The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You will have gathered from the lecture yesterday that a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke cannot be understood unless the evolution of humanity is pictured from the higher vantage-point of spiritual science—in other words unless the transformations that have taken place in the whole nature and constitution of man during the process of evolution are kept in mind. In order to understand the radical change that came about in humanity at the time of Christ Jesus—and this it necessary for elucidation of the Gospel of St. Luke it will be well to make a comparison with what is happening in our own age—admittedly less rapidly and more gradually but for all that clearly perceptible to those possessed of insight.

To begin with we must entirely discard a frequently expressed idea to which mental laziness gives ready assent, namely, that Nature, or Evolution, makes no ‘jumps’. In its ordinarily accepted sense, no statement could be more erroneous than this. Nature is perpetually making jumps! This very fact is essential and fundamental. Think, for example, of how the plant develops from the seed. The appearance of the first leaflet is evidence of an important jump. Another is made when the plant advances from leaf to flower; another when its life passes from the outer to the inner part of the blossom; and yet another, very important jump has been made when the fruit appears. Anyone who ignores the fact that such jumps occur very frequently will entirely fail to understand Nature. When such a man turns his attention to humanity and observes that development in some particular century proceeded at a snail's pace, he will believe that the same will be the case during other periods. It may very well be that in a particular period development is slow, as it is in the plant from the first green leaf to the last. But just as in the plant a jump occurs when the last leaf has developed and the blossom appears, so do jumps continually occur in the evolution of humanity. The jump made when Christ Jesus appeared on Earth was so decisive that within a comparatively short time the old clairvoyance and the mastery of the spiritual over the bodily nature were transformed to such an extent that only remnants of clairvoyance and of the former power of the soul-and-spirit over the physical continued to exist. Hence before that drastic change took place it was essential that whatever of the ancient heritage survived should once again be gathered together. It was in this milieu that Christ Jesus was to work. The new impulse could then be received into mankind and develop by slow degrees.

In another domain a jump is also taking place in our own epoch, but not so rapidly. Although a longer period of time is involved, the parallel will be quite comprehensible to those who understand the character of the present age. We can most easily form an idea of this jump by listening to people who approach spiritual science from one sphere or another of cultural life. It may happen that the representative of some religious body comes to a lecture on spiritual science ... what I am saying is quite understandable and is not meant as censure. He listens to a lecture let us say on the nature of Christianity, and says afterwards: ‘It all sounds very beautiful and fundamentally speaking is not at variance with what we ourselves preach. But we put it in a way that is intelligible to everyone, whereas only a few individuals can understand what is being said here.’ This statement is frequently made. But whoever says or believes that his is the only right way of presenting Christianity overlooks one essential, namely that he must judge according to facts, not according to his personal inclinations. I once had occasion to reply: ‘No doubt you believe that you are presenting the truths of Christianity in a form suitable for everyone. But beliefs prove nothing; only facts decide. Does everybody go to your Church? Thus facts prove the contrary. Spiritual Science is not there for people whose spiritual needs you are able to satisfy; it is there for people who demand something else.’

We are living in an age when it is becoming impossible for human hearts to accept the Bible as it has been accepted during the last four or five centuries of European civilization. Either mankind will receive spiritual science and through it learn to understand the Bible in a new way, or, as is now happening to many who are unacquainted with Anthroposophy, men will cease to listen to the Bible. In that case they would lose the Bible altogether and with it untold spiritual treasures—actually the greatest and most significant spiritual treasures of our Earth evolution! This must be realized. We are now at the point where a jump is to take place in evolution; the human heart is demanding the spiritual-scientific elucidation of the Bible. Given such elucidation, the Bible will be preserved, to the infinite blessing of mankind; without it the Bible will be lost. This should be taken earnestly by those who believe that they must at all costs adhere to their personal inclinations and the traditional attitude towards the Bible. Such, therefore, is the jump now being taken in evolution. Nothing will divert a man who is aware of this from cultivating Antroposophy, because he recognizes it as a necessity for the evolution of humanity.

Considered from a higher point of view, what is happening at the present time is relatively unimportant compared with what took place when Christ Jesus came to the Earth. In those days the stage reached in the evolution of humanity was such that the last examples were still in existence of its development since primeval times, actually since the previous embodiment of the Earth. Man was developing primarily in his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the Ego had long since been membered into him but at that time was still playing a subordinate rôle. Until the coming of Christ Jesus the fully self-conscious Ego was still obscured by the three sheaths: physical body, etheric body and astral body.

Let us suppose that Christ Jesus had not come to the Earth. What would have happened? As evolution progressed the Ego would have fully emerged; but to the same extent as it emerged, all earlier outstanding faculties of the astral, etheric and physical bodies, all the old clairvoyance, all the old mastery of the soul and spirit over the body would have vanished. That would have been the inevitable course of evolution. Man would have become a self-conscious Ego, but an Ego that would have led him more and more to egoism and to the disappearance and extinction of love on the Earth. Men would have become ‘Egos’, but utterly egotistical beings. That is the point of importance.

When Christ Jesus came to the Earth man was ready for the development of the Self, the Ego; for this very reason, however, he was beyond the stage where it would have been permissible to work upon him in the old way. In the ancient Hebrew period, for example, the ‘Law’, the proclamation from Sinai, was able to take effect because the Ego had not fully emerged and what the astral body—the highest part of man's constitution at that time—should do and feel in order to act rightly in the outer world was instilled, impressed into it. The Law of Sinai came to men as a last prophetic announcement in the epoch preceding the full emergence of the Ego. Had the Ego emerged and nothing else intervened, man would have heeded nothing except his own Ego. Humanity was ready for the development of the Ego but it would have been an empty Ego, concerned with itself alone and having no wish to do anything for others or for the world.

To give this Ego a real content, so to stimulate its development that the power of love should stream from it—that was the Deed of Christ Jesus on the Earth. Without Him the Ego would have become an empty vessel; through His coming it can become a vessel filled more and more completely with love. To those around Him Christ could speak to the following effect: ‘When you see clouds gathering, you say: there will be this or that weather; you judge what the weather will be by the outer signs, but the signs of the times you do not understand! If you were able to understand and assess what is going on around you, you would know that the Godhead must penetrate into the Ego. Then you would not say: We can be satisfied with traditions handed down from earlier times. It is what comes from earlier times that is presented to you by the Scribes and Pharisees who wish to preserve the old and will allow nothing to be added to what was once given to man. But that is a leaven which will have no further effect in evolution. Whoever says that he will believe only in Moses and the Prophets does not understand the signs of the times, nor does he know what a transition is taking place in humanity!’ (Cp. Luke XII, 54–57). In memorable words Christ Jesus said to those around Him that whether or not an individual will become Christian does not depend upon his personal inclination but upon the inevitable progress of evolution. By the words recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke concerning the ‘signs of the time’, Christ Jesus wished to make it understood that the old leaven represented by the Scribes and Pharisees who preserve only what is antiquated, was no longer sufficient and that belief to the contrary could be entertained only by those who felt no obligation to put aside personal inclinations and judge according to the necessity of the times. Hence Christ Jesus called what the Scribes and Pharisees desired, ‘Untruth’—something that does not tally with reality in the outer world. That would have been the real meaning of the expression.

We can best realize the forcefulness of these words by thinking of analogous happenings in our own day. How should we have to speak if we wished to apply to the present age what Christ Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees? Are there, in our own times, any who resemble the Scribes? Yes indeed! They are the people who will not accept the deeper explanation of the Gospels and refuse to listen to anything that is beyond the range of their own faculties of comprehension—faculties that have been unaffected by spiritual science; these people refuse to keep pace with the strides in knowledge of the foundations of the Gospels made through spiritual science. This is really everywhere the case when efforts—no matter whether of a more progressive or more reactionary character—are made to interpret the Gospels, for the fact is that the capacity for such interpretation can develop only on the soil of spiritual science—there and there alone. Spiritual science is the only source from which truth about the Gospels can be derived. That is why all other contemporary research seems so barren, so unsatisfactory, wherever there is a genuine desire to seek the truth.

To-day, as well as the ‘Scribes and Pharisees’ there are the natural scientists—a third type. We may therefore speak of three categories of men who want to exclude everything that leads to the spiritual, everything in the way of faculties attainable by man in order to penetrate to the spiritual foundations of the phenomena of Nature. And those who, among others, must be impugned at the present time, if one speaks in the sense of true Christianity, are very often the holders of professorships! They have every opportunity for comparing and collating the phenomena of Nature, but they entirely reject the spiritual explanations. It is they who hinder progress; for humanity's progress is hindered wherever there is refusal to recognize the signs of the times in the sense indicated.

In our days the only kind of action consistent with discipleship of Christ Jesus would be to find the courage to turn—as He turned against those who wished to confine truth to Moses and the Prophets—against people who retard progress by rejecting the anthroposophical interpretation of the scriptures on the one side and the phenomena of Nature on the other. Now and then there are really well-meaning people who occasionally would like to bring about a kind of vague reconciliation. But it would be well if in the hearts of all such people there were some understanding of the words spoken by Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Among the most beautiful and impressive parables in that Gospel is the one usually known as the parable of the unjust steward. (Luke XVI, 1–13.) A rich man had a steward who was accused of wasting his goods. He therefore decided to dismiss the steward. The latter asked himself in dismay: ‘What shall I do? I cannot support myself as a husbandman for I do not understand such work, nor can I beg, for I should be ashamed.’ Then the thought occurred to him: In all my dealings with the people with whom my stewardship brought me into contact, I had in mind only the interests of my lord; therefore they will have no particular liking for me. I have paid no attention to their interests. I must do something in order to be received into their houses and so not be utterly ruined; I will do something to show that I wish them well. Thereupon he went to one of his lord's debtors and asked him: ‘How much owest thou?’—and allowed him to cancel half the debt. He did the same with the others. In this way he tried to ingratiate himself with the debtors, so that when his lord dismissed him he might be received by these people and not die of starvation. That was his object. The Gospel continues—possibly to the astonishment of some readers: ‘And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.’ Those who set out to elucidate the Gospels to-day have actually speculated about which ‘lord’ is meant, although it is absolutely clear that Jesus was praising the steward for his cleverness. Then the verse continues: ‘For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’ This is how the sentence has stood for centuries. But has anyone ever reflected upon what is meant by ‘the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light?’ ‘In their generation’ stands in all the different translations of the Bible. But if someone with only scanty knowledge were to translate the Greek text correctly, it would read: ‘for the children of this world in their way are wiser than the children of light,’ that is to say, in their way the children of this world are wiser than the children of light, wiser according to their own understanding—that is what Christ meant. Translators of this passage have for centuries confused the expression ‘in their way’ with a word that actually has a very similar sound in the Greek language; they have confused it—and do so to this very day—with ‘generations’, because the word was sometimes also used for the other concept. It hardly seems possible that this kind of thing should have dragged on for centuries and that modern, reputedly good translators, who, have endeavoured to convey the exact meaning of the text, should make no change. Weizsacker, for example, gives this actual rendering! Strangely enough, people seem to forget the most elementary school-knowledge when they set about investigating biblical records. Spiritual science will have to restore the biblical records in their true form to the world, for the world to-day does not, properly speaking, possess the Bible and can have no real grasp of its contents. It might even be asked: Are these the genuine texts of the Bible? No, in very important parts they are not, as I will show you in still greater detail.

What is the meaning of this parable of the unjust steward? The steward reflected: If I must leave my post I must gain the affection of the people. He realized that one cannot serve ‘two masters’. Christ said to those around Him: ‘You too must realize that you cannot serve two masters; the one who is now to enter the hearts of men as God, and the one hitherto proclaimed by the Scribes and the interpreters of the books of the Prophets. You cannot serve the God who is to draw into your souls as the Christ-principle and give a mighty impetus to the evolution of humanity, and the other God who would hinder this evolution.’ Everything that was right and proper in a bygone age becomes a hindrance if carried over into a later stage of evolution. In a certain sense the process of evolution itself is based upon this principle. The Powers which direct the ‘hindrances’ were called at that time by a technical expression: Mammon. ‘You cannot serve the God who will progress, and Mammon, the God of Hindrances. Think of the steward who, as a child of the world, realized that one cannot serve two masters, not even with the help of Mammon. So too should you perceive, in striving to become children of light, that you cannot serve two masters!’ (Cp. Luke XVI, 11–13.)

Those living in the present age must also realize that no reconciliation is possible between the God Mammon in our time—between the modern ‘scribes’ and scientific pundits—and the direction of thought that must provide human beings to-day with the nourishment they need. This is spoken in a truly Christian sense. Clothed in current language, what Christ Jesus wished to bring home to those around Him in the parable of the unjust steward was that no man can serve two masters.

The Gospels must be understood in a really living way. Spiritual science itself must become a living reality! Under its influence everything it touches should be imbued with life. The Gospel itself should be something that streams into our own spiritual faculties. We should not only chatter about the Scribes and Pharisees having been repudiated in the days of Christ Jesus, for then once again we should be thinking only of an age that is past. We must know where the successor of the Power described by Christ Jesus for His epoch as the ‘God Mammon’ is to be found to-day. That is a living kind of understanding—which is also such a very important factor in what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. For with the parable that is found only in this Gospel there is connected one of the most significant concepts in all the Gospels: it is a concept we can engrave into our hearts and souls only if we are able once again, and from a somewhat different angle, to make it clear how Buddha, and the impulse he gave, were related to Christ Jesus.

We have heard that Buddha brought to mankind the great teaching of compassion and love. Here is one of the instances where what is said in occultism must be taken exactly as it stands, for otherwise it might be objected that at one time Christ is said to have brought love to the Earth, and at another that Buddha brought the teaching of love. But is that the same? On one occasion I said that Buddha brought the teaching of love to the Earth and on another occasion that Christ brought love itself as a living power to the Earth. That is the great difference. Close attention is necessary when the deepest concerns of humanity are being considered; for otherwise what happens is that information given in one place is presented somewhere else in a quite different form and then it is said that in order to be fair to everybody I have proclaimed two messengers of love! The very closest attention is essential in occultism. When this enables us really to understand the words in which the momentous truths are clothed, they are seen in the right light.

Knowing that the great teaching of compassion and love brought by Buddha is given expression in the Eightfold Path, we may ask ourselves: What is the aim of this Eightfold Path? What does a man attain when from the depths of his soul he adopts it as his life's ideal, never losing sight of the goal and asking continually: How can I reach the greatest perfection? How can I purify my Ego most completely? What must I do to enable my Ego to fulfil its function in the world as perfectly as possible?—Such a man will say to himself: If I obey every precept of the Eightfold Path my Ego will reach the greatest perfection that it is possible to conceive. Everything is a matter of the purification and ennoblement of the Ego; everything that can stream from this wonderful Eightfold Path must penetrate into us. The point of importance is that it is work carried out by the Ego, for its own perfecting. If, therefore, men were to develop to further stages in themselves that which Buddha set in motion as the ‘Wheel of the Law’ (that is the technical term), their Egos would gradually become possessed of wisdom at a high level—wisdom in the form of thought—and they would recognize the signs of perfection. Buddha brought to humanity the wisdom of love and compassion, and when we succeed in making the whole astral body a product of the Eightfold Path, we shall possess the requisite knowledge of the laws expressed in its teachings.

But there is a difference between wisdom in the form of thought and wisdom as living power; there is a difference between knowing what the Ego must become and allowing the living power to flow into our very being so that it may stream forth again from the Ego into all the world as it streamed from Christ, working upon the astral, etheric and physical bodies of those around Him. The impulse given by the great Buddha enabled humanity to have knowledge of the teaching of compassion and love. What Christ brought is first and foremost a living power, not a teaching. He sacrificed His very Self, He descended in order to flow not merely into the astral bodies of men but into the Ego, so that the Ego itself should have the power to ray out love as substantiality. Christ brought to the Earth the substantiality, the living essence of love, not merely the wisdom-filled content of love. That is the all-important point.

Nineteen centuries and roughly five more have now elapsed since the great Buddha lived on the Earth; in about three thousand years from now—this we learn from occultism—a considerable number of human beings will have reached the stage of being able to evolve the wisdom of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, out of their own moral nature, out of their own heart and soul. Buddha had once to be on Earth, and the power that mankind will develop little by little as the wisdom of the Eightfold Path proceeded from him; after about three thousand years from now men will be able to unfold its teaching from within themselves; it will then be their own possession and they will no longer be obliged to receive it from outside. Then they will be able to say: This Eightfold Path springs from our very selves as the wisdom of compassion and love.

Even if nothing else had happened than the setting in motion of the Wheel of the Law by the great Buddha, in three thousand years from now humanity would have become capable of knowing the doctrine of compassion and love. But it is a different matter also to have acquired the faculty to embody it in very life. Not only to know about compassion and love, but under the influence of an Individuality to unfold it as living power—there lies the difference. This faculty proceeded from Christ. He poured love itself into men and it will grow from strength to strength. When men have reached the end of their evolution, wisdom will have revealed to them the content of the doctrine of compassion and love; this they will owe to Buddha. But at the same time they will possess the faculty of letting the love stream out from the Ego over mankind; this they will owe to Christ.

Thus Buddha and Christ worked in co-operation, and the exposition given has been necessary in order that the Gospel of St. Luke may be properly understood. We realize this at once when we know how to interpret correctly the words used in the Gospel. (Luke II, 13–14.) The great proclamation is to be made to the shepherds. Above them is the ‘heavenly host’—this is the spiritual, imaginative expression for the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. What is it that is proclaimed to the shepherds from on high? The ‘manifestation (or revelation) of the wisdom-filled God from the Heights!’ This is the proclamation made to the shepherds by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, pictured as the ‘heavenly host’ hovering over the Nathan Jesus-child. But something else is added: ‘And peace be to men on the Earth below who are filled with a good will’—that is, men in whom the living power of love is germinating. It is this that must gradually become reality on Earth through the new impulse given by Christ. To the ‘revelation from the Heights’ He added the living power, bringing into every human heart and into every human soul something that can fill the soul to overflowing. He gave the soul not merely a teaching that could be received in the form of thought and idea, but a power that can stream forth from it. The Christ-bestowed power that can fill the human soul to overflowing is called in the Gospel of St. Luke, and in the other Gospels too, the power of Faith. This is what the Gospels mean by Faith. A man who receives Christ into himself so that Christ lives in him, a man whose Ego is not an empty vessel but is filled to overflowing with love—such a man has Faith.

Why could Christ be the supreme illustration of the power of ‘healing through the word?’ Because He was the first to set in motion the ‘Wheel of Love’ (not the ‘Wheel of the Law’) as a freely working faculty and power of the human soul; because love in the very highest measure was within him—love brimming over in such abundance that it could pour into those around Him who needed to be healed; because the words He spoke, no matter whether ‘Stand up and walk!’ or ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, or other words—issued from over-flowing love. His words were uttered from overflowing love—love transcending the limits of the Ego. And those who were able to some extent to experience this were called by Christ ‘the faithful’. This is the only true interpretation of the concept of Faith—one of the most fundamental concepts in the New Testament. Faith is the capacity to transcend the self, to transcend what the Ego can—for the time being—achieve. Therefore when he had passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus and had there united with the power of the Buddha, Christ's teaching was not concerned with the question: ‘How shall the Ego achieve the greatest possible perfection?’ but rather with the question ‘How shall the Ego overflow? How can the Ego transcend its own limits?’ He often used simple words, and indeed the Gospel of St. Luke as a whole speaks to the hearts of the simplest men. Christ said, in effect: It is not enough to give something only to those of whom you know for certain that they will give it back to you again, for sinners also do that. If you know that it will come back to you, your action has not been prompted by overflowing love. But if you give something knowing that it will not come back to you, then you have acted out of pure love; for that is pure love which the Ego does not keep enclosed but releases as a power that flows forth from a man. (Luke VI, 33–34.) In many and various ways Christ speaks of how the Ego must overflow and how the power overflowing from the Ego, and from feeling emancipated from self-interest, must work in the world.

The words of greatest warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke are those which tell of this overflowing love. The Gospel itself will be found to contain this overflowing love if we let its words work upon us in such a way that the love pervades all our own words, enabling them to make their effect in the outer world. Another Evangelist, who because of his different antecedents lays less emphasis upon this particular secret of Christianity, has for all that summarized it in a short sentence. In the Latin translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew we still have the genuine, original words which epitomise the many beautiful passages about love contained in the Gospel of St. Luke: Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur. ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ (>Matt. XII, 34.) This expresses one of the very highest Christian ideals! The mouth speaks from the overflowing heart, from that which the heart does not confine within itself. The heart is set in motion by the blood and the blood is the expression of the Ego. The meaning is therefore this: ‘Speak from an Ego which overflows and rays forth power (the power of faith). Then do thy words contain the Christ-power!’—‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh!’ this is a cardinal principle of Christianity.

In the modern German Bible this passage is rendered: ‘His mouth overflows whose heart is full!’¹ These words have for centuries succeeded in obscuring a cardinal principle of Christianity. The absurdity of saying that the heart overflows when it is ‘full’ has not dawned upon people, although things do not generally overflow unless they are more than full! Humanity—this is not meant as criticism—has inevitably become entangled in an idea which obscures an essential principle of Christianity and has never noticed that the sentence as it stands here is meaningless. If it is contended that the German language does not allow of a literal translation of Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur into ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh’ on the ground that one cannot say ‘The abundance of the stove makes the room warm’—that too is senseless. For if the stove is heated only to the extent that the warmth just reaches its sides, the room will not be heated, it will be heated only when a superabundance of warmth comes out of the stove. Here we light upon a point of great significance: a cardinal principle of Christianity, one upon which part of the Gospel of St. Luke is based, has been entirely obscured, with the result that the meaning of one of the most important passages in the Gospel has remained hidden from humanity.

The power that can overflow from the human heart is the Christ-power. ‘Heart’ and ‘Ego’ are here synonymous. What the Ego is able to create when transcending its own limits flows forth through the word. Not until the end of Earth evolution will the Ego be fit to enshrine the nature of Christ in its fullness. In the present age Christ is a power that brims over from the heart. A man who is content that his heart shall merely be ‘full’ does not possess the Christ. Hence an essential principle of Christianity is obscured if the weight and significance of this sentence are not realized. Things of infinite importance, belonging to the very essence of Christianity, will come to light through what spiritual science is able to say in elucidation of the sacred records of Christianity. By reading the Akashic Chronicle, spiritual science is able to discover the original meanings and thus to read the records in their true form.

We shall now understand how humanity advances into the future. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five or six centuries before our era, ascended into the spiritual world and now works in his Nirmanakaya. He has risen to a higher stage and need not again descend into a physical body. The powers that were his as Bodhisattva are again present—but in a different form. When he became Buddha at that time, he passed over the office of Bodhisattva to another who became his successor; another became Bodhisattava. A Buddhist legend speaks of this in words which give expression to a deep truth of Christianity. It is narrated that the Bodhisattva, before descending to the incarnation when he became Buddha, removed his heavenly tiara and placed it upon the Bodhisattva who was to be his successor. The latter, with his somewhat different mission, works on. He too is to become a Buddha. When—in about three thousand years—a number of human beings have evolved from within themselves the teachings of the Eightfold Path, the present Bodhisattva will become Buddha, as did his predecessor. Entrusted with his mission five or six centuries before our era, he will become Buddha in about three thousand years, reckoning from our present time. Oriental wisdom knows him as the Maitreya Buddha.²]

Before the present Bodhisattva can become the Maitreya Buddha a considerable number of human beings must have developed the precepts of the Eightfold Path out of their own hearts and by that time many will have become capable of this. Then he who is now the Bodhisattva will bring a new power into the world.

If nothing further were to have happened by then, the future Buddha would, it is true, find human beings capable of thinking out the teachings of the Eightfold Path through deep meditation, but not such as have within their inmost soul the living, overflowing power of love. This living power of love must stream into mankind in the intervening time in order that the Maitreya Buddha may find not only human beings who understand what love is, but those who have within them the power of love. It was for this purpose that Christ descended to the Earth. He descended for three years only, never having been embodied on the Earth before, as you will have gathered from everything that has been said. The presence of Christ on the Earth for three years—from the Baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha—meant that love will flow in ever-increasing measure into the human heart, into the human soul in other words, into the human Ego; so that at the end of Earth evolution the Ego will be filled with the power of Christ. Just as the teaching of compassion and love had first to be kindled to life through the Bodhisattva, the substance of love had to be brought down from heavenly heights to the Earth by the Being who allows it gradually to become the possession of the human Ego itself. We may not say that love was not previously in existence. What was not present before the coming of Christ was the love that could be the direct possession of the human Ego; it was love that was inspired that Christ enabled to stream down from cosmic Heights; it streamed into men unconsciously, just as previously the Bodhisattva had enabled the teaching of the Eightfold Path to stream into them unconsciously. Buddha's relation to the Eightfold Path was analogous to the status of the Christ-Being before it was possible for Him to descend in order to take human form. The taking of human form signified progress for Christ. That is the all-important point.

Buddha's successor—now a Bodhisattva—is well known to those versed in spiritual science and the time will come when these facts—including the name of the Bodhisattva who will then become the Maitreya Buddha—will be spoken of explicitly. For the present, however, when so many factors unknown to the external world have been presented, indications must suffice. When this Bodhisattva appears on Earth and becomes Maitreya Buddha, he will find on Earth the seed of Christ, embodied in those human beings who say: ‘Not only is my head filled with the wisdom of the Eightfold Path; I have not only the teaching, the wisdom of love, but my heart is filled with the living substance of love which overflows and streams into the world.’ And then, together with such human beings, the Maitreya Buddha will be able to carry out his further mission in the world's evolution.

All these truths are interrelated and only by realizing this are we able to understand the profundities of the Gospel of St. Luke. This Gospel does not speak to us of a ‘teaching’, but of Him who flowed as very substance into the beings of the Earth and into the constitution of man. This is a truth expressed in occultism by saying: The Bodhisattvas who become Buddhas can, through wisdom, redeem earthly man in respect of his spirit, but they can never redeem the whole man. For the whole man can be redeemed only when the warm power of love—not wisdom alone—flows through his whole being. The redemption of souls through the outpouring of love which He brought to the Earth—that was the mission of Christ. To bring the wisdom of love was the mission of the Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha; to bring to mankind the power of love was the mission of Christ. This distinction must be made.

• 1. In the English versions of the New Testament the correct meaning has been preserved. (See Matt. XII, 34, also Luke VI, 43.
• 2. Among countless references to Maitreya Buddha in the vast literature of Buddhism, special attention may be called to the chapter entitled ‘Maitreya, the future Buddha’, in Buddhist Scriptures, translated by Edward Conze (Penguin Classics).

  Dr. Steiner spoke of Maitreya Buddha in many lecture-courses and in considerable detail in the following lectures: Buddha and Christ. The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas, given in Milan, 21st September 1911; Jeshu ben Pandira, Lecture 1, 4th November 1911, and Jeschu ben Pandira, Lecture 2, 5th November 1911, both lectures given in Leipzig.

Since we spoke yesterday of the differentiation of the soul life of the human being into three parts—the realm of concepts, or of thought, the realm of emotions, and the realm of will impulses—it should be interesting to us now to raise the question: How can self-discipline, the nurture of the soul life, take hold in order to work in the appropriate way through one's own activity on the right development and cultivation of these three parts of the soul life? Here we shall begin with our life of will, of our will impulses, and shall ask ourselves: What characteristics must we cultivate very specially if we wish to work in a beneficial way on our will life?

Most beneficial of all in our will nature is the influence of a life directed in its entire character toward a comprehension of karma. We might also say a life of the soul which strives to develop, as its primary characteristic, serenity and acceptance of our destiny. And how could one better acquire for oneself this acceptance, this calmness of soul in the presence of one's destiny, than by making of karma an actual content in one's life?

What is the meaning of making karma a real content of life? This means that—not merely as a theory but in a living way—when our own sorrow or the sorrow of another comes to us, when we experience joy or the heaviest blow of fate, we shall really be fully aware that, in a certain higher sense, we ourselves have given the occasion for this painful blow of fate; that is, the development of such a mood as to accept an experience of joy with gratitude, but also to be clearly aware, especially in regard to joy, that we must not go to excess, since it is perilous in a certain way to go to excess in connection with joy. If we desire to move upward in our development, we can conceive joy in the following way. For the most part, joy is something which points to a future destiny, not to one already past. In human life joy is for the most part something one has not deserved through previous actions. When we investigate karma by occult means, we always discover that in most cases the joy one experiences has not been merited, and that the manner in which we should view an experience of joy is to accept it gratefully as sent to us by the Gods, as a gift of the Gods, and to say to ourselves: The joy which comes to meet us today ought to kindle in us the will to work in such a way as to take into ourselves the forces streaming to us through this joy, and to apply these usefully. We must look upon joy as a sort of prepayment on account for the future.

In the case of pain, on the contrary, our actions have generally been such that we have merited this, that we always find the reason in the course of our present life or in earlier lives. And we must then realize with the utmost clarity that we have often failed to conduct ourselves in our external life in accordance with this karmic mood. We are not able so to conduct ourselves always in external life in the presence of what causes us pain that our conduct shall seem to be an acceptance of our destiny. We do not generally have an insight into such a thing at once—into the law of destiny. But, even though we are not able to conduct ourselves outwardly in such a way, yet the principal thing is that we shall do this inwardly.

And even if we have conducted ourselves outwardly in accordance with this karmic mood, yet we should say to ourselves in the depths of our souls that we ourselves have been the cause of all such things. Suppose, for instance, that some one strikes us, that he beats us with a stick. In such a case it is generally characteristic for a person to ask: "Who is it that strikes me?" No one says in such a case: "It is I that beat myself." Only in the rarest cases do people say that they punish themselves. And yet it is true that we ourselves lifted the stick against another person in days gone by. Yes, it is you yourself who then raised the stick. When we have to get rid of a hindrance, this is karma. It is karma when others hold something against us. It is we ourselves who cause something to happen to us as recompense for something we have done. And thus do we come to a right attitude toward our life, to a broadening of our self, when we say: "Everything that befalls us comes from ourselves. Our own action is fulfilled outwardly even when it seems as if some one else performed it."

If we develop such a way of viewing things, then our serenity, our acceptance of our karma in all occurrences, fortifies our will. We grow stronger in facing life through serenity, never weaker. Through anger and impatience do we become weak? In the face of every occurrence we are strong when we are serene. On the contrary, we become continually weaker in will through moroseness and an unnatural rebellion against destiny.

Of course, we must view within a broad circumference that which we consider as destiny. We must conceive this destiny of ours in such a way that we say to ourselves, for instance, that the development of precisely one power or another at a certain period of one's life pertains also to a person's karma. And mistakes are often made just here in the education of children. Here karma comes into contact with the problem of education, for education is destiny, the karma of the human being in youth.

We weaken the will of a person when we expect him to learn something, to do something, for which his capacities are not yet adequate. In the matter of education one must have come to see clearly in advance what is suitable for each stage of life in accordance with the universal karma of humanity, so that the right thing may be done. Doing the wrong thing is raising a rebellion against destiny, against these laws, and is associated with enormous weakening of the will. It is not possible to discuss here how a weakening of the will is associated with all premature awakening of the sensual appetites and passions. It is the prematurely awakened appetites, instincts and passions which are especially subject to this law. For making use prematurely of such instrumentalities as those of the bodily organs is contrary to destiny. All that is directly against the karma of humanity, all actions opposing the existing arrangements of nature, are associated with a weakening of the will.

Since people have been for a long time without any true fundamental principles of education, there are many persons in the present population of the world who did not pass through their youth in the right way. If humanity does not determine to direct what is most important of all, the education of youth, according to spiritual-science, there will arise a race with ever weaker wills—and this not in a merely external sense. This takes a deep hold in the life of the human being. Ask a number of persons how they came into their present occupations. You may be sure that most of them will answer: "Well, we don't know; we have in some way been pushed into the situation." This feeling that one has been pushed into something, has been driven into it, this feeling of discontent, is also a sign of weakness of will.

Now, when this weakness of will is brought about in the manner described, still other results follow from this for the human soul, especially when the weakness of will is evoked in such a way that states of anxiety, of fear, of despair are produced at a youthful age. It will be increasingly necessary that human beings shall possess a fundamental understanding of the higher laws in order to overcome states of despair, for it is precisely the mood of despair which is to be expected when we do not proceed in accordance with the knowledge of the spirit.

By means of a monistic and materialistic world view it is possible to maintain only two generations of persons with strong wills. Materialism can satisfy just two generations: the one that founded the conception and the pupils who have received it from the founders. This is the peculiarity of the monistic and materialistic world view: that the one who works in the laboratory or the workshop and who founded the view, whose powers are fully occupied and activated by what he is building up in his mind,—that he experiences an inner satisfaction. But one who merely associates himself with these theories, who takes over a materialism ready-made, will not be able to attain to this inner satisfaction; and then the despair will work back upon the culture of the will, and evoke weakness of will. Weakening of the will, human beings lacking energy, will be the results of this world view.

The second of the three aspects of the super-sensible life we mentioned yesterday is that of emotions. What affects the emotions in a favorable way?

If we take the utmost pains to acquire an attentive attitude of mind, a marked attentiveness for what occurs in our surroundings—and do not imagine that this attentiveness is very generally and strongly developed by people—this can be of great value to us. I must repeatedly mention a single illustration. In a certain country the order of the examinations for teachers was once altered, and for this reason all the school teachers had to stand the examinations again. The examiner had to test both old and young teachers. The young ones could be tested on the basis of what they had learned in the teachers' colleges. But how should he test the old teachers ? He decided to ask them about nothing except the subjects which they had themselves been teaching year after year in their own classes, and the result showed that very many of them had no notion of the very subjects they themselves had been teaching!

This attentiveness, this habit of following with vital interest the things that occur in one's environment, is most beneficial especially in the cultivation of the emotions.

Now, the emotions, like everything else in the soul, are connected in a certain way with the will impulses; and, when we influence our emotional life in an unfavorable way, we may thus influence indirectly the will impulses. We nurture our emotions in a favorable way when we place ourselves under the law of karma in the matter of our anger and our passions, when we hold fast to karma. And this we find in what occurs in our environment. We find it, for example, when any one does the opposite of what we had expected. We may then say to ourselves: "All right; that is simply what he is doing!" But we may also become angry and violent, and this is a sign of weakness of will.

Outbursts of violent temper hinder the development of the emotions and also the will, and have also a far more extensive influence, as we shall see at once. Now, anger is something that a person does not by any means have under his control. Only gradually can he master the habit of becoming angry. This can come about only gradually, and a person must have patience with himself. To any one who believes he can achieve this with a turn of the hand I must repeat the story of a teacher who took very much to heart the task of ridding his pupils of anger. When he was faced by the fact, after constant endeavors in this direction, that a boy still became angry, he himself became so angry that he threw the ink bottle at the child's head. A person who permits himself to do such a thing must think for many, many weeks about karma.

What this signifies will become clear to us if we take this occasion to look a little more deeply into the life of the human soul. There are the two poles in the soul life, the life of will on the one hand and that of thoughts, of conceptions, on the other. The emotions, the feelings of the heart, are in the middle. Now, we know that the life of man alternates between sleeping and waking; and, while the human being is awake, his life of thoughts and conceptions is especially active. For the fact that the will is not very wide awake can become clear to any one who observes closely how a will impulse comes about. We must first have a thought, a concept; only then does the will thrust upward from the depths of the soul. The thought evokes the will impulse. When the human being is awake, he is awake in thought, not in the will.

But occult science teaches us that, when we sleep, everything is reversed. Then the will is awake and is very active, and thought is inactive. This cannot be known by the human being in, a normal state of consciousness, for the simple reason that he knows things only by means of his thoughts and these are asleep. Thus he does not observe that his will is active. When he rises to clairvoyance and arrives at the world of imaginative representations, he then observes that the will awakes at the moment when thinking falls asleep. And the will slips into the pictures that he perceives and awakes these. The pictures are then woven out of will. Thus the thoughts are then asleep but the will is awake.

But this being awake in our will is connected with our total human nature in a manner entirely different from the connection of our thoughts. According as the person works or does not work, is well or ill, according as he develops serenity or is hot-tempered, does the will become healthy or unhealthy. And according as our will is healthy or unhealthy does it work in the night on the condition of our life, even into the physical body. Very much depends upon whether the person develops a mood of serenity during the day, acceptance of his destiny, and thus prepares his will so that this will may be said to develop a pleasant warmth, a feeling of well-being, or whether, on the other hand, he develops anger. This unhealthiness of the will streams into the body during the state of sleep at night and is the cause of numerous illnesses, whose causes are sought for but not found because the resulting physical illnesses appear only after the lapse of years or even decades. Only one who surveys great stretches of time can see in the manner indicated the connection between conditions of the soul and of the body. Even for the sake of bodily health, therefore, must the will be disciplined.

We can also influence our emotions through serenity and acceptance of our karma so that they work beneficially even upon our bodily organization. On the other hand, in no other way do we injure this organization more than through apathy, lack of interest in what is occurring around us. This apathy is spreading more and more; it is a characteristic which constitutes the final reason for the fact that so few persons take an interest in spiritual things. It may be supposed that objective reasons lead to the adoption of a materialistic view of life. There are really by no means such great objective reasons for a materialistic view of life. No, it is apathy; no one can be a materialist without being apathetic. It is a lack of attention to our surroundings. Any one who observes his environment with alert interest is confronted on all sides with that which can be harmonized only with spiritual knowledge. But apathy deadens the emotions and leads to weakness of will.

Furthermore, special significance attaches to the characteristic called obstinacy—the attitude of mind that insists inflexibly upon one thing or another. Unhealthy emotions can also bring about obstinacy. These things are often like the serpent that bites his own tail. All that we have mentioned may be caused by obstinacy. Even persons who go through life very inattentively may be very obstinate. Persons who are altogether weak-willed are often discovered to be obstinately persisting in something when we had not expected it, and the weakness of will becomes constantly more marked if we do not strive to overcome obstinacy. It is precisely in persons with weak wills that we find this quality of obstinacy. On the other hand, when we endeavor to avoid the development of obstinacy, we shall see that in every instance we have improved our emotions and strengthened our wills. Every time that we actually are goaded by an impulse to be obstinate but refuse to yield to it, we become stronger for the task of confronting life. We shall observe the fruits if we proceed systematically against this fault; through struggling to overcome obstinacy we attain to inner satisfaction. Especially does the nurturing of our emotions depend upon our struggling in every way to overcome obstinacy, apathy, lack of interest. In other words, interest and attentiveness in relation to the environment foster both the feelings of the heart and also the will. Apathy and obstinacy have the opposite effect.

For a sound emotional life, we have the fine word Sinnigkeit, [Sinnigkeit is scarcely translatable in one English word. It signifies the gift or capacity of inventive, or creative, fantasy.] Being creatively fanciful means that something of that character occurs to one. Children ought to play in such a way that the fantasy is stimulated, that the spontaneous activity of their souls is stimulated, so that they have to reflect about their play. They ought not to arrange building blocks according to patterns: this merely develops pedantry, not creative fantasy. We are developing creative fantasy when we let children do all sorts of things in sand, when we take them into the woods and let them form little baskets out of burs, and then stimulate them to make other things of burs stuck together. Things which cause a certain inventive talent to expand nourish creative fantasy. Strange as it may seem, such cultivation of creative fantasy brings serenity of soul, inner harmony, contentment into human life.

Moreover, when, we go to walk with a child, it is good to leave him free to do whatever he will, provided he does not become too badly behaved. And, when the child does anything, we should manifest our pleasure, our participation and interest; we should not be unresponsive or lacking in interest in what the child produces out of his own inner nature. Even when instructing a child, we should connect what we teach him with the forms and processes of nature. When children reach an older stage, we should not then occupy .them with riddles or puzzles taken from newspapers; this leads only to pedantry. On the contrary, the observation of nature offers us the opposite of what is afforded by the press for the cultivation of the emotional life. A serene heart, a harmonious life of feeling, determines not only the mental health but also that of the body, even though long stretches of time may intervene between cause and effect.

We come now to the third aspect of the super-sensible life, to thinking. As to this, we nurture it, make it keen, especially by the development of characteristics which seem to have nothing whatever to do with thinking, with the concepts. By no method do we develop good thinking better than by complete absorption and insight, not so much through logical exercises but by observing one thing and another, using for this purpose processes in nature, in order to penetrate into hidden mysteries.' Through absorption in problems of nature and of humanity, through the endeavor to understand complex personalities, through the intensifying of attentiveness, do we render our thinking sagacious. Absorption means striving to unravel something by thinking, by conceiving. In this connection, we shall be able to see that such absorption of the mind has a wonderfully good effect in later life.

The following example is taken from life. A little boy showed his mother remarkable aspects of his observation, which were associated with extraordinary absorption and capacity for insight. He said: "You know, when I walk on the streets and see persons and animals, it seems as if I had to enter into the persons and the animals. It happened that a poor woman met me, and I entered into her, and this was terribly painful to me, very distressing. (The child had not seen any sort of destitution at home, but lived in altogether good circumstances.) And then I entered into a horse and then into a pig." He described this in detail, and was stimulated in extraordinary degree of compassion, to special deeds of pity, through this feeling entrance into others. Whence does this come, this expansion of one's understanding for other beings? If we think the matter over in this case, we are led back into the preceding incarnation, when the person in question had cultivated the absorption in things, in the secrets of things, that we have described.

But we do not have to wait till the next incarnation for the results which follow the cultivation of absorption. These come to manifestation even in a single life. When we are induced in earliest youth to develop all of this, we shall be possessed in later life of a clear, transparent thinking, whereas otherwise we develop a scrappy, illogical thinking. It is a fact that truly spiritual principles can bring us forward in our course of life.

During recent decades there have been few truly spiritual fundamental principles of education, almost none at all. And now we are experiencing the results. There is an extraordinary amount of wrong thinking in our day. One can suffer the pains of martyrdom from the terribly illogical life of the world. Any one who has acquired a certain clairvoyance does not have in this connection simply the feeling that one thing is correct and another incorrect, but he suffers actual pain when confronted by illogical thinking, and a sense of well-being in connection with clear, transparent thinking. This signifies that he has acquired a feeling for such things, and this enables him to decide. And this is a far truer differentiation when one has actually reached this stage. This gives a far truer judgment as to truth and untruth. This seems unbelievable, but it is true. When something erroneous is said in the presence of a clairvoyant person, the pain which rises in him shows him that this is illogical, erroneous. Illogical, thinking is spread abroad in extraordinary volume; at no time has illogical thinking been so widespread as precisely in our time, in spite of the fact that people pride themselves so much on their logical thinking. Here is an example that may well seem somewhat crass, but is typical for the habit of passing through experiences without interest or thought.

I was once traveling from Rostock to Berlin. Into my compartment entered two persons, a gentleman and a lady. I sat in one corner, and wished only to observe. The gentleman was very soon behaving in a strange manner, though he was otherwise probably a well educated person. He lay down, sprang up again in five minutes; then again he groaned in a pitiable manner. Since the lady considered him ill, she was seized by pity, and very soon a conversation was in full course between them. She told him that she had clearly observed that he was ill, but she knew what it meant to be ill, for she was ill also. She said she had a basket with her in which she had everything that was curative for her. She said: "I can cure anything, for I have the remedy for everything. And just think what a misfortune has befallen me! I have come from the far interior of Russia all the way here to the Baltic Sea, in order to recuperate and to do something for my ailment, and, just as I arrive, I find that I have left at home one of my important remedies. Now I must turn back at once, and this hope also has been in vain."

The gentleman then narrated his sufferings, and she gave him a remedy for each of his illnesses, and he promised to do everything, making notes about all. I think there were eleven different prescriptions. She then began to enumerate all of her illnesses one by one; and he began to show his knowledge of what would cure them: that for one ailment she could be helped in a certain sanatorium, and for another in another sanatorium. She, in turn, wrote down all the addresses and was only afraid that the pharmacies might be closed for Sunday when she arrived in Berlin. These two persons never for one moment noticed the strange contradiction that each knew only what might help the other one, but for himself and herself knew no means of help. This experience gave these two educated persons the possibility of bathing in a sea of nonsense that streamed forth from each of them.

Such things must be clearly visualized when we demand that self-knowledge shall give insight. We must demand of self-knowledge that it shall develop coherence in thinking, but especially absorption in the matter in question. All these things work together in the soul. Such scrappy thinking has the inevitable effect, even though only after a long time, of making the person morose, sullen, hypochondriacal about everything, and frequently we do not know where the causes of this are to be found. Insufficient cultivation of absorption and insight makes one sullen, morose, hypochondriacal. What is so extremely necessary to thinking seems to have nothing to do with it. All obstinacy, all self-seeking, have a destructive effect upon thinking. All characteristics connected with obstinacy and selfishness—such as ambition, vanity,—all these things that seem to tend in a very different direction make our thinking unsound, and act unfavorably upon our mood of soul. We must seek, therefore, to overcome obstinacy, self-seeking, egoism; and cultivate, on the contrary, a certain absorption in things and a certain self-sacrificing attitude toward other beings. Absorption, a self-sacrificing attitude, in regard to the most insignificant objects and occurrences have a favorable effect upon thinking and upon one's mood. In truth, self-seeking and egoism bring their own punishment through the fact that the self-seeking person becomes more and more discontented, complains more and more that he comes off badly. When any one feels this way about himself, he ought to place himself under the law of karma and ask himself, when he is discontented: "What self-seeking has brought this discontentment upon me?"

In just this way can we describe how we may develop and how injure the three parts of the soul life, and this is extraordinarily important. We see, therefore, that spiritual-science is something which lays deep hold upon our life. It lays deep hold upon our life because a true observation of spiritual principles may lead us to self-education, and this is of the utmost importance for our life, and will become of ever increasing significance to the extent that the time in man's evolution has passed when human beings were led by the Gods from above, from the higher worlds. In ever increasing measure, men will have to do things of themselves, without being directed and led.

With regard to what the Masters have taught about our working our way upward to Christ, Who will appear even in this century on the astral plane, a greater understanding of this advance for humanity can be achieved only in this way: that the human being shall ever increasingly impart his own impulses to himself. Just as we explained to you yesterday that human beings gradually work their way upward to Christ, so must we gradually perfect in freedom our thinking, feeling, and will impulses. And this can be achieved only through self-mastery, self-observation. Just as in earlier times, in ancient clairvoyance, the impulses were given to men from above by the Gods, so will man determine his own way in later times through the new clairvoyance. It is for this reason that Anthroposophy appears precisely in our time in order that mankind may learn to develop soul characteristics in the right way. Thus does man move forward in his life to meet what the future will bring. Only in this way can we understand what must one day appear: that is, that those who are shrewd and immoral will be cast out and rendered harmless.

The characteristics mentioned are important for every human being. But they are of such a nature that they are especially important to those who are determined to strive to reach rapidly in rational ways those characteristics which are to become more and more necessary for humanity. For this reason it is the Leaders of human beings who strive to achieve this development in very special measure as regards themselves, because the highest attainments can be reached only by means of the highest attributes.

In highest degree of all is this development carried through, as an example, by that individuality who once ascended to the rank of a Bodhisattva, when the preceding Bodhisattva became a Buddha, and who has, since that time, been incarnated once in nearly every century; who lived as Jeshu ben Pandira, herald of the Christ, a hundred years before Christ. Five thousand years are needed for his ascent to the rank of a Buddha, and this Buddha will then be the Maitreya Buddha. A Bringer of the Good will he be, and this for the reason that (as can be seen by those who are sufficiently clairvoyant) he succeeds, by most intense self-discipline, in developing to the utmost those powers which cause to emanate from him such magical moral forces as enable him to impart to souls through the word itself feelings of the heart and morality. We cannot as yet develop on the physical plane any words capable of doing this. Even the Maitreya Buddha could not do this at present—could not develop such magical words. Today only thoughts can be imparted by means of words.

How is he preparing himself? By developing in the highest possible degree those qualities which are called the good qualities. The Bodhisattva develops in the highest degree what we may designate as absorption, serenity in the presence of destiny, attentiveness to all occurrences in one's surroundings, devotion to all living beings, and insight. And, although many incarnations will be needed for the future Buddha, yet he devotes himself during his incarnations primarily to giving attention to what occurs even though what he now does is relatively little, since he is utterly devoted to the preparation for his future mission.

This will be achieved through the fact that a special law exists with regard to just this Bodhisattva. This law we shall understand if we take account of the possibility that a complete revolution in the soul's life may occur at a certain age.

The greatest of such transformations that ever occurred took place at the baptism by John. What occurred there was that the ego of Jesus, in the thirtieth year of his life, abandoned the flesh and another ego entered: the Ego of the Christ, the Leader of the Sun Beings.

A similar revolution will be experienced by the future Maitreya Buddha. But he experiences such a revolution in his incarnations quite differently. The Bodhisattva patterns his life on the life of Christ, and those who are initiated know that he manifests in every incarnation very special characteristics. It will always be noted that, in the period between his thirtieth and thirty-third years, a mighty revolution occurs in his life. There will then be an interchange of souls, though not in so mighty a manner as in the case of Christ. The "ego" which has until then given life to the body passes out at that time, and the Bodhisattva becomes, in a fundamental sense, altogether a different person from what he has been up to that time, even though the ego o does not cease and is not replaced by another, as was true of the Christ.

This is what all occultists in common call attention to: that he cannot be recognized before this time, before this revolution. Up to this time—although he will be absorbed intensely in all things—his mission will not be especially conspicuous; and even though the revolution is certain to occur, no one can ever say what hat will then happen to him. The earlier period of youth is always utterly unlike that into which he is transformed between his thirtieth and thirty-third years.

Thus does he prepare for a great event. This will be as follows: The old ego passes out and another ego then enters. And this may be such an individuality as Moses, Abraham, Elijah. This ego will then be active for a certain time in this body; thus can that take place which must take place in order to prepare the Maitreya Buddha. The rest of his life he then lives in such a way that he continues to live with this ego which enters at that moment.

What then occurs is like complete interchange. Indeed, that which is needed for the recognition of the Bodhisattva can occur. And it is then known that, when he appears after 3,000 years, and has been elevated to the rank of Maitreya Buddha, his “ego" will remain in him but will be permeated inwardly by still another individuality. And this will occur precisely in his thirty-third year, in the year in which occurred in the case of Christ the Mystery of Golgotha. And then will he come forth as the Teacher of the Good, as a great Teacher who will prepare the true teaching of Christ and the true wisdom of Christ in a manner entirely different from that which is possible today.

Spiritual-science is to prepare that which will one day take place upon our earth.

Now, it is possible for any one in our time to adopt the practice of cultivating those characteristics which are injurious to the emotional life, of cultivating apathy, etc. But this results in a laxity in the emotions, a laxity in the inner soul life, and the person will no longer be able to discharge his task in life, will no longer be able to fulfill it. For this reason every one may consider it a special blessing if he can acquire for himself a knowledge of things that are to occur in future. Whoever has the opportunity today to devote himself to spirit knowledge, enjoys a gift of grace from karma.

For having a knowledge of these things gives a foundation for security, devotion, and peace in our souls, for being serene in soul, and looking forward with confidence and hope to what faces us in the coming millennia of the evolution of humanity. All who can know these things should consider this a special good fortune, something which evokes the highest powers of the human being, which can kindle like fire everything in his soul that seems at the point of being extinguished or is in a state of disharmony, or approaching destruction. Enthusiasm, fire, rapture become also health and happiness in the outer life.

He who earnestly acquaints himself with these things, who can develop the needed absorption in these things, will surely see what they can bring to him in happiness and inner harmony. And, if any one in our Society does not yet find this demonstrated in himself, he should for once surrender himself to such knowledge that he shall say:

"If I have not yet felt this, the fault lies in me. It is my duty to immerse myself in the mysteries about which we can learn today. It rests upon me to feel that I am a human being, one link in a chain which has to stretch from the beginning to the end of evolution, in which are bound together as links all human beings, individualities, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Christ. I must say to myself: ‘To feel that I am a link therein is to be conscious of my true worth as a human being.’ This I must sense; this I must feel."

I am delighted to see you again after such a long time—the branch members and those of you who have joined the meetings in the course of the year. Let us hope that the winter which lies ahead will take our work and our spiritual movement some way forward again, and that we'll gain a little more depth in finding our way to the world of the spirit and living in it.

We have not seen one another for a long time but in a way this period is like all those other times when we were not together in outer terms. For the members of this branch are deeply and most eminently concerned to see this spiritual movement spread in the world as well as letting it enter into their own hearts. All our seeking in theosophy would be just a refined form of egoism if we were not also interested in having other people in this world hear of the movement and take an interest in it, just as we ourselves love being part of it.

The speaker has been able to talk to wider audiences and all kinds of different people in recent times, and it is good to know that people from all levels of society and of all classes have a longing for the world of the spirit, something which is also evident in the fact that the theosophical movement exists.

Perhaps we may just make a brief review of those wider audiences as we start our winter studies. The tour I was able to undertake to make the theosophical movement more widely known took me to Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Alsace, Switzerland and Bavaria. I was able to speak in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Colmar, Strasbourg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Heidelberg, Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Regensburg, Nurnberg and Weimar. In some places I gave lecture courses. The course in Leipzig consisted of fourteen lectures, the one in Stuttgart took more than a fortnight,³⁰ during which time people interested in the theosophical movement had to meet daily. Such courses are probably the most effective way of helping the theosophical movement gain deeper entry into our time. It is not so easy to spread the theosophical movement with sufficient intensity if one can only give one or two lectures and arouse initial interest But when people are given an introduction to life in the spirit for a whole two weeks, they can begin to realize that a new world can open up for them.

There are, of course, infinitely many obstacles that prevent people from getting closer to the science of the spirit and from living with it One does have to go more deeply into the approach we have come to call theosophy, for only then will hearts and minds begin to get an idea, a feeling, that this higher world is something very real. Initially everything they hear is taken to be not only incomprehensible but also pure fantasy. People do not find it easy to let go of the accepted view that the things we speak of in theosophy are mere dreams and fantasies and to realize now that our spiritual movement is concerned with something that in a most profound sense is the very basis of the real world. Many think that people who talk of these things are remote from the realities of life. However one gradually comes to see the point of view that can be gained, and realize that this is something down-to-earth, not living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but is at deeper levels, giving us strength, insight and truth. It enables us to find genuine ways of achieving the great tasks humanity has been given in this world. It is prejudice to say that theosophy is inimical to life, that it denies life. One hears people say: ‘Theosophy presents the world in a very nice light, offering great ideals, but it deflects people from life itself, from the true enjoyment of and pleasure in life.’ It has even been said that theosophists may have nice things to tell, but that these are not wholesome.

This kind of prejudice will probably take longest to disappear. It will always be possible to find people who understand the things presented in theosophical literature and lectures. It will be harder for them to find their way out of the kind of inner responses and feelings that are part of their upbringing and acquired prejudices. Inner responses and feelings are harder to overcome than are thoughts that need to be discarded. You may even hear someone say: ‘Yes, of course, we want to devote ourselves to theosophy, but we also don't want to spoil things for people who want to make the most of life.’ They'll say that we must remember that young people should enjoy life. It is a question, of course, of what we take pleasure in, and the issue must really go deeper. For it is possible to look for better and more noble objects of pleasure and to work with these to take life to a nobler level. We can give life a new content and there is no need to spoil young people's pleasure in life, for we shall give them new kinds of pleasure and enjoyment. People often find it hard to understand that one may find the things others consider entertaining rather uninteresting—going to the cinema, and spending one's time talking about things that have nothing to do with the reality of life. Perhaps a day will come when we speak of today's popular amusements as of a cloud-cuckoo-land.

It probably does not happen very often that someone envies someone else the inability to enjoy things, but it does happen. We have a small theosophical group in one particular city. One of our theosophists, who takes a tremendous interest in the science of the spirit and has also adopted a certain theosophical life style, is living with someone else who is also interested in the science of the spirit but cannot yet give up his predilection for roast suckling pig, that is, he really loves to eat roast suckling pig. Sitting there eating his suckling pig he then gets pangs of conscience because he is still much given to this enjoyment. And he thinks the other individual is lucky because he no longer has a taste for suckling pig. The point is that the other individual has developed different needs. And the day may well come when people who are no longer looking for common amusements will be considered true examples, and people will look to them for the good.

Much deeper down lie the prejudices that come from learning and intelligence and prove an obstacle to humanity's progress. You can find an article in a journal about national epidemics. A well-known academic³¹ who works in the field of psychiatry and deals with issues that lie between psychology and psychiatry, writes about mass epidemics. He refers to a phenomenon that existed for 200 years, to the end of the Middle Ages, with excessive asceticism widely practised as a ritual, with people throwing themselves to the ground, scourging and torturing themselves, their fantasies going to extremes and leading to strange excesses. This may be seen as a disease. The psychiatrist calls it hysteria of epidemic proportions. He goes on to say that hysterics of that type are often open to suggestions that cannot be evaluated by thinking. When a person sees someone else who has hurt his arm, he'll feel compassion and do what he can to help. We need not go into the things that go on in normal people's minds. But there are others who feel the pain in their own arm, abnormally so, when someone gets hurt. This is due to suggestion. It can reach such levels that the individual is completely out of control, his inner life lacking all order and given up to all impressions coming from outside.

When a materialistic soul expert speaks of such a phenomenon affecting whole populations, he is referring to public suggestion coming from particular groups—in medieval times from the monasteries—and becoming widespread. A kind of ‘disease of the age’ develops. People are not inclined to ask what they should think about such a thing when it comes up. They are wholly caught up in the suggestion. Such an expert will speak of the matter in all seriousness, but he fails to notice one thing, which is that an independent person who is capable of insight into himself will be able to recognize and clearly distinguish another kind of epidemic among the masses. This has reached many social groups today, even highly educated people. It consists in people living under the influence of specific suggestions, both positive and negative. If you speak of the truths to be found in the science of the spirit to such people, the truths will act as a negative suggestion on them. Such people cannot understand them; they will find them intolerable. Many materialistic prejudices that are widespread today act as positive suggestions. What do you find in medical, theological and law faculties? Suggestion that influences specific social groups and goes so far that one is perfectly justified in calling them a kind of disease, just like the kind of mass epidemic of which I spoke.

A well-known biologist has written something rather strange in a widely-read journal.³² It is strange—perhaps not so much for someone who only reads a bit here and a bit there, but for someone who studies the whole it is something he finds in 95% of the whole academic world. He will find that in future it will be possible to speak of a kind of academic madness, academic feeble-mindedness just as we now speak of hysteria. In the essay it says: ‘If a rolling billiard ball strikes another and makes it move, I cannot imagine that nothing passes from the one to the other.’ The scientist calls the peculiar spectre which emerges from the first billiard ball, creeping into the second one and setting it in motion under the influence of the first ball, the materia movens. He thinks he is enormously clever but is in fact only under the influence of materialistic suggestion, which affects him just as mass hysteria influenced people in the 16th century. Now just think how the suggestions to which a person is subject are apt to live around him. Their number is infinite. If they occur in large numbers—and it is possible to list a great many of them—they may be brought together in a picture that would be a disease picture of modern academic knowledge like that of dementia precox, which we keep hearing so much about.³³

There you see the unfreedom of those who are governed by suggestion. A little bit has changed since the Middle Ages. Only a theosophist is able to realize this. In medieval times people would speak of possession when something spoke out of a human being which was not that person himself. Today people laugh at the idea of possession and speak of an illness instead. This kind of possession, which existed in medieval times, has grown a little less today. It only shows itself in particular circles today. Another kind of possession, real and genuine possession, is however widespread today. The medieval kind of possession was astral by nature, today it is mental. The spirits to be found in academics today, spirits that possess them, are on the mental, the devachanic plane. In the world which is considered to be the only real world they come to expression as thoughts and are therefore also said to exist as thoughts. Just as the world of human feelings, inner responses, passions, drives and desires is not merely something arising from existence in a body, but is something independent, true and real in its own right, so the world of thoughts, too, is a distinct entity. It is just that the thoughts which human beings have are not real. These human thoughts are but shadow images of the real thoughts, just as human passions and feelings are only shadow images of something completely different. We have often spoken about the way these things are connected. We know that things we are able to observe in human beings through the physical senses are indeed the physical body, which is only part of the whole human being. We know that muscles and nerves, bones and blood are only part of the whole human being. These things, which we call the parts, the elements, of the human body, are part of the physical world. In the same way, however, human feelings and thoughts belong to another world, the astral world.

This is where modern logic takes the strangest leaps. People do not realize at all today that their own thinking, their own logic, should really tell them how impossible the conclusions are which they are drawing all the time, and that they are including things in their trains of thought that are obvious suggestions. It is terribly easy and it only needs some very commonplace ideas for an audience to accept what one is saying if for five minutes one presents them with an inevitable sequence of conclusions. They fail to realize that the debris of old life and of old ways of seeing things covers it all. That is the way it is with 'inevitable conclusions'.

Someone who was born blind and might be among us would be quite right in thinking we were indulging in fantasies when speaking of light and colour. This has never been a truth to him. He'll object that things can only be known by touch. He need not believe what we tell him, but he would nevertheless be wrong. What matters here is not that he is wrong but that he does not have the organ to perceive light and colour. The moment he is given that organ a new world will exist around him. True theosophy will never assume another world; it will merely approach it in a different way. The higher worlds of the theosophists are here around us, just as the world of colours is around the blind person. Someone born blind whose condition is operable may regain the use of his physical eye. We are saying no more than this in theosophy when we say that it is possible to develop the inner eyes. Just as it has been possible to achieve the physical eye, made with such art, so it is also possible to create organs out of the passions, instincts and feelings that live in us, organs of perception that will truly open up new worlds around the human being. It is thus possible to help human beings to achieve and develop this, so that they will be able to look into these other worlds just as they otherwise do into the physical world. This is the astral world of which we speak in theosophy. Within the outside world it is as real as is the world of colour within the world given by the sense of touch.

Someone who knows nothing of these worlds should not raise objections to them. It should be a general principle for everyone that we may only speak of things that we know something about and should never make statements about things about which we know nothing. All opinions about the science of the spirit based on the idea that those worlds must remain unknown to us are therefore a logical monstrosity that does no good at all. No one should ever say: ‘Any world I do not know about does not exist for me.’

So much to characterize the prejudices we meet. These are the suggestions made in today's academic world. And many, many people are subject to these suggestions. A lecture based on the science of the spirit is heard once, after which people continue to hear hundreds and thousands of things said to be highly significant, but they always involve elements that come not from materialistic science but from the materialistic interpretation of science.

It is hard to combat these suggestions with good sense, and this is something only someone able to see more deeply into the intellectual life of today is able to know. Popular science, busy as it is, has an extremely harmful effect because it is presented with an air of authoritative infallibility which can only be shown in its true light at some future date. People today have no idea how much they are subject to suggestion presented with an authoritative air. Take what I am saying merely as a characterization and consider how odd it is that nations struggle to rid themselves of one authority yet at the same time fall prey to new ones.

In the past, people would fall for suggestion, with their I given up to something that was active in them, but someone able to look into the higher worlds would see real entities. Human thoughts relate to certain spirits in the ‘devachanic’ world the way shadows do to the actual objects. The thought images you have are shadows cast by spirits in the devachanic or mental world. The thought that lives in you is but such a shadow image, all by itself. Someone with vision, someone who has developed his higher sense organs, will see it in connection with a spirit. If you see a shadow cast on a wall you can only understand it if you relate it to the object which cast it. It is the same with your thoughts. Without anything to relate them to, your thoughts are shadows. They relate to spirits that are as real in a higher world as this hand of mine is here. Just as my hand casts a shadow on the wall, so do the higher spirits cast their shadows in this our world. And these shadows are your thoughts.

The human being, as we see him before us, is really the scene of events that take place beyond the physical world. As a physical entity, man is in the first place complete in himself, and as such he lives in a physical world that is complete in itself. To understand the human being as a physical entity we have to remain in the physical world. To investigate and understand blood as a physical substance, for instance, you have to remain in the physical world. To understand the nature of feelings, inner responses and passions, you will either have to use empty phrases or relate these things to spirits that are behind the physical world, to a world that relates to this one as the world of colour does to the world of touch. Also you have to use a similar approach to understanding the world of thought.

So you see that man has a share in the higher worlds, that the astral body extends into those worlds, and that the devachanic world for its part casts a kind of shadow into this world. Someone who knows nothing of those higher worlds is subject to them like a slave, powerless against powers that control the chains. Just as the physical person can only be free if able to develop the will to face another person in freedom, so can the astral nature of man only be free if it recognizes its connection with the whole astral world. For as long as people live only in their ordinary inner feelings, their astral nature has them on leading strings, as it were. They are always possessed by it. They come free when they recognize it. Just as we perceive and know the physical world around us, so we must face those spirits, spiritual eye to spiritual eye, and know who we are dealing with. It is the same for the world of human thoughts. This is the way to real freedom, seeing through the world around us. To gain the right measure of understanding we have to consider what lies behind the physical aspect. A beginning has to be made and you need to study these things; the world must study these things.

There is some justification for the following objection, which is also raised by many people: What good it is to us to hear someone tell us of worlds which we ourselves are unable to see? You see, it is the first step towards being able to see into those worlds oneself. Why is it the first step? Because the physical world appears in a somewhat different light to someone who has gained insight than it does to materialistic minds. A comparison may show the different standpoint a theosophist should gain in relation to the physical world. We may take our example from ordinary writing. Someone unable to read may look at it and so may someone who is able to read. They both see the same thing; there is no difference in what they actually see. The person who is unable to read will say: I see lines going down and up, longer and shorter lines. He'll be able to describe them. Someone who is able to read however will find that the lines have meaning. He'll not describe the shape of the letters but find meaning in them.

That is how it is with the whole world when it is seen from the spiritual scientific point of view. Compared to this, take our modern conventional science. Here the world is described in the way someone who has not learned to read describes the letters. For the other person all things in the world become letters; they gain significance and he learns to read them. When someone unable to read describes the shapes of the letters, this cannot be said to be wrong. Many people say our ideas are divorced from reality when we say that the word or the world also holds a specific meaning. You cannot say anything against this objection; it is the everyday view of things. But there is another way of looking at things where every flower becomes a letter, every plant species a word, and the world a great book.

The world holds something within it that goes beyond its physical aspects. The signs for this have no lips, however, and therefore meaning has to be given to them. A completely new world opens up in the devachan for someone able to read the writing of the plants. You can also think of every animal in the world as a letter, and you will gradually be able to decipher these letters. If you understand what comes to expression in animal lives you will relate to them as someone able to read and not as someone who merely describes the letters, which is the way of modern conventional science. Learning to recognize the word that lies in the animal you are able to see another, completely different world behind the physical world—the astral world. Learning to see the plant world as letters you gain the ability to see into the mental world. This is not something divorced from reality. Quite the contrary, it is something firmly based on reality that teaches us to see the abundant meaning of life.

It truly is the case that we only perceive the true significance of spiritual insight into the world if we compare it with reading. What would be the point if I were to draw something on the board here and describe it if there was no meaning to it? It gains meaning in that we perceive its significance. And that is how it is with the world. We gradually come to realize why the world exists, what it can mean to human beings and what human beings themselves are within the world.

Telling you all this, I did not mean to present something new. Those of you who have heard about theosophy on several occasions will know it all. I have been telling it to you to give you a means of rebutting the statement that theosophy is unscientific, to arm you against objections reputed to be logical. Only someone using a shortsighted logic has objections to raise against the science of the spirit. A logic that explores every nook and cranny will show that no objection can be raised but that it is absolutely sensible. It has to be understood therefore that people who base themselves on a scientific point of view in their attacks on theosophy are doing so not for logical reasons but on the basis of suggestion. When you are free of such suggestion and know that thoughts are but the shadows cast by devachanic spirits, and if you then hear a professor who is under the influence of the mental world say that a billiard ball is moved by materia movens, which transfers to a second billiard ball—you can see behind the scenes and see that he is influenced by other spirits.

The earth is atremble, in a way. It presents us with major tasks. Questions arise from the serious challenges of our time. It will not be possible to solve the social question, which has already caused so much bloodshed, with the suggestions people are making at present. The political parties seeking to solve the social question are also under the influence of such suggestions. Someone able to see behind the physical aspects sees the demon who stands behind many a party supporter. It can never be otherwise than it was in the case of Robert Owen,³⁴ a noble and caring person with good knowledge of social conditions in England. He wanted to create an example of an economy where he asked good and bad workers to join him in establishing a social community. He based himself on the understandable prejudice that people are essentially good and one only needed to put them in a situation where they had a chance to earn a proper living. In such a situation, he believed, they would be able to have the kind of life they desired. But this philanthropist finally had to admit that it was not possible to start with practical measures in one’s efforts for social progress but that one had to teach people first, addressing their understanding.

Someone able to see into the world of the spirit perceives what lies behind the physical plane. He will see how people live together, some in the greatest misery, poor and oppressed by labour and need, and others indulging in superabundance, enjoying all kinds of things. If one does not go beyond the physical plane it will be easy to imagine how the situation can be changed. This is what most people do when they feel they are called to be reformers today. They do not find themselves in the same situation as someone who was born blind and after a successful operation suddenly sees the world around him to be full of colour. For then they would see all kinds of different spirits behind everything physical. When they try to bring their well-meant plans for reform to realization but take no heed of the spirits behind it all, the situation will be much worse fifty years later than it has ever been. All the social ideals of today would go grotesquely against the astral world unless this astral world of human passions, desires and wishes were to change as well. General misery, a terrible ferment in the world, a dreadful struggle for existence would then take the place of today's struggle which is terrible enough as it is.

You need only look a little bit into the world of the spirit and you can see the situation. Human beings are not just bodies to be provided with food; human beings are also spirits, and they are in touch with other spirits. The task of those able to see the occult world is to make them aware of being comrades, members, of higher worlds. Imagine a human being, and a few beetles crawling around on this human being. The beetles can have no idea that this human being, this spiritual entity, is something different from themselves. They will describe the shape, e.g. of the nose. That is how human beings describe the heavens, Mars, the Sun, Mercury and the other stars. A modern astronomer is just like a beetle which has no idea that the nose belongs to a soul when he describes Mercury, Mars, the Sun. He describes them just the way he sees them, like a beetle crawling around in the cosmos. We shall only know how to describe the reality of things when we realize that the stars have souls, that spirit is present everywhere, that the whole universe is ensouled. That and nothing else is the aim with the science of the spirit. It is as logical as that. Prejudices, being sheer suggestion, make it difficult to make people aware of what this spiritual view of the world is really about.

The aim of this introductory lecture has been to show the resistance met by people who think in terms of the science of the spirit and who in the eyes of the world represent this science. Each of you may find yourself in a position where you have to show firmness in the face of views presented to you from the outside. It is part of the work in our groups to help members to stand firm. They should be sufficiently sure inwardly that in spite of everything they come up against in the world they have a living inner certainty of the world of the spirit and are thus armed against any objection that may be raised. It is not the amount of theosophical knowledge we have but our inner awareness, inner life and inner certainty that matter. Many people who represent other approaches want to enter into discussion with us, wanting to offer wisdom which theosophy already has. They keep saying things which a theosophist has long since left behind. He will characterize but not criticize. He will not make propaganda in the usual sense, for that cannot be our task. People must come of their own free will if they are to join our ranks. To make propaganda and agitate is not the theosophists' task. It therefore also is not for them to refute others. One seeks to characterize the standpoint of spiritual science itself. The other person has to enter into the spirit of it. Agitation—if a public lecture may be said to be such—consists in telling people: theosophy has this and that to offer. Anyone destined to come to it will come to it. A theosophist does not have to offer views and opinions. He speaks of realities in a higher world, and realities, facts, are beyond dispute. A theosophist presenting the spiritual scientific point of view will stop himself from presenting his own opinions. As theosophists we speak of ancient wisdom that has always been known to wise people. You'll never have two people having different opinions once they have entered the higher realm. At most it may be the case that one of them has not penetrated far enough. This is the kind of attitude a theosophist can develop. He should not impose himself on others, but he should be sure in his heart and sure of himself in presenting theosophy to the world. Someone who knows will also be able to find words for the knowledge he has in him.

This, then, is the way the theosophical approach, and other approaches which are in opposition to it, should be characterized and not criticized. If we develop this attitude more and more, we'll have the best possible means of being active theosophists in the world. We shall understand the world around us more and more and investigate it in the spirit. That is the theosophical way of doing things.

In conclusion one more example, one of those that will shock people when it is referred to in public. These things are simply true and can be found with the means of our spiritual research. I would like to describe a phenomenon of our time to you, and you'll see how we come to understand the world around us if we really penetrate the things which the science of the spirit has to offer. Please do not take my words amiss, for one will have to get used to the fact that there are things of which we do not yet have the least idea. Who would have thought fifty years ago that there is a substance where it just needs a tiny granule to damage our health? Fifty years ago no one knew anything about it. There are things that have an effect before people know about them and understand them. This substance is called radium. In this case, people did not yet have the physical instruments to understand it. When it comes to things of the spirit, people lack the spiritual instruments.

There are members of the socialist movement who are extraordinarily radical and would really like to hit out and destroy everything. Other members are to some extent conservative in their views. You find all kinds of different trends among them. One group within the socialist movement is a closed group with a remarkably homogeneous, like-minded view and the same way of doing things. They have been the least radical people. Basically this is the trade, the occupational group, which gave rise to the socialist union movement—the printers.³⁵ They were the first to develop a more formal set of rules within the social movement. Rates of pay were agreed on for the relationship between workers and employers. It has even gone so far that a newspaper is produced for the printing trade the editor of which is not a socialist at all, having been thrown out of the socialist party. This shows how moderate the group is.

Now it is possible to ask if we can investigate the spiritual causes of these things just as we can physically investigate the actions of radium. Yes, we can. Do not be too surprised at the answer given in the science of the spirit to the question as to why there is such a group within the socialist movement. It is due to the action of lead on the human soul. All things in the world around us, be they small or large, are the physical bodies of spiritual principles. Gold, silver, copper, everything that lives around us is body for a spiritual principle. Lead, too, is the visible body of a particular spirit. And anyone working with lead is dealing with the metal not just in its chemical sense but also in its spiritual nature. Lead not only affects the lungs; it also has quite a specific effect on the rest of the human being. So there you have the source of the unusual views held in this occupational group.

Now something else—something that happened to me just a few days ago. Someone I know well came to me who cannot explain why he is able to find analogies and see connections in his scientific work with a facility that is unusual even among academics. Such an ability is due to a highly mobile mental body. I thought I’d find out how this phenomenon comes about. After a time I was able to tell the man that he probably had a lot to do with copper. This proved to be true, for he plays the French horn. The small amount of copper in it had such an effect on him.

Now just think. Without knowing it, people are subject to all kinds of influences. I spoke of suggestion earlier. We now see the influence of the whole world of the spirit that is around the human being. And what is theosophy? It is a way of penetrating into the world of the spirit and its laws. And what does this mean? It means freedom, for only insight will give freedom. When we know something we can relate to it in the right way. Gaining insight in the spirit is therefore the greatest process of liberation we can ever possibly have. True development and progress lie in the things the science of the spirit can teach us. People will only come to the search for truth in the spirit when they want to be free. However, today they will not gain knowledge of the spirit, and we can see that it is impossible for them to do so, if they want to be free not only of social prejudices but also of everything else, including things they do not yet have the power of mind to understand. People who still depend on fashion and so on, will not be greatly inclined to consider the influence of the metals that exist around them. But a beginning must be made, a small beginning for something that is large, very large. What I wanted to do today was to take just a bit of a look at something in which the science of the spirit can hope to be a beginning.

• 30. ‘Populärer Okkultismus’, Leipzig 28 June–11 July 1906 (notes from members of the audience in GA 94). At the Gates of Spiritual Science 14 lectures, Stuttgart 22 Aug.–4 Sept. 1906 (GA 95). Tr. E.H. Goddard, C. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1976.
• 31. Möbius, Paul Julius (1853–1907), neurologist and lecturer in Leipzig. Über den Begriff der Hysterie und andere Vorwürfe vorwiegend psychologischer Art, Neurologische Beiträge 1. Heft, Leipzig 1894. See also Nachrichten der Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung Nr 22 (Michaeli 1968) S. 30f.
• 32. Has not so far been identified.
• 33. Dementia precox is an earlier term for schizophrenia.
• 34. Owen, Robert (1771–1858), Welsh social and educational reformer. The community he established at New Lanark in Scotland did not prove viable (it has now been restored by the New Lanark Conservation Trust). In 1833 Owen organized the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. See also Anthroposophy and the Social Question, essay first published in Lucifer-Gnosis 1906-1908 (in GA 34). Tr. H. Collison. 2nd edition Spring Valley: Mercury Press 1982. Also in Reincarnation and Immortality, Tr. M. & E. Tapp. New York: Multimedia Publishing Corp. 1974.
• 35. The German Printers Association was the first socialist union to be established in Germany in 1866.

If we wish to resolve the contradiction which was placed before us at the end of yesterday's lecture, we must to-day once more look back upon the two forces, the two principles, which in the course of time have appeared to us to stimulate and also at the same time to regulate our karma.

We have seen that our karma is brought into action only through the influences which the luciferic powers bring to bear upon our astral body, and that through the temptations of these powers we are led into expressions of feelings, impulses and passions, which in a certain way make us less perfect than we should otherwise be. Whilst acting upon us, the luciferic influences call forth the ahrimanic influences whose forces do not act from within, but from without, working upon and in us by means of all that confronts us externally. Thus it is Ahriman who is evoked by Lucifer, and we human beings are vitally involved in the conflict of these two principles. When we find ourselves caught in the clutches of either Lucifer or Ahriman, we must endeavour to progress by triumphing over the ill that has been inflicted upon us. This interplay of activity of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers around us can be understood quite clearly if we consider from a somewhat different aspect the case we alluded to in the last lecture—the case where the person succumbs to ahrimanic influence, whereby he experiences all kinds of deceptive images and illusions. He believes that knowledge of one thing or another has been specially imparted to him, or is in one direction or another making an impression upon him, while another person who had preserved a sound power of judgement would easily recognise that the person in question has succumbed to errors and delusions. Last time we spoke of those cases of clairvoyant delusions regarding the spiritual world, clairvoyance in the invidious sense, and we have also seen that there is no other, or at least no more favourable defence against the delusions of false clairvoyants than a sound power of judgement acquired during our physical life between birth and death.

What has been said in our last lecture is of great significance and of fundamental importance if we are dealing with clairvoyant aberrations, for in the case of clairvoyance not attained through regular training, through systematic exercises under strict and proper direction, but showing itself through old inherited characteristics, in images, or else in hearing of sounds—in the case of such false clairvoyance we shall always find that it diminishes, or even ceases altogether if the person in question finds the opportunity and has the inclination seriously to take up anthroposophical studies, or to take up a training that is rational and normal. So we can say that a person who has a wrong perception of the super-sensible always finds that the true sources of knowledge, if he is susceptible to them, will invariably prove helpful to him and lead him back to the right path. On the contrary, we all know that if someone through the complexities of karma has arrived at a condition in which he develops symptoms of persecution mania, or megalomania, he will develop a whole system of delusive ideas, all of which he can substantiate most logically but which are nevertheless delusive. It may happen for instance that he thinks quite correctly and logically in every other department of life, but has the fixed idea that he is being pursued everywhere for some reason or another. He will be able, wherever he may be, to form the cleverest combinations out of the most trivial happenings: ‘Here again is that clique whose one and only aim it is to inflict this or that upon me.’ And in the cleverest way he will prove to you how well founded is his suspicion.

Thus a person may be perfectly logical and yet give expression to certain symptoms of madness. It will be quite impossible to impress such a person by logical reasoning. On the contrary, if we make use of logical reasoning in such a case it may well happen that this will challenge the delusive ideas and the victim will try and find even more conclusive proof of the assertion resulting from his persecution mania. When we speak in the terms of Spiritual Science things must be taken literally. If a little while ago, and also the last time, we pointed to the fact that in the knowledge of Spiritual Science we possess an opposing force against any aberration of clairvoyant powers, we were then referring to something entirely different from what we are now discussing. We are not now concerned with influencing the person in question by means of revelations of Spiritual Science. Such a person is not amenable to any reasoning derived from the realm of ordinary common sense. Why should this be so?

In a disease whose symptoms are such as we have described, we have to deal with a karmic cause in previous incarnations. The errors which come from the inner being do not in every case proceed from the present incarnation but from a preceding one. Let us now try to get an idea of how something may be carried from an earlier into the present incarnation.

For this purpose we must envisage the course of our soul evolution. As external man, we consist of physical body, etheric body and astral body. In the course of time, into these sheaths we have built by means of our Ego the sentient soul into the sentient body, the rational or mind soul into etheric body, and a consciousness soul into the physical body. These three soul members we have developed and have built into the three sheaths where they now dwell. Let us suppose that in some incarnation we were so tempted by Lucifer, or in other words, we developed such egotistical impulses, greed, and other instincts that our soul was laden with transgressions. These transgressions may be in the sentient soul, the rational or mind soul, or in the consciousness soul. This then is the cause which in some future incarnation will be implanted in one of the three soul members. Let us suppose that there was a fault attributable especially to the forces of the rational soul. In the state between death and rebirth this will be so metamorphosed that it will be manifested in the etheric body. Thus in the new incarnation we encounter in the etheric body an effect that may be traced back to a cause in the rational soul of a preceding incarnation. But the rational soul of the next incarnation will again work independently in that incarnation, and it makes a difference whether this human being has previously committed this fault or not. If he has committed it in an earlier incarnation, he now carries his fault in his etheric body. It is now deeper rooted and is not in the rational soul but in the etheric body. But such rationality and good sense as we may acquire upon the physical plane will affect only our rational soul, and will not affect the activity of our rational soul in an earlier incarnation which has already been woven into the etheric body. For this reason it may happen that the forces of the rational soul, as we now encounter them in human beings, are doing their work logically, so that the real inner being is altogether intact; but that the co-operation of the rational soul with the diseased part of the etheric body provokes error in a certain direction. We can affect the rational soul with reasons which can be brought forward upon the physical plane, but we cannot directly affect the etheric body. That is why neither logic nor persuasion will have any effect. Logic would be of little use were we to place someone in front of a convex mirror so that he could see his distorted image, and then try to convince him that he is mistaken in thus seeing the image. He will nevertheless see a distorted image. In the same way does it depend upon the man himself if he morbidly misunderstands a thing, for his logic may be sound in itself but is reflected in a deformed manner by his etheric body.

Thus we can carry within our deep organism the karmic effects of an earlier incarnation, and we can actually demonstrate that the defect is present in a certain part of the organism, as in our etheric body for instance. We see here how under the luciferic influence we have contracted an evil in a previous incarnation, and how between death and a new birth it has been transformed. In the interim between death and a rebirth is accomplished the transformation of something internal into something external, and then Ahriman works against us through our own etheric body. This shows how Ahriman is drawn by Lucifer to approach our etheric body. Previously the transgression was luciferic; it has been so transformed that, as it were, a receipt for it is given us by Ahriman in the next incarnation, and then it is a question of expelling the defect from one's etheric body. This can be done only by a deeper intervention in our organism than can be achieved in one incarnation by the ordinary means of external reason.

He who in a certain incarnation passes through such an experience as that of persecution mania will, when again passing through the gate of death, be confronted by all the actions that he has performed in consequence of this ahrimanic defect, and he will see the absurdity of what he has done. From this will spring the new force which will completely heal him for his next incarnation; for he can be healed only by realising henceforth that the way he acted under the influence of the symptoms in question was absurd in the external world. We now realise how we can assist such healing. If someone suffers from such mad ideas we shall not succeed in healing him by means of logical reasoning, for such reasoning will only call forth even more violent opposition. But we shall achieve some result, especially when such a disposition shows in early youth, if we bring the sufferer into such a situation where the consequences of these symptoms prove themselves to be obviously absurd. If we make him face facts called forth by himself, and which react upon him in a crassly absurd manner, we can heal him in a certain way.

We can also have a healing influence if we ourselves are so far in possession of the truths of Spiritual Science, that they have become the inner possession of our soul. If they have become such an integral part of us, then the whole of our personality will be radiating these truths of Spiritual Science. With these truths that stream into life between birth and death, filling it and yet projecting this life itself; with these revelations of the super-sensible world we can achieve more than with external rational truths. When nothing can be achieved by external logical reasoning we shall, if we patiently apply the truths of Spiritual Science, be able to bring impulses to bear upon the person in question, so that we can, as it were, achieve in the one incarnation what could otherwise take place only by the circuitous passage from one incarnation to another, namely, through penetration of the etheric body by the rational soul. For the truths of the physical plane cannot bridge the chasm between the sentient soul and the astral body, between the rational and the etheric body, or even between the consciousness soul and the physical body. That is why we shall always find that however much wisdom concerning the material world one may absorb upon the physical plane, this wisdom will have but little relationship to the world of his feeling—what we might term a permeation of his astral body by the corresponding impulses and passions. One may be most learned, may have much theoretical knowledge of things belonging to the physical world, may have become an ‘old professor,’ and yet may not have attained within to a transformation of the impulses, feelings and passions that dwell within the astral body. One may indeed know a great deal about the physical world and yet be a gross egotist, because such impulses have been absorbed in youth. Naturally the two things can go hand in hand, external material science and cultivation of the astral and etheric bodies from within. In the same way one can possess truths and amass such knowledge as may become forces for the rational soul in regard to the physical plane, and yet be incapable of bridging the deep chasm existing between the rational soul and the etheric body. In external truths, though one may be learning an enormous amount it will seldom be found that what has been learnt will have any power over the formative forces of the body.

In the case of a person who is affected by these truths to such an extent that they get a hold upon his entire being, we may find that in the course of ten years the whole of his physiognomy will have changed so that upon it we can read the conflict he has experienced. We may also notice in his gestures if, for instance, with self-restraint he has become tranquil. These things will find their way into the formative forces of the organism, and even the most delicate and subtle parts of the organism will be stirred thereby. If what is grasped by our mind is not exclusively concerned with the physical plane we still shall become different after ten years, but the change will then have kept to the normal course in the same way as dispositions develop and change in a normal way in ordinary life. In the course of ten years we may possibly develop a different facial expression, but unless we have bridged the chasm from within, this change will have been produced by external influences. In this case we are not transformed by a force taking possession of us from within. It is therefore obvious that only the truly spiritual which really unites itself with our innermost being is able to have a transforming effect upon our formative forces during the period between birth and death, and that this transition, this bridging of the chasm will assuredly take place in the karmic activity between death and re-birth. If, for instance, those worlds through which we pass in the interim between death and a new birth are impregnated with the experiences of the sentient soul, then they will appear in the next incarnation as formative, shaping forces.

In this way the reciprocal activity of Ahriman and Lucifer has become intelligible. And now we ask how this combined reciprocal activity presents itself when things are even more distant, when, for instance, the luciferic influence has not merely to cross the abyss between the rational soul and the etheric body, but has, as it were, a longer way to go.

Let us suppose that in one life we are particularly susceptible to the influence of Lucifer. In such a case, we should with the whole of our inner being become considerably less perfect than we were before, and in the kamaloca period we should have this most vividly before our eyes, so that we should resolve to make a tremendous effort in order to balance this imperfection. This desire we incorporate as tendency, and in the next incarnation, with what have now become formative forces, we shape our new organism so that it must have a tendency towards balancing our earlier experiences. But let us suppose that the release of these luciferic influences had been instigated by something external, by an external greed, there must have been the influence of Lucifer. Anything external could not have affected us had not Lucifer been active within us. Thus we have within us a tendency to compensate for that which we have become through the luciferic influence.

But as we have seen, the luciferic influence of one incarnation challenges and attracts to itself the ahrimanic influence in the next incarnation, so that the two act in alternation. We have seen the luciferic influence to be such that we can perceive it with our consciousness; that is to say, however, that our consciousness can still just reach down into our astral body. We have said that it is due to the luciferic influence when we are conscious of pain, but we cannot descend to those realms that may be termed the consciousness of the etheric and physical bodies. Even in dreamless sleep we have a consciousness, but one of so low a degree that we are not able to be aware of it. But this does not necessarily mean that we are inactive in this consciousness which is possessed normally for instance by plants, consisting as they do only of physical and etheric body. Plants live continually in the consciousness of dreamless sleep. The consciousness of our etheric and physical body is present also in our waking condition in the daytime, but we cannot descend to it. That this consciousness may he active, however, is shown when we perform in our sleep somnambulistic actions of which we later know nothing. It is this dreamless sleep consciousness that is active. The ordinary consciousness and the astral consciousness cannot penetrate to the sphere of somnambulistic action.

But because in the daytime we are living in our Ego-consciousness and astral consciousness, we must not believe that the other kinds of consciousness are absent. It is only that we are not aware of them. Let us suppose that through the luciferic influence of an earlier incarnation we have provoked a strong ahrimanic influence which will be unable to act upon our ordinary consciousness. It will, however, attack the consciousness which dwells within our etheric body, and this consciousness will not only conduce to a certain organisation of our etheric body but will impel us even to acts which will be so expressed, that the consciousness of the etheric body will realise that we must discard from within us the effects of the luciferic influence to which we had succumbed in an earlier incarnation; it will realise further that this can be accomplished only through a deed in direct contradiction to the earlier luciferic transgression.

Let us suppose that dominated by the luciferic influence, we have been led to supplant a point of view which was religious or spiritual by the point of view of the man who says: ‘I want to enjoy life,’ and thus plunges headlong into gross material pleasures. This would challenge the ahrimanic influence in such a way as to provoke the opposite process. It then happens that passing through life we seek a spot where it is possible at one leap to return to spirituality from a life of the senses. In the one, we went with one plunge into gross material pleasures, and in the other we try by one leap to return to a spiritual life. Our ordinary consciousness is not aware of this, but the mysterious subconsciousness which is chained to the physical body and the etheric body now urges us towards a place where we may await a thunderstorm, where there is an oak, a bench placed beneath, and where the lightning will strike. In this case the subconscious mind has urged us to make good what we have done in an earlier incarnation. Here we see the opposite process. This is what is meant by an effect of luciferic influence in an earlier life, and, as consequence, an ahrimanic influence in the present life. Ahriman's co-operation is necessary to enable us to put aside our ordinary consciousness to such an extent that our whole being will obey exclusively the consciousness of the etheric or of the physical body.

In this way many events become comprehensible. However, we must beware of concluding that every accident should be traced to something similar, for this would be taking a very narrow view of karma. There are currents of thought even in our movement that take a really narrow view of karma. Were karma really as they conceive it, the whole world order would have to be specially arranged in the interests of each single human being, so that each life should run harmoniously and be duly compensated—the conditions of one life would be always combined in such a way as to result in an exact balancing of the consequences of an earlier life. This standpoint cannot however be maintained. Suppose someone were to say to a man who had met with an accident: ‘This is your karma; this is the karmic result of your earlier life, and you at that time brought it on yourself.’ Were the same man to have some stroke of luck, then the other would say: ‘This can be traced back to a good deed you did in an earlier life.’ If such words are to have any value, the person should have known what happened in an earlier life which is supposed to have produced this result. If he had knowledge of the earlier life, he would there see the causes coming from that life, and he would have to look towards later incarnations for the effects. From this it is logical to conclude that in every incarnation there are certain prime causes which come into play from incarnation to incarnation, and these will be karmically balanced in the next life. When examining the next life we can observe the causes. If an accident happens, however, for which in spite of all means at our disposal we can find no causes in an earlier life, then we must conceive that this will be balanced in a later life. Karma is not fate. From every life something is carried into later lives.

If we understand this, we shall also understand that we may find new events in our life which are of profound significance. Let us remember that the great events in the course of human evolution could not come about without being carried by certain people. At a certain moment people must take over the intentions of evolution. What would the development of the Middle Ages have been, had not Charlemagne intervened at a given moment! How could the spiritual life of olden times have developed if Aristotle had not at a certain time done his work! We see from this that people like Charlemagne, Aristotle, Luther and so on, did not live at a certain period for their own sakes but for the sake of the world. Nevertheless, their personal fates are intimately connected with world events. Should we conclude from this, however, that what they accomplished is the expiation or the recompense for their previous merits or transgressions?

Take the case of Luther. We cannot just simply ascribe everything he experienced and endured to his karma; we must be clear that those things which are due to happen in the course of human evolution must come about through human agency and that these individual agents have to be brought out of the spiritual world, without consideration whether they are fully ready in themselves. They are born for the purposes of human evolution, and a karmic path has to be interrupted or lengthened, so that the individuality concerned may appear at a certain time. In such cases a destiny is thrust upon men which need have no relation to their past karma. But to have achieved something between birth and death sets up on earth later karmic causes, so that though it is true that a Luther was born for humanity and had to bear a fate which had no vital association with his former karma, yet what he accomplished on earth will be connected with his later karma. Karma is a universal law, and each experiences it for himself; but we must not only look back to our former incarnations; we must also look forward. From this point of view it is only in a subsequent life that we can judge and justify earlier incarnations, for some of the events of this life do not lie in the karmic path.

Let us take a case which actually happened. In a natural catastrophe a number of people perished. It is not at all necessary to believe that it was in their karma that they all should thus perish together; this would be a cheap supposition. Everything need not always be thus traced back to earlier transgressions. There is an instance that has been investigated of a number of people perishing in an elemental catastrophe which resulted in a close alliance of these people at a later period, and, owing to their common fate, they gained the strength to undertake something in common. Through this catastrophe they were able to turn from materialism and brought with them in their next incarnation a disposition to spirituality.

What happened in that case? If we go back to the previous life we find that in this instance the common destruction took place during an earthquake; at the moment of the earthquake the futility of materialism presented itself to their souls, and so a mind directed towards the spiritual developed within them. We can see from this how people whose mission it was to bring something spiritual into the world, were prepared for it in this way, which demonstrates the wisdom of evolution. This case has been investigated and authenticated by Spiritual Science. So we can show how primary events can enter human life, and that it cannot always be traced back to an earlier transgression if one person or several people meet with an early death in a catastrophe or an accident. Such an event may appear as a primary cause, and will be balanced in the next life.

Other cases may occur. It may happen that someone will have to meet with an early death in two or three consecutive incarnations. This may occur because this individuality has been chosen to bring to mankind in the course of three incarnations certain gifts that can be given only when living in the material world with such forces as result from a ‘growing body’. To be living in a body that has developed up to the thirty-fifth year is quite different from living in a body of greater age. For up to our thirty-fifth year we direct our forces towards the body, so that the forces unfold from within. But from the thirty-fifth year onward begins a life in which we progress only inwardly—a life in which we must continually attack the external forces with our life forces. From the point of view of the inner organisation, these two halves of life differ in every respect the one from the other. Let us suppose that according to the wisdom which presides over human evolution we stand in need of such people who can flourish only when they do not have to fight against external stress which comes in the second half of life, then it may be that the incarnations are brought to a premature close. There are such cases. At our meetings we have already pointed out an individuality who appeared successively as a great prophet, a great painter, and a great poet and whose life was always brought to an end through premature death, because what had to be accomplished by him in the course of these three incarnations was possible only by interruption of the incarnation before he had entered the second half of life. Here we see the strange interlacing of individual human karma and the general karma of mankind.

We can go still further and find certain karmic causes in the general karma of mankind, whose effects show only at a later period. Thus the individual again sees himself caught up into the general karma of humanity.

If we consider the post-Atlantean evolution, we find the Graeco-Latin period in the middle, preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and followed by our period—the fifth period of civilisation. Our period will be followed by a sixth and seventh cultural epoch. I have also pointed out on other occasions that in a certain respect there are cycles in succession of the various civilisations, so that the Graeco-Latin culture stands by itself, but that the Egyptian-Chaldean period is repeated in our own. Also in this course, I have already pointed out that Kepler lived in our period, and that the same individuality lived earlier in an Egyptian body, and was in that incarnation under the influence of the wise Egyptian priests who directed his gaze to the celestial vault, so that the mysteries of the stars were revealed to him from above. All this was brought further in his Kepler-incarnation which took place in the fifth period, and which, in a certain way, is a repetition of the third.

But we can go still further. From the standpoint of Spiritual Science we can truly assert that most people to-day are blind when they consider world evolution and human life. These similarities, these repetitions, these cyclic lives can be followed even in their details. If we take a certain moment in human evolution, say for instance the year 747 B.C. we shall find that it constitutes a sort of ‘Hypomochlion,’ a kind of zero-point, and that what lies before and after this point corresponds in quite a definite way. We may go back to an epoch of the Egyptian evolution, and there we find certain ritualistic ordinances and commands which appeared as given by the gods. And this they actually were. These ordinances related to certain ablutions which the Egyptians had to perform by day. They were regulated by custom and by certain ritualistic prescriptions, and the Egyptians believed that they could only live in the manner desired by the gods, if on this or that day they were to undertake a certain number of ablutions. This was a command of the gods, that found expression in a certain cult of cleanliness, and if in the interim we encounter a period somewhat less clean, we now again, in our own period, encounter hygienic measures such as are given to humanity for materialistic reasons. Here we see a repetition of what was lost at a corresponding period in Egypt. The fulfilment of what happened earlier is represented in the general karma in a most remarkable manner. Only the general character is always different. Kepler in his Egyptian incarnation had directed his gaze up to the starry sky, and what that individuality there perceived, was expressed in the great spiritual truths of Egyptian astrology. In his reincarnation during that period of materialistic aims, the same individuality expressed these facts in a manner corresponding with our period, in his three materialistically coloured ‘Kepler laws.’ In ancient Egypt the laws of cleanliness were laws of Divine revelation. The Egyptian believed that he was fulfilling his duty to humanity by caring for his particular cleanliness at every opportunity. This preoccupation for cleanliness comes to the fore again today, but under the influence of a mentality which is entirely materialistic. Modern man does not think that he is serving the gods when he is obeying such rules, but that he is serving himself. It is nevertheless a reappearance of what went before.

Thus all things are in a certain way cyclically fulfilled. And now we begin to understand that the matters that we summarised last time in a contradiction, are not as simple as one is inclined to suppose. If at a certain period people were not able to conceive certain measures against epidemics, these were times at which men could not do so because, according to the general wise world plan, the epidemics had to take effect in order to give human souls an opportunity of balancing what had been effected through the ahrimanic influence and certain earlier luciferic influences. If other conditions are now being brought about, these too are subject to certain great karmic laws. So we see that these matters cannot be regarded superficially.

How does this agree with our statement that if someone seeks an opportunity of being infected in an epidemic, this is the result of the necessary reaction against an earlier karmic cause. Have we the right now to take hygienic or other measures?

This is a profound question, and we must begin by collecting the necessary material for replying to it. We must understand that where the luciferic and ahrimanic principles are co-operating, whether concurrently or over longer periods, or where they are working against each other, there are manifested certain complications in human life. These complications appear under forms so diverse that we never see two identical cases. If we study human life, however, we shall find our way in the following manner: if in a particular case we try to discover the combined activity of Lucifer and Ahriman, we shall always find a thread by which this connection will become clear. We must discriminate clearly between internal and external man. Even today we had to differentiate sharply between that which is expressed by the rational soul, and that which appears within the etheric body as a result of the rational soul. We must examine the continuity in which karma is accomplished, and we must at the same time understand that we have still the possibility of influencing our inner being by means of certain karmic influences, so that in future a new karmic compensation may be prepared by the inner being. For this reason, it is possible for a being in an earlier life to have experienced sensations, feelings and so forth that have developed in him a want of love towards his fellow-creatures. Let us suppose, for instance, that he had passed through an experience whereby through karmic action he had become uncharitable. It may well happen that we, following for a time a downward grade, beget evil. We at first descend in order to develop the contrary impetus that will cause us to re-ascend. Let us suppose that a being, by yielding to certain influences, tends towards uncharitableness. This uncharitableness will in a later life appear as karmic result, and will develop inner forces in his organism. We can then act in two ways—consciously, or else unconsciously. In our epoch we have not progressed so far as to do it consciously. With such a person we can take precautions by which these characteristics in his organism, derived from uncharitableness, will be driven out and we may act in such a way that the effect that is expressed in the external organism as a lack of charity will be counteracted. By these means, however, the soul will not be cleansed of all uncharitableness, but only the external organ of uncharitableness will have been expelled. For if we do nothing further, we shall have accomplished only half of our task, perhaps even nothing at all. We may perhaps have helped this person physically, externally, but we shall not have given succour to his soul. Now that the physical expression of uncharitableness has been removed he will not be able to give expression to this uncharitableness, but he will have to retain it within his inner organism until a future incarnation. Let us suppose that a great number of people, because of uncharitableness, had been impelled to absorb certain infectious germs, so that they succumbed to an epidemic. Let us further suppose we were in a position to protect them from this epidemic. We should in such a case preserve the physical body from the effects of uncharitableness, but we should not have removed the inner tendency towards uncharitableness. The case might be such that, in removing the external expression of uncharitableness, we should undertake the duty of influencing the soul also in such a way as to remove from it the tendency towards a lack of charity. The organic expression of uncharitableness is killed in the most complete sense, in the external bodily sense, by vaccination against smallpox. There, for instance, the following becomes manifest, and has been investigated by Spiritual Science. In one period of civilisation, when there prevailed a general tendency to develop a higher degree of egotism, and uncharitableness, smallpox made its appearance. Such is the fact. In anthroposophy it is our bounded duty to give expression to the truth.

Now it will be clear why in our period the protection of vaccination appeared. We also understand why, among the best minds of our period, there exists a kind of aversion to vaccination. This aversion corresponds to something within, and is the external expression of an inner reality. So if on the one hand we destroy the physical expression of a previous fault, we should, on the other hand, undertake the duty of transforming the materialistic character of such a person by means of a corresponding spiritual education. This would constitute the indispensable counterpart without which we are performing only half our task. We are merely accomplishing something to which the person in question will himself have to produce a counterpart in a later incarnation. If we destroy the susceptibility to smallpox, we are concentrating only on the external side of karmic activity. If on the one side we go in for hygiene, it is necessary that on the other we should feel it our duty to contribute to the person whose organism has been so transformed, something also for the good of his soul. Vaccination will not be harmful if, subsequent to vaccination, the person receives a spiritual education. If we concentrate upon one side only and lay no emphasis upon the other, we weigh down the balance unevenly. This is really what is felt in those circles which maintain that where hygienic measures go too far, only weak natures will be propagated. This of course is not justifiable, but we see how essential it is that we should not undertake one task without the other.

Here we approach an important law of human evolution which acts so that the external and the internal must always be counter-balanced, and that it is not permissible to act with regard to the one only, leaving the other out of consideration. We here get a glimpse of an important relationship, and yet we have not even arrived at the significance of the question: ‘What is the relationship between hygiene and karma?’ As we shall see, the answer to this question will lead us still further into the depths of karma, and we shall further see that there exist karmic relationships between man's birth and death. In addition, other personalities influence a human life, and man's free will and karma are in harmony.

There are certain deeper questions of karmic connection concerning more especially our human influence upon karma, particularly upon that of other people, and concerning also the changing of the direction of karma, be it to a greater or less extent. Such questions as these one can neither answer nor even give an idea of how they ought to be answered, without touching, as we shall today, upon certain important secrets of our world existence. They may perhaps arise out of what has been said, if we follow up what has been broached and had light thrown upon it from one side or another.

We may ask what happens in a person's karma when by reason of his previous acts or experiences there has arisen a necessity for illness to compensate for these acts and experiences, and this person is really healed through human assistance by means of remedies or other intervention. What does this signify and in what way is such a fact related to a deeper conception of karmic law?

Now I will begin by saying that in order to throw any important light at all upon this question, things must be touched upon which are far removed from the science and the present thought of today and which may, so to say, only be spoken of amongst Anthroposophists who, having absorbed some of the truths relating to the deeper foundations of existence, have already prepared themselves for such things, and have acquired a perception of how things which today can only be indicated, may nevertheless be fully proved. I should like, however, to take this opportunity of asking one thing of you. I am today compelled to talk about the deeper foundations of the earth's existence which I shall endeavour to express as precisely as possible. But this would be wrong if it were used in another connection or spoken of without any connection at all, and would lead to one misunderstanding after another. I ask you for the present just to accept it only, and make no other use of it. I must also make a point, regarding these things, that they should not be handed on; that no one should consider them as a teaching which may in any way spread further; for only the connection justifies such a statement, and such a statement is justifiable only when it is backed by the consciousness that can coin suitable words to express thoughts of this kind.

We are now speaking, on the one hand, of the deeper nature of material existence, and on the other, of the nature of soul existence. We must today acquire a deeper comprehension of what pertains to the soul and to the material world. This is, indeed, necessary for a quite definite reason—for the reason given in the previous lectures when we said that the soul of man can penetrate more or less deeply into matter. We described yesterday the nature of the male by saying that in a man the soul penetrates deeper into matter, while in the female the soul holds back in a certain way and is more independent of matter. We saw that much of karmic experience depends upon how the penetration of the soul into matter takes place. We saw also how certain illnesses in one incarnation appear as the karmic consequences of errors made by the soul in former incarnations when it worked at its deeds, experiences and impulses. Then on the way between death and a new birth the soul acquired the tendency to transform into matter that which was formerly only a characteristic, a mere influence in the soul; so it now permeates the body. Because the human being is then permeated by a soul which has also absorbed either the luciferic or ahrimanic influence, the human substance will in consequence be damaged. Here is to be found the cause of illness, and we may therefore say: In a sick body there dwells a damaged soul which has come under a wrong influence—a luciferic or ahrimanic influence; and the moment we are able to remove these influences from the soul, the normal relationship of soul and the body should come about, and health should be re-established. What then is the relation between these two members of the earthly human existence of which we are now speaking, matter and soul? What are they in their deeper nature?

The man of the present day is generally of the opinion that the answer to the question, ‘Of what does matter consist? What is the soul?’—if it could be given at all—must prove to be the same all over the world. I do not think it would be easy for him to understand that for the beings who lived upon the old Moon, the answer to these questions must be quite different from those of beings who live upon the Earth. For existence is so much in the throes of evolution, that even the ideas may alter which a being may have about the deeper foundations of his own nature; so that the answer to this question, ‘What is matter, what is the soul?’ must also vary. It must at once be emphasised that the answers which will be given are only those which the earth-man can make, and are of significance only to the earth-man.

A person will at first judge ‘matter’ according to what confronts him in the external world in the shape of different beings and things, and everything which makes an impression upon him in any way. Then he discovers that there are different sorts of matter. But I need not go very far into that, for you may find in all the ordinary books those expositions which could be given here if we had time enough. These differences in matter present themselves to man when he sees the different metals, gold, copper, lead, and so on, or when he sees anything that does not belong to this category. You know, too, that chemistry traces these different materials back to certain fundamental substances of matter, called ‘elements.’ These elements, even in the nineteenth century, were still considered to be substances possessing certain properties which did not admit of being further divided. But in the case of a substance such as water, we are able to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen, yet in hydrogen and oxygen themselves we have substances which, according to the chemistry of the nineteenth century, were incapable of being further divided. One could distinguish about seventy such elements. You will doubtless also know that owing to phenomena which have been produced in connection with a few special elements—radium, for instance—and also owing to various phenomena produced in the study of electricity, the idea of the elements has been shaken in many ways. One has come to the conclusion that the seventy elements were only temporary limitations of matter, and that one could trace back the possibility of subdivision to a fundamental substance, which then through inner combinations, through the nature of its inner elementary being, manifests at one time as gold, at another time as potash, lime, and so on.

These scientific theories vary; and just as the scientific theories changed in ‘each fifty years’ of the nineteenth century, so it came about that certain physicists saw in matter certain entities which are charged with electricity; just as the ionic theory is now in fashion—for there are fashions in science—in the same way at no distant future other scientific methods will exist, and our idea of the constitution of matter will be quite different. These are facts. Scientific opinions are changeable, and must be changeable, for they depend altogether upon those facts which are of significance for one particular epoch. The teachings of Spiritual Science on the other hand continue through all ages—as long as there are civilisations on the earth—and will continue as long as these civilisations exist. It has always had the same comprehensive view regarding the nature of material existence and matter; and in order to lead you on to what Spiritual Science looks upon as the essential part of matter and of substance, I should like to say the following:

You all know that ice is a solid body—not through its own nature, but through external circumstances. It at once ceases to be a solid if we raise the temperature sufficiently; it then becomes a fluid substance. Therefore it does not depend upon what is in a substance itself as to what form it takes in the external world, but upon the entire conditions of the universe surrounding it. We can then further bring heat to this substance, and out of the water we can, after a certain point, produce steam. We have ice, water, steam, and through the raising of the temperature we have caused what we may describe as ‘the appearance of matter in manifold forms.’ Thus we have to distinguish in matter that the appearance it presents to us does not come out of an inner constitution, but that the manner in which it confronts us depends upon the general constitution of the universe, and that one must not isolate any part of the whole universe into individual substances. Now the methods of modern science cannot reach where Spiritual Science is able to reach. The science of today can never, by means of the methods at its disposal, bring the substance of ice—which, when the temperature is increased, is first made fluidic and then turned into steam—into the final condition attainable on earth, into which every substance can be transmuted. It is not possible today, by scientific means, to bring about conditions which show that ‘if you take gold and rarefy it as far as it can be rarefied upon the earth, you will bring it at last to a state which could equally be reached by silver or by copper.’ Spiritual Science can do this because it is based upon the methods of spiritual research; is thus able to observe how, in the spaces between substances, there is always a uniform substance everywhere which represents the extreme limit to which all matter is reducible. Spiritual research discovers a condition of dissolution in which all materials are reduced to a common basis, but what then appears there is no longer matter, but something which lies beyond all the specialised forms of matter around us. Every single substance, be it gold, silver, or any other substance, is there seen to be a condensation of this fundamental substance, which is really no longer matter. There is a fundamental essence of our material earth existence out of which all matter only comes into being by a condensing process, and to the question: What is this fundamental substance of our earth existence, Spiritual Science gives the answer: ‘Every substance upon the earth is condensed light.’ There is nothing in material existence in any form whatever which is anything but condensed light. Hence you see that to those who know the facts, there can be no necessity for such a theory as that of the ‘vibration hypothesis’ of the nineteenth century. Therein one sought to find light by methods which themselves are coarser than the light itself. Light cannot be traced back to anything else in our material existence. Wherever you reach out and touch a substance, there you have condensed, compressed light. All matter is, in its essence, light.

We have thus indicated one side of the question from the point of view of Spiritual Science. We have seen that light is the foundation of all material existence. If we look at the material human body, that also, inasmuch as it consists of matter, is nothing but a substance woven out of light. Inasmuch as man is a material being, he is composed of light.

Let us now consider the other question: ‘Of what does the soul consist?’ If we were to make research in the same way, by means of the methods of Spiritual Science, into the substance, into the really fundamental essence of the soul, then it would appear that just as all matter is compressed light, so all the different phenomena of the soul upon earth are modifications, are manifold transformations of that which must be called, if we truly realise the fundamental meaning of the word: love. Every stirring of the soul, wherever it appears, is in some way a modification of love, and if the inner and the outer are, as it were, intermingled, impressed into one another in man, we find also that his outer bodily part is woven out of light, and his inner soul is woven spiritually out of love. Love and light are, indeed, in some way interwoven in all the phenomena of our earth existence, and anyone who wishes to understand things as explained by Spiritual Science, will first of all ask: To what extent are love and light interwoven?

Love and light are the two elements, the two component parts of all earthly existence: love as the soul part, and light as the outer material part.

Now, however, another fact comes in. For both these elements, light and love, which would otherwise be side by side throughout the great course of the world existence, there must be found an intermediary, weaving the one element into the other—light into love. This must needs be a power which has no particular interest in love, which thus weaves light into the element of love—a power which is interested only in causing the light to be spread abroad to as great an extent as possible, and therefore causes light to stream into the element of love. Such a power cannot be terrestrial for the earth is the Cosmos of Love; and its mission is to weave love in everywhere. Anything, therefore, which is bound up with the earth existence can have no interest which is not to some degree influenced by love.

It is the luciferic beings which act here—for they remained behind upon the Moon upon the Cosmos of Wisdom. They are particularly interested in weaving light into love. The luciferic beings are everywhere at work when our inner part which is actually woven out of love comes into any sort of connection with light, in whatsoever form it may be found; and we are confronted with light in all material existence. Wheresoever we come into connection with light, the luciferic beings enter, and the luciferic influence becomes woven into love. In that way man first, in the course of his incarnations, entered the luciferic element. Lucifer has woven himself into the element of love; and all that is formed from love has the impress of Lucifer, which alone can bring us what causes love to be not merely a self-abandonment, but permeates it in its innermost being with wisdom. Otherwise, without this wisdom, love would be an impersonal force in man for which he could not be responsible. But in this way love becomes the essential force of the Ego where that luciferic element is woven, which otherwise is only to be found outside in matter. Thus it becomes possible for our inner being which, during earth existence, should receive the attribute of love in its fullness, to be permeated besides by everything that may be described as an activity of Lucifer, and from this side leads to a penetration of external matter; so that which is woven out of light is not interwoven with love alone, but with love that is permeated by Lucifer. When man takes up the luciferic—element, he interweaves into the material part of his own body a soul which is, it is true, woven out of love, but into which the luciferic element is interwoven. It is that love which is permeated with the luciferic element, which impregnates matter and is the cause of illness working out from within. In connection with what we have already mentioned as being a necessary consequence of an illness proceeding from a luciferic element, we may say that the ensuing pain, which we have seen is a consequence of the Luciferic element, shows us the effect of the working of the karmic law. So the consequences of an act or a temptation coming from Lucifer are experienced karmically and the pain itself indicates what should lead to the overcoming of the consequences in question.

Now ought we to help in such a case or not? Ought we in any way to cancel what has pressed in from the luciferic element with all its consequences working out in pain?

Remembering the answer to our question as to the nature of the soul, it follows of necessity that we have the right to do this only if we find the means, in the case of a man who has the luciferic element in him which caused his illness, to expel that luciferic element in the right way. What is the remedy which exerts a stronger action, so that the luciferic element is driven out. What is it which has been defiled by the luciferic element on our earth? It is love! Hence only by means of love can we give real help for karma to work out in the right way. Finally we must see in that element of love which has been psychically influenced by Lucifer resulting in illness, a force which must be affected by another force. We must pour in love. All those acts of healing dependent upon what we may call a ‘psychic healing process’ must have the characteristic that love is part of the process. In some form or other all psychic healing depends on a stream of love, which we pour into another person as a balsam. All that is done in this domain must finally be traced back to love; and this can be done. Even if we set simple psychic factors in action; if we assist another, perhaps, only to overcome depression, this can be traced back to love. All arises from the impulse of love, from simpler processes of healing, to that which is often, in amateur fashion called ‘magnetic healing.’ What does the healer communicate to the one to be healed? It is, to use an expression of physics, an ‘interchange of tensions.’ Certain processes in the etheric body of the healer create with the person to be healed a sort of polarity. Polarity arises just as it would arise in an abstract sense, when one kind of electricity, say positive, is produced and then the corresponding electricity—the negative—appears. Thus polarities are created, and this act must be conceived as emanating from sacrifice. One evokes in oneself a process which is not intended to be significant to oneself only, for then one would call forth one process only; in this case, however, the process is intended in addition to induce a polarity in another person, and this polarity, which naturally depends upon a contact between the healer and the person to be healed, is, in the fullest sense of the word, the sacrifice of a force which is no other than the transmuted action of love. That is what is really active in these psychic healings—a transmuted power of love. We must clearly understand that without this fundamental love-force the healing will not lead to the right goal. But these processes of love need not always run their course [so] that the person is fully aware of them with his ordinary day-consciousness; they run their course also in the region of the subconscious. In that which is considered as the technique of the healing process, even to the way in which the movements of the hands are made, and technically reduced to a system, we have the reflection of a sacrificial act. Therefore even where we do not see the direct connection in a process of healing, when we do not see what is being done, we have, nevertheless, before us an act of love, although the action may be completely transformed to a mere technique.

Since the soul consists fundamentally of love, we can assist with psychic factors. And these processes apparently lie very near the periphery of human nature, and by such factors of healing that which in its essence consists of love is enriched by what it requires in the way of love. Thus on the one side we see how we can help, so that, after being caught in the toils of Lucifer, the sufferer is able to free himself again. Because love is the fundamental essence of the soul, we may, indeed, influence the direction of karma.

On the other hand, we may ask, what has become of the substance woven from light in which the soul dwells?

Take the body—the outer man in his material part. If through a karmic process there had not been imprinted from out of the soul into matter a love substance such as is permeated by Lucifer or Ahriman; if a pure love substance only had poured in, it would not have been impurifying, or damaging to the substance woven out of light. If love alone were to flow into matter, it would then so flow into the human body that the latter could not be damaged. It is only because a love which has absorbed luciferic or ahrimanic forces can penetrate that the substance woven out of light becomes less perfect than it was originally intended to be. Therefore it is only through pouring into man of the luciferic or ahrimanic influences during his consecutive incarnations, that the human organisation is not what it might be. If it were as it ought to be, it would manifest healthy human substance; but because it has absorbed the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman, sickness and disease result.

How can we draw from outside those influences which have flowed in from an imperfect soul, that is, from a wrong love substance? What happens to the body by this influx of something which is faulty? According to Spiritual Science something happens which turns light in some way into its opposite. Light has its opposite in darkness or obscurity. Everything really presenting itself—strange as it may sound—as the defilement of that which is woven out of light, is a darkness woven out of a luciferic or ahrimanic influence. Thus we see darkness woven into the human substance. But this darkness was only thus interwoven because the human body has become the bearer of the Ego that lives on through the incarnations. This was formerly not there. Only a human body can be subject to this corruption, for such a corruption was formerly not contained in that which was woven out of light.

Man today draws the base of his material life out of what he has gradually rejected in the course of evolution—that is, the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. These also contain the different substances woven out of light for earth existence. But in none of these substances are there any of the influences which, in the course of human karma have acted on the organism through the soul. In the three kingdoms around us, therefore, man cannot through his luciferic or ahrimanic influence, as emanating from his love forces, have a defiling effect. Nothing of him is here. And what in man has been defiled is spread around him in all its purity. Let us consider a mineral substance, a salt or any other substance which man has also within him, or might have within him. But in him it is interwoven with the love substance defiled by Lucifer or Ahriman. Outside, however, it is pure. Thus every substance outside is distinguished from that which man bears within him. Externally it is always different from what it is in man, because in him it is interwoven with the ahrimanic or luciferic influence. That is the reason why, for everything of external substance which can be more or less defiled by man, there must be something which can be found externally representing the same thing in its pure condition. That which exists in the world in its purity, is the external cure for the corresponding substance in its damaged state. If you apply this in the right way to the human being, you then have the specific for the corresponding injury.

Thus we find in quite an objective way, what may be applied to the human body as a remedy. Here is the injury characterised as a form of darkness—and that which is not yet dark as the outer woven pure light; and we see why we are able to remove the darkness to be found in man if we bring pure substance woven from light to bear upon him. Thus we have a specific remedy for the injury. Now attention has often been drawn to the fact that Anthroposophists in particular should not fall into the narrow-minded error of denying that in such cases there really is a specific remedy against this or that injury, or which beneficially affects this or the other organ. It has often been said that the organism has within it the forces with which to help itself. Even although the Vienna School of Nihilistic Therapeutics may be right in its assertion that by calling up the opposing forces we can bring about a cure, we may nevertheless help on the cure by specific remedies. Here we see a parallel which one may describe from Spiritual Science.

From what I have said about diphtheria, for instance, you may gather that the karmic causes have in this case particularly affected the astral body. Now closely related to the astral body is the animal kingdom You will always find in those forms of illness closer connected with the astral body, that medical science, unconsciously driven by a dim impulse, seeks for remedies from the animal kingdom. For such illnesses whose causes lie in the etheric body, science seeks for remedies out of the vegetable kingdom. An interesting lecture might be given about the relation of the purple foxglove to certain illnesses of the heart. These are things which, inasmuch as they are based on truth, are not right for five years only—as one doctor states—and then begin to be wrong—as in the case when only external symptoms are taken into consideration. But there is a certain treasure of remedies which can always in some way be traced back to some connection with Spiritual Science, which have been inherited without any knowledge whence they came. Just as today the astronomers do not know that the theory of Kant and Laplace came from the mystery schools of the Middle Ages, so people do not know whence came these real valuable remedies. Causes of illness, which are connected with the nature of the physical body, lead to the use of remedies from the mineral kingdom.

A simple consideration of these analogous views will provide a fingerpost for these matters. Through his connection with the surrounding world, man can be helped from two different sides: on the one hand bringing him transmuted love from the psychic method of healing and on the other hand by bringing him transmuted light in various ways by those processes which are connected with external methods of healing. Everything which can be done is brought about either by inner psychic means—by love—or by the external means of densified light. When one day science has advanced so far as to learn to believe in the super-sensible and in the saying: ‘Matter is a form of condensed light,’ then a spiritual light will be thrown by these words upon the systematic research on external remedies. Hence we see that what during long ages, from the mystery schools of old Egypt and old Greece, was gradually added to the treasure of healing is not mere nonsense, but that in all these things there is a sound kernel. Anthroposophy does not exist in order to attack a certain school of medicine, and to say, ‘There they give people poisons!’ The word poison today works as a suggestion, and people do not reflect how relative this word is. For what is ‘poison’? Every substance may be a poison. It is only a question of the methods of healing and of how much is taken at a time. Water is a strong poison, if one takes ten bucketfuls at one time. The results of this, considered chemically, are not very different from what they would be if one gave a person any other substance. It depends always upon the quantity, for all these ideas are relative.

From what we have gone into today, we can be glad that for every injury we can do to injure our body, there is to be found in surrounding nature, which now appears to us as the world, that which will make it whole again. It is also a beautiful relationship that we have for the external world, and we may rejoice not only because we see the beautiful flowers and the mountains glowing in the sunlight, but also because our surroundings are so intimately connected with what is in man himself, good or bad. We can rejoice in nature, not only for what appeals at first sight, but the deeper we go into what has condensed into external material existence, the more we shall find that this nature which causes us to rejoice has within it at the same time the mighty healer for all the damage man can cause himself. Somewhere in nature the remedy is concealed. It is a question, not only of understanding the language of the healer, but also of obeying it and really carrying it out. Today it is in most cases impossible for us to hear the voice of healing nature because our misunderstanding of light, and the darkness which has penetrated into knowledge has in many respects brought about conditions preventing us from hearing. Therefore we must clearly understand that where in one case no help can properly be given, where, on account of karmic connections, some suffering may not properly be lessened, this does not mean that it absolutely could not be done.

Here again we see a remarkable connection which allows us to perceive the whole great world, inclusive of mankind, as One Being. In the sayings: ‘Matter is woven light,’ and ‘the soul is in some way or other diluted love,’ are to be found the keys of innumerable secrets of earth existence. But these hold good only for the earth existence, and would not concern any other domain of the world existence. Thus we have shown nothing less than that we, if in any way we alter the direction of karma, unite ourselves in one or the other case with the elements composing our earth existence: on the one side with light which has become matter—and on the other side with love which has become soul. We either draw the remedies out of our surroundings, out of the condensed light, or out of our own soul by the healing loving act, the sacrificial act, and we then heal with the soul-forces obtained from love. We unite ourselves with what is most deeply justified upon the earth, when, on the one hand, we unite ourselves with light and on the other with love. All earth conditions are in some way conditions of balance between light and love and everything unhealthy is a disturbance of that balance. If the disturbance is in love, we can then help by unfolding the forces of love; and if the disturbance is in light, we can then help by somehow providing for ourselves, out of the universe, that light which is able to dissolve the darkness within us.

These are the fundamental ways of help, and we see again how everything depends upon the balance of opposites. Light and love are polar opposites and on their being interwoven depend ultimately all the psychic and material processes of our life. Therefore in all the spheres of human life, evolution continues from epoch to epoch with the balance inclining first to one side and then swinging back to the other, so that evolution resembles the surging of waves. This motion of an unstable equilibrium throws light even on the most complex processes of civilisation. Take a period when certain injuries entered into the evolution of mankind because man contemplated only [the] inner and neglected the outer, for example, in the Middle Ages. It was then that through the blossoming of the mystical side, the external remained unheeded and errors occurred not only in knowledge but in action. Then followed the age that was repelled by mysticism, and was attracted by the outer world so as to make the pendulum swing to the opposite side.

Here is the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times and many such disturbances of the balance, manifest in different ways.

In this connection I should like to note that just in such times as our own, a characteristic in many people is that they completely forget, and pay no attention to, that which one may call ‘the consciousness of a super-sensible world.’ They pay no attention whatever to the fact that there is a spiritual world, and they therefore turn away their thoughts from it. In such an age—or in all such ages—there is always in certain respects a counterpart to be found. I should like to show you this in a very simple manner.

When there are people upon the physical plane who are so absorbed in the physical that they completely forget the spiritual, then a contrary tendency appears among those souls who are living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth—a tendency which works over from the physical into the spiritual plane—impelling them to occupy themselves with the influences which act out of the spiritual world into the physical. It is this which brings about in the physical world the intervention by souls who are still in that state before birth. These souls work down into the physical world according to the means which offer and they are able to work indirectly through persons who are more sensitive to such influence from the spiritual world. In order to make this clearer, one must not accept everything that purports to be a revelation from a Spiritual world. We must distinguish the real characteristic cases in which the dead are anxious show in a palpable manner that there is indeed a spiritual world. Because there are so many people completely in the dark, who have woven so much darkness into themselves that they wish to know nothing about the spiritual world, there are, on the other hand, among the dead many who have the impulse to work into the physical world. Such things generally occur when nothing is done deliberately to bring them about on the physical plane and they occur without special preparation.

You will find much proof of these things collected in the book by our friend, Ludwig Deinhard, Das Mysterium des Menschen (The Mystery of Man). Here much has been collected and systematised which is just what one needs, and which in the scientific literature of to-day is so scattered that it is impossible for everyone to gather it together. Therefore it is a good thing to have in this book a collection of these spiritual facts, which, as you now see, are eminently characteristic of one aspect of our age. You will find very aptly described in this book the characteristic fact of an investigator, who by materialistic methods had in his earth life endeavoured to give every possible proof of the spiritual world—I mean the late Frederick Myers—and who after his death was strongly impelled to show to mankind by means of radiations from the spiritual world and by the help of the spiritual world, what he had endeavoured to do when here.

This is intended to illustrate how in the world and in world affairs we see continual disturbances of the balance, and then again the efforts for the restoring of the balance.

This continual disturbance and restoration of the balance between the two elements of light and love is fundamental for us; and in human karma, from incarnation to incarnation, both work to restore the disturbed condition. Karma, working its serpentine way through incarnations is just such a disturbed balance, until man, after all his incarnations, shall at last create the final balance which can be reached upon earth. Having fulfilled his mission on earth, he evolves then into a new planetary form.

I have endeavoured to set forth a few facts, without which a deeper establishment of karmic connections and laws would be impossible. I have not shrunk from touching to-day upon those mysteries for which our modern science will not for a long time be ripe: Matter is in reality woven light, and that which belongs to the soul is in some way or other refined love. These are ancient occult sayings, but they are sayings which will for all time remain true and will prove fruitful for human evolution, not only for knowledge, but also for human work and action.

In the course of these lectures we shall study matters which will, so to say, easily enter into the soul of each one, because each one will be able to interest himself in them intensely and directly. But as the whole would not otherwise be comprehensible, we must also make reflections which are necessary for the sake of completeness and of comprehension, and which will be a little more difficult than that which is, so to say, the central theme of our lectures. To-day, for instance, we are confronted with the necessity of glancing into the inner nature of those Beings of whom we have spoken in the two preceding lectures, the normal Folk-spirits.

We have already said what was necessary to characterize them outwardly: that they are Beings who are two stages higher than man, Beings who are working at the transformation of their etheric bodies, who are now at the present time engaged in transforming their etheric bodies into that which is called Life-spirit or Buddhi. Man is spun into the web of this work. In so far as the evolution of these Beings so progresses that man is woven into this evolution, the reflection of this Folk-spirit is expressed in human individuality itself, as the folk-character of the single human individual.

We must now look a little into the inner nature of such a Folk-soul. If we wish to throw light upon the present inner being of man, we find it necessary to picture it as being threefold, as being divided into:

The sentient-soul, which is, as it were, the lowest member of the inner human being,

The Intellectual-soul or Mind-soul, the central member, and

The Spiritual-soul, the highest member of the inner nature of the human being, in which the human ‘I’ is first actually brought to a state of consciousness.

In the spiritual-soul is first to be found that which is called human self-consciousness. Nevertheless the ‘I’ of man is active in all three parts of his inner life, in the sentient-soul as well as in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the spiritual-soul.

In the sentient-soul the ‘I’ is active in such a way that man is hardly aware of his ego. In the sentient-soul, therefore, he is thus far given up to all his desires and passions. The ‘I’ broods dully in what we call the sentient-soul. It first works itself out and begins to appear in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and only becomes quite apparent in the spiritual-soul.

If we wish to examine each of these three members of the human inner being separately, we must look upon them as three modifications, as three parts within the astral body. It certainly is the case, that these modifications, these three members of the astral body, prepare the transformation of the astral body itself, of the etheric body and of the physical body. But these transformations are still not what meets us as the actual human inner being or soul. The soul, the inner part of man; consists of three modifications of the astral body. The three modifications must make use of certain instruments, and these express themselves in such a way, that in the astral body the sentient-soul is a sort of instrument, in the etheric body the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the physical body the spiritual-soul. Thus we can distinguish the human inner being from that which is the human envelope or covering; so that therefore the inner nature of man consists of three modifications of the astral body.

Just as in man the inner part, that in which the ‘I’ works and imprints itself, is represented by these three modifications of the astral body, so in those spiritual Beings whom we designate as Folk-spirits their actual inner part, or that which we may compare to the human inner part, is represented by three members, three modifications of the etheric body. Just as in man we distinguish sentient-soul, intellectual-soul, spiritual-soul, so in the Archangelic Beings, the normal Folk-spirits we must distinguish three modifications in the etheric body. As, however, these three modifications are not in the astral but in the etheric body they are quite different, essentially different from the three modifications in the soul-life of man. Hence also you must think of the form of consciousness, the whole soul-life of these Folk-spirits as being different from the soul-life of man. From an external description, therefore, we now press on as it were into the inner part of the soul of these Folk-spirits. It will not be quite easy but we must endeavor to cross this rubicon.

It will now be a case of starting out from some conception with which you are acquainted, a conception that bears some likeness to the inner life of the Folk-spirits. A man has not many such in his normal life, on the contrary, he has in his own consciousness extremely little of that which lives in the consciousness of the Folk-spirits. You may nevertheless form an idea of it if you will patiently follow with me the following considerations. You have all learnt at school that the three angles of a triangle are 180 deg., and you know that you could never learn that by any sort of external experience. I want you just to think of an iron or a wooden triangle; if now you measure with an instrument what the three angles together amount to, this external experience can never inform you that these three angles make 180 deg., but you will at once be informed, whether you draw these three angles or only imagine them, if you experience from within, that the three angles are 180 deg. You must realize it through the power of your own mind, from within. You need only carry out the following in thought. What I am now drawing is only drawn to represent the thought. In this figure you have strict proof that the three angles together make 180 deg.

If you once clearly visualize this figure in your mind, it will in every case bring this certainty; you may carry out the figure in thought, without externally drawing it. You thus perform an operation in pure thought, by the power of your own inner being; you need not go outside yourself. You may imagine for one moment, that there is no such thing as the so-called world of impressions, or what enters into man through the outer senses. Imagine the external world away, and space as being constructed in thought, then in this space the sum-total of the angles of all triangles will give 180 deg. In order to arrive at geometrical, mathematical knowledge it is not necessary for an outer object to approach your senses, it only needs inner experience, that which takes place in the consciousness itself. I have had to make use of this example, for it is the simplest and most practical, because people already know it, having learnt it at school. I might also give you the example of Hegel's logic, you would then also have a number of inner conceptions, but there you would find much with which you are unacquainted, for Hegel's logic is unknown to most people. By this you may therefore see how a man may arrive at knowledge merely from within, without being brought to this by anything external.

If you think of that which externally in the world is only attainable by mathematical construction, then you have some conception of how the consciousness of the Archangels works. A world such as appears to external man, a world of external colors and tones, they do not perceive at all. A Being of this kind never has these perceptions, it is never possible for him to touch a thing and thus receive impressions. But what he does experience may be thus expressed in words, ‘Something is now approaching me from a world which inspires me. This world has passed through my consciousness and has filled it.’

Now the Archangels are not Beings who can form mathematical concepts only; it is man who is so imperfect that he is only able by means of abstractions such as the truths of mathematics, to conceive of the activity of the Archangels. These truths appear normal to man, as well as to the Folkspirits. From this you may gather that the external physical world which man's senses bring before him, does not affect the Archangels at all. In that form in which the physical world appears to man, in which he receives impressions of it by means of his senses, it does not exist at all to the Archangels. If, therefore, you eliminate from your picture of the world all that is merely physical sensation, if you take away everything which you have received by means of external perceptions, you have then eliminated just what does not concern the Archangels. We shall therefore inquire, ‘What then still remains for the Archangels out of all that can also become human consciousness? What part of it exists for the Folk-spirits?’ Everything you experience in the sentient-soul as ordinary joy or ordinary grief brought about by the external world, all colors, sounds, in fact all sensible perceptions of the outer world,—none of this concerns these Beings at all. Therefore eliminate the whole contents of the human sentient-soul, and tell yourself that all that is in the picture of the world through man's possessing the sentient-soul, is of no importance to the Archangels, they do not work into that. Even one portion of the intellectual-soul is not an element of any significance to the Archangels, in so far as it is stimulated by outer impressions. That too, which is aroused externally, which a man works upon with his intellect and lives through in his feelings, that too, does not concern the Archangels. But in the intellectual-soul of man there are, however, certain things which man experiences in common with the Archangels. We can perceive quite clearly that such things come into the human intellectual-soul or mind-soul when we see how, for instance, what we call our moral ideals come to us. There would be no moral ideals if we were only able to have feelings, to feel joy and sorrow and to think about that which comes to us from the outer world by means of our sense-perceptions; true we might then be able to rejoice over the flowers in the field and also over a beautiful landscape, but our hearts would never be able to glow with enthusiasm for an ideal which cannot shine forth to us out of the external world, which we can inscribe in our soul and then follow with enthusiasm. But we must not only be aglow and feel in the sentient-soul, we must also give thought to the matter. The man who only feels and does not think, may indeed be an enthusiast but never a practical man. We must not absorb ideals into our sentient-soul from outside, but we must let them pour in out of the spiritual world, and work upon them in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul. The artistic, the architectural ideals and so on, are present in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the spiritual-soul. They are connected with that which a man cannot perceive outwardly, but which glows through and permeates his being inwardly, so that it becomes a part of his life. Observe the life of the peoples from epoch to epoch, how it has run its course, how new conceptions and new world-secrets have from time to time appeared in it. From whence could the Greeks have taken their conceptions of Zeus and Athena if they had only relied upon external perception? All that is contained in the wisdom, in the mythologies, religions, and sciences of the peoples came into them from within. So therefore we must see that one half of our inner life, half of our intellectual-soul or mind-soul and of our spiritual-soul is filled from within, and indeed exactly so far as man permeates himself inwardly with what has just been described. Thus far can the Archangels penetrate into the human inner being, and thus far also does the actual life of the Archangels extend. You must therefore eliminate from the inner life that which is received from outside through the sentient-soul and distinguish it from what is worked upon by the intellectual-soul or mind-soul feelings. Then, however, you still have that which we call our ‘I’. To us the ‘I’ is the highest member of our being; what we carry into our moral consciousness are ideals, moral, aesthetic, ideal thoughts. just as the outlook of man is closed as it were inwards, but can, by means of the senses, open itself outwards to the external world, so he can say that he perceives colors, sounds, cold and warmth, but he also has the consciousness that behind these perceptions of colors, sounds, warmth and cold, there is yet something real, and that is, the beings belonging to the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. They are behind it all. So that a man can in the manner described think of the world as continued beyond. On this world beyond, however, the outlook is closed to ordinary people. Were this not the case, there could be no materialism. If a man could have a free outlook over the domain extending upward from the intellectual-soul and spiritual-soul, it would then be quite as foolish to doubt the existence of the spiritual world as it would be foolish to-day to doubt the existence of the animal, plant and mineral worlds.

Now remember how in man the ‘I’, his highest member, encloses within itself the sentient, the intellectual and spiritual-souls. With the Archangels it is the case that their soul-life begins by experiencing in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and then goes up into the ‘I’, which then spreads itself out in a world of higher realms, in a realm of spiritual facts, in which it lives just as man lives in the realm of the animals, plants and minerals; so that we may say, we must indeed perceive that this Archangelic Being may have in his soul-life that which we call the human ‘I’, yet nevertheless we cannot say that the ‘I’ of the Archangels is of the same nature. The ‘I’ of man is not one and the same as the ‘I’ of the Archangels. The Archangel-’I’ is in fact two stages higher, so that the Archangel is through his ‘I’ rooted in a higher world.

Now just as man by means of his sense-perception looks at colors and hears sounds, so does the Archangel look down upon the world which includes the ‘I’ as objective truth, only that around that ‘I’ there is still gathered some of that part of the astral, which we human beings know in ourselves as intellectual-soul or mind-soul. Think of these Beings as gazing into a world which does not extend to the minerals, plants or animals. Think that instead of this, their vision, which is a spiritual one, is directed to their picture of the world, and that they perceive centers therein. These centers are the human egos, around which again is gathered something that appears as a sort of aura. You have then the picture of how the Archangelic Being looks down upon those personalities of the folk belonging to him and which constitute the people. His world consists of an astral field of perception in which there are certain centers; these centers, these central points, are the several human personalities, the several human egos. just therefore as to us, colors and sounds, warmth and cold are within our field of perception, and are for us the important world, so to the Archangelic Beings, to the Folk-spirits, we ourselves with a portion of our inner life are the field of perception, and just as we go into the outer world and work at it and transform it into our instruments, so are we the objects in so far as we belong to this or the other Folk-spirit-belonging to the scene of action of the Archangels or Folk-spirits.

Thus we have an insight, strange as it may sound, into a higher theory of cognition, a higher epistemology of the Archangels. This is completely different from the epistemology of man; what is data for the Archangels is quite different. What is data for man is all that is spread out in space and meets us through our senses, as color, sound, warmth, cold, hardness and softness; what is data for the Archangels is what appears within, in the field of human consciousness. That to them is a number of centers around which the inner experiences of men are woven, in so far as these experiences take place in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul; but their activity is relatively a higher one.

What then differentiates the world of the Archangels or Folk-souls? The world of man is differentiated by the fact that if he takes hold of a thing with his hand, he feels it to be either warm or cold. The Archangel experiences something similar when he meets with human individualities. He meets with some men whose souls have more inner activity, the contents of whose souls are richer,—these make a greater impression upon him. Others he finds to be lethargic, indolent, the contents of whose souls are poor,—these beings are to him as the world impression of warmth and cold are to the human soul. Thus is the Archangel's picture of the world specialized, and he can make use of the several persons and work for them, by weaving out of his own being that which has to guide the whole people.

But there is also another way in which the life of the Archangel is connected with the life of the particular people he is leading. just as a human being has an ascending and a descending period in his life, an ascending time of youth, and a descending time of old age, so does the Archangel experience in the rise and fall of the culture of a people, his youth and his old age.

We must now again look into the inner life of one of these Archangels. You will already have noticed, from what I have related, that what man receives from without, the Archangel receives from within; hence when the individuals belonging to a people appear as centers within him, the Archangel has the feeling that what comes to him thus, does, it is true, arise in his consciousness from within, but it is nevertheless foreign to him. This to him is just like the sudden ideas that flash into our consciousness. He is also affected in just the opposite way by that which in man is youth and old age. Man experiences his youth in feeling the members of his body to be fresh, he feels that they are improving and developing. In old age these members become relaxed, they refuse to work; that is something which a man feels as happening from within him. Now the Archangel feels, it is true, that everything is happening within him, but the rise and decline of a nation nevertheless seems like something foreign to him, as something about which he has the feeling that it is independent of him, with which therefore he has nothing directly to do, but which gives him the occasion to incarnate in some particular people at a certain time. When the possibility of incorporating himself occurs, when there is a people living in the ascending period of its life, in all its upward-striving power, then the Archangel goes down, just as a man goes down when he has lived out his life between death and a new birth. Thus the Archangel goes down into a people and embodies himself in it. In the same way too, does the Archangel feel his death, the necessity of withdrawing from the people in question, when the several perceptions, the centers which he perceives begin to become less productive, less active, when they begin to have fewer contents. Then comes the time when he forsakes that community of people and enters into his Devachan, into his life between death and a new birth, in order at a later opportunity to seek out in another way a community of people. Thus the youthful upward life of a people signifies the youth of its Folk-spirit, he perceives it as being a fresh, flowing element in which he dwells. The descending period of a people's life he perceives as a withering of the centers in his domain of perception.

That gives a sort of insight into the inner being of one of these Folksouls. If we recall all this to mind, we may say, that in certain respects such a Folk-soul is really rather far removed from an individual human life, for in each one of these, what is in the sentient-soul and in the lower part of the intellectual-soul is a domain into which the Folk-spirit, the Archangel does not reach. For a human being it is, however, something very real. A man feels keenly that it belongs to the most inward, the most intimate part of his own life. In a certain respect the Archangel-nature, the one which guides the people, is something which floats above the separate individual human beings. The personal things which a man experiences because he receives perceptions through his senses, are foreign to the Archangel who is guiding the people. But there are intermediaries, and it is important that we should understand that there are such intermediaries. They are the Beings we call Angels, who are between the Archangels and man. You must take this in the strictest sense of the words: Folk-spirits are Archangels, they are Spirits who have finished the transforming of their astral bodies into Spirit-self or Manas, and are now transforming their etheric body or life-body into Life-spirit. Just halfway between these Beings and man are the Angels. These are Beings who are occupied in remodeling their astral body into Spirit-self or Manas, but have not yet concluded their work. At the present time man is at the beginning of this work, the Angels are nearly at the end of it, but have in no wise finished it. Therefore these Beings come into closer contact with that which makes up the daily life of man. We may say that the Angels incline with their whole soul-nature towards what we call the astral body. For this reason they fully understand all the joy and sorrow the human personality may go through. But because on the other hand they extend much higher than the human ‘I’, because they possess a higher ‘I’, because they can take in part of the higher world, the world of their consciousness extends to that domain in which is to be found the sphere of consciousness of the Archangels. They are therefore really the intermediaries between the Archangels and the several human individuals. They on their part receive the commands of the Folk-spirits and convey them into the several souls, and by means of this agency is brought about what a single individual may do, not only for his own progress, his own evolution, but for his whole people.

In the life of a human being these two streams flow side by side. The one stream is that which brings him onward from one incarnation to the next, which is connected with his own concerns, with what he has above all to do so as to fulfill the duty which is to him the strictest, because most especially his own duty. He may not stand still, because he would then be allowing the germs for growth within him to lie fallow, if he did not trouble about them. That, however, is his own private affair, by attending to which he progresses from incarnation to incarnation. But that which he contributes to his own people, which belongs to the concerns of the people of his own particular nation is brought about through the inspiration of the Angels, who carry the commands of the Archangels to the several human beings.

We can therefore easily picture a people spread over a certain portion of the earth, and over this people the folk-aura, the etheric aura, and in this how the forces of the Folk-spirit work, and modify the etheric body of man according to the three types of force. That which is at work in this folk aura is the Archangel; we must think of him as being a higher Being, one standing two stages higher in evolution than man, floating over the whole people, and giving directions as to what this people as a whole has to fulfill. The Archangel knows what must be done during the upward period, during the fresh youth of the people; he knows what are the achievements to be brought about by the transition of this people from youth to old age, so that his impulses should have the right effect.

These great outlines are fashioned by the Archangel; but here, upon this physical plane, the individual human beings must work, here they must take care that these great aims are realized. Between the individual human beings and the Archangels there are the Angels as intermediary beings, they impel the man to the place to which he must go, so that in the feelings of the people should arise that which corresponds to the great ordinances of the Archangels. You will form a correct picture of it, if you take what I have been describing not merely as an allegory, but as representing as nearly as possible the reality.

Now the whole tissue spun by the Archangels is influenced by those whom we call the abnormal* Archangels, the Spirits of Language, as I yesterday described. We have also described how the abnormal¹ Spirits of Personality, the Archai, work. We may now glance at the field in which the Archangel gives his orders, in which he distributes the missions which are to be carried further by the Angels into the separate individuals. The Archangels can, however, also operate into the domain of the abnormal Spirits of Personality, and it may happen that in the mutual co-operation of the Archangels with the abnormal Spirits of Personality,—because the latter are pursuing quite different objects,—that in certain respects the measures taken by the Archangels are crossed. When this occurs, when these abnormal Spirits of Personality come into collision with the measures taken by the Archangels, we can then perceive that within a single nation groups are formed, having special tasks. The action of the Spirits of Personality is externally visible when, within a certain people, groups are formed having special tasks. This may last for several centuries. For instance, in the very country in which we now have specially to work at Anthroposophy, in Germany, you have seen for centuries this play of the Archangel of the Germans in co-operation with the sometimes opposing separate Spirits of Personality. In the division of the collective German people into the smaller peoples, you have an interplay of the abnormal Spirits of Personality with the Archangel.

Such peoples are not so much centralized, they pay more attention to the cultivation of the individualities. This has in certain respects its good side, because in this way a great variety, many different shades of folk character can find their expression.

You may, however, take the other case, in which not the abnormal Spirit of Personality but the normal Spirit of Personality, who expresses himself in the Spirit of the Age becomes, so to speak, more important for a certain epoch than he otherwise is in the ordinary course of things.

Therefore, when we look at a people, we are looking at the Archangel as its first power. Then the Spirit of the Age comes and gives his orders to the Archangel, the latter passes them on to the Angels, and these convey them to the separate individuals. Now because one only sees, as a rule, what is nearest to one, so in this combined action one sees the actions of the Archangel as being the most important. It may, however, occur that the Spirit of the Age has to give out more weighty, more important orders, that he is, so to speak, compelled to take something away from the Archangel, because he must detach a portion of the people in order that the task of the age, the mission of the Spirit of the Age may be fulfilled. In such a case bodies of people separate themselves from the rest. The Spirit of the Age then visibly gains the upper hand over the influence of the Archangel. A case in point occurred when the Dutch people split away from the foundations which it had in common with the German people. Holland and Germany had originally one Archangel in common, and the separation occurred because the Spirit of the Age severed off a portion at a given time, and then passed on to this portion that which has become the important concern of the modern Spirit of the Age. All you may read in Dutch history—for history is in reality only an external expression, a maya, for what is happening inwardly—is only the reflection of an inner event. Thus in this case we can see the splitting of the Dutch people from the collective German people taking place externally; but the inner kernel is, that the Spirit of the Age required an instrument with which to carry out his overseas mission. The whole mission of the Dutch people was a mission of the Spirit of the Age, and it was split off for the purpose of giving him the possibility of carrying out something important at a certain time in history. What is described by historians is only outer maya, which hides the actual facts more than it reveals them.

There are other cases in which you can meet with what is so striking in this connection, namely, that a portion of a people had to sever itself from the common folk; that is the case with the Portuguese people. You may look in vain for other reasons in their case, you will find that it is here solely a question of a victory of the Spirit of the Age over the Archangel. If you go through the several events you will find that the opportunity was here made use of to form a special people,—there were not many such opportunities. The Spanish people and the Portuguese formed one mother folk. The outer reasons perhaps were, that the rivers were only navigable as far as to the Portuguese frontiers; there were no other external reasons. On the other hand there was the inner reason, that those tasks had to be fulfilled which were the specific tasks of the Portuguese, and which were different from the tasks of the combined Spanish people. There we see the Spirits of the Age for a time developing a more intense activity than they usually display. We see the harmony which had prevailed till then replaced by something else. We see the Spirit of the Age, instead of communicating his orders to the Archangel, taking a direct part in the history of the people, and we see how the other Spirits make use of this opportunity to incorporate themselves. When such a people is split off, then the Spirit of the Age for a time, in the first enthusiasm which has permeated the several persons, discharges the functions of the Archangel so much, that hardly anything else appears of the severance than a hurry and bustle within this people. One sees the hurrying and the urging, the activity which comes from the mission of the Spirit of the Age. Then, however, the possibility arises for a normal and an abnormal Archangel to incorporate themselves in the severed part of the people. Thus we see the growth of the Dutch and the Portuguese peoples who then received their own normal and abnormal Archangels. In that which incorporated itself here, in the difference in the temperament of the people expressed in the several personalities, we see the work of those spiritual Beings whom we have named. We see the work of these spiritual Beings in a very wonderful manner and we then recognize that what takes place outwardly in history is only a result of their activity. Gradually the saying, that the external world is maya or illusion, assumes more definite significance.

What happens in external history is only the outer reflection of the spiritual, of the super-sensible Beings, just as the outer man is only the outer reflection of the inner man. That is why I had to say, and it must be emphasized again and again, that the saying ‘The world is maya’ is of the very greatest importance; but it is not sufficient to emphasize it in an abstract way, rather should one be in a position to carry it out in detail.

Now we have seen that yet other Spirits and Hierarchies are active in what we call the world. We have spoken of the normal and abnormal Archangels. The abnormal Archangels have revealed themselves to us as being actually Spirits of Form or Powers, only they are those who have renounced a certain portion of the attributes of their evolution. We may then ask, How is it with the normal Spirits of Form? We perceive the normal Spirits of Form as being four degrees above man. In our next lecture we shall have a little more to say about them. These normal Spirits of Form are Beings four stages higher than man. The Hierarchies we mentioned yesterday do not end with the Spirits of Form, with whom we concluded the ascending line. Above these there are the Spirits of Motion, the Dynamis, or Mights; higher still there are the Beings we call Kyriotetes, Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom. You will find these different spiritual Beings enumerated in my Occult Science, as well as in my writings about the Akashic Record.

Now you can understand that the law of renunciation, of remaining behind, applies also to the higher Spirits, therefore that the Spirits of Motion may also remain behind with certain attributes,—Spirits of Motion, who are five stages higher than man,—that certain Spirits of Motion have so remained in human evolution, as if they were now only Spirits of Form or Powers. These are, as regards certain attributes, really Spirits of Motion, and in respect of other attributes, regarding which they have made renunciation, they are Spirits of Form; so that we have normal Spirits of Form, four stages higher than man, and other Spirits working on the same ground on which are the Spirits of Form, but who are really Spirits of Motion. That is therefore a domain in which the normal and abnormal Spirits of Form, the backward Spirits of Motion, work together, just as we have found a domain in which the normal and abnormal Archangels work together. Through this co-operation, however, something takes place which closely concerns man; by means of it the shaping of what we call the human races takes place, which we must distinguish from the peoples.

If we consider the matter in this way, we shall not have a confused idea of it, but one that is elastic; we must not confuse all this. A nation is not a race, the concept of a nation has nothing to do with that of a race. A race may divide itself into many different nations, races are different communities from nations. We are certainly right in speaking of a German, a Dutch, a Norwegian nation, but we speak of a Germanic race. Now what acts in the idea of a race? The Beings whom we describe as normal Spirits of Form or Powers act therein in combination with those Beings whom we have learnt to know as the abnormal Spirits of Form, but who in reality are Spirits of Motion having the mission of Spirits of Form. That is why mankind is divided into races. That which makes man the same over the whole globe, which makes each man, irrespective of the race to which he belongs, a member of the whole human kingdom, is brought about by the normal Spirits of Form. But that which plays a part over the whole earth and divides the whole of humanity into races, is brought about by the abnormal Spirits of Form, who have denied themselves so that there should not be one humanity only upon the earth but a variety of people.

Thus we arrive at the subsoil, so to say, at the ground of which the separate individual peoples first arise. In this way we succeed in surveying into the field belonging to the Spirits of Form and as abnormal Spirits of Form to bear one humanity, and that the belated Spirits of Motion enter into the field belonging to the Spirits of Form and as abnormal Spirits of Form divide up all humanity upon the globe into the several races. When we look into what these Spirits actually want, when we study the aims and objects of these normal and abnormal Spirits of Form, we shall understand what they wish to bring about with the human races, and how through these a foundation is created for what arises out of them. If we then study a people itself we shall have understood and comprehended it.

• 1. As the constant interchange of name is confusing, the reader is referred to the synopsis. The term abnormal is applied sometimes to the hierarchic rank abandoned, sometimes to the new hierarchy taken on.

In these lectures we shall have to discuss important questions intimately related to spiritual life. We shall have to speak of what lies at the basis of so-called initiation and, after having indicated some of its secrets and laws, we must go on to speak of the significance of all that radiates out for life from initiation and initiates in the course of human evolution. We shall have to speak of all this in relation to what may be summed up in such contrasting ideas as eternity and the passing moment, the light of the spirit and the darkness of life. Then, having considered the life of man from the point of view these ideas give, we shall return again to the power of initiation and the power of initiates. It is the principle of initiation, then, that on this occasion will be the limit of our studies.

Eternity; we need only touch on this idea to feel resounding in us something connected with the deepest longings of man's soul and with the highest aims of his endeavour. The passing moment always brings before us all that surrounds us in life, that reminds us of the necessity to search in this passing moment of our lives for what is able to give us a view into the land of our desire, into eternity. We only have to call to mind how Goethe introduced into his Faust the deepest secret of this his greatest poem, by making Faust say to the passing moment. “Tarry yet, thou art so fair!” and making him then confess that if such can become the soul's attitude, if it can so identify itself with this confession as to say to the passing moment, “Tarry yet, thou art so fair,” it must necessarily follow that Faust should own that he deserves to fall victim to Mephistopheles, the enemy of mankind on earth. Thus, Goethe makes everything connected with the feeling that flows from the passing moment the basic mystery of his greatest poem. It seems then that what we live in—the passing moment—is in opposition to what we call eternity, for which man's soul must constantly long.

The light of the spirit! In all the anthroposophical studies we have pursued over the years, we have recognised that the striving after spirit light has the fundamental aim of leading man out of the darkness of life. Once more we feel how in Faust, one of the greatest poems in human evolution, a poet, wishing to portray a great and all-embracing soul, cannot but make it come forth out of the darkness of life. What is it that entangles Faust at the beginning of the poem? What envelops him? It is the darkness of life. How often have we to emphasise that so great is the force and power of this darkness over man, that the spirit light, finding him immature, may so work upon him as not to illuminate but to dazzle and stun him. So that the question may not only be, “What is the way to the light of the spirit, where can it be found?” but rather and above all, “How must man tread the path of the soul that is able to lead him to the spirit light in the right way?”

These are only the guiding lines that should occupy us in these lectures. We have reached such a stage in our anthroposophical work that we need not develop our subject from the very start, but may connect it to some of the things already familiar to us.

When we meet the word, initiation, which is for us so intimately connected with the words eternity and spirit light, all the great men of whom we have heard in the successive epochs of humanity as initiates, become living in our souls. With them our souls call to life, too, the several epochs themselves, how they ran their courses, how men lived in them, and how the light streamed into humanity from both initiates and initiation temples in order to make possible what the impulses, the essential driving forces of human evolution, have in all ages become. It would take us too far afield today to refer in detail to all that happened in earth evolution before the Atlantean catastrophe broke upon the face of the earth, completely changing it. We can gain an adequate idea of what we are considering if we turn our gaze to post-Atlantean times, remembering the particular configuration of the human being and his various aspects throughout the ages.

We will let our gaze sweep back over the characteristic civilisation that followed immediately after the face of the earth had been re-formed by the Atlantean catastrophe. We have often spoken reverently of all that in the first post-Atlantean epoch the great and holy teachers of mankind brought to that part of the earth where later the Indian civilisation was developed. We have remarked how the soul cannot but look up from below to the lofty spiritual teachings that came into the world at that time, through certain human individualities who still bore within them all the inward greatness of those men who in Atlantean times had direct communion, which was no longer possible in later epochs of mankind, with the divine spiritual worlds. We have pointed out how the heritage of Atlantean wisdom, now accessible to the occultist alone, lived on in post-Atlantean form in the ancient holy teachers of the first post-Atlantean period of culture. We have also pointed out how great and significant man finds all that then lived, to which, now, it is only the Akashic Records that bear witness, when he receives reflections of it in Indian, or any other oriental literature. The moral and spiritual sublimity contained in these writings as an echo of primeval spiritual teachings cannot be fully realised by present-day humanity insofar as external culture is concerned. Least of all can it be realised in the countries that have been prepared for their present external culture by what the various forms of Christianity have accomplished during the last centuries. Thus the soul felt directed upwards when it turned its gaze to all the greatness that, so dimly sensed today, has only come down to us as a faint echo of primeval spirituality. So, if man looks up to the old wisdom and remembers above all what has often been mentioned here, namely, that only in the seventh and last epochs of the post-Atlantean age will mankind again reach the point of drawing up out of the darkness of life the understanding of what once lived at the beginning of post-Atlantean times and gave the impulse for human evolution—if we consider that mankind must mature to the last epoch before it can feel and experience in itself what at that time was felt and experienced, then only shall we get a sense of how exalted must have been the initiation principle that gave the impulse to the ancient, holy, spiritual culture of mankind.

Then we see how, in the course of successive epochs, mankind, struggling for other spiritual treasures, other treasures of earthly life, seems to descend ever lower, how it takes other forms, but how, according to the needs of the age, great initiates give to men from the spiritual worlds what they require at any particular epoch as impulse for their culture. Then, before our vision, arises the Zarathustra culture that, if seen in its true light, entirely differs from that of the holy Rishis.

We then see the Egyptian-Chaldean culture arise, and the ancient holy mysteries of Greece, to which we referred from a quite different aspect in our last lecture. Everywhere we see the light of the spirit shining down, according to the needs of the different epochs, into the darkness of life. If at the outset of our considerations we ask what are our ideas of an initiate—it is obvious that at the beginning of these lectures only approximate ideas can be given of so vast a concept—we must first gather up much of all we have already heard in the anthroposophical field. We must be clear that for complete initiation it is necessary that man should not look out on the world from within his physical body in the usual way, by perceiving the world around him through his eyes and other sense organs, nor must he gain knowledge of this world or any other world around him through the intellect bound to the brain, nor through what he may call his sense of orientation. He must not form concepts about these worlds in the ordinary way. He must arrive at a stage in which, by means of what we may term “the perceiving of worlds outside his physical body,” he develops something in his life of soul that may be called a super-sensible spiritual body, having within it organs of perception, though of a higher kind, just as the physical body has eyes and cars and other organs of perception and understanding. “One who can see worlds without using the organs of his physical body” can be given as an entirely explicit definition of an initiate. The great initiates, who gave man the important cultural impulses in the course of successive ages, had attained in the highest measure independence of the sensory body, and use of another quite different in character.

I do not wish to say much that is abstract. Wherever possible I shall bring forward concrete examples, and today therefore I should like to illustrate this life outside the sensory body in a higher organisation belonging to the soul and to illustrate it by means of the following example.

If one who has only gone a few steps on the way to initiation, realises through self-observation what it is that he experiences in and of himself, he may say something like, “One of the first things I experienced of myself is that I have within me, besides my physical body of flesh, a finer one that may be called an etheric body, which in earth life is carried about with me just like the physical body.” Anyone making his first steps toward initiation realises this at first in such a way that he feels within this body and experiences it just as, on another level, he feels what lives in his blood or nervous system, or in what arises from his muscular system. Such an inner feeling and experience is present, and it can exist also for the etheric body. It is then particularly useful for a student in the first stages of initiation to get to know the difference, or one might say the relationship, between the realisation of himself, the experience of himself in his physical body, on the one hand, and on the other, in his etheric body. Man experiences himself in the etheric body in the same way as one is conscious of the blood or the beating of one's heart and pulse in the physical body.

To gain a clear idea of this we may consider the etheric body in connection with the physical body, in which one is more at home than in the body that one only succeeds in reaching by means of a journey into the spiritual. One may say to oneself, “In my etheric body I have a part corresponding to my physical brain and to all that constitutes my head. The head, the brain, is as though crystallised out of the etheric body, and so rests within it that it might be compared to a piece of ice floating in water—the water representing the etheric body and the ice, the physical body crystallised from the etheric body. An intimate connection is felt and experienced between what may be called the etheric part of the head or brain, and the physical brain itself. We then realise how we create our thoughts, how we form memory images within the etheric body, and how the physical brain is only a kind of reflector, but we also realise how intimate is the connection of the brain with the etheric body. This can be experienced with especial force when one has to work hard at tasks connected with the physical plane in the physical life, when prolonged thought about things is necessary, and when one must exert the physical body to bring up memory images from the depths of life and to hold them together. In such a process, the etheric body always takes a direct part, whether one knows it or not. But inwardly connected with it is the physical brain, and if this brain is tired out, fatigue is markedly felt in the corresponding etheric part. We then notice something like a block in what is experienced as the etheric part of the brain, something like a foreign body, so that one can no longer get at what one must know since mobility in the physical brain must run parallel with mobility in the etheric body. You may then have the distinct feeling that your etheric body never grows tired. It would be able to gather up thought images to all eternity, and bring to the surface all that you know. But before all this can be expressed in the physical world, it must be reflected back, and this the brain refuses to do. The etheric body never tires. Just because it can be continuously active, it notices the fatigue of the brain all the more. One notices as it were the forces of exhaustion produced by the brain, and when the brain goes to sleep and falls into the torpor of fatigue, one might say, “Now you must stop or you will be ill.” The etheric body cannot be used up, but by giving the brain too much to do it is possible indirectly to over tire it more and more, thus bringing about a lifeless, deathlike condition. A living organism will not suffer anything normally connected with it to be partially deadened and brought into an abnormal state. Hence, out of a free resolve, one must say, “So that I may not kill part of my brain and leave it to go on consuming itself, I must stop when I begin to feel it like something foreign inside me.”

That is what we experience when we try to find the relation between that part of the human or etheric body, which corresponds to the brain or head, and the physical brain or physical head itself. There is an intimate connection between them. In effect, the external life of the senses runs its course in such a way that it is impossible to break down what is parallel between the two. Therefore, if we want to express the relation, we may also say that in our head, especially in our brain, we have a faithful expression of the etheric forces, something that, in the external phenomena and external functions, gives us a really faithful image of the functions and processes in the corresponding etheric part.

It is different in the case of other organs of the human etheric body and the corresponding physical sense organs. These things are quite different. I will give you an example. Consider the hands. Just as there exists in the etheric body an etheric part corresponding to the head or brain, so there are etheric processes in the human etheric body corresponding to the hands. But the difference between the external physical hands and their tasks, and what lies at the basis of the corresponding etheric part is far greater than the difference between the physical head and its corresponding part in the human etheric body. What the hands perform has far more to do with the world of the senses and is much more a purely sensory function, while what is done by the corresponding etheric organs is only manifest in a small degree in what finds physical expression in the hands.

In order to describe the corresponding facts, I must, as is often the case, say things that appear grotesque and strange for physical experience, and for grasping physical observations in words. But what I say is fully in accordance with basic facts, and everyone who knows anything about these things will at once feel that they really are as I am obliged to describe them. They are the etheric parts corresponding to the physical hands. But apart from the fact that what corresponds to these etheric parts finds its expression in the hands and their movements, these etheric organs in the etheric body are true spiritual organs. The etheric organs expressed in the hands and their functions, work far more intuitively, more spiritually, and perform a far higher task than is accomplished by the etheric brain. Whoever has made progress in these matters will say that the brain with its etheric basis is in effect by far the least skilful of the spiritual organs man bears within him because as soon as he begins to bestir himself in the etheric part of the brain, he soon becomes aware of this foreign part of it.

The spiritual activities connected with the organs underlying the hands, but incompletely expressed in the hands and their functions, serve for a far higher, more spiritual kind of knowledge and observation. These organs can lead into the super-sensible world and can occupy themselves with our perception and orientation there. A spiritual seer may express this, somewhat surprisingly but accurately, by saying that the human brain is a most clumsy organ for research in the spiritual world, and that the hands, or the spiritual basis of the hands, are far more interesting and significant organs for gaining knowledge of the world, and are certainly far more skilful organs than the brain.

Not much is gained on the way to initiation by advancing from the use of the physical brain to a free use of the etheric brain. The difference is not great between what may be achieved through a purified, intuitive brain-thinking, and regulated spiritual working in the etheric spiritual counterpart of the brain. The difference becomes much greater between what our hands accomplish in the world, and what can be done by the etheric part that is the spiritual basis of the hands, in the same way as the etheric brain is the spiritual basis of the physical brain. On the path of initiation not much development of the etheric brain is necessary, since it is not a particularly important organ. But the etheric basis of the hands is connected with the activity of the lotus flower in the region of the heart, as you will learn in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

This lotus flower pours out its rays of force in such a way as to build up the organism that, at the stage at which physical man now stands, exists in an incomplete form in the hands and their functions. When we learn this fact, and think of the great difference between the mere use of physical hands and all that we can acquire as regards the super-sensible world through the etheric organs underlying the hands—such far more skilful organs than those of the etheric brain—we gain a vivid conception of learning to experience initiation and all the enrichment that it means for man. We do not acquire much enrichment through the feeling that our brain radiates out to feel its etheric counterpart. This is the case, but it is not a really permeating and significant experience. The significant experience begins when one feels that other parts are also expanding and making contact with the universe. Though it may sound strange, yet it is true that the least skilful organ for spiritual investigation is the brain, since it is the least capable of development. On the other hand, entirely new perspectives are opened out when we consider other apparently subordinate organs.

Thus there takes place a complete transformation of what man experiences in himself when he starts on the first steps toward the heights of initiation. It is necessary that one should bring this to consciousness, that one should grasp it as an inner transformation of the human personality, like the principle of development elsewhere in the universe; one thing passes over into another, the later being called, though perhaps not always appropriately, the more perfect as compared with the earlier. If we are clear how in the course of evolution one thing is transformed into another, how the seed of the plant is transformed and becomes leaves, flower and fruit, we can say that the human personality, too, experiences something of this kind; namely, what it is and what it can become through the methods given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, which are the first beginnings of what may lead us right up to the highest regions of initiation. It is good—and you will see why—to arouse within us a living conception of how the men who are destined to become spiritual leaders in the course of time develop themselves inwardly, how all becomes transformed that is at first only germinal and appears so imperfect in man, like the hands in comparison with other organs. Outwardly, this transformation is not noticeable, but the inward change is all the more significant. Just as the outer world exists even for one who is blind and cannot see what is visible to others but only appears if the eye is there, so the world that is spiritual is present around us. But we have to bring to it what we can in order that the spiritual content of the world should approach us.

Now, in the various epochs of humanity there must stream into the course of evolution as impulse all that can be given through living oneself into the spiritual world. This is what was always behind everything proceeding from the mysteries, the initiation centres. A true idea of the course of human evolution may be gained by thinking of the great initiates as the real driving force, the real individualities, behind what is to be perceived externally. The connection between what these great initiates have to do and what happens externally in the World, often only becomes perceptible through anthroposophy or some other form of occultism. The external, purely historical knowledge of the learned only sees that human history, human evolution, is running its course; it does not see the driving forces behind it. In external history we follow what seems like a chain of phenomena, one link following another in a succession of external events. But that at certain points of the chain impulses are entering from quite another world by way of initiation, this we only learn to accept through anthroposophical development. Thus, anthroposophically we see the inmost centre in the course of time and all that, fundamentally, gives to evolution its whole stamp and character. We perceive the various developments of religion as an out-streaming from the initiates. We perceive how the impulses flowing from the mysteries and initiation centres pass over into the general life of mankind.

Whoever regards the evolution of mankind in this way becomes, as a matter of course, free from any kind of a priori preference for a particular religion. This has always been the case with genuine occultism. It is one of the first requirements of initiation to divest oneself of all prejudices and preconceived feelings that grow up in a human soul when it incarnates into a particular religious system or community. In self-education one has to watch carefully that nothing remains in the soul that might give preference to any one religion. We must meet with absolute impartiality all that is contained in the various religions that, through initiation as impulse of development, has entered human evolution. As soon as there is any preference for a particular religion, something like an astral mist is formed through which no free vision is possible. Anyone who, by reason of an inclination that is a matter of course in ordinary life, harbours a preference in his soul for any religion, will never be able to understand other religions. Though he may not know it, he will perceive the predominance of one part of the contents of initiation and will never attain impartial knowledge of the other. Thus, for an occult view, it is obvious that one should confront without prejudice the various streams and impulses flowing from initiation. No one in studying a plant would give the flower preference over the root because he then would not be able to form an objective judgement of its whole structure. Just as little can a correct judgement of the inner content of one religious principle be gained if one is unable to observe other religions with complete impartiality.

In these lectures we shall be speaking of the demands the soul must make upon itself when taking the first steps toward initiation. I should like first to arouse a feeling of how initiation is related to life, and of how the various initiation centre's and initiation impulses stand in regard to human evolution, particularly in post-Atlantean times.

Now occult investigation, in following up this course of human evolution, has a peculiar experience that can only be properly appreciated when such words as have just been spoken about the equal value of all religions are genuinely understood. When these ideas become a matter of course, something remarkable is experienced that will be increasingly better understood during the course of these lectures.

Let us turn our gaze to the initiates who give light to mankind as the ages go by. A man living primarily in the physical world, looking back on the initiates as historical and traditional figures, may say, “Those are the great figures of world history.” When necessary, history has taken good care that as little as possible should be known of them. Although this may sound paradoxical, it is a good thing that humanity should know so little of Homer, for example, since it has not been possible for his image to be distorted by the learned as has been done in the case of other personalities. So will it be—we may well long for this—with Goethe when once he has become as unknown a personality as Homer is today. Man's soul then can look out into the external world at these personalities, and see what they did there. Then he may himself take the first steps in initiation and become able to turn his gaze on the great figures of initiation such as Buddha or Zarathustra. He may be able to remember what Buddha or Zarathustra was to him in the world of the senses, what sort of impression he there received of these human individualities. Then, when some degree of spiritual light has dawned for him through initiation, he may ask, “How does Buddha now appear to me, and how Zarathustra?” And he will say, “I now have more knowledge of Buddha and Zarathustra. I know something I was not able to know in the world of the senses.” Such a man may then develop even further, until he comes to the stage when he will see better what these beings are as spiritual entities. One learns to know a Buddha, a Zarathustra, better the more one lives oneself into spiritual light until, when at last a certain limit is reached, it stops. That is one secret phenomenon, however, that has no need to be discussed further here. Suffice it to say that, as higher worlds are approached, further knowledge may come to a stop. This is the case as regards all initiates whom we meet in world evolution.

Now the spiritual student, who has not advanced too far, can easily be mistaken in these matters. That, however, is not of much consequence. It may happen that some human individuality, who in bygone ages stood high as a spiritual seer, on being reincarnated later, seems to have descended from his former spiritual heights. But the truth is simply that there are certain connections in human evolution where those who have already been initiates, are reincarnated as non-initiates because time conditions call for them to accomplish certain deeds for which their initiation, latent during one or more incarnations, may work in some special way. Mistakes may easily arise about such individualities as they appear to us here or there making their way in external life, and quite wrong ideas may be formed about them. But in the course of progress these mistakes have gradually to be corrected. On the whole, therefore, it is a fact that man's relation to the initiates is such that he learns to know them better as he himself ascends toward the light of the spirit.

In the successive epochs of human evolution we find one remarkable phenomenon. I could give examples of what I have just told you of the confusing way in which initiates on reincarnating sometimes appear to have come down from their heights. You would probably be much surprised if I told you, for instance, in what way Dante was reincarnated in the nineteenth century. But it is not my task here to discuss further this result of my own investigation and what was established for me. Rather have I to bring forward with strong proof the things known to everyone conversant with occultism, letting everything else recede into the background and stating nothing that is not generally recognised where bona fide occultism is upheld.

Now another remarkable phenomenon appears to us that can best be expressed by saying that we meet with a Being regarding Whom it would be senseless to say that He was initiated like other initiates. While through Him the principle of initiation stands before us in the world objectively and is there, yet it would be meaningless to speak of this Individuality as having been initiated on earth like other initiates in the course of human evolution. I have often touched on this fact. A certain degree of misconception has arisen by understanding this fact as originating in specifically Christian prejudice. In reality it is not any kind of Christian prejudice, but should be stated as the objective result of occult research. This Individuality Who was not initiated like other initiates, of Whom it would be quite meaningless to speak as having gone through initiation like others, is Christ Jesus Himself. Let us again emphasise that, just as it is impossible to understand a scale if it is said that it should be suspended from two points instead of one since the one point constitutes its very nature—just as it would be impossible for a competent mechanic to maintain that a scale should be suspended from two or more points, it would be equally impossible for any genuine occultist to maintain that our earth evolution could have more than one fulcrum, more than one centre of stability. I have said that this is an objective result of occult research that may be recognised by anyone, be he Buddhist or Moslem.

Anyone who has made certain progress in occult development learns to know the initiates insofar as they are great personalities or have done great deeds. He learns to know them in the spiritual worlds as he ascends toward initiation, and the higher he rises the better he learns to know them. Let us take the example of a man who possibly had no opportunity in his earthly life to learn to know the Buddha and had never concerned himself about him. I know people who have entered deeply into the whole life of the occident without having any idea of the Buddha. It might be said of them that in their bodily life in the physical world they never had anything to do with him. Or take someone who in his earthly life has never interested himself in the great leaders of the Chinese religion. Imagine men of this kind entering the super-physical worlds through initiation or, as in some of the cases I know, entering these worlds for the first time after physical death. They can then become acquainted with Buddha, Moses and Zarathustra because they can meet them as spiritual beings and gain a real knowledge of them. If they want to gain knowledge of these personalities, the fact that they had no opportunity to do so on earth is no hindrance. But it is quite different in the case of Christ. I beg you to receive this as an occult fact. Suppose a man had never in any of his incarnations established a relation with the Christ Being. That is a hindrance to him when, in order to find Christ in higher worlds, he is using his perceptive faculties in an ultra-physical world, for Christ cannot then appear to him in His true form. It is on earth that it is essential to prepare for the vision and recognition of the Christ Being in higher worlds. This is the occult difference in the relation of man to other initiates. The Christ event is such that something specific becomes related to the actual physical evolution of the earth in its most important phase, radiates down into the earth's physical evolution and forms its centre of gravity.

Now let us assume that the beings who live out their lives as human souls did not at first pay any attention to the earth. It might be that something happened in the course of the world to make these souls say, “We will take no notice of the earth; why should we incarnate down there?” This is, of course, impossible but let us assume it for a moment.

Then, insofar as what belongs to the earth is spiritual, these human souls would be able to experience it in the spiritual worlds, and all the great, sublime principles that were active in the initiates would there be visible to them. Were such a soul in the higher worlds to put the question to cosmic evolution, “Of all the beings in the higher worlds I want to know the Christ, to learn to understand His world mission and His essential task,” then the answer would have to be, “If you would know the Being Who is for us the Christ, then you must incarnate on earth. You must in some way participate in the Mystery of Golgotha in order to enter into relation with the Christ Being.”

The Christ Mystery had to take place on earth in accordance with cosmic law. The earth is the stage where, in accordance with cosmic law, the Mystery of Golgotha has had to be enacted, and where the essential foundation has had to be laid for an understanding of the Christ. The understanding of the Christ that man gains on earth is a preparation, on a different scale to any other preparation that takes place on earth, for any vision and knowledge of this Being in the higher worlds. Therefore, in the Christ Being the principle of initiation was lived out in quite a different way from that of other initiates. They experienced a super-sensible world, indeed, sometimes profoundly, and gave the various impulses out of that world into the course of human evolution. But when they had experience of the higher worlds, when they were within them, they were out of their physical bodies. Though it did not require much effort on the part of high initiates to leave the physical body, though but a small step was necessary to issue from it into the fullness of spiritual facts, yet it is true that this transition from the physical body to the higher bodies has to be made. In the Christ Jesus we have the distinctive phenomenon that, in reality, in accordance with the principle of initiation—in accordance, that is, with what man needs in order to bring about initiation—He never, during the whole three years He was living on earth, deliberately left the physical body as is done in initiation. He always remained within it. All that He brought into life and gave to the world during those three years He gave through His physical body. The other initiates gave what they had to give to mankind through their super-physical bodies. In Christ we have the one and only individuality Who has given all that He gave, all that He said, all that went out from Him into human evolution, through His physical body and never indirectly through the higher bodies.

In ordinary consciousness this is experienced in such a way that the sense of it can be summed up by saying that in Christ we have a phenomenon that can be understood by the most primitive consciousness that anyone possesses through the body by means of which we speak in everyday life. Hence, the intimate, brotherly union with the Christ Individuality, the possibility of understanding the Christ Individuality without the aid of education, simply by means of original primitive human feeling; hence, the necessity for working up to a higher form of comprehension, if one wishes to understand the other initiates. Thus what I have often emphasised in these last ten years is true. In Christ we have a Being Whom the simplest mind can understand, although anyone who has raised himself to this higher comprehension will understand Him better. In Christ Jesus all that can be connected with a human body was present, spiritualising the human body to the greatest possible extent, and working in the human body through Christ Jesus. The other initiates were not able to be so fully active while giving forth what was spiritual because they had always to go out of their physical body and return to it later in order to reveal what they had retained of the super-sensible world. Christ, however, always had to live everything out in the physical world through the physical body.

Such things must be taken into consideration if we would go into the true connections. Everything else is empty talk, as for instance, when it is discussed whether Christ or the other initiates stand the higher. Nothing is gained by such classification; that is quite beside the mark. The essential thing is to look into the connection between the beings. It is a matter of personal preference whether the founder of one religion is deemed “higher” than another. That will not do much harm; men are always subject to such little weaknesses. The important thing is to realise wherein consists the actual distinction between the position of Christ and that of the other initiates in the world. We may then calmly allow people to say, “I consider this or that individuality the higher on account of what he did.” When the difference I have described is understood, the distinction will also be understood between the impulses that have come into the world through the various initiates.

During my last visit here I spoke about man's life between death and rebirth and how that life is connected with the great realm of the cosmos. I wanted to show how the path traversed by the human being between death and a new birth actually leads through the cosmic spheres. Let us now briefly recapitulate what was said then.

The first period after a man's death is filled with experiences connected in some way with his recent life on earth. He is emerging from, growing away from, his last earthly life, and during the first period after death the emotions, passions and feelings that affected his astral body all continue to exist. Because during physical incarnation man is conscious of these feelings only when he is actually within his physical body, it is natural that his experiences of all these forces in the astral body is essentially different when he is passing through the region of existence between death and a new birth. In normal cases, although there are many exceptions, a sense of deprivation is present during the first period after death. This is due to the fact that man must live through the experiences in his astral body without having a physical body at his disposal. He still longs for his physical body, and in normal cases this longing holds him back in the sphere of the earth for a longer or shorter period. Life in kamaloca takes its course in the sphere between the earth and the orbit of the moon, but experiences in kamaloca that are of essential significance take place in a realm nearer the earth than, let us say, the orbit of the moon.

Souls who have unfolded only few feelings and sentiments transcending the affairs of earthly life remain bound to the earth sphere by their own cravings for a considerable time. Even outwardly it is easy to understand that a man who for a whole lifetime has cultivated only such feelings as can be satisfied by means of bodily organs and earthly conditions can but remain bound to the earth sphere for a certain time. Impulses and desires quite different from those ordinarily imagined can also cause a soul to remain bound to the earth sphere. Ambitious people, for instance, who cultivate an inordinate longing for certain things within earthly conditions and who depend on the appreciation of their fellow men, thereby develop an emotional disturbance in their astral body that will result in their being bound to the earth sphere for a longer time after death. There are many reasons for which human souls are held back in the earth sphere. By far the greater majority of communications from the spirit world made by mediums stem from such souls and consist essentially of what they are striving to cast off.

Although the motives binding these souls to the earth are mostly ignoble, it need not invariably be so. It may also be due to anxiety for those who have been left behind on earth. Concern for friends, relatives and children may also act as a kind of gravity that holds souls back in the earth sphere. It is important to pay attention to this because by taking it into account we can also help the dead. If, for instance, we realize that the departed soul feels anxiety for a living person—and much can come to our knowledge in this respect—it will help the dead person in his further development to relieve him of this anxiety. We ease the life of someone who has died by relieving him, for example, of anxiety about a child whom he has left behind unprovided for. By doing something for the child, we relieve the dead person of anxiety, and this is a true service of love. Let us picture such a situation. The dead person has not available the means to rid himself of anxiety. From his realm he may be unable to do anything that would ease the circumstances of a child, a relative or a friend. He is often condemned—and in many cases this weighs heavily upon the seer—to bear the anxiety until the situation of the one left behind improves of itself or by circumstances. Therefore, if we do something to better the situation we will have performed a real deed of love for the dead one.

It has frequently been observed that a person who had planned to do something definite in life died and then continued to cling to the plan after his death. We help him if we ourselves attempt to do what he would have liked to do. These situations are not difficult to grasp. We should take account of them because they tally with clairvoyant observation.

There are many other facts that may keep a soul in the etheric sphere of the earth. Eventually he grows beyond this sphere. This process has already partly been described. Our concepts must be recast if we wish to gain an understanding of the life between death and rebirth. It is not really incongruous to speak about the dead in words taken from the conditions of earthly existence because our language is adapted to these conditions. Although what can be expressed in words about life after death tallies only in a pictorial sense, it need not necessarily be incorrect.

Descriptions are never quite accurate that convey the idea that the dead are confined to a definite place like a being who is living in a physical body. What is experienced both after death and in initiation is that one is emerging from the body and one's whole soul-being is expanding. When we follow a soul who has reached the Moon sphere as we call it, the “body” denotes the expansion of the range of experience. In actual fact the human being grows, in a spiritual sense, to gigantic dimensions. He grows out into the spheres, but the spheres of the dead are not separate from each other as in the case of men on earth. They are spatially intermingled. A sense of separateness arises because consciousness is separate. Beings may be completely intermingled without knowing anything of one another.

The feeling of either isolation or community after death of which I spoke during my last visit is connected with the interrelationships of consciousness. It is not as if a dead person were on some isolated island in a spatial sense. He pervades the other being of whose existence he is totally unaware although they occupy the same space.

Let us now consider what comes about mainly when the period of kamaloca is over. When an individual enters upon his devachanic existence after passing through the Moon sphere, kamaloca is not yet entirely at an end. This does not preclude the fact that it is within the Moon sphere that adjustments take place that are of significance not only as kamaloca experiences, but also for the later life of the individual when he again enters existence through birth. We can characterize in the following way what is added to the kamaloca experiences. A man may be so active in life that he brings all his talents to expression. But there are many men of whom we have to say, when we observe them with the eyes of the soul, that according to their faculties and talents they could have achieved in life something quite different from what they have in fact achieved. Such people have lagged behind their talents.

Something else comes into consideration. There are people who nurture a great number of intentions in the course of their life. It need not be a question of talent, but of intentions connected either with trivial or important aims. How much in life merely remains at the stage of intention without being fulfilled!

There are things in this category that need not be considered blameworthy. In order to show how significant such things may be I will mention an instance already known to some friends. Goethe embarked in his Pandora upon a poetical work and at a certain point he came to a standstill. I once explained what happened to Goethe when writing Pandora in the following way. The very greatness that had conceived the plan of the poem prevented him from completing the work. He was incapable of unfolding the power whereby the plan could have turned into reality. It was not because of shortcomings but in a sense because of his greatness that Goethe was prevented from completing Pandora. This is the case with some of his other works, too. He left them unfinished. The fragment of Pandora shows that Goethe made such considerable artistic demands upon himself that his powers, even in respect of the outer form of the poem, were simply not able to carry out the entire mighty plan with the same ease as in the fragment with which he was successful. This is obviously an example of an unfulfilled intention.

Therefore, on the one hand, a man may lag behind his talents owing to laziness or to defects in character or intellect, but the other possibility is that he may not be able to carry out his intentions in small or important matters. Now there is something great in a poet who does not complete a work such as Pandora, but every imperfection in man is inscribed by him into the Akasha Chronicle in the Moon sphere, and thus an abundance of shortcomings and imperfections come before the eye of the seer in the realm between Earth and Moon. Human imperfections, be they noble or no, are faithfully recorded there. Instances can be found in which, through physical health, through a bodily constitution, providing a good foundation for intellectual gifts, a man would have been capable of achieving certain things, but failed to do so. What he could have become but had not become when he passed through the gate of death—this is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle.

Do not imagine that the end of Pandora is in some way inscribed in the Moon sphere. What is inscribed has to do with Goethe's astral body, namely, that he had conceived a great, far-reaching plan and only fulfilled a part of it. All such things, including trivial matters, are inscribed between the spheres of Earth and Moon. A person who forms a resolution but has not carried it out before his death, inscribes the fact of non-fulfillment in this sphere. A fairly accurate characterization can be given of what is disclosed to the eye of seership in this realm. A promise that has not been kept, for example, is not inscribed until later, actually not until the Mercury sphere is reached. An unfulfilled resolution, however, is inscribed in the Moon sphere. Anything that affects not only ourselves but also others is not immediately inscribed in the Moon sphere, but only later. Anything that affects us as individuals, that keeps us behind our proper stage of evolution and thus denotes imperfection in our personal development, is inscribed in the Moon sphere.

It is important to realize that our imperfections, especially those that need not have been inevitable, are inscribed in the Moon sphere.

It should not be thought that in all circumstances such an inscription is a dreadful thing. In a certain sense it can be of the greatest value and significance. We will speak in a moment of the meaning and purpose of these inscriptions in the Akasha Chronicle. First it must be emphasized that as the person expands into other spheres, all his imperfections are there inscribed. He expands from the Moon sphere into the Mercury sphere; I am speaking entirely from the aspect of occultism, not from that of ordinary astronomy. Something is inscribed by him in all the spheres, in the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere, the Sun sphere, the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere and even beyond.

Most inscriptions, however, are made within the Sun sphere, for as we heard in the last lecture, outside the Sun sphere a man mainly has to adjust matters that are not just left to his own individual discretion.

Thus after having cast away more or less completely what still draws him to the earth, man journeys through the planetary spheres and even beyond them. The contact thus established with the corresponding forces provides what he needs in his evolution between death and a new birth. When I spoke in the last lecture of man coming into contact with the higher hierarchies and receiving the gifts they bestow, that was the same as saying that his being expands into the cosmos. When the expansion has been completed he contracts again until he has become minute enough to unite as a spirit-seed with what comes from the parents. This is indeed a wonderful mystery. When the human being passes through the gate of death he himself becomes an ever-expanding sphere. His potentialities of soul and spirit expand. He becomes a gigantic being and then again contracts. What we have within us has in fact contracted from the planetary universe. Quite literally we bear within us what we have lived through in a planetary world.

When I was here last I said certain things about the passage through the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. Today I wish to speak about certain aspects of the passage through the Mars sphere. When a man passes from the Sun sphere into the Mars sphere, the conditions of existence into which he enters are quite different in our present age from what they were a comparatively short time ago. To the eyes of the seer it is quite evident that there was good reason for the statements, originating from the clairvoyance once possessed by humanity, about the several bodies composing the planetary system. It was entirely in keeping with the facts that Mars was considered to be the member of our planetary system connected with all warlike, aggressive elements in the evolution of humanity. The fantastic theories advanced by physical astronomy today about a possible form of life on Mars are without foundation. The nature of the beings who may be called “Mars men,” if we wish to use such an expression, is altogether different from that of the men on earth, and no comparison is possible. Until the seventeenth century the character of the Mars beings had invariably been one of warlike aggressiveness. Belligerency, if one may use this word, was an inherent quality of the Mars “culture.” The basis of it was formed by the rivalries and clashes between souls perpetually battling with each other. As an individual was passing through the Mars sphere between death and rebirth, he came into contact with these forces of aggression and they made their way into his soul. If when he was born again his innate tendencies made him specially able to develop and give expression to these forces, it was to be attributed to his passage through the Mars sphere.

This subject is full of complications. On the earth we live among the beings of the three kingdoms of nature, and among men. By various means we come into contact with the souls who in their life after death still retain some connection with the earth but we also encounter beings who are utterly foreign to the earth. The more an initiate is able to widen his vision, the more souls are found who are strangers on the earth, and the more it is realized that wanderers are passing through the earth sphere. They are beings who are not connected with earthly life in the normal way. This is no different for us as men of earth than it is for the moon dwellers through whose sphere of life we also pass between death and a new birth. When we are passing through the Mars sphere, for example, we are ghosts, specters, for the Mars dwellers. We pass through their sphere as strangers, as alien beings. But the Mars beings, too, at a certain stage of their existence, are condemned to pass through our earth sphere and one who possesses certain initiate faculties encounters them when conditions are favorable.

Beings of our planetary system are continually streaming past each other. While we are living on earth, often imagining that we are surrounded only by the beings of the different kingdoms of nature, there are itinerants from all the other planets in our environment. During a certain period between death and a new birth we, too, are itinerants among the other planetary “men,” if one might speak in this way. We have to develop in our lives on earth the essentials of our particular mission in the present epoch of cosmic existence. Other beings are allotted to the other planetary worlds, and between death and rebirth we must contact these worlds, too. Therefore, when reference is made to one region or another of life in Devachan, it is actually the case, although it is not expressly stated, that the happenings are taking place in some sphere of our planetary system. This should be borne in mind. Thus at a certain time in life between death and a new birth we pass through the Mars sphere.

Just as the process of the earth evolution is a process of descent until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and of ascent from then onwards, so also do the other planets undergo an evolution in their own way. From the year 33 A.D. the date is approximately correct, the earth entered upon an ascending process of evolution. That year was the pivotal point in the earth's evolution. On Mars the pivotal point was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Until then, the evolution of conditions on Mars had been a process of descent and from that time onwards a process of ascent has occurred because an event of the greatest significance for that planet then took place.

In connection with earth evolution we know of the remarkable personage Gautama Buddha. He was a Bodhisattva until in the twenty-ninth year of his life he rose to the rank of Buddhahood and was then destined never to be incarnated again in a physical body on earth. From other lectures you will have heard, however, that later on the Buddha still worked into the earth sphere from the spiritual world. He sent his forces into the astral body of Jesus child of the Gospel of St. Luke. But in another way, too, he influenced earthly life without incarnating into a physical body. In the seventh and eighth centuries there was a mystery school in the southeast of Europe for those who at that time were endowed with some degree of seership. The teachers in that school were not only individualities in physical incarnation but there were also those who work from spiritual heights only as far as the etheric body. It is possible for more highly developed men to receive instruction from individualities who no longer, or never, descend into a physical body. The Buddha himself was a teacher in the mystery school. Among his pupils at that time was the personality who was born later on in his next incarnation as Francis of Assisi. Many of the qualities so impressively displayed in that later life are to be traced to the fact that Francis of Assisi had been a pupil of Buddha.

Here we see how the Buddha continued to work from spiritual heights into the earth sphere after the Mystery of Golgotha, and how he was connected with the life of man between birth and death.

Then, in the seventeenth century, the Buddha withdrew from earthly existence and accomplished for Mars a deed that, although not of the magnitude of the Mystery of Golgotha, nevertheless resembled it and corresponded on Mars to the Mystery of Golgotha on earth. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Buddha became the redeemer, the savior of Mars. He was the individuality whose mission it was to inculcate peace and harmony into the aggressive nature of Mars. Since then the Buddha impulse is to be found on Mars, as the Christ impulse is to be found on the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

The destiny of the Buddha on Mars was not death as in the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet in a certain respect, it, too, was a kind of crucifixion inasmuch as this wonderful individuality, who in keeping with his life on earth radiated universal peace and love, was transferred into the midst of what was completely alien to him, into the aggressive, warlike element on Mars. It was Buddha's mission to exercise a pacifying influence on Mars. For the gaze of seership there is something tremendously impressive in the picture of two collateral events. The Buddha had risen to the highest point attainable in his earthly existence, to the rank of Buddhahood, and had lived on earth as the Buddha for fifty years. Then in his eightieth year, on October 13, 483 B.C, on a glorious moonlit night, he breathed out his being into the silvery radiance glimmering over the earth. This event, which even outwardly seems to be a manifestation of the breath of peace emanating from the Buddha, bears witness to the fact that he had attained the zenith of development within his earthly existence. It is deeply impressive to contemplate his wonderful happening in connection with that moment at the beginning of the seventeenth century when, with all his abounding powers of peace and love, the Buddha went to Mars in order that those powers might stream from him into the aggressiveness prevailing there to gradually inaugurate the process of Mars' ascending evolution.

When a soul passed through the Mars sphere in times before the Buddha Mystery, it was endowed primarily with forces of aggressiveness. Since the Buddha Mystery a soul undergoes essentially different experiences if it is fitted by nature to gain something from the Mars forces. To avoid any misunderstanding it must be emphasized that as little as the whole earth today is already Christianized, as little has Mars become entirely a planet of peace. That process will still take a long time so that if a soul has any aptitude for receiving elements of aggressiveness there is still ample opportunity for it. Nevertheless, we must not lose sight, spiritually, of the event of which we have spoken. The more deeply the earth enters into a phase of materialism, the less will anyone who really understands the evolutionary process admit that it would be natural for a man in his life between birth and death to follow Buddha in the way that men followed him in pre-Christian times. The development of natures such as that of Francis of Assisi will gradually become less and less possible on earth, less and less suitable for external civilization. Nevertheless, between death and rebirth the soul is able to pass through this experience. Grotesque as it may seem, yet it corresponds to the facts, for a certain period between death and a new birth, during the passage through the Mars sphere, every human soul has the opportunity of being a Franciscan or a Buddhist and of receiving all the forces that can flow from feeling and experience of this kind. The passage through the Mars sphere can therefore be of great importance for the human soul. Man, however, inscribes his perfections and imperfections into whatever sphere he enters according to their affinity with the characteristic qualities of that sphere.

Between death and rebirth our perfections and imperfections are faithfully recorded in the Akasha Chronicle. Certain attributes are inscribed in the Moon sphere, others in the Venus sphere, others in the Mars sphere, others in the Mercury sphere, others in the Jupiter sphere, and so on. When we are returning to an incarnation in a physical body and our being is slowly contracting, we encounter everything that was inscribed on the outward journey. In this way our karma is prepared. On the path of return we can inscribe into our own being the record of an imperfection we ourselves first inscribed into the Akasha Chronicle. Then we arrive on the earth. Because there is within us everything we inscribed into our being on the return journey, and we are obliged to inscribe a great deal even if not everything, because of this our karma unfolds. Up above, however, everything still remains inscribed.

Now these inscriptions work together in a remarkable way. They are engraved into the spheres, into the Moon sphere, Venus sphere, and so on. These spheres are involved in certain movements so that the following may happen. Let us say that a man has inscribed one of his imperfections into the Moon sphere. While passing through the Mars sphere he has inscribed there a quality of his character through the fact that he acquired in that sphere a certain element of aggressiveness that was not previously in him. Now on the return journey he passes through the Mars sphere again and comes back to the earth. He lives on the earth and has received into his karma what he has inscribed in the Mars sphere but at the same time it stands recorded above him. Up there is Mars, in a certain relationship to the Moon. (The outer planets indicate the relative positions of the spheres.) Because Mars stands in a certain relationship to the Moon, the inscription of the aggressive element and the man's imperfections are, as it were, in the same constellation. The consequence is that when the one planet stands behind the other they work in conjunction. This is the time when the individual in question will tackle his imperfections with the aggressive quality acquired from Mars. So the position of the planets really does indicate what the man himself has first inscribed into these spheres.

When in astrology we ascertain the positions of the planets and also their relative positions to those of the fixed stars, this gives some indication of what we ourselves have inscribed. The outer planets are in this case a less important factor. What actually has an effect upon us is what we ourselves have inscribed in the several spheres. Here is the real reason why the planetary constellations have an effect upon man's nature. It is because he actually passes through the several planetary spheres. When the Moon stands in a certain relationship to Mars, and to some fixed star, this constellation works as a whole. That is to say, the Mars quality, Moon and fixed star work in conjunction upon the man and bring about what this combined influence is able to achieve.

So it is really the moral inheritance deposited by us between death and rebirth that appears again in a new life as a stellar constellation in our karma. That is the deeper basis of the connection between the stellar constellation and man's karma. Thus if we study the life of a man between death and a new birth we perceive how significantly he is connected with the whole cosmos.

An element of necessity enters into a man's connection with the realms lying beyond the Sun sphere. Let us consider the Saturn sphere in particular. If during his present earth life a man has made efforts to master the concepts of spiritual science, the passage through the Saturn sphere is of special significance for his next life. It is in this sphere that the conditions are created that enable him to transmute the forces acquired through the knowledge of spiritual science or anthroposophy into forces that elaborate his bodily constitution in such a way that in his coming life he has a natural inclination towards the spiritual. A human being may grow up today and be educated as a materialist, Protestant or Catholic. Spiritual science approaches him. He is receptive to it and does not reject it. He inwardly accepts it. He now passes through the gate of death. He enters the Saturn sphere. In passing through it, he absorbs the forces that make him in his next life a spiritual man, who shows even as a child an inclination to the spiritual.

It is the function of every sphere through which we pass between death and rebirth to transform what our souls have assimilated during an incarnation into forces that can then become bodily forces and endow us with certain faculties. Yesterday I could only go as far as is possible in a public lecture when I said that the true Christian impulses were already in Raphael when he was born. This must not be taken to imply that Raphael brought with him some definite Christian concepts or ideas. I have said impulses, not concepts. What has been taken into the conceptual life in one incarnation is united with the human being in quite a different form. It appears as impulses or forces. The power that enabled Raphael to create those delicate, wonderful figures of Christianity in his paintings came from his earlier incarnations. We are justified in speaking of him as a “born Christian.” Most of you know that Raphael had been incarnated previously as John the Baptist, and it was then that the impulses that appeared in the Raphael existence as inborn Christian impulses had penetrated into his soul.

It must always be emphasized that conjectures and comparisons may lead far off the mark when speaking about successive incarnations. To the eyes of seership they present themselves in such a way that in most cases one would not take one life to be the cause of the next. In order that something assimilated in the life of the soul in one incarnation may be able to unfold forces in the next incarnation that work upon the bodily foundation of talents, we must pass through the period from death to rebirth. On earth and with terrestrial forces it is impossible to transform what our souls have experienced in earthly life into forces capable of working upon the bodily constitution itself. Man in his totality is not an earth being, and his physical form would have a grotesque appearance according to modern ideas if only those forces present in the earth sphere could be applied to his bodily development.

When an individual comes into existence through birth he must bear within him the forces of the cosmos, and these forces must continue to work within him if he is to assume human form. Forces that build up and give shape to such forms cannot be found within the earth sphere. This must be borne in mind. Thus in what he is man bears the image of the cosmos in himself, not merely that of the earth. It is a sin against the true nature of man to trace his source and origin to earthly forces, and to study only what can be observed externally in the kingdoms of the earth through natural science. Nor should we ignore the fact that everything a man receives from the earth is dominated by what he brings with him from those super-earthly spheres through which he passes between death and rebirth. Within these several spheres he becomes a servant of one or the other of the higher hierarchies.

What is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle between the earth and the moon is of special importance because it is there that among other things all imperfections are recorded. It should be realized that the inscribing of these imperfections is governed by the view that every record there is of significance for the individual's own evolution, either furthering or hindering his progress. Because it is there inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle between earth and moon, it also becomes significant for the evolution of the earth as a whole. The imperfections of really great men are also recorded in that sphere. One example of tremendous interest for clairvoyant observation is Leonardo da Vinci. He is a spirit of greatness and universality equaled by few others on earth, but compared with what he intended, his actual achievements in the external world in many respects remained incomplete. As a matter of fact, no man of similar eminence left as much uncompleted as Leonardo da Vinci. The consequence of this was that a colossal amount was inscribed by him in the Moon sphere, so much indeed that one is often bound to exclaim, “How could all that is inscribed there possibly have reached perfection on the earth!”

At this point I want to tell you of something that seemed to me quite significant when I was studying Leonardo da Vinci. I was to give a lecture about him in Berlin and a particular observation made in connection with him seemed to be extremely important. It fills one with sadness today to see on the wall of the Church of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan the rapidly disappearing colors that now convey no more than a faint shadow of what the picture once was. If we remember that Leonardo took sixteen years to paint this picture, and think of how he painted it, we gain a definite impression. It is known that he would often go away for a long time. Then he would return to the picture, sit in front of it or many hours, make a few strokes with the brush and go off again. It is also known that many times he felt unable to express what he wished in the painting and suffered terrible fits of depression on this account. Now it happened that a new prior was appointed to the monastery at a time when Leonardo had already been working at the picture for many years. This prior was a pedantic and strict disciplinarian with little understanding of art. He asked impatiently why the painter could not finish the picture, reproached him for it and also complained to Duke Ludovico. The Duke repeated the complaint to Leonardo and he answered, “I do not know whether I shall ever be able to complete this picture. I have prototypes in life for all the figures except those of Judas and Christ. For them I have no models, although in the case of Judas, if no model turns up I can always take the prior. But for the Christ I have no prototype.” That, however, is digressing.

What I want to say is that when one looks today at the figure of Judas in the picture that has almost completely faded, a shadow is to be seen on this figure, a shadow that cannot be explained in any way, either by the instreaming light or by anything else. Occult investigation finds that the painting was never as Leonardo da Vinci really wanted it to be. With the exception of the figures of Judas and the Christ he wanted to portray everything through light and shadow, but Judas was to be portrayed in such a way as to give the impression that darkness dominated the countenance from within. This was not intended to be conveyed by external contrasts of light and shadows. In the figure of Christ the impression was to be that the light on His countenance was shining from within, radiating outwards from within. But at this point disharmony beset Leonardo's inner life, and the effect he desired was never produced. This affords a clue when one is observing the many remaining inscriptions made by Leonardo in the Moon sphere. It is an example of something that could not be brought to fulfillment in the earth sphere.

When the period following that of Leonardo da Vinci is investigated, it is found that Leonardo continued to work through a number of those who lived after him. Even externally there can be found in Leonardo's writings things that later on were demonstrated by scientists and also by artists. In fact, the whole subsequent period was under his influence. It is then discovered that the inscribed imperfections worked as inspirations into the souls of Leonardo's successors, into the souls of men who lived after him.

The imperfections of an earlier epoch are still more important for the following epoch than its perfections. The perfections are there to be studied, but what has been elaborated to a certain degree of perfection on the earth has, as it were, reached an end, has come to a conclusion in evolution. What has not been perfected is the seed of the following divine evolutionary process. Here we come to a remarkable, magnificent paradox. The greatest blessing for a subsequent period is the fruitful imperfection, the fruitful, justifiable imperfection of an earlier period. What has been perfected in an earlier epoch is there to be enjoyed. Imperfection, however, imperfection originating in great men whose influences have remained for posterity, helps to promote creative activity in the following period. Hence, there is obviously tremendous wisdom in the fact that imperfections remain in the neighborhood of the earth, inscribed in the records of the Akasha Chronicle between earth and moon.

This brings us to the point where we can begin to understand the principle that perfection signifies for the different epochs the end of a stream of evolution, and imperfection, the beginning of an evolutionary stream. For imperfection in this sense men should actually be thankful to the gods.

What is the purpose of studies such as are contained in this lecture? The purpose is to make man's connection with the macrocosm more and more comprehensible, to show how men bear the macrocosm compressed within them and also how they can be related to their spiritual environment. Realization of what these things mean can then be transformed into a feeling that pervades a man in such a way that he combines with this knowledge a concept of his dignity that does not make him arrogant, but fills him with a sense of responsibility, prompts him to believe not that he may squander his powers, but that he must use them.

It must, of course, be emphasized that it would be futile to say, “I had better leave imperfect such faculties as I possess.” Nothing whatever could be gained by such an attitude! If a man were deliberately to ignore his imperfections, he would, it is true, inscribe them as described, but they would have no light nor would they be capable of having any effect. Only those imperfections that are inscribed because they were due to necessity and not to result of laziness can work in the way that has been described.

I have already spoken of the different states of consciousness which can be developed out of the forces of the human soul. Initiation-knowledge is dependent upon the fact that our knowledge of the world stems from these different states of consciousness.

Today we propose to ascertain how man's relationship to the world is determined by these different states of consciousness. First of all, let us recall that a single level of consciousness, that of daily waking consciousness, suffices to meet the needs of everyday existence. In our present epoch man has the possibility of developing two further states of consciousness in addition to his normal waking consciousness, but initially they cannot serve as valid criteria for immediate purposes of knowledge.

The one is the state of dream consciousness in which man experiences reminiscences of his daily life or faint intimations of the life of the spirit. But in ordinary dream life these reminiscences and intimations are so distorted, so commingled with uncorrelated, grotesque images and symbols that nothing can be learnt from them.

If, with the aid of Initiation-knowledge, we wish to know what realm man inhabits when he dreams, the answer would be somewhat as follows: in normal life man possesses a physical body, the body which is perceptible .to the senses and which is an object of scientific study. This is the first member of man's constitution, the member which everyone imagines he understands, but which in effect, as we shall see later, he understands least of all today.

The second member is the etheric body which is described in more detail in my publications, especially in my book Theosophy. The etheric body or body of formative forces is a delicate organization, imperceptible to ordinary sight. It can be perceived only when man has developed the first state of consciousness which is able to accompany the dead in the first years after death. This etheric body is more intimately linked with the Cosmos than the physical body whose whole organization is more independent.

The third member of man's constitution—it seems best to adhere to the old terminology—is called the astral body. This is an organization that is imperceptible to the senses; neither can it be perceived in the same way as the etheric body. If we were to try to perceive the astral body with the cognitive faculty by means of which we perceive the external world today or with the insights of the next higher consciousness that is in touch with the dead, we should see nothing but a void, a vacuum, where the astral body is located.

To sum up: man possesses a physical body that is perceptible to the senses; an etheric body perceptible to Imagination by virtue of the forces that can be developed through the practice of concentration and meditation in the manner already indicated. But if we try to perceive the astral body with the aid of these forces, we meet with a void, a spatial vacuum. This void is filled with content only when we attain the emptied consciousness which I have described, when we can confront the world in full waking consciousness in such a way that, though sensory impressions are obliterated and thinking and memories are silenced, we remain none the less aware of its existence. We then know that in this void we have our first spiritual vehicle, the astral body of man.

A further member of the human organization is the Ego itself. We perceive the Ego only when the emptied consciousness is progressively developed.

When we dream, our physical and etheric bodies are detached from the astral body and Ego which are in the spiritual world, but we cannot perceive with the astral body and Ego if we possess only normal consciousness. We perceive external impressions of the world around because the physical body is endowed with eyes and ears. At the present stage of man's evolution we find that in ordinary life his astral body and Ego, unlike the physical body, are not endowed with eyes and ears. Thus, when he withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies in order to enter the dream-state, it is as if he had a physical body in the physical world bereft of eyes and ears, so that all around were dark and silent. But it was never intended that the astral body and the Ego should always remain without organs, without eyes and ears of the soul. Through spiritual training of which I have spoken in my books, it is possible to awaken these spiritual organs in the astral body and Ego and thus to see into the spiritual world through the insight born of Initiation. Then man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies and perceives the spiritual, just as in his physical and etheric bodies he perceives the physical, and in a certain sense, the etheric as well. The man who achieves this insight then achieves Initiation.

Now what is the position of the ordinary dreamer? Try and imagine concretely the process of falling asleep. The physical and etheric bodies are left behind in the bed whilst the astral body and Ego slip out of the physical vehicle. At this moment the astral body is still vibrating in harmony with the physical and etheric bodies. The astral body has participated in all the inner activities of eyes and ears and of the will in the functioning of the physical and etheric bodies throughout the day. The astral body and the Ego have shared in all this. When they quit the body, the vibration continues. But the day experiences, as they continue to vibrate, come in contact with the surrounding spiritual world and there arises a chaotic, confused interplay between the activity of the external spiritual world and the continued vibrations of the astral body. The individual is caught up in all this and is aware of the confusion. All that he has brought with him has left its impact upon him, continues to vibrate and becomes the dream.

It is obvious that this will contribute little to the understanding of reality. What is the position of the Initiate? When he slips out of his physical and etheric bodies, he is able to obliterate the reminiscences and after-vibrations that still persist. He suppresses, therefore, all that proceeds from the physical and etheric bodies. Moreover through concentration, meditation and the development of emptied consciousness, the Initiate has been able to acquire eyes and ears of the soul. He does not now perceive what is happening within himself, but what is happening in the spiritual world outside him. In place of dreams he now begins to perceive the spiritual world. Dream consciousness is a chaotic counterpart of spiritual perception.

When the Initiate has first developed these inner astral organs, clairvoyance and clairaudience, he finds himself in a continual state of conflict and endeavours to suppress these reminiscences, these after-vibrations from the physical and etheric bodies. When he enters into the world of Imaginations, when he has an intuitive perception of the spiritual, he must fight a continual battle to prevent the dreams from asserting themselves. There is a continual interplay between that which seeks to dissolve into dreamlike fantasy and delude him, and that which represents the truth of the spiritual world.

Ultimately every aspirant becomes familiar with this conflict. He comes to realize that, at the moment he strives to enter consciously into the spiritual world, he experiences recurrent after-images of the physical world, disturbing images that intrude upon the true pictures of the spiritual world. Only through patience and persistence can he resolve this intense inner conflict.

Now if we are too easily satisfied when dream images flood our consciousness, we may readily dream ourselves into an illusory world instead of entering into a world of spiritual reality. The aspirant, in effect, must possess an exceedingly strong, intelligent inner control. Imagine what this demands of him. If we are to speak of spiritual investigation, or of methods for attaining to the spiritual world, we must draw attention to these things. If we wish to take the first steps towards an understanding of the spiritual world, we must show real enthusiasm for the task. Inner lethargy, inner indifference or indolence are obstacles in the path of its fulfilment. Our inner life must be active, lively and responsive. But there is a danger of losing ourselves in day-dreams, of spinning a web of illusion. We must be able, on the one hand, to soar into the empyrean on wings of fancy and, on the other hand, we must be able to temper this inner activity and responsiveness with prudence and sober judgment.

The Initiate must possess both these qualities. It is undesirable simply to indulge one's emotions; it is equally undesirable to submit to the dictates of the intellect and to rationalize everything. We must be able to strike a balance between these two extremes. We must be able to dream dreams and yet be able to keep our feet on Earth. As we enter into the spiritual world we must be able to participate in the dynamic world of creative imagination, but at the same time have firm control over ourselves. We must have the capacity to be a poet richly endowed with imagination, yet not succumb to its lures. We must be able, at any moment in our search for spiritual knowledge, to be fired by a creative impulse. We must be able to control the drift towards a world of fantasy and rely upon practical common sense. Then we shall not become victims of illusion, but experience spiritual reality.

This inner disposition of soul is of vital importance in true spiritual investigation. When we reflect upon the nature of dream consciousness and recognize that it conjures up chaotic images out of the spiritual world, we realize at the same time that, in order to acquire spiritual knowledge, the whole force of our personality must now enter into the psychic energy that otherwise persists in a dreamlike state. Then for the first time we begin to understand what ‘entering into the spiritual world’ implies. I said that dream consciousness conjures up the spiritual. This would appear to contradict the statement that the dream consciousness also conjures up pictures derived from the corporeal life. But the body is not only physical, it is wholly permeated with spirituality. When someone dreams that an attractive and tasty meal is set before him and he proceeds to consume it, though he has not a tithe of the cost of the meal in his pocket, then in the symbol of the meal he is presented with a picture of the real spiritual, astral content of the digestive organs. There is always a spiritual element in the dream despite the fact that the spirit has its seat in the corporeal. The dream always contains a spiritual element; but very often it is a spiritual element associated with the body. It is necessary to realize this fact. .

We must understand that when we dream of snakes, their coils are a symbol of the digestive organs or of the blood vessels in the head. We must penetrate into these secrets, for we can only arrive at an understanding of these subtle, intimate elements that must be developed in the soul when we undertake spiritual investigation through the science of Initiation and give the closest attention to these matters.

The third stage through which man passes in ordinary life is that of dreamless sleep. Let us recall this condition: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed; outside these bodies are the astral body and Ego-organization. The after-vibrations and reminiscences from the physical and etheric bodies have ceased. It is only in his Ego and astral body that man inhabits the spiritual world. But, having no organs, he cannot perceive anything. Darkness surrounds him; he is asleep. Dreamless sleep means that we live in the Ego and astral body and are unable to perceive the vast, majestic world around us. Take the case of a blind man. He has no visual perception of colours and forms. So far as these are concerned, he is asleep. Now picture a man living in his astral body and Ego, but without organs of perception. In relation to the spiritual he is asleep. Such is man's condition in dreamless sleep. The purpose of concentration and meditation is to develop spiritual eyes and ears in the astral body and Ego-organization. Then man begins to behold the spiritual plenitude around him. He perceives spiritually with that which in normal consciousness is lost in sleep and which he must rouse from its slumber through meditation and concentration. The otherwise uncoordinated elements must be integrated. Then he gazes into the spiritual world and shares in the life of the spiritual world in the same way as he normally shares in the life of the physical world through his eyes and ears. This is true Initiation knowledge. One cannot prepare a person for spiritual perception by external means; he must first learn to organize effectively his inner life which is normally so chaotic.

Now at all times in the history of humanity it was an accepted practice to prepare selected individuals for Initiation. This practice was interrupted to some extent during the epoch of extreme materialism, i.e. between the fifteenth century and today. During these centuries the real significance of Initiation was forgotten. Men hoped to satisfy their quest for knowledge without Initiation and so they gradually came to believe that only the physical world was their proper field of enquiry. But what is the physical world in reality? We shall not come to terms with it if we consider only its physical aspect. We only understand the physical world when we are able to apprehend the spirit that informs it. Mankind must recover this knowledge once again, for today we stand at the crossroads. The world presents a picture of disruption and increasing chaos. Yet we know that amidst this chaos, this welter of dark, obscuring passions that threaten to destroy everything, the intuitives are aware of the presence of spiritual powers who are actively striving to awaken in man a new spirituality. And preparation for Anthroposophy consists fundamentally in listening to this voice of the spirit that can still be heard amid the clamour of our materialistic age.

I said that in all ages men endeavoured to develop the human organization in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual world. Conditions varied according to the epoch. When we look back to ancient Chaldean times, or to the epoch of Brunetto Latini, we find that men were more loosely linked with their physical and etheric bodies than is the case today when we are firmly anchored in those bodies. And this is to be expected; it is the inevitable consequence of our education today. After all, how can we expect to communicate with spiritual beings when we are compelled in many cases to learn to read and write before the change of teeth? Angels and spiritual beings cannot read or write. Reading and writing have been developed in the course of human evolution in response to physical conditions. And if our whole being is orientated towards purely scientific investigation we shall obviously have difficulty in withdrawing from our physical and etheric bodies.

Our present age finds a certain satisfaction in ordering our entire cultural life in such a way that we cannot have any possibility of spiritual experience when we are separated from our physical and etheric bodies. I have no wish to inveigh against our contemporary culture, nor do I wish to criticize it. It is the inevitable expression of the epoch. I shall discuss the implications later; meanwhile we must accept things as they are.

In ancient times the astral body and Ego, even in waking consciousness, were much more loosely associated with the physical and etheric bodies than they are today. The Initiates, too, were dependent upon this loose association of the bodies that was natural to them. Indeed, in the remote past, nearly everyone could be initiated into the Mysteries. But it was only in the far distant times of the primordial Indian and old Persian cultures that everybody could be raised above his human station.

Then, in later epochs, the selection of candidates for Initiation was limited to those who had little difficulty in withdrawing from their physical and etheric bodies—men whose astral body and Ego enjoyed a relatively high degree of independence. Certain conditions were a prerequisite for Initiation. This in no way prevented every effort being made to bring the aspirant to the highest stage of Initiation commensurate with his potentialities. But beyond a certain point success depended upon whether the aspirant could attain to independence in his astral body and Ego easily or only with difficulty. And this was determined by his makeup and natural disposition. Since man is born into the world, he is inevitably dependent upon the world to a certain extent between birth and death.

The question now arises whether man today is subject to similar limitations when embarking on Initiation. To a certain extent that is so. Since I wish to give a full and clear account in these lectures of the true and false paths leading to the spiritual world, I should like to point out the difficulties in the way of Initiation today.

The man of ancient times was more dependent upon his natural endowments when he became an Initiate. Modern man also can be brought to the threshold of Initiation, in fact, through appropriate psychic training he can so fashion his astral body and Ego-organization that he is able to develop spiritual vision and perceive the spiritual world. But in order to complete and perfect this vision he is still dependent today on something else, something of extreme subtlety and delicacy. I must ask you not to come to any final conclusions about what I shall say today until you are familiar with the content of my next lectures. I can only proceed step by step.

In Initiation today man is dependent to a certain extent on age. Let us take the case of a man who is thirty-seven when he begins his Initiation and has good expectations of life. He begins to practise meditation, concentration or some other spiritual exercises, either under guidance, or independently, in accordance with some instruction manual. As a result of repeated meditation on some theme, he acquires, first of all, the capacity to look back over his life on Earth. His earthly life appears before his inward eye in the form of a uniform tableau. Just as in normal three dimensional vision objects are situated in Space—the front two rows of chairs and their occupants here, over there a table and behind it a wall; we see the whole in perspective in simultaneity—so at a certain level of Initiation we see into Time. One has the impression that the passage of Time is spatial. Now we see ourselves at the age of thirty-seven. We had certain experiences at thirty-six, at thirty-five and so on, back to the time of our birth. In retrospect we see a uniform tableau before us.

Now let us assume that at a certain stage of Initiation a man reviews his life in retrospect. At thirty-seven he will be able to look back into the period from birth to the age of seven approximately, the time of the change of teeth.

Then he will be able to look back into the period between the ages of seven and fourteen, up to the age of puberty. And then he is able to look back into the period between fourteen and twenty-one and the rest of his life up to his thirty-seventh year. He can survey the panorama of his life in spatiotemporal perspective, so to speak. If he can add to this perception the consciousness born of the emptied waking consciousness, a certain power of vision flashes through him. He acquires insight, but his insight assumes widely different forms. The experiences from birth to the age of seven, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and those of later years evoke different responses in him. Each life-period responds in its own way; each period has its own power of vision.

Now let us consider the man of sixty-three or sixty-four. He is able to look back over the later periods of his life. The period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two appears relatively uniform. Then follows further differentiation. There are significant differences in his perceptions between the ages forty-two to forty-nine, forty-nine to fifty-six, fifty-six to sixty-three. All these periods are an integral part of his make-up. They represent the spiritual aspects of his life on Earth. If he develops this inward vision, he sees that his different insights are dependent upon the level of his being at a particular age. The first seven years of childhood awaken in him a different insight from that of the years between seven and fourteen. In the period of adolescence, from fourteen to twenty-one, it is again different; the years between twenty-one and forty-two bring further differentiation, to be followed in its turn by the somewhat differentiated powers of insight that belong to the later periods of life.

Let us assume that we have acquired the capacity to have memory-pictures of our life experiences and, in addition, have attained the insight derived from the emptied consciousness which has obliterated the memory-pictures. The forces of Inspiration now become operative, so that we no longer survey our life-periods through the physical eye, but through the spiritual eye, the new organ of vision. Through Inspiration we have reached a point when we no longer conjure up pictures of our life-periods with their separate happenings, but perceive them through spiritual eyes and ears. At one time we see clairvoyantly the life-period between seven and fourteen, at another clairaudiently the period between forty-nine and fifty-six, just as formerly we heard and perceived in the external world when we used our eyes and ears. In the world of Inspiration we make use of the power derived from the period between the ages of seven and fourteen and from the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. In this world the life periods become differentiated organs of cognition. Thus we are, to a certain extent, dependent upon our age for the range of our vision. At thirty-seven we are perfectly capable of speaking from first-hand experience of Initiation, but at the age of sixty-three we would speak with deeper knowledge, because, at that age, we have developed other organs. The life-periods create organs. Now let us assume that we propose to describe personalities such as Brunetto Latini or Alanus ab Insulis, not from information derived from books, but from clairvoyant knowledge. (These examples will be familiar to you because we have already spoken of them in the last few days.) If we try to describe them when we have reached the age of thirty-seven, we discover that we are in touch with them spiritually in the awakened consciousness of sleep. We can converse with them, metaphorically speaking, as we do with our fellowmen. And the strange thing is that when they discuss spiritual matters with others, they can only speak with them from their present level of wisdom and inner spirituality. Then we realize how very much we can learn from them. We must listen to them and accept in good faith what they have to teach.

Now you will realize that it is no light matter to stand in the presence of a personality such as Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. But if we have made the necessary preparations we shall be able to determine whether we are victims of a dream delusion or in the presence of a spiritual reality. It is possible therefore to evaluate the communications we receive.

Suppose, then, at the age of thirty-seven we were to converse with Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. This should not be taken literally, of course. He would talk to us of many things; then, perhaps, we should like to have more precise, more detailed information. Thereupon he would say: ‘in that case we must retrace our steps from the present, the twentieth century, back through the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, to the century in which I lived when I was Dante's teacher. If you wish to accompany me along this path you must wait until you are a little older, until you have a few more years behind you. Then I can tell you everything and satisfy your thirst for knowledge. You can become a high Initiate, but, in reality, you cannot accompany me along this path into the past by spiritual volition alone.’—For this to be possible you must have grown older. If you wish to make certain of returning without hindrance to the spiritual world with the person in question, you must have passed your forty-second year at least and have reached the age of sixty.

These things will show you the deeper aspects of man's being and the significant part they play in youth and age. Only when we draw attention to these things are we in a position to understand why some die young and others live to a ripe age in their different incarnations. I shall have more to say about this later.

We have seen how man, as he develops, progressively deepens and extends his perception of the spiritual world. I have shown how his relationship with a being existing as a discarnate soul in the spiritual world, such as Brunetto Latini, changes with the conditions of evolution, depending on whether he uses for spiritual perception the organs developed in youth or in age.

The panoramic survey of the world and its evolution that unfolds before the soul of man in this way can be extended to other fields. The question is: in what way can we enlarge human consciousness, human insight, and give it another direction? Today I will indicate one such direction and enter into further details in the following lectures.

In the normal consciousness of our earthly life we know only the Earth environment between birth and death. If there were an end to our chaotic dream life, if we were to have perception in a state of deep, dreamless sleep instead of normal consciousness, we should no longer experience a purely Earth environment around us. But we are, in effect, endowed with other conditions of perception and consciousness than the normal.

Let us now consider the following: our everyday consciousness is related to our immediate environment. Since we cannot see into the interior of the Earth our immediate environment is the sphere of normal consciousness. Everything else in the Cosmos, Sun, Moon and all the other stars shine into this sphere. Sun and Moon send down to Earth clearer indications of their presence in the Cosmos than the other heavenly bodies. Physicists would be astonished if they could experience in their own way—for they refuse to consider our approach—the prevailing conditions in the sphere of the Moon or the Sun. For the descriptions given in the text-books of astronomy, astrophysics and the like are wide of the mark. They offer only the vaguest indications. In ordinary life when we wish to make a person's acquaintance and later have an opportunity of speaking to him, we do not normally say: I have only a vague impression of this person; he must retreat to a distance where he is almost out of sight. Then I shall have a much clearer impression of him and will describe him.

The physicists of course have no choice; it is the result of necessity and they can only describe the stars when they are a long way off. But a transformed and enlarged consciousness lifts us into the world of stars. And the first thing we learn from this is to speak of these worlds of stars quite differently from the way in which we speak of them in ordinary life.

In normal consciousness we see ourselves standing here on Earth, and at night the Moon over against us in the heavens. In order to see differently, we must enter into another kind of consciousness and sometimes that takes a considerable time. When we have attained this consciousness and are able to perceive our experiences, all that we have lived through from birth to the age of seven, to the change of teeth, with the consciousness that is in touch with the dead, with a consciousness that has achieved Inspiration and so become inner power of vision, then we see a totally different world around us. The ordinary world grows dim and indefinite.

This other world is the Moon sphere. When we have attained to this new consciousness, we no longer see the Moon as a separate entity, we are actually living in the Moon sphere. The Moon's orbit traces the furthest limits of the Moon sphere. We know ourselves to be within the Moon sphere.

Now if a child of eight could be initiated and could review the first seven years of its life, it could live in the Moon sphere in this way. Indeed, a child would not have the slightest difficulty in entering into the Moon sphere because it has not yet been corrupted by the influences of later years.

Theoretically this is a possibility; but, of course, a child of eight cannot be initiated.

When we use the power derived from the first life-period, from birth to the age of seven, for spiritual vision, we are able to enter into this Moon sphere which is radically different nom the sphere perceived by ordinary consciousness. An analogy will help to illustrate my point.

In embryology today the biologist studies the development of the embryo from the earliest stages. At a certain stage in the development of the embryo a thickening of the membrane occurs at an eccentrically situated point on the external wall. Then encapsulation takes place and a kind of nucleus is formed. But whilst this is clearly visible under the microscope, we cannot say: this is nothing but the germ, the embryo, for the rest is also an integral part.

The same applies to the Moon and the other stars. What we see as the Moon is simply a kind of nucleus and the whole sphere belongs to the Moon. The Earth is within the Moon sphere. If the germ could rotate, this nucleus would also rotate. The Moon's orbit follows the boundaries of the Moon sphere.

The ancients who still knew something of these matters did not speak therefore of the Moon, but of the Moon sphere. The Moon, as we see it today, was to them only a point at the furthest boundary. Every day this point changes position and in the course of twenty-eight days traces for us the boundaries of the Moon sphere. When our inner experiences between birth and the seventh year become inspirational vision, we acquire the power to enter into the Moon sphere as our perception of the Earth is gradually lost.

When the experiences of the second life-period, between the change of teeth and puberty, are transformed into inspirational vision, we experience the Mercury sphere, the second sphere. We live together with the Earth in the Mercury sphere. The experiences of the Mercury sphere only become visible through the organ of vision that we can create for ourselves when we look back consciously and with clear perception into the experiences of our life on Earth between the ages of seven and fourteen. With the inspirational vision derived from the years between puberty and the age of twenty-one, we experience the Venus sphere. The ancients were not so ignorant as we imagine; with their dreamlike knowledge they knew a great deal about these things and they endowed the planetary system that we experience after the years of puberty with a name associated with sexual awareness which begins at this period.

Then when we look back consciously on our experiences between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, we know that we are within the Sun sphere.

When the separate life-periods are transformed into organs of the inner life, they endow us with the power to enlarge step by step our cosmic consciousness.

It would be untrue to say that we cannot know anything of the Sun sphere before our forty-second year. We can learn about it from the Mercury beings for they are fully acquainted with it. But in that event our experience comes to us indirectly, through super-sensible teaching. Now in order to have direct experience in the Sun sphere in our own consciousness, in order to be able to enter into it, we must not only have lived in the period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, but we must have passed our forty-second year, we must be able to look back over the past, for only in the retrospective survey are the mysteries revealed.

And again, when we are able to look back upon our life up to the forty-ninth year, the mysteries of Mars are revealed. If we can look back upon our life up to the age of fifty-six, the Jupiter mysteries are revealed. And the deeply veiled, but extraordinarily illuminating mysteries of Saturn—mysteries which, as we shall see in the following lectures, veil the profound secrets of the Cosmos—are revealed when we look back upon the events and happenings between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years.

Thus you will realize that man is in fact a microcosm. He is related to those things that he never perceives in normal consciousness. But he would be unable to fashion, or to order his life, if the Moon forces were not active within him from birth to his seventh year. He perceives later on the nature of their influence. He would not be able to re-create his experiences between the ages of seven and fourteen, if the Mercury mysteries were not active within him; nor would he be able to re-create his experiences of the years between fourteen and twenty-one—the period when powerful creative forces pour into him, if he is karmically predisposed to receive them—if he were not inwardly related to the Venus sphere. And if he were not united with the Sun sphere, he would not be able to develop ripe understanding and experience of the world between the ages of twenty and forty-two, the period when we pass from early manhood to maturity. In ancient times the system was not very different: the craftsman served his apprenticeship until he reached the age of twenty-one, then he became “travelling man” and ultimately “master.” Thus, all man's inner development between his twenty-first and forty-second years is related to the Sun sphere. And all his experiences during his declining years between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three can be attributed to the influences of the Saturn sphere.

Together with the Earth we exist within seven interpenetrating spheres, and in the course of our life we grow into them and are related to them. The original pattern of our life between birth and death undergoes a metamorphosis through the influence of the starry spheres which mould us from birth to death. When we have reached the Saturn sphere, we have passed through all that the Beings of the planetary spheres can of their bounty accomplish for us. Then, in the occult sense, we embark upon a free and independent cosmic existence which looks back upon the planetary life from the standpoint of Initiation, an existence that in certain respects is no longer subject to the compulsions of earlier life-periods. However, I shall speak further on these matters in the following lectures.

First of all, my dear friends, I want to say that I am very glad we are meeting here at this branch of the Anthroposophical Society today. I remember with great pleasure our meeting last year, and my greeting at the beginning of this lecture is as sincere and heartfelt as that memory.¹

Today I want to talk about a subject closely connected with the core of our anthroposophical movement. All the results of our spiritual movement are based on research that may be called clairvoyant. While I have often emphasized that our heart, mind, and feelings are primarily affected by anthroposophical truths, we cannot ignore that these truths depend on clairvoyant research, which is an expression of a soul condition different from that of everyday life. It appears to lead us away from the things that seem so important to us in daily life, but in reality, clairvoyant research leads us right into the heart of truly human life.

Today, I do not want to speak about the paths to clairvoyant research since I have already described them in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.² Rather, I would like to characterize the condition and mood of soul that develops as a consequence of this research.

Indeed we must bear in mind that if we follow the paths to clairvoyant research, we will feel completely different from our usual self. What happens to our soul when it becomes clairvoyant can be compared with our dreams, which are like surrogate clairvoyance. When we dream, we live in a world of images, which contains nothing of what we call “the sensation of touching an object outside us.” In our dreams there is usually nothing we can compare with normal ego consciousness. If any aspect of our ego does appear in our dreams, it seems to be separate from us, almost like another being outside us. We face our ego like a separate entity. Thus, we can speak of a doubling of the ego. However, in dreams we perceive only the part of ourselves that has separated, not the subjective ego. All statements apparently contradicting what I have just said can be traced to the fact that most people know of their dreams only from memory, and cannot remember that in the actual dream the subjective ego was extinguished.

The images of clairvoyant research resemble dreams because in both the sense of touch and the subjective ego are absent. A clairvoyant recalling his or her experiences must feel that the clairvoyant reality is permeable and, unlike physical objects, offers no resistance to touch. In the physical world we have ego awareness because we know: I am here, the object is outside me. However, in clairvoyant perception we are inside the object, not separated from what we perceive. Consequently, the individual objects are not fixed and distinct as physical ones, but are in continuous movement and transformation. Objects in the physical world are fixed because we can touch them and because they offer us boundaries, which objects of clairvoyant perception do not have. The same thing that causes our ego to fuse with the objects of clairvoyant perception also forces us to be very careful when we encounter what we call in the physical world another ego, another human being.

Let us first look at what happens when we encounter a person who has died through our clairvoyant faculties. Such an encounter can come about when the figure of the deceased approaches us in clairvoyant perception like a very vivid dream image, looking every bit as we remember the person looked in life. However, this is not the usual type of such encounters, but a rare exception.

Another possibility is that we clairvoyantly perceive a dead person who has taken on the form of either a living or another dead individual, and thus does not appear in his own form. The appearance of the deceased, then, is of very little relevance in identifying him. Perhaps we were particularly fond of another dead person or have a particularly close friendship with a living one; the deceased approaching us can then take on the form of either of those other individuals. In other words, we lack all the usual means of identifying the ego and appearance of a person in the physical world. It will help us find our way to remember that the appearance or form is not at all important; a being is meeting us in one form or another, and we need to note what this being does. If we take our time and carefully observe the image before us, we will realize that, based on everything we know about the individual in question, this person could not act the way he does in the clairvoyant sphere; his actions are totally out of character. We will often encounter a contradiction between the person appearing to us and his actions.

If we allow our feelings to accompany these actions, ignoring the individual's appearance, we will get a sense in the depths of our soul telling us what being we are actually dealing with. Let me repeat that we are guided by a feeling that rises up from the depths of our soul, for that is very important. The individual's appearance in the clairvoyant sphere seems to resemble a physical figure but can be as different from the being really present as the signs for the word “house” are from the actual house. Since we can read, we do not concentrate on the signs that make up the word “house” and do not describe the shape of the letters, but instead we get right to the concept “house.” In the same way, we learn in true clairvoyance to move from the figure we perceive to the actual being. That is why we speak of reading the occult script, in the true sense of the word. That is, we move inwardly and actively from the vision to the reality it expresses just as written words express a reality.

How can we develop this ability to go beyond the appearance, the immediate vision? We do so, above all, by looking at new ideas and concepts we will need if we want to understand the clairvoyant sphere—new, that is, in contrast to the ideas we use in the physical world.

In the physical world we look at an object or a being and say, quite rightly, I perceive that being, that object. We perceive the plant, mineral, and animal kingdoms, the realm of physical human beings, as well as clouds, mountains, rivers, stars, sun, and moon. The feeling expressed in the words “I perceive” undergoes a transformation when we enter the clairvoyant sphere.

Let me try to explain this with an analogy, though it may sound simplistic. If you were a plant, how would you relate to people perceiving you? If this plant had consciousness and could speak, it would have to say: People look at me, I am perceived by them. Of course, we say: I perceive the plant, but at its level of consciousness, the plant would have to say that it was perceived by human beings. It is this feeling of being perceived, being looked at, we must acquire in relation to the beings of the clairvoyant sphere. For example, concerning the beings of the first hierarchy, the angels, we must be aware that strictly speaking it is not correct to say “I perceive an angel,” but we have to say “I feel an angel perceiving me.”

Based on our Copernican world view, we know full well that the sun does not move. Nevertheless, we say that it rises and moves across the sky, thus contradicting our better knowledge. Similarly, in everyday language we can say that we see an angel. But that is not the truth. We would actually have to say that we feel ourselves seen or perceived by an angel. If we said we experience the being of an angel or of a dead person and can feel it, we would speak the truth from the clairvoyant point of view.

Perhaps an example from clairvoyant observation will help you understand this. More than ten years ago, at the beginning of our work with spiritual science, a dear friend of ours worked with us for a short time.³ This individual possessed not only enthusiasm for what we could give her in the early stages of spiritual science, but also a profound artistic sensitivity and understanding. One could not help but love this person, a love that may well be described as objective because of her qualities. Having worked with us for a relatively short time and having learned a great deal about the results of spiritual science, she left the physical world. There is no need to go into the next four or five years after her death, so let me get directly to what happened after that. In 1909, we presented our mystery plays in Munich, preceded, to our great delight, by Children of Lucifer by our highly respected friend Edouard Schuré.⁴ Whatever you may think about the way the plays were produced then and later, we had to present them the way we did. The circumstances under which we had to work on the performances were such that we needed an impulse from the spiritual world, an impulse that also included the artistic aspect we wanted to incorporate. Now, I can assure you that even at that time, in 1909, and even more so in later years, I always felt a specific spiritual impulse as I was working on the arrangements for the performances.

You see, when we have work to do in the physical world, we need not only intellect and skills but also the strength of our muscles. Our muscles objectively help us; they are given to us, unlike the intellectual capacities we ourselves dwell in. Now, in dealing with matters of the spirit we need forces from the spiritual world to combine with our own, just as we need the strength of our muscles for physical action. In the case I mentioned, the impulse from the individual who had left the physical world in 1904 entered more and more into our artistic work on the Munich plays. To describe what happened, I would have to say the impulses from this individual came down from the spirit plane and flowed into my intentions, into my work. She was the patron of our work.

We develop the right feelings toward the dead if we become aware that their spiritual gaze—if I may use that expression—and their powers focus on us; they look at us, act in us, and add to our strength.

To experience such a spiritual fact in the right way, we need to develop a very specific type of selflessness and a capacity for love. That is why I stressed that one could love that person objectively, as it were, because of her qualities; one had to love her because she was as she was. A subjective love, a love arising out of personal needs, can easily be egotistical and can potentially keep us from finding the right relationship to such a dead individual. The difference between the right love, the selfless love we have for such a person, and selfish love becomes perfectly obvious in clairvoyant experience.

Let us assume such a person would want to help us after her death, but we cannot develop true selfless love for her. Her spiritual gaze, her spiritual will streaming toward us would then be like a burning sensation, causing a piercing, burning feeling in our soul. If we can feel and maintain a selfless love, this stream, her spiritual gaze as it were, flows into our soul like a feeling of warm mildness and pours itself into our thoughts, imagination, feeling, and willing. It is out of this feeling that we recognize who the dead person is and not on the basis of his or her appearance, because the dead may manifest in the guise of a person we feel close to at the moment. The form in which the beings of the higher world appear to us—and after death we are all beings of a higher, spiritual world—depends on our subjective nature, on what we habitually see, think, and feel. The reality is what we feel for the being manifest before us, how we receive what comes to us from this being. Regardless of what Joan of Arc said about the appearance of the higher beings in her visions, the occultist who is able to investigate these things knows that it was always the genius of the French nation who stood behind them.⁵

I described how we can feel the gaze of spiritual beings resting upon us and their will flowing into our souls. To learn this is analogous to learning to read on the physical plane. Those who merely want to describe their visions would be like people describing the shape of the letters on a page rather than their meaning. This shows you how easy it is to have preconceived notions about the experiences in the spiritual realm. Naturally, it seems most obvious to attach great importance to the description of what the vision looked like. However, what really matters is what lies behind the veil of perception and is expressed in the images of the vision.

Thus, in the course of occult development, the soul immerses itself in specific moods and inner states different from those of our everyday life. We have entered the world of the hierarchy of angels and the hierarchy, or we could also say hierarchies, of the dead as soon as our occult exercises have brought us to the stage where the sense of touch characteristic of the physical world no longer exists, and where a person's appearance is no longer characteristic of the I concerned. Then our thinking changes and we no longer have thoughts in the sense we have them here in the physical world. In that world, every thought takes on the form of an elemental being. In the physical world, our thoughts can agree or contradict each other. In this other world we enter, thoughts encounter other thoughts as real beings, either loving or hating each other. We begin to feel our way into a world of many thought beings. And in those living thought beings, we really feel what we usually call “life.” Here life and thinking are united, whereas they are completely separate in the physical world.

When we speak on the physical plane and tell our thoughts to someone, we have the feeling that our thoughts come from our soul, that we have to remember them at this particular moment. Speaking as a true occultist and not someone who just tells his experiences from memory, we will feel that our thoughts arise as living beings. We must be glad if we are blessed at the right moment with the approach of a thought as a real being.

When you express your thoughts in the physical world, for example, as a lecturer, you will find it easier to give a talk for the thirtieth time than you did the first time. If, however, you speak as an occultist, thoughts always have to approach you and then depart again. Just as someone paying you the thirtieth visit had to make his way to you thirty times, the living thought we express for the thirtieth time has to come to us thirty times as it did the first time; our memory is of absolutely no use here.

If you express an idea on the physical level and someone is sitting in a corner thinking, “I don't like that nonsense, I hate it,” you will not be particularly bothered by it. You have prepared your ideas and present them regardless of the positive or negative thoughts of someone in the audience. But if as an esotericist you let thoughts approach you, they could be delayed and kept away by someone who hates them or who hates the speaker. And the forces blocking that thought must be overcome because we are dealing with living beings and not merely with abstract ideas.

These two examples show that as soon as we enter the sphere of clairvoyance, we are immersed in living and weaving thoughts. It is as if these thoughts are no longer subjective and as if you yourself are no longer within yourself, as if you are living outside in the wide world. When you are in this world of living and weaving thoughts, you are in the hierarchy of angels. And just as our physical world is everywhere filled with air, the world of the hierarchy of angels is filled with the mild warmth I spoke about earlier that the beings of this hierarchy pour out. When our inner development has brought us to the stage where we can live in this spiritual atmosphere of streaming mildness, we feel the spiritual eyes of the hierarchy of angels resting on our souls.

Now, in our earthly life, we have certain ideals and think about them abstractly. As we think of them, we feel obligated to pursue these ideals. In the clairvoyant sphere, however, there are no abstract ideals. There ideals are living beings of the hierarchy of angels and flow through spiritual space, looking at us with warmth.

In the physical world, we may have ideals, know them well, and yet we may not do anything to apply them. Our emotions, and perhaps passions, can tempt us to shirk them. However, if we knowingly ignore an ideal in the clairvoyant sphere, we feel the spiritual gaze of a being of the hierarchy of angels directed at us with reproach, and this reproach burns. In the spiritual world, ignoring an ideal is thus a reality, and a being of the hierarchy of angels reproaches us. Their gaze makes us feel the reproach; it is the reproach we feel.

You see, learning to develop a real feeling for ideals is one way of entering the world of the hierarchy of angels. Limiting our consciousness to the physical plane may lead us to think that nothing will happen if we are too lazy to act on our ideals. However, we can learn to feel that if we do not act on an ideal, then, regardless of other consequences, the world becomes different from what it would have been had we followed our ideal. We are on the way to the hierarchy of angels when we begin to see that not acting on our ideals is something real, and when we can transform this insight into a genuine feeling. Transforming and vitalizing our feelings allows our souls to grow into the higher worlds.

Through continued esoteric training, we can rise to an even higher level, that of the hierarchy of archangels. If we ignore the angels, we feel reproach. With the archangels we feel reproach as well as a real effect on our being. The strength and power of the archangels works through our I when we live in their world.

For example, a few months ago we lost a very dear friend when he left the physical plane. A profound poet, he had quickly found his way into the anthroposophical world view in the last five years, and the feelings it evoked in him are beautifully reflected in his recent poetry.⁶ From the time he joined us, and even before that, he had been struggling with an infirm and deteriorating body. The more his body deteriorated, the more his soul was filled with poetry that reflected our world view. Only a short time has elapsed since his death, and so one cannot yet say that this individual possesses a clearly existing consciousness. Nevertheless, the first stages of his development in the existence after death can be seen. The astral body, now separated from the physical and living in the spiritual world, reveals the most wonderful tableaux of cosmic development as we understand it in spiritual science. Having left the deteriorated physical body, the astral body has become so illuminated, comparatively speaking, that it can present the clairvoyant observer with a complete picture of cosmic evolution.

Let me use an analogy to explain what I mean. We can love nature and admire it, and still appreciate a beautiful painting that recreates what we have seen in nature. Similarly, we can be uplifted when what we have seen in the clairvoyant sphere lights up again, as a cosmic painting, so to speak, in an astral body of a person who has died. The astral body of our departed friend reveals after death what it absorbed, at first unconsciously but later also consciously, in the course of his anthroposophical development when the beings of the hierarchy of archangels worked actively on the poetical transformation of his anthroposophical thoughts and ideas.

Our progress in our esoteric development can be called mystical, because it is initially the inner progress of the soul. We transform our ordinary personality and gradually reach a new state. This step-by-step growth of the soul is mystical progress because at first it is experienced inwardly. As soon as we can perceive the mildness looking down from the spiritual world, we are objectively in the world of the angels, which reveals itself to us. And as soon as we can recognize that real forces of strength and power enter into us, we are in the realm of the archangels. With each stage of inner mystical progress we have to enter another world.

However, if we fail to develop selflessness and reach the stage of living in the world of the angels while remaining selfish and unloving, then we carry the self intended for the physical world into their realm. Instead of feeling the mild gaze and will of the angels upon us, we feel that other spiritual powers are able to ascend through us. Instead of gazing at us from outside, they have been released by us, shall we say, from their underworld while we were raised to a higher world. Instead of being overshadowed, or rather illuminated, by the world of the angels, we experience the luciferic beings that emerge from us.

Then, if we reach the stage of mystical development allowing us to enter the world of the archangels—without, however, having first developed the wish to receive by grace the influences of the spiritual world, we carry our self up into their realm. As a result, instead of being strengthened and imbued with the power of the archangels, the beings of the ahrimanic world emerge from us and surround us.

At first glance, the idea that the world of Lucifer appears in the realm of the angels and the world of Ahriman in that of the archangels seems terrible. However, there is really nothing awful about this. Lucifer and Ahriman are in any case higher beings than we are. Lucifer can be described as an archangel left behind at an earlier stage of evolution, Ahriman as a spirit of personality also left behind at an earlier stage. The terrible thing is not that we encounter Lucifer and Ahriman, but that we encounter them without recognizing them for who they are. Encountering Lucifer in the world of the angels really means encountering the spirit of beauty, the spirit of freedom. But the all-important thing is that we recognize Lucifer and his hosts as soon as we enter the world of the angels. The same is true of Ahriman in the realm of the archangels. Lucifer and Ahriman unleashed in the higher worlds is terrible only if we do not recognize them as we release them, because then they control us without our knowledge. It is important that we face them consciously.

When we have advanced in our mystical development to the level of living in the world of the angels and want to continue there with really fruitful occultism, we have to look for Lucifer as soon as we expect the spiritual gaze of the angels to rest on us. Lucifer must be present—and if we cannot find him, he is within us. But it is very important that Lucifer is outside us in this realm, so that we can face him.

These facts about Lucifer and Ahriman, angels and archangels, explain the nature of revelation in the higher worlds. From our viewpoint in the physical world, we are easily led to believe that Lucifer and Ahriman are evil powers. But when we enter the higher world, this no longer has any meaning. In the clairvoyant sphere, Lucifer and Ahriman have to be present just as much as the angels and archangels. However, we do not perceive them the same way. We identify the angels and archangels not by their appearance, but we know the angels by the mildness that flows from them into us, and recognize the archangels by allowing their strength and power to flow into our feeling and will. Lucifer and Ahriman appear to us as figures, merely transposed into the spiritual world; we cannot touch them, but we can approach them as spiritual projections of the physical world. Clearly, it is important that we learn in our mystical clairvoyant development to see forms in the higher world and to be aware that we are seen, that a higher will focuses on us.

You see, higher development does not consist merely in acquiring clairvoyant faculties, but in developing a certain state of soul, a certain attitude or relationship to the beings of the higher world. This new attitude and state of soul must be developed hand in hand with the training of our clairvoyant faculties. In other words, we must learn not only to see in the spiritual world but also to read in it. Reading is not meant here in the narrow sense of a simple learning process, but as something we acquire through transforming our feelings and sensations. It is important to keep in mind that a split of our personality occurs when clairvoyance begins, and we reach a revelation of the higher worlds. Our earthly personality is left behind, and a new one is acquired on ascending into a higher world. And just as the beings of the higher hierarchies look at us in the higher world, so we perceive our own ordinary personality from a higher perspective. Our higher self discards the lower one and observes it. So, to make valid statements about the higher worlds we had better wait until we are able to say: That is you; the person you see in your clairvoyant vision is yourself. “That is you” on the higher level corresponds to “this is I” on the physical one.

Now remember when you were eight or thirteen or fifteen years old and try to reconstruct from your memory a small part of your life at that time. Try to recall as vividly as possible your thinking in those years. Then concentrate on your current feelings about the girl or boy you were at eight, thirteen, or fifteen. As soon as we move from the physical level to the higher world, the present moment we live in now becomes a memory of the kind we have just recalled. We look back at our current existence on the physical level and at what we may still become during the remainder of our physical life in the same way you look back to your experiences at eight, thirteen, or fifteen from your vantage point in the present moment.

Everything we consider part of ourselves on the physical level, such as our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and actions, becomes a memory as soon as we enter the higher world. We look down at the physical world and become a memory to ourselves when we live in the higher world. We have to keep our experiences in the higher worlds separate from those in the physical realm, just as we distinguish between our present situation and an earlier one. Imagine a person who is forty years old and vividly remembers the feelings and abilities he or she had as an eight-year-old boy or girl. For instance, the person might be reading a book now, at the age of forty, and all of a sudden he or she begins to relate to the book as an eight-year-old would. That would be a confusion of the two attitudes, the two states of soul, and is analogous to what happens when we confuse our state of soul on the physical level with what is required in the higher worlds.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that every unbiased person can understand what I say about the higher worlds; in other words, we do not merely have to believe these descriptions, but we can understand them if we approach them without preconceived ideas. People may object that we cannot describe the higher worlds with concepts, thoughts, and ideas from the physical world because the former are completely different from the latter. This objection makes as much sense as saying that we cannot give people an idea of what we mean by writing h-o-u-s-e; for them to understand that concept, we have to bring them a house.

We talk about physical facts and objects by means totally independent of the object or fact. So we can also describe phenomena of the spiritual world with what we understand on the physical plane. However, we cannot understand the higher worlds with our everyday concepts and ideas, but need to acquire others and expand our thinking. People who honestly tell us about the higher world must also extend our concepts beyond our everyday life; they must give us concepts that are new and different and yet comprehensible on the physical plane.

People find it difficult to understand genuine spiritual science and serious esotericism because they are so reluctant to expand their concepts. They want to understand the higher world and its revelations with the ideas they already have and don't want to create new ones. When people in our materialistic age hear lectures on the spiritual world, they believe all too easily that the esoteric world can be understood simply by looking at it. They think the shapes there may be slightly more delicate and more nebulous than in the physical world, but similar nevertheless. It may seem inconvenient to some that the serious occultist is expected to do more than merely follow instructions on how to see angels. A change in thinking is necessary, and the concept “angel” must include that we are perceived by them, that their spiritual gaze is focused on us.

Mystical development, or ascending to the higher worlds, cannot be separated from enriching and giving greater scope to our ideas, feelings, and soul impulses. To understand the higher worlds, we must not let our life of ideas remain as impoverished as it is on the physical plane.

To provide esoteric help for this enrichment, we are constructing our modest building in Dornach in a completely new style. That building is, of course, nowhere near the ideal, but it is a humble beginning. After all, we have only limited means at our disposal, despite the fact that our friends have done everything within their power for this project.

The spiritual impulses behind the building styles that developed in the third, the fourth, and in the current fifth post-Atlantean epoch included the task of guiding humanity to knowledge of the physical world. For example, Egyptian architecture initiated this development with its succinct geometrical forms. Greco-Roman architecture is like a marriage of soul and spirit with etheric and physical body. Here soul and spirit on the one hand and etheric body and physical body on the other connect in a state of complete equilibrium. The rising, pointed arches of the Gothic style are the first architectural attempt to rise again from the physical into the spiritual world.

If anthroposophy is to be represented in a building the next step must be to bring to life the living and weaving thought patterns themselves, flowing, and pouring into space. Then we will see in physical form what Imagination and Inspiration reveal directly of the spiritual world. That is why the forms of the Dornach building are such that it is pointless to ask in materialist fashion what they symbolize and what their shapes stand for. They have to be taken on their own merit, since they are nothing more than immediate spiritual experiences poured out into spatial forms. We have attempted to transform everything that can be seen and experienced in the spirit into artistic form. So if people ask what a form stands for, they have misunderstood the building; for every form signifies only itself, just as our hands or head stand only for themselves and nothing else. Such a question also indicates a complete misunderstanding of our position in regard to occultism. We will be glad to leave behind the old theosophical nonsense of examining every fairy tale, every figure, and every myth for what it signifies and symbolizes.

All our forms really exist in the spiritual world and therefore express only themselves and nothing else. They are not symbols, but spiritual realities. You will not find a single pentagram throughout the building, no form of a pentagram, nothing to make you wonder what this or that form means. At most, there is one place where subtle forms could be interpreted as a pentagram, but so can every five-petaled flower. People may ask what our fourteen pillars mean, which are not shaped as pentagrams, but are five-sided for aesthetic reasons. They may wonder what the pillars supporting the cupolas mean besides representing spatial relations perceptible in the spiritual world. In reply we can only point out how materialistic our age is when even spiritual intentions must be clothed in materialist garments.

Our building will be understood if people stop asking what it symbolizes and instead think about what it is. They will understand our building when they realize it is better not to use any of the usual terms and the old verbal images to help our materialist age comprehend it. Spiritual science can at most be a synthesis of religions; unlike the ancient religions, it does not build temples, but rather a structure that expresses its innermost nature. This building can only be understood gradually, and only if we do not apply old words to this new development.

We know only too well that we can realize our intentions in Dornach only in the most modest, rudimentary way. But I ask only that you make a real effort to understand this humble beginning from the perspective and significance of our spiritual science. Try to understand what this simple beginning, paid for with considerable sacrifices, is aiming at. Any other attitude would be most disheartening.

Enough grand words and pompous phrases have been bandied about in the so-called occult movement. All we want is that even if our way of expressing things no longer exists fifty years from now, people will still say of our movement that it endeavored with every fiber to be totally sincere and honest. And the more modestly and simply, but thus perhaps the more objectively, we discuss what we wish to do, the better we serve our cause. Every word that is superfluous or returns to the old, convenient concepts does untold damage to what we are striving to achieve—please excuse me for saying this—honestly. If people understand us in this way, then perhaps the mood will arise that we need if we are really, in December at the earliest, to inaugurate our modest building without pomp and fuss.⁷ The mood we need will be there only if we concentrate on our goals, even if we do not create a stir in our materialist age.

Please accept these words in the spirit of the serious intentions of our movement. They must fill our souls if this spiritual impulse is really to take root in our age. There is a real need for an honest spiritual movement that truly promotes the mystical life of the soul and allows revelations of the higher worlds to flow into this materialist age. Only when our friends understand this purpose and attitude of our spiritual movement, then and only then shall we be able to fulfill the task given us by the wise, guiding individualities in the spiritual world.

Based on what I have tried to explain today, I will speak to you the day after tomorrow about the progress in our understanding of Christ through the ages and about the position of our movement concerning the Christ.⁸

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, Die Welt des Geistes und ihr Hereinragen in das physische Dasein, Vol. 150 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1972), lecture of May 5, 1913. There are no transcripts of the lectures of May 4 and 9, 1913, in Paris.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, repr., (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press 1986).
• 3. Steiner here refers to the actress Maria von Strauch-Spettini, 1847–1904. See Lecture Two, note 7.
• 4. Edouard Schuré, French writer. His play Children of Lucifer was performed in German in Munich on August 22, 1909, under Rudolf Steiner's direction. See Steiner The East in the Light of the West and Schuré, Children of Lucifer, both in one volume, (Blauvelt NY: Spiritual Science Library, 1986).
• 5. Joan of Arc, 1412–1431, French national heroine and saint.
• 6. Morgenstern, see Lecture Two, note 8.
• 7. Due to complications and delays caused by World War I (1914–1918), the building neared completion only in 1920. The inauguration ceremony never took place because of the fire that destroyed the Goetheanum. A “provisional inauguration” took place on September 26, 1920, on the eve of the first event held in the building, the “first anthroposophical academic course,” which lasted from September 27 to October 16, 1920.
• 8. Rudolf Steiner, Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgotha, Vol. 152 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1964), Lecture of May 27, 1914.