The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of the last few days we had occasion to refer once again to the turning point in Western civilization in the fourth century A.D. with the example of John Scotus Erigena. In the present, when so many things are supposed to change, it is particularly important to understand clearly what really happened then to the human soul constitution. For it is a fact that we too are living in an extraordinarily significant moment in humanity's evolution; it is necessary for us to pay heed to the signs of the times and to listen to the voices of the spiritual world, so that out of the chaos of the present we may find a path into the future.

In the fourth century A.D., changes took place in the souls of those belonging to the leading nations and tribes, just as in our century changes in part have begun to develop, in part will still occur. And in John Scotus Erigena we have observed a personality who in a certain way was influenced by the aftereffects of humanity's world view prior to the fourth century A.D.

We shall now call to mind other things that also make evident this change of character. As far as can be done in a more outward manner, we will consider from this standpoint how the study of nature developed, in particular people's views of health and illness. We shall confine ourselves, first of all, to historical times. When we ask what the views concerning nature, particularly human nature in connection with health and illness were, and look back into the early Egyptian period, we can for the first time speak of any similarity between these ancient views and ours now. Yet, in regard to health, illness, and their natural causes, these ancient Egyptians held opinions still differing significantly from ours. The reason was that they thought of their relationship with nature quite differently from the way we think of it today. The ancient Egyptians certainly were not fully aware that they were gradually separating from the earth. They pictured their own bodies—and they naturally started by considering what we call “body” in an intimate connection with the forces of the earth. We have already mentioned in the last lecture how such a concept arises, how it is that the human being pictures himself in a certain sense closely bound inwardly to the earth through his body. I referred to the ancient soul forces in order to illustrate this. It was altogether clear to the ancient Egyptians that they had to see themselves as part of the earth, similarly to how the plants must be seen as belonging to the earth. Just as it is possible to trace the course of the sap or at least the earth's forces in plants more or less visibly, so people in ancient Egypt experienced the working of certain forces that, at the same time, held sway in the earth. Therefore, the human body was seen as belonging to the earth.

This could only be done because a view of the earth prevailed that was quite different from the view prevalent nowadays. The ancient Egyptians would never have thought of representing the earth as a mineral body the way we do it today. In a sense, they pictured the earth as a mighty organic being, a being not organized in quite the same way as an animal or man, but still, in a certain respect, an organism; and they considered the earth's masses of rock as a skeleton of sorts. They imagined that processes took place in the earth that simply extended into the human body.

The ancient Egyptians experienced a certain sensation when they mummified the human corpse after it had been discarded by the soul, when they tried to preserve the shape of the human body by mummification. In the formative forces proceeding from the earth and forming the human body, they beheld something like the will of the earth. They were trying to give permanent expression to this will of the earth. These Egyptians held views concerning the soul that seem somewhat alien to a person of today. We shall now try to characterize them.

It must be emphasized that when we go back to early Egyptian times, and even more so to the ancient Persian and Indian epochs, we find that, based on instinctive old wisdom, the doctrine of reincarnation—the return of the essential human entity in successive earth lives—was widespread. We are mistaken, however, in assuming that these ancient people were of the opinion that what we know as soul today is what always returns. Especially the Egyptian concept demonstrates that such a view did not exist. Instead, it must be pictured like this: The soul-spiritual being of man lives in spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When the time approaches for this being to descend to the physical earth, it works formatively in the human body, in what comes through heredity from the successive generations. On the other hand, these ancient people did not think that what they bore in their consciousness during life between birth and death was the actual psycho-spiritual being that lives between death and a new birth and then shapes the human corporeality between birth and death. No, these people of antiquity pictured things differently. They said: When I find myself in the waking state from morning until evening, I know absolutely nothing of the soul-spiritual matters that are also my own affairs as a human being. I must wait until my own true being, which worked on me when I entered into earthly existence through birth, appears to me in half-sleep or in image-filled sleep, as was the case in these ancient times.

Thus, the ancient human being was aware that in his waking state he was not meant to experience his actual soul being; instead, he was to look upon his true soul entity as upon an external picture, something that came over him when he passed into the frequently described dreamlike, clairvoyant conditions. In a certain sense, the human being in former times experienced his own being as something that appeared to him like an archangel or angel. Only beginning in ancient Egypt, people started to think of this inner human essence as belonging directly to the soul.

If we try to characterize how the ancient Egyptians pictured this, we have to say the following. They thought: In a dream image, my soul-spiritual being appears to me in its condition between death and a new birth. It shapes the body for its use. When I look at the form of the body, I see how this soul-spirit being has worked like an artist on this body. I see much more of an expression of my soul-spiritual being in my body than if I look within. For that reason I shall preserve this body. As a mummy, its form shall be retained, for in it is contained the work the soul has done on the body between the last death and this birth. That is what I retain when I embalm the body and in the mummy preserve the image on which the soul-spiritual being has worked for centuries.

By contrast, the ancient Egyptians considered the experiences of the human being in the waking state between birth and death differently: This is really like a flame kindled within me, but it has very little to do with my true I. My I remains more or less outside my soul experiences in the waking state between birth and death. These soul experiences are actually a temporal, passing flame, enkindled in my body through my higher soul being. In death, they are extinguished once again. Only then does my true soul-spirit being shine forth, and I dwell in it until the new birth.

It is true that the ancient Egyptians imagined that in the life between birth and death they did not properly attain to an experience of the soul element. They viewed it as something that stood above them, enkindled their temporal soul element and extinguished it again; they saw it as something that took from the earth the earth's dust to form the body. In the mummy, they then tried to preserve this bodily form.

The ancient Egyptians really placed no special value on the soul element that experiences itself in the waking state between birth and death, for they looked beyond this soul nature to a quite different soul-spirit essence, which ever and again forms new bodies and passes through the period between death and a new birth. Thus, they beheld the interplay of forces between the higher human element and the earth. They really directed their attention to the earth, for to them, the earth was also the house of Osiris. Inner consciousness was something they overlooked.

The development of Greek culture, which began in the eighth century B.C., consisted precisely in man's placing an ever increasing value on this soul element that lights up between birth and death, something the ancient Egyptian still viewed as enkindled and subsequently dying flame. To the Greeks, this soul element became valuable. But they still had the feeling that in death something like an extinction of this soul element took place. This gave rise to the famous Greek saying I have characterized often from this viewpoint: "Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades." This saying was coined by the Greeks as they looked upon the soul element. To them, the latter became important, whereas it had been less significant for the ancient Egyptians. This development is connected with the view of health and illness held by the ancient Egyptians.

They thought that this soul-spiritual element, which does not really enter properly into human consciousness between birth and death, builds up the human body out of the earth elements, out of the water, the air, the solid substances of the earth, and the warmth. And since the ancient Egyptians believed that this human body was formed out of the earth, they set great store by keeping it pure. During the golden age of Egyptian culture, maintaining the body in a pure state was therefore something that was especially cultivated. The Egyptians thought very highly of this body. Hence, they felt that when the body became ill, its connection with the earth was in some way disturbed, in particular its relationship to the earth's water, and this relationship had to be restored. Therefore, there were hosts of physicians in Egypt who studied the relationship of the earthly elements to the human body. Their concern was to maintain people's health and, when it was disturbed, to restore it by means of water cures and climatic treatments. Already in the heyday of Egyptian civilization, specialized physicians were at work, and their activity was principally directed at the task of bringing the human body into the proper relation with the earth's elements.

Beginning with the eighth century B.C., particularly in Greek civilization, this changed. Now, the consciously experienced soul element became really important. People did not see it anymore in as close a connection with the earth as people in ancient Egypt had done. For the ancient Egyptians, the human body was in a sense something plantlike that grew out of the earth. For the Greeks, the psycho-spiritual element was the factor that held together the earth elements; they were more concerned with the way these elements in the body were held together by man's soul and spirit. On this basis developed the scientific views of Greece. We find them especially well expressed by Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician and contemporary of Phidias, Socrates, and Plato.¹ This view of the importance of the human soul element, which becomes conscious of itself between birth and death, is already clearly developed in Hippocrates, who lived in the fourth century B.C.

We would be very much mistaken, however, if we believed that this soul-spiritual element lived in Greek consciousness in the same way we experience it in our consciousness today. Just reflect on how poor, how abstractly poor this thing is that modern man calls his soul! When people speak of thinking, feeling, and willing, they picture them as quite nebulous formations. It is something that no longer affects the human being substantially. It had a substantial effect on the Greeks, for they had an awareness that this psycho-spiritual being actually holds together the elements of the body and causes their interplay. They did not have in mind an abstract soul element as people do today. They had in mind a full, rich system of forces that gives shape above all to the fluid element, bestowing on it the human form. The Egyptians felt: The soul-spirit being that finds its way from death to a new birth gives form to this fluid element. The Greeks felt: What I experience consciously as my soul element, this is what shapes the water; it has a need for air and then develops the circulatory organs in that form. It causes the conditions of warmth in the body and also deposits salt and other earthly substances in the body.

The Greeks actually did not picture the soul separately from the body. They imagined it molding the fluid body, bringing about the presence of air through inhaling and exhaling. They pictured the soul causing the conditions of warmth in the body, the body's warming and cooling processes, the breathing and movement of the fluids, the permeation of the fluids with the solid ingredients—actually representing only about 8% of the human body. The Greeks pictured all this in full vitality. They attached special importance to the shaping of the fluids. They imagined that in turn a fourfold influence was at work in these fluids due to the forces active in the four elements, earth, water, air, and warmth. This is how the Greeks pictured it.

In winter, human beings must shut themselves off from the outer world to a certain extent, they cannot live in intimate contact with it. They must rely on themselves. In winter, above all the head and its fluids make themselves felt. There the part of the fluids that is most waterlike works inwardly in the human being. In other words, for the Greeks this was phlegm or mucus. They believed all that is mucous in the human organism to be soul-permeated and particularly active in winter. Then came spring, and the Greeks found that the blood made itself felt through greater activity; the blood received greater stimulation than in winter. This is a predominantly sanguine time for human beings, emphasis is placed on what is centralized in the arteries leading to the heart and is active in the movement of fluids. In winter, it is the movement of the phlegm in the head, hence, this is the reason why the human being is then particularly inclined to any number of diseases of the mucous fluids. In spring, the blood circulation is especially stimulated.

The Greeks pictured all this in such a way that matter was not separated from the soul aspects. In a sense, blood and phlegm were half soullike, and the soul itself with its forces was something half physical in moving the fluids.

When summer approached, the Greeks imagined that the activity of bile (they called it yellow gall), which has its center in the liver, is particularly aroused. The Greeks still had a special view of what this is like in the human being. For the most part, people have lost this view. They no longer see how, in spring, the skin is colored by the blood's stimulation. They no longer notice the peculiar yellow tinge coming from the liver where this so-called yellow bile has its center. In the rosy flush of spring and the yellowish tinge of summer, the Greeks saw activities of the soul.

When autumn came, they said: Now, the fluids having their center in the spleen, the fluids of black bile, are particularly active. In this way, the Greeks pictured in the human being movements and effects of fluids that were directly under the influence of the soul. Unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks considered the human body by itself, apart from the whole of the earth. Thus, they came closer to the inner soul configuration of the human being as it is expressed between birth and death.

As this civilization progressed further, however, particularly as the Western element, the Latin-Roman element, gained ground, this view, which we find especially in Hippocrates who based his medical science on it, was to a certain extent lost. Hippocrates held that the soul-spiritual nature of man manifesting between birth and death causes these mixtures and separations of the fluids. When these do not proceed as the soul-spiritual influence intends them to go, the human being encounters illness. The soul-spiritual element actually always strives to make the activities of the fluids run their normal course. This is why the physician has the special task of studying the soul-spirit nature and the effect of its forces on the activities of the fluids in addition to observing the illness. If the activity of the physical body somehow tends to cause an abnormal mixture of fluids, then the soul element intervenes. It intervenes to the point of a crisis, when the outcome in the struggle between corporeal and soul-spiritual elements hangs in the balance. The physician must guide matters in such a way that this crisis occurs. Then, at some point in the body it will be evident that the bad fluid combination is trying to come out, to escape. Then it is the physician's task to intervene in a proper way in this crisis, which he has introduced in the first place, by removing the fluids that have accumulated in the way described above and that are resisting the influence of the soul-spiritual element. The physician accomplishes this either by means of purging or by bloodletting at the right moment.

Hippocrates' manner of healing was of a quite special kind and connected with this view of the human being. It is interesting that such a view existed that pictured an intimate relationship between the soul-spirit element as expressed between birth and death and the system of body fluids. Things changed, however, when the Latin-Roman influence continued this development.

This Roman element had less inclination for a full comprehension of the form and the system of fluids. This can be clearly seen in the case of the physician Galen² who lived in the second century A.D. The system of fluids that Hippocrates saw was no longer so transparent to Galen. You really have to picture it like this: Today, you watch how a retort in a chemistry laboratory is heated by a flame underneath, and you see the product of the substances inside. For Hippocrates, the effect of the soul-spiritual element in the fluids of the body was just as transparent. What took place in the human being was to him visible in a sensory-supersensory way. The Romans, on the other hand, no longer had a sense for this vivid view. They no longer considered the soul-spiritual element that dwells in man in its connection to the body. They turned their glance in a more abstract, spiritual direction. They only understood how the soul-spiritual being can experience this spirit within itself between birth and death.

The Greeks looked at the body, saw the soul-spiritual in the mixing and separating of the fluids and, to them, the sensory view in its clarity and vividness was the main thing. To the Romans, the essential thing was what a man felt himself to be, the feeling of self within the soul. To the Greeks, the view of how phlegm, blood, yellow, and black bile intermingle, how they are, in a manner of speaking, an expression of the earthly elements of air, fire, water, earth in the human being became something they saw as a work of art. Whereas the Egyptians contemplated the mummy, the Greeks looked upon the living work of art. The Romans had no sense for this, but they had an awareness for taking a stand in life, for developing inner consciousness, for allowing the spirit to speak, not for looking at the body but for making the spirit speak out of the soul between birth and death.

This is connected with the fact that at the height of Egyptian civilization, four branches of knowledge were especially cultivated in their ancient form: geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. In contemplating the heavenly element that formed the human body out of the earth, the Egyptians imagined that this body is molded in its spatial form according to the law of geometry; it is subject to the influences of the stars according to the laws of astrology. It is involved in activity from within according to the laws of arithmetic and is inwardly built up harmoniously according to the laws of music—music here conceived not merely as musical tone elements but as something that lives in harmonies in general. In the human being. as a product of the earth, in this mummified man, the Egyptians saw the result of geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. The Greeks lost sight of this. The Greeks replaced the lifeless, mummified element, which can be comprehended by means of geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music, with the living soul element, the inner forming, the artistic self-development of the human body.

This is why we note in Greek culture a certain decline of geometry as it had existed among the Egyptians. It now became a mere science, no longer a revelation. The same happened with astrology and arithmetic. At most, the inner harmony that forms the basis of all living things remains in the Greek concept of music.

Then, when the Latin element came to the fore, the Romans, as I said, pictured this soul-spiritual being as it is between birth and death together with the inner spirit now expressing itself not as something that could inwardly be seen but inwardly experienced, taking its stand in the world through grammar, through dialectics, and through rhetoric. Therefore, during the time when Greek culture was passing over into Latin culture, these three disciplines flourished. In grammar, man was represented as spirit through the word; in rhetoric, the human being was represented through the beauty and forming of the word; in dialectics, the soul was represented through the forming of thought. Arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music continued to exist, but only as ancient legacies turned science. These disciplines, which in ancient Egypt had been very much alive, became abstract sciences. By contrast, the arts attached to man—grammar, rhetoric, dialectics—took on new life.

There is a great difference between the way a person thought of a triangle in ancient Egypt prior to Euclid and the way people thought of it after Euclid's time. The abstract triangle was not experienced in earlier times the way it was conceived later on. Euclid signified the decadence of Egyptian arithmetic and geometry. In Egypt, people felt universal forces when they envisaged a triangle. The triangle was a being. Now, all this became science, while dialectics, grammar and rhetoric became alive.

Schools were now established in accordance with the following thinking: Those people who want to be educated have to develop the spiritual potential in their already existent soul-spiritual human nature. As the first stage of instruction, they must master grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics. Then, they have to go through what remains only as a traditional legacy but forms the subjects of higher education: geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. These then were the seven liberal arts, even throughout the Middle Ages: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. The arts that came more to the fore were grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; the arts that were more in the background, conceived by the ancient Egyptians in a living manner as they stood on a relationship to the earth, were the subjects of higher learning.

This was the essential development between the eighth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. Look at Greece in the fourth century or in the third or fifth centuries. Look at modern Italy. You find everywhere in full bloom this knowledge of the human being as a work of art, as a product of the soul-spiritual element, of life of the spirit through dialectics, rhetoric, and grammar. Julian Apostate³ was educated in approximately this way in the Athenian school of philosophers. This is how he saw the human being.

Into this age burst the beginning of Christianity. But by then all this knowledge was in a certain sense already fading. In the fourth century it had been in its prime, and we have heard that by John Scotus Erigena's time only a mere tradition of it existed. What lived in the Greeks based on the view I have just characterized, then was transmitted to Plato and Aristotle who expressed it philosophically. When the fourth century B.C. drew near, however, people understood Plato and Aristotle less and less. At most people could accept the logical, abstract parts of their teachings. People were engrossed in grammar, rhetoric, dialectics. Arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music had turned into sciences. People increasingly found their way into a sort of abstract element, into an element where something that had formerly been alive was now to exist only as tradition. As the centuries passed, it became still more a tradition. Those who were educated in the Latin tongue retained in a more or less ossified state grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics. Formerly a person would have laughed if he had been asked whether his thinking referred to something real. He would have laughed, for he would have said: I engage in dialectics; I do not cultivate the art of concepts in order to engage in anything unreal. For there, the spiritual reality lives in me. As I engage in grammar, the Logos speaks in me. As I engage in rhetoric, it is the cosmic sun that sends its influences into me.

This consciousness of being connected with the world was lost more and more. Everything became abstract soul experiences, a development that was completed by Scotus Erigena's time. The ideas that had been retained from earlier times—from Plato and Aristotle—were only comprehended more or less logically. People ceased to find any living element in them.

When the Emperor Constantine⁴ made Rome the ruling power under the pretext that he wished to establish the dominion of Christianity, everything became entirely abstract. It became so abstract that a person like Julian Apostate, who had been educated in the Athenian school of philosophy, was silenced. With an aching heart, he looked at what Constantine had done in the way of ossifying concepts and ancient living ideas, and Julian Apostate resolved to preserve this life that had still been evident to him in the Athenian schools of philosophers.

Later on, Justinian ruled from Byzantium, from Constantinople, which had been founded by Constantine.⁵ He abolished the last vestiges of these Athenian philosophers' schools that still possessed an echo of living human knowledge. Therefore, the seven wise Athenians—Athenians they were not, they were a quite international group, men from Damascus, Syrians, and others gathered from all over the world—had to flee on order of Justinian. These seven wise men fled to Asia, to the king of the Persians,⁶ where philosophers had had to escape to already earlier when Zeno, the Isaurian,⁷ had dispersed a similar academy. Thus we see how this knowledge, the best of which could no longer be comprehended in Europe, the living experience that had existed in Greece, had to seek refuge in Asia.

What was later propagated in Europe as Greek culture was really only its shadow. Goethe allowed it to influence him and as a thoroughly lively human being, he was seized with such longing that he wished he could escape from what had been offered to him as the shadow of Greek culture. He traveled to the south in order to experience at least the aftereffects.

In Asia, people who were capable of doing so received of Plato and Aristotle what had been brought across to them. This is why during the sixth century Aristotle's work was translated based on the Asian-Arabic spirit. This gave Aristotle's philosophy a different form.

What had in fact been attempted here? The attempt had been made to take what the Greeks had experienced as the relationship between the soul-spiritual element and the body's system of fluids, what they had seen in full physical and soul-spiritual clarity and formative force, and to raise it up into the region where the ego could be fully comprehended. From this originated the form of science tinged with Arabism, which was especially cultivated in the academy of Gondishapur⁸ throughout the whole declining age of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This form of science was brought in later centuries by Avicenna⁹ and Averroes¹⁰ by way of Spain into Europe and eventually exerted a great influence on people such as Roger Bacon¹¹ and others. It was, however, a completely new element that the academy of Gondishapur meant to bestow on mankind in a manner that could not endure by way of the translation of Aristotle and certain mystery wisdom teachings, which then continued in directions of which we shall talk another time.

Through Avicenna and Averroes, something was introduced that was to enter human civilization with the beginning of the fifteenth century, namely, the struggle for the consciousness soul. After all, the Greeks had only attained to the intellectual or rational soul. What Avicenna and Averroes brought across, what Aristotelianism had turned into in Asia, so to speak, struggles with the comprehension of the human I, which, in a completely different way, has to struggle upward through the Germanic tribes from below to above—I have described this in the public lectures here during the course.¹² In Asia, on the other hand, the I was received like a revelation from above as a mystery wisdom. This gave rise to the view that for so long provoked such weighty disputes in Europe, namely, that man's ego is not actually an independent entity but is basically one with the divine universal being. The aim was to take hold of the ego. The I was supposed to be contained in what the Greek beheld as the being of body, soul, and spirit.

Yet, people could not harmonize the above with the I. This is the reason for Avicenna's conception that what constitutes the individual soul originates with birth and ends with death. As we have seen, the Greeks struggled with this idea. The Egyptians viewed it only in this way—the individual soul is enkindled at birth, extinguished at death. People were still wrestling with this conception when they considered the actual soul element between birth and death, the true soul element. The I, on the other hand, could not be transitory in this manner. Therefore, Avicenna said: Actually, the ego is the same in all human beings. It is basically a ray from the Godhead which returns again into the Godhead when the human being dies. It is real, but not individually real. A pneumatic pantheism came about, as if the ego had no independent existence but was only a ray of the deity streaming between birth and death into what the Greeks viewed as the soul-spiritual nature. In a manner of speaking, the transitory soul element of man is ensouled with the eternal element through the ray of the Godhead between birth and death. This is how people imagined it.

This shows to some extent how people of that age struggled with the approach of the I, the consciousness of the ego, the consciousness soul. This is what occurred in the span of time between the eighth century B.C. and the fifteenth century A.D., the middle of which is the fourth century A.D. People were placed in a condition where the concrete experience, which still dwelled in the mixing and the separating fluids and beheld the soul element in the corporeal being, was replaced. A purely abstract state of mind, directed more toward man's inner being, replaced this vivid element of perception.

It is indeed possible to say that until the fourth century A.D., Greek culture predominated in Romanism. Romanism only became dominant when it had already declined. In a sense, Rome was predestined to exert its activity only in its dead element, in its dead Latin language, in which it then prepared the way for what entered human evolution in the fifteenth century. This is how the course of civilization must be observed. For, once again, we are now faced with having to seek the way toward knowing of the approach of spiritual revelations from the higher worlds. Once again, we must learn to struggle, just as people struggled then.

We must be clear about the fact that what we possess as natural science came to us by way of the Arabs. The knowledge we have acquired through our sciences must be lifted up to Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. In a certain sense, however, we must also steel our faculties by means of observing the things of the past, so that we acquire the strength to attain what we need for the future. This is the mission of anthroposophical spiritual science. We must recall this again and again, my dear friends. We should acquire quite vivid perceptions of how differently the Greeks thought about soul and corporeal aspects. It would have sounded ridiculous to them if one had listed seventy-two or seventy-six chemical elements. They perceived the living effect of the elements outside and of the fluids within.

We live within the elements. Insofar as the body is permeated by the soul, the human being with his body lives within the four elements the Greeks spoke about. We have arrived at the point where we have lost sight of the human being, because we can no longer view him in the above manner and focus only on what chemistry teaches today in the way of abstract elements.

• 1. Hippocrates, 460–377 B.C., known already in antiquity as the greatest physician.
  
  Phidias, 500–435 B.C., Greek sculptor in Athens, master of classical style.
  
  Plato, 427–347 B.C., Greek philosopher, pupil of Socrates.
  
  Socrates, 470–399 B.C., moral philosopher in Athens, developed Socratic dialog to teach his students to think for themselves.
• 2. Galen, A.D. 129–199, outstanding physician in the days of the Roman emperors; personal physician to Marc Aurel. In his writings, he tried to compile all medical knowledge of antiquity.
• 3. Julian Apostate, A.D. 332–363, nephew of Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from A.D. 361–363.
• 4. Constantine I., the Great, A.D. 288–337, Roman Emperor from A.D. 306–337. Made Christianity the state religion in 324.
• 5. Justinian I, see note 8, Lecture IV.
• 6. “... to the king of the Persians ...”: Chosrau Nurshivan (king from A.D. 531–580) invited the sages from all over the world, particularly those versed in medicine, to Persia. He is frequently considered the founder of the academy of Gondishapur.
• 7. Zeno the Isaurian, A.D. 426–491, Byzantine emperor from A.D. 474–491, closed the school of philosophers in Edessa in 487.
• 8. Gondishapur (Djundaisabur), city founded by the king of the Sassanides, Shapur I (242–272). It was the cultural center of the kingdom for a long period.
• 9. Ibn Sina Avicenna, 980–1037, Persian philosopher and physician, author of over 100 books.
• 10. Ibn Roshd Averroes, 1126–1198, Arabian philosopher and universal scientist. Physician from Cordova. Following Aristotelianism, he attempted to combine philosophy and faith. His rational faith led to his banishment.
• 11. Roger Bacon, around 1216–1294, English Franciscan, called doctor mirabilis on account of his comprehensive knowledge. He included natural scientific perceptions in his theological manner of thought.
• 12. See note 2 to Lecture XVI.

Today and the day after tomorrow I propose to discuss a few of the more important facts relating to consciousness and to karmic connections.

If you cast even a superficial glance at that which exists in your soul from awaking in the morning to falling asleep at night—in the form of ideas, moods, impulses of will, adding of course all the impressions that approach the soul from without—then you have everything that may be called the objects of ordinary consciousness.

It must be clear to us that all these details of our conscious activity are dependent, under ordinary conditions, upon the instrumentality of the physical body. The immediate, irrefutable proof of this is that one must awake in order to live within these facts of the usual consciousness. For us this means that the human being must submerge himself in the physical body with what is outside it during sleep, and his physical body must be at his disposal with its instruments. He must be able to make use of them if the activities of the ordinary consciousness are to go on.

The following question then arises: In what way does the human being, as a soul and spiritual entity, make use of his physical instruments, his organs of sense, his nervous system? In what way does he use his bodily organs in order to exist in his ordinary consciousness? In the outer, materialistic world there is, first of all, the belief that the human being possesses in his physical instruments that which produces the facts present to consciousness. It has been frequently pointed out that this is not the case; that it is no more sensible for us to imagine that our inner corporeality, our sense organs or brain, bring forth the details of consciousness than to imagine that a candle creates the flame. The relation of what we call consciousness to the bodily mechanism is quite otherwise. We might compare it with the relation of a man to the mirror in which he sees himself. When we sleep our state of consciousness is comparable, let us say, to walking straight ahead in a certain space. If we do this we do not see ourselves, how our nose or forehead looks, and so forth. Only when someone steps forward with a mirror and holds it before us do we behold ourselves. But then we are confronted by what has always belonged to us. It is then there for us. It is the same with the facts of our ordinary consciousness. They exist continually within us, and have, as they exist there, nothing whatsoever to do with the physical body—as little as we ourselves have to do with the mirror mentioned above. The materialistic theory in this field is simply nonsense; it is not even a possible hypothesis. For the materialist in this field affirms nothing less than would be asserted were someone to declare that because he sees himself in a mirror the mirror created him.

If you wish to give yourself up to the illusion that the mirror creates you because you see yourself only when it is held before you, then you may also believe that parts of the brain or the sense organs produce the content of your soul-life. Both statements are equally intelligent and true. That the mirror creates the human being is just as true as that the brain produces thoughts. The facts of our consciousness persist. It is necessary for our ordinary organization that we be able to perceive these existing details of consciousness. To this end we must encounter that which reflects them—our physical body. We have thus in our physical body what we may call the reflecting apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness. These facts exist in our soul and spiritual entity. We cannot perceive them psychically any more than we can perceive ourselves without a mirror. We become aware of that which lives within us and is a part of us by having held before us the mirror of our bodily nature. That is the actual state of things, except that one has not to do with a passive reflector in the case of the body, but with something that contains processes of its own. Thus it may be imagined that instead of the mirror which is silvered to produce reflection, the physical body has behind it all sorts of processes. The comparison suffices to show the relation of our spirit and soul being to the body. We will hold before our minds the fact that for all we experience in normal, everyday consciousness, the physical body is an adequate reflector. Behind or, let us say, below all the details of this usual consciousness lie the things that rise up into our ordinary soul-life, and which we must designate as facts within the hidden depths of the soul.

Some of that which exists in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced by the poet or the artist who knows—if he is a genuine poet or artist—that he does not conceive his works by means of logic or outer observation. He knows instead that they emerge from unknown depths, and are there, really there without having been gathered together by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But from these hidden depths of soul-life other things also emerge which, although in everyday life we are unaware of their origin, play a part in our everyday consciousness.

We saw yesterday that we can go down deeper, into the realm of half-consciousness, the realm of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something up out of the depths of soul-life which we cannot lift up by straining the memory in the simple usual way. When something long buried in memory stands before a human soul in a dream picture—which happens again and again—the individual in most cases could never, through recollection alone, lift these things up from the hidden depths of soul-life because the ordinary consciousness does not extend so far down. But that which is inaccessible to this surface consciousness is quite within reach of the subconsciousness, and in the half conscious dream state much that has remained or been preserved, so to say, is brought up or rises up.

Only those things strike upwards that have failed to produce their effects in the way usual to that emanation of human experience which sinks into the hidden depths of the soul. We become healthy or ill, moody or gay, not due directly to our ordinary course of life, but because a bodily condition results from that which has sunk down from our life experience. It is no longer remembered, but there below in our soul this sunken something works, and makes us what we become in the course of our lives. Many a life would be quite comprehensible to us, if we but knew what hidden elements had descended throughout its course into these subconscious depths. We should be able to understand many a man in his thirties, forties, or fifties, should know why he has this or that tendency, why he feels so deeply dissatisfied in certain connections without being able to say what causes this discomfort. We should understand a great deal if we were to follow the life of such a man back into childhood. We should be able then to see how in his early years his parents and environment had affected him, what was called forth of sorrow and joy, of pleasure or pain, perhaps entirely forgotten, but acting upon his general condition. For that which rolls down, and surges out of our consciousness into the hidden depths of soul life continues its operation there. It is a curious fact that the force, acting in this way, works primarily upon ourselves, does not leave, so to speak, the sphere of our personality. Therefore when the clairvoyant consciousness descends, (and this happens through what is called imaginative cognition), when the clairvoyant consciousness descends to the realm where, in the subconsciousness, things rule which have just been described, the seeker always finds himself. He finds that which exists and surges within him. And that is good; for in true self-knowledge the human being must learn to know himself in order that he may observe and become acquainted with all the driving forces that work within him.

If he gives no heed to these facts; if when he gains clairvoyant consciousness through exercises in imaginative cognition, and forces his way down into the subconscious—if he does not recognize that in everything working within him he finds only himself—then he is exposed to manifold errors. For he cannot become aware of this in any way comparable to the ordinary activities of consciousness. There arises for the human searcher the possibility, at one step or another, of having visions, of seeing shapes which are quite new and do not resemble those with which he has become acquainted in average experience. This may happen, but to believe that such things are part of the outer world would be a serious mistake. These phenomena of the inner life do not present themselves as in the ordinary consciousness. If one has a headache it is a fact of the ordinary consciousness. One knows it to be located in one's own head. If anyone has a stomachache he is aware of it within himself. If we descend into what we call the hidden depths of the soul, we remain absolutely within ourselves, and yet what we encounter may present itself objectively, as if it were in the outside world.

Let us consider a striking example: Let us assume that someone has a longing to be the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. (I have already stated that I have counted during my lifetime twenty-four such Magdalenes!) Let us assume also that this wish is not as yet admitted: we do not need to admit to ourselves our own wishes, that is not necessary. But a woman reads the story of Mary Magdalene, and it pleases her exceedingly. The desire to be Mary Magdalene may arise at once in her subconscious mind while in the surface consciousness nothing is present but the attraction of this character. It pleases the person in question. In the subconsciousness, unknown to its possessor, there is a growing desire to be this Mary Magdalene. This individual goes through the world, and as long as nothing intervenes in her upper consciousness, that is to say, as far as she knows, she is simply pleased with Mary Magdalene. The ardent desire to be Mary Magdalene is in her subconscious mind, but she knows nothing about that, so it does not trouble her. She is guided by the details of the ordinary consciousness, and may go through the world as though she had no such injurious subconscious desire. But let us assume that, as a result of employing this or that occult method of reaching the subconscious, this woman succeeds in descending into herself. She might not become aware of a desire to be Mary Magdalene as she would of a headache. If she did her attitude towards her desire would be the same as towards a pain: she would just try to get rid of it. But in the case of an irregular penetration this desire presents itself as something outside the personality. The vision pretends to say: Thou art Mary Magdalene! It stands before her, projecting itself as a fact, and a human being, as evolution is today, is unable to control such a condition with the ego. With good, correct, and careful schooling this cannot happen, for then the ego goes along into every sphere; but as soon as something enters the consciousness without the accompanying presence of the ego it is produced as an objective fact. This observer believes that she recalls events surrounding Mary Magdalene, and identifies herself with her.

This is a real possibility. I emphasize this today in order that you may gather from it the fact that only careful schooling, and caution in regard to your entrance into the domain of occultism can save you from falling into error. It is to be understood that you must first see a whole world before you, must note objects around you, excluding however that which you relate to yourself, or which is within you, even though it appears as a world tableau—if you know that it is well to regard what you first see only as the projection of your own inner life, then you have a good corrective for the errors along the way. This is the best of all: regard, as a general rule, everything as phenomena emanating from yourself. Most of them arise out of our wishes, vanities, from our ambitions, in short, from characteristics relating to the egotism of humanity. These things project themselves, for the most part, outward, and you may now raise the question: How can we avoid these errors? How can we save ourselves from them?

We cannot save ourselves from these errors by the ordinary facts of consciousness. The deception arises from the fact that, although the human being is confronted in reality by a world-tableau, he cannot escape from himself, is all entangled in himself. From this you may see that it depends upon our coming, in one way or another, out of ourselves that we learn to differentiate: here you have a vision and there another. The visions are both outside ourselves; one is perhaps only the projection of a desire, the other is a fact, but they do not differ as radically as in ordinary life when someone else says he has a headache, and you have it yourself. Our own inner life is projected into space, just as the inner life of another person. How shall we learn to distinguish the one from the other?

We must undertake research within the occult field, and learn to distinguish true from false impressions, although they appear confused and all make the same claim to authenticity, as though we looked into the physical world and saw besides ordinary trees, imaginary ones. The real objective facts and those which arise from our own inner life are mixed together. How are we to learn to separate two realms which are so intermingled?

We do not learn this primarily through our consciousness. If we remain entirely within the confines of our mental life there is then no possibility of differentiation. This possibility lies only in the slow occult training of the soul. As we go on further and further we acquire real discrimination. This means that we learn to do in the occult realm what we would have to do in the physical world if trees born of phantasy and genuine trees stood side by side. If we run against phantasy-trees they let us pass through without resistance, but if we encounter real trees we bruise ourselves against them. Something similar, although of course only as a spiritual fact, must confront us in the occult field.

We can, if we go about it properly, learn in a comparatively simple way to distinguish between the true and false within this field, not however through ideas, but by resolution of will. This resolution may be brought about in the following way: If we look over our life we find in it two distinctly different groups of occurrences. We often find that this or that in which we succeed or fail is related to our abilities. That is to say, we find it comprehensible that in a certain field we do not succeed very well because in it we are not particularly bright. Where we assume on the contrary that we have ability, we find success quite natural.

Perhaps we need not always discern so distinctly the connection between what we carry out and our abilities. There is also a less definite way to realize this connection. If, for example, anyone in his later years is pursued by this or that blow of fate and, thinking back says to himself: “As a man I did little to make myself energetic”—or must say to himself: “I was always a careless fellow”—he may also say: “Well, the connection between my lack of success and my other omissions is not immediately apparent, but I do see that things cannot really succeed for a careless, lazy person to the same degree they are possible for one who is conscientious and industrious.” In short, there are successes and failures which we can comprehend and find natural, but there are others which happen in such a way that we cannot discover any connection, so that we say to ourselves: “Although in accordance with certain abilities this or that should have succeeded, it nevertheless did not succeed.” Thus there is distinctly a type of success or failure whose connection with our capacities we cannot see.

That is one thing. The other is that in regard to some things in the outside world which strike us as blows of fate, we can sometimes say: “Well yes, that appears to be just, for we furnished all the predisposing conditions;” but some other things that happen we cannot discover that we are in any position to explain. We have thus two types of experience; those whose relation to ourselves and our capacities we realize, and the other type just characterized, for which we cannot see that we are responsible. Our external experiences fall likewise into two classes: those of which we cannot say that we have produced the determining conditions, in contrast to others which we know we have brought about.

Now we may look around a little in our lives. That is a useful experiment for everyone. We could gather together all the things whose causes we cannot see, whose success led us to say “a blind chicken has found a kernel of corn”—things whose success we cannot attribute to ourselves. But we can remember and collect also failures in the same way, and those seemingly accidental outer events for which we know of no modifying influence. And now we make the following soul experiment: We imagine that we constructed for ourselves an artificial human being who, through his own abilities, brought about all our successes whose cause we do not understand. If something succeeded for us requiring wisdom just where we ourselves are stupid, then we conceive a person who is particularly clever in this field, and for whom the enterprise simply had to succeed. Or for an outer event we proceed in this way: let us say a brick falls on our head. We can see no reason, but we conceive someone who brought it about by running up to the roof and loosening the brick, so that he needed only to wait a little for it to fall. He runs down quickly, and the brick strikes him. We do this with certain events which we know have not been brought about by us in any ordinary way, and which happen very much against our will. Let us assume that at some time in our life we were struck by someone. In order that we may not find this too difficult we may place this event back in our childhood; we can pretend that then we contrived to be beaten by someone, that is, we had done everything to bring it about. In short, we construct for ourselves a human being who brings down upon himself everything for which we cannot account. You see, if progress in occultism is desired many things must be done which run contrary to ordinary events. If you do only what generally seems reasonable you get no further in occultism, for that which relates to higher worlds may seem to ordinary people quite foolish. It does no harm if the method does seem foolish to the prosaic outer man.

Well, we construct for ourselves this human being. At first it seems to us a merely grotesque performance, something the object of which we perhaps do not understand; but we shall make a discovery about ourselves, in fact everyone will who tries it, namely the astonishing discovery that he no longer wishes to detach himself from this being which he has himself built up, that it is beginning to interest him. If you try it you will see for yourself: you cannot get away from this artificial human being; it lives within you. And in a peculiar way: it not only lives within you but it transforms itself and radically. It changes so that at last it becomes something quite different from what it was originally. It becomes something of which we are forced to say “it really does exist within us.”

This is an experience which is possible to everyone. We admit that what has just been described—which is not the original self-created being of phantasy, but that which this has become—is a part of what is within us. Now this is just what has, so to speak, brought about the apparently causeless things during our lives. We find within ourselves the real cause of what is otherwise incomprehensible. That which I have described to you is, in other words, the way not only to peer into your own soul-life and find something, but it is the way out from the soul-life into the environment. For what we fail to bring off does not remain with us, but belongs to our environment. So we have taken something out of our environment which does not harmonize with the facts of our consciousness, but presents itself as if it were within us. Then we gain the feeling that we really have something to do with what seems so causeless in real life. A person acquires in this way a feeling of his connection with his destiny, with what is called Karma. Through this soul experiment a real way is opened to experience within himself, in a certain manner, his own Karma.

You may say: “Yes, but I do not understand exactly what you have said.” If you say that you do not fail to understand what you imagine, but you lack understanding for something which even a child can grasp, but about which you simply have not thought. It is impossible for anyone who has not carried out the experiment to understand these things. Only he who has done this can understand. These things are to be taken only as the description of an experiment that can be made and experienced by anyone. Each one comes to the realization that something lives within him which is connected with his Karma. If anyone knew this beforehand no rule would need be given him for the attainment of this knowledge.

It is quite in order that no one grasps this who has not yet made the experiment; it is not however a question of understanding in the ordinary sense, but an acceptance of information regarding something that our soul may undertake. If our soul follows such paths it accustoms itself not to live within itself only, in its own wishes and desires, but to relate itself to outer happenings, to consider them. Exactly the things which we ourselves have not desired, we have built into that which is here considered. And when we have come to face our Destiny so that we can calmly take it upon us, and think in regard to what we usually murmur and rebel against: “We accept it willingly, for we ourselves have decreed it,” then there arises a state of mind and heart in which, when we force our way down into the hidden depths of soul, we can distinguish with absolute certainty the true from the false. For then is shown with a wonderful clarity and assurance what is true and what false.

If you behold any sort of vision with the mental eye, and can as it were by a mere look, banish it, drive it away, simply by the use of all the inner forces with which you have become acquainted—then it is just a phantasm. But if you cannot get rid of it in this fashion, if you can banish at most that which reminds you of the outer world; if the really visionary quality, the spiritual thing remains like a solid fact—then it is true. But you cannot make this distinction until you have done what has been described. Therefore without the above-mentioned training there can be no certainty in the differentiation between the true and false upon the super-sensible plane. The essential thing in this soul experiment is that we always remain in full possession of our ordinary consciousness in regard to what we desire, and that by means of this experiment we accustom ourselves to look upon what we in our ordinary consciousness do not at all want, and is repugnant to us, as something willed into existence by us. One may in a certain sense have reached a definite degree of inner development; but unless, through such a soul experiment, we have learned to contrast all the wishes, desires, sympathy and antipathy which live in the soul with our relation to what we have not wished, then we shall make mistake after mistake.

The greatest mistake in the Theosophical Society was first made by H. P. Blavatsky; for although she fixed her spiritual attention upon the realm where Christ may be found, in the contents of her upper consciousness, in her wishes and desires, there was a constant antipathy, even a passion against everything Christian or Hebrew, and a preference for all other spiritual cultures on earth, and because she had never gone through what has been described today she conceived of the Christ in an entirely false way. That was quite natural. It passed over to her nearest students, and has been dragged along, although grotesquely coarsened, to the present day. These things extend to the highest spheres. One may see many things upon the occult plane, but the power of discrimination is something different from mere sight, mere perception. This must be sharply stressed.

Now the problem is this: When we sink down into our hidden soul-depths (and every clairvoyant must do this,) we first come into what is fundamentally ourselves. And we must learn to know ourselves by really making the transition, by having a world before us, of which Lucifer and Ahriman always promise to give us the kingdoms. This means that our own inner self appears before us, and the devil says: “This is the objective world.” That is the temptation that even Christ did not escape. The inner illusions of the inner world were presented, only He, through His inherent power, recognized from the very beginning that it is not a real world, but a world that is within. It is through this inner world alone, which we must separate into two parts in order to get rid of one—our own personal part—and have the other remain, that we pass through the hidden depths of our soul-life out into the objective super-sensible world. And just as our spiritual-soul kernel must make use of our physical body as a mirror for outer perception, for the facts of ordinary consciousness, so must the human being make use of his etheric body as a reflecting apparatus for the super-sensible facts which next confront him. The higher sense organs, if we may so describe them, open within the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected by the etheric body, just as the spiritual and soul activity of which we are aware in ordinary life is reflected by the physical body. We must now learn to manage our ether body, and it is entirely natural since our etheric body is usually unknown to us, although it represents what vitalizes us, that we must become acquainted with it before we can learn to recognize that which enters us from the super-sensible objective world and may be reflected by this ether body.

You now see what we experience when we descend into the hidden depths of our soul life. It is primarily ourselves, and the projection of our wishes is very similar to what we usually call the life in Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or of Cleansing Fire; also Purgatory.] It differs from it only in that when anyone in ordinary life thus pushes forward into imprisonment within himself (which is what it may be called,) he has still his physical body to which he can return. But in Kamaloca the physical body is gone, even part of the etheric body—the part which most immediately reflects for us—but the universal life-ether surrounding us serves as an instrument of reflection, and mirrors everything that is within us. Thus in the Kamaloca period our own inner world is built up about us as an objective world, all our wishes, desires, all that we feel, and to which we are inwardly attuned.

It is important to understand that the primary characteristic of the life in Kamaloca is our imprisonment within ourselves, and this prison is the more securely fastened by the fact that we cannot return to any sort of physical life to which our whole inner activity has been related. Only when we live through this Kamaloca period in such a way as to realize gradually (we do come to this gradually,) that it all may be got rid of by experiencing our-self otherwise than through mere desires and so forth, only then is our Kamaloca prison opened.

How is this meant? In the following way: Let us suppose that someone dies with a definite wish; this wish belongs to that which projects itself outward and is built up around him in some kind of imagery. Now as long as this desire lives within him it is impossible, in regard to it, to open Kamaloca with any sort of key. Only when he realizes that this wish cannot be satisfied except by discarding it, when his attitude towards it becomes the opposite to what it has been, then gradually with the wish everything that imprisons us in Kamaloca will be torn from the soul. Only then do we come into the realm between death and rebirth which has been called the devachanic [Devachan = Heaven.], and which may be entered also through clairvoyance when we have recognized that which belongs to the self alone. In clairvoyance it is reached through a definite degree of development; in Kamaloca through the passage of time, simply because time so torments us through our own desires that at last they are overcome. By this means that which has been dangled before us as if it were the world and its splendor is destroyed.

The world of super-sensible realities is what is usually called Devachan. How does this world of super-sensible facts appear before us? Here upon this earthly globe we can speak of Devachan only because in clairvoyance, when the self has been really conquered, we enter at once into the world of super-sensible facts, which are objectively present, and these facts coincide with those of Devachan.

The most important characteristic of this devachanic world is that in it moral actualities are no longer separable from the physical, that moral and physical laws are one and the same. What does that mean? Well, is it not true that in the ordinary physical world the sun shines upon the just and the unjust? Whoever commits a crime may be put in prison, but the physical sun is not darkened. That is to say: in the physical world there is a realm of moral and physical laws, leading in two very different directions. It is not so in Devachan, not at all; instead of this, everything proceeding from morality, from intelligent wisdom, from the aesthetically beautiful, and so on, leads to growth (is creative,) and that which arises from immorality, intellectual falsity, and aesthetic ugliness leads to withering and destruction. And there the laws of nature are such that the sun does not shine upon the just and the unjust alike but, if we may speak figuratively, it darkens upon the unjust; so that the just, passing through Devachan, have there the spiritual sunshine, that is to say, the influence of the fertilizing forces that bring about their forward progress in life. The spiritual forces draw back from the dishonest or ugly human being. The following is possible there which is impossible here on earth. When two people—just and unjust—walk here side by side, the sun cannot shine upon one and not upon the other; but in the spiritual world the effect of the spiritual forces depends absolutely upon the quality of the individual concerned. That is to say: the laws of nature and the spiritual laws do not follow two separate roads, but one and the same. That is the fundamental, essential truth. In the devachanic world the natural, moral, and intellectual laws act together as one.

As a result the following occurs: If a human being has entered and lives through the devachanic world he has within him what is left over from his last life of justice and injustice, good and evil, aesthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. All this residue acts however in such a way that it takes immediate possession of the natural laws. We may compare the law there with the following in the physical world: If anyone in the physical world had stolen or lied and, seeking the sunlight, found that the sun did not shine upon him, could not find it anywhere, and thus through lack of sunshine developed a disease ... or let us rather assume as an example that someone in the physical world who was a liar had difficulty in breathing; that would be an exact parallel with what would be the case in the devachanic world. To the person who has burdened himself with this or that, something happens in his spiritual and soul nature so that the natural law at once and absolutely expresses the spiritual law. Hence, if the further development of this personality is brought about in this way, as he progresses gradually and is more fully permeated by these laws, such characteristics develop in him that he becomes an expression of the qualities which he brought over from his past life. Just let us suppose that someone has been two hundred years in Devachan, and has gone through it, having been in his last life a liar: the spirits of Truth withdraw from him. There dies in him that which in a truthful soul would be invigorated.

Or let us assume that someone with a pronounced quality of vanity which he has not given up goes through Devachan. This vanity in Devachan is an extraordinarily evil-smelling emanation, and certain spiritual beings avoid a personality who gives out the offensive evaporation of ambition or vanity. This is not a figurative statement. In Devachan vanity and ambition are extremely evil exhalations, and lead to the withdrawal of the beneficent influence of certain beings who retreat before this atmosphere. This could be compared to the placing in the cellar of a plant which thrives only in sunlight. A vain person cannot thrive. He will grow up with this characteristic. When he reincarnates he lacks the strength to build in the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs in a healthy way, he forms an unhealthy part in his organism. Thus not only our physical limitations, but our moral and intellectual ones as well show us the kind of human beings we become in life. Only when we emerge from the physical plane do natural and spiritual law go side by side. Between death and a new birth they are a single whole. And in our soul are implanted the natural forces which destroy if they are the result of the immoral deeds of past lives, but which fructify if they are the result of noble ones. This is true not only for our inner constitution, but also for that which falls upon us from without as our Karma.

In Devachan the essential fact is that no difference exists there between natural and spiritual law, and it is the same for the clairvoyant who really penetrates to the super-sensible worlds. These laws of the super-sensible worlds are radically different from those which rule upon the physical plane. It is simply impossible for the clairvoyant to differentiate in the manner of the materialistic mind when someone says: “That is only a law of objective nature.” Behind this objective natural law there exists always in reality a spiritual law. A clairvoyant cannot cross a scorched meadow, for example, or a flooded district, cannot perceive a volcanic eruption without thinking that behind the facts of nature are spiritual forces, hidden spiritual beings. For him a volcanic eruption is at the same time a moral deed, even though its morality may lie in an entirely different, undreamed-of realm. Those who always confuse the physical with the higher worlds will say: “Well, when innocent human beings are destroyed by a volcanic outbreak, how can one assume that it is a moral deed?” We do not need to worry about that. Such a judgment would be as cruelly philistine as the opposite idea: namely, to regard it as a punishment from God upon the people who are settled around the volcano. Both judgments are possible only to the narrow-minded standpoint of the physical world. Such is not the question, which may have to do with much more universal things. Those who live on the slope of a volcano, and whose property is destroyed by it, may be for this life entirely innocent. It will be made up to them later. This does not make us hardhearted and unwilling to help them (that again would be a narrow-minded interpretation of the matter). But in the case of volcanic eruptions the fact is that in the course of the earth evolution certain things happen through human deeds which retard human evolution, and just the good gods must work in a certain way for a balance which is sometimes achieved through such natural phenomena.

This application of the law is to be seen only in occult depths: that compensation is created for what is done by men themselves against the genuine development of humanity. Every event, whether a mere activity of nature or not, is at bottom something moral, and spiritual beings in the higher worlds are the bearers of the moral law behind the physical fact. If you simply conceive a world in which no separation of natural and spiritual laws can be considered, a world in which, with other words, justice rules as a natural law, you have then the devachanic world. Therefore one need not think that in this devachanic world through any sort of arbitrary decision an unworthy action has to be punished, because in that realm the immoral destroys itself as inevitably as fire consumes inflammable material, and morality is self-stimulated, and advances itself.

We thus see that the essential characteristic, the innermost nerve of existence, so to speak, is quite different for the different worlds. We gain no idea of the several worlds if we do not consider these peculiarities which differ so radically upon different levels. We may thus correctly characterize physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan: in the physical world natural and spiritual law run side by side as two series of facts; in Kamaloca the human being is confined within himself, as if in a prison of his own being; the devachanic world is the complete opposite of the physical; there natural and spiritual law are one and the same. These are the three characteristics, and if you consider them carefully, striving sensitively to realize how very different from our own a world must be in which the moral, intellectual, even the law of beauty are at the same time natural law, then you will gain an acute impression of conditions in the devachanic world.

In our physical world when we meet an ugly or a beautiful face we have no right to treat the ugly person as if he must be psychically revolting, or the beautiful one as if he must necessarily be worthy of high esteem. In Devachan it is quite otherwise. There we meet no ugliness that is not deserved, and it will be impossible for anyone who, because of his preceding incarnation, is obliged in this one to wear an ugly face, but who strives throughout this life to be true and honorable, to meet us in Devachan with any sort of unpleasant appearance. He will have transformed his ugliness into beauty. But it is equally true that he who is untruthful, vain, or ambitious in this life will wander about in Devachan with some hideous form. And something else is also true: In ordinary physical life we do not see that an ugly face continually robs itself, nor that a beautiful one contributes something to itself, but in Devachan it is like that; ugliness is an element of progressive destruction, and we cannot perceive beauty without assuming that it is the result of an equally continuous furtherance and help.

We must feel quite otherwise towards the devachanic or mental world than towards the physical world. And this is necessary: to differentiate in these sensations, to see the essential which matters, in order that you may appropriate not only the description of these things, but that you may take away feelings, sensitivity towards that which is described in spiritual science. If you try to soar upwards to an appreciation of a world in which morality, beauty, and intellectual truth appear with the inevitability of natural law then you have the feeling of the devachanic world; and this is why we must, so to say, collect so much material and work so much, in order that the things which we work out for ourselves may at last be merged into one feeling.

It is impossible for anyone to come easily or lightly to a real knowledge of what must gradually be made clear and comprehensible to the world through spiritual science. There are many different movements that say, “Oh why must so many things be learned in spiritual science? Are we to become pupils again? Feeling is all that matters.” It does matter, but it must be the right feeling, which must first be developed! This is true of everything. It would be pleasanter, would it not, for the painter if he did not have to learn the technique of his art, if he did not have to bring out upon the canvas, at first slowly, the final result, if he needed only to exhale in order to have his finished work before him! In our world today it is a curious fact that the more the realm of the soul is in question, the harder it is for people to realize that nothing is accomplished by mere exhaling! In music it would not be admitted that one could become a composer without learning anything of composition; there it is quite obvious. This is so also with painting, though people admit it less easily, and in poetry they admit it even less, otherwise there would be in our own time fewer poets. For actually no time is as unpoetic as our own though there are so many poets. If it is not necessary to have studied poetry, but only to be able to write (which naturally has nothing to do with poetic art) and of course to spell correctly—we need only to be able to express our thoughts! And for philosophy still less is required. For today, that anyone may judge straight away anything concerning the conceptions of life and the world is regarded as a matter of course, since everyone has his own point of view. One finds again and again that no value is set by such people upon the carefully worked out personal possession of the means and methods of cognition and of research in the world, gained through every resource of inner work. Instead, it seems to them obvious that the standpoint of one who has labored long before venturing to give out even a little about world secrets has no greater value than that of the one who simply takes it upon himself to have a standpoint. Anyone can count nowadays as a man with a world conception.

This, on the contrary, is what really matters, upon which everything depends; that we labor with all our energy in order that what we work out for ourselves we may at last gather together and carry over into feelings, which through their coloring give the highest, the truest knowledge. Struggle through, by working towards a feeling, an impression of a world in which natural and spiritual law coincide. Then if you work seriously—no matter though people believe you to have learned only theoretically, although you have striven hard in working through this or that theory—you will realize that it makes an impression upon the devachanic world. If you have not simply imagined a feeling, but evolved it by years of careful work, then this feeling, these nuances of sensibility, have a strength which will bring you further than they could reach of themselves; for through earnest, eager study, they have become true. Then you are not far from the point where these nuances burst asunder, and there lies before you the reality of Devachan. For if the nuances of feeling are truly worked out they become a power of perception.

Therefore, if work along these lines is undertaken by student groups upon a basis of truth, honesty, and patient practice, outside of all sensation, their meeting places become what they should be: schools to lead men into spheres of clairvoyance. And only those who cannot wait for this, or who will not co-operate, can have an erroneous view of these matters.

We have spoken recently of many things concerning the existence of hidden soul depths, and it will be well in any case to continue to occupy ourselves with various details of this subject which it may be useful for an anthroposophist to know. Generally speaking, it must be said that a complete clarification of these things is possible only if it can be worked out on the basis of anthroposophical knowledge.

We have considered what may be called the human organization from the most diverse viewpoints. Therefore, when we wish to point out something in hidden soul depths, it will be easy for each one to relate it correctly to what was shown regarding the human structure as we know it from the more or less elementary presentations of the anthroposophical world-conception.

It has been repeated that everything included in our visualizations and percepts, our impulses of will, our feelings, in short, all that goes on in our souls under normal conditions between awaking in the morning and falling asleep at night, may be called the activities, peculiarities, and powers of the ordinary consciousness. Now we shall indicate by a diagram all that falls within this ordinary human consciousness, all that is known and felt and willed between waking and sleeping, within these two parallel lines (a–b).

In this section (a–b) belong, in addition to our visualizations, every sort of percept. Thus, if we put ourselves into correspondence with the outer world through our senses, and procure thereby in every possible sense-impression a picture of this world, remaining in connection, in touch with it, then that belongs also to our ordinary consciousness. But since all our feelings and impulses of will belong to it as well, one might say that in the area indicated by the parallel lines (a–b) everything belongs of which our normal soul activities give us information in everyday life.

The point is for us to know with certainty that to this so-called soul life the physical body is assigned as an instrument, including the senses and the nervous system. If we add two more to these parallel lines we may indicate the physical sense organs and the nervous system, which we may call the tools of this consciousness—the sense organs chiefly, but also to a certain extent the nervous system.

Below the threshold of this ordinary consciousness lies everything which we may describe as the hidden aspects of soul-life, or the subconscious. (See diagram, b–c.) We shall get a good idea of all that is, so to speak, embedded in this subconsciousness if we remember having heard that the human being, through spiritual training, attains to imagination, inspiration, and intuition; [These three terms as used by Rudolf Steiner denote three super-sensible faculties. (Tr.)] so we must substitute for the thoughts, feelings and impulses of will belonging to the surface consciousness, the imagination, inspiration, and intuition of the subconsciousness. We know, however, also that the subconscious activity is not aroused by spiritual training alone, but that it may exist as inheritance of an old, primitive atavistic state of the human mind. Under these conditions there arise what we define as visions, and visions of this naive consciousness would correspond to imaginations gained through training. Premonitions arise; and these might be primitive inspirations. We can show at once the difference between an inspiration and a premonition by a significant example.

We have already mentioned that in the course of the 20th century there will occur in human evolution what may be called a sort of spiritual return of Christ, and that there will be a number of persons who experience this working of Christ from the astral plane into our world in an etheric form. We may acquire knowledge of this event by authentic training, recognizing the trend of evolution, and also that this must come about in the 20th century. It may, however, happen, as it often does at the present time, that individuals here and there are gifted with a natural, primitive, clairvoyance which is, so to speak, a kind of obscure inspiration which we may call a premonition of the approach of Christ. Perhaps such people might not have accurate knowledge of the matter involved, but even such an important inspiration may arise as a premonition, though in the case of a primitive consciousness it may not retain its premonitory or visionary character. The vision constitutes some sort of picture of a spiritual event. Let us say, for example, that someone has lost a friend whose ego has passed through the gate of death. This friend now dwells in the spiritual world, and a kind of bond establishes itself between this person and the one still living in this world. It may be that the person in this world cannot rightly understand what the deceased desires and has a false idea of what is being experienced by the departed. The fact that such a condition exists presents itself in a vision which, as a picture, may be false though founded upon the fact that the dead is really trying to establish a bond with the living, and this gives weight to the presentiment so that the living person who experiences it knows certain things, either about the past or future, which are inaccessible to normal consciousness. If the human soul acquires, however, a definite perception, not a vision which may, under the circumstances, be false, but a factual perception—an occurrence, let us say, of the sense world, but in this case in a sphere invisible to the physical senses, or an incident in the super-sensible world—it is called in occultism deuteroscopy, or second sight. With all this I have described to you only what takes place although subconsciously, within the human soul, whether developed by correct training or appearing as a natural clairvoyance.

The phenomena enumerated when contrasting the subconscious with the ordinary consciousness, differ considerably from those confined to the conscious mind. The relation of this ordinary consciousness to the underlying causes of its activities has already been described in one aspect by this phrase: the impotence of ordinary consciousness. The eye sees a rose, but this eye, which is so constituted that in our consciousness the image of the rose arises has, like the consciousness itself, no power over the blooming, growth and fading of the rose in spite of its perception and the resultant image. The rose blooms and fades through the activity of the forces of nature and neither the eye nor the consciousness has any control beyond the sphere which is accessible to their perception.

This is not the case regarding subconscious happenings. We must hold fast to this fact, for it is extraordinarily important. When we perceive something through the use of our eyes in normal sight, pictures in color or anything else, we can alter nothing in the objective facts by mere perception. If nothing happens to harm our eyes they remain unchanged by the mere act of seeing; only by crossing the boundary between normal and blinding light do we injure our eyes. Thus it may be said that if we confine ourselves to the facts of the normal consciousness, we do not react upon ourselves. Our organism is so constituted that changes are not ordinarily induced in us by this consciousness.

It is quite otherwise with that which appears in the subconscious. Let us assume that we are forming an imagination, or that we have a vision which may be the response of a good being. This good being is not in the physical, but in the super-sensible world, and let us imagine this world where such beings exist and which we perceive, perchance, through an imagination or a vision, to be between these lines (b–c). In that world we have to seek all objects of subconscious perception. But if we identify anything in that other world as an evil or demonic being, either through an imaginary image or a vision, we are not, in regard to this being as powerless as we are with the eye in regard to the rose. If in a super-sensible imagination or vision of an evil being we develop a strong feeling that it must depart, it is bound to feel as if it were powerfully thrust from us. It is the same when we form an imagination or vision of a good being. If in this case we develop a sympathetic feeling, the being feels impelled to approach and to connect itself with us. All beings who in one way or another inhabit that world feel, when we form visions of them, our attracting or repelling forces. With our subconsciousness we are in a position resembling somewhat that of the eye if with it we were able not only to see a rose, but by means of simple sight could arouse a desire that the rose approach and could draw it toward us or, if the eye, seeing something disgusting, could not only form such a judgment but could remove this object by mere antipathy. The subconscious is in touch with a world in which the sympathy and antipathy which are present in the human soul can take effect. It is necessary for us to impress this upon our minds.

Sympathy and antipathy, and in general all subconscious impulses, act in the manner described not only upon their own world, but above all upon what is within ourselves; and not only upon a part of the etheric body, but upon certain forces of the physical body. We must consider here as enclosed between these lines (b–c) that living force within the human being which, pulsing in his blood, can be called the blood warming power and, also, the force residing in our healthy or unhealthy breathing power, conditioned more or less by our whole organism. (See diagram b–c.) To all this, upon which the subconscious works within us, there belongs in addition a large part of what is called the human etheric body. The subconscious or hidden soul powers work within us so as to affect our blood heat upon which depend the pulsation, the liveliness or sluggishness of our circulation. It may thus be comprehended that our subconsciousness is directly connected with the circulation of our blood. A slower or a more rapid circulation depends primarily upon the subconscious powers of the individual.

An influence upon the demonic or beneficent beings inhabiting the outer world can only be exerted if the human being has visions, imaginations, or some other sort of subconscious perception of a certain clarity. That is to say, if they really stand before him; only then can his sympathy or antipathy set in motion subconscious powers that act like magic in this outer world. This distinct standing-before-the-soul in the subconsciousness is not necessary for the effect upon our own inner organism as described above. (See diagram b–c). Whether the person in question knows or does not know which imaginations correspond to a certain sympathy, this sympathy nevertheless affects the circulation of his blood, his breathing system, and his etheric body.

Let us assume that during a certain period of his life someone has a tendency to have feelings of nausea. If he were subject to visions or had imaginative sight, he would recognize these visions and imaginations as perceptions of his own being; they would appear projected into space, but would, nevertheless, belong to his own inner world. They would represent the sort of inner forces that produced the feelings of nausea. But even if he could not practice this kind of self-knowledge and were simply nauseated, these inner forces would act upon him nevertheless. They would influence the warmth of his blood and his forces of breathing. It is actually the case that a human being possesses more or less healthy breathing and circulation, according to the character of his subconscious feelings. The activity of his etheric body and, indeed, all his functions, are dependent upon the world of feelings existing within him.

When, however, the facts of the subconscious mind are really experienced by the soul, it is shown not only that this connection exists, but that because of it a continuous effect is produced upon the general human organism. There are certain feelings, certain states of mind, that work down into the subconscious and, because they call forth definite conditions of blood, of the breathing power, and of the etheric body, affect the organism beneficially, or obstruct the entire life. Thus, as a result of what works down into the subconscious, something is always arising or subsiding. The human being either deprives himself of his life forces, or adds to them through what he sends over from his state of consciousness into the subconscious conditions. If he takes pleasure in a lie he has told, if he is not horrified at it—this being the normal feeling about lies—if instead he feels indulgence, or even satisfaction, then what he feels about it is sent down into his subconscious. This injures the circulation, breathing, and the forces of the etheric body. The result is that when this human being goes through the gate of death he will have become stunted, poorer in forces, something will have died in him which would have lived had he felt the normal horror and disgust at his lie. In the latter case, his disgust would have worked against the lie, transformed itself into the forces here indicated (see diagram), and he would have succeeded in sending something enlivening, creative, into his organism.

We see from the fact that forces are continually transferred from the conscious to the subconscious, that the human being contributes from this subconscious to his own invigoration or deterioration. True, he is not yet strong enough in his present state to spoil out of his soul, so to speak, any other parts of his organism except the circulation of his blood, his breathing system, and etheric body. He cannot injure the coarser and more solid portions, but is able to affect detrimentally one part only of his organism. What he has injured is most distinctly visible when what remains of the etheric body has been influenced in this way; for the etheric body is in constant connection with the warmth of the blood and the constitution of the breath. It is impaired by evil feelings. Through good, normal, and sincere feelings it gains, however, fertilizing, strengthening and maturing powers. We may say, therefore, that a human being, through his subconscious activities works directly, creating or depleting, upon the factual reality of his organism by descending from the level of his powerless surface-consciousness, into the region where something arises or perishes within his own soul, and thereby in his entire organism.

We have seen because the subconscious may be experienced more or less consciously by the soul and something may be known about it, that it achieves an influence in a sphere which we may describe by an expression used throughout the Middle Ages as the elemental world. A human being cannot enter directly into any kind of connection with this elemental world; he can do so only indirectly through those experiences within himself which are effects of the subconsciousness upon the organism. But when he has for a time learned to know himself so as to be able to say: if you feel this, and send down this or that emanation from your conduct into your subconsciousness, you destroy certain things or cripple them; if you have other experiences and send down a different sort of reaction you improve yourself,—if a human being for a time observes within himself this ebb and flow of destructive and beneficent forces, he will become ever riper in self-knowledge. This is the genuine form of self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge gained in this manner is as definite in its effect as would be a scorpion's sting on our toe every time we felt in the physical world the impulse to lie or were tolerant of lying. We may be sure that one observing such an immediate result would cease to lie. If the direct physical effect upon us should be a more or less serious mutilation it would resemble what actually happens, although unperceived, through what is sent down into the subconscious mind from these daily experiences. What is sent down because of our tolerant attitude toward a lie is such that it does bite off and take away from us something the loss of which injures us and which through our future karma we must regain. If we send down a right feeling into the subconscious mind—there is naturally an almost endless scale of feeling which may descend—we grow within ourselves, create new life forces in our organism. Such an observation of our own up-building or deterioration is an immediate result of true self-knowledge.

It has been recently reported that many do not understand how to distinguish a genuine vision or imagination [This term as used by Rudolf Steiner, denotes a super-sensible faculty (Tr.)] belonging to something objective from that which appears in space but is the creation of our own subjective nature. Well, it cannot be said: write down this or that and you will then be able to make the distinction. There are no such rules. One learns gradually through development; and the ability rightly to distinguish that which belongs to ourselves alone from that which, as outer vision, belongs to a genuine entity can be attained only when we have endured the continual gnawing of deadly subconscious activities. We are then equipped with a certain assurance. Then also the condition arises in which a human being, confronting a vision or imagination may ask himself: Can you penetrate it through the power of your spiritual sight? If the vision persists when this active force is turned upon it then it is an objective fact, but if this concentrated gaze extinguishes the vision it is proved to be only his own creation. Anyone who, in this respect, does not take precautions may have before him thousands of pictures from the Akashic Record; if he does not test them to see whether or not they can be extinguished by a resolutely active gaze, the akashic pictures which may give so much information, count only as images developed by his own inner nature. It could happen, for example, that such a person sees nothing beyond himself, externalizing himself in quite dramatic images which he believes to extend throughout the entire Atlantean world, throughout generations of human evolution—but which may be, in spite of such apparent objectivity, nothing but the projection of his own inner self.

When the human being has passed through the gate of death the obstructions no longer exist by which something within himself becomes an objective vision. In ordinary life of the present day what is subconsciously experienced, sent down by the individual human being into his subconscious mind, does not always become vision and imagination. It becomes imagination through correct training, and vision in the case of atavistic clairvoyance. When the human being has passed through the gate of death his collective inner self becomes at once an objective world. It is there confronting him, Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or of Cleansing Fire; also Purgatory.] being in essence nothing but a world built up around us out of that which is experienced within our own soul. This condition is reversed only in Devachan. [Devachan = Heaven]

Thus we can easily comprehend what has been said regarding the effect of sympathy or antipathy present in visions, imaginations, inspirations and premonitions: that these act in all cases upon the objective elemental world. Upon this point it has been stated that in the physically incarnate personality only that which he has developed into vision and imagination acts upon this elemental world. In the case of the dead the forces affect the elemental world which were present in the subconscious mind, and which are always taken along when a human being passes through the gate of death, so that everything experienced after death influences in reality the elemental world. As surely as waves are aroused in a stream by whipping it do the subconscious experiences transmit themselves after death to the elemental world; as certainly as waves that are whipped extend in flattening circles, or a current of air passes undeterred on its way, do these forces spread over the elemental world. Therefore this world is constantly filled with that which is aroused by the content of the subconscious mind which mortals take with them through the gate of death. The point concerning us here is that we gain the ability to bring about the conditions necessary for sight in the elemental world. One need not wonder at the clairvoyant when he recognizes quite correctly that occurrences in that world are activities of the dead. It is even possible, as you will see, to follow the effects of these after-death experiences into the physical world—of course under certain conditions. When the clairvoyant has gone through all that has been described, and acquired the ability to perceive the elemental world, he reaches then after a time a point where he may have strange experiences.

Let us suppose that a clairvoyant looks at a rose with his physical eyes, and receives a sense impression. Let us further suppose that he has trained himself so that the color red gives him a definite shade of feeling. This is necessary, for without it the process goes no further. Unless colors and tones produce definite nuances of feeling when clairvoyance is directed at an outside object, the sight progresses no further. Suppose that he gives the rose away. Then, if he is not clairvoyant, what he felt would have sunk into his subconscious mind, and would be working, either beneficially or detrimentally, upon his health, and so on. But if he is clairvoyant, he would perceive just how the image of the rose acts in his subconscious mind. That is to say, he would have a visionary picture, an imagination of the rose. He would perceive at the same time—as has been explained—how his feeling about the rose affected, either beneficially or detrimentally, his etheric or his physical body. He would observe the action of all this upon his own organism. When he has this image before himself he will be able by its means to exert an attractive force upon the being which we may call the group-soul of the rose and which underlies its existence. He will be looking into the elemental world, seeing the rose's group-soul in so far as it dwells there.

If the clairvoyant goes still further, has emerged from perception of the rose, has given it away, has followed his own inner procedure in concentrating upon the rose and its results, and has reached the point of seeing something of it in the elemental world—then there appears in place of the rose a wonderful shining image belonging to the elemental world. Then, if the procedure has been followed up to this point, something special happens. The clairvoyant can now disregard what is before him. He can then give the command to himself: Do not look with your inner sight at what seems to be a living etheric being going out into the world. Do not regard it! Then, strangely, the clairvoyant sees something which, passing through his eye, shows him how the forces act which form it, how they issue from the human etheric body and build up the eye. He sees the formative forces belonging to his own physical body. He sees his own physical eye as he ordinarily sees an external object. That is in fact something which may occur. A way may be followed from the outer object up to the point where, in absolute inner darkness—no other sense impressions being admitted—what the eye looks like is seen in a spiritual picture. The human being sees his own inner organ. He has entered the region (see diagram), which is really formative in the physical world: the creative physical world. It is first perceived by the clairvoyant in observing his own physical organization. Thus he follows the way back to himself. What sent such forces into our eye that we see it giving out rays of light which really express the essential nature of sight? Then we see the eye surrounded by a sort of yellow glow; we see it enclosed within us. This was brought fourth by the entire process that brought the human being finally up to this point.

The forces that may issue from a dead person follow the same course. The human being takes with him the contents of his subconscious mind into the world that he inhabits after he passes through the gate of death. Just as we enter our own physical eye, do the forces sent out by the dead from the elemental world reenter the physical world. The deceased has perhaps an especial longing for someone whom he has left behind. This longing, at the time lying in the subconscious, becomes at once a living vision and in this way affects the elemental world. What was only a vision in the physical world becomes a power in the elemental world. This power follows the way indicated through the longing for the one who is living and, if the conditions permit, it may create some disturbance in the physical world near the living, who may notice rapping sounds or something of the kind. These are heard just like any physical sounds. Occurrences of this kind, originating in this way, would be noticed more frequently than is usually the case were people more observant of the times favorable to such activities. The times of gradual going to sleep and of similar awaking are the most favorable, but no attention is paid to them; yet there are few, if any, who have never received during such moments of transition what were really manifestations of the super-sensible world, ranging all the way from disturbing noises to audible words.

All this has been pointed out today in order to show both the reality and the nature of the connection between human beings and the world. Impressions of an objective sense-world, received by the ordinary consciousness, are powerless and without any real relation—even to that world; but as soon as the human experience descends into the subconscious the relation with realities is established. The helplessness of the former consciousness passes over into a delicate magic, and when the human being has passed through the gate of death and is released from the physical body, his experiences are such that they are effective both in the elemental world and, under favorable circumstances, even upon the physical plane where they may be observed by the ordinary consciousness.

In describing what may take place, only the simplest example has been used, because it is best to begin with the simplest case. Of course we shall—since we have left ourselves time for it—work out also what we need to know in order to proceed to more complicated matters which may lead us into the more intimate relations between the world and humanity.

Today I shall have something to add to what was stated yesterday. I am reminding you of something which most of you have already heard from me. When the human being passes through death the physical body remains behind within the earth-forces, the etheric body dissolves within the cosmic forces, and the human being finds his continuing life, his existence, throughout the realms which lie between death and a new birth. I said that we can follow up the formative forces within the human being himself which project from one life into the other.

We know that man is in essence a threefold being, with three independent members; I mean, in regard to the formative forces of the physical body, the physical organization. We have the system of the nerves and senses, which naturally is spread over the whole body, but is located primarily in the head; we have the rhythmic system, including the rhythm of the breath, circulation, and other rhythms; then we have the metabolic and limb organization, which we consider as one because man's movements are intimately and organically connected with his metabolism.

You know that each human being has a differently, an individually shaped head. If we consider the forces which shape the human head—of course you must not think of the physical substances, but of the formative forces, of that which gives to the head its physiognomy, its entire character, its phrenological expression—if we consider these forces, we find them to be those of the metabolic and limb system belonging to the previous incarnation which have now become form. Thus we have in the head the transformation of the earlier metabolic organism, and if we consider what we possess as a metabolic and limb system in this present incarnation, these formative forces are found to be undergoing a metamorphosis and shaping the head for our next incarnation. Therefore, if we understand the building of the human form we can, as it were, look back, through a corresponding development of the idea of metamorphosis, from the human head of today to the metabolic system of the previous incarnation; and we can look from the present metabolic system forward to the head formation of the next incarnation. [See: Guenther Wachsmuth, Reincarnation as a Phenomenon of Metamorphosis, Anthroposophie Press, New York, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London.]

This conception, which in our spiritual science and in the spiritual science of all ages plays a certain role, these truths concerning repeated earth lives remain by no means without substantiation, for whoever understands the human organism can read them directly from it. But the present trend of natural science is as far removed as possible from embarking upon the sort of investigation which would be necessary in this case. Of course one cannot escape, through the study of anatomy and physiology alone, the foolish conclusion that the liver and lungs may be investigated by the same method. One lays the liver beside the lungs upon the dissecting table and regards them as organs of equal value, since both consist of cells, and so on. In such a way one can obtain no knowledge of these things, and two organic systems which are as different from one another as the lungs and liver cannot be studied by an external comparison of their cellular configuration, as they must be according to present ideas.

If we really wish to discover the pertinent details, methods must be employed through which a conception of these things may be gained. If the methods which I have described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment are sufficiently developed, then the human power of cognition is greatly strengthened. I am repeating here certain statements that I have already explained in lectures given last autumn in the Goetheanum building: Our ordinary cognition is strengthened, through which we look out with our senses at our environment, and through which we also examine our inner life, where we meet primarily our thinking, feeling, and willing. And if we broaden our knowledge to the degree possible through these exercises which have been often described, then our view of the outer world changes, and in such a way that as a first result we realize the absolute folly of speaking of atoms in the manner of present world-conceptions. What is behind sense perception, behind its qualities, behind yellow and red, behind C sharp, g, and so forth, is not vibration but spiritual essentiality. The outer world becomes ever more spiritual the further we press forward in cognition, so that we really cease to take seriously all those constructions derived from chemical or other ideas. All atomism is thoroughly driven from our minds when we broaden our knowledge of the outer world. Behind the phenomena of the senses there is a spiritual world.

If, on the other hand, through such an enlarged vision we look more deeply into our inner life there arises—not that confused mysticism which forms a justifiable transition, pointed out and explained yesterday—but there arises instead, when inner cognition is developed, a psychic knowledge of the organs. We learn really to recognize our inner organization. While our outer perception is more and more spiritualized, our inner perception is, first of all, more and more materialized. Working in this inner direction, not the nebulous mystic but the real spiritual researcher will become acquainted with each single organ. He learns to know the differentiated human organism. We attain to the spiritual world in no other manner than by this detour through the observation of our own inner materiality. Unless we learn to know lungs, liver, and so forth, we do not gain on this detour through our inner being any kind of spiritual enthusiasm which, freed of the confusion of mysticism, works towards a concrete knowledge of the inner organs.

At all events, we gain a more exact knowledge of the configuration of the soul. To begin with, we learn to give up the preconceived idea that our psychic constitution is merely an adjunct of the sensory and nervous system. Only the world of representations is correlated to the nervous system, the world of feeling not at all. The world of feeling is connected directly with the rhythmic organization; and the world of will is adjusted to the metabolic and limb system. If I will something, a corresponding activity is induced in my metabolic and limb system, the nervous system being there only in order that concepts may be formed in regard to what takes place in the will. There are no nerves of will, as I have often stated; the division of nerves into sensory nerves and nerves of will is absurd. The nerves are all of one kind, and the so-called nerves of will exist for no other purpose than the inner observation of the processes of will. They too are sensory nerves.

If we study this thoroughly we come at last to consider the human organism in its entirety. Take the lung organism, the liver organism, and so forth. Looking at them within, you reach a point when you survey, as it were, the surface of the several organs, naturally by means of spiritual sight. What exactly is this surface of the organs? It is nothing less than a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. Our perceptions, and also what we elaborate in thought are reflected upon the surface of all our inner organs; and this reflection makes known our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and digested something in thought, it is mirrored upon the surface of our heart, liver, spleen, and so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our memories. And with a not very extensive training you may notice how certain thoughts shine back in memory from the whole organism. Very different organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering, let us say, very abstract conceptions, then the lung surface participates strongly. If it is a question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts which have a nuance of feeling, then the surface of the liver is concerned. Thus we can describe very well, and in detail, how the various organs take part in this reflection which makes its appearance as recollection, as the power of memory.

When we concentrate upon the whole soul nature we must not say: In the nervous system alone we have the organic correlate of the soul life, for the entire human organism is the correlated organization for the life of the soul.

In this connection much knowledge, once present as instinct, has simply been lost sight of. It still exists in certain words, but people no longer realize how wisdom is preserved in words. For example, if anyone in the time of the ancient Greeks had a tendency to depression when forming his recollections, they called it hypochondria, meaning a process of cartilage-formation or ossification of the abdomen where, as a result of this rigidity, reflection was brought about in such a way as to make memory a source of depression. The entire organism is involved in these things. That is something which must be kept in our minds.

When speaking of the power of memory, I drew attention to the surface of the organs. In a certain sense everything experienced strikes the surfaces, is reflected, and that leads to recollections. But something enters the organism at the same time. In ordinary life this is transmuted, undergoes a metamorphosis, so that the organ produces a secretion. The organs having this function are mostly glandular. They have an inner secretion, which during life is changed into force. But not everything is thus transformed into organic metabolism, etc. Certain organs take up instead something which becomes latent within them, and constitutes an inner force; for example, all thoughts connected mainly with our perception of the outer world through which we form images of outer objects. The forces developed in these thoughts are, in a certain manner, stored up within the lungs.

You know that the inside of the lungs comes into activity through the metabolism, the movement of the limbs, and these forces are so transmuted that during the life between birth and death our lungs are somewhat of a reservoir of forces which are continually influenced by the metabolic-and-limb system. We find that at the time of death such forces have been stored up. The physical matter naturally falls away, but these forces are not wasted. They accompany us through death, and throughout the entire life between death and a new birth. And when we enter a new incarnation these forces which were in the lungs form our head outwardly, stamp upon it its physiognomy. That which the phrenologist, the craniologist study in the outer form of the skull would be found forecast within the lungs during the previous incarnation.

You see how definitely, from life to life, the transmutation of forces may be followed up. When this is done reincarnation will no longer be an abstract truth alone, but will be studied concretely, as one can study physical things. And spiritual science becomes valuable only when in this way we penetrate into concrete facts. If we speak only in generalities of repeated earth lives, and so forth, then these are mere words. They have meaning only if we can enter upon the single concrete facts.

If that which has been stored in the lungs is not controlled in the right way it is squeezed out, as I said yesterday, much in the same way as a sponge is squeezed out, and then, from that which should form the head only in the next incarnation, there arise mainly abnormal phenomena which are usually called coercive thoughts, or described by some other term as illusions. It is an interesting chapter of a higher physiology to study in lung cases the strange notions which arise in the patient in the advanced stages of the disease. This is connected with what I have just explained to you, with the abnormal pressing out of thoughts.

You will see undoubtedly that the thoughts which are pressed out under these conditions are coercive because they already contain the formative forces. The thoughts which we ought normally to have in consciousness should be pictures only, they must not contain a formative force, and should not coerce us. Throughout the long period between death and rebirth these thoughts do coerce us; then they are causative, formative. During earth life they must not overwhelm us; they should use their power only during the transition from one life to another. This is the point to be considered.

If you now study the liver in the manner I have just explained in regard to the lungs, you will discover that there are concentrated in the same way within the liver all the forces which in the next incarnation determine the inner disposition of the brain. Again by a detour through the metabolic organism of the present life, the forces of the liver pass over, this time not into the shape of the head, but into the inner disposition of the brain. Whether or not someone is to be an acute thinker in the next incarnation depends upon how he behaves in the present one, in order that thus, upon the detour through the metabolism there may arise within the liver definite powers. But if these are ejected during the present incarnation they lead to hallucinations or to powerful visions.

You see now concretely what I pointed out yesterday more theoretically: that these things arise, having been squeezed out of the organs, then force their way into consciousness. Out of the general hallucinatory life, which should extend from the end of one incarnation into the next, they assert themselves within a single incarnation and, in this way, make their abnormal appearance.

If you study in the same manner all that is connected with the kidneys and excretory system you will discover that they concentrate within themselves the forces which, in the following incarnation, influence the head organization preferably in the field of affective emotions. The kidneys, the organs of excretion, bring forth in preparation for the next incarnation essentially that which has to do with the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense, but by a detour through the head organization.

If these forces are squeezed out during the present incarnation they display all the nervous symptoms connected with over-excitement of the human being, inner excitement specifically, hypochondriacal symptoms, depression, in short all the conditions connected particularly with this aspect of the metabolism.

In reality everything remembered with a strong ingredient of feeling or passion is also connected with what is reflected from the kidneys. If we consider lung or liver reflections we find them to be more often memory ideas, the memories proper. If we turn to the kidney system we see what sort of lasting habits we have in this incarnation; and within the kidney system are being prepared already the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense which, by a detour through the head organization, are intended for our next incarnation.

Let us study the heart with the same idea. For spiritual-scientific research, the heart is an extraordinarily interesting organ. You know that our trivial science is inclined to treat knowledge of the heart rather lightly. It looks upon the heart as a pump which pumps the blood through the body. Nothing more absurd can be believed, for the heart has nothing to do with pumping the blood. The blood is set in motion by the full agility of the astral body and ego, and the heart's movement is only the reflex of these activities. The movement of the blood is autonomous, and the heart only brings to expression the movement caused by these forces. The heart is in fact only the organ that manifests the movement of the blood, the heart itself having no activity in relation to this blood movement. The present natural scientists become very angry if you speak of this. Many years ago, I think in 1904 or 1905, on a journey to Stockholm I explained this to a scientist, a medical man, and he was furious about the idea that the heart should not be regarded as a pump, that the blood comes into movement through its own vitality, that the heart is simply inserted in the general blood movement, participates with its beat, and so on.

Well, something is reflected from the surface of the heart which is not a matter of memory or of habit. The life processes become spiritualized when they reach the outer surface of the heart. For what is thrown back from the heart are the pangs of conscience. That is to be taken simply, entirely as the physical aspect. The pangs of conscience which radiate into our consciousness are that ingredient in our experiences which is reflected from the heart. Spiritual cognition of the heart teaches us this.

But if we look into its interior we see gathered there forces which again stem from the entire metabolic and limb organism, and because everything connected with the heart forces is spiritualized that is also spiritualized within it which has to do with our outer life and deeds. And however strange and paradoxical it may sound to anyone clever in the modern sense, the fact remains that what is thus prepared within the heart are the karmic propensities, the tendencies of our karma. It is revoltingly foolish to speak of the heart as a mere pumping mechanism, for the heart is the organ which, through mediation of the limb and metabolic system, carries what we understand as karma into the next incarnation.

You see, if we learn to know this organization we learn to differentiate and recognize its connection with the complete life extending beyond birth and death. We look then into the whole structure of the human being. We cannot speak of the head in relation to metamorphoses, for the head is simply cast off, its forces having completed their activity in the present incarnation. That which, however, exists in these four main systems, in lung, kidney, liver, and heart, after making a detour through the metabolic and limb system, passes over forming our head with all its predispositions and tendencies in the next incarnation. We must seek within the organs of our body the forces which will carry over into the next incarnation what we are now experiencing.

The human metabolism is by no means a mere simmering and seething of chemicals in a retort which modern physiology describes. You need only to take a step in walking and a certain metabolic effect is produced. The metabolism then taking place is not simply the chemical process which may be examined by means of physiology and chemistry, but bears within it at the same time a nuance of morality. And this moral nuance is in fact stored up in the heart and carried over as karmic force into the next incarnation. To study the human being in his entirety means to find in him the forces which reach over beyond earth life. Our head itself is a sphere, and this form is modified only because the rest of the organism is attached to it. Our head is formed out of the cosmos. When we go through death we must, with the spiritual and soul organization which remains to us, adapt ourselves to the whole cosmos. The whole cosmos then receives us. Up to the middle of the period between two incarnations—I have called it in one of my Mystery Dramas the Midnight of Existence—up to this time, if I may so express myself, we continue to spread out into our environment and what thus goes out from us into the surrounding world gives the astral and etheric configuration for the next incarnation.

All this, coming in essence from the cosmos, is determined by the mother. Through the father and impregnation comes that which is formed in the physical body and in the ego. This ego, as it is then, after the Midnight Hour of Being, passes over into an entirely different world. It goes over into the world from which it can then follow the path through the paternal nature. This is an extremely important process. The period up to the Midnight Hour and the period from the Midnight Hour on—both between death and rebirth—are really very different from each other. In my Vienna lecture cycle in 1914 I pictured these experiences in their inner aspect.¹ If we look at them more from the outside, we must say: The ego is more cosmic in the first half, up to the Midnight Hour, and prepares within the cosmos that which then enters the next incarnation indirectly through the mother. From the Midnight Hour of Existence on up to the next birth, the ego passes over into what the old Mysteries called the netherworld; and on the detour through this netherworld it passes through impregnation. There the two poles of humanity meet as it were, through mother and father, from the upper world and from the netherworld.

What I am now saying was an intrinsic portion of the Egyptian Mysteries which came out of the old instinctive knowledge, at least so far as is known to me. The Egyptian Mysteries led particularly to knowledge of what they then called the upper and the lower gods, the upper and the underworld of gods; and it may be said that in the act of impregnation a polar equilibrium of the upper and the underworld of gods is brought about. The ego between death and rebirth goes first through the upper and then through the lower world. In olden times there was not the strange nuance which many connect today with upper and netherworld. People of today nearly always look upon the upper as the good and the netherworld as the bad. This nuance was not originally connected with these worlds; they were simply the two polarities which had to participate in the general world creation. Humanity in the direct experience of the upper world, viewed it more as the world of light, the netherworld more as the world of gravity. Gravity and light were the two polarities when expressed exoterically, and thus you see that such things may be described concretely.

In regard to the other organs I have told you that the overflowing of organic forces may become hallucinatory life, especially that which is squeezed from the liver system. But if the heart squeezes out its contents it is really the collected forces, ejected and brought into consciousness, which call forth in the next incarnation that strange urge to live out one's karma. If we observe how karma works, it may be said that a figurative description from the human side might represent it as a kind of hunger and its assuagement.

That must be understood as follows: Let us proceed first from the standpoint of ordinary life. Let us take a striking case: A woman meets a man and begins to love him. As that is usually regarded, it is somewhat as though you were to cut out a small piece from the Sistine Madonna, for example, a little finger from the Jesus boy and gaze at it. You have a piece of the Sistine Madonna, but you do not see anything. Neither do you see anything if you merely consider the fact that a woman meets a man and begins to love him. The matter is not like that. You must trace it backwards. Before the woman met the man she had been in other places in the world; before that she had been somewhere else, and still earlier somewhere else again. You can find all sorts of reasons why the woman went from one place to another. There is sense in it and, although it is naturally hidden in the subconscious, there is a connection throughout, and we can, by going back into childhood, follow the way. The woman in question—and this is directed at no one in particular—follows the path from the beginning which culminates in the event under discussion. The human being at birth hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger. The pressing forward to a karmic event is the result of such an indescript spiritual feeling of hunger. One is driven to it, as it were, by the whole self. The human being has forces within him which lead to later events, in spite of the freedom which nevertheless exists, but acts in a different field. Well, the forces which manifest in this way as hunger, leading to karmic satisfaction, are concentrated in the heart; and when they are pressed out prematurely and enter the consciousness during the present incarnation, they may create pictures which produce a stimulus, and then frenzy results.

Frenzy is nothing but the outburst in this incarnation of a karmic force intended for the subsequent incarnation. Think how differently we must accustom ourselves to look upon world events, having understood these connections. People put questions such as: Why did God create frenzy? Frenzy has plenty of good reasons for existence, but everything working in this world may appear at the wrong time, and the displaced manifestation, due in this case to Luciferic forces—everything premature in the world is brought about by Luciferic forces—this precipitate appearance of karmic forces intended for a later incarnation produces frenzy.

You see, what is to be carried over and continued in later incarnations may really be studied in the abnormalities of the present life. You may easily imagine what an important difference exists between what remains in our heart throughout our entire incarnation, and the condition it will be in after it has gone through the long development between death and rebirth, to appear then in a new life in the outer behavior of a human being.

However, if you look into your own hearts you can see pretty clearly, though of course only in latency, not in a finished picture, what you will do in your next life. We need not confine ourselves to the general statement: what will take effect karmically in the next life is prepared in this one, but we can point directly to the receptacle in which the karma of subsequent incarnations is stored. These are the things which must be concretely regarded if we wish to practice genuine spiritual science.

You may imagine what enormous importance these things will attain when they are studied and made a part of the general education. What does present medicine know of the possibility of a liver or heart disease when it does not recognize the most important fact of all, that is, the actual purpose of these organs! And it does not know that. It does not even discover a correct connection between excitement hallucinations and the kidney system, nor of the quiet hallucinations, those which simply appear and are present as I have just explained, and are, so to say, liver hallucinations. Hallucinations which appear as though crawling on a human being so that the victim wants to brush them off come from the kidney system. These are the excitement hallucinations which have to do with the emotions and temperament. From such symptoms a much more exact diagnosis can be made than by the means in ordinary use today. And diagnoses based upon purely external evidence are very uncertain in comparison with what they would be were these things studied with the above-mentioned symptoms in mind.

Now all these things are connected with the outer world. The lungs, as an inner organ or organic system, contain the compressed coercive thoughts with all that we receive and concentrate in that organ through perception of outer objects. The liver has an entirely different relation to the outer world. Because the lungs preserve the thought material they are quite differently shaped. They are more closely connected with the earth element. The liver, which conceals in particular the quietly appearing hallucinations, is connected with the element of water; and the kidney system, paradoxical as it sounds, belongs to the element of air. One thinks naturally that this ought to be the case with the lungs, but the lungs as organs are connected with the earth element, though not with it alone. On the other hand, the kidney system—as an organ -—belongs to the element of air, and the heart system to that of warmth, being entirely formed out of that element. Hence, this element which is the spiritual one is also the one which takes up the predisposition of our karma into the delicate warmth structures of the warmth organism.

Since the human being as a whole stands in a relation with the outer world, you can readily realize that the lungs have a particular relation to the outer world in connection with the earth element, and the liver in regard to the watery element. If you examine the earthly qualities of plants you will find in them the remedies for diseases which originate in the lungs. (This is of course to be considered in its broadest implications.) If you take what circulates in the plant, its circulation of juices, you will have the remedy for all disturbances connected with the liver. Thus a study of the reciprocal relation of the organs with the outer world offers in fact the foundation for a rational therapy.

Our present therapy is a jumble of empiric notes. One can reach a really rational therapy only by studying in this way the reciprocal relations between the domain of the human organs and the outer world. Of course the voluptuous longing for subjective mysticism must then be overcome. If the aim is to reach no farther than the well-known “little divine flame” of Meister Eckhardt, and so on; if only the outpouring of inner delight is the aim, and the beholding of beautiful images without penetrating this element to the definite configuration of the inner organs, then important therapeutic knowledge cannot be acquired. For this knowledge is gained upon the path of genuine mysticism which advances to the concrete reality of the inner human organism.

We learn, by the detour through this inner knowledge, to discern the passage through the incarnations. In just the same way, when we regard the outer world, in penetrating this carpet of the sense impressions, we attain to the spiritual. We rise into the world of the spiritual hierarchies, which we did not reach through the detour of inner mysticism. The hierarchies are found through a more profound contemplation of the outer world. Upon this path there follow results which may be first expressed by analogies; yet they are not mere analogies, for there exist deeper connections and relations.

We breathe, do we not? And I recently reckoned for you the number of inhalations during twenty-four hours. If we count eighteen breaths to the minute we have in an hour 60 x 18, and in twenty-four hours 25920 inhalations in a day and night.

Let us take another rhythm in the human being, the rhythm of day and night. When you awake in the morning you draw into your physical and etheric bodies the astral body and ego. This is also breathing. In the morning you inhale the astral body and ego, and when you fall asleep at night you exhale them again; thus one complete breath in 24 hours, in one day. That is 365 such breaths in a year. And take the average age of a human being, 72 years, and you have approximately the same result. If I had not started with 72, but somewhat lower, I should have reached the same figure. That is to say, if you take the entire earthly life of a human being, and count each single day, each falling asleep and awakening, as one breath, you have then in an entire life as many inhalations and exhalations of the astral body and ego as you have in and out breathings in 24 hours. You make in the course of your life as many in and out breathings of the astral body and ego as you make daily in your in and out breathing of air. These rhythms correspond absolutely, and show us how man is fitted into the cosmos. The life of one day from sunrise to sunset, as a single circuit, corresponds with an inner sunrise and sunset that lasts from birth to death.

You see the human being becomes a part of the whole world organism; and I should like to close these considerations by pointing out to you an idea, asking you to think about it rather thoroughly, and to make it a subject of meditation. Science today postulates a cosmic process, and within this cosmic process the earth once arose. In the end the earth, when the entropy is fulfilled, will be consumed in cosmic heat. If today we form for ourselves a concept such as the Copernican, or any modification of it, then we take into consideration only the forces which formed the earth out of the primeval nebula, and human life really becomes a sort of fifth wheel on the wagon; for the geologist and the astronomer do not consider mankind. It does not occur to them to seek in any sense within mankind itself the cause of a future world organism. The human being is everywhere present in this cosmic process, but he is the fifth wheel on the wagon. The world process takes its course, but he has nothing to do with it. Consider it in this way: the world process comes to an end, ceases, is dispersed in space. It stops, and the causes of what ensues are always within the human being himself, inside his skin; there they find their continuation.

The inception of what is now the world lies far back within man of primeval ages. It is thus in reality. The books of ancient wisdom tell us this in their own language, and the saying of Christ-Jesus points to these things: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. All that constitutes the material world is dissolved, but that which issues from the spirit and soul and is expressed in words survives the destruction of the earth and lives on into the future. The causes of the future exist within us, and need not be investigated by geologists. We should seek them among the inner forces of our organism which pass over into our next earth-life first, but then continue into other metamorphoses. Hence when you search for the future of the world you must look within man. Everything external perishes utterly.

The nineteenth century erected a barrier against this knowledge, and this barrier is called: the law of the conservation of energy. This law carries forward the forces of man's environment; but all these will dissolve and disappear. Only that which arises within humanity itself can create the future. The law of the conservation of energy is the most false imaginable. In reality its result is simply to make mankind a fifth wheel in the creative process of the cosmos. Not the statement of the law of the conservation of energy is correct, but that other saying: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. These two are in diametrical contrast; and it is simply thoughtlessness when today certain members of this or that positive denomination wish to be believers in the Bible and, at the same time, adherents of the theories of modern physics. This is sheer dishonesty which claims today to be something culturally creative. This dishonesty must be driven from the field of creative culture—which it actually opposes—if we are to emerge from these forces of decline into ascending powers.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Inner Nature of Man, Vienna, Easter 1914, six lectures.

It is natural that different points of view exist among the members about their own relation to the Anthroposophical Society. A person may enter the Society with the idea that he will find in it what he is seeking out of the inmost needs of his soul. In his search and in the finding of what the Society can give him, such a member will then see the meaning of his membership. I have already indicated that no objection can properly be made to this point of view.

From the very essence of Anthroposophy, it cannot be for the Society to bring together a circle of human beings, and impose upon them when they enter it obligations which they did not recognise before, but are expected to take on simply on account of the Society. If we are to speak of obligations in the proper sense, it can only be of those of the Society towards its members.

This truth (it should indeed go without saying) involves another which is not always rightly understood, nay, is sometimes not even considered.

As soon as a member begins to be active in any way in the Society and for it, he takes upon himself a great responsibility, a very solemn sphere of duty. Those who do not intend to be thus active should not be disturbed in the quiet spheres of their work; but if a member undertakes any activity in the Society, he must thenceforth make the concerns of the Society his own, and this he must on no account forget.

It is natural for one who wishes to be a quiet member to say, for example, ‘I cannot concern myself with the statements of opponents about the Society’. But this is changed the moment he goes outside the sphere of silent participation. Then at once it becomes his duty to pay attention to the opponents and to defend all that is worthy of defence in Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society.

It was bad for the Society that this most necessary fact was not always observed. Members have the fullest right to expect that the Society will give them in the first place what it promises to give. It must surely seem strange to them to be called upon at once to undertake the same obligations as those who hold out these promises.

If, then, we speak of the duties of members to the Society, we can only be referring to those members who desire to be active. This question must not of course be confused with that of the duties which belong to man as such. Anthroposophy does indeed speak of duties. But these will always be of a purely human character; they will only extend the horizons of human responsibility in a way that results from insight into the spiritual world. When Anthroposophy speaks in this way, it can never mean obligations that apply only in the Anthroposophical Society. It will mean duties arising out of human nature rightly understood.

Once more, then, for the members who are active in it, the Anthroposophical Society by its very nature involves definite responsibilities, and these—for the same reason—must be taken most seriously. A member, for example, may wish to communicate to others the knowledge and perceptions of Anthroposophy. The moment his instruction extends beyond the smallest and most quiet circle, he enters into these responsibilities. He must then have a clear conception of the spiritual and intellectual position of mankind today. He must be clear in his own mind about the real task of Anthroposophy. To the very best of his ability he must keep in close contact with other active members of the Society; and it must be far from him to say, ‘I am not interested when Anthroposophy and those who represent it are placed in a false light, or even slandered by opponents’.

The Executive formed at the Christmas gathering understands its task in this sense. It will seek to realise in the Society what has here been expressed, and it can do no other than ask every member intending to be active to make himself a helper and co-operator in these matters.

Only so shall we achieve our purpose, and the Society will be equal to the promise which it holds out to all its members—and thereby to the world at large.

To take one example, it is distressing to have the following experience. It sometimes happens that the members in a certain place, who desire to be active, meet from time to time to discuss the affairs of the Society. In conversation with individuals who take part in these meetings, it will afterwards emerge that they hold certain opinions about each other, each other's activities for the Society, and the like—opinions which are not voiced at all in the meetings. A member, one will find, has no idea what those who are often associated with him think of his work.

It is essential for these matters to be guided into better channels, and this should follow from the impulse which the Christmas gathering has given. Those above all who claim and desire to be active members, should seek to understand this impulse. How often does one hear such members say: I really have the good-will but I do not know what is the right line to take. We should not hold an all too comfortable view upon this subject of ‘good-will’, but ask ourselves again and again, have we really explored all channels which the Society provides to find the right line in co-operation, on the strength of our good-will, with other members?

In the lectures to the Anthroposophical Society which I am now giving at the Goetheanum, I am seeking to give expression to the root-questions of the inner life of Man. The underlying point of view has been indicated in the first five ‘Leading Thoughts’ published in the News Sheet. My object has been to meet the fundamental need of an anthroposophical lecture. The listener must feel that Anthroposophy is speaking of what he, when he holds counsel with himself most deeply, realises as the essential concern of his soul. If we can thus find the right way of representing Anthroposophy, there will arise among the members the feeling that in the Anthroposophical Society the human being is truly understood.

And this is the fundamental impulse in those who become members. They want to find a place where the understanding of Man is duly cultivated.

When we earnestly seek to understand the human being, we are indeed already on the way to recognition of the spiritual being of the World. For we are made aware that, as to Man himself, our knowledge of Nature affords no information but only gives rise to questions.

If in representing Anthroposophy we tend to lead the soul away from love of Nature, confusion alone is the result. The true starting-point of anthroposophical thoughts cannot lie in the belittling of what Nature reveals to Man. To despise Nature, to turn away from the truth which flows to Man from the phenomena of life and the world, or from the beauty that pervades them and the tasks they offer to man's will: this frame of mind can at most produce a caricature of spiritual truth.

Such a caricature will always be tinged with the personal element. Even if it is not composed of dreams, it will be experienced in a dreaming way. In waking life man lives with other men, and his effort must be for mutual understanding on things of common interest. What one man states must have some meaning for the other; what one achieves by his work, must have a certain value for the other. Men who live with one another must have the feeling that they are in a common world. But when a man is living in his own dreams he cuts himself off from the common world of men. The dreams of another—even his nearest neighbour—may be utterly different from his. In waking life men have a world in common; in dreaming each man has his own.

Anthroposophy should lead from waking life, not to a dreaming, but to a more intense awakening. In everyday life we have community indeed, but it is confined within narrow limits. We are banished to a certain fragment of existence, and only in our inner hearts we bear a longing for life's fullness. We feel that the true community of human life extends beyond the confines of the everyday. We look away from the Earth to the Sun when we would see the source of light common to all earthly things. So too we must turn away from the world of the senses to the reality of the Spirit to find the true sources of humanity where the soul can experience the fullness of community it needs.

Here it may easily happen that we turn away from life instead of entering it more fully and more strongly. The man who despises Nature has fallen a victim to this danger. He is driven into that isolation of the soul, of which ordinary dreaming is a good example.

Let us rather educate our minds by contact with the light of truth which streams into the soul of man from Nature. Then we shall best develop the sense for the truths of Man, which are at the same time the truths of the Cosmos. The truths of Nature, experienced with free and open mind, lead us already toward the truths of the Spirit. When we fill ourselves with the beauty, greatness and majesty of Nature, it grows in us to a fountain of true feeling for the Spirit. And when we open our heart to the silent gesture of Nature revealing her eternal innocence beyond all good and evil, our eyes are opened presently to the spiritual world, from whence—into the dumb gesture—the living Word rings forth, revealing good and evil.

Spirit-perception, brought up in the loving perception of Nature, brings to life the true riches of the soul. Spiritual dreaming, elaborated in contradiction to true knowledge of Nature, can but impoverish the human heart.

If one penetrates Anthroposophy in its deepest essence one will feel the point of view here indicated to be the one from which all anthroposophical descriptions should take their start. With this as our point of departure, we shall come into living touch with the reality, of which every member will say, ‘There lies the true reason why I entered the Anthroposophical Society’.

It will not be enough, for the members who wish to be active in the Anthroposophical Society, to be theoretically convinced of this. Real life will only enter their conviction when they unfold a warm interest in all that goes on in the Society. As they learn of what is being thought and done by active individuals in the Society, they will receive the warmth they need for their own work in it. We must be filled with interest in other human beings, to meet them in an anthroposophical way. The study of ‘What is going on in the Society’ must gradually form the background of all our activity in it. Those above all who wish to be active members will stand in need of this.

As one of the results of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, those who take upon themselves to work actively in the Society should make increasingly plain in the eyes of the world the real nature of Anthroposophy, what it is and what it is not. The following is frequently heard: Ought not this or that anthroposophical truth to be introduced here or there without frightening people by saying it is Anthroposophy? So long as such a question is still a matter for discussion, much in the Society will fail to have the effect it should.

Now it is most important to strive for clarity in this matter. There is a difference between advancing, in a sectarian spirit, something which one has laid down for oneself as dogmatic Anthroposophy, and the straightforward, open, unconcealed and unembellished standing for the knowledge of the spiritual world which has been brought to light through Anthroposophy in order that men may be able to reach a relation to the spiritual world, worthy of humanity.

It is the task of the Executive at the Goetheanum, unceasingly to carry on the work of Anthroposophy with this understanding. Moreover this task in its peculiar nature must be fully understood by those members who undertake to work actively in the Society. As a result of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society should become ever more and more united. This can never be the case as long as the seed continues to flourish which has been disseminated through continual distinction being made in anthroposophical circles between what is ‘orthodox’ and what is ‘heretical’.

Above all one must know what the true standard and content of Anthroposophy should be. It does not consist of a sum of opinions which must be entertained by ‘anthroposophists’. It ought never to be said amongst anthroposophists, ‘We believe this’, ‘We reject that’. Such agreement may arise naturally as the result of our anthroposophical study, but it can never be put forward as an anthroposophical ‘programme’. The right attitude can only be: ‘Anthroposophy is there. It has been acquired by persistent effort. I am here to represent it, so that what has thus been acquired may be made known in the world.’ It is still much too little felt in anthroposophical circles what a difference—indeed as between day and night—exists between these two standards. Otherwise the grotesque remark would not be heard continually: ‘The Anthroposophical Society holds this or that belief.’ A remark of this sort is absolutely meaningless, and it is most important that this should be realised.

Were a person to ask—with the intention of obtaining a clear idea of Anthroposophy—let us say, the following question: ‘What is the opinion or standard of life of some particular member of the Anthroposophical Society?’ he would be taking quite a wrong direction to arrive at the nature of Anthroposophy. Yet many would-be active members act in such a manner that this question is bound to arise. Rather should the thought arise: ‘Anthroposophy really exists in the world, and the Anthroposophical Society provides opportunity to become acquainted with it.’

Each one entering this Society should have the feeling: I enter simply in order to learn about Anthroposophy. The normal development of this feeling can be effected by the attitude of the would-be active members. But as things are, something quite different is often produced. People are afraid of joining the Society because, from the attitude of the would-be active members, they receive the impression that they must subscribe with the inmost core of their soul to certain dogmas. And naturally they shrink from this.

The good-will must be developed to efface this impression. Many would-be active members think that if people are received into the Society merely in order that they may become acquainted with Anthroposophy, they will leave again when they have learned what they desired, and we shall never have a compact Society.

But this will never happen if the Anthroposophical Society is rightly comprehended by its would-be active members. It will however come about if we try to make membership of the Society depend upon the acknowledgment of even the smallest dogma—and in this connection every point in a ‘programme’ is a dogma. If the members of the Anthroposophical Society are simply directed to become acquainted with Anthroposophy by virtue of their membership, then, whether they remain in the Society or not will depend upon something entirely different, namely on whether they feel they can hope to continue learning more and more in the Society.

That again will depend upon whether the kernel of the Society is really alive or dead, and whether in the circles of the Society the conditions exist for the living kernel not to die away when it tries to expand into the Society. It is the concern of the Executive at the Goetheanum that the kernel should be alive. The Executive does not administer dogmas; it feels itself solely as the vehicle of a spiritual possession, of the value of which it is fully aware, and it works for the spreading of this spiritual possession. It is happy if anyone comes and says, ‘I wish to share in what you are doing’. As a result of this, the Anthroposophical Society will have a living form. And this will be kept alive if the general attitude and way of working of all the would-be active members is in unison with the Executive of the Goetheanum.

All that one is justified in calling ‘confidence’ in the Society can only flourish on such a foundation as this. If this foundation exists it will not happen again and again that the Anthroposophical Society appears to the world as something quite different from what it really is.

I know quite well the judgment that will be passed by many would-be active members when they read the above. They will say: ‘This we cannot understand; now we really do not know what is wanted.’ But to say this is the worst prejudice of all. The above words only require to be read exactly, and it will then be found that they are neither indefinite nor ambiguous. To catch their spirit does indeed require a certain sensitiveness of feeling; but this ought surely not to be absent in those who wish to be active in the Anthroposophical Society.

This week something will be given in the communications addressed to members in these columns, which may serve to bring us to a further understanding of the weekly ‘Leading Thoughts’.

The understanding of anthroposophical truth can be furthered if the relation which exists between man and the world is constantly brought before the human soul.

When man turns his attention to the world into which he is born and out of which he dies, he is surrounded in the first place by the fullness of his sense-impressions. He forms thoughts about these sense-impressions.

In bringing the following to his consciousness: ‘I am forming thoughts about what my senses reveal to me as the world’, he has already come to the point where he can contemplate himself. He can say to himself: In my thoughts ‘I’ live. The world gives me the opportunity of experiencing myself in thought. I find myself in the thoughts in which I contemplate the world.

And continuing to reflect in this way, he ceases to be conscious of the world; he becomes conscious of the ‘I’. He ceases to have the world before him; he begins to experience the self.

If the experience be reversed, and the attention directed to the inner life in which the world is mirrored, then those events emerge into consciousness which belong to our life's destiny, and in which our human self has flowed along from the point of time to which our memory goes back. In following up the events of his destiny, a man experiences his own existence.

In bringing this to his consciousness: ‘I with my own self have experienced something that destiny brought to me’, a man has already come to the point where he will contemplate the world. He can say to himself: I was not alone in my fate; the world played a part in my experience. I willed this or that; the world streamed into my will. I find the world in my will when I experience this will in self-contemplation.

Continuing thus to enter into his own being, man ceases to be conscious of the self, he becomes conscious of the world; he ceases to experience himself, he becomes feelingly aware of the world.

I send my thoughts out into the world, there I find myself; I sink into myself, there I find the world. If a man experiences this strongly enough, he is confronted with the great riddles of the World and Man.

For to have the feeling: I have taken endless pains to understand the world through thinking, and after all there is but myself in this thinking—this gives rise to the first great riddle. And to feel that one's own self is formed through destiny, yet to perceive in this process the onward flow of world-happenings—this presents the second riddle.

In the experience of this problem of Man and the World germinates the frame of mind in which man can so confront Anthroposophy that he receives from it in his inner being an impression which rouses his attention.

For Anthroposophy asserts that there is a spiritual experience which does not lose the world when thinking. One can also live in thought. Anthroposophy tells of an inward experience in which one does not lose the sense-world when thinking, but gains the Spirit-world. Instead of penetrating into the ego in which the sense-world is felt to disappear, one penetrates into the Spirit-world in which the ego feels established.

Anthroposophy shows, further, that there is an experience of destiny in which one does not lose the self. In fate, too, one can still feel oneself to be active. Anthroposophy points out, in the impartial, unegoistic observation of human destiny, an experience in which one learns to love the world and not only one's own existence. Instead of staring into the world which carries the ego on the waves of fortune and misfortune, one finds the ego which shapes its own fate voluntarily. Instead of striking against the world, on which the ego is dashed to pieces, one penetrates into the self, which feels itself united with the course of events in the world.

Man's destiny comes to him from the world that is revealed to him by his senses. If then he finds his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too.

If a person is able to feel, however faintly, how the spiritual part of the world appears in the self, and how the self proves to be working in the outer world of sense, he has already learned to understand Anthroposophy correctly. For he will then realise that in Anthroposophy it is possible to describe the Spirit-world which the self can comprehend. And this will enable him to understand that in the sense-world the self can also be found—in a different way than by diving within. Anthroposophy finds the self by showing how the sense-world reveals to man not only sense-perceptions but also the after-effects of his life before birth and his former earthly lives.

Man can now gaze on the world perceptible to his senses and say: It contains not only colour, sound, warmth; in it are active the experiences passed through by souls before their present earthly life. And he can look into himself and say: I find there not only my ego but, in addition, a spiritual world is revealed.

In an understanding of this kind, a person who really feels—who is not unmoved by—the great riddles of Man and the World, can meet on a common ground with the Initiate who in accordance with his insight is obliged to speak of the outer world of the senses as manifesting not only sensible perceptions but also the impressions of what human souls have done in their life before birth and in past earthly lives, and who has to say of the world of the inner self that it reveals spiritual events which produce impressions and are as effective as the perceptions of the sense-world.

The would-be active members should consciously make themselves mediators between what the questioning human soul feels as the problems of Man and the Universe, and what the knowledge of the Initiates has to recount, when it draws forth a past world out of the destiny of human beings, and when by strengthening the soul it opens up the perception of a spiritual world.

In this way, through the work of the would-be active members, the Anthroposophical Society may become a true preparatory school for the school of Initiates. It was the intention of the Christmas Assembly to indicate this very forcibly; and one who truly understands what that Assembly meant will continue to point this out until the sufficient understanding of it can bring the Society fresh tasks and possibilities again.

Those who want to take active part in the Movement may find in the Leading Thoughts that are issued from the Goetheanum, an impulse and stimulus that shall enable them to bring unity and wholeness into all anthroposophical activity.

They will find in them, as they receive them week by week, guidance for deepening their understanding of the material that is already at hand in the lecture-cycles and for putting it forward in the Group Meetings with a certain order and harmony.

It would without doubt be more desirable for the lectures given in Dornach to be carried at once in all directions to the individual Groups. But one has to remember what complicated technical arrangements such a course would necessitate. The Executive at the Goetheanum are making every possible effort in this direction, and still more will be done in the future. But we must reckon with the possibilities that exist. The aims that found expression at the Christmas Foundation Meeting will be realised. But we need time.

For the present those Groups that have members who visit the Goetheanum, hear the lectures there and can bring back the substance of them into the Group Meetings have an advantage. And Groups should recognise that the sending of members to the Goetheanum in this way is a good thing to do. On the other hand, however, the work that has already been achieved within the Anthroposophical Society and that is embodied in the printed lecture-cycles and single lectures should not be undervalued. If you take up these lecture-cycles and call to mind from the titles what is contained in this one and in that, and then turn to the Leading Thoughts, you will find that you meet with one thing in one lecture-cycle, another in another, that explains the Leading Thoughts more fully. By reading together passages that are found separated in different lecture-cycles, you will discover the right points of view for expounding and elaborating the Leading Thoughts.

We in the Anthroposophical Society are wasting opportunities all the time if we leave the printed lecture-cycles quite untouched and only want always to hear ‘the latest’ from the Goetheanum. And it will readily be understood that all possibility of printing the lecture-cycles would gradually cease if they were not widely made use of.

Another point of view also comes into consideration. In spreading the contents of Anthroposophy, a strong sense of responsibility is necessary in the first place. That which is said about the spiritual world must be brought into a form such that the pictures of spiritual facts and beings which are given are not exposed to misunderstanding. Anyone who hears a lecture at the Goetheanum will receive an immediate and direct impression. If he repeats the contents of what he heard, this impression can echo from him; and he is able so to formulate them that they can be rightly understood. But if they are repeated at second or third hand, the possibility of inaccuracies creeping in becomes greater and greater. All these things should be borne in mind.

The following point of view is, however, probably the most important. The point is not that Anthroposophy should be simply listened to or read, but that it should be received into the living soul. It is essential that what has been received should be worked upon in thought and carried into the feelings; and the Leading Thoughts are really intended to suggest this with regard to the lecture-cycles already printed and in circulation. If this point of view is not sufficiently considered, then the nature of Anthroposophy will be constantly hindered from manifesting itself through the Anthroposophical Society. People say, though only with apparent justice: ‘What use is it to me to hear all these things about the spiritual worlds if I cannot look into those worlds for myself?’ One who speaks thus does not realise that such vision is promoted when the working out of anthroposophical ideas is thought of in the manner indicated above. The lectures at the Goetheanum are so given that their contents can live on and work freely in the minds of the hearers. The same applies also to the contents of the lecture-cycles. These do not contain dead material to be imparted externally, but material which, when viewed from different aspects, stimulates the vision for spiritual worlds. It should not be thought that one hears the contents of the lectures and that the knowledge of the spiritual world is acquired separately by means of meditation. In that way one will never make real progress. Both must act together in the soul. And to think out anthroposophical ideas and allow them to live on in the feelings is also an exercise of the soul. A person grows into the spiritual world with open eyes if he uses Anthroposophy in the manner we have described.

Far too little attention is paid in the Anthroposophical Society to the fact that Anthroposophy should not be abstract theory but real life. Real life, that is its nature; and if it is made into abstract theory this is often not at all a better but a worse theory than others. But it only becomes theory when it is made such—i.e. when one kills it. It is still not sufficiently realised that Anthroposophy is not only a conception of the world, different from others, but that it must also be received differently. Its nature is recognised and experienced only when one receives it in this different way.

The Goetheanum should be looked upon as the necessary centre of anthroposophical work and activity, but one ought not to lose sight of the fact that the anthroposophical material which has been worked out should also be made use of in the Groups. What is worked out at the Goetheanum can be obtained gradually by the whole Anthroposophical Society in a full and living sense, when as many members as possible come from the Groups to the Goetheanum itself and participate as much as possible in its activities.

But all this must be worked out with heart and mind; the mere imparting of the contents of the lectures each week is useless. The Executive at the Goetheanum will need time and will have to meet with sympathetic understanding on the part of the members. It will then be able to work in accordance with the intention of the Christmas Foundation Meeting.

From the time of the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society (Dornach, Christmas to New Year, 1923–24) until his death shortly before Easter, 1925, Rudolf Steiner wrote a Letter week by week, addressed to the members of the Society. The Letters were printed in the members' supplement to the Goetheanum Weekly and in the English edition of it, Anthroposophical Movement. The later Letters (forming a self-contained series from autumn 1924 onward) were published in book form in 1956, entitled The Michael Mystery (Vol. II of Letters to Members).

An urgent need has been felt for the earlier Letters in which Rudolf Steiner describes the character of the Society arising out of the Foundation Meeting and gives advice as to its conduct and its relation to the world. To meet this need, the Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung has issued these Letters in a separate volume entitled Das lebendige Wesen der Anthroposophie und seine Pflege: Briefe an die Mitglieder, and has given the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain permission to publish the translation contained in the following pages (Vol. I of Letters to Members).

RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE
London, N.W.1, 1963