The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! A whole group of new members of this school have arrived here today, and so I am obliged to say at least a few words once again to convey something of the principles of this school.

The first thing to be said about this school is that it forms the esoteric aspect of the existing Anthroposophical Movement, which with the Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum has been newly reestablished. Earlier there were a few esoteric circles at the Goetheanum. All these esoteric circles must by and by come into this school, for it certainly has occurred that with the Christmas Conference a new spirit has come into the Anthroposophical Movement, insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society.

I have also just spoken the words abroad, in recapitulation, which should point out the difference between the Anthroposophical Movement before Christmas, and what we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a sort of administrative body for anthroposophical teachings, for the substance of Anthroposophy. Since Christmas it is different. Now it does more than merely foster Anthroposophy in the Anthroposophical Society. Now it is constituted so that Anthroposophy is actually done, which means that all things that flow through the Anthroposophical Society bearing on operations and ideas are constituted so as to be anthroposophical through and through.

What has happened with this renewal, my dear friends, must be taken in with sufficient depth, and fundamentally must be taken in with deepest sincerity. The renewal will then allow a differentiation between the Anthroposophical Society in general, and this esoteric school within the Anthroposophical Society. In keeping with the principle of openness that was established at the Christmas Conference, the Anthroposophical Society will of course require no more of its members than that they stand honestly by whatever Anthroposophy is, that they are, we might say, listeners to Anthroposophy, and that they make of this Anthroposophy whatever they can with their hearts and souls.

It is quite different within the school. Whoever enters this school, declares thereby that as a member he will be a true representative of the Anthroposophical Movement. And in this esoteric school, that eventually will be expanded into three classes, in this esoteric school the freedom implicit for every member of the anthroposophical community most certainly must be made to rule. Also, for the directorate, the Executive Council at the Goetheanum,¹ whose members answer for the school, full freedom must rule.

Being a true member of this school entails that in whatever matters a member is engaged with in daily life, that an anthroposophical approach is displayed to the world. And the Goetheanum Executive Council, as it appears to them, must be able to decide whether a member, not being able to be a representative of the Anthroposophical Movement, should therefore be stricken from the membership of the school. It must be a two-way relationship.

In the future, in the holding and handling of this school, a certain spirit must be engaged, a spirit that is ever more and more serious and in a certain sense stronger. Otherwise, we just cannot progress further with the Anthroposophical Movement. We ourselves must really feel it within the school, especially if we have a chance to enhance and strengthen Anthroposophy. There will be hard times ahead for Anthroposophy, and so the members of the school must know the difficulties that they have taken upon themselves. They are not simply devoted to Anthroposophy, but are members of an esoteric school.

And it must be seen as a commitment, a most inward commitment, that the operation of the Executive Council, as it is presently constituted, is seen in its esoteric substance. This must ever more and more come into the awareness of the members, which has not yet happened. It must happen. It must come to be generally known. And it says a lot, that at this time an Executive Council has come into being out of the esoteric.

What is certainly being pointed out, is that all of those who rightfully regard themselves as members of the school, should see the school as having been founded not by men and women, but rather by the will of the present-day ruling spiritual powers of the world. The school should be seen as having been put in place by the spiritual world, and should be seen as the meaningful work of the spiritual world, the spiritual world that not only feels somewhat responsible for it, but the spiritual world that feels responsible for it in the strongest sense. Therefore, whoever does not take this School seriously, and does not carry it within when involved in daily activities, without fail, for such a member, who does not take the matter seriously, his membership must be stricken.

Actually, lassitude to a very great degree has infiltrated the Anthroposophical Society in the last few years. To remove this forever is to be one of the many functions of this school. We should feel ourselves to be responsible for the words that we speak, we should before all things feel responsible for them, so that every word we speak, in the most serious sense, has been so fully verified by us, that we can represent it as truth. For untruthful statements, even when coming forth with good will, will work destructively within an occult movement. There must be no deceit about this, but rather the fullest clarity must reign. It comes down to this, the intention is not to allow it to wash lightly over a person, but the intention is to arrive at the absolute truth. And among the first responsibilities of a student of the esoteric, is that he not only feel a commitment to relate what he believes to be the truth, but that a commitment is felt to verify that the things that are said are actual objective truths. For only when (in the sense of objective truth) we have won godly spiritual might, the strength of which runs through this school, will we thereby be able to steer our way through all the difficulties that will beset Anthroposophy.

One should also not fail to attend to what is happening in the external world. Now please, my friends, whatever is spoken in the environs of the school should remain within the environs of the school. Yet I tell you that even within the environs of the school, one may not forget the sorts of things that are being discussed by authoritative personalities, such as the following: “Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will be doing their utmost in the near future to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent,” and I am merely reporting, “so that out of these independent states, with the exclusion of Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation can once more be established, which in turn, having been established out of such a prominent quarter, will of course spread its influence over neighboring regions.” These persons say that they will have to do this in order to destroy, in root and branch, those movements that are most dangerous and frightful. They add that if they fail to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, then they will find other means by which to destroy in root and branch those most contrary, those most dangerous movements. The movements they are referring to are the Anthroposophical Movement and the Movement for Religious Renewal.

I am quoting them almost word for word. And you should see, from what I say time and again, that the difficulties will not become smaller, but rather every week greater, and that what I say is built through and through on a firm foundation. I would like you to take this to heart at once, by bringing an earnest heart-felt quality to what you become acquainted with as members of this school. Only when we are members of this school openly, fully, in earnest, and actively, will we be able to reach the bedrock that is absolutely necessary, if we are to make it through the difficulties of the future.

You may conclude from this that opponents will take Anthroposophy, and its branch Religious Renewal, much more seriously than many already ensconced as members. For when one becomes aware of the intention of reconstituting the broken-up Holy Roman Empire of 1806, and the implication that it is in order to dispose of our Movement, then one must take the matter very seriously. In a movement grounded in the spirit, it really and truly does not matter, my dear friends, just how many members are in the movement. What does matter is the sort of strength living within, strength that has come out of the spiritual world. The opponents know that this sort of strong force dwells within our Movement, so don't enter into it lightly, but with sufficient strength and firmness.

It is not easy to present to someone that the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold can really happen, if the person has not had the experience of knowing what it means for their human nature to be in the "I am” and their astral body to be outside of the physical body. For if a person's essential being is closed up within the physical body, he can only take whatever is in his vicinity as the truth, when it has been verified through the apparatus of the physical body. And through the apparatus of the physical body, the sensory world can only come to be taken as a reflection of the spiritual world, which initially is not disclosed through the senses, but is merely reflected.

Now in general, it is not so difficult to leave one’s body. It is done every time one goes to sleep. A person is then outside of his body. But when outside of his body in the state of sleep, then his awareness is also quenched to the point of unconsciousness. Only illusory dreams, or perhaps also dreams that are not illusory, surge up out of this loss of consciousness. It is part of the subject matter of the attainment of higher awareness, however, to leave the physical body with fully aware-self-possession, so that external to his physical body one may perceive around about himself, just as within his physical body with the help of the physical senses he perceives the physical world. And he partakes then, outside of his physical body, of the spiritual world in truth.

Initially, however, a person just sleeps without awareness. Under ordinary conditions it is not given to us to know what could be seen when outside of one’s body. And this specifically is due to a person being protected from coming upon the spiritual world unprepared.

If and when a person is sufficiently prepared, what happens with him then? Then, when the person steps up to the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world [It was marked in red.], when the person has been found to be prepared, as has been pointed out in the last lesson, then the Guardian of the Threshold takes the true individuality of the person out and beyond, allowing over-flight of the abyss [It was marked in yellow.], under the agency of what has been delineated in the foregoing mantric verses. And for the first time, from the other side of the Threshold, a person can then observe his own sensory being, his physical being.

Such is the first grand impression of true experience, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to a person, "Look over there, there you are, so you appear to the outside while within the physical world, but with me, you appear in your innermost being."

And then resounding again and again from the Guardian of the Threshold is a significant word. For now, it resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold out over the abyss, this significant word, in calling out to the person, for him to retain his presence of mind when he looks upon himself quite differently from the other side of the abyss. And he does look upon himself quite differently. He beholds himself as threefold. [It was marked in green.]²

He beholds himself in his threefold nature, expressed in soul in thinking, in feeling, and in willing. There are actually three people, the thinking person, the feeling person, and the willing person, all of which have been stuck into each person, and for the time being are really only drawn together in the physical world through the physical body. And all this, that the person looks upon, is intoned by the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following manner.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness on the earth.

Or it could be the human stamp, for one must of course translate the words from the occult speech.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt
Feel the heart’s world-beat
Think the limb’s world-strength

They are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

[The mantra was now written on the board.]

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the human stamp
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt
Feel the heart’s world-beat
Think the limb’s world-strength

They are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

The Guardian of the Threshold points out here how the three, which separate from one another as soon as the person leaves his physical body, how the three appear in relationship to this physical body. The gaze is directed out upon the physical body, upon the head, the heart, the various members of the body, and as said by the Guardian of the Threshold, "When you in actual truth behold the human head, this human head will be an image of the heavenly universe. You must gaze out upon the far-flung depths that seem to border on and to define the world, and realize it is not so, your physical one-sided envisioning of it, you must gaze out and on, and in your gazing out and on, you must remember that your head, in its roundness, is really a truthful image of the surrounding heavenly world.” And one may connect to this here and now by bringing into awareness the mantric verse.

Experience the head’s world-gestalt

One connects outwardly through the symbol of a triangle pointing up. [It was drawn before the line.]

Through this symbol, as one pauses at this line of the mantric verse, you send your attention to the wide-open space above, and take note that everything around and about the earth is certainly part of this wide-open space above. You send your attention out and make it all an immediate presence.

Feel the heart’s world-beat

Through this cosmic-heavenly presence flows the rhythm of the world, resounding as music of the world. When we feel the human heart beating, it seems as though this human heart is merely beating out upon all that passes before the human organism. In reality, what beats in the heart is a harmonious counterpoint to what has been circling as world-rhythm for not merely a thousand years, but a million years. Hence one again pauses, as the Guardian of the Threshold speaks accordingly the words "Feel the heart’s world-beat" and one senses, finds with empathy, feels what takes effect both in the heart and all around and overhead. [Now the symbol ⧖ of a down-pointing and an up-pointing triangle connected at the tips was drawn before the second line.] The triangles in this diagram join all that is below with all that is overhead.

Think the limb’s world-strength

This world-strength is the one in which gravity and the other earthly forces are concentrated and rise from beneath. In our thinking, that is, insofar as it is earth-thinking, adapted merely to grasping the earthly, we must gaze down and under, then we grasp the things that stream out of the earth working effectively in men and women. Again, one pauses by the "Think the limb’s world-strength” in a triangle facing downward. [▽ was drawn before the third line of the stanza.]

And one will feel the character of the word of the Guardian, how it should work today on the human heart, on the human soul, if one allows this mantric verse in commensurate manner to come alive within and to work effectively.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

One says the following verse while rendering the up-pointing triangle symbol △ before the head:

△ Experience the head’s world-gestalt

⧖ Feel the heart’s world-beat

One says the last verse while rendering the down-pointed triangle symbol ▽.

▽ Think the limb’s world-strength

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

And one tries, after having allowed this mantric verse to work on his soul, to blunt the senses, to close the eyes, to hear nothing with the ears, to perceive nothing, and to remain in the dark for a while, that one might live fully and completely in the atmosphere of what sounds through the words. And in this manner, a person will place himself in the sphere in which initiation into all reality can then be experienced. In undertaking this, a person may take the first step beyond the Threshold.

But one must allow the profound word of the Guardian to work upon him fully and in earnest. This profound word of the Guardian speaks of everything, the moment we cross over the Threshold, of everything being different than it is in the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that thoughts, that ideas are predominant in people. This is the way it is in the sensory world. By itself this predominance of envisioning, of thinking, which is perceptible to customary awareness as well, is always intermixed with a bit of willing. Always in stepping from one thought to another, we must be using our will, as we do when we bring an arm into motion, or a leg into motion, or in doing just about anything we wish to do. But it is easy and refined, this willing that carries one thought on to the next. And so it is, when we are in the sensory world, the two are bound together, the predominance mostly of thinking with a little bit of willing, an easy willing. Yet as soon as a person comes across over the Threshold and comes before the Guardian, it will be quite the opposite, for there the bundled predominance is mostly of far-flung will and minimally of thinking. And in this willing that is otherwise sleeping in people, one catches in it a scent of the spirit, for the human head is constituted out of the cosmos, out of the heavenly world, a spherical copy in all particulars.

Hence the Guardian of the Threshold, when we have crossed over to the other side of the Threshold, calls out the following words. [A new part of the mantra was written on the board forthwith.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it;

And now one sees that willing is something quite different than it was previously. Previously the senses facilitated sensory perceptions, mediated sensations, and one had no awareness of will coursing through the eyes, of will coursing through the ears, of will coursing through the sense of warmth, of will coursing through every sense. Now, one sees that of all that the eyes sense as manifold colors, that the ears hear as manifold tones, that a person discerns as warmth and cold, as the difference between coarse and smooth, as odors, tastes, et cetera, that all this, all in the spiritual world is a sort of willing. [The mantra was continued on the board.]

And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;

If a person has come to know this by looking back at his head from the other side of the Threshold as willing becomes predominant, [The verb "willing" in the second line of the mantra was underlined.] how the mind sets willing in place there, [The word "willing" in the third line of the mantra was underlined.] then he would furthermore know, how the heart harbors the soul, and how he can feel the soul in his heart, just as he can will the head's spirit correspondingly in the head. And then he knows for the first time, when he regards thinking not as a capacity of the brain, but rather as an capacity of the heart, of the soul of the heart, how thinking belongs not to an individual person, but rather to the world. Then he experiences world living, circling around as world music. [The second stanza was begun on the board.]

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
Thinking’s seed-awakening world living;

You live in glory, not in soulless semblance of glory, but rather in the glory of the glow of the being of the world. [The summary lines of the first and second stanzas were now written, as the first stanza was once again spoken.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;

Summarized in the final line:

You weave in wisdom.

Summarized, bearing on the heart's soul, on feeling, in the sentence:

You live in glory.

[The words "wisdom" and "glory" were underlined.]

Just as a person gets to know the mind as a willing, so he gets to know feeling as a thinking in regard to personal presence and awareness in the world, if from the other side he observes the three, which only in the sensory world are one. [In the second stanza “feel” and "feeling" were underlined.]

And the Guardian continues in the third section. [The third stanza was begun on the board.]

The limb's strength,
You can think it;

Now we have the full reversal. On the other side a person maintains a concentration in the head of something else than thinking, for willing is here [The first stanza was indicated.], as I have just explained, concentrated in the head. Feeling remains in the heart, where it is also felt in the sensory world, for the inner force of the heart continues on in the spiritual world,

The limb's strength,
You can think it;

["Think" was underlined.]

On the other side, thinking is brought together directly with the limbs, which is quite the reverse in the sensory world. [The writing was continued.]

And thinking becomes for you
Willing’s goal-directed human striving;

And the will does this for thinking. ["Thinking" was underlined. The writing was continued and the word "virtue" was at the same time underlined.]

You strive in virtue.

And so, we have the full reversal in the spiritual world, by means of what the Guardian of the Threshold has said to us. While not being able to differentiate willing, feeling, and thinking while a person looks up from down under, it is differentiated as a trinity when the person looks on it from the other side, willing up at the head, feeling in the middle, and thinking down among the limbs.

In this way one becomes aware that what is willed, concentrated in the head, is wisdom woven into the world, in which all the beings of the spirit stream forth, and that thinking, seen in the extremities, is human striving, that can live as human virtue. And the three appear before the spiritual gaze:

The head's spirit,
The heart's soul,
The limb's strength.

[At the same time the words on the board "head's", "heart's", and limb's" were underlined in white, and the words "spirit", "soul", and "strength" were underlined in red.]

In this way the mantric verse is built. And a person must be aware of the inner congruence, more than aware, for as it floods into him, he must allow the mantric verse to work on him:

heavenly weaving
world living
human striving

[Forthwith were these three word-groups underlined on the board in yellow.]

These are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, in which the three, emerging from the one as we cross over into the world on the other side of the Threshold, the three are guided into our mind's eye.

The head's spirit,
You can will it;
And willing becomes for you
Sensing’s many-formed heavenly weaving;
You weave in wisdom.

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling becomes for you
Thinking’s seed-awakening world living;
You live in glory.

The limb's strength,
You can think it;
And thinking becomes for you
Willing’s goal-directed human striving;
You strive in virtue.

These are the impressions through which the soul must sift, if real insight, real inward knowing is to be attained, resounding in the admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold, as he also says to us:

Enter
The door is opened³
You will⁴ become
A true human being.

[It was written on the board.]

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being.

And these are the words, that for countless thousands of years, that yawn at all portals to the spiritual world, and at the same time, that resound spiritedly:

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being.

Imagine, my brothers and sisters,⁵ saying to yourselves at once, "I will take these words of the Guardian of the Threshold seriously; I will know that I was not yet human; I will know that I become so through insight into the spiritual world." Imagine, my brothers and sisters, saying to yourselves a second time, "Why, the first time I did not take these words seriously enough; I will tell myself that I need twice as many steps, from my present state of being, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being." Imagine declaring to yourselves a third time, "I will know that I need three steps, from the spot on which I stand, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being."

Serious is the first admonition that you give to yourselves. More serious is the second admonition. But the stamp of highest seriousness must be borne by the third admonition. And when you know how to bring this trinity in three-fold seriousness into the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means for a person, through insight, through actual inwardly knowing, to become a person. And then you will have come full circle, as we have in this class today, coming full circle to the first admonition, all of which should live in our souls as one self-transmuting verse.

O show the three
They are the one,
When you bear the stamp of man
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

△ Experience the head’s world-gestalt
⧖ Feel the heart’s world-beat
▽ Think the limb’s world-strength

These are the three,
The three, that live as one
In existence-awareness upon the earth.

Just so, my brothers and sisters, it has sounded just so in the heart, since there has been human existence on the earth, struggling for awareness. There has been a pause in this struggle since the emergence of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This pause is at an end, by will of the heavenly, spiritual entities leading mankind. May it once again commence in a worthy manner. In your human hearts may it sound again. So the wise leaders of mankind, ever since there has been human existence upon the earth, have guided human hearts into glimpsing what works as spirit in the world, what works as spirit through the world in human beings, as the crown of the world.

• 1. Der Vorstand
• 2. Sinn is “mind-awareness,” whereas Geist is “body-free spirit-awareness.” Body-free thinking becomes many-formed sensing. Body-free feeling becomes seed-awakening heart-thinking. Body-free willing becomes goal-directed willing.
• 3. Das Tor ist geöffnet is neither present-perfect in German nor in English, so should not be “The door has opened,” which would imply that someone has opened it. Instead, it is phrasal-reflexive auto-causative intransitive, so must be “The door is opened.” This leaves one with the proper sense of wonder at how one’s meditative activity in conjunction with the spirit has caused the door to be opened.
• 4. Regarding the translation of wirst in the next to last line, according to the Oxford Dictionary, normally “shall” is used only with first person pronouns, and “will” is used with second and third person pronouns, but if strong determination is expressed, the order is reversed. The word “shall” is now seldom used in any normal context in American English. The question is does the Guardian say to put our will into entering and “You will become,” or does he admonish us with determination to enter and says, “You shall become.” Both are correct translations.
• 5. In this lesson for the first of many times Steiner says the phrase Schwestern und Brüder. This sounds just fine in German, but in English, one always says it the other way around, for otherwise it just does not sound right, so it should be translated always as “brothers and sisters.”

Die Raetsel des geschichtlichen Lebens der Menschheit nach Ergebnissen der Geisteswissenschaft. (The Historical Evolution of Humanity and the Science of Spirit. Lecture given at Stuttgart, Germany, April 25, 1918)

No person with real inner sensitivity would find it any longer necessary to have to speak about a mystery when dealing with human soul life, than he would have to speak about the presence of hunger when dealing with the life of the body.

In the way it functions the life process must be so regulated that it induces hunger. It is possible to disregard hunger by the use of certain drugs and to believe that we can get away from it for a time, but in the long run this cannot be done without injury to the body. Similarly, any attempt to conceal the fact that there is a mystery in human life is bound to lead to injury in the soul. Those who disregard the mystery of the human being, either because of their condition in life or a lack of interest, very easily fall prey to a kind of soul hunger and to what happens as a result of this—a sort of atrophy in the life of the soul, an uncertainty and powerlessness, an inability to find one's way in the world.

Although no really sensitive person would find it necessary to have to speak about a human mystery in general, he would probably find more reason to consider that the great questions of life take on a new character in each succeeding period of time. As our time is so short, it is not possible to do more than indicate this fact. We can see how the outer conditions of life change from epoch to epoch, how new needs, new questions arise about the way we live. This also happens within the soul, which in its search for a solution to the mystery of man, changes its own finer qualities from epoch to epoch in order to make it possible for man to find such a solution. In this age that has been with us for three or four centuries, and particularly in the 19th century and our own day, which has culminated in the controlling of the world by means of steam, electricity, modern economic and social conditions, in this age there are also questions about the world in which the human being is placed that are of a different kind from those of earlier times. The science of spirit or anthroposophy seeks to approach the solution of the mystery of man out of the needs of modern times.

It is a mistake to regard the science of spirit, or anthroposophy, as a renewal of the views of the old mystics. Those who level this sort of criticism, from whatever viewpoint it happens to come, usually construct their own picture of the science of spirit and then criticize this picture, which actually has very little to do with what the science of spirit really is. It is only a caricature of the science of spirit that is criticized.

It is of course not possible within the framework of an evening's lecture to mention everything that would be necessary even to provide an outline of the science of spirit. Only a few further points can be added to what I have been saying about this for many years now, even in this city. It is particularly important to remember that the science of spirit does not take its origin from religion or mystical movements—although we should not conclude that it is necessarily opposed to these, as we shall see later—but it arises out of the life of the modern scientific outlook, out of a scientific approach to the world, connected with what is happening in the evolution of present-day natural science.

I do not think that anyone who despises the modern scientific outlook can penetrate the mysteries of the world as is done in the science of spirit, even if it is not the results of science that matter so much as the method of approach in conscientiously applying one's thinking to the phenomena of the world. The science of spirit must be well versed in the ways natural science investigates and thinks, and in the way in which it disciplines the inner life of the soul in the art of acquiring knowledge. The science of spirit must absorb this and reckon with it, if it is to keep abreast of the times.

It is just in connection with such an approach that the question arises: How is it at all possible for modern science and the outlook which results from it, to arrive at a view of the mysteries of the human being that really satisfies us deep down? If we are really positive thinkers we cannot permit ourselves an answer derived from preconceived opinions, or from one form of belief or another, but only from the facts of present-day scientific development and its method of thought. And so you will allow me to start with the course of scientific thought and research in more recent times. This will be regarded very much from the viewpoint of an admirer of the enormous progress made by the scientific approach in the 19th century, a viewpoint which enables one to realize that the hopes placed in natural science, particularly in the 19th century, for a solution to the great mysteries of man were absolutely honest and genuine.

To take one aspect of this, let us look at the rise of the physical and chemical sciences, along with the hopes and aspirations which came with it. We see how people steeped in the scientific outlook began to believe (around the middle of the 19th century) that the inmost being of man can be explained in terms of the physical body just as the working of the forces and forms of nature can be explained in terms of the wonderfully advanced laws of physics and chemistry. The great progress made by physics and chemistry no doubt justified such hopes for a while, and this progress led to the formulation of particular ideas about the world of the smallest particles: atoms and molecules. Even if people think differently about such matters today, nevertheless what I have to say about the atom and the molecule holds good for the whole of the scientific development. The idea was to investigate them and to explain how the substances and physical forces worked in terms of the constitution of the material molecules and atoms, and of the forces and mutual relationships brought about by this constitution. It was thought that if it was possible to explain a process in terms of the smallest particles, it would not be long before the way would be found to understand even the most complicated process, which was seen as a natural process: the process of human thinking and feeling.

Now let us examine where this approach with its great hopes has led. Anyone having studied the achievements of physics and chemistry during the past decades can only be filled with admiration for what has been achieved. I cannot go into details, but I will mention the views of a representative scientist, who sought his views in physics and chemistry in investigating the nature of the smallest physical particle, the atom,—Adolf Roland, who specialized in spectral analysis. He formulated his views on the basis of everything that is possible to know about the smallest particles that can be imagined as effective in the material world.—And how remarkable his views are! And how justified they are must be recognized by anyone who has some understanding of the subject. Adolf Roland says: According to everything that can be known today, an atom of iron must be imagined as being more complicated than a Steinway piano.

Now this is a significant statement, coming from one so familiar with the methods of modern science. Years ago it was believed that one could investigate the tiniest lifeless beings, or at least produce provisional hypotheses about them, in order to find out something about the world that constitutes the immediate surroundings of our ordinary consciousness. And what, in fact, does one find out? The scientist has to admit that having penetrated this smallest of worlds, he finds nothing that is any more explicable than a Steinway piano. So it becomes quite clear that however far we are able to go by this process of division into the very smallest particles, the world becomes no more explicable than it already is to our ordinary, everyday consciousness.—This is one of the ways of approach, with its great hopes. We see as it were, these great hopes disappearing into the world of the smallest particles. And honest scientific progress will show more and more by penetrating into the smallest particles of space that we can add nothing toward answering the great human mystery to what can be known to our ordinary consciousness.

In another sphere there have been just as great hopes, and understandably so, in view of the condition of the times. Just think of the great hopes people had with the advent of the Darwinian theory, with its materialistic bias! People thought they could survey the whole range of living beings, of plants and animals, right up to man. It was thought possible to understand man through having seen how he arose out of the species below him. And in following the transformation of the different species, from the simplest living being right up to man, it was thought possible to find material which would help solve the mystery of man.

Once again, anyone initiated into the ways of modern research can only be filled with admiration for the wonderful work that has been done on this subject even to this day. It was thought that we would find the single egg cell, out of which man had evolved, in the appropriate simplest living being, and would then be able to explain the origin of man out of this egg cell, which would be similar to what would be discovered as the simplest animal form in the world. Once again the path was taken to the smallest, this time the smallest living beings. And what has been found there? It is interesting to hear what a conscientious and important scientist of the 80's, Naegeli, had to say. He expressed his view, which has become famous, in the following way: Exact research on the individual species of plants and animals shows that even the tiniest cells of each single species have the most varied differentiation. The egg cell of a hen is just as fully differentiated from that of a frog as a hen itself is different from a frog.—In descending to the simplest living cells, by means of which it was hoped to explain the complications facing our normal consciousness, we do not arrive at anything simpler—as for instance when we study the iron atom—and in the end have to admit that it is just as complicated as a Steinway piano. Thus we have to imagine that the difference between the individual egg cells is as great as is the difference between the various species we see in nature with our ordinary consciousness.

Naegeli therefore proves by means of his own scientific conscientiousness that the approach of Darwinism with its materialistic bias is of no value.

But now there is another interesting fact. We could, of course, think that Naegeli, the great botanist, was really a one-sided personality, and in any case what he said was spoken in the 80's and that science has progressed and that his views are out of date. But we can also study the very latest developments on this subject, which have been well summed up by a most significant person, one of the most eminent pupils of Ernst Haeckel:—Oskar Hertwig. In the last week or two there has been published his summing up of what he has to offer as a result of his research on—as he calls his book,—Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufalls theorie.

Just imagine, we are confronted by the fact that one of the great pupils of Haeckel, the most radical exponent of materialistic Darwinism, has in the course of his life come to refute this materialistic Darwinism in the most thorough and complete way. I myself often heard from Haeckel's own lips that Oskar Hertwig was the one from whom he expected the most, and whom he expected to be his successor. And now we find today that it is Oskar Hertwig who refutes what he had absorbed as scientific Darwinism from his teacher, Haeckel! And he does it thoroughly, for his work—if I may use the expression—has a certain completeness.

This is what I wanted to say, to start with. I shall come back to the question later. I would only like to add that Oskar Hertwig makes use of everything that even the most recent research has brought to light in order to prove that what Naegeli said was absolutely true, so that one can say that the present-day position of biological research shows that a study of the smallest living entities does not tell us any more than does a study of the various species that we can perceive quite normally. For these smallest living entities, the cells, are, according to Naegeli and Hertwig, just as different as are the species themselves. A study of them only teaches us that nothing can be discovered in this way that cannot also be discovered by our normal perception in looking at the ordinary world.

Nor is it much different when—I can only mention this briefly—instead of looking at the very small, we look at the very large, the world of astronomy. For here too there has been the most wonderful progress in more recent times, for instance, in the study of the way the heavenly bodies move, which surprised everyone so much in 1859, and which has had such tremendous consequences in astronomy and especially in astrophysics.—And what has been the result? A thing one hears frequently from those who are at home in this subject is: Wherever we look in the world, whether we discover one or the other substance, this is not the main thing, for we find exactly the same substances with exactly the same forces in the universe, in the relatively large, as we find working here on the earth, so that when instead of looking into the very small, we examine the very large we only find what we know from our ordinary experience of space and time in everyday life. It is just in deepening what can be achieved by natural science and in particular in feeling deep admiration for what natural science has achieved that the way for a modern science of spirit or anthroposophy is prepared. But the latter is also well aware that however admirable these achievements of natural science are, however significant they may be for particular purposes, however necessary they may be for sound human progress, they can never penetrate the real mystery of man. This they themselves have proved until now.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy therefore takes its cue from natural science and tries to go quite a different way, and this way is not connected with trying to explain what we experience with our normal consciousness by means of a study of the very small or the very large, nor with methods using microscopes, telescopes or anything that can be attained by our senses or instruments which help them, nor by any scientific methods used in the sense world, nor by studying anything other than what we experience in our normal consciousness, but the science of spirit seeks to approach a solution to the mystery of man by a quite different kind of perception, as far as it is possible for human beings to do this.

In giving an outline of how one can imagine this other way of looking at the things that surround us, and at the events that happen around us in the world, I will make use of a comparison which will help to make the matter clearer.

In ordinary life we are familiar with two states of consciousness, the state of our normal consciousness which we have from the time we awaken in the morning to the time we go to sleep in the evening—this is our normal day consciousness. We are also familiar with the state of our so-called dream consciousness, in which pictures rise chaotically out of depths of the organism that are not accessible to human consciousness, and these pictures appear to be completely without any form of order. It is our experience that makes us aware of the difference between this chaotic dream consciousness and our orderly day consciousness which is encompassed by the real world.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy shows us that just as we awaken out of the chaotic dream consciousness into our ordinary day consciousness there is also a further awakening out of our day consciousness to—as I have called it in my book, Riddles of Man—a perceptive consciousness. The science of spirit does not deal with a reversion into a world of dreams, visions or hallucinations, but with something that can enter into human consciousness, into ordinary day consciousness in the same way that this day consciousness replaces our dream consciousness when we awaken. The science of spirit or anthroposophy is therefore concerned with a perceptive consciousness, with a real awakening out of our ordinary day consciousness, with a higher consciousness, if I may use such an expression. And its content is derived from the results of this perceptive, higher consciousness.—Just as the human being awakens from his dream world, where pictures move chaotically to and fro, into the world of the senses, so now as a scientist of spirit he awakens from the normal day consciousness into a perceptive consciousness, where he becomes a part of a real, spiritual world.

Now, first of all, I must give an idea of what this perceptive consciousness is. It is not acquired by means of any particular fantastic, arbitrary act or fantastic arbitrary decision, but it is acquired by a person working as a scientist of spirit, work which takes a long time, that is no less toilsome than work in the laboratory or observatory, which is pieced together out of the smallest fragments, perhaps even with only small results, but which are necessary for the progress of science as a whole. But everything that the scientist of spirit has to do is not done as in the laboratory or observatory with ordinary methods and appliances, but is done with the only apparatus that is of any use to the science of spirit, the human soul. It consists of inner processes of the human soul, which, as we shall now see, have nothing to do with vague or chaotic mysticism, but which demand systematic and methodical work on the human soul.

How does one acquire the wish to pursue such spiritual work, such an inner development, such a higher self training? It is possible to do it by taking our ordinary conscious life as a starting point, and gradually coming to a particular kind of conviction that becomes more compelling as one immerses one's mind in the modern scientific outlook. For several hundred years already there have been some personalities with this attitude of mind, and today this is increasingly the case. I cannot mention individual names now, but this inner experience, which gradually emerges under the influence of the scientific way of thinking as a distinct and necessary inner outlook and attitude, will affect increasingly wider circles of people and will become a common conviction with all the consequences that such a conviction is bound to entail.

There are two things that we are concerned with here. The first is that we have to acquire a certain view of the human ego, or what we call our self, by means of true and intimate observation, carried out willingly and with discipline. We address this self, we express it in one word, when after a certain point in our childhood development, we begin to use the word “I.” In our honest self-observation based on self-training we ask: What is this ego really like? Where is it to be found in us? Is it possible to find it or, if we are honest and conscientious, do we not have to admit as the great thinker Hume did, who did not arrive at his convictions arbitrarily, but by honest, self-observation, that however much I look into myself, I find feelings, ideas, joy and sorrow, I find what I have experienced in the world, but I do not find an ego anywhere? And how can I in any case—as he quite rightly says—find this ego? If it could be found so easily it would also have to be present when I sleep. But when I sleep, I know nothing about this ego. Can I assume that it is extinguished in the evening and revives again in the morning? Without actually being grasped by the mind, it must be present even when the mind is not working in sleep.

This is absolutely clear. And all those who are familiar with present-day literature on this subject will increasingly find this clear and obvious, that this will become more and more the case.

How are we to understand this? I would have to speak for hours if I were to go into details to prove what I am now saying.—I can only just mention the one fact that the ego of which we are speaking is present in the same way in our day consciousness as it is in the deepest, dreamless sleep. The ego always sleeps. It sleeps when we are asleep, and it sleeps when we are awake, and we know only about a sleeping ego when we are awake, about what lives, even as far as our waking consciousness is concerned, in a hardly conscious sphere of our soul life. Even when we are wide awake in our ordinary consciousness the ego is still only present as it is when we sleep. The reason we cannot imagine anything like an ego in us is because the rest of our soul life is present and, like the black spot in our eyes, cannot see.—The ego is made dark in our souls in a way, and can only be perceived as something we cannot imagine. The ego is always asleep and there is no difference between the way the ego should be imagined in sleep and when we are awake.

It is the same when we consider our minds; for if we train our self-observation properly we realize that our mental images have exactly the same existence in our waking day life as they do in the night in the chaotic mental images of our dreams. In our minds we dream, even when we are awake.

These truths that our ego sleeps and that we dream in our minds and imagination, even when we are awake—these truths, it is true, are washed away by our active life in the day. But for anyone able to observe the human soul they prove to be great and shattering truths which stand at the start of every spiritually scientific investigation.

And if we were then to ask, to ask one's self-observation: This is all very well, but how do we actually distinguish our ordinary waking life of the day from our dream life and our sleeping life? What happens at the moment when we wake up?—As I have said, I cannot go into details—you can find all the details necessary to understand more completely what I am now saying in outline in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.—The question arises: What actually happens when we wake up, if our ego really remains asleep and our ideas and images, even in waking life, are like dream pictures? What is the difference between the waking and the sleeping human being?

Trained self-observation provides the answer: It is solely the penetration of the will into the soul life which differentiates waking life from sleeping and dreaming. The fact that we are awake and do not dream is due solely to the will pouring into us. It is because of this that we do not have dream pictures rising up without any direction of will, that we unite ourselves to the outer world with our will and with our will become a part of the outer world. It is what awakens the dream pictures to the substance of real-ness that they are images of an outer world, that brings it about that after waking up we are able to incorporate ourselves into the world through our will.

However paradoxical this may sound to many people today, it will have to become a basic conviction of a future outlook and will indeed become so, because it is bound to follow from a science based on true self-observation.

It is the flashing of the will into our minds that gives us our real connection with the outer world, which we experience with our ordinary consciousness. It is this that provides us with real self-observation in our ordinary consciousness. But we cannot remain in this consciousness if we really wish to fathom the actual nature of the things that surround us and the connection of human beings with the world. There has to be a similar transformation in our soul life, in the ordinary soul life we have in the day, in relation to the transformation that happens in our sleeping and dreaming life when we wake up. And a transformation can come about by working arduously towards a change, firstly in the life of our minds, and secondly, in the life of our will.

And I would like to point out at the start that what we call the science of spirit or anthroposophy is not based on anything metaphysical, spiritualistic or anything vaguely mystical, but that it is a true continuation of the well-founded and human scientific way of thinking. And so we can, for instance, link on to the sound beginnings that are to be found in the Goethean outlook upon nature and the world.

Allow me this personal remark, because it has something to do with what I have to say. That I am linking on to this Goethean outlook upon nature and the world is due to the fact that my destiny led me to immerse myself in it and to take from it what leads, as we shall see, to real perception into the spiritual world that surrounds us, surrounds us in the same way that the sense world does. What is so noteworthy with Goethe—and which is still not appreciated today—is that for instance he is able to bring physical phenomena that normally are only considered quite apart from the soul being, right into the life of the human soul. It is really quite wonderful to see how Goethe treats the physical aspects in his Theory of Color, which is still looked down upon by most people today, how he starts with the physical and physiological aspects and leads from them to what he expresses so beautifully in the section, “The Physical and Moral Effect of Color.” Naturally, one compromises oneself in many respects if one speaks about Goethe's Theory of Color. It cannot be spoken about as a matter of course because in its present form physics does not allow for any possibilities of discussing a justification of Goethe's theory. But the time will come when Goethe's Theory of Color will be vindicated by a more advanced kind of physics.

I can refer to what I have said about the artistic side of this in my book Goethe's Conception of the World, and in my introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. (Published in English as Goethe the Scientist—Ed.) Today, however, I am not concerned with vindicating Goethe's Theory of Color, but only wish to deal with method, with how Goethe manages to evolve beyond purely physical considerations in the chapter “The Physical and Moral Effect of Colors.” Here he describes so beautifully what the human soul experiences when it perceives the color blue. Blue, says Goethe, pours into the soul the experience of coldness because it reminds us of shadow. Blue rooms bestow a feeling of sadness on all the objects in the rooms.—Or let us take what Goethe says about the experience of the color red. Red, says Goethe, produces an experience purely according to its own nature. It can produce the experience of seriousness and worthiness, or of devotion and grace—of seriousness and worthiness in its darker and thicker shades, of devotion and grace in its lighter and thinner shades.—So we see that Goethe does not only deal with the immediate physical nature of color, but he brings the soul into it, the experiences of sympathy and antipathy, as immediate experiences of the soul, as we have in life when we feel joy and sorrow. It may be that the intensity with which Goethe studied the colors is hardly noticeable, but nevertheless he goes through all the colors in a way that one can do if one allows one's soul life to pervade them,—that is, Goethe does not separate the physical from the soul experience. In doing this he laid the foundation for a kind of observation which even today is naturally only in its beginnings, but which will find a serious and worthy further development in the science of spirit. For the human being's relationship to color is exactly the same as exists with the rest of his senses. He is so fully taken up with the perception of something physical, with what works through his eyes and ears, that he does not perceive what radiates through and permeates the physical percept as an element of soul; he does not experience its full power and significance in his inner life. It is like not being able to see a weak light against a strong one. For it is above all the physical object that our eye normally perceives so strongly.

Now it is possible to take what is to be found in Goethe in its first beginnings—albeit instinctively with him because of his naturally sound outlook—a stage further. And it can also be looked at from another viewpoint. Goethe never deals with colors only as they exist in the world, but he also deals with the reaction they stimulate, their effect on the organism. How wonderful, even compared with the latest experiments in physics done by Hertwig, Hume and others, are the things that Goethe brought to light about the reaction of the eye, how the colors are not only perceived as long as one looks at them, but then they only gradually fade away. In all this there are in our ordinary perceptions weak beginnings which can be applied much more to the inner life of our mental images and can undergo further development. For in the conscientious and careful development of particular aspects of our cognitive and imaginative life there is to be found an aspect of science that belongs to the science of spirit or anthroposophy. Goethe's attitude to color has to be applied by those who wish to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of the science of spirit to the content of our minds, which for our normal consciousness is really only a world of dream pictures permeated by the will. The scientist of spirit also approaches the outer world in exactly the same way as our ordinary consciousness approaches the pictures in our minds, concepts and ideas. A sound thinking person does not become any different from anyone else. But if he is to receive a revelation of the spiritual world he has to effect a particular kind of perceptive consciousness. And he does this by inducing a certain metamorphosis in the life of his mind.

The details of what has to be done you can find in the book already mentioned. I only want to put before you now the main principles.

The scientist of spirit gradually manages to free his mental images from their normal task by a particular kind of methodical approach to the content of his mind. The normal function of our mental images is that they enable us to have pictures of the outer world. These pictures are the end result. But for the scientist of spirit they are a beginning, for whatever their significance, whatever kind of picture of the world they give, he immerses himself in its inner life, the inner effects of the picture, the image. And he does this in such a way that he does not look to its content, but to the forces that develop in it, and he does this when his consciousness has been completely brought to rest and becomes alive in the activity of his imagination and thinking.

Normally, a scientist starts with nature as it is in the world and ends up with his ideas. The scientist of spirit has to start with the inner activity of his ideas, with a kind of meditative activity, but which is not at all the same as the kind of meditation normally described and which is nothing more than brooding on something that is on one's mind—no, what we are concerned with here is that the soul is brought to rest, its activity is stilled, so that the life of the soul approaches certain ideas that can be grasped and surveyed like a calm sea. They should then become active in the life of the soul, active solely in the life of the mind. After a great amount of meditative work which is certainly not less than work done in the laboratory or observatory, we arrive at a stage where we perceive remarkable things happening, affecting the life of the soul in this inner life of the mind. One of the most important and significant faculties of the soul that we develop in our normal consciousness is our memory, our ability to remember. What is it that our memory, our ability to remember brings about? It enables us to call up at a later time mental images that we have formed at an earlier time. First of all, we have an experience and this is taken into the mind. The resulting image is like a shadow of the original experience. The experience disappears, but the fact of its existence continues.—We carry the image of the experience in us. Years later, or whenever it might be, we can recall it. What we recall out of the total organism of our spirit, soul and body as a memory image is a shadow-like copy of what was imprinted on the memory in the first place.

If we pursue the methods actively and energetically that are given and described in my books for the cultivation of the mind, we acquire a much stronger kind of activity in the soul working in the memory. However paradoxical it may appear, I have to describe it, because I do not want to speak about the generalities of the science of spirit, but to deal with the positive and concrete aspect of it, upon which it is based. The scientist of spirit experiences that a mental image is brought alive, and by bringing the peace of his consciousness constantly to bear upon this image he gets to the point where he knows: Now you have exercised the powers of your thinking to such an extent that you can continue no further.—Then something shattering happens. The moment arrives when we know that we cannot continue to use our thinking in the same controlled way, but have to let it go, just as we let an idea or image go that then sinks into forgetfulness and that later can be recalled out of this by our memory. But when an image that we have as a result of an energetic meditative life is let go, it enters into much greater depths of our life than an image that is taken into our memory. The scientist of spirit then experiences—this is only one example, other experiences have to be linked to this, but now I only wish to give a few examples—that he has strengthened an image by the powers of his thinking to such an extent that he can allow it to sink into his being so that it is no longer present. But then it appears later, according to the images we have—this has all to be regulated—these images remain present. We acquire views in the course of time in which these images have to remain present, deep down in the unconscious. Some images remain for a longer period in the subconscious, others a shorter period and we acquire the power to recall them again and again. We do not do this by exerting ourselves in trying to remember an image. Images are recalled by peaceful immersion in ourselves; It is not like the way our ordinary memory works, for here we are dependent upon a mood of expectancy that we bring about at the right moment. We become aware of this mood of expectancy by other things which cannot be described here. We have a mood or feeling of expectancy; we do not do anything to bring about an image or an experience. We simply have this peaceful expectancy, this purely selfless immersion in ourselves and only after hours, weeks or even only after years does there come back what we have perceived in the very depths of our being, as if in a kind of abyss. And then the opposite happens from what takes place in our normal consciousness.

With our normal consciousness the experience comes first in all its vividness and then the shadowlike image is produced. Here something quite different happens. We start with something which leads at the same time to self-discipline and self-education, and this is an image which we put before our souls and let it be present in the soul for weeks or months until the moment comes when it can be completely immersed. Then it emerges again—but how it emerges is the surprising thing, for it is not anything as shadowlike as the normal image.

This experience is brought about by working on the image in a certain way and we know full well, if we are familiar with things that lead to such results as these, that we are dealing here with something sound and not morbidly introspective. These are not the same forces that lead to hallucinations or visions, or that produce morbid or unsound states of any kind, but they are the forces that produce precisely the opposite and, in fact, have the effect of banishing everything in the nature of hallucinations and visions.—It is the opposite process. The soul, in undergoing this, is not as it is in everyday life with its normal, healthy understanding, but it has to be much healthier and sounder if the exercises which belong to this whole development and which have to be done regularly are to overcome everything that would lead one astray. What this leads up to is something we have not known before—something spiritual, something super-sensible, that we now perceive in ourselves. What is it that perceives? It is what Goethe called the eye or the ear of the spirit, of which he had an instinctive presentiment.

From the moment onward when we have had an experience such as I have just described, we know that we do not have only a physical body, but that we have a finer, more inward body that is in no way made up of physical substance. However paradoxical it may appear to many people today when in the science of spirit or anthroposophy we speak of a fine etheric body, a soul body, it is nevertheless a truth—but a truth that can really be investigated only in this way I have described. We now know that we have something in ourselves in which spiritual perception can arise, just as perception can arise in the physical organism in the physical eye. We know that the eye or the ear of the spirit, as Goethe called it, becomes something from which there springs something out of the etheric world, out of the super-sensible body. We cannot use this super-sensible body like a physical body, but we know that it exists and we know that there has to be a science of spirit for us to find it. It does not come into being by means of any arbitrary act of the will, but it comes into being with the help of the most recent philosophical thought.

Let me cite a few facts that are especially important in this connection for the formation of a judgment about anthroposophy. The philosophers of more recent times who inherited the work of their predecessors done around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and in the first half of the 19th century, pointed out, albeit instinctively and not as a result of method, that man does not have only a physical body, which provides the basis for his being, but he also has what one can call an etheric, a soul body. Only the terminology for this fine body was different, a body which exists as a fact for the science of spirit.

This kind of assumption led Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797-1879) to his conception of the process of death, which he expressed in the following way: “For we hardly have to ask how the human being acts in regard to himself” when “going through death ... With this concept of the continuing existence of the soul we are not therefore bypassing our experience and laying hold of an unknown sphere of merely illusory existence, but we find ourselves in the midst of a comprehensible reality accessible to our thinking.” And now Fichte says—and this is what is important—this consciousness points to something beyond itself. “... Anthroposophy produces results founded on the most varied evidence that according to the nature of his being as also in the real source of his consciousness man belongs to a super-sensible world. Our ordinary consciousness, however, which is based on our senses and on the picture of the world that arises through the use of sight, and which includes the whole life of the sense world, including the human sense world, all this is really only a place where the super-sensible life of the spirit is carried out in bringing the otherworldly spiritual content of ideas into the sense world by a conscious free act ... This fundamental conception of man's being raises `Anthropology' in its final result into `Anthroposophy'.”

Into an “anthroposophy!” He uses the expression, anthroposophy. We can see from this the longing for the science that today has to become a reality.

To cite another example—owing to lack of time I can only quote a few examples—I would like to bring in the important German thinker, Vital Troxler (1780-1866), who also did some important teaching in Switzerland. He speaks out of the same approach, but still instinctively, because the science of spirit or anthroposophy did not exist at that time: “Even in earlier times philosophers distinguished a fine, noble, soul body from the coarse body ... a soul, which contained within it a picture of the body which they called a model and which for them was the inner higher man ... More recently even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer dreams seriously as a joke about a wholly inward soul man, that bears within its spirit-body all the limbs normally to be found outside ...”

And now Troxler says: “It is most gratifying that the most recent philosophy, which ... must be manifest ... in anthroposophy, climbs to greater heights, and it must be remembered that this idea cannot be the fruit of mere speculation ...”

I do not need to quote the rest. He means that there must be a science which leads to the super-sensible, to the qualities of this super-sensible body, just as anthropology leads to the physical qualities and forces of the physical human body.

I have dealt with characteristic thinkers on this subject in my book, The Riddles of Man. They did not work out these things as the present-day science of spirit can do, but they spoke out of instinctive longing for a future science of spirit that has now to become a reality through this present science of spirit. Thus also the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the important philosopher, Immanuel Herman Fichte.

In his Anthropology, the second edition of which appeared in 1860, Fichte says that there can be nothing that persists in matter: “In the elements of matter it is not possible to find the unifying form principle of the body that is active during our whole life. We are therefore directed to a second, essentially different cause in the body. Insofar as this contains what persists in the digestion it is the true, inner, invisible body that is present in all visible matter. The outer manifestation of this, formed out of the never-ceasing digestion may henceforth be called `body' which neither persists nor is a unity and which is the mere effect or image of the inner bodily nature, which casts it into the changing world of substance in the same way that an apparent solid body is made out of the particles of iron filings by a magnetic force, but which is again reduced to dust as soon as the binding force is taken away.”

Thus we see that Immanuel Hermann Fichte instinctively finds himself in the position of having to accept a force-body which holds the material components together in a material body in a certain formal structure like a magnetic force.

You notice, too, that Fichte also longs for an anthroposophy when he deals with the super-sensible in man and draws our attention to it.

Anthroposophy does not appear at a particular time without reason, but it is something that has long been anticipated by the really deep core of our soul life. This can be seen quite clearly in the examples I have given.

Now I must turn to the other aspect of the development of our soul life, the development of the will. What I have said so far was concerned with the development of the mind. The will, too, can be led beyond the condition it has in our normal consciousness. If you imagine that someone—I only want to mention the most important things, the rest can be read in my books—that someone were to look at his inner life in the same way that we look at our ordinary life between human beings under normal conditions, the life of the human community, we can notice our reaction when a desire or impulse awakens when we say: Conditions allow this impulse, this desire to take its course; another time the conditions do not allow us, or we do not allow it. We see that we evolve a certain responsibility toward outer life that is rooted in our conscience. We develop quite definite feelings, a particular configuration of our soul life in our conscience, concerning what we do or do not do. Our normal consciousness is subject to our soul life in developing such inner demands or standards—we obey logic, but when it comes to thinking or not thinking, to whether thinking is clear or restricted, how cool and logical our relationship is to this as compared to our relationship to outer life! We accept the one because we can, as it were, grasp it in spirit, as a mental image; we reject the other. But one cannot experience the intensive life that we feel in our human responsibility when it comes to our purely logical and scientific thinking.

The second kind of exercise consists in pouring out a certain kind of inner responsibility over our thinking, over our mind, so that we reach the point of not only saying: This opinion is valid, this opinion is properly conceived, I can give it my assent and so on, but also that we manage to preserve a mental image in the same duty-bound consciousness as we have when we do not go through with the one or the other action. Morality—though quite a different kind of morality from the one we have in normal life—is poured out over our mind, over our mental images. Inner responsibility poured out over the life of our mental images results in attitudes where in dealing in certain experiences we allow ourselves some mental images and reject others, in the one case accepting them, in the other rejecting them by a justified but temperate antipathy. From this new aspect, sympathy and antipathy activate our inner life. This again has to be practiced for a long time. I will give an example of how this can be supported by accustoming ourselves to allowing a mental image to be present in our souls in as manifold a way as possible.

In ordinary life one person may be a monist, another a dualist, the third a materialist, the fourth a spiritualist and so on. If we learn to immerse ourselves in the life of our mental images our concepts take on a different aspect in the living inner experience of the world of our mental images so that we come to recognize: Of course, there are concepts of materialism, they can be used for a particular province, for a particular sphere of the world. In fact, they must be available, for one can only get something out of immersing oneself in a particular sphere of the world if one has grasped materialism in all its many aspects. For another sphere of the world spiritualistic concepts are needed, for a third, monistic, for a fourth, the concept of idealism and so on. Monistic, dualistic concepts—they enrich the life of our minds and we know that such concepts mean no more than do different photographs of a tree taken from different points. We learn now to immerse ourselves in an inner element, an inner tolerance, that once again is an outpouring of moral substances over our inner life. It is just like someone receiving a picture of a tree that he has actually seen, who would never say, if he received a picture of the tree taken from a different angle, that it was not the same tree. Just as we can have four or even eight pictures which all portray the same tree, so we learn to look at all sorts of ideas, which singly would represent a one sided picture of reality, and to learn about them, to look into them with great care and immerse ourselves in their manifoldness. This is normally underrated when it comes to doing the exercises which have now to be undertaken. This is something that is not much understood today, even by the best, but it does lead to the further development of the will in a way similar to the development of the mind that I have described. We then experience that the will liberates itself from being bound to the body.

Just as oxygen can be extracted from water, so the will is released by means of the energetic pursuit of these various exercises that are described, and it becomes freer and freer, and more and more spiritual. By these means we awaken a real, higher man in ourselves that is not just an image of an ideal nor something thought out. We make the discovery which is still a paradox to most people today, but which is quite real for the science of spirit, that a second, more subtle man lives in us, having a quite different consciousness from our normal consciousness. And this consciousness that we can awaken in this way shows us that it is a much more real man than the one that we live in the physical body and move around in. This man in us can make use of the eye of the spirit, as I called it earlier, in the etheric body, in the way I have described.

The acceptance of such another consciousness of another more all-embracing man—this has a far more intimate connection with nature and its beings and to the spiritual world than our normal consciousness.—The acceptance of this also was instinctively foreseen by the more penetrating scientists of the 19th century. Here, too, the science of spirit brings about a fulfillment. I would only like to point out how Eduard von Hartmann worked in this direction, though I do not wish to advocate his philosophy in detail in any way. In his really controvertible work, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, Hartmann referred to the fact that an unknown soul quality is to be found behind the normal consciousness of the human being that—as Eduard von Hartmann describes it—comes to expression painfully in a way, and which has a kind of underground telephone connection with the unconscious spiritual nature of the outer world, and which can work its way up, and does work its way up, through the astral nature and pours out of the unconscious or subconscious into our normal, everyday consciousness.

Eduard von Hartmann really pointed instinctively to what the science of spirit teaches as a fact. Only he believed that this other consciousness of the human being could only be arrived at by theoretical hypotheses, analytical concepts and inferences. This was what he was lacking because he never wanted to take the path which is appropriate to his time: not just to formulate the life of the soul theoretically, but to take it actively into training in the two ways that have been described.

It has been possible to see from this that the acceptance of this spiritual nature in everything is much more helped by the solution of the mystery of the human being—even from a philosophical viewpoint, if it really remains philosophical—than all that can be done by the rest of science in the ways described above. And this can be proved by what has happened. Just in these matters Eduard von Hartmann proves a remarkable figure.

In 1869 he published his Philosophy of the Unconscious. Here he discussed how the spiritual that lives in the soul, hidden, as it were, in the spiritual soul, also lives in nature, and how the materialist today has only a one-sided idea of how the spiritual that lives in the soul also permeates and invades nature. In was 1869 that The Philosophy of the Unconscious was first published. It was the time when people had the greatest hopes of gaining a new view of the world on the basis of the new Darwinian approach, the laws of natural selection and the struggle for existence. Hartmann energetically opposed everything connected with this approach from a spiritual viewpoint, and naturally enough the scientists who were full of materialistic interpretation of Darwinism reacted to what Hartmann said. They said: Well, of course, only a philosopher can speak like that who is not at home in real scientific research and who does not know how conscientiously science works!—And many works were published by various scientists attacking Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. They all wrote basically the same thing—Hartmann was a dilettante and one should not bother to listen to him any further. One only had to protect the layman who always fell for such things; that is why Hartmann's position should be exposed.

Among the many works that appeared there was also one which was anonymous. From start to finish everything was brilliantly refuted. It was shown how from the viewpoint which a scientist had to have, he understood nothing about how science works in its approach to the great mystery of the world!—The scientists were tremendously enthusiastic and were in full agreement with what the anonymous author had written, and it was soon necessary to reprint this ingenious, scientific work. Oskar Schmidt and Ernst Haeckel themselves were full of praise and said: It is a pity that this colleague of ours, this significant scientific thinker, does not say who he is. If he will only say who he is we will regard him as one of ourselves.—In fact, Ernst Haeckel even said: I myself could have said nothing better than what this anonymous author has marshaled from the scientific viewpoint against Hartmann.

And lo and behold, a second edition was needed just as the scientists had wished, But now in the second edition the author revealed himself. It was Eduard von Hartmann himself who had written the work! This was a lesson that could not have been executed more brilliantly for people who constantly believe that those who do not adopt their own attitude could not possibly understand anything about their learning and knowledge. It is a lesson from which we can still learn today, and particularly those could learn who, when it comes to opposing what the science of spirit teaches, approach it with a similar attitude.

The scientist of spirit or anthroposophist knows quite well the sort of things that can be leveled against anthroposophy, however well it may be presented. He is fully aware of what can be said against it, just as Eduard von Hartmann was able to present what the scientists found to be excellent and to their liking. Such lessons, it is true, are soon forgotten, and the old habits soon return. But we can recall them, and we should learn from them. It is not only with Eduard von Hartmann but also with others that an instinctive feeling has arisen that quite a different kind of consciousness is at work in the depths of the human soul.

I would remind you of Myers, the English scientist and editor of the reports of psychic experiments which were published in many volumes and which set out to show how there is something hidden in the human soul that exists alongside our ordinary experience,—what James, the American, called the year of the discovery of one of the most significant facts, namely the discovery of the unconscious in 1886. Today scientists on the whole know very little about such things. They know nothing of Eduard von Hartmann's arguments, nothing about James, nothing about 1886 when Myers discovered the unconscious, the part of us that is of a spirit-soul nature and is connected with the spirit-soul nature of the world, and that rises into and awakens our normal consciousness. It is the same as I have described as awakening as if out of our everyday consciousness, out of a dreaming state, and makes our ordinary consciousness into a perceptive consciousness.—But in Myers and James it is to be found in a chaotic and immature state, rather like a hope or promise.—It becomes a real fact for the first time with the science of spirit or anthroposophy.

And so we see—however paradoxical it may appear today—that the development of the inner powers of the soul emerges on two fronts. I can only indicate how what I have described in its first beginnings, when systematically carried out, eventually leads to our being increasingly able to learn to use the spiritual eye in the etheric body by means of the other man that lives in us, and we discover this world of inner processes in ourselves and are able to feel ourselves as belonging to it. How we then learn not only to overcome our conception of space, but also of time. We come to look at time in quite a different way. And, as I have said, we become able not only to carry ourselves back in our memories into the past, but also to gain experience of ourselves at earlier points of time and also to carry ourselves back beyond the time that we normally remember.

You all know that we can remember back only to a certain point in our childhood. This is as far as we can think back to. What we experienced in the first years of our childhood we can only be reminded of from outside. But now we can carry ourselves back to the time in our earliest childhood when as human beings we were not yet able to recognize or perceive our powers, to the time when the forces we need for our ordinary consciousness were needed for the initial growth of the body. That is to say, we learn to perceive not with the ego of our earliest childhood, but the ego that has brought our spiritual nature out of the spiritual world and united itself with what has been inherited in the way of physical forces and substances from our father, mother and ancestors. We go back to this spiritual human being. From the present moment we look back with an awakened consciousness and see through the sense world into the spiritual; we have a spiritual world before us. Similarly, when we carry ourselves back in time we then have a qualitative experience of the life that we live in the body and that comes to an end with death. On the one hand, our ordinary perception cuts us off in our normal consciousness from spiritual reality; on the other, our bodily experience cuts us off in our normal consciousness from what exists beyond the gate of death. The moment we reach the time which we can remember back to, we see on the other hand life bordered by death, and we see what death makes of us. What is beyond death is revealed, together with what is beyond birth, only divided, kept apart by our life in the body. The spiritual man, the eternal in us, is experienced in that we see our physical life as a river; the one bank is birth and the other bank is death. Death, however, is revealed together with what exists before birth.

We also see maturing in us what leads from this life to a further life on earth. For if we have gone through the gate of death we then see what lives in us. Just as we can say that there is something that lives in the plant which, having gone through the dark and cold time of year, develops into a new plant, so we see how our spirit-soul nature that is within us in this life goes through the spiritual world between death and birth and appears again in a new life on earth. All this becomes accessible to our perception when we develop the powers of the soul in the way that it has been described. Just as we grow accustomed to a physical world through our open eyes and open ears, so we accustom ourselves to a spiritual world, really become concretely aware of a spiritual world that exists around us. We live together with spiritual beings, spiritual forces. Just as we recognize our life, our body, as the expression of our spiritual being which begins at birth, or rather at conception, so we also come to know our physical life on the earth, our physical earth, as a further condition or state of something that has been preceded in planetary existence.

We come to see our earth as a metamorphosis, a transformation of an earlier planet, in which we existed as human beings at an earlier stage, not yet with the present-day physical body, but in a spiritual state and with the nature we have today in a spiritual form. The animals have undergone a downward evolution, the human being has evolved in such a way that the point at which man and animal meet is to be found in the spiritual and not in the physical. Man's evolution on the earth is a continuation of the life on an earlier planet, which has been transformed into the present earth, and which will similarly be transformed into the next stage and will enable the human being to take into himself an ego that today is still slumbering in him, but which will become more and more awake in the further course of evolution. The whole world will be spiritualized.

When we speak about nature we do not content ourselves with referring to a vague pantheism existing in the outer world, but in looking at the being of the earth we speak of rising stages that we get to know. Nor do we enter into a spiritual world with a vague pantheism, but as a concrete individual and real human being.

Today one is forgiven least of all for saying such a thing as this. Nevertheless it is true that a real, concretely spiritual world is opened up to us, the spiritual world that we belong to with our spiritual man, just as with our physical man we belong to ordinary physical reality.

And so in bringing about a methodical awakening of inner life the science of spirit or anthroposophy adds knowledge of spirit to natural knowledge and introduces a different picture of the world from the one we have in our ordinary consciousness. In this connection the science of spirit will gradually have to be taken into the hearts of those who are longing for it, but who for the most part do not know that this longing exists in their hidden feelings. But it is there, and it will come to be more and more recognized.

It is remarkable how even the most eminent thinkers of our time and of the immediate past have not yet been able to grasp the details of the kind of experience I have been describing. I wanted to cite the great philosopher Eduard von Hartmann who had an idea of what it was about, but who was only interested in reaching another consciousness in the human being theoretically, and who was unable to discover that one cannot find one's way into the spiritual by theories or hypotheses, but only by experience, by working upon one's thoughts in such a way that they are sent out as messengers into an unknown world, from which they return as experience, and that leads one into the spiritual world, as I have described. But the experience of it must be based on accepting the existence of a world of ideas and images as real.

Forgive me if I say something personal once more, but it is very much connected with this whole subject. I do not particularly wish to do so, but you will see why I refer to it.

In 1894 I attempted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to provide the world with just such a philosophical approach as a preparation for the science of spirit, where the individual human viewpoints, which sometimes have such remarkable names, could be understood, not as a choice of mutually exclusive views, but that they could be seen like photographs or different pictures of the same object and that these concepts could be allowed to speak for themselves so that one has a many-sided picture.

Eduard von Hartmann studied this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in 1894, and he sent me his copy in which he had made notes. I would like to read a passage from the letter he sent me. It contains singular, philosophical expressions but what he means is quite clear even without going into what these expressions mean.

In the first place he says, for instance: “The title should be `Monism based on the theory of knowledge—ethical individualism,' and not `Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'.”

But he has an instinctive feeling for the fact that these two aspects are supposed to throw light on one and the same thing. He thinks, however, that they cannot be brought together. They are in fact brought together in the life of the soul and not by means of empty theories. This is what he meant. And similarly in other points.

Eduard von Hartmann therefore says: “In this book neither Hume's absolute phenomenalism nor Berkeley's phenomenalism based on God are reconciled, nor this more immanent or subjective, phenomenalism and the transcendental panlogism of Hegel, nor Hegel's panlogism and Goethean individualism. Between these two aspects there yawns an unbridgeable abyss.”

Because all these views exist in such a living way, they all testify to the same thing, they characterize one and the same thing from varying viewpoints!

Hartmann has an inkling of this, a feeling for it, but he does not see that what is important is not a hypothetical and theoretical way of putting them together in thought, but a living way of experiencing them as a unity.

He therefore goes on to say: “Above all, the fact is ignored that phenomenalism leads with absolute inevitability to soliphism [this may be a coined word, a `typo,' or the translator really meant solipsism - e.Ed] (that is, to a doctrine of being one, a doctrine of the ego), to illusionism and to agnosticism, and nothing is done to prevent this plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy, because the danger is not even recognized.”

This danger certainly has been recognized! And Eduard von Hartmann once again instinctively uses the right expression: “plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy.”

This is precisely what I have described today! Of course, this plunge into the abyss is not prevented by un-philosophy or by any hypotheses setting out to be philosophical, but only by our real life being led into the other existence, by the unconscious being made conscious, so that what is experienced objectively and independently in the soul can be guided back again into the conscious.

You can see here how the science of spirit or anthroposophy has gradually to get to grips with the longings and hopes for such a science, that exist at the present time, but which in themselves cannot get as far as what has to be achieved in the science of spirit, because for this to happen it is imperative to see that intimate work on the soul has to be done which does not remain mystically subjective, but is just as objective as ordinary science and knowledge.

What then has been done about this up to now? I have cited Oskar Hertwig to you. Oskar Hertwig is one of those who felt the significance of Eduard von Hartmann!

Ernst Haeckel is one of those who mocked most at what Eduard von Hartmann published in his Philosophy of the Unconscious.

Oskar Hertwig still cites Eduard von Hartmann continuously and does so in full agreement with what he says, even where Eduard von Hartmann says that the way in which the idea of natural selection is treated as a modern superstition is like a childhood disease, a scientific childhood disease of our times. This is cited by Oskar Hertwig, himself a pupil of Haeckel, as an appropriate statement about natural science by Eduard von Hartmann. And there is much more like this. It all adds up to a clear statement as to what science is unable to recognize and what it would really have to recognize. But what has happened is that the pupils of the great teachers of science of the 19th century have already started to refute everything that existed earlier in the nature of the hopes I have been talking about.

Oskar Hertwig is extraordinarily interesting because he shows that science today cannot have any objection to such a philosophy as Eduard von Hartmann's.

If the scientists find their way to Eduard von Hartmann, they will also find their way to the science of spirit. But then the general consciousness of humanity too will be able to find its way.

The science of spirit will encounter opposition enough from other directions as well. To conclude, I would like to mention briefly the objections that are constantly brought by the adherents of various religious organizations against the science of spirit. It is remarkable how it is just from the religious viewpoint that the science of spirit is attacked. It is said, for instance, that what the science of spirit has to say contradicts things in the Bible or that are held according to tradition.—But is this really what we should be concerned about? Could we think of not wanting to discover America because it cannot be found in the Bible or in Christian tradition?

If anyone believes that the power of the greatest thing in the world—Christianity—could be endangered because of some discovery, he cannot have much faith in it!

When I hear of how objections can be made by Christians, I recall a theologian, this time not Protestant, but Catholic, a teacher of Christian philosophy, member of a Catholic faculty of theology, who gave his inaugural lecture on Galileo—and we know how the church dealt with Galileo. This really genuinely Christian and Catholic priest, who up to the time of his death never denied that he was a true son of the church, said in his lecture on Galileo: It is with injustice that a really perceptive Christianity turns against the progress of natural science as brought about by such people as Galileo. It is with injustice that Christianity declares certain ideas which are falsely said to be derived from Christianity, to be irreconcilable with natural science. For modern science, thinks this priest and professor of theology, only appears to be irreconcilable with the more limited view of the world held by the ancient peoples, but not with the Christian view, for this Christian view, properly understood, is bound to confirm the discoveries of more and more wonders in the world, and is bound to confirm the glory of the Godhead and the glory of the Christian view; it is bound to confirm the wonders that divine grace has instituted upon the earth.

We can say the same about the science of spirit, for there is no contradiction between it and Christianity, properly understood. But contradiction exists only between it and a false teaching that unjustly purports to originate from Christianity. The only thing that the science of spirit cannot be reconciled with is a narrowly conceived scientific view of the world and not with a broadly based Christian view. And the discoveries of the science of spirit, the wonders that it finds in the spiritual world, will not mean an end to the wonders that Christianity teaches us about, but on the contrary will confirm them.

Laurenz Mueller, also a genuinely Christian theologian and professor, speaks in a similar vein: Christianity does not contradict and is not intended to contradict a doctrine of evolution properly understood, as long as it does not set out to be a purely causal evolution of the world and to place man only within the framework of a physical causality.

The science of spirit does not clash with Christianity, because it does not lead to the deadening of religious life and vision, but, on the contrary, it encourages and fires religious life and vision.

And those today who still believe that their Christianity would be endangered by the science of spirit will gradually have to realize that whereas wrongly understood science has driven away more and more souls, both outwardly and inwardly, anthroposophy or the science of spirit, because it kindles religious life, will bring even educated people back to the great mysteries, not only of Christian teaching, but also of Christian deeds and ceremonial services. This will largely be the work of the future, in fact, of the relatively near future.

Just in this connection one could wish that things would be better understood and that above all there were more willingness to understand the matter, that one would not formulate a picture without really going into it and then setting up this picture as something contradictory to Christianity.

I can only mention this very briefly. I would have to speak for a long time if I had to go into everything in detail—but this could be done—to show that Christianity has not the slightest grounds for turning against such ideas as repeated lives on earth.

To finish with, allow me to say a few words about the teachings of natural science.

Today natural science has arrived at the point of realizing what it cannot attain. Oskar Hertwig—to keep to our former example—hits upon something in a remarkable way in his book Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheorie.

In a remarkable way he comes to the conclusion that it is not any objective research, nor analytical research into scientific facts, that has led to the materialistic philosophy of Darwinism, but it arises from the fact that the people of this age have borne this materialistic outlook in themselves, have borne the belief in the unspiritual nature of the outer world in themselves, and have applied this to nature.

And here it is very interesting to feel the weight of Oskar Hertwig's own words to show the real nature of the situation.

Hertwig says: “The principle of utility, the conviction of the necessity of unrestricted commercial and social competition, materialistic tendencies in philosophy, are forces that would have played an important part, even without Darwin. Those who were already under their influence greeted Darwinism as a scientific confirmation of the ideas they already cherished. They could now look at themselves, as it were, in the mirror of science.”

“The interpretation of Darwin's teaching,” Oskar Hertwig continues, “which is so ambiguous in its uncertainties, also allows for a varied application in the other spheres of economic, social and political life. Each person can get what he wants from it, just as from the Delphic oracle, and can draw his own conclusions concerning social, hygienic, medical and other questions, and can call on the scientific learning of the new Darwinian biology with its unalterable laws of nature, to confirm his own views. If however these laws of nature are not what they are made out to be”—and Oskar Hertwig sets out to prove, and does prove, that they are not really laws of nature, “could there not also be social dangers when they are applied in various ways to other spheres? We surely do not believe that human society can use for fifty years such phrases as bitter struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, of the most useful, the most expedient, perfection by selection etc., without being deeply and substantially influenced in the whole direction of this kind of ideas.”

This is what a scientist is already saying today. He is not just saying that these materialistically formulated ideas of Darwinism are wrong, but that they are injurious, that they inevitably lead to difficulties in the soul life, and to social and political harm. Only the restricted and one-sided views of certain scientists could maintain otherwise. And sometimes this works out in the most terrible way.

A great scientist of the present day for whom I have great respect—and it is just because I have respect for him that I cite him now—hints in a remarkable way at how the scientist does not perhaps wish to be understood, but at how he must be understood on the basis of his attitude toward what can be expected of a purely naturalistic view of nature. The scientist, for whom I have the greatest respect, says at the end of a significant book—and these are now his own words that I am quoting: “We live today in the best period of time”—this is what he maintains, it cannot be proved with full validity, but he asserts: “we live today in the best period of time, at least we scientists, and we can even hope for better,” he says, “for in comparing the science of today with the achievements of earlier scientists we can say with Goethe who knew so much about nature and the world:

The pleasure ... is great, to cast

The mind into the spirit of the past,

And scan the former notions of the wise,

And see what marvelous heights we've reached at last.”

—Thus speaks a first class scientist at the end of an important book!

I do not know whether many people notice and think about the person whom Goethe makes say this. Is it really Goethe, the one who knew so much about the world and nature, who says this? No, he puts it into the mouth of Wagner

And Faust replies to Wagner:

“How strange, that he who cleaves to shallow things

Can keep his hopes alive on empty terms

And dig with greed for precious plunderings,

And find his happiness unearthing worms!”

This is the real view of the one who knew so much about the world and nature!

And if scientists today do not yet realize what can be built on the basis of the sound foundations to be found in a view of the world, such as also shone through Goethe, one can understand what Oskar Hertwig so rightly says: The materialistic conception of the world and Darwinism with its materialistic bias have arisen out of the general materialistic attitude of the times, their naturalistic methods, their materialistic impulses and feelings, and which have then been applied to nature. But the facts disprove this.

The scientist of spirit replies to this out of what he believes to be a deeper knowledge of the world and of man: No, it is not such a narrow view like the one prevalent around the middle of the 19th century that should affect our study of nature, but our views should be formulated according to the highest possible content that spirit and soul can attain, and they should then be applied to nature to see if nature really confirms them. We can then expect that the resultant view will not be anything like Darwinism. This latter believed the world to exist according to certain laws and, as we have seen, nature herself has disproved this belief.

The science of spirit strives to study the human soul in its depths, and to draw out of these depths the spirit that exists in the broadest and most embracing sense as the foundation of existence in spiritual beings and forces. It is not a one-sided but a many-sided path that it takes, for there is not only one path it follows, but it follows all the paths on which the human soul is led, from out of its own rich inner life. The science of spirit may be allowed to hope that the questions, the mysteries, which nature has put to it will not be refuted by nature, but that the spirit in nature will affirm them because the spirit that lives in nature also lives in man, and not, as in the other case, to deny what the science of spirit or anthroposophy envisages the real nature of the human mystery to be.

When we set out today to speak about Anthroposophy and the Threefold Movement with its various consequences—which indeed arise out of Anthroposophy, and must really be thought of as arising out of it,—then we must first of all hold before our souls that it is difficult to make oneself understood. And, without this feeling—that it is difficult to make oneself understood—we shall hardly be able to succeed as lecturers for anthroposophical Spiritual Science and all that is connected with it, in a way satisfying to ourselves. For if there is to be speaking about Anthroposophy which is appropriate, then this speaking must be entirely different from what one is accustomed to in accordance with the traditions of speaking. One has often fallen into the habit of speaking also about anthroposophical matters in the way one has become used to speaking in the age of materialism; but one is more apt thereby to obstruct the understanding for Anthroposophy, rather than to open up an approach to it.

We shall first of all have to make quite clear to ourselves what the content of the matter is that comes towards us in Anthroposophy and its consequences. And in these lectures I shall deal as I said yesterday, with the practice of lecturing, but only for anthroposophical and related matters, so that what I have to say applies only to these.

We must now make clear to ourselves that primarily it is the feeling for the central issue of the threefold order that must at first be stirred in our present humanity. It must after all be assumed that an audience of today does not begin to know what to do with the concept of the threefold order. Our speaking must slowly lead to the imparting first of a feeling for this threefold order in the audience.

During the time in which materialism has held sway, one has become accustomed to give expression to the things of the outer world through description. In this one had a kind of guidance in the outer world itself. Moreover, objects in the outer world are, I would say, too fixed for one to believe that, in the end, it makes much difference how one speaks about the things of the outer world; one need only give people some guidance on the way for perceiving this outer world. Then, in the end it comes to this: if, let us say, one delivers somewhere a popular lecture with experiments, and thereby demonstrates to people how this or that substance reacts in a retort, then they see how the substance reacts in the retort. And whether one then lectures this way or that way—a bit better, a bit less well, a hit more relevantly, a hit less relevantly—in the end makes no difference. And gradually it has tended to come to the point that such lectures and such talks are attended in order to see the experimenting, and what is spoken is just taken along as a kind of more or less agreeable or disagreeable side noise. One must express these things somewhat radically, just in order to show the exact direction in which civilization is moving in regard to these things.

When it is a matter of what to stimulate in people for doing, for willing, one is of the opinion that one must just “set up ideals”. People would have to accustom themselves to “apprehend ideals”, and thus one gradually glides more and more over into the utopian, when it is a matter of such things as the threefold order of the social organism.

So it has also happened in many an instance that many people who lecture about the threefold idea today absolutely call forth the opinion, through the manner in which they speak, that it is some utopia or other that should be striven for. And, since one is always of the opinion that what should be striven for in most cases cannot be expected to come in less than fifty or a hundred years—or many extend the time even further—so one also allows oneself, quite unconsciously, to approach speaking about things as if they would first ripen in fifty or a hundred years. One glides away from the reality very soon, and then talks about it thus: How will a small shop be set up in the threefold social organism? What will be the relation of the single person to the sewing machine in the threefold social organism?—and so on. Such questions are really put in abundance to any endeavor such as the threefolding of the social organism. As regards such an endeavor, which with all of its roots comes out of reality, one should not at all speak in this utopian fashion. For one should always evoke at least this feeling: the threefold order of the social organism is nothing which can be "made" in the sense that state constitutions can be made in a parliament—of the kind for example, that the Weimar National Assembly was. These are made! But one cannot speak in the same sense of making the threefold social organism.

Just as little can one speak of "organizing" in order to produce the threefold order. That which is an organism, this one does not organize; this grows. It is just in the nature of an organism that one does not have to organize it, that it organizes itself. That which can be organized is no organism. We must approach things from the start with these feelings, otherwise we shall not have the possibility of finding the appropriate expression.

The threefold order is something which indeed simply follows from the natural living together of people. One can falsify this natural living together of people—as has been the case, for example, in recent history—by extending the characteristic features of one member, the states-rights member, to both others. Then these two other members will simply become corrupted because they cannot prosper, just as someone cannot get on well in an unsuitable garment, that is too heavy, or the like.

It is in the natural relation of people that the threefold order of the social organism lives, that the independent spiritual life lives, that the rights or states life, regulated by the people's majority, lives, that the economic life, shaped solely out of itself, also lives. One can put strait jackets on the spiritual life, on the economic life, although one does not need them; but then its own life asserts itself continually nevertheless, and what we then experience outwardly is just this self-assertion. It is hence necessary to show that the threefolding of the social organism is implicit in the very nature of both the human being and the social life.

We see that the spiritual life in Europe was entirely independent and free until the 13th or 14th centuries, when, what was the free, independent spiritual life was first pushed into the universities. In this time you find the founding of the universities, and the universities then in turn slip by and by into the life of state. So that one can say: From about the 13th to the 16th or 17th century, the universities slip into the states-life, and with the universities, also the remaining educational institutions, without people really noticing it. These other institutions simply followed. This we have on the one hand.

On the other hand, until about the same period, we have free economic rule that found its true, middle-European expression in the free economic village communities. As the free spiritual life slipped into the universities, which are localized at first, and which later find shelter in the state, so does that which is the economic organization first receive a certain administration in the “rights” sense, when the cities emerge more and more. Then the cities, in the first place, organize this economic life, while earlier, when the village communities were setting the pace, it had grown freely. And then we see how increasingly, that which was centralized in the cities seeks protection in the larger territories of the states. Thus we see how the tendency of modern times ends in letting the spiritual life on the one hand, the economic life on the other, seek the protection of states which increasingly take on the character of domains constituted according to Roman law. This was actually the development in modern times.

We have reached that point in historical development where things can go no further like this, where a sense and a feeling for free spiritual life must once again be developed. When in a strait jacket, the spirit simply does not advance; because it only apparently advances, but in truth still remains behind—can never celebrate real births, but at most renaissances. It is just the same with the economic life.

Today we simply stand in the age in which we must absolutely reverse the movement which has developed in the civilized world of Europe with its American annex, the age in which the opposite direction must set in. For what has gone on developing for a time must reach a point at which something new must set in. Otherwise one runs into the danger of doing as one would when, with a growing plant, one were to say it should not be allowed to come to fruition, it should grow further, it should keep blooming on and on.—Then it would grow thus: bring forth a flower; then no seed, but again a flower, again a flower, and so on. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to familiarize oneself inwardly with these things, and to develop a feeling for the historical turning point at which we stand today.

But, just as in an organism every detail is necessarily formed as it is, so is everything in the world in which we live and which we help to shape, to be formed as it must be in its place in the sense of the whole. You cannot imagine, if you think realistically, that your ear lobe could be formed the very least bit differently from what it is, in conformity with your whole organism. Were your ear lobe only the least bit differently formed, then you would also have to have quite a different nose, different fingertips, and so forth. And just as the ear lobe is formed in the sense of the whole human being, so must also the lecture in which something flows be given—in the sense of the whole subject—that lecturing which is truly taking on new forms.

Such a lecture cannot be delivered in the manner which one could perhaps learn from the sermon-lecture. For the sermon-lecture as we still have it today, rests on the tradition which really goes back to the old Orient,—on a special attitude which the whole human being in the old Orient had toward speech. This characteristic was continued, so that it lived in a certain free way in Greece, lived in Rome, and shows its last spark most clearly in the particular relationship which the Frenchman has to his language. Not that I want to imply that every Frenchman preaches when he speaks; but a similar relationship, such as had to develop out of the oriental relationship to language still continues to live on in a definite way in the French handling of speech, only entirely in a declining movement.

This element which we can observe here in regard to language came to expression when one still learned speaking from the professors, as one could later, but now in the declining phase—professors who really continued to live on as mummies of ancient times and bore the title, “professor of elocution”. In former times, at almost every university, in every school, also in seminaries and so on there was such a professor of elocution, of rhetoric. The renowned Curtius¹ of Berlin actually still bore the title “professor of elocution” officially. But the whole affair became too dull for him, and he did not lecture on elocution, but only demonstrated himself as a professor of elocution through being sent out by the faculty council on ceremonial occasions, since that was always the task of the professor of elocution. Nevertheless, in this Curtius made it his business to discharge his duties at such ceremonial occasions by paying as little regard as possible to the ancient rules of eloquence. For the rest, it was too dull for him to be a professor of elocution in times in which professors of elocution did not fit in any more, and he lectured on art history, on the history of Greek art. But in the university catalog he was listed as “professor of elocution”. This refers us back to an element that was present everywhere in speech in olden times.

Now, when we consider what is quite especially characteristic in the training of speech for the middle European languages, for German, for example, then indeed everything denoted in the original sense by the word “elocution” has not the least meaning. For something flowed into these languages that is entirely different from that which was peculiar to speaking in the times when elocution had to be taken seriously. In the Greek and Latin languages there is elocution. In the German language elocution is something quite impossible, when one looks inwardly at the essential.

Today, however, we are living definitely in a time of transition. That which was the speech element of the German language cannot continue to be used. Every attempt must be made to come out of this speech element and to come into a different speech element. This also is the task, in a certain sense, to be solved by him who would speak productively about Anthroposophy or the threefold idea. For only when a fairly large number of people are able to speak in this way, will Anthroposophy and the threefold idea be rightly understood in public, even in single lectures. Meanwhile, there are not a few who develop only a pseudo-understanding and pseudo-avowal for these.

If we look back on the special element in regard to speaking which was present in the times out of which the handling of elocution was preserved, we must say: then it was as if language grew out of the human being in quite a naive way, as his fingers grow, as his second teeth grow. From the imitation process speaking resulted, and language with its whole organization. And only after one had language did one come to the use of thinking.

And now it transpired that the human being when speaking to others about any problem had to see that the inner experience, the thought experience, to a certain extent clicked [einschnappte] into the language. The sentence structure was there. It was in a certain way elastic and flexible. And, more inward than the language was the thought element. One experienced the thought element as something more inward than the language, and let it click into the language, so that it fitted into it just as one fits the idea of a statue or the like into marble. It was entirely an artistic treatment of the language. Even the way in which one was meant to speak in prose had something similar to the way in which one was to express oneself in poetry. Rhetoric and elocution had rules which were not at all unlike the rules of poetic expression. (So as not to be misunderstood, I should like to insert here that the development of language does not exclude poetry. What I now say, I say for older arts of expression, and I beg you not to interpret it as if I wanted to assert that there can be no more poetry at all today. We need but treat the language differently in poetry. But that does not belong here; I wanted to insert this only in parenthesis, that I might not be misunderstood.)

And when we now ask: How was one then supposed to speak in the time in which the thought and feeling content clicked into the language? One was supposed to speak beautifully! That was the first task: to speak beautifully. Hence, one can really only learn to speak beautifully today when one immerses oneself in the old way of speaking. There was beautiful speaking. And speaking beautifully is definitely a gift which comes to man from the Orient. It might be said: There was speaking beautifully to the point that one really regarded singing, the singing of language, as the ideal of speaking. Preaching is only a form of beautiful speaking stripped of much of the beautiful speaking. For, wholely beautiful speaking is cultic speaking. When cultic speaking pours itself into a sermon, then much is lost. But still, the sermon is a daughter of the beautiful speaking found in the cult.

The second form which has come into evidence, especially in German and in similar languages, is that in which it is no longer possible to distinguish properly between the word and the grasping of the thought conveyed—the word and the thought experience; the word has become abstract, so that it exempts itself, like a kind of thought. It is the element where the understanding for language itself is stripped off. It can no longer have something click into it, because one feels at the very outset that what is to be clicked in and the word vehicle into which something is to click are one.

For who today is clear, for example in German, when he writes down “Begriff” [concept], that this is the noun form of begreifen [to grasp; to comprehend] be-greifen (greifen with a prefix) is thus das Greifen an etwas ausfuehren [the carrying out of the grasping of something]—that “Begriff” is thus nothing other than the noun form for objective perceiving? The concept “Begriff” was formed at a time when there was still a living perception of the ether body, which grasps things. Therefore one could then truly form the concept of Begriff, because grasping with the physical body is merely an image of grasping with the ether body.

But, in order to hear Begreifen in the word Begriff it is necessary to feel speech as an organism of one's own. In the element of speaking which I am now giving an account of, language and concept always swim through one another. There is not at all that sharp separation which was once present in the Orient, where the language was an organism, was more external, and that which declared itself lived inwardly. What lived inwardly had to click into the linguistic form in speaking; that is, click in so that what lives inwardly is the content, and that into which it clicked was the outer form. And this clicking-in had to happen in the sense of the beautiful, so that one was thus a true speech artist when one wanted to speak.

This is no longer the case when, for example, one has no feeling any more for differentiating between Gehen [to go] and Laufen [to run] in relation to language as such. Gehen: two e's—one walks thither without straining oneself thereby; e is always the feeling expression for the slight participation one has in one's own activity. If there is an au in the word, this participation is enhanced. From running (Laufen) comes panting (Schnaufen) which has the same vowel sound in it. With this one's insides come into tumult. There must be a sound there that intimates this modification of the inner being. But all this is indeed no longer there today; language has become abstract. It is like our onward-flowing thoughts themselves—for the whole middle region, and especially also for the western region of civilization.

It is possible to behold a picture, an imagination in every single word; and one can live in this picture as in something relatively objective. He who faced language in earlier times considered it as something objective into which the subjective was poured. He would as little not have regarded it so, as he would have lost sight of the fact that his coat is something objective, and is not grown together with his body as another skin.

As against this, the second stage of language takes the whole organism of language as another son' skin, whereas formerly language was much more loosely there, I should like to say, like a garment. I am speaking now of the stage of language in which speaking beautifully is no longer taken into first consideration, but rather speaking correctly. In this it is not a question of rhetoric and elocution, but of logic. With this stage, which has come up slowly since Aristotle's time, grammar itself became logical to the point that the logical forms were simply developed out of the grammatical forms—one abstracted the logical from the grammatical. Here all has swum together: thought and word. The sentence is that out of which one evolves the judgment. But the judgment is in truth so laid into the sentence that one no longer experiences it as inherently independent. Correct speaking, this has become the criterion.

Further, we see a new element in speaking arising, only used everywhere at the wrong point—carried over to a quite wrong domain. Beautiful speaking humanity owes to the Orient. Correct speaking lies in the middle region of civilization. And we must look to the West when seeking the third element.

But in the West it arises first of all quite corrupted. How does it arise? Well, in the first place, language has become abstract. That which is the word organism is already almost thought-organism. And this has gradually increased so much in the West, that there it would perhaps even be regarded as facetious to discuss such things. But, in a completely wrong domain, the advance already exists.

You see, in America, just in the last third of the 19th century, a philosophical trend called “pragmatism” has appeared. In England it has been called “humanism.” James² is its representative in America, Schiller³ in England. Then there are personalities who have already gone about extending these things somewhat. The merit of extending this concept of humanism in a very beautiful sense is due to Professor MacKenzie⁴ who was recently here.

To what do these endeavors lead?—I mean now, American pragmatism and English humanism. They arise from a complete skepticism about cognition: Truth is something that really doesn't exist! When we make two assertions, we actually make them fundamentally in order to have guide-points in life. To speak about an “atom”—one cannot raise any particular ground of truth for it; but it is useful to take the atom theory as a basis in chemistry; thus we set up the atom concept! It is serviceable, it is useful. There is no truth other than that which lives in useful, life-serviceable concepts. “God,” if he exists or not, this is not the question. Truth, that is something or other which is of no concern to us. But it is hard to live pleasantly if one does not set up the concept of God; it is really good to live, if one lives as if there were a God. So, let us set it up, because it's a serviceable, useful concept for life. Whether the earth began according to the Kant-Laplace theory and will end according to the mechanical warmth theory, from the standpoint of truth, no human being knows anything about this—I am now just simply reporting—, but it is useful for our thinking to represent the beginning and end of the earth in this way. This is the pragmatic teaching of James, and also in essence,the humanistic teaching of Schiller. Finally, it is also not known at all whether the human being now, proceeding from the standpoint of truth, really has a soul. That could be discussed to the end of the world, whether there is a soul or not, but it is useful to assume a soul if one wants to comprehend all that the human being carries out in life.

Of course, everything that appears today in our civilization in one place spreads to other places. For such things which arose instinctively in the West, the German had to find something more conceptual, that permits of being more easily seen through conceptually; and from this the “As If” philosophy originated: whether there is an atom or not is not the question; we consider the phenomena in such a way “as if” there was an atom. Whether the good can realize itself or not, cannot be decided; we consider life in such a way “as if” the good could realize itself. One could indeed quarrel to the end of the world about whether or not there is a God: but we consider life in such a way that we act “as if” there were a God. There you have the “As If” philosophy.

One pays little attention to these things because one imagines: there in America James sits with his pupils, there in England Schiller sits with his pupils; there is Vaihinger, who wrote the “As If” philosophy: there are a few owls who live in a kind of cloud-castle, and of what concern is it to other people!

Whoever has the ear for it, however, already hears the “As If” philosophy sounding everywhere today. Almost all human beings talk in the sense of the “As If” philosophy. The philosophers are only quite funny fellows. They always blab out what other people do unconsciously. If one is sufficiently unprejudiced for it, then one only seldom hears a human being today who still uses his words differently, in connection with his heart and with his whole soul, with his whole human being, who speaks differently than as though the matter were as he expresses it. One only does not usually have the ear to hear within the sound and the tone-color of the speaking that this “As If” lives in it,—that fundamentally people over the whole of civilization are seized by this “As If.”

Whereas things usually come to be corrupted at the end, here something shows itself to be corrupted at the beginning, something that in a higher sense must be developed for handling of speech in Anthroposophy, in the threefold order and so on. These things are so earnest, so important, that we really should speak specially about them. For it will be a question of elevating the triviality, “We need concepts because they are useful for life,” this triviality of a materialistic, utilitarian theory, of raising it up to the ethical, and perhaps through the ethical to the religious. For, if we want to work in the sense of Anthroposophy and the threefold order, we have before us the task of learning good speaking, in addition to the beautiful speaking and the correct speaking which we can acquire from history. We must maintain an ear for good speaking.

Until now, I have seen little sign that it has been noticed, when, in the course of my lectures I have called attention to this good speaking—I have done it very frequently. In referring to this good speaking I have always said that it is not only a question today that what is said be correct in the logical-abstract sense, but it is a matter of saying something in a certain connection or omitting it, not saying it in this connection. It is a question of developing a feeling that something should not only be correct, but that it is justified within its connection—that it can be either good in a certain connection or bad in a certain connection. Beyond rhetoric, beyond logic, we must learn a true ethics of speaking. We must know how we may allow ourselves things in a certain connection that would not be at all permitted in another connection.

Here I may now use an example close to hand, that could perhaps have already struck some of you who were present lately at the lectures: I spoke in a certain connection of the fact that, in reality, Goethe was not born at all. I said that Goethe for a long time endeavored to express himself through painting, through drawing, but that nothing came about from it. It then flowed over into his poetic works, and then again in the poetic works, as for example Iphigenia, or especially in Naturliche Tochter [“Daughters of Nature”], we have indeed poetic works not at all in the sentimental sense. People called these poems of Goethe's “marble smooth and marble cold,” because they are almost sculptural, because they are three-dimensional. Goethe had genuine capacities which really did not become human at all; he was actually not born.—You see, in that connection in which I spoke lately, one could quite certainly say it. But imagine, if someone were to represent it as a thesis in itself in the absolute sense! It would be not only illogical, it would he of course quite crazy.

To speak out of an awareness of a life connection is something different from finding the adequate or correct use of a word association for the thought and feeling involved. To let a pronouncement or the like arise at a particular place out of a living relationship, that is what leads over from beauty, from correctness, to the ethos of language—at which one feels, when a sentence is uttered, whether one may or may not say it in the whole context. But now, there is again an inward growing together, not with language, but with speaking. This is what I should like to call good speaking or had speaking; the third form. Aside from beautiful or ugly speaking, aside from correct or incorrect speaking, comes good or bad speaking, in the sense in which I have just presented it.

Today the view is still widespread that there can be sentences which one forms and which can then be spoken on any occasion, because they have absolute validity. In reality, for our life in the present, there are no longer such sentences. Every sentence that is possible in a certain connection, is today impossible in another connection. That means, we have entered upon an epoch of humanity's development in which we need to direct our view to this many-sidedness of living situations.

The Oriental who with his whole thinking lived within a small territory, also the Greek still, who with his spiritual life, with his rights life, with his economic life, lived on a small territory, poured something into his language that appears as a linguistic work of art must appear. How is it though in a work of art? It is such that a single finite object really appears infinite in a certain realm. In this way beauty was even defined, though one-sidedly, by Haeckel, Darwin and others: It is the appearance of the idea in a self-contained picture.—The first thing which I had to oppose in my Vienna lecture on “Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetics,” was that the beautiful is “the appearance of the idea in outer form.” I showed then that one must mean just the reverse: that the beautiful arises when one gives to form the appearance of the infinite.

And so it is with language, which in a certain way also acts as a limited territory—as a territory which encloses the possible meaning within boundaries. If that which is actually infinite in the inner soul- and spirit-life is to click into this language, it must there come to expression in beautiful form.

In correct speaking the language must he adequate; the sentence must fit the judgment, the concept, the word. The Romans were compelled to this, especially as their territory became ever larger and larger; their language transformed itself from the beautiful into the logical. Hence the custom has been retained, of conveying logic to people precisely in the Latin language. (You have indeed learned logic quite well by it.)

But we are now once again beyond this stage. Now, it is necessary that we learn to experience language with ethos—that, to a certain extent we gain a kind of morality of speaking in our lecturing, while we know that we have in a certain context to allow ourselves something or to deny ourselves something. There, things do not click-in, in the way I described earlier, but here we make use of the word to characterize. All defining ceases; here we use the word to characterize. The word is so handled that one really feels each word as something insufficient, every sentence as something insufficient, and has the urge to characterize that which one wishes to place before humanity from the most varied aspects—to go around the matter to a certain extent, and to characterize it from the most varied aspects.

You see, for free spiritual life—that is to say spiritual life that exists out of its own laws—there is as yet not very much understanding in present-day humanity. For, mostly what is understood by free spiritual life is a structure in which people live, where each one crows his own cock-a-doodle-doo from his own dung heap—excuse the somewhat remarkable picture—and in which the most incredible consonances come about from the crowing. In reality, in free spiritual life, harmony comes about through and through, because the spirit, not the single egoists, lives—because the spirit can really lead its own life over and above the single egoists.

There is, for example,—one must already say these things today—a Waldorf School spirit definitely there for our Waldorf School in Stuttgart that is independent of the body of teachers,—into which the body of teachers grows, and in which it becomes ever more and more clear that possibly the one can be more capable or less capable, but the spirit has a life of its own.

It is an abstraction, which people today still represent to themselves, when they speak of “free spirit.” This is no reality at all. The free spirit is something that really lives among people—one must only let it come into existence; and what works among people—one must only let it come into existence.

What I have said to you today I have also said only so that what we are meant to gain here may proceed from fundamental feelings, from the feeling for the earnestness of the matter. I cannot, of course, suppose that every one will now go right out and, as those in olden times spoke beautifully, in the middle period correctly, now all will speak well! But you may not for this reason object: of what help, then, are all our lectures, if we are not at once able to speak in the sense of good speaking?—It is rather a matter of our really getting the feeling of the earnestness of the situation, which we are thus to live into, so that we know: what is wanted here is something in itself so organically whole, that a necessity of form must gradually express itself even in speech, just as a necessity of form expresses itself in the ear-lobe, such as cannot be otherwise depending on how the whole human being is.

Thus I shall try to bring still closer together what is for us the content of Anthroposophy and the threefold order with the way in which it should be presented to people. And, from the consideration of principles I shall come more and more into the concrete, and to that which should underlie the practice of lecturing.

I have often emphasized that this must be Anthroposophy's manner of presenting things. I have often emphasized that one should not indeed believe that one is able to find the adequate word, the adequate sentence; one can only conduct oneself as does a photographer who, in order to show a tree, takes at least four views.

Thus a conception that lives itself out in an abstract trivial philosophy such as pragmatism or humanism, must be raised up into the realm of the ethical. And then it must first of all live in the ethos of language. We must learn good speaking. That means that we must experience as regards speaking something of all that we otherwise experience in relation to ethics, moral philosophy.

After all, the matter has become quite clear in modern times. In the speaking of theosophists we have an archaism simply conditioned through the language—archaic, namely as regards the materialistic coloration of the last centuries: “physical body”—well, it is thick; “ether body”—it is thinner, more nebulous; “astral body”—once again thinner, but still only thinner; “I”—still thinner. Now, new members of the human being keep on coming up: they become even thinner. At last one no longer knows at all how one can reach this thinness, but in any case, it only becomes ever thinner and thinner. One does not escape the materialism. This is indeed also the hallmark of this theosophical literature. And it is always the hallmark that appears, when these things are to be spoken about, from theoretical speaking, to that which I once experienced within the Theosophical Society in Paris, (I believe it was in 1906). A lady there who was a real rock-solid theosophist, wanted to express how well she liked particular lectures which had been given in the hall in which we were; and she said: “There are such good vibrations here!” And one perceived from her that this was really thought of as something which one might sniff. Thus, the scents of the lectures which were left behind and which one could sniff out somehow, these were really meant.

We must learn to tear language away from adequacy. For it can be adequate only for the material. If we wish to use it for the spiritual, in the sense of the present epoch of development of humanity, then we must free it. Freedom must then come into the handling of language. If one does not take these things abstractly, but livingly, then the first thing into which the philosophy of freedom [spiritual activity] must come is in speaking, in the handling of language. For this is necessary; otherwise the transition will not be found, for example, to the characterization of the free spiritual life.

You see, for free spiritual life—that is to say spiritual life that exists out of its own laws—there is as yet not very much understanding in present-day humanity. For, mostly what is understood by free spiritual life is a structure in which people live, where each one crows his own cock-a-doodle-doo from his own dung heap—excuse the somewhat remarkable picture—and in which the most incredible consonances come about from the crowing. In reality, in free spiritual life, harmony comes about through and through, because the spirit, not the single egoists, lives—because the spirit can really lead its own life over and above the single egoists.

There is, for example,—one must already say these things today—a Waldorf School spirit definitely there for our Waldorf School in Stuttgart that is independent of the body of teachers,—into which the body of teachers grows, and in which it becomes more and more clear that possibly the one can be more capable or less capable, but the spirit has a life of its own.

It is an abstraction, which people today still represent to themselves, when they speak of “free spirit.” This is no reality at all. The free spirit is something that really lives among people—one must only let it come into existence.

What I have said to you today I have also said only so that what we are meant to gain here may proceed from fundamental feelings, from the feeling for the earnestness of the matter. I cannot, of course, suppose that every one will now go right out and, as those in olden times spoke beautifully, in the middle period correctly, now all will speak well! But you may not for this reason object: of what help, then, are all our lectures, if we are not at once able to speak in the sense of good speaking?—It is rather a matter of our really getting the feeling of the earnestness of the situation, which we are thus to live into so that we know: what is wanted here is something in itself so organically whole, that a necessity of form must gradually express itself even in speech, just as a necessity of form expresses itself in the earlobe, such as cannot be otherwise depending on how the whole human being is.

Thus I shall try to bring still closer together what is for us the content of Anthroposophy and the threefold order with the way in which it should be presented to people. And, from the consideration of principles I shall come more and more into the concrete, and to that which should underlie the practice of lecturing.

• 1. Ernst Curtius, 1814–1896, archeologist and historian.
• 2. William James. 1842–1910, American philosopher.
• 3. F. C. S. Schiller. 1864–1937. Representative of pragmatism in England which he combined with humanism.
• 4. S. MacKenzie, born 1560. Professor in Cardiff.

My dear friends,

Quite a large number of new members of this School are present, and I am therefore obliged to again say a few words about its principles.

First if all, this School represents the impulse of the anthroposophical movement which was renewed here during the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Previously there were several esoteric circles. All these esoteric circles must be gradually absorbed into this School, because with the Christmas Conference a new spirit was introduced into the anthroposophical movement insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society.

I have repeatedly spoken - also outside [Dornach] - about what the difference is between the anthroposophical movement before the Christmas Conference and the one we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a kind of administrative body for anthroposophical teaching and content. Within the Anthroposophical Society, Anthroposophy was, so to speak, cultivated. Since Christmas anthroposophy is not only cultivated, it is also carried out; meaning that everything which passes through the Anthroposophical Society as activity, as thought, is anthroposophy itself.

The renewal which has taken place must be clearly grasped, my dear friends, and above all it must be grasped with deep earnestness. For a distinction exists between the Anthroposophical Society in general and this Esoteric School within the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society will, as a matter of course and according to the principle of openness, not be able to demand anything more from the members than that they honestly recognize what anthroposophy is and that they are in a certain sense listeners to what anthroposophy says; and that they receive from it what their hearts, their souls can make of it.

It is different as far as the School is concerned. Those who become members of this School declare that they want to be true representatives of the anthroposophical movement. In this Esoteric School, which will gradually be expanded to include three classes, the same freedom must of course apply as it does to every member of the Anthroposophical Society; but freedom must also apply for the Executive Council at the Goetheanum which is responsible for this School. In this case, it means that only those who are recognized by the School as true members can be recipients of what the School teaches.

Therefore, whatever a member of the School does should have the effect of reflecting on anthroposophy in the world; and it must belong to the competence of the Executive Council to remove a member if it considers that he cannot be a representative of the anthroposophical movement. The relationship must be mutual.

Therefore, more and more a serious, in a certain sense strict spirit will have to be utilized in the management of the School. Otherwise the anthroposophical movement cannot advance if we do not feel that the School is like building a rock to support anthroposophy. It is going to be very difficult and the members of this School must know that they must adapt to those difficulties. They are not merely anthroposophists, they are members of an Esoteric School.

And it must be an inner obligation to consider the Executive Committee, as it is presently constituted, as an esoteric entity. This is not generally understood. So something must be done to bring it to the members' attention. It is saying much that an Executive Committee has been esoterically formed.

Furthermore, all those who consider themselves to be legitimate members of this School see the School as not having been founded by men, but in fact by the will of the world's presently reigning spiritual powers; something which has been instituted from the spiritual world and which intends to act accordingly; which feels responsible to the spiritual world alone. Therefore, anything which indicates that a member is not taking the School seriously must lead to the cancellation of that person's membership.

It is a fact that negligence has entered into the Anthroposophical Society to a marked degree in recent years. That it ceases is one of the tasks for the members of this School. We want to feel responsible even for the words we speak. Above all we should feel responsible that every word we speak is tested to the extent that we know it is true. For untruthfulness, even when derived from what is called good intentions, is destructive in an occult movement. There must be no illusions about this; it must be completely clear. It is not a question of good intentions, which are often taken very lightly, but of objective truth. Among the first duties of an esoteric student is that he does not merely feel obliged to say what he thinks is true, but that he feels obliged to determine that what he says is really objectively true. For only when we serve the divine-spiritual powers - whose forces stream through this School - in the sense of objective truth, will we be able to steer through all the difficulties which will assail anthroposophy.

What I will now say is within the circle of the School, and what is said within the circle of the School remains within the circle of the School. We may not forget that many people are saying something like the following. Certain influential persons are saying: Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will do everything in their power to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent and out of them - I am only reporting - with the exception of the predominance of Prussia, to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire, which of course, when it is established by such prominence, will spread its power over the neighboring regions. Then - they say - we will need to completely destroy from the roots up the most dangerous, the worst movements. And, they add, if the reestablishment of the Holy Roman Empire is not successful, and it will be successful, but if not, we will find other means to completely destroy from the roots up the most resisting, the most dangerous movements of the present, and they are the anthroposophical movement and the movement for Religious Renewal [Christian Community].

I quote almost verbatim. And you can see that the difficulties are not less, but every week greater, that what I say is well founded. I wish today to speak from the heart to those who consider their membership in this School with heartfelt seriousness. Only by such earnestness as members of the School can we construct the necessary foundation for navigating through the future difficulties.

You can see from this that anthroposophy - the movement for religious renewal is only a branch of it - is taken more seriously by the opposition than by many of the members. Because when one can learn that the Holy Roman Empire, which fell in 1806, is to be reinstated in order to eliminate such a movement, that means that it is taken very seriously indeed. What is important is whether a movement is founded from the spirit and not, my dear friends, how many members it has, but which force is instilled in it directly from the spiritual world. The opponents see that it contains a strong inner force; therefore, they choose sharp, strong rather than weak means [to combat it].

*

The considerations of these Class lessons, my dear friends, have been primarily concerned with what can be told about the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, the encounter which is the first experience towards the attainment of real and true supersensible knowledge. Today I would like to add something to what has already been considered.

It is not possible to claim that the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold has been successful until one has experienced what it means to be outside the physical body with the human I and the astral body. Because when the human being is enclosed within the physical body, the only things he can perceive in his surroundings are those which he perceives with the instruments of his physical body. And through the instruments of the physical body only the sensible world can be perceived - which is a reflection of a spiritual world, one which does not, however, reveal to the senses what it is a reflection of.

Generally speaking, it is not difficult for a person to leave the physical body. He does so every time he falls asleep. He is then outside the physical body. But when he is asleep outside the physical body his consciousness is suppressed to the point of being unconscious. Only illusory - or perhaps even not illusory - dreams rise up from this unconsciousness. But through the attainment of higher knowledge leaving the physical body takes place in fully conscious deliberateness, so that when outside the physical body the person perceives his surroundings exactly as he perceives the physical world with his senses when within the physical body. He perceives the spiritual world while outside the physical body.

But the human being is at first unconsciously asleep. Under normal circumstances he is not aware of what he could see when outside the physical body. And the reason for this is that he is protected from approaching the spiritual world unprepared.

If he is sufficiently prepared, what happens then? When he is at the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world, the Guardian of the Threshold extracts his true human essence - assuming he is prepared as described in the previous lessons - which can then fly over the abyss with the means indicated in the mantric verses. And then from beyond the threshold he can behold his own sensory physical being.

That is the first powerful impression of true knowledge, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to the human being: See, that is how you are over there, as you appear in the physical world; here with me you are as your inner being really is.

And now meaningful words sound out again from the Guardian of the Threshold - that the person is called upon, now that he is on the other side of the abyss, how differently he sees himself on the other, physical side. He sees himself differently. He sees himself as a tripartite being. He sees himself as a tripartite being which expresses itself psychically in thinking, feeling and willing. In reality they are three humans: the thinking one, the feeling one, the willing one, which exist in every person and are only held together in one by the physical body in the physical world. And what the person sees there resounds from the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following way:

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human form have got.

Or also “human imprint”; one must translate the words from the occult language.

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard:]

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

The Guardian of the Threshold is indicating here how the Three - which separate from each other once the person leaves the physical body - how the Three look in relation to the physical body. Thevision is directed to the physical body, to the head, heart and limbs, and the Guardian of the Threshold says: If you observe the human head in its true cosmic significance, it is a mirror image of the heavenly universe. You must look into the distance, where the universe seems to reach its boundary. (In reality it is bounded by the spirit, not as it naively appears physically to be.) In looking up you must recall that your round head is a true image of the heavenly universe. And we add here, being conscious of the mantric words:

“Experience the head's cosmic form”

The sign is added here [in front of the above line]:

which encourages us to pause at this line of the mantric verse in order to envision the upward direction to the cosmic vastness, and of course that direction is always upward from anywhere on the earth.

“Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”

Through this cosmic-heavenly place the cosmic rhythm resounds as cosmic music. When we hear the human heart beating it seems as if this human heart were only beating as a result of the human organism's interior processes. In reality what beats in the heart is the counterpoint of the cosmic rhythm which has circulated not only for thousands but for millions of years. Therefore, pause again - the Guardian of the Threshold says - at the words “Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”, and feel what works in the heart upward as well as downward.

[The corresponding sign is drawn:]

The triangle pointing downward combines with the one pointing upward.

“Think the limbs' cosmic force”

This cosmic force is the one concentrated from below by gravity and other earthly forces. In our thinking - which as earthly thinking is only capable of understanding the earthly - we must look downward to grasp what streams out from the earth to work in man. Now we pause again at “Think the limbs' cosmic force” in the triangle pointing downward:

And we will feel the Guardian's words as they should affect the human heart, the human soul today if one activates this mantric verse in the appropriate way.

Experience the head's cosmic form.

The verse is spoken while making the sign before the head:

Feel the heart's cosmic pulse

One speaks the verse while making the sign before the breast:

Think the limbs' cosmic force

One speaks the verse while making the sign pointing downward:

And you should then try, after letting these mantric verses work on the soul, to make the senses subdued, close the eyes, hear nothing with the ears, perceive nothing and have darkness around you for a while, so that you are living totally in the atmosphere through which these words pass. And in this way you will transport yourself to the sphere in initiation which in all reality can be realized during the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. This is one of the ways by which one can take the first step beyond the threshold.

But we must let the Guardian's next words work upon us with great earnestness. These words indicate that once we have crossed the threshold everything is different from the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that the site of thinking and mental images is the human head. And so it is, for the sensory world. But this thinking in the head is always mixed a little bit with willing, something which is also perceptible for normal consciousness. Because when we move from one thought to another we must use the will just as we use it when moving an arm or a leg, or when willing in general. But it is a fine, delicate willing which transfers one thought to another. When we are in the sensory world the whole extent of thinking and a small amount of willing are bound together in the head. As soon as we cross over the Threshold and encounter the Guardian it is the reverse: a small amount of thinking and much widespread willing is bound to the head. And in this willing, which otherwise sleeps in man, we sense the spirit which forms the head from out of the cosmos, the heavens, as it's spherically-shaped mirror image in all its details.

Therefore, once we have crossed beyond the threshold, the Guardian calls out the following words:

[The new mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it

And now we see that willing is something quite different from what it previously was. Previously the senses were the transmitters of sense-impressions, and one was not aware that the will goes through the the eyes, through the ears, that the will goes through the sense of warmth, and through every other sense as well. Now we see that everything the eye experiences as multiple colors, what the ear hears as multiple sounds, what man perceives as warmth and cold, as rough and smooth, smells and tastes etc., is all will in the spiritual world.

[writing continues:]

And willing provides you with
The senses' multiple heaven-weaving

If on seeing the head from the other side of the threshold one recognizes how will goes through the head and how the senses represent will, then he will realize how the heart contains the soul and how one can feel the soul within the heart just as he can will the head's spirit when observing the head. And now we know that when thinking is not considered as a function of the head, but as a function of the heart, of the soul, we realize that thinking does not belong to an individual, but to the world; then one experiences cosmic-life, the music of the spheres.

[The second verse is written on the blackboard.]

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling provides you with
Thinking's germinal-waking cosmic-life.
You live in the shining.

not in the unsubstantial shining, but the shining where the essence of the world appears.

The head's spirit,
You're able to will it;
And willing provides you with
The senses' manifold heavenly weave.

summing up in the line:

You weave in wisdom.

Summing up what pertains to the heart's soul and feeling in the line:

You live in the shining.

Just as you recognize the senses as will, you also recognize thinking as feeling in respect to cosmic being, when you consider the Three, which only in the sensory world are One.

And thirdly the Guardian of the Threshold adds:

[The third verse is written on the blackboard.]

The limbs' strength,
You can think it.

Now we have a complete reversal. Whereas normally we consider thinking to be concentrated in the head, here [in the first verse] it is the will, as I previously explained, that is concentrated in the head. Feeling stays in the heart, where it is also felt to be in the sensory world; for the inner force of the heart goes over to the spiritual world.

The limbs' strength,

You can think it.

Now thinking is brought directly into connection with the limbs, the opposite of the sensory world.

[Writing continues.]

And thinking gives you
Human striving's goal oriented will;

thus, willing becomes thinking,

You strive in virtue.

Thus, we have the complete reversal in the spiritual world as revealed to us by the Guardian of the Threshold. Whereas we normally differentiate willing, feeling, thinking from below upward in man, on the other side [of the threshold] we differentiate man as a Three: will above in the head, feeling in the middle, thinking below at the limbs.

We realize then how willing, concentrated in the head, is the weaving cosmic wisdom in which we live; how feeling is the cosmic shining in which all the spirit-beings glow; and how thinking, observed in the limbs, is human striving, which can be lived as human virtue. And the Three appear before spiritual vision thus:

The mantric verse is built thus. And we must be aware of this inner congruence, and also aware that if we let this mantric verse work on us the following will penetrate our being:

[These three lines are underlined in yellow.]

These then are the Guardian of the Threshold's words which accompany our spiritual vision of the Three, which derive from the One, when we cross over into the world beyond the threshold:

These are the sensations which must flow through the soul if real knowledge is to be obtained; these are the admonitions which the Guardian of the Threshold lets resound at the moment when he also tells us:

[Written on the blackboard:]

Those are the words which for thousands and thousands of years have resounded at all the gates to the spiritual world, admonishing and yet encouraging:

Just imagine, my sisters and brothers, that you say to yourselves for the first time: I want to take the Guardian of the Threshold's words seriously; I recognize that I was not yet a human being; I recognize that I will become one through insight into the spiritual world.

Imagine, my dear sisters and brothers, you say the second time: Oh, I didn't take the words seriously enough the first time; I must admit that I need not one, but two of the stages from where I am now in order to become a true human being.

And imagine you say the third time: I recognize that I need three of the stages from the point where I now stand, at which I am not a true human, in order to become a true human being.

The first admonition, which you give to yourself, is earnest. The second admonition is more earnest. But the third admonition must bear the most earnest impression of all. And if you can awaken this threefold admonition of earnestness from the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means to become a true human being through knowledge. And then you will return to the first admonition - as we will also do now - as a transforming verse in our souls.

Thus, my sisters and brothers, has it resounded in the hearts of all who have striven for knowledge ever since there have been human beings on the earth.

There has been a pause in the striving since the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. According to the will of the divine-spiritual entities who guide humanity, the pause has come to an end. Now it is up to you to make human hearts open again in a worthy way to what the wise guides of humanity raise up to the vision of what works in the world as spirit, what as spirit works in the world in humanity, as the crown of existence.

Today I would like to talk about an important concept in esoteric science, the connection between microcosm and macrocosm. Within esoteric science, there are various fundamental concepts that run like leitmotifs through the entire esoteric movement. One of these is the concept of rhythmic number, another is that of microcosm and macrocosm. The mystery of number is expressed in the fact that certain phenomena succeed each other in such a way that the seventh repetition can be designated as the conclusion of an event, the eighth as the beginning of a new event. This fact is reflected in the physical world in the relationship between the octave and the fundamental. For those who seek to penetrate into occult worlds, this principle becomes the basis for a comprehensive world view. Not only are the tones arranged according to the law of number, but so are the events in time. The events of the spiritual world are arranged in such a way that a relationship is found as in the rhythm of the tone.

Even more important is the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. We find the sensory image of this at every turn. If we look at the relationship between the whole plant and the germ, we see a macrocosm in the whole plant and a microcosm in the germ. In a sense, the forces that are distributed throughout the whole plant are concentrated in the germ as if at a single point. In a similar way, we can understand the development of the individual human being from childhood to old age as a microcosm, and the development of a nation as a macrocosm. Every nation has a childhood in which it absorbs important cultural elements. The ancient Romans, for example, absorbed Greek culture. A nation grows and draws the forces for its further development from within itself. It is therefore important that the members of a nation go through what the whole nation goes through. They are to their nation as the germ is to the plant. The relationship between microcosm and macrocosm is found to the highest degree in man, as he appears to us in the sense world, and the cosmos. Just as he stands before us in the sense world, he has drawn together the forces of the universe within himself, just as the forces of the whole plant are drawn together in the germ.

We can now ask ourselves: Are these forces in man also distributed in some way throughout the macrocosm, just as the forces of the plant germ are distributed throughout the whole plant? Only esoteric science can give us an answer to this, because within earthly life, man only gets to know himself as a microcosm. But he does not only live in the microcosm, he also has a life in the universe.

At first this seems to be no more than an assertion, that in the experience of waking and sleeping, man alternates between a life in the microcosm and a life in the macrocosm. When he sinks into sleep, consciousness ceases to function, affects cease to be there for him. An external science will seek in vain to find within the sleeping person what constitutes his soul life in the waking state. But it is logically impossible to think that when a person falls asleep, his soul life is destroyed and that it comes out of nowhere when he wakes up. In the not too distant future, external science will admit that one can no more recognize the soul life from external material facts than one can know the lungs by knowing the laws of oxygen. To do this, we study the lungs in their organic functions. Thus we also recognize that in the external laws there is nothing of the physical life that we inhale when we awaken and exhale when we fall asleep. For the occultist, falling asleep and waking up is nothing other than breathing. With every morning, man takes in spiritual-soul substance through breathing and exhales it again when he falls asleep. Where is this spiritual-soul substance when man is in a state of sleep, corresponding to the air in the room that he has exhaled? Occult science shows us that it is enveloped by the atmosphere of the spiritual world, just as we are enveloped by the atmosphere of air, only that the latter extends only a few miles, while the former fills the universe.

If we consider the amount of air that a person has inhaled into their body, we can compare it to the entire atmosphere: the same amount that is in the human body after inhalation is part of the atmosphere after exhalation. In the sense of occultism, we can say that after inhalation it is in the microcosm and after exhalation it is in the macrocosm. Likewise, the soul-spiritual life that is active within our body, from waking to sleeping in the microcosm, from sleeping to waking in the macrocosm. Just as external physical science teaches us the existence of the physical atmosphere, so occult science speaks of the spiritual macrocosm that receives our soul during sleep.

Spiritual science is acquired through spiritual methods: initiation. The life of our soul within the microcosm is shown to us by daily experience; we get to know the life within the spiritual-soul macrocosm through initiation. This science must be spoken of first if the transition from microcosm to macrocosm is to be understood. This science takes on a special significance because in it we enter the spiritual world after death. Crossing the threshold of death only means that the soul leaves the body for good. The method of initiation teaches the soul intimate exercises. Just as we act on our physical environment in our daily lives, we must enable our soul to act spiritually and soulfully on the macrocosm and to receive impressions from it. We must seek to free our spiritual and soul forces that are bound to our physical life. In our ordinary lives, three soul forces are connected to the body, and these are released through initiation. The first soul force is the power of thought. In our ordinary lives, we use this to form thoughts and to imagine the things around us. Let us try to put ourselves in the shoes of this power of thought. What happens when we think and imagine? Even physical science will admit that every time we think of something sensual, a process of destruction takes place in our brain. We have to destroy fine structures of the brain, and fatigue shows this sufficiently. What is destroyed by everyday thinking is restored during sleep.

Through the method of initiation, we attain a state in which we free the power of thought from the physical brain: then nothing is destroyed. We achieve this in meditation, concentration, contemplation. These are certain processes in our soul that differ from ordinary soul life. The images and soul processes that fill us in our ordinary life are not very suitable for creating meditation in our soul; we have to choose others for this. To speak in concrete terms, an example will be given. Imagine two glasses, one empty, the other half full. Then imagine that we are pouring water from the half-filled glass into the empty one, and now imagine that the half-filled glass is becoming fuller and fuller. The materialist finds such a thing foolish. But in a meditation suitable for meditation, it is not about something in the physical sense of the word, but about something that forms soul perceptions. Precisely because such a perception does not refer to anything real, it distracts our minds from the real. But it can be a symbol, namely for the soul process that is linked to the secret of love. In the process of love, it is like a half-filled glass from which one pours into an empty one, and which thereby becomes fuller. The soul does not become emptier, it becomes fuller to the extent that it gives. This symbol can have such a meaning.

When we treat such an idea by turning all the powers of our soul towards it, then this is meditation. We must forget everything else, including ourselves, when we are dealing with such an idea. Our entire soul life must be directed towards it for a long time, about a quarter of an hour. It is not enough to do such an exercise once or a few times; it must always be repeated. Depending on the disposition of the individual, it will become apparent that the soul life changes in the process. We notice that we develop a kind of thinking power that does not destroy the brain. Anyone who undergoes such a development will recognize that meditation does not cause fatigue and does not destroy the brain. It may seem contradictory that beginners fall asleep during meditation. But this is because in the beginning we are still attached to the external world and have not yet freed our thoughts from the brain. Once we have freed our thoughts from the brain through repeated efforts, we have achieved meditation without fatigue, and then a transformation occurs in our entire human life. Just as we were unconsciously outside the body during sleep, so now we are consciously outside the body. And just as we think of our ego in our skin during our daily lives, so after meditation we experience ourselves outside our body. The body becomes an object that we look at. But now we get to know it differently than in sleep. We get to know it like magnetic forces that chain us to our body. It is something we want to plunge into. And we recognize that these are the same forces that draw us to our physical body every morning, that we have drawn out of the spiritual world before birth, and that have caused us to seek out the currents of inheritance to find a new body. We thereby experience why we feel drawn to our parents and ancestors.

We can exclude one idea, one soul experience, which is different from those we have when we pass from the microcosm to the macrocosm. When we look at the body from the macrocosm, we say of all experiences: This is outside of us. But if we have awakened the Paul experience in us, then we have developed a soul element that is already outside of us. When we are out of the body, we feel the Christ-experience as an inner one. This can be called the first encounter with the Christ impulse in the macrocosm. Now we have to discuss a second kind of initiation forces. Just as we can detach the power of thinking, we can also detach the power we use for linguistic expression. Materialistic science says that the motor speech organs have their center in the so-called Broca's area. But it was not Broca's organ that formed language, but language that formed Broca's organ.

The power of thought has a destructive effect, while language, which comes from our social environment, has a constructive effect. Now we can detach this power that Broca's organ builds up. We achieve this by permeating our meditation with emotional values. If I meditate: In the light shines wisdom - this too does not reflect an external truth, but it does have a deep meaning, a deep significance. If we imbue it with our feeling: We want to live with all the light that wisdom radiates - then we feel how we grasp the power that is otherwise expressed in the word and that now lives in our soul. When one speaks of golden silence, it refers to this: we have a power in our soul that creates the word. We can grasp it like the power of thought. Then we overcome time, just as we overcome space by grasping the power of thought. What is a remembering for everyday life up to childhood then extends to prenatal life. This is the way to gain experience about life from the last death until our present birth, and at the same time the way to understand the evolution of humanity. We understand the forces that guide the evolution of human history.

And we recognize life from birth to death. When we develop the power of the silent word, we recognize the spiritual foundation of life on earth. Here again we come across a historical event, the Mystery of Golgotha. For this is the way in which we find the ascending and descending evolution of humanity and the point where Christ incarnates. He is recognized as he is in his very own power. Just as we connect with the Christ through the liberation of thought, as he was on earth, so we connect with the Mystery of Golgotha through the liberation of the word. A special light thus falls on the first line of the Gospel of John.

Then a third power becomes independent through meditation. It takes hold not only of the brain and larynx, but also of the blood circulation and the heart. When it is working in a weak form, we feel it when we blush or turn pale. Then something soul-like takes hold of the pulsation of the blood and goes up to the heart. This soul power can be drawn out of the pulsation of the blood and become an independent soul power. This happens through meditation, where the will connects with meditation. We meditate: In the light shines wisdom. But we make the decision to connect our will with it in such a way that we want to go with this radiant wisdom in the evolution of humanity. When we arrive at this kind of will-meditation, we achieve an inflow of willpower into the soul. These forces can be grasped and drawn from the blood – although they cannot be drawn out completely – and then they form a clairvoyant power through which we can transcend our Earth. We learn to recognize our Earth as a re-embodied planet that will re-embody itself and we human beings with it. Thus we grow through the spiritual and soul world into the macrocosm. In a sense, we experience how life between death and birth must be opposite to life in an incarnation. For what man experiences after 'death', freed from the body, that is what the initiate experiences. Let us take the main characteristic of what was presented to us in the body-free state. It is the same experience as in the life after death. Living in the microcosm, we perceive through the physical organ of the senses. After death, we look at the body like the initiate. One cannot perceive what the sense organs perceive. The initiate can recognize the life between death and new birth because he has already found the transition from microcosm to macrocosm here.

In the ordinary language of man, one cannot talk to the dead. But when we have liberated the power of speech, we can see how we are with the dead. By liberating the power of thought, we can talk to those who are between death and rebirth.

Let me give you an example: a seer was able to talk to a deceased person. He had been an excellent man, but he had only taken care of his family in a material sense. He had no religious or anthroposophical ideas. The seer was able to learn the following from the man: “I know that I lived with my family, with my loved ones, and they were my sunshine. They still live now, I know that, but I only see them up to the point when I left the earth. No connection can be established with them. The circumstances are complicated after death. The seer was able to see the following: The woman still showed something of the effects of her husband's influence in her nature. The man could see these effects, but not as one sees a person, but as in a mirror: there is indeed seeing, but it is as if one were only seeing an image in a mirror. This seems gruesome because one cannot really see the person as he is. Just as we see the physical in the life of the senses, so must we be able to see the soul afterwards. But just as we cannot see a candle in a dark room if it is not lit, so here too is the recognition subdued, darkened. Yet a connection is still possible between the dead person and the person on earth if the latter imbues himself with spiritual life. This is the basis for the benefit we can do for the dead. Someone has passed through the gate of death, with whom we have common interests: we can read to him. We imagine that he is in front of us, we read to him quietly, and we can also send him thoughts. But he will only receive an impression if we send him ideas and concepts with spiritual life. The task of anthroposophy will be understood when we understand that we have to remove the abyss that separates us from the dead.

Even a soul that was opposed to anthroposophy can feel a benefit from such reading aloud. In our soul life, two sides can be distinguished: what we consciously experience and the soul's undercurrents, which, like the depths of the sea, only express themselves in the waves on the surface. Thus we can experience that, for example, one of two brothers becomes an anthroposophist and the other an opponent of anthroposophy. This can only be a fact of the external world. The inner process is as follows: there is a deep longing for something religious, and the only way to numb oneself to this is to reject anthroposophy. The conscious idea is only an opiate to forget what is going on in the depths. Death removes all this and we then hunger precisely for what we unconsciously long for. That is why reading anthroposophical writings aloud is such a blessing for us. Gradually, we become aware of our connection with the dead. But even before we have this feeling, we risk nothing more than the dead person not listening to us when we read to him. Thus we see that through the living comprehension of the anthroposophical teaching, the dead and the living, microcosm and macrocosm, come into connection.

This also happens in another area. When the seer observes the sleeping, he sees: souls pass through the gate of sleep that never have spiritual interests, and others that absorb spiritual thoughts during the day. — There is a difference: the sleeping souls are like germs in the field. Famine would occur in the spiritual world if no spiritual thoughts were taken across. The dead feed on the spiritual and anthroposophical ideas that the dying bring with them. If we do not carry spiritual concepts with us when we fall asleep, we deprive the dead of nourishment. By reading to them, we give them spiritual stimulation; with the spiritual ideas that we carry with us when we fall asleep, we give the dead nourishment.

Through what a person creates in his soul, he becomes a bridge from the microcosm to the macrocosm. What we acquire is like a seed. I would like to describe the living, not just the theoretical mission of anthroposophy as follows: Theory is transformed into elixir of life, immortality becomes an experience. Just as the seed guarantees the germination of another seed, we develop spiritual and soul forces that guarantee our return in a subsequent earthly life. We not only comprehend, we experience immortality within us. From the moment our hair turns grey, we experience that which passes through the gate of death. In this sense, anthroposophy will become the elixir of life, just as blood courses through our physical body. Only then will anthroposophy be what it is meant to be. When we learn to recognize this and want to summarize it in a basic feeling, in the basic feeling that the human soul is connected to the spiritual world as our physical body is to the physical world, then the human being experiences:

The following speaks to the human mind:
The beings in the expanse of space,
They change over the course of time.
The human soul, experiencing,
From the expanse of space, unlimited
And unperturbed by the passage of time,
Into the realm of eternity.

We have been endeavouring, as Christmas has drawn near, to enter into that spirit which also from the anthroposophical standpoint may be called the true spirit of Christmas. We have been seeking to realise that there is an interpretation of the Christmas Festival, which in a measure enables us to bring the spirit of Christmas to bear on everything of importance that happens to a man during the year. The celebration of the Christmas Festival, in the true anthroposophical spirit, is a matter of the utmost importance to the anthroposophist, especially at the present time. And what else could this mean, this ‘celebration of Christmas in the true anthroposophical spirit,’ but that all the year round we should set before ourselves, in fervency of soul, the endeavour to fulfil our spiritual duty towards the present stage of human evolution; and to this end we must understand the task of humanity in our time and continually enrich our souls through experiences drawn from the spiritual world. This is to be our aim, in order that we may be able, that we may have the right to belong to those whose task it is to accomplish the necessary spiritual work in the next epoch of humanity. Thus the whole year through, we seek to fill our thoughts with what Anthroposophy has to give us, to open our hearts to anthroposophical wisdom. And when the year draws to its close (and even outwardly this season has a symbolical importance, for in the outside world, owing to the limited power of the sun’s rays, an excess of darkness prevails), then, at this Festival time, let us try to understand how we may connect our Christmas Celebration with the anthroposophical year that is past. Let us be continually realising afresh that anthroposophical truth, in its entirety, must be permeated and illumined by that mighty Impulse which we call the Christ-Impulse! If we try in this way to inscribe the anthroposophical truths in our hearts and souls, as the message of Christ Himself, then we can indeed say: At Christmas-time we anthroposophists must develop the spirit of Christmas by allowing all that we have learned during the whole year to be lighted up in our souls by means of deeper feelings, so that new force may be generated in us. We must be able to feel that we not only know something of anthroposophical wisdom, but that it penetrates our soul, our heart, becomes in us an illuminating, glowing force, which enables us during the coming year to fulfil our duty and to carry on our work in any sphere of life in which we may be placed. If we thus seek to transmute the holy truths of the Spirit into holy feelings, into holy force in our souls, then will be born in us, on a higher plane, that which we learn at first by means of the forces of this earthly world. For this reason we ought, ever more and more, to call to mind those occasions upon which one or another of the human family strove to rise to those spiritual realms where the Christ Himself is to be found. The truly Christian poet, Novalis, has already guided us, during this Christmas-time, into these realms of spirit. And again to-day a little of that anthroposophical Christmas spirit just described—the kindling of feeling by means of those rays of warmth—may well be sought in the writings of a truly anthroposophical poet, such as Novalis was. Let us turn to Novalis.

We may perhaps most effectually realise, in the various forms in which Novalis gives us his rarest wisdom, how we may be enabled, through Anthroposophy, to fill life with a new glory. All around us life is rushing by, and our own work forms part of this modern whirl of life. When, through Anthroposophy, we gain the power of bringing wisdom down from the spiritual world, we shall gild the whole of life with the gold of anthroposophical wisdom, however prosaic circumstances may appear. This we must learn. We shall see that life becomes filled with a new glory, if each year we allow the anthroposophical Christmas-spirit to enter into our souls; if we, so to speak, allow Anthroposophy to be re-born within us at Christmas-time, as feeling and perception. We shall then feel how impossible it is, if we want to live here in the ordinary world, to attain, even in small degree, to spiritual perception. There is much to-day which hinders a man from unfolding his wings in order to rise to the spiritual world! Let me tell you briefly something which we may regard to a certain extent as symbolical.

Many of us, who come to Anthroposophy, may say: Ah! everything which it offers to me would be beautiful, would be glorious; it warms my heart and fills my soul with love, but I cannot believe it! I am bound by what I have learned in the outer world, by the prejudices which I have acquired. ‘That is mere idle fancy,’ say these prejudices: ‘These things do not rest on any sure foundation!’ Many a man is thus thrown into bitter doubt. If he could only rise above the prejudices of the outer world, by which he is so beset at the present time, if he could only feel himself free in the pure ether of the spirit, he would know himself to be in touch with spiritual forces, and he would be able to make use of these forces in his daily work. The following little event may serve as an illustration of that attitude of mind, which prevents the ordinary man of the present day from perceiving, without prejudice or hindrance, all that Anthroposophy is able to provide for heart and soul.

There lived a man in the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, the German Count Hardenberg. He had a son, whom we know as Novalis, and we have been able to admit in intimate anthroposophical circles, that the poems and deep wisdom given to the world by this son sprang from a soul which was the reincarnation of significant and powerful personalities, who had accomplished momentous things for the earth. But how was the father, surrounded as he was by the influences of the outer world, to recognise this soul in his son? How could he have even a suspicion of the spirit, which was able to express itself in the soul of this son? He was as unable to free himself from the prejudices of the material world and his connection with the actualities of life around him, as many to-day, who are influenced by the prejudices of our time, are unable to perceive the impelling force of the spiritual wisdom of Anthroposophy. The old Hardenberg would have had to free himself, as it were, from harshness in his misunderstanding of his son; he would have had to rise above a completely material life, before he could feel, within his Moravian Community, anything of a deeply religious spirit—or, as one might perhaps say, ‘A knowledge of the universal spirit as it was understood in the olden days.’ Those traditional, authoritative influences which are operative within such a community were necessary in order that his inmost soul might be affected by that true Christian spirit, which can only be understood when it has received anthroposophical inspiration.

Old Hardenberg had once a remarkable experience of the breath of that Christian spirit, when he and others were assembled in the Moravian Church, and they began to sing one of their hymns. By means of this hymn, the origin of which he did not know, there came to him a breath from the eternal world. He was deeply moved by the hymn beginning:

Without Thee, where should I have ended,
Without Thee, what should I have done?

He perceived something which hitherto he had been unable to perceive! The service came to an end. Old Hardenberg went out and asked some of his fellow-worshippers: ‘Who then is the writer of this glorious poem?’ ‘It was written by your son,’ was the reply. Old Hardenberg, freed from all the associations of the ordinary world, undisturbed by the prejudices of the physical plane, had felt the compelling power of the spiritual life. But his son, as far as his physical body was concerned, had already been in his grave for some months. For this experience only came to old Hardenberg some months after the death of Novalis. Only when his surroundings were such as enabled him for a short time to escape from all his preconceived physical-plane ideas, was he borne upwards into the spiritual heights, and realised their constraining force—that constraining force which we ought to feel, untroubled by all the prejudices of the material world. Let us rise above the materialistic prejudices of the present day! Let us feel the constraining force of the spiritual life, and let power and warmth flow from it into our hearts! If we do this, we shall then fulfil our duty towards the humanity of the present day. Through this illustration, taken from a real experience of Novalis’ father, I wished to lead you into that spirit to which we now want to attain, by means of the strong, anthroposophical forces which lie in the songs of Novalis. (Here follow readings from Novalis’ ‘Spiritual Songs.’)

This time of Festival perhaps makes it easier not only to understand and to know, but to feel and to realise, all that we have been considering, through so many anthroposophical hours, in connection with our Gospels. And we know that a large part of the time which we had at our disposal during this past year, was devoted to this Gospel study. There are still further important deductions to be drawn from our study of the Gospels, and now, in the short lecture to-day, in which we must still think of our Christmas Festival, let us realise what is associated with that Event—the Christ-Event—which should be so vividly before us at Christmas-time.

Consideration of the Christ-Event enables us to estimate very fully the significance and force of the anthroposophical conception of the universe, as it affects the present time, and also the future of humanity. If we allow ourselves to be influenced by the same deep feeling for the Christ-Event, which filled the soul of Novalis, we shall continually be constrained to ask ourselves afresh: ‘How can that mighty impulse, which entered into mankind when Christ was born in Palestine, become more and more a reality to us?’ At the present time we are right in associating Anthroposophy with the Christ-Event. Could we but show how the different streams of human spiritual life, which existed before the time of Christ, were united in the Event of Palestine, we could also show how great a number of people have, at the best, but a dim idea of the Event of Palestine, and how it will only gradually be possible to understand it, in its full power and significance, in the far future, when men come to seek a more spiritual view of life. For however great may be the wisdom gained in the course of the evolution of the earth, this wisdom will only find its deepest fulfilment as it makes itself into an instrument for the understanding of what the Christ-Impulse really is. We are thus faced with the immediate necessity of bringing direct spiritual experience to bear upon the Christ-Event. At the time in which Christ walked on earth in bodily form, humanity received the great and powerful impulse to rise again into the spiritual world, but even now this impulse is only apprehended, in its true form, by those souls who are fitted to receive it. On the other hand, as though to complete the measure of that which must be overcome, humanity has continued to descend more and more deeply into materialism. Man’s whole existence is, in fact, a descent into matter. During the post-Atlantean time also, man has become ever more and more immersed in matter. The Christ-Event signified the impulse which enables men once more to ascend, but this empowering impulse has as yet been but little realised. On the other hand, the descent into matter, even during the time since Christ, has manifested itself ever more and more forcibly, and, as the result of this descent, the whole thinking, feeling, and perception of man have been injuriously affected. To-day we are already living in an age in which materialistic investigation is brought to bear on our understanding of the Christ-Event. And since we are met for serious thought, it is fitting to refer to such a serious matter as this application of materialistic investigation even to the most spiritual event that has ever happened on the earth. We see that the materialistic theology of the present day states on the authority of so-called ‘higher criticism,’ that it is impossible to give any proof of an outward historical Christ, and there are already theologians who say: ‘Higher criticism compels us to admit, that “ historically ” it cannot be proved that, at the beginning of our era, there lived in Palestine One of whom the Gospels proclaim such mighty facts, and from whom such mighty impulses appear to have been poured into the spiritual life of humanity.’ Thus Science to-day, as a result of its methods, seems to feel called upon to do away with the historical Christ. On this account, we need to remember that Spiritual Science, in accordance with its principles, is now being called upon to prove the historical Christ Jesus. The faith of men does not depend upon the truths belonging to any particular branch of learning. Illustration after illustration could be given to prove how threadbare such learning is. But people may spend their lives without perceiving that such proofs exist. Thus also in the future (and this will be the case for a long time to come) an ever-increasing number of people will follow the line of materialistic thought and will be influenced more and more by the belief that the true historical method must needs deny the certainty of an historical Christ Jesus. Science would seem to abolish that for which we are hoping to obtain a new symbol in the light of golden wisdom. The time will surely come, in which Christ will only be known in circles such as this, where through the study of Spiritual Science light is thrown on the words: ‘I am with you al way even to the end of the world,’ and where those who are able to investigate for themselves, through spiritual vision, will know that He, from Whom the Christian impulse has gone forth, is ever to be found in the spiritual world, and that certainty with regard to the Christ-Event is to be obtained from within that spiritual world. Only in circles in which such spiritual truths are acknowledged will it be possible to reach the assurance of that for which this symbol is once more being sought. And the outer world will not accept any proof that the historical, the outer scientific method, is itself built on an uncertain foundation. Certainly those who are able to understand the nature and value of Science to-day know already how threadbare and unfounded its methods are, and therefore how little is proved when those who believe they are proceeding on strictly scientific lines come to the conclusion that history provides no proof that any of the persons, from Christ down to the Apostles, ever lived.

But it will be a long time yet before men free themselves from that belief in authority which does not appear to them to be belief in authority. The worst form of this belief exists at the present time. And men do not perceive that He Who really frees us from belief in authority, is He Who taught man to build in his inmost being on the power of his own Ego. He who has revealed to us what the Ego is capable of taking into itself can also show us how to find the source and the power of truth within our own being. With Christ within, we find truth within; with Christ within, we find the sure foundation for free and independent judgment, a foundation which is deeper than that of authority. But during this hour, when our thoughts are turned to the Christ-Event, let us give our earnest attention, in order that we may realise our calling as anthroposophists. Perhaps I should postpone for future lectures what I now propose to include here, were it not that it will be some time before we meet again. But I want to direct your attention to what the anthroposophist should recognise as one of the most significant signs of the time in which he is living, namely, the impossibility, so to speak, of the scientific methods of the present day. One cannot hope to convince those who wish to believe in the material science which in our time explains away even the historical Christ. But there must be some who, through the teaching of Anthroposophy, understand something of the way in which material science is failing in all departments and how, in the future, spiritual life alone can promote the welfare of mankind.

In current events people fail to see the most important point. A lawsuit was recently held in Vienna, in which the whole civilised world was interested. Because this lawsuit was considered of importance, the whole of Europe may be said to have assembled in order to gain information from it, but probably the most important thing which happened there passed unnoticed. And even if this most important point were put into words those, who were not anthroposophically prepared, would regard it as a mere fantasy. A certain professor of history was present, a man famous in Europe, esteemed by the rest of his profession, who had written important words in accordance with the strict methods of historical research—a ‘good dabbler in learning.’ This dabbler in learning became possessed of a series of documents, which had been handed over by one of the southern countries of Europe. These documents were to prove that there had been treachery in the south-east of Austria. Now who could be more fitted, according to present-day ideas, to put the matter to the test than a professor of history? A historian, before all others, ought to be called upon to examine the value of documents. All the beliefs of the world are founded on documents! Truth is determined by the testing of documents and the way in which they are applied and compared. The truth, even about the miracle of Christianity, can be reached in no other way! The historian and investigator into whose hands these documents fell, was also a pupil of the professor of history whom I like to call to mind when I think of my own young days. There were, at that time, two historians; the one carried on his investigations in accordance with the strictest methods of documental research, the other, his colleague, paid less heed to these strict methods and was more concerned in seeing that the candidates knew something of real historical events. Now it happened that the favourite pupil of this investigator of documents was to take his degree. He was examined first in the science of ancient documents, i.e., the science by means of which one learns to establish satisfactorily how to arrive at the truth through outward material means. For instance, he was asked in which Papal Document the dot over the i appeared for the first time. This is, of course, a very important piece of knowledge, and the candidate knew instantly that it was in the time of a certain ‘Innocent’ that the dot over the i first appeared. But the other historian, his colleague, then said: ‘May I now ask something of the candidate who knew so exactly when the dot over the i first appeared?’ ‘Can you tell me, sir, when the Pope, in whose documents the dot over the i first appeared, ascended the Papal throne?’ No, he did not know that. ‘Do you know then, perhaps, when he died?’ No, he did not know that either. ‘Now tell me something else about this Pope.’ He knew nothing! Then said the Professor, whose favourite pupil he was, ‘Really, sir, it seems as if you are very stupid to-day.’ To which the other rejoined, ‘But, my dear colleague, he is your favourite pupil! Who then has made him very stupid?’

The historian in question had not, at that time, proceeded far on the path of learning. But he became an able student of ancient documents, capable of establishing the truth with regard to times far past, by means of historical investigation. So what more suitable person could be found to discover if there were any treachery in the documents which had been handed over to him from a most important quarter? In accordance with the methods of historical research he duly examined them, and in a public article made serious accusations against a number of people. This resulted in a lawsuit, and, during this lawsuit, one of the most important documents was proved to be an altogether clumsy forgery. The whole point lay in the fact that a certain personality ought to have taken the chair at the meeting of a society in a certain town; but on making inquiry, it was ascertained that this man had been elsewhere during the time in question.

We see here the methods of historical research at work on documents dealing with events of the present day and the only result in this case was that these methods were turned to a laughing-stock. The important point to which I alluded is this: not that any man, or men, were condemned, but that the historical, scientific method was completely condemned. And this was the really significant point which a modern lawsuit brought to light. We ought therefore seriously to face the question: What is a method worth, which sets out to decide whether something took place eighteen or nineteen centuries ago, when it is not in the position to discover anything about the plainest modern affairs? Here Science itself was brought to judgment and this is a fact that should be recognised! A science, arising out of the materialistic prejudices of the present day, will always be brought to judgment, if people are so indolent that they accept authorities without knowing what they are. The present day demands that we should know what our authority is. If, with an earnest belief in a spiritual philosophy, we give ourselves to the study of what is known to-day as Science, we shall see how it vanishes, how it proves to be built on sandy foundations and falls to pieces when we really set to work upon it earnestly. But men are not willing to regard the things of the present day from the spiritual standpoint. Men are not conscientious enough (that is, those who are outside anthroposophical life) to judge for themselves as to the character of these methods, which force materialistic, authoritative opinion into the minds of men. Hence for a long time to come, except within the intimate circle of anthroposophical influence, there will be no possibility of perceiving, in its true form, that which is for the highest welfare of mankind. And as Science increasingly questions and does away with that which took place in Palestine and which we symbolically bring to life anew in our hearts every year, then the anthroposophical, spiritual world-movement will provide a place in which the power of the Event in Palestine will shine forth ever more and more clearly and from this centre there will stream forth again into the rest of humanity that life which can only proceed from this Event. What can develop in our souls through a true inner experience of the Event of Palestine?

‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’

We may look upon this as the fundamental word of Christ Jesus. That is to say, Christ Jesus lived in Palestine in bodily form at the beginning of our era. Since that time He is to be found in the spiritual world; for He has united Himself with the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. He became ‘The Spirit of the Earth,’ If we seek Him within the spiritual atmosphere of our Earth, we find Him there. He permeates the whole life of our Earth ever more and more. But what are men to gain through the continual indwelling of the Christ- Spirit? If we want to understand clearly what men are to gain in the future through the dwelling of the Christ-Spirit in their souls, then we must continue what has been already attempted for some time in our anthroposophical movement. What we are doing in this movement has not arisen from any arbitrary spirit—not from any programme drawn up merely by this or that man. Spiritual life is traced back ultimately to those sources which we seek in the individualities whom we call the ‘Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling.’ Through them, if we search rightly, we shall find the impulse which will enable us to work as we ought to work, from epoch to epoch, from age to age.

A great impulse has recently come to us from the spiritual world and today, on this solemn Christmas evening, let us refer to this momentous impulse—a direction, so to speak, which has come to us during recent years from the spiritual world. It is through this impulse that our anthropsophical movement here in Central Europe has developed. We might describe this impulse in human words somewhat in the following manner:

‘Look at what is happening in the outer world: the words of the Gospels are becoming more and more misunderstood! They are being explained childishly, they are being tested by outward historical methods. The spiritual investigator must for a time disregard all merely outward history. What is necessary now is that the Gospels should again be understood quite literally, for it is through the literal understanding of them that the real depths of their Wisdom are reached.’

The spiritual world has directed us to become acquainted once more with the literal meaning of the Gospels, to understand what is contained in the actual wording of them. And all that we have attempted in our study of the Gospels of St. John, St. Luke and St. Matthew and which we hope still to attempt in our consideration of the Gospel of St. Mark, has arisen from this impulse, as it developed and took shape. We ought to try once again to understand the Gospels literally! This we are told by those who have given us this impulse from the spiritual world. Such is the ‘coming Christianity,’ the following of this impulse to understand the Gospels in their literalness. And what shall we gain through the literal understanding of the Gospels, through giving heed to the instruction of the Spiritual Powers who have spoken from the astral plane with such clearness as would scarcely be possible a second time in one century? We shall gain what is necessary if we desire to make ourselves into instruments which shall be able to guide the coming era of humanity in the right way, able to direct that which requires guidance and instruction in the world around us.

When we look back on the evolution of mankind in the remote past, we know that the human ego was not yet fully developed. As we trace back the evolution of man, we come to the Group-soul. A certain number of human beings had at that time an Ego-soul in common, just as animals still have a group-soul to-day. We find this in every race. Thus we know that humanity has developed itself from the group-soul consciousness and at the time when Christ came down to our Earth humanity had reached the point in which the old group-souls were beginning to lose their significance. The old group-souls had withdrawn. Every man was now called upon to develop his own individual soul, his true individuality. And who brought that which was to be poured into the individual soul? It was brought by the Christ-Impulse! And the more we fill ourselves with the Christ-Impulse, the richer will our individuality become, so that those truths, which we need to carry over into the future, spring up within the Ego itself. At the present time we are at an important turning-point. Many are asking to-day: What does it mean, that we, anthroposophists, speak of reincarnation, when we have no recollection of any previous life? It is true, we have as yet no such recollection. But I have already pointed out, that if we take a four-year old child and say, ‘This is a human being, but he cannot reckon! that is no proof that human beings are unable to reckon. One must wait until the child has grown old enough to learn; in ten years he will be able to reckon I In the same way the human soul will so mature, that it will be able to remember past incarnations. Whether it will remember correctly or not is another matter.

We are at an important turning-point. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, Christ descended as that Impulse whereby man is enabled to realise his individuality as a self-dependent being. We are now in the fifth Period, the last in which men are unable to recall their former incarnations. In the sixth Period, which will succeed our own, men will have the power to recall the past. Whether they remember correctly depends upon how they receive into their souls to-day the impulse thereto: whether they make themselves capable of remembering in the right way. In the future only those will remember their present existence in the right way, who have taken into themselves the Christ- Impulse, the source of true individuality. On the other hand, those who do not appropriate this source of true individuality will form new group-souls. Look at the impulse there is in men to-day towards the group-soul spirit, although there is no need for it, when they might find instead the sources of truth springing up in their own souls. It is well-known how everybody wants to do as ‘they’, the other people, do. Men do not look for what is to be found in their own souls, but they follow that which leads them into companies and groups and we see them happiest when they can have, not truths which are independent, but those which are held in common with others. Yes, and what is more, people hate individuality and they think that through this hatred of what is individual they can forge the strongest weapon against such wisdom as the anthroposophical. For anthroposophical wisdom must shine forth in the soul of each individual, it cannot be forced upon us by lever and screw, or by means of the rack. All that Anthroposophy says must come to us without the help of any external instrument. We must each one of us appropriate its teachings for himself, without being persuaded through any outward means, because it belongs to the invisible world into which each one must enter through his own power of thought. Through anthroposophical wisdom a man becomes individual. If we receive this wisdom in the true individual way—i.e., permeated by the Christ-Impulse—then there sinks into our souls that which will enable us to recall, in the sixth Period, an individuality, which each man has for himself, which belongs exclusively to himself. On the other hand, the memory of those who to-day are seeking to live in the old group-soul spirit, will be such that the group-soul consciousness will still be present. They will remember their present incarnation in the sixth Period, but they will then see clearly that they made their judgment at that time dependent on the judgment of others. And it will be a fearful chain for a man to be obliged to feel himself as part of a group-soul consciousness.

The prospect of being bound to the group-soul consciousness threatens all those who are unable to receive the Christ-Impulse in our time. When we accept the Christ-Event, that Event which is the message to us of our human individuality, there enters into our souls the possibility of attaining the goal which humanity is to reach in the sixth Period—viz., that we should not look back to a group-soul consciousness, but to an individuality, permeated by the Christ. Thus he who comprehends Christianity in the right way to-day and understands how to inspire and permeate it with the spirit of Anthroposophy, will be enabled to rise to his full height and to be an instrument for work in the sixth Period.

That then is the question: whether we resolve to look back from our reincarnations in the sixth Period, upon our present ego as a non-individual, lacking in independence, bound up in the group-soul consciousness, or whether we desire to remember an ego, which has laid hold for itself of the source of spirituality in our Earth-evolution, which has laid hold of the great Word. Before all personality existed, before there was anything belonging to humanity upon the earth and ‘before Abraham was, was the I AM.’ That which lives within us is in close union with the Father-Spirit—something is brought to life in us through the understanding of the Christ-Impulse and it is this understanding alone which unites us consciously with the source of the universe. Thus the entering of the Christ-Impulse into our souls signifies the possibility of rising again in the sixth Period as individual beings who look back upon an independent existence. If we allow the Christ, truly understood, to be born within us, we shall be able to awaken the remembrance of this Christ in the sixth post-Atlantean Period. And if in the fifth Period, we celebrate a true Christmas Festival, we shall then be able to celebrate a true Easter Festival in the sixth Period. As the beautiful Christmas hymn sings in our hearts on Christmas night: ‘Unto you is born this day a Saviour, Christ, the Lord,’ so, in looking back to the birth of the Christ in our souls, we shall hear within ourselves the announcement of this true Higher Ego. We shall look back upon this, and shall allow the memory of it to arise as an Easter Festival within ourselves; and then we shall be able to hear the grand and beautiful strains of Easter music: ‘May the Christ arise in us, enkindling and illuminating our own divine individuality.’ In this way the Festivals of Christmas and Easter are linked together in the fifth and sixth Periods of our post-Atlantean epoch—this is how we must learn to understand what we are taught in the Gospels. We have already partially learned and we shall learn still further, how the forces of Buddha, of Zoroaster and those of the old Hebrew race, flowed together in Christianity, and how, as the Gospels also show, they were united in the Person of Jesus Christ. That which has lived and moved in the world in pre-Christian times, must now live in our own individuality: it must be born again, penetrated by the Christ- Impulse. We then celebrate the anthroposophical Christmas Festival in our own souls, the birth of Christ in ourselves. And if we carry this inner knowledge of the Christ through Kamaloka and Devachan and back into a new life on earth and ever again into new earthly existences, until the sixth Period is reached, we shall then remember what we experienced in the fifth Period, and shall thus celebrate in ourselves the Christian Easter Festival.

So, through the Christmas symbol, may that five in us symbolically, which we have been learning of late from the Gospels concerning the Mystery of Christ. So may these lights, now burning before us, incite us to give ourselves up to that impulse, which comes to us from the spiritual world: i.e., to understand the Gospels literally! And we look upon these outward lights as symbols of those lights which must be kindled in our souls and which, if they are kindled through the anthroposophical knowledge of Christ, will still bum in the sixth Period of the post-Atlantean epoch.

Let us feel, just at this Christmas Festival, that it is for us to resolve to become worthy instruments for the future evolution of humanity. Let us feel the full meaning and gravity of this anthroposophical resolve: we are not to be anthroposophists for our own sakes alone; but, taking into consideration what has just been said, we are to be anthroposophists from a sense of duty towards humanity. Let there shine down upon us symbolically from the Christmas-tree, the Light which can fill us with enthusiasm for our spiritual mission to the race. We shall then have understood something of that which can again give us strength in this New Year to become ever more and more familiar with anthroposophical life and anthroposophical wisdom.

The following are three addresses given to the children of the first Waldorf school at school assemblies in 1919 and 1920. In the Christmas assembly address Steiner also spoke to the parents who were in attendance. Steiner had previously assisted the industrialist Emil Molt in establishing the school for the children of the factory workers of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. He made frequent visits, traveling from Switzerland, to work with the faculty of the school and to view the students' progress. (A chapter from Molt's autobiography describing the opening of the school appeared in Issue No. 2 of The Threefold Review.)

What is most revealing in these addresses is how open and straightforward Steiner was concerning the Christian basis of the school. Even though Christ is central to Anthroposophy, the world view based on spiritual-scientific research and inaugurated by Steiner, Anthroposophy is open to everyone regardless of religious background. Waldorf schools, which are based on Anthroposophy, are also open to families of any religious background.

A universal approach to Christianity is elaborated by Steiner in the following passages:

“Would a Buddhist be justified in saying that he may not acknowledge Christ because nothing is said to this effect in his scriptures? Is anything essential at stake when a truth is not found in particular writings or scriptures? Would it be right for a Buddhist to say that it is against the principles of Buddhism to believe in the truth of the Copernican theory of the universe, for no mention of it is made in his books? What applies to the Copernican theory applies equally to the findings of modern spiritual-scientific research concerning the Christ-being, namely, that because He has nothing to do with any particular denomination, the Christ can be accepted by a Hindu or an adherent of any other religion. Those who reject what spiritual science has to say about the Christ impulse in relation to the religious denominations simply do not understand what the true attitude to religion should be.

“Perhaps some day the time will come when it will be realized that what we have to say about the nature of the Christ impulse and its relation to all religious denominations and world-conceptions speaks directly to the heart and soul, as well as [endeavors] to deal consistently with particular phases of the subject. It is not easy for everyone to realize what efforts are made to bring together things that can lead to the true understanding of the Christ impulse needed by man in the present cycle of existence. Avowal of the belief in Christ has nothing fundamentally to do with any particular religion or religious system. A true Christian is simply one who is accustomed to regard every human being as bearing the Christ principle in himself, who looks for the Christ in a Chinese, a Hindu, or whoever he may be. In a man who avows his belief in Christ is founded the realization that the Christ impulse is not confined to one part of the earth. To imagine it as confined would be a complete fallacy. The reality is that since the mystery of Golgotha, Paul's proclamation to the region with which he was connected has been true—Christ died also for the heathen. Humanity must learn to understand that Christ did not come for one particular people, one particular epoch, but for all the peoples of the earth, for all of them! Christ has sown His spirit-seed in every human soul, and progress consists in the souls of men becoming conscious of this.”¹

• 1. Life Between Death and Rebirth (Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, N.Y.,1968), pp. 50–51.

Yesterday we tried to gain a conception of the importance in human life of what may be termed the super-sensible revelation of our age. We indicated that this was to be reckoned the third revelation in the most recent cycle of mankind, and should, in a certain sense, be regarded as in sequence to the Sinai revelation and the revelation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. We ought not to look upon this feature of our age as something affecting us merely theoretically or scientifically; as Anthroposophists we must rise to an ever fuller realisation that men, in their evolution, are neglecting something essential if they hold aloof from all that is being announced to us now and will be announced in the future. It is quite appropriate that at first the external world should pass this by, or even treat it as sheer fantasy; and quite natural also that, to begin with, many people should not pay attention to the harmful consequences of disregarding what is here in question. But Anthroposophists should be clear that the souls in human bodies to-day, irrespective of what they absorb at present, are approaching an ineluctable future. What I shall have to say concerns every soul, for it is part of the whole trend of change in our time.

The souls incorporated to-day have only recently advanced to the stage of that genuine ego-consciousness which has been in preparation during the course of evolution ever since the old Atlantean period. But for the people of those ancient days, up to the time when the great change was intimated by the Mystery of Golgotha, this ego-consciousness was gradually freeing itself from a consciousness of which present-day people no longer have any real knowledge. To-day modern men generally distinguish only between our ordinary condition of being awake and the state of sleep, when consciousness is in complete abeyance. Between these states they recognise also the intermediate one of dreaming, but from the present-day standpoint they can regard it only as a kind of aberration, a departure from the normal. Through dream-pictures certain events from the depths of the soul-life rise into consciousness; but in ordinary dreaming they emerge in such an obscure form that the dreamer is scarcely ever able to interpret rightly their very real bearing on deep super-sensible processes in his life of soul.

In order to grasp one characteristic feature of this intermediate state—a state well understood in earlier times—let us take an ordinary dream of which a scientific modern investigator of dreams, able to interpret it only superficially and in a materialistic way, has made a regular conundrum. A highly significant dream! You see, I am taking my example from the science of dreams, which—as I have mentioned before—has to-day been given a place, little understood though it is, among sciences such as chemistry and physics. The following dream, a characteristic one, has been recorded. I might easily have taken my example from similar, unpublished, dreams; but I would like to deal with one which raises certain problems for present-day commentators, who have no key to such matters.

Now the case is this. A married couple had a much beloved son, who was growing up to the joy of his parents. One day he fell ill, and his condition worsened in a few hours to such a degree that, at the end of this one day, he passed through the gate of death. Thus for the ordinary experience of this couple, their son was abruptly snatched from them, and the son himself torn from a life full of promise. The parents, naturally, mourned their son. During the months following there was a great deal in the dreams of both husband and wife to remind them of him. But, quite a long time—many, many months—after his death, there came a night when his father and mother had exactly the same dream. They dreamed that their son appeared to them saying he had been buried alive, having only been in a trance, and that they merely had to look into the matter to be convinced that this was true.

The parents told each other what they had thus dreamed on the same night, and such was their attitude to life that they immediately asked the authorities for permission to have their son's body disinterred. In such matters, however—conditions being as they are—authorities are not easily persuaded; the request was refused. The parents had this further cause for grieving.

Now the investigator who gave his account of the dream, and could think of it only in a materialistic way, was faced with great difficulties. To begin with it is very easy to say: Yes, this is quite intelligible. The parents were thinking so much about their son that it is obvious they would both have dreamt of him. But the puzzling thing was that they should have had the same dream on the same night. The investigator finally explained it in a remarkable way which is bound to seem very forced to anyone reading it. He said: We can only assume that one parent had the dream, and the other, hearing it when awake, got the idea that he (or she) had dreamt it also. To present-day consciousness this interpretation at first seems fairly obvious, but it doesn't go very deep. I have expressly mentioned that for anyone well-versed in dream-experiences there is nothing unusual in several people having the same dream at the same time.

Let us try now to look into this dream-experience from the point of view of Spiritual Science. The results of spiritual investigation show how a man who has gone through the gate of death lives on as an individuality in the spiritual world. We know, too, that there are definite connections between every thing and every being in the world, and that this is evident in the link that unites those who have departed with people still on earth, when the latter lovingly concentrate thoughts on their dead. There is no question of there not being a connection between those on the physical plane and those who have left it for the super-sensible world. There is always a connection when thoughts are turned at all to the dead by those left on the physical plane—a connection that may continue even when their thoughts are directed elsewhere. But the point is that human beings, organised as they are now for life on the physical plane, are unable when awake to become conscious of these bonds. Having no knowledge of a thing, however, does not justify denying its existence; that would be a very superficial conclusion. On that basis, those now sitting in this room and not seeing Nuremberg could easily prove there is no such place. So we must be clear that it is only because of their present-day organisation that men know nothing of their connection with the dead; it exists all the same.

However, knowledge of what is going on in the depths of the soul can occasionally be conjured up into consciousness, and this happens in dreams. It is one thing we have to reckon with when considering dream-experiences. Another thing is the knowledge that passing through death is not the sudden leap imagined by those knowing nothing about it; it is a gradual transition. What occupies a soul here on earth does not then vanish in a moment. What a man loves, he continues to love after his death. But there is no possibility of satisfying a feeling which depends for its satisfaction on a physical body. The wishes and desires of the soul, its joys, sorrows, the particular tendencies it has during incorporation in a physical body—these naturally continue even when the gate of death has been passed. We can therefore understand how strong was the feeling in this young man, meeting with death when quite unprepared, that he would like to be still on earth, and how keen was his longing to be in a physical body. This desire, working as a force in the soul, lasted on for a long, long time during his Kamaloka.

Now picture to yourselves vividly the parents, with their thoughts engrossed by this beloved dead son. Even in sleep the connecting links were there. Just at the moment when both father and mother began to dream, the son, in accordance with the state of his soul, had a particularly keen desire that we may perhaps clothe in these words: “Oh! If only I were still on earth in a physical body.” This thought on the part of the dead son sank deep into his parents' soul, but they had no special faculty for understanding what lay behind the dream. Thus the imprint of the thought on their life of soul was transformed into familiar images. Whereas, if they could have clearly perceived what the son was pouring into their souls, their interpretation would have been: “Our son is longing just now for a physical body.” In fact, the dream-image clothed itself in words they understood—“He has been buried alive!”—which hid the truth from them.

Thus, in dream-pictures of this kind we should not look for an exact replica of what is real in the spiritual worlds; we must expect the actual objective occurrence to be veiled in accordance with the dreamer's degree of understanding. To-day it is the peculiar feature of the dream-world that—if we are unable to go into these matters more deeply—we can no longer regard its pictures as faithful copies of what underlies them. We are obliged to say: Something is always living in our soul behind the dream-picture, and this picture can be looked upon only as a still greater illusion than the external world confronting us when we are awake.

It is only in our time that dreams are appearing to people in this guise; strictly speaking only since the events in Palestine, when ego-consciousness took on the form it has now. Before then, the pictures appeared while men were in a state different from either waking or sleeping—a third state, more like the one prevailing in the super-sensible world. Human beings lived with the dead in spirit far more than is feasible nowadays. There is no need to look back many centuries before the Christian era to realise what a countless number of people were then able to say: “The dead are certainly not dead; they are living in the super-sensible world. I can perceive what they are feeling and seeing, what they now actually are. This holds good also for the other Beings in the super-sensible world; those, for instance, whom we know as the Hierarchies.”

Thus, for human beings in certain states between waking and sleeping, these were experiences of which the last degenerate echoes linger on in dreams. Hence it was very important that men should then feel this disappearance of something they once possessed. In that traditional epoch of human evolution, when the great events were taking place in Palestine, there was indeed cause for saying: “Change your mood of soul; quite different times are coming for mankind.” And among the changes was this—that the old possibility of seeing into the spiritual world, of personally experiencing how matters stood with the dead and with all other spiritual beings, was going to pass away.

The history of those olden days offers ample evidence of this living with the dead—notably in the religious veneration arising everywhere in the form of ancestor-worship. This was founded on belief in the reality and activity of those who had died. And whereas it continued almost everywhere during the transitional period, men's experience was this, though perhaps not put clearly into words: “Formerly our souls could rise to the world we call that of the spirit, and we were able to dwell among the higher Beings and with the dead. But now our dead leave us in quite another sense; they disappear from our consciousness and the old vivid contact is no more.”

We come here to something exceptionally difficult to grasp, but the intelligent mind, the intelligent soul, can learn to do so. It was the early Christians who felt most vividly the loss of direct psychical contact with the dead, and it was this that made their worship of God so full of meaning, so infinitely deep and holy. They compensated for what was lost by the reverent feeling they brought to their religious ceremonies; when, for instance, they sacrificed at the graves of their dead or celebrated the Mass, or observed any other religious rite. In fact, it was during this period of transition, when consciousness of the dead was seen to be wanting, that altars took the shape of coffins. Thus it was with a feeling for mortal remains of this kind—unlike that of the ancient Egyptians—that the service of God, the service of the spirit, was reverently performed. As I have said, this is something not easy to understand. We need, however, only observe the form of an altar, and allow our hearts to respond to this gradual change in men's whole outlook, and feeling and understanding will then arise for the change and its consequences.

We see, therefore, that slowly, gradually, the present state of the human soul was brought about. From indications given yesterday it can be gathered that what has thus come into being will again be succeeded by a different state, for which people are already developing faculties. The example I gave you yesterday of how a man will see, in a kind of dream picture, his future karmic compensation for some deed, means the re-awakening of faculties that will lead the soul once more to the spiritual worlds. In relation to earthly evolution as a whole, the intermediate state when the soul has been cut off from the super-sensible world, will prove to be comparatively short. It had to come about for men to be able to acquire the strongest possible forces for their freedom. But something else of which I have spoken was bound up with the whole progress of human evolution—that only in this way was a man able to acquire a feeling of the ego within him; to have, that is, the right ego-consciousness. The farther men advance into the future, the more firmly will this ego-consciousness establish itself within them, always increasing in significance. In other words, the force and self-sufficiency of men's individuality will be increasingly accentuated, so that it becomes necessary for them to find in themselves their own effective support.

Thus we see that the ego-consciousness men have to-day does not go back as far as is usually imagined. Only a few incarnations ago, men had no ego-feeling such as is characteristic of them to-day. And as the ego-feeling is intimately connected with memory, we need not be surprised that many people should not have begun, as yet, to look back on their previous incarnations. Because of the undeveloped state of this feeling for his ego during early childhood, a man does not even remember what happened to him then; so it seems quite comprehensible that, for the same reason, he is unable yet to remember his earlier incarnations. But now we have come to the point when man has developed a feeling for his ego, and the forces are unfolding which will make it necessary in our coming incarnations to remember those that have gone before. The days are drawing near when people will feel bound to admit: “We have strange glimpses into the past, when we were already on the earth but living in another bodily form. We look back and have to say that we were already then on earth.” And among the faculties appearing more and more in human beings will be one which arouses the feeling: It can only be that I am looking back on earlier incarnations of my own.

Just think how in the human souls now on earth the inner force is already arising which will enable them, in their next incarnations, to look back and to recognise themselves. But for those who have not become familiar with the idea of reincarnation this looking back will be a veritable torment. Ignorance of the mysteries of repeated earthly lives will be actually painful for these human beings; forces in them are striving to rise and bear witness to earlier times, but this cannot happen because all knowledge of these forces is refused. Not to learn of the truths now being proclaimed through Spiritual Science does not mean neglecting—let us say—mere theories; it is on the way to making a torment of life in future incarnations. In these times of transition, accordingly, something is happening; the slow preparation for it can be gathered from our second Mystery Play, “The Soul's Probation,” where we are shown earlier incarnations of the characters portrayed—incarnations of only a few centuries before. The event was then already in preparation; and now, thanks to the wisdom of cosmic guidance, human beings will be given positive opportunities of making themselves familiar with the truths of the Mysteries.

At present comparatively few find their way to Spiritual Science; their number is modest compared with that of the rest of mankind. It may be said that interest in Anthroposophy is not yet very wide-spread. But, in our age, the law of reincarnation is such that those now going through the world apathetically, ignoring what experience can tell about the need for exploring the riddles of life, will incarnate again in a relatively short time, and thus have ample opportunity for absorbing the truths of Spiritual Science. That is how it stands. So that when perhaps we see around us people we esteem, people we love, who will have nothing to do with Anthroposophy, are even hostile towards it, we ought not to take it too much to heart. It is perfectly true, and should be realised by Anthroposophists, that refusing to look into Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy, means preparing a life of torment for future incarnations on earth. That is true, and should not be treated lightly. On the other hand, those who see friends and acquaintances they care for showing no inclination towards Anthroposophy can say: “If I become a good Anthroposophist myself, I shall find an early opportunity, with the forces remaining to me after death, to prove helpful to these souls”—provided the living link we have spoken of is there. And because the interval between death and rebirth is becoming shorter, these souls, too, will have the opportunity of absorbing the Mystery-truths that must be absorbed if torment is to be avoided in men's coming incarnations. All is not yet lost.

We have, therefore, to look upon Anthroposophy as a real power; while on the other hand we must not be unduly grieved or pessimistic about the matter. It would be mistaken optimism to say: “If that is how things are, I need not accept the truths of Spiritual Science till my next incarnation” If everyone were to say that, when gradually the next incarnations come, there would be too few opportunities for effective aid to be given. Even if those wishing for Anthroposophy can now receive its truths from only quite a few people, the situation will be different for the countless hosts of those who, in a comparatively short time, will be eagerly turning to Anthroposophy. A countless number of Anthroposophists will then be needed to make these truths known, either here on the physical plane, or—if they are not incarnated—from higher planes.

That is one thing we must learn from the whole character of the great change now taking place. The other is that all this has to be experienced by the ego so that it should rely increasingly upon itself, becoming more and more independent. The self-reliance of the ego must come for all souls; but it will mean disaster for those who make no effort to learn about the great spiritual truths, for the increasing individualism will be felt by them as isolation. On the other hand, those who have made themselves familiar with the deep mysteries of the spiritual world will thereby find a way to forge ever stronger spiritual bands between souls. Old bonds will be loosened, new ones formed. All this is imminent, but it will be gradual.

We are living at present in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which will be followed by a sixth and then by a seventh, when a catastrophe will come upon us, just as one came between the Atlantean and post-Atlantean periods. When the lectures on the Apocalypse were given here in Nuremberg, you heard a description of this coming catastrophe, of how it will resemble and how it will differ from the one in old Atlantis.

If we observe life around us, we might express the particular feature of our age in this way: The most active element in human beings to-day is their intellectualism, their intellectual conception of the world. We are living altogether in an age of intellectualism. It has been brought about through quite special circumstances, and we shall come to understand these if we look back to the time before our present fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the Graeco-Latin, as it is called. That was the remarkable period when human beings had not reached their present state of detachment from the outer manifestations of nature and knowledge of the world. But at the same time it was the epoch in which the ego descended among men. The Christ-event had also to happen in that epoch, because, with Him, the ego made its descent in a special way.

What then is our present experience? It is not just of the entering-in of the ego; we now experience how one of our sheaths casts a kind of reflection upon the soul. The sheath to which yesterday we gave the name of “faith-body” throws its reflection on to the human soul, in this fifth epoch. Thus it is a feature of present-day man that he has something in his soul which is, as it were, a reflection of the nature of faith of the astral body. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch there will be a reflection within man of the love-nature of the etheric body, and in the seventh, before the great catastrophe, the reflection of the nature of hope of the physical body.

For those who have heard lectures I am giving in various places just now, I would note that these gradual happenings have been described from a different point of view both in Munich and in Stuttgart; the theme, however, is always the same. What is now being portrayed in connection with the three great human forces, Faith, Love, Hope, was there represented in direct relation to the elements in a man's life of soul; but it is all the same thing. I have done this intentionally, so that Anthroposophists may grew accustomed to get the gist of a matter without strict adherence to special words. When we realise that things can be described from many different sides, we shall no longer pin so much faith on words but focus our efforts on the matter itself, knowing that any description amounts only to an approximation of the whole truth. This adherence to the original words is the last thing that can help us to get to the heart of a matter. The one helpful means is to harmonise what has been said in successive epochs, just as we learn about a tree by studying it not from one direction only but from many different aspects.

Thus at present it is essentially the force of faith of the astral body which, shining into the soul, is characteristic of our time. Someone might say: “That is rather strange. You are telling us now that the ruling force of the age is faith. We might admit this in the case of those who hold to old beliefs, but to-day so many people are too mature for that, and they look down on such old beliefs as belonging to the childish stage of human evolution.” It may well be that people who say they are monists believe they do not believe, but actually they are more ready to do so than those calling themselves believers. For, though monists are not conscious of it, all that we see in the various forms of monism is belief of the blindest kind, believed by the monists to be knowledge. We cannot describe their doings at all without mentioning belief. And, apart from the belief of those who believe they do not believe, we find that, strictly speaking, an endless amount of what is most important to-day is connected with the reflection the astral body throws into the soul, giving it thereby the character of ardent faith. We have only to call to mind lives of the great men of our age, Richard Wagner's for example, and how even as an artist he was rising all his life to a definite faith; it is fascinating to watch this in the development of his personality. Everywhere we look to-day, the lights and shadows can be interpreted as the reflection of faith in what we may call the ego-soul of man.

Our age will be followed by one in which the need for love will cast its light. Love in the sixth culture-epoch will show itself in a very different form—different even from that which can be called Christian love. Slowly we draw nearer to that epoch; and by making those in the Anthroposophical Movement familiar with the mysteries of the cosmos, with the nature of the various individualities both on the physical plane and on the higher planes, we try to kindle love for everything in existence. This is not done so much by talking of love, as by feeling that what is able to kindle love in the soul is prepared for the sixth epoch by Anthroposophy. Through Anthroposophy the forces of love are specially aroused in the whole human soul, and that is prepared which a man needs for gradually acquiring a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For it is indeed true that the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass; and the Gospels have evoked something which yesterday was likened to how children learn to speak. But the deepest lesson—the mission of earthly love in its connection with the Mystery of Golgotha—has not yet been grasped. Full understanding of this will be possible only in the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch, when people grow to realise more and more that the foundations for it are actually within them, and out of their innermost being—in other words, out of love—do what should be done. Then the guidance of the Commandments will have been outlived and the stage reached that is described in Goethe's words: “Duty—when one loves the commands one gives to oneself.” When forces wake in our souls which impel us to do what we should through love alone, we then discover in us something that must gradually become widespread in the sixth culture-epoch. Then in a man's nature quite special forces of the etheric body will make themselves known.

To understand what it is that must come about increasingly in this way, we have to consider it from two sides. One side has certainly not come yet and is only dreamt of by the most advanced in spirit; it is a well-defined relation between custom, morals, ethics and the understanding, intellectuality. To-day a man may be to a certain extent a rascal, yet at the same time intelligent and clever. He may even use his very cleverness to further his knavery. At present it is not required of people to combine their intelligence with an equal degree of morality. To all that we have been anticipating for the future this must be added—that as we advance, it will no longer be possible for these two qualities of the human soul to be kept apart, or to exist in unequal measure. A man who, according to the reckoning-up of his previous incarnation, has become particularly intelligent without being moral, will in his new incarnation possess only a stunted intelligence. Thus, to have equal amounts of intelligence and morality in future incarnations he will be obliged, as a consequence of universal cosmic law, to enter his new incarnation with an intelligence that is crippled, so that immorality and stupidity coincide. For immorality has a crippling effect upon intelligence. In other words, we are approaching the age when morality and what has now been described for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch as the shining into the ego-soul of the love-forces of the etheric body, point essentially to forces having to do with harmonising those of intelligence and morality. That is the one side to be considered.

The other side is this—that it is solely through harmony of this kind, between morality, custom, and intelligence, that the whole depth of the Mystery of Golgotha is to be grasped. This will come about only through the individuality who before Christ-Jesus came to earth prepared men for that Mystery, developing in his successive inearnations ever greater powers as teacher of the greatest of all earthly events This individuality, whom in his rank as Bodhisatva we call the successor of Gautama Buddha, was incarnated in the personality living about a hundred years before Christ under the name of Jeshu ben Pandira. Among his many students was one who had at that time already, in a certain sense, written down a prophetic version of the Matthew Gospel, and this, after the Mystery of Golgotha had been enacted, needed only to be given a new form.

There have been, and will continue to be, frequent incorporations of the individuality who appeared as Jeshu ben Pandira, until he rises from the rank of Bodhisatva to that of Buddha. According to our reckoning of time this will be in about 3,000 years, when a sufficient number of people will possess the above-mentioned faculties, and when, in the course of a remarkable incarnation of the individual who was once Jeshu ben Pandira, this great teacher of mankind will have become able to act as interpreter of the Mystery of Golgotha in a very different way from what is possible to-day. It is true that even to-day a seer into the super-sensible worlds can gain some idea of what is to happen then; but the ordinary earthly organisation of man cannot yet provide a physical body capable of doing what that teacher will be able to do approximately 3,000 years hence. There is, as yet, no human language through which verbal teaching could exert the magical effects that will spring from the words of that great teacher of humanity. His words will flow directly to men's hearts, into their souls, like a healing medicine; nothing in those words will be merely theoretical. At the same time the teaching will contain—to an extent far greater than it is possible to conceive to-day—a magical moral force carrying to hearts and souls a full conviction of the eternal, deeply significant brotherhood of intellect and morality.

This great teacher, who will be able to give to men ripe for it the profoundest instruction concerning the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, will fulfil what Oriental prophets have always said—that the true successor of Buddha would be, for all mankind, the greatest teacher of the good. For that reason he has been called in oriental tradition the Maitreya Buddha. His task will be to enlighten human beings concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and for this he will draw ideas and words of the deepest significance from the very language he will use. No human language to-day can evoke any conception of it. His words will imprint into men's souls directly, magically, the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence in this connection also we are approaching what we may call the future moral age of man; in a certain sense we could designate it as a coming Golden Age.

Even to-day, however, speaking from the ground of Anthroposophy, we point in full consciousness to what is destined to come about—how the Christ will gradually reveal Himself to ever-higher powers in human beings, and how the teachers, who up to now have taught only individual peoples and individual men, will become the interpreters of the great Christ-event for all who are willing to listen. And we can point out how, through the dawning of the age of love, conditions for the age of morality are prepared.

Then will come the last epoch, during which human souls will receive the reflection of what we call hope; when, strengthened through the force flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha and from the age of morality, men will take into themselves forces of hope. This is the most important gift they need in order to face the next catastrophe and to begin a new life, just as was done in this present post-Atlantean age.

When in the final post-Atlantean epoch our external culture, with its tendency to calculation, will have come to a climax, bringing no feeling of satisfaction but leaving those who have not developed the spiritual within them to confront their culture in utter desolation—then out of spirituality the seed of hope will be sown, and in the next period of human evolution this will grow to maturity. If the spirit is denied all possibility of imparting to men's souls what it can give, and what the Anthroposophical Movement has the will to convey, this external culture might for a short while be able to hold its own. Ultimately, however, people would ask themselves what they had gained and say: “We have wireless installations—undreamt of by our ancestors—to transmit our thoughts all over the earth, and what good does it do us? The most trivial, unproductive thoughts are sent hither and thither, and human ingenuity has to be strained to the utmost to enable us to transport from some far distant region, by means of all kinds of perfected appliances, something for us to eat; or to travel at high speeds round the globe. But in our heads there is nothing worth sending from place to place, for our thoughts are cheerless; more-over, since we have had our present means of communication, they have become even more cheerless than when they were conveyed in the old snail-like fashion.”

In short, despair and desolation are all that our civilisation can spread over the earth. But, in the last culture-epoch, souls who have accepted the spiritual in life will have become enriched, as if on the ruins of the external life of culture. Their surety that this acceptance of the spiritual has not been in vain will be the strong force of hope within them—hope that after a great catastrophe a new age will come for human beings, when there will appear in external life, in a new culture, what has already been prepared spiritually within the soul.

Thus, if we permeate our whole being with Spiritual Science, we advance step by step, in full consciousness, from our age of faith, through the age of love and that of hope, to what we can see approaching us as the highest, truest, most beautiful, of all human souls.

I should like to-day to add various things to the considerations of Cosmic and human truths, which we have been studying of late, and I shall want to add several things concerning the sort of truths we discussed in the last lecture, truths connected with the development of mankind in our own age.

How, in order to amplify those things from one side, and another, it will be necessary to-day to insert here and there an observation which may strike you as being personal; but you know that I only make personal observations on the rarest occasions, and when I do, it is always, as to-day, to explain something strongly objective.

We are living at present in an epoch which demands something quite definite from human beings. It demands from everyone what must be called a decision arising from the innermost depths of human nature. It must be considered, and clearly seen that we have now really entered for the first time on the age of human freedom, and the upheavals in intellectual, moral or social spheres, are, after all, nothing but the expression of man being brought into the region of freedom through the deeper forces connected with human development. We have merely to consider the life of individual man or the life of Nations, and to look at them in a quite unprejudiced way, to see what occurs; and then we can say to ourselves that there are to-day innumerable factors, through which each single individual, or whole races, communities and Groups of mankind, are deteriorated either from without or within, factors which leave them unfree. This being carried along by the relationships and events around then, is something which fundamentally lay in the real evolution of humanity; but now man has to emerge from this stage. The future of the Earth will consist in man developing more and more what we have just characterised by saying that, to-day, for the first time, man is faced with such significant decisions.

The fact that man is thus placed before such significant decisions, my dear friends, decisions which have to be made from the innermost depths of man's heart and soul, is expressed in the external course of events. As a rule, however, the great changes which have occurred in all the spheres of political, social, Spiritual and scientific life in the course of the second half of the 19th Century, have been too little observed.

One can notice signs of this transition, both in great and in small things everywhere to-day. Let us take one instance which lies very close to us. You know that amongst the many enemies of our Anthroposophical Movement to-day, are also to be found the Clergy of this Country (Switzerland), and they show quite clearly that behind them stands the power of the Jesuits, and that power appears to have a certain validity just in Switzerland. One has merely to keep in mind what reveals itself to-day in various spheres, to see how this Jesuitical power is amalgamated, for many people, with what they call the external religious education and so on. As regards this Country it may be interesting to bring before our souls an extraordinary document which, because it is so interesting, I have had photographed. This document originated in Switzerland and was produced there in 1847. I will read it to you:—

“Dedicated to the contemporary Army and their brave leaders as a permanent monument, in memory of the 24th November 1847, when the Dominion of the Jesuits passed away from Switzerland. The Almighty has given victory to the just cause. Those days, from the 12th to the 30th November 1847 are therefore unforgettable to every Confederate soldier—those days during which in consequence of resolutions passed on the 20th July and 4th November 1847, the seven Catholic separated States—Lucerne, Uri, Schweiz, Zug, Freiburg, and the Valais, were infested with war, but because of our Army under the command of Heinrich Du-four of Geneva, they had one after another to capitulate. To these days belong some of the most note-worthy events which Swiss history offers. With a relatively slight sacrifice of dead and wounded our clever and war-experienced leader, by his strategical arrangements, was successful, after many conflicts, in freeing those people who were slaves to the tyranny and power of a hypocritical Clergy full of fanaticism; and the inhabitants blinded by their Catholicism, who as enemies faced the Confederate army including the Militia over 80,000 strong. After a few days were entirely conquered, which made it possible to dissolve that Sonderbund and to drive the Jesuits out of Switzerland”

The concluding sentence, which is especially interesting in my opinion runs: “May God's Fatherly protection rule over our Army.”

You see under whose protection at that time the expulsion of the Jesuits was undertaken, and how “God's Fatherly protection” was similarly evoked for the future, that it might always continue to rule over the Swiss people as at the time, when General du-four was successful in ridding Switzerland from the Jesuits. That occurred in 1847.

Now, my dear friends, not these things alone, but many others, have undergone radical transformations in the course of the last half Century, transformations of quite a definite character. Their characteristic is that anyone who gives himself over merely to the sequence of external events, such as have transpired during this epoch, must of necessity come into confusion. The very best way to come into confusion, and to be unable to find a way out of certain knots and tangles, is just to let the external events of the last half- or two-thirds of the last Century work upon us. If a person to-day wishes to find his way aright, a certain orientation which comes entirely from within, a certain impulse, is absolutely necessary. In that chaos, which is the basis of all the confusion into which we fall if we rely solely on external things, all the best strivings of recent times have been entangled. It cannot of course be denied, that our newer age has accomplished many things in various spheres of life; especially in the sphere of technique and the science which is connected with technique, great significant progress has been made. Triumphs have been celebrated, and this praise is thoroughly justified. But if you take the best results, the best scientific and technical conquests of our civilisation, although you will find many things of use, many illuminating things, many things which bring man on materially, you will find nothing either in science or in technique or in any other sphere, or even in that sphere which has brought good to man, nothing which can shine from the outer world into man's soul so that he can get a guiding impulse from those things coming from that external world. Therefore, Spiritual Science had to come, just at this very time, because out of Spiritual Science something must come which is drawn from no external world, but simply from the Spiritual world; and which is so taken up that when it flows into the outer world it represents an impulse which has nothing to do with anything drawn from that outer world itself. It is an impulse carried into the outer world from Spiritual worlds,—and that is what is sought to be given through our Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In this connection, we are radically misunderstood to-day, and my yesterday's remarks were a kind of explanation of this from a certain aspect. I wanted especially to show that it must not be said of our School-Impulse (which of course is born out of Spiritual Science), or of our practical undertakings, that we carry into them anything of a theoretical view of the world. I tried to show yesterday how far such a statement is from reality. But neither may one say the opposite, and this too is connected with a right understanding of our Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. One may not say the reverse, that, as people usually imagine to-day, any external activity is the result of a theory, of a programme; one must not imagine that what we accomplish—whether in the sphere of pedagogy or practical life—proceeds from any programme such as is usually imagined to-day.

A few days ago, for instance, someone said:—“Well, this peculiar idea regarding the Threefold State, would not have arisen if this Threefold idea had not sprung from Anthroposophy,” and I had to correct such an utterance radically. And here I must add a few personal things, which are meant quite objectively, and have a good deal to do with these matters. I had to say:—“It is really the case that what meets you and others to-day as the Threefold Division of the Social Organism, in so far as it was conceived by me, sprang from no abstract thought, nor from meditating on how the social life could be so arranged that something could come into it of that Utopian character one finds in many writings to-day. It did not arise in this way.” That came to me as the perception of a Spiritual stream, which flowed together naturally in life with other streams, especially with the economic stream. The economic perception arose from its own soil, on the basis of its own life.

A few years ago, I had to explain how this perception of the economic life of our recent times, of the economic necessities arose I had to object then, when I was told that the Drei-Gliederung (Three- foldness) proceeded out of Anthroposophy, just as one can take something out of a programme to-day and put it forward as an impulse. I said:—My boyhood was spent as the son of a railway official. That was in the 60's and 70's, when railways had only half evolved from their embryonic life. The great traffic only came gradually and later, but I shared in just those measures which were taken under the very first arrangements made for railways. I was thus absolutely under the impression of this life of commerce which was then arising, and it was the perception which I got from that, which of course, was later united with something else, that led to my presenting the social life as I had to do, in the sense of the three-fold Social Order.

We have to consider that in the 70's of the last Century, the essential, basic element of the newer evolution, was the transformation of traffic. International commerce developed in this epoch. I myself, in the last years of this inter-national commercial evolution, was under the daily and hourly influence of the details that developed in connection with that world-traffic, and then, in the last third of the 19th Century, or rather in the last quarter of it, came that great turnover, the great transformation, which led from world-intercourse, to world-trading, and economics.

My dear friends, those are two quite different things. It was world-commerce which first led to world-economics. World-trade is but the latest phase of the development of National economics. That which is, in its essentials, prepared in single Countries, has been spread abroad through the world-trade and been carried into other Countries. But nevertheless, there exists a certain individuality as regards the productions of each Country. All this, under the influence of the developing traffic, became different,—the world passed over from world trade to world economics. World-economics can only exist when the raw product is purchased in one Country and then sent to another where it is worked over industrially; so that not only through the trading, but through the economics itself, one Country or land became dependent on another, and thereby economics were spread over many different Countries. This spreading of trade, of commerce, this—what I must call a welding of the world into a common world- sphere in economics, came about for the most part in the last decades of the 19th Century;—and this arose perhaps in its most permeating, penetrating form, in the arrangements made in the European Textile Industries in connection with the Indian and American cotton. In the cotton industry, one could especially experience the transformation of ordinary trade into world- economics. Just at the time when it could be seen how these things were going on, I was for eight years tutor in a house dealing in cotton brought from India and America to Europe, and in this house Cotton-Agents—which means also the manufacturers of such goods,—congregated together. Those people too traded in cotton, and so at that time I was in the midst of the interests connected with these things.

I lived entirely in that centre, never having been one of those who regarded external things as trivial, considering that one should withdraw from external things into a mystic twilight, I was deeply interested, especially when despatches came, which had to be deciphered with a Code. Once there came a dispatch which included the word “wire-puller,” and one had to look up this word, which meant, “such and such a firm wants so many bales of cotton at this or that price.” With the word “wire-puller” one could draw forth things which might have a very significant business importance.

You see, during this epoch I was greatly interested in those patterns which came, samples of American and Indian cotton, cotton piled high up in the office, each with its own little specification, labels on which were written quite interesting things. While I was studying these carefully, (pardon these personal observations, but they are connected with the objective side), I also studied Goethe's “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” and those two things were carried on absolutely side by side, and fundamentally it was from that which flowed to me then out of my study of the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” that twenty one years later, 3x7 years after, there flowed that which led to my first Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation.” I just wanted to bring forward this couple of instances—which I could multiply many times; but you see, I had to explain to that man who came to me saying that my ideas of economic life came from an abstract Anthroposophy, that it was not abstract. Anthroposophy is not abstract, although people say think so. I had to tell that man that I had taken part in the life of commerce. I even wrote hills of lading; even if in addition to the signs which I had to write on the bills of lading, I made many blots, nevertheless I wrote them. I grew up in the middle of that cotton industry and trade, and it was in connection with these things which are in connection with the whole feeling of our present time, out of my perceptions of these, then that my economic ideas arose. They are not mere theories, but are in reality drawn from life itself. I feel that one can only draw such things out of life if one has the good-will really to look at life itself. One must also, of course look at life just where many despise it, if one wishes to get at those things which can be made practical in life and prove themselves as such. Just out of what resulted from the practise of life and from being in the very midst of it, and seeing the confused tangle and knots in it, those things arose later; for among the men I met at that time were some whose destiny still caused them to find the aftereffects of the great crisis in 1873. At this time, one could clearly see their remarkable connections between the World-views and the economic life, which must now be overcome by our mode of thought. The Director of that railway on which my father worked, was at that time a man named Pontout, who was regarded as a small demi-god by the neighbourhood in which I then lived,—Frau Pontout, for what reason I do not know, was always called the Baroness; she was considered an extremely pious woman. They were both really, from a certain point of view, extremely religious people. Pontout then resigned the post of General Director of the Southern Railway and entered a great business undertaking, which stretched its tentacles from France to Serbia; and, because of his piety he was able to carry out a gigantic business in the service, not of course of a World-power, but of those powers in whose service he placed himself, whenever he took the Prayer-book in his hand. Then the whole business smashed, and there arose that famous Pontout-crash, from which at the right moment, a certain clerical community withdrew their fingers, leaving Pontout alone in it. But even at that time one could see a certain philosophy or let us say a certain order of ideas, being carried into financial undertakings; and one could very well learn from that what one ought not to do. Of course, many people could not believe that I thus learned the right way, and that this led to my thinking in a very different way of the connection between Anthroposophy and the “Kommenden Tag” and “Futurum,” than did Pontout of the connection between the Catholic Church and the Serbian bank.

These things are all taken from life, my dear friends, and the fact that one can read them from life, that we do not approach life with theoretical dogmas, is just what should come from Anthroposophy, if it be rightly understood. Anthroposophy is distinguished, or should make itself distinct from other World-views, in that it can be selfless; that means that it does not trumpet its dogmas abroad, but simply provides an introduction, by which one can learn to know life itself in all its fullness and breadth. Only in this way can Anthroposophy satisfy the most weighty and important demands and necessities of man's present evolution.

I told you that anyone able to look with open eyes at what happens could see confusion everywhere, that even in what was good there was confusion, and that a person could not help going astray if he simply swam on in what the external world offered. Into that an impulse had to flow from spirit-lands, an impulse which coming from quite a different source, was called upon to give a direction which could not be got from the external world, even though there may be good in it. It is just that which Anthroposophy should bring to expression; just consider what an impulse lies in this age, where in external events everywhere whether in scientific or any other branch of cultural life, or in outer life, these insoluble-knots were being formed. It was just then, that coming out of Spiritual depths, something had to find its way into the world which could give it the right direction.

You must consider how, on the other hand, something else came to humanity. That is the following:—Whenever a person gives himself up to the stream of those insoluble knots, he is tempted not to care to seek for guidance for his own soul, but to give himself over to the confusion of external life, and is then only carried along by the river of confusing external events. I could see to my great sorrow, that human beings under this influence, become less and less independent. On the one hand, they were driven to form an independent judgment of things, but their independent judgment could only form that which then forced itself out of that sphere of chaotic external events, urging them into paths unknown to them. These people wanted to be free, they wanted to be independent, for the demand for freedom lives in the subconscious nature of man. People imagine they are free, but all the time, because freedom means a strong shaking up in one's inner soul, and because they did not want to be shaken up, they gave themselves over to that stream which runs its course in the way I have described. In this way, they come under Ahrimanic influence, which strives for the Spiritual with all kinds of beautiful and well-chosen words which have their roots simply in personal egotism, and a longing to allow this personal egoism to carry them into the social life around them.

It is one of the most important characteristics of the age, that human beings are full of this egotism, so that when they speak of social demands they really mean; how can their egoism best be carried along by social life? They speak of the demands of social life, but all the time they mean egoistic life; they want a social life of such a kind that Egoism can thrive best in it.

Of course, the Three-fold Social-Order could not speak in this way, it cannot speak of a Paradise! It must leave that to the Lenins and Trotzkis etc. The Three-fold-Order can only speak of what is organically possible in the social body, of that which is capable of life, of that which can fulfill itself. To that we must attain; for if we simply picture and strive for illusion we shall certainly not get very far.

We must accustom ourselves, my dear friends, not to consider life from any abstract principle, but to live our life, regarding the details of life with full consciousness, whether they belong apparently to Spiritual or material things. A great transformation has taken place, in that the economic life of the whole world has become a single body, but humanity is not able to understand it, could not bear it. It has been proclaimed, but not inwardly understood. Many things have appeared concerning “World Economics,” but they are all mere phrases, for this perception of the whole economic life as one body has not been inwardly digested. And so it has come about that humanity has been driven into a World-trade, but it has not understood how to adapt life to it, and so has now come to live in such a World where barriers on barriers have been set up to preserve all sorts of impossible national commerces, hemmed in by all kinds of customs, duties, passports and other limitations, by which they hope to preserve in a most terrible way, something for which the time is long past.

All that we experience today is nothing but this result of the misunderstanding of what has arisen because the last third of the 19th and the first two decades of the 20th Century, presented a state of chaos, of the confusing tangles to which one ought not to give oneself up externally, for that is also something which shows itself in the inimical attacks made now on Anthroposophy. These attacks which appear to-day, (both extensively and intensively) are now assuming the most incredible dimensions; and we may say, if we take these things externally, that we can see in the very way these attacks are expressing themselves, the spirit by which they are inspired. For instance, the following has been said of “Steiner's Goetheanum in Dornach”—“We should like anyone who wants to form his own judgment of Dr Steiner's views, to visit that Temple, that image of his spirit, and to see it with their own eyes. For what does this man take himself and others, for whom he chooses to pour the hallucinations, the feverish dream of his brain into concrete, to carve them in wood, and in glass, and to have them painted on the wall?”

Finally, my dear friends, another very extraordinary party has joined the various people, the Chauvinists the extreme Socialists, and especially the leaders of Socialism, and so on. They are not of recent date, one heard of their activities in 1912, 1913, They add quite extraordinary sentences to what I have just read to you:—Somebody writes: “these are only tiny samples of attacks, appearing at present under the Uranus-influence.”

You see that mockery is not lacking, especially shown in the indignation of an opponent filled with hate, from which I will quote. The odd people who now are uniting with those others, are especially Astrologers; and behind these lies a special ruthlessness, (of which many of them are unconscious,) because in this astrology there is something attractive, and one can do much with such things. Some of these are very extraordinary if one brings them into connection. For instance, here is another attack which contains these words:—

“We hold it very necessary to keep an open eye on Rudolf Steiner, that man who supports himself on Judaism, on the most distorted Communistic and idealistic ideas, and who wanted to become the Minister for Culture in Wurttemberg during the revolution.”

Here you see, a man is speaking of my relationship with the Jews and Communists. Let us quote another attack, from the other side. It is good to compare these things, because in the comparison many details come to light. “None of the former religious founders, such as Christ and Buddha, none of the wise men and prophets” (I do not think that I have ever in the remotest degree taken upon myself such a title but the opponents do, as it seems here) “have ever paid such heed to the external; to earthly treasures, palaces, temples. On the contrary, they remained without much property, they instructed human beings without reward, they led them higher Spiritually, and taught them to pray in their own quiet chambers. They perieated and spread their Spiritual ideas and wise teachings without needing the material help of rich financiers.”

Here you see, on the one hand, my relationship with the Catholics and Jesuits; and on the other, with rich financiers. Only one thing is lacking, and that is my relationship with prominent generals. But my dear friends, I know that no one can take it amiss if I emphasise quite especially,—it must be emphasised once, for this must be said—I say it quite expressly, it must be sooner or later investigated whether I have used anybody, whether Communists, financiers or generals, for my own purpose; for I could have dispensed with those people. It must be ascertained whether I came to them or they to me; that is something which must be kept in mind, my dear friends, for a great deal depends on it.

There is another point; when on the one hand we must meet with the statement that “he can only support himself on the basis of the Communists” and so on, and on the other it is asserted that the wise men of old managed to spread their Spiritual teachings without the material help of rich financiers, one can say that rounds very much like the calumnies which appeared in 1909, when it was said that I was an especially dangerous 'Freemason.' That assertion came from the side of the Jesuits; but from the other side the Calumny arose, that I was myself a Jesuit! You see how well these people know me! One ought to reflect whether perhaps, that which it is most necessary of all to keep in mind, whether in the Jew or Communist, or even in the rich financier, “Man” himself has not been overlooked; for to-day it is a question of man and what must be sought in the human in every form; for in the last resort, my dear friends, neither the old party-strata, e.g. Communists “nor the old racial connections such as the Jews, nor even the old ranks of financial advisers signify a great deal to-day, because to-day we must with all our power enter into what is universally human.”

But it would seem, my dear friends, that those who are in Spiritual relation with all kinds of movements except with that which is really able to bring a Spiritual impulse into the present confused state of human evolution, are quite specially filled with Ahrimanic influence, so we may calmly listen to what they say, which runs as follows:

“The starry influence of 1921 will bring on Dr. Rudolf Steiner, as on all other men with similar horoscopes either psychic upheavals, or shatterings! will lead to a deepening of Spiritual effort; or, if the astral influences are not appreciated Spiritually, thy will bring about severe material losses, harm or bodily diseases. And many another person born in February in such critical years may also be even in personal danger, which, of course is clearly visible if one looks into each particular horoscope.”

Now my dear friends, it is not in the least necessary that such things should be said of the Uranus and Saturn-influences;—that it is necessary to master the life of Self, and so on. I have tried to describe to you, for instance, from what depths the Threefold Order of the Social Organism of the “Portal of Initiation” came about, and I myself can remain quite unmoved as regards what comes from the Uranus and Saturn-influences. These are not the things that worry me. The things that worry me are of quite a different nature, and as long as such things as the following play a part, there is good cause for anxiety; although the things connected with it must be seen in quite a different light.

A certain enemy filled with hatred is here quoted as having said the following:—“Spiritual flashes of light, like lightning-flashes are darting towards that wooden mousetrap, such flashes are plentiful; and it will need a certain cleverness and cunning on the part of Steiner, so to work that one day a real flash of light does not strike that Dornach magnificence, and bring it to an untimely end.” Now my dear friends, you see, there is something clearly indicated here, which people want to see occurring on the top of the Dornach Hill, and they could then search for the reason of such threats, in the fact of Uranus being near the Sun. You see, not only are these attacks very numerous, but they are filled with a striking intensity; and above all my dear friends, as far as I am concerned, I must say that where such Uranus influences express themselves, they show that they come from no good side, for in their way of appearing they show whose Spiritual child they really are.

On the other hand, we must be quite clear that if we look beyond the Spiritual flames of fire of which it is said that enough exist already, and turn to the physical flames, then, my dear friends, a waking-anxiety is necessary on the part of those who cling, perhaps with a certain love, to what has come to expression here, and all that is connected with it. It is really necessary to feel anxiety about this, in order to preserve that work which is really carried out here with sacrifice. For, those people who look at this work filled with hate, with a will tending to such a ruthless deed, are to-day sufficiently numerous.

You might say I ought not to read out such things to you; but, my dear friends there can be no question as to that, for these things are well-known amongst other peoples in the world, they take care of that. But that such things should be known to you who feel perhaps differently, at least most of you, the fact that you must be told about such things, I take on myself. For, through that custom which has been widely prevalent in this room, these things might be concealed from you. Unfortunately, many things have thus been concealed. And so a certain wakefulness must flash in on our friends, as to those who are filled with hatred for our Anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

It was not simply by way of a joke yesterday that I said:—“Our enemies are in many respects very different people”;—they will yet show themselves quite different people unless we make an effort to be awake, and guardians of that which has been accomplished, with so much sacrifice and such hard work; because if, as is the case at present, where evil is, there ever so many are awake, it should also be possible that where what we regard as good exists, there also we should be awake. You see, my dear friends it will be ever more important to be true Watchers of that Spiritual treasure of which we must say again to-day in a certain connection, that it is not brought into the world through any subjective idea, but from the observation of life itself; out of the perception of those demands which are taken from the most important human things of our age, and which will become more and more important as we advance into the near future. I want you to pay attention to those people whose Will it is, to destroy what is necessary for man-kind. That Will for destruction is very, very strong in many to-day. May you yourselves then be strong, for that which lies in this Spiritual Movement, and which has brought this Goetheanum into expression has not arisen out of the chaos around us. It is an impulse which has been brought into the chaos. That Bau, whenever one comes near it, will make us feel that it gives strength, and life. Be you therefore true Watchers of what you have apparently chosen as your very own, when you joined this Anthroposophical Spiritual Movement.

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question?

Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack.

I have another question, something completely different.

Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too.

Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children.

The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world.

Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet.

The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family.

Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being.

Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context?

Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense.

However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that.

There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is.

Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter.

You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire.

You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body.

Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about.

Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death.

If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium.

Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!)

So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life.

But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see.

Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about.

As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history.

I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past.

But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands.

Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea.

Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England!

Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again.

Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe.

Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life.

Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place.

The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later.

So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time.

There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said.

Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge.

You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way.

Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being.

Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden.

What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it.

Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan.

There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other.

But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.

From my father I have the stature,
The serious way of life,
From my mother, a cheerful disposition
And the desire to tell stories.

Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother.

I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved.

Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars.

His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other.

And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have.

And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way.

Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book.

On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that.

I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible.

But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture.

If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people!

It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys.

I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere.

Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other.

From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts.

So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty.

Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge.

Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him.

Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred.

Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process.

In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn.

The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion.

And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world.

And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out!

When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking.