from the alert observation of the world facts and world events around us. The materialist is only a sleeper to the world facts and world events around us.

If what has just been said is plausible – and it is well-founded in spiritual science – then perhaps the question will arise: Yes, but why has there been no real possibility for so long in humanity to develop complete clarity precisely about these three ideas? Why is that so? Yes, you see, that has to do with what I would like to call the historical “misdeity” — “misdeity”. Three is the number: mis-deity, just “misdeity”. I had to coin a new word, and you will soon hear that it is quite good to coin a new word for this idea. In the future, we will have to coin many new words. People will coin many new words in general, because the old words are no longer sufficient for what we need to understand now. And for what we have to say to each other now, we take the word “abuse”, where three is taken from the number three.

You see, my dear friends, in the presentation that I have given in my “Theosophy”, I have pointed out from the most diverse sides in a clearly noticeable way that in order to understand the entire essence of man, it is necessary to consider the human and also the worldly trinity of body, soul and spirit - body, soul and spirit. If we go back to those times when there was only an atavistic, dream-like consciousness, but within this atavistic, dream-like consciousness there was an ancient view of reality, we find everywhere, especially in the wisdom of the mysteries, the threefold division of the world and man into body, soul and spirit. For neither the world nor man can be understood otherwise if one does not grasp the meaning of the threefoldness of body, soul and spirit.

Now something strange has occurred. The Council of Constantinople took place in 869; with it, the spirit was actually abolished. Until then, there was widespread awareness that one must distinguish between body, soul and spirit. Among the things established by the Council of Constantinople, the most important is that one should not assume a difference between soul and spirit, but in the soul one should only think of a thinking and a spiritual part. And from that time on, throughout the entire world-developmental currents of the Middle Ages, it became necessary that one no longer distinguished the human being into body, soul and spirit, but only into body and soul, whereby soul and spirit were conflated with each other. It was heretical to speak of the so-called “trichotomy” since the Council of Constantinople in 869, after which it was only permissible to distinguish the human body and the human soul as a thinking and spiritual being, but not the threefold nature, the trichotomy into body, soul and spirit. This is tremendously significant. Those who are familiar with medieval philosophy know how some medieval philosophers struggle with the fact that they still had the feeling from ancient times that the human being consists of three parts. But the misappropriation had occurred since the Council of Constantinople, and anyone who wanted to claim or philosophically teach the trichotomy of body-soul-spirit would have been declared a heretic.

We are experiencing the highly remarkable fact today that the gentlemen who pursue unconditional science, exactly according to the Council of Constantinople, divide man into body and soul, and have no idea at all about the division into soul and spirit, except at most as something that is only a verbal skirmish. Look at Wundt and other enlightened minds of the present day; they all have the division into body and soul. That is why these gentlemen are also “presuppositionless”, because they have only the Council of Constantinople as a presupposition. They just don't know that they have this presupposition, which is why they call this philosophy “presuppositionless science”.

In certain directions, order and, above all, strength and world understanding are not created if one does not penetrate the secret of “dreiung” again, if one does not overcome the “missdreiung” that has been going on for centuries through the world view, through the view of humanity in general. The deep significance of the division of the human being into body, soul and spirit must be recognized again. But then, in precisely this most important and essential area, one will find the possibility of speaking concretely, imbued with reality, and expressing the truth, whereas in this area, the present time speaks not in terms of reality but in abstract terms; it believes that it is not speaking abstractly but is presenting the greatest real ideals of humanity.

It was at the end of the nineteenth century, as you know, that three ideals of humanity resounded through Europe and as far as Asia: fraternity, freedom, equality. And you know that within the European discussion - which today is no longer a discussion, but is being written in blood - that within this discussion the three words keep coming up that are supposed to say: But let us ask the question that must be asked in relation to these three words, let us ask it from a spiritual scientific point of view: if we simply talk in general terms that man or humanity must strive for fraternity, freedom and equality, we are dealing with an abstraction, three abstractions that are still under the complete influence of “misdeity”. Why? Man is in reality a trinity: body, soul and spirit, and as body, soul and spirit man lives with other people, who are also body, soul and spirit, here on earth together. This gives rise to a relationship between those forces within people that experience each other here in the physical world, and that comes from the fact that a person is incarnated in a body, a relationship that arises from the fact that we interact with each other in our bodies.

If we are to formulate an ideal for the future, a social ideal based on the truth that man is incarnated in a body, then it must be the ideal of brotherhood. From what man is for man, because man is bodily, from that must grow brotherhood, my dear friends; that is a social ideal for the future. But there is no point in speaking of the ideal of freedom from the same point of view. That would be to speak in the abstract. Speaking of the ideal of freedom only makes sense if one knows that only the spiritual relationship between people can be free. Just as people can only develop a social relationship according to the ideal of brotherhood if they are incarnated in the body, so too can this striving for the ideal of freedom only be realized if one understands how one soul can live from another. People become free as souls, people can become free as souls just as they can be fraternal if they are incarnated in bodies. Equality is an ideal that only makes sense if it refers to man as spirit. For the way we are placed in the world means that we are specialized in having one body and one soul. In terms of our spirituality, we are equal. Therefore, when we have discarded the body and with it the specialization of the characteristics, the saying that aptly characterizes the event comes to mind: In death, all men are equal, because they all become spirits.

The three ideals are meaningless when they are mixed up in “misuse”; they only become meaningful when these three ideals will sound through humanity in such a way that one can recognize them.

Man is body, soul and spirit; he must become brotherly according to the body, free according to the soul, equal according to the spirit. You see, these three abstract, unreal words will only make sense when spiritual science can find this meaning for them.

But why were these words spoken at the end of the 18th century? You see, you say words – I gave you the example on a small scale earlier – you say words, you believe you have come to a difference [with someone]; in truth it was hatred that has been unleashed. I have shown you that. And now we have the application of this small example to the great world-historical event. And so these words were also spoken in historical time, not to express what one thought one could find in these words, but to compensate, as it were, for something else. In a sense unconsciously, the three words came historically from the human mouth as if in a play, out of ecstasy. Out of full reflection, the words should have been: Fraternity from the body, freedom from the soul, equality from the spirit. One speaks the words half consciously, not fully consciously, for only spiritual science will speak them fully consciously. One speaks the words half consciously, like a person in ecstasy, a visionary speaks the words. But of course no one will understand this who swears by the supposed weight of these three words today. What will he say? He will say: Are you saying that these words were spoken in ecstasy? They are something that is most imbued with self-confident human reason. That is the belief that is poured out over the whole fact. Because why? Because in the depths of the soul of the times, when these words were spoken, Ahriman was lurking; and Ahriman is the one from whom these words really emerged. That is why they rashly croak.

And Ahriman needed to unburden his soul. Just as a soul usually unloads hatred, so Ahriman sought to unload himself. And just as a soul that is discharging would say that so-and-so did this or that to me, Ahriman had above all to bring out of his soul a certain impulse towards the material. And this was expressed not by letting people say — imagine what would have been the fate of people if they had had to say: We must not oppose materialism, we must now forget that there is a soul and a spirit, we must ascribe everything to the material; not to the body fraternity, not to the soul liberty, not to the spirit equality, but we must ascribe everything to material man; we must finally wipe the slate clean with this trichotomy.

That did not work. Therefore, the three things had to be conjured up as an ideal. And because Ahriman was at work in these, they came out under ecstasy. When a person does something like this, he numbs himself, he is in ecstasy. When Ahriman raves in him, then he can believe that he is saying the wisest thing, that he has complete control over himself and is saying something quite natural, while in fact he is saying nothing else that is perfectly apt for outer development, but which in truth is the life of an Ahrimanic power in the human soul.

We will take up these matters again tomorrow, for they are truly important if we want to understand the present time. And tomorrow I will have many more important things to say, especially with regard to the present time.

But now, following these discussions, allow me to say something that I would rather not say, but must say. We have fulfilled our task today. But it is necessary because I am obliged to observe certain measures for the near future within the Anthroposophical Society, and I need to give some motivation for them.

You see, my dear friends, spiritual science is something that must — I have motivated you from a wide variety of perspectives, quite objectively — that must become part of human development. It is not something that has an end in itself, like the program points of other societies, which one can be passionate about, but something that must become established because humanity itself, if it understands itself correctly, demands spiritual science. Only a few people still know this objectivity over time to observe what really presents itself as a yearning in human souls. But from certain laws, which are already understandable through spiritual science itself, my dear friends, what I have indicated in the most diverse ways is being realized more and more. And those who have heard me speak often know that I have often pointed out that the forces that would like to extinguish the light of spiritual science are indeed already at work. These dear friends who have heard me speak often know this for certain. For those who observe things, they have not come as a surprise, but they must still be treated in the right way.

Is it not the case that spiritual science is something that has to become established? In a sense, the Anthroposophical Society should be an instrument for spiritual science. It is an instrument that is difficult to handle, that must be readily admitted. But my dear friends, we must also truly face the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must be taken extremely seriously. Otherwise it would be better to have very small groups of friends in different cities trying to organize public lectures, and spiritual science would be able to fulfill its current mission for humanity in this way. But if there is an Anthroposophical Society, then it must be something real. Now, from certain backgrounds, it is extremely difficult for this Anthroposophical Society to fulfill its ideals, but on the other hand, it must not be ignored that one must look at what is necessary in this Anthroposophical Society in order to advance it as a society - I am not talking about spiritual science now, but about the society.

You see, above all it is necessary to acquire a clear and healthy judgment within the Society, also for what exists in society, and about the way society works outwardly, and to shape one's feelings and one's judgment of the world in the sense of this judgment. I am not saying that I demand this of society, but society cannot be what it wants to be if it does not strive for it. I have nothing to demand of society, I emphasize that, but it cannot be what it should be and wants to be if it does not strive for this healthy judgment of the world and life, if this striving does not really take root in society.

Look, let me start from a specific point: there are things that, as they happen, are only possible within our Anthroposophical Society, that would not actually be possible outside. Take the most blatant case of Heindel-Vollrath. What I mean is this: a Mr. Grasshoff applied for admission to the Anthroposophical Society a few years ago. That is, he was one of those people who are dragged into it by other members, sometimes in a rather unjustified way. But he had an urgent desire to become a member of our society. He became one, attended all the lectures, perhaps even spent some time in Hamburg, took part in public and branch lectures, but he also borrowed all kinds of individual lectures from all kinds of members and diligently copied everything down. So that when he said one day that he wanted to go back to America, he not only had all the public lectures in his head, but also pretty much everything that had been presented in our cycles and branch lectures.

Now you may say: Why was the person accepted at all? Yes, my dear friends, you cannot anticipate the future in such a case. You cannot – I must ask for forgiveness for using a harsh word – you cannot reject someone and say: I am rejecting you because later on you will be a bastard! You cannot give prophecies as a reason for rejection. This is a dilemma that occurs in such a society, and it makes it necessary for every member of the society to develop correct judgment.

So Mr. Grasshoff went back to America one day, took all his things with him and said that he wanted to spread our spiritual science in America. The dependency was so great that he himself said, before he took leave and made the solemn promise, that the way he would represent spiritual science would be a thoroughly honest one. The matter went so far that he said at the time: How should one actually translate “Rosicrucian worldview” into English? Back then, it was very difficult to translate “Weltanschauung” into English, and we still discussed the “Rosicrucian World Conception”. Except for this word, it is from me, which is a word that had not been used before: “Rosicrucian World Conception”. So he packed this word into his suitcase and left.

What did he do? He sat down in America and wrote down in his own way what he had found in the lectures and in the printed books, changing it in his own way. But there is nothing in his books that he did not get here. But in the preface he wrote the following: He had learned many things in my lectures that he wanted to share in America, but it was not enough, and after he had listened to the lectures here - here with me, with us - he received a call from a wise master down there in Transylvania, in the Transylvanian Alps, who introduced him to the deeper secrets of the matter. Therefore, he would not only give what he had from me, but also what he had received from that wise master there in the Transylvanian Alps. But if you check what this wise master told him, it is what he copied here from the cycles, lectures and branch lectures. It is all worked into it. The book was published in America.

Well, that could still be tolerated, right? But it didn't stop there. This book was translated into German and published years ago in German translation as “Rosenkreuzerische Unterrichtsbriefe” under the aegis of Mr. Hugo Vollrath years ago, and on the bookplates and in the preface, you can read that some building blocks of this Rosicrucian worldview did indeed come to light here in Germany, but they were impure; they first had to be purified by the bright Californian sun. That is where Grasshoff, who later called himself Heindel, later lived. So not only was it possible in America, but the things were retranslated into German. That is possible. This is a scandal, my dear friends, and deserves to be made known. I have even mentioned it in public lectures. It has not become known. But if the Anthroposophical Society wants to fulfill its task, it is important that our cause be presented to the world in the right way; that it is not just said by me, but that one also gains the right attitude towards these things. Of course, it is wonderful and desirable to hear lectures and read cycles about spiritual things, but for that we do not need an Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society must work and develop a field of activity.

Of course, where such things can develop, things move forward. What have we experienced recently? Recently we have seen that a man who for a long time truly appeared to be the most honest of the so-called followers of anthroposophy, was a member of the Anthroposophical Society who called himself true, he was so true that he even wrote a book that was published by the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House, and then he wrote a small booklet “Who was Christ?” In this booklet, he used some material that is also from the Cycles. Now, that might still be acceptable, but Dr. Steiner did not think it was quite right to introduce it. I did not take a stand on the matter, but Dr. Steiner did not think it was right – and she is the one who runs the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House – that if you take things from the cycles and then say: some hints have been given, but I must first explain them clearly. For these and other reasons, the booklet “Who Was Christ?” had to be rejected. Post hoc ergo propter hoc - after a thing, therefore because of a thing. This is often a disputed dictum, but I believe it is often a very correct dictum. What became of this man who had lived among us as a loyal anthroposophist and who had sought to find his own place for his work? This man became the most vehement and swollen opponent because his little book was not accepted by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. That is the only reason. All the foolish talk he has developed about alleged contradictions in “Psychische Studien” is just added. And one does not do justice to the matter if one believes that one has to go into this talk, but one has to know, in order to see the whole enormity, that a person who has last sought to publish his writing in the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag posophical publishing house, and thus had every intention, had his writing been accepted, to remain an anthroposophist as he had been before, that he would become a person producing defamatory writings if his writing were rejected. One has to - forgive me - found the Anthroposophical Society in order to experience such things, because otherwise this cannot actually happen with such intensity.

Now don't misunderstand me! Opposing writings must also appear, I will have no objection to that. Please do not take my words as if spiritual science should be afraid of opposing writings. They may appear, but they should be objective. But there is nothing objective here. This will become immediately apparent when we see what ground the whole matter is taking. Everywhere it is actually only seemingly a matter of all kinds of refutations, I might say, of contradictions that are pointed out; in truth, it is a matter of spreading gossip and scandal, most of which is even invented, but sometimes presented with great sophistication. So this is not said because of factual opposition, but because the aim is not to engage in a factual fight – that is far too uncomfortable – but because the aim is – by virtually driving the anthroposophical movement into scandal, into defamation, into slander, into inventing facts that have absolutely no connection with reality - to make this Anthroposophical Society impossible.

But so much can happen in the realm of this Anthroposophical Society! A man from a town in central Germany once wrote to Dr. Steiner: He is now at a particular point in his soul life, he does not know what to do next. He would like some advice, should he become involved in a business or should he seek his new soul path in some other way. Since he had been informed that it could not be our task to give advice on marrying into a family, he turned up one day. He made himself noticed by reciting Schiller's “Cassandra” with furious emphasis, although he had no idea of any art of recitation, and unleashing it on the unsuspecting members of the Anthroposophical Society. In this way he made himself felt in the Society; to individual members he made himself felt by, as I was credibly told, energetically exercising the will to marry the young girls of the Society.

Now, of course, such things happen in the course of the flow of anthroposophical life, but sometimes they take on even more forms. One day the good man was seized by the urge to be a genius, a painter genius. He was seized not by the urge to become a genius, but to be a genius, not by the urge to become a painter. If anyone expected him to become a painter, he took it as an insult.

He couldn't paint, couldn't do anything, but he wanted to be a painter. He moved to Munich, and we tried in every way – didn't we, to a certain extent anyone can become a painter – to get him teachers. He has been supported, but we just couldn't make him a genius. And this whole matter developed into what is now called the “Bamler case”, which is supposed to characterize the entire disgrace of the anthroposophical movement with invented stuff about exercises causing bruises on the skin and similar things. These articles are accepted with open arms, and not only that, by busy editors, by editors who are sometimes of such a nature that they make any old remark, and someone writes to them – I am only telling facts, a correct judgment can only be based on facts and I am accustomed to telling only facts —, someone wrote to the editor: Well, haven't you read the essay in your own magazine, which should have told you that this [illegible] is completely unjustified [illegible]? The editor replied to the person concerned: “Yes, do you think that I have time to read all the essays that are printed by me?”

Well, it is not about that when someone enters into a factual discussion, but rather that one wants to avoid it. For spiritual science has no need to fear factual discussions. One wants to collect all that is simply invented today from such things. For the things that are invented are indeed enough to make one want to climb up the walls – and are partly invented in the most obscene way.

I do not want to tell you obscenities today, which are already being printed, but I do want to give you a small sample of what is possible in this day and age; I will give you a sample that is sweet but no less ridiculous. I could come up with very thick chunks that would taste quite different, through which, in order to drive them into a scandal, anthroposophy is to be made impossible. I would like to give just a small sample. There is a nice / gap in the transcript] essay that contains things that are all made up. What matters is that they are made up. And what is not important is that attention is drawn to the fact that the personality who wrote this did so in a mentally ill state; that is not important, but that the things are objectively untrue. It says: Dr. Steiner often explained the Lazarus miracle to his students, the transformation of the human being through the Lazarus miracle. Dr. Steiner sent chocolate to a certain person who had to be taken to a sanatorium “to thicken the blood.” This chocolate had been chosen to bring about a transformation in the person in the sense of the Lazarus miracle.

There you have an example – as I said, I have chosen one that is still the most appetizing, but that does not make it any less likely for you to invent. But there are editors who write: “Even a healthy person could be put in an asylum because of such craziness.” - So you can imagine: someone thinks that Dr. Steiner wrote about the Lazarus miracle; Dr. Steiner wants to perform the Lazarus miracle by sending chocolate biscuits - now imagine during the war - to a sick woman in the sanatorium to send chocolate biscuits to thicken the blood so that the Lazarus miracle will take place. This will be printed today, and an editor can be found who says: “Through such follies, even a healthy person could end up in an insane asylum.”

Yes, it is ridiculous, but the very campaign that is starting today is characterized by the fact that on the one hand it is ridiculously ridiculous and on the other hand it is downright spiteful. For it has become possible for articles to appear in the “Psychische Studien” with comments by the editor that ridicule the anthroposophical movement and drive it into scandal. It has become possible for such an article to appear that one would have to experience first hand to believe that such things could appear. For against the prevailing attitude, everything that has been written in the scandal press so far does not come up. For to proceed in such a way would have been avoided until now – I will say, if not towards a man, then at least towards a woman, but that has also become possible.

And it has become possible that just people who cannot be rejected when they enter society – because the one who wrote this was, of course, a member of the Anthroposophical Society – because one cannot anticipate the future, one cannot reject them; it is possible for these things to happen. It is possible, my dear friends, that now, in the most incredible way, what really did not happen to my pleasure and at the request of the members, that the most incredible gossip and slander about the personal relationship between me and Dr. Steiner and the members – that all of this is being dragged into gossip and slander and – not to speak with my own words, but with the words of a friend who was at the Nuremberg lectures and heard the matter – into meanness. Not only did the Imperial Privy Councillor and Professor Max Seiling explain quite tastefully, despite the fact that he had come repeatedly over the years and did not even request brief private discussions, and now declares: the cycles would have a better style if they were corrected by me, instead of having private discussions with the members. Nevertheless, the imperial court councilor Professor Max Seiling knows very well how the cycles were wrested from me, because it was not my wish that they be published, but it was done out of two necessities: it was desired by the members, although I said there was no time to review them; on the other hand, the mischief that was done with the rewritten lectures. The rewriting went so far that one day we came across a lecture that had been rewritten. This transcript actually stated that I had said in a cycle that prostitution had been set up by the great initiates. This is just a sample of the things that were present in the private transcripts that were passed from hand to hand.

It was necessary that at least once the matter was taken in hand, that at least the follies that were passed from hand to hand in society in the form of private notes should cease. Nevertheless, the imperial court councilor Seiling had the nerve to say: if the private conversations had not taken place, then these lectures - while he was calculating and indicating prices - could have been corrected. All this is possible, other things are possible that I do not want to mention for the time being. All these things are possible, but it is precisely the private conversations that lead to things being invented, purely invented, and that are now beginning to be used because people do not want to fight objectively, that are now to be used to proceed in the most unobjective way against what the anthroposophical movement is.

What has been said over the years, and how have I emphasized: Those who know me know how opposed to everything sectarian what I have in mind is. And where is there more of a tendency towards it than in our society! I need only mention one external manifestation. We once wanted to travel to a course in Helsingfors. We arrived at the Stettin train station and found, walking on the other platform, a whole company of female members - I don't want to say anything against the female members, it could also be male members - so we saw a whole bunch of ladies with purple bishop's caps in incredible costumes heading for the Helsingfors train. When the ladies got off in Helsingfors: One should have seen the fright that the poor Helsingfors Anthroposophists got. They no longer had any sense of the aesthetics of these bishop's caps and so on, but only the sense of accommodating the ladies in such a way that at least the rest of the Helsingfors population would not notice that they belonged to the Helsingfors Anthroposophists.

But this is only an outward sign of the urge for sectarianism. Again and again, people on the outside have to hear: This is a society built on authority. They do everything that Dr. Steiner wants. I don't think there is a society where it is like ours, where if something is to happen according to my opinion, it certainly won't happen. I do not consider myself the master of the Society, so I cannot demand that what I want should happen; but I can demand one thing: that I should not be asked. But on a small scale it has been shown time and again: some lady or man, it can also be a gentleman, feels the need to justify to her husband or a friend why she is traveling on a cycle. What does she say? “Doctor Steiner said so.” — What do I care whether she goes to the cycle or not? — ‘Do you have anything against it?’ she asks me. — I can't have anything against it, that would be an infringement of human freedom, which I respect and value. But then one says: ‘Doctor Steiner said I should travel to the cycle.’

Well, these are the kinds of insinuations that make it necessary, after years of talking about these things, to take measures once, not to take them, but because they are necessary, even if they are as difficult for me as they are for some people, but to emphasize the seriousness that is necessary in these measures.

Firstly, I now have to stop having private conversations with members for the time being. I can no longer have private conversations with members. I can only say that I am as sorry as anyone can be, but you will have to turn to those who made this necessary. It was not I who made it necessary.

The second thing is – but I ask that the one not be told without the other, the one is not right without the other – the second thing is: I explain to everyone who has ever had a private conversation with me that they can tell everything that has been said in these private conversations or has otherwise occurred, that they can tell everything completely, as far as they themselves want. I urge no one not to tell anything, insofar as he himself wants, that has ever occurred in such conversations. Nothing need shun the light of day if it is truthfully communicated.

So first, the private conversations must stop; second, I authorize everyone, insofar as he himself wants, to tell everything that has ever been spoken or occurred in any private conversation. It remains to be seen whether, under the seriousness of these measures, one or the other may yet be achieved. For my part, I am completely convinced that those of our dear members who are seriously and with dignity seeking that which must now be sought through spiritual science within humanity not only understand these two measures, but also approve of them and find them necessary. For those who seriously want to advance esoterically – just give me a little time, and even without the private conversations I will find ways and means to ensure that no one is held back in their esoteric development; a fully valid substitute will be found, it just has to be created first.

I have only given you a small part of the characteristics of the campaign as it is now being launched, but something must be done, because it is not acceptable to be caught between personal spite and ridicule. After all, it could be said in Munich: One of the most serious attacks is yet to come, that of Goesch.

Yes, my dear friends, that can be said, even though Goesch's attack is typical of the stupid and ridiculous on the one hand, because he engages in magical effects of handshakes and the like, and on the other hand, just in mere spite.

Perhaps if we just have a little awareness / gap in the transcript] some things can be improved. I know that those who take the Anthroposophical Society and spiritual science seriously will understand me.