The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Born in Austria in 1861, Rudolf Steiner received recognition as a scholar when he was invited to edit the Kürschner edition of the natural scientific writings of Goethe. In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. He then began his work as a lecturer. From the turn of the century until his death in 1925, he delivered well over 6000 lectures on the Science of Spirit, or Anthroposophy.

The lectures of Rudolf Steiner dealt with such fundamental matters as the being of man, the nature and purpose of freedom, the meaning of evolution, man's relation to nature, and the life after death and before birth. On these and similar subjects, Steiner had unexpectedly new, inspiring and thought-provoking things to say. Through a study of the transcripts of lectures like those contained in this book, one can come to a clear, reasonable, comprehensive understanding of the human being and his place in the universe.

In all his years of writing and lecturing, Steiner made no appeal to emotionalism or sectarianism in his readers or hearers. His profound respect for the freedom of every man shines through everything he produced. The slightest compulsion or persuasion he considered an affront to the dignity and ability of the human being. Therefore he confined himself to objective statements in his writing and speaking, leaving his readers and hearers entirely free to reject or accept his words. He addressed the healthy, sound judgment and good will in each person, confident of the response in those who come to meet his ideas with the willingness to understand them.

Among the many activities springing from the work of Rudolf Steiner are the Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association which aims at improved nutrition resulting from methods of agriculture outlined by Rudolf Steiner; the art of Eurythmy, created and described by him as “visible speech and visible song;” the medical and pharmaceutical work carried out by the Clinical and Therapeutical Institute at Arlesheim, Switzerland, with related institutions in other countries; the Homes for the education and care of mentally retarded children; and new directions for work in such fields as Mathematics, Physics, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, Drama, Speech Formation, Social Studies, Astronomy, Economics and Psychology.

The success of Rudolf Steiner Education (sometimes referred to as Waldorf Education) has proven the correctness of Steiner's concept of the way to prepare the child for his or her eventual role as a resourceful, creative, responsible member of modern adult society.

The transcripts of Rudolf Steiner's many lectures on a wide variety of subjects are a storehouse of spiritual knowledge as it can become fruitful in many fields of modern life. However, Steiner himself stressed that his lectures were not intended for print, and are not a substitute for what he expressed in his written works on the Science of Spirit or Anthroposophy. Therefore, if the reader finds the following lectures of interest, or if they arouse questions and points upon which he wishes further clarification, he is certain to find the latter in the fundamental books included in the series of Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner listed at the end of the present volume.

—The Publishers

The present edition of this course—which Rudolf Steiner gave in 1921 in order to bring to realization the hygienic-therapeutic side of eurythmy, which, as he explained in his introductory words to eurythmy performances, was given this name to distinguish it from artistic and pedagogical eurythmy—is the first edition to appear in print and be available to a wider public. Since those days curative eurythmy has become much used on a worldwide scale as a therapy in connection with medicine, and it takes its place alongside other recognized therapies in the same way as, according to Rudolf Steiner, artistic eurythmy does among the other arts.

In the main there are two things to be said about this edition. Firstly,—and Rudolf Steiner said this very strongly—curative eurythmy must only be given when a doctor prescribes it and is in charge of it. Secondly, a proper training in eurythmy is required as a preliminary to learning curative eurythmy for use as a therapy. Rudolf Steiner said that at least two years should be spent on a thorough study of eurythmy. The normal eurythmy training takes four years at present. As this course is now available to everyone, it should be said that it is quite impossible to study curative eurythmy on one's own with the help of this book. Collaboration with a doctor and the study of eurythmy are both inescapable. Rudolf Steiner puts it in the following way in the “Course for Curative Education” (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981)

“When you bring curative eurythmy into curative education you are bringing the whole of eurythmy into it. So you should be aware that you must acquire a living connection with it, and this should be such that anyone who does curative eurythmy ought to a certain point to have learnt basic eurythmy. Curative eurythmy ought to be based on a general knowledge of speech and tone eurythmy, even if artistic perfection has not been attained. Then, above all, people must be filled with the conviction that they must work with others, and therefore, when curative eurythmy is going to be put into practice the therapist must get the support of a doctor. When curative eurythmy was given to the world it was stipulated that it should not be put into practice without the collaboration of a doctor. All this points to how inter-connected in a living way, things have to be when they come out of Anthroposophy.”

The present lectures—with the exception of the one given on April 18,—were made available in manuscript form by Frau Marie Steiner in 1930. They were edited by Elisabeth Baumann, who had taken part in the course. Rudolf Steiner's executors produced a new edition in 1952 edited by I. de Jaager. The lecture to doctors given on October 28, 1922 was included in this edition. Both these editors made important comments on the course and summaries of these will follow.

For the present edition the notes were examined and the whole text checked against the available shorthand reports. Some additions and corrections could consequently be made. Some parts that had been revised now follow the shorthand notes more closely.

Where the story of eurythmy is concerned a detailed account is given in the volume of Rudolf Steiner's complete works “Die Entstehung and Entwickelung der Eurythmie” (the origins and development of eurythmy).

The following words are taken from Frau Baumann's introduction: “Children of all ages grasped and carried out the movements of eurythmy so naturally that we experienced every day of our lives that the visible language of eurythmy movement is a language that is in genuine harmony with the laws and requirements of both man's spiritual-soul nature and his bodily nature. We also experienced daily that hindrances the children had, whether in the realm of the will or in the realm of thought—the thinking activity—could be loosened up or actually overcome by eurythmy. At the Waldorf School we had to deal with children, almost from the very beginning, who had hindrances of this sort. Sometimes these difficulties were only slightly in evidence, sometimes the children were so overwhelmed by them, that they could not keep up with the lessons of their class, and a special remedial class was started where they could be given what Rudolf Steiner prescribed for their care.

Experience showed that for children of this sort eurythmy more than anything else could get across to them and they could take immediate hold of it. Therefore we asked ourselves whether it would be possible to find exercises that would help the spiritual part that was having such difficulty in incarnating because it met with such strong bodily resistance—exercises that would give the physical sheath a better form, movement exercises which would help the etheric formative forces to penetrate better and give their support to the creative upbuilding forces of the organism.

Out of our close connection with so-called difficult cases, with retarded children, with those in need of special care, we acquired the most intense desire to discover and take hold of the hygienic, curative element of eurythmy. From many conversations with Erna van Deventer-Wolfram, who was actively engaged in eurythmy in various parts of Germany, it transpired that through the work she was doing she, too, had been powerfully drawn to this curative aspect of eurythmy. After due reflection we decided to ask Dr. Steiner for instructions on curative eurythmy. Rudolf Steiner agreed with alacrity and promised to think about it. It was not long before Frau van Deventer and I were requested to go to Dornach in April where he wanted to give lectures on curative eurythmy alongside the doctors' course he was going to give at the Goetheanurn.

And so during the clays of April 12 to 17, 1921, Rudolf Steiner presented the gift of the third element of eurythmy, and the doctors and eurythmists who were present experienced a whole new world of possibilities for therapy opening up before them, which, in its variety and effectiveness and the way in which Rudolf Steiner presented it, is bound to have made an unforgettable impression on them. Instead of the few instructions and indications we had asked for we were given a complete and detailed method of eurythmy therapy in which we could directly experience that even today the creative and curative power of the Word, with its capacity to take hold of the movement potential in the human body, is still at work. It often happened that it was not easy to find our way into it, for even those of us who had been familiar with the eurythmic art of movement for many years found that the exercises Rudolf Steiner either performed himself or asked Frau van Deventer-Wolfram and myself to perform were utterly new and surprising. It was especially difficult for the doctors present, as only a minority had had anything to do with eurythmy up till then. Two eurythmy courses were organized where we discussed and practised basic eurythmy with the doctors, and also the exercises that had been given by Dr. Steiner in the curative eurythmy lecture that day.

Regular work at curative eurythmy now started up in various places. In the clinics in Arlesheim and Stuttgart and also at the Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner gave several more indications for the use of curative eurythmy in special cases, he himself varied one or another exercise, and he gave certain sound sequences that were to be practised with individual patients under his special observation. These indications offer doctors and curative eurythmists a rich opportunity to learn more about a methodical approach, adapting of exercises to the individual needs of patients, and the scrupulous observation required for this.

The real basis of all curative eurythmy work is given in this course, as is clearly stated in Rudolf Steiner's own words. In October 1922, on the occasion of a medical week in Stuttgart he was again asked to speak about curative eurythmy, this time by doctors. That lecture is included here with the 1921 course. Right at the beginning Rudolf Steiner says ”I have been requested to say something more about this curative eurythmy of ours. Fundamentally speaking I presented the empirical material for this curative eurythmy at the last doctors' course in Dornach (see “The Spiritual Scientific Aspect of Therapy”), and it is hardly necessary to go further than that. For if it is put to proper use it can have far-reaching significance.”

From Frau I. de Jaager's epilogue (1952 edition):

“It will soon be evident to the reader that unless you make a thorough study of Anthroposophy you will not get very far with this curative eurythmy course. Curative eurythmy arises out of Anthroposophy just the same as artistic eurythmy does. A living grasp of Man and the world is a necessary basis for its use. Only on this assumption will it avoid becoming a system or something that is grasped and applied in an abstract, intellectual way; a danger that is ever present in our times. Curative eurythmy also requires an extensive knowledge of artistic eurythmy. Imaginative forces, the coming into motion of the whole being of man, are prerequisites for the application of this therapy, where it is essential to have an artistic understanding of the patient. All the delicate and minute nuances we need in order to help a sick child or adult come to us out of artistic eurythmy. You will continually find new inspiration there.

I would like to stress that a young person should not devote herself exclusively to curative eurythmy. Up to the age of 28 a person should be able to give her imagination and creative forces free rein. The more this can happen the better she will be able to develop devotion, patience and empathy when doing eurythmy later on. It is essential to devote oneself wholly to the patient and carry him with artistic warmth of heart.

As Rudolf Steiner often mentions in the course, curative eurythmy should never be used without a doctor's thorough diagnosis. The greater the collaboration with the patient's doctor the more effective the curative eurythmy will be.”

When we carefully study the mental life of the present day we find a deep cleft in many minds. Men now receive, even in earliest youth, not one view of the world only but two: the one from their religious instruction and the other from Natural Science. The result of this is, that from the very outset doubts arise as to the correctness of the religious traditions.

It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect.

In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. John's Gospel, and in so doing we shall be able to point out the relation of Spiritual Science to religious records in general. Spiritual Science enables us to understand the various religions in the world. One who is acquainted with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes Christianity as it is, as a fact of the very greatest significance to the whole spiritual life of humanity. It has been made impossible for the mental and spiritual life of the present day to understand the depths of Christianity. This understanding can only be gained through Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If we make use of what it provides we can penetrate deeply into the wisdom contained in the religious records.

We might compare Spiritual Science with philology. We can also study the Christian documents with the aid of philology; but Spiritual Science leads us into the spirit of these documents. The best expounder of Euclid's Geometry is one who knows Geometry, not one who only knows the Greek language.

Spiritual Science is not to be a new religion for the men of modern times; it is to be the means by which the true contents of Christianity may be brought home to them. Christianity is the zenith and meeting point of all religions. All other religions do but point to Christianity, which is the religion for all the future and will not be followed by any other. The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side.

Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view:

1. The point of view of the Simple Believer, who holds fast to the words that are giving him. Many people, however, cannot reconcile the standpoint with their modern thought and they then pass on to:

2. The point of view of the Critic, the Doubter, the one who denies. This is the point of view of the “clever, enlightened men”, who have “risen above” religious truths. But many of them search further and discover that a very great deal is nevertheless contained in these religious documents they wrestle through to:

3. The point of view of the Symbolists. These interpret the religious records in their own way and find in them much or little according to their knowledge or acuteness. In Germany many former Freethinkers have come to this point of view. Finally, it is possible through Spiritual Science to arrive at:

4. The point of view where one learns to take the religious documents literally once more. We find many remarkable examples of this in the study St. John's Gospel.

St. John's Gospel takes quite a special place among the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us an historical picture of Jesus, but St. John's Gospel is regarded as a kind of apotheosis, a wonderful poem. There are many contradictions when we compare it with the statements made in the other Gospels, but these contradictions are so apparent that it cannot be supposed that the old defenders of St. John's Gospel did not perceive them also.

At the present time St. John's Gospel is considered to be the least worthy of credence. The reason for this attitude lies in the materialistic frame of mind of the men of our time. In the course of the 19th century humanity became materialistic in feeling, and consequently also in thought; for as a man feels, so does the judge. Materialism is not confined to the view of the world contained in the books of Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt: even those who explain the religious documents from a certain spiritual standpoint do this in a fully materialistic way. As example of this I might quote the dispute between Karl Vogt and Professor Wagner of Munich. This dispute was fought out at the time in the “Augsburger Zeitung” and ended completely in favor of Karl Vogt. Wagner stood up for the existence of the soul; he did this, however, in an absolutely materialistic way. And as the theologians have materialistic feelings, the three synoptic Gospels please them better, because they more easily admit of a materialistic explanation. It is repugnant to materialistic thinking to accept a Being who towers above all men; it is much more acceptable to them to see in Jesus a noble human being only, “the humble man of Nazareth.” According to St. John's Gospel is quite inadmissible to see in Jesus only that which also lives in any other man. The Christ-soul in the Jesus-body is something quite different. St. John's Gospel represents Christ to us not only as a very great man, but as a Being who embraces the whole earth.

If we translate St. John's Gospel according to the spirit and not only according to the words, the first 14 verses run approximately as follows:—

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God

2. The same was in the very beginning with God

3. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

4. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.

5. And the Light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that through him all men might believe.

8. He was not that Light, that came to bear witness of the Light.

9. For the true Light, which enlighteneth all men, was to come into the world.

10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world did not recognize Him.

11. It came into the several human beings, even into the ego-men; but the individual human beings, the ego-men, did not receive Him.

12. But those that did receive Him, to them gave He power to manifest that they were Sons of God.

13. Those who trusted in His Name were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth. (in St. John's Gospel truth—aletheia—is Spirit Self, devotion—charis—is Life Spirit, and wisdom—sophia—is Spirit Man.)

Even the very first words are taken in an abstract sense by the modern man. The “Very Beginning” is thought of as an abstract beginning; but to grasp the true significance of this word we must recall what was taught on this point in the Christian Secret School of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Mineral, plant, animal, and man make up the series of being in evolution which require the physical body. Above them are beings who do not need the physical body, namely, the Angels, Archangels, Very Beginnings, the Powers, Virtues, Dominions, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, and Beings were still higher.

Thus the Very Beginnings are real Beings. They are those who, at the beginning of the evolution of our world, were already at the stage humanity will only reach at the end of its evolution (in the Vulcan Period.) If in the light of this we study the first verse, “In the very beginning was the word,” we might represent the state of affairs pictorially by the following comparison. Before we utter a word, this word lives in us as thought. It lives within us. When the word is uttered the air around us is set in motion; vibrations are produced. If we imagine these vibrations condensed and hardened in some way, we should see the words fall to the ground as forms and figures; we should perceive the creative power of the word with our eyes. If the word is already creative now, it will be much more so in the future.

Man already possesses organs which will only attain their full significance in the future; he also possesses others which are already in decline. To the latter belong the organs of reproduction, to the former the heart and the larynx, for these are only at the beginning of their development. At the present time the heart is an involuntary muscle, although it has transverse fibers like all voluntary muscles. These transverse fibers are an indication that the heart is in the process of transition from an involuntary to a voluntary organ. The larynx is destined to be the human organ of reproduction in a distant future, strange as this may sound at present. Just as man, by means of speech, can already transpose his thoughts into vibrations of the air, he will in the future be able to create his own image by means of the word.

The Very Beginnings already possessed this creative power at the outset of the evolution of our world and can therefore be rightly looked upon as divine Beings. At the beginning of the evolution of the Earth a divine Word was uttered, and this has become mineral, plant, animal and man.

[ 1 ] A certain institution which arose within the Anthroposophical Society in such a way that there was never any thought of the public in connection with it does not really belong to the chapters of this exposition. Only it has to be described for the reason that attacks made upon me have been based upon material derived from this.

[ 2 ] Some years after the beginning of the activity in the Theosophical Society, Marie von Sievers and I were entrusted by certain persons with the leadership of a society similar to others which have been maintained in preservation of the ancient symbolism and cultural ceremonies that embody the “ancient wisdom.” I never thought in the remotest degree of working in the spirit of such a society. Everything anthroposophic should and must spring from its own sources of knowledge and truth. There should not be the slightest deviation from this standard. But I had always felt a respect for what was historically given. In this lives the spirit which evolves in the human process of becoming. And so wherever possible I also favoured the linking of the newly given to the historically existent. I therefore took the diploma of the society referred to, which belonged to the stream represented by Yarker. It had the forms of Free Masonry of the so-called high degrees; but I took nothing else – absolutely nothing – from this society except the merely formal authorization, in historic succession, to direct a symbolic-cultural activity.

[ 3 ] Everything set forth in content in the “ceremonies” which were employed in the institution were without historic dependence upon any tradition whatever. In the formal granting of the diploma only that was fostered which resulted in the symbolizing of anthroposophic knowledge. And our purpose in this matter was to meet the needs of the members. In elaborating the ideas in which the knowledge of spirit is given in a veiled form, the effort is made to arrive at something which speaks directly to perception, to the heart; and such purposes I wished to serve. If the invitation from the society in question had not come to me, I should have undertaken the direction of a symbolic-cultural activity without any historic connection.

[ 4 ] But this did not create a “secret society.” Whoever entered into this practice was told in the clearest possible manner that he was not dealing with any “order,” but that as participant in ceremonial forms he would experience a sort of visualization, demonstration of spiritual knowledge. If anything took on the forms in which the members of traditional orders had been inducted or promoted to higher degrees, this did not signify that such an order was being founded but only that the spiritual ascent in the soul's experience was rendered visible to the senses in pictures.

[ 5 ] The fact that this had nothing to do with the activity of any existing order or the mediation of things which are mediated in such orders is proved by the fact that members of the most various types of orders participated in the ceremonial exercises which I conducted and found in these something quite different from what existed in their own orders.

[ 6 ] Once a person who had participated with us for the first time in a ceremonial came to me immediately afterward. This person had reached a very high degree in an order. Under the influence of the experience now shared, the wish had arisen to hand over to me the insignia of the order. The feeling was that, after having once experienced real spiritual content, one could no longer share in that which remained fixed in mere formalism. I put the matter right; for anthroposophy dare not draw any person out of the association in which he stands. It ought to add something to that association and take away nothing from it. So this person remained in the order, yet continued to participate further with us in the symbolic exercises.

[ 7 ] It is only too easily understood that, when such an institution as the one here described becomes known, misunderstandings arise. There are, indeed, many persons to whom the externality of belonging to something seems more important than the content which is given to them. And so even many of the participants spoke of the thing as if they belonged to an “order.” They did not understand how to make the distinction that things were demonstrated among us without the environment of an order which otherwise are given only within the environment of an order.

[ 8 ] Even in this sphere we broke with the ancient traditions. Our work was carried on as work must be carried on if one investigates in spiritual-content in an original manner according to the requirements of full clarity in the mind's experience.

[ 9 ] The fact that the starting-point for all sorts of slanders was found in certain attestations which Marie von Sievers and I signed in linking up with the historic Yarker institution means that, in order to concoct such slanders, people treated the absurd with the grimace of the serious. Our signatures were given as a “form.” The customary thing was thus preserved. And while we were giving our signatures, I said as clearly as possible: “This is all a formality, and the practice which I shall institute will take over nothing from the Yarker practice.”

[ 10 ] It is obviously easy to make the observation afterwards that it would have been far more “discreet” not to link up with practices which could later be used by slanderers. But I would remark with all positiveness that, at the period of my life here under consideration, I was still one of those who assume uprightness, and not crooked ways, in the people with whom they have to do. Even spiritual perception did not alter at all this faith in men. This must not be misused for the purpose of investigating the intentions of one's fellow-men when this investigation is not desired by the man in question himself. In other cases the investigation of the inner nature of other souls remains a thing forbidden to the knower of the spirit; just as the unauthorized opening of a letter is something forbidden. And so one is related to men with whom one has to do in the same way as is any other person who has no knowledge of the spirit. But there is just this alternative – either to assume that others are straight-forward in their intentions until one has experienced the opposite, or else to be filled with sorrow as one views the entire world. A social co-operation with men is impossible for the latter mood, for such co-operation can be based only upon trust and not upon distrust.

[ 11 ] This practice which gave in a cult-symbolism a content which is spiritual was a good thing for many who participated in the Anthroposophical Society. Since in this, as in every sphere of anthroposophical work, everything was excluded which lies outside the region of clear consciousness, so there could be no thought of unconfirmed magic, or suggestive influences, and the like. But the members obtained that which, on the one hand, spoke to their ideal conceptions and yet in such a way that the heart could accompany this in direct perception. For many this was something which also guided them again into the better shaping of their ideas. With the beginning of the War it ceased to be possible to continue the carrying on of such practices. In spite of the fact that there was nothing of the nature of a secret society in this, it would have been taken for such. And so this symbolic-cultural section of the anthroposophical movement came to an end in the middle of 1914.

[ 12 ] The fact that persons who had taken part in this practice – absolutely unobjectionable to anyone who looked upon it with a good will and a sense for truth – became slanderous accusers is an instance of that abnormality in human conduct which arises when men who are not inwardly genuine share in movements whose content is genuinely spiritual. They expect things corresponding with their trivial soul life; and, since they naturally do not find such things, they turn against the very practice to which they previously turned – though with unconscious insincerity.

[ 13 ] Such a society as the Anthroposophical could not be formed otherwise than according to the soul-needs of its members. It could not lay down an abstract programme which required that in the Anthroposophical Society this and that should be done. The programme had to be elaborated out of reality. But this very reality is the soul-need of its members. Anthroposophy as a content of life was formed out of its own sources. It had appeared before the world as a spiritual creation, and many who were drawn to it by an inner attraction tried to work together with others. Thus it came about that the Society was the formation of persons of whom some sought the religious, others rather the scientific, and others the artistic. And it was necessary that what was sought should be found.

[ 14 ] Because of this working out from the reality of the needs of the members, the private printed matter must be judged differently from that given to the public from the beginning The content of this printed matter was intended as oral, not printed, information. The subjects discussed were determined by the soul-needs of the members as these needs appeared with the passage of time.

[ 15 ] What is contained in the published writings is adapted to the furtherance of anthroposophy as such; in the manner in which the private printed matter evolved, the configuration of soul of the whole Society has co-operated.

There exist within the sphere of Esoteric Science different principal ideas, which then run as leading-threads, leit-motifs through the entire Esoteric Movement. Such an idea, is that of Rhythm in Numbers; and another is that of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. The secret of Number expresses itself in the fact that certain phenomena follow each other in such a way that the 7th in a series of events reveals itself as a kind of conclusion, whereas the 8th may be designated as the beginning of quite another series of events. One finds this fact reflected in the physical world, in the relation of the octave to the Key-note.

For those who endeavour to penetrate in occult spheres, this principle becomes the basis of a very comprehensive view of the cosmos. Not only are tones, sounds, arranged according to the Law of Number, but also events in the course of time; events in the spiritual world are also so arranged that one finds in them a relationship, just as one finds in the Rhythm of Sound.

Still more important is the relationship between the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. We find a physical image of this at every touch and turn. Let us consider the relationship of the whole plant to the seed. In the entire plant we see a Macrocosm, in the seed a Microcosm. In a certain sense we find compressed in the seed, as in a point, the forces which are divided later over the entire plant. In a similar way we can look upon the development of each individual human being from childhood to old age as a Microcosm, whereas the evolution of a race, a people, is to be conceived as a Macrocosm. Every nation has its childhood in which it absorbs important elements of civilisation,. An instance of this is to be seen in the Romans, who absorbed into themselves the Greek civilization. As a people grows, it draws out of itself the necessary forces for its own further evolution. Therefore it is so important that each member of a nation should experience what his whole race undergoes, because each single member of a race relates himself to the whole nation as the seed to the whole plant. In the highest degree we find the relationship between Macrocosm and Microcosm existing in man as he meets us in the world of sense and the cosmos surrounding him. As man stands before us in the world of sense, he has concentrated into his being the forces of the Universe, just as the forces of the plant are concentrated in the seed or germ.

Now we must ask ourselves:—Are these forces distributed in some way over the Macrocosm, just as the plant-forces of the seed are distributed over the entire plant? Esoteric Science alone can give us an answer to this question, for in his earthly life man only learns to know himself as a Microcosm; but he lives not only in the Microcosm, but also has a life within the entire Universe. To state, that in his experience from waking to sleeping man oscillates between a life in the Macrocosm and a life in the Microcosm, at first appears to be merely an assertion. When he sinks into slumber, his consciousness ceases to work, his feelings and emotions cease to exist for him, and external science will bestir itself in vain if it endeavours to find within the sleeping human being that which constitutes his soul life in the waking condition. Even logically it is impossible to conceive that man's soul-life is destroyed when he goes to sleep and that when he awakes it arises again as if out of nothingness. External science in no very distant future will have to admit that one can just as little recognise the soul-life by external, material facts, as one can recognise the lungs by studying the laws of oxygen. In addition to studying the laws of oxygen, we have to learn to know the lungs in their organic functioning. In the same way we learn that in our external laws there is nothing of the physical life which we draw in with our breath on waking in the morning, and which we expire when we go to sleep. To the occultist going to sleep and waking up is nothing but a kind of breathing:—Every morning man draws into himself with his waking breath his spiritual, psychic nature, and he breathes that out again on going to sleep. Where is the spiritual, psychic part of man when he is asleep,—that part which corresponds as it were to the air in space which he has breathed out of his body? Occult science shows us that it is surrounded by the atmosphere of the spiritual world, just as we are surrounded by the atmosphere of the air; the only difference being that our atmosphere extends only for a few miles, whereas the spiritual atmosphere fills the entire cosmos.

Consider the quantity of air which man inspires in his body, in comparison with the entire atmosphere. The same quantity which, after inspiration exists inside the human body, is added, after expiration, to the atmosphere around one. Thus in the sense of occultism, we can say that after an inspiration the same amount of air is in the Microcosm which after expiration is in the Macrocosm. It is just the same with that psychic spiritual life which is actually present within our body; from waking to going to sleep that is in the Microcosm, but from sleeping until waking in the morning that is in the Macrocosm.

Just as an external physical science teaches us concerning the existence of a physical atmosphere, so Occult Science speaks of a spiritual Cosmos, which takes up into itself our souls when we sleep. Spiritual Science can only be attained through spiritual methods, the methods of initiation. Daily experience reveals to us the life of the soul in the Macrocosm, but life within the spiritual, psychic Macrocosm we only learn to know through initiation.

So we must speak first of the Science of Initiation whenever that transition from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm is to be discussed, and this science of Initiation is of special significance, because we enter that spiritual world after death. That crossing of the Threshold of Death signifies a definite forsaking of the body by the soul.

The methods of Initiation give an intimate exercise for the soul; just as in everyday life we work on our bodily environment, so we must train our souls to work in a spiritual psychic way on the Macrocosm and receive impressions from it. We must endeavour to release those spiritual, psychic forces which are bound up with our physical life, to set them free from the body. Three Soul-Forces are bound up with the body in ordinary life, which can be made free through Initiation. The first of the Soul-Forces is the power of thought. In ourordinary life we use it for shaping our thoughts, for forming ideas about the things around us. Let us attempt to enter into the nature of this Thought-Force. What happens when we think and form concepts? Even physical science will admit that every time we grasp a thought which relates to anything sensible, a process of destruction takes place in our brain. We have to destroy the finer structures of the brain, and this destruction is very evident in the signs of fatigue.

What the everyday-thinking destroys in this way is replaced in sleep; but through the methods of initiation we attain a condition in which our thinking-power is set free from the physical brain, and then nothing is destroyed. This we attain by Meditation, Concentration and Contemplation. These are certain processes in our souls which are to be distinguished from the ordinary life of the soul. In order to speak quite concretely, an example shall be given. Those ideas and soul processes which fill our ordinary life are but little adapted to kindle meditation in our souls. We must choose quite different ones. Suppose you have two glasses of water before you; one empty, the other half full. Now suppose we pour water out of the half-full glass into the empty one, and imagine that the half-full glass becomes fuller and fuller be cause of what we are doing. The materialist would consider this kind of thing foolish; but, my dear friends, with a concept suitable for meditation it is not a question of its reality but of whether it is one which will form ideas in the soul. Just because it relates to nothing real, it can direct our senses away from reality. It may be a symbol especially for that soul-process which we describe as the mystery of love. The process of love is something like that half-full glass from which man pours into the empty one, and which thereby becomes fuller and fuller. The soul does not become more empty, it becomes fuller in the same measure in which it gives; and in this way that symbol may have great significance.

Now, my dear friends, if we treat such an idea in this way, so that we apply all our soul-powers to it, then it is a meditation. We must forget everything else in the presence of that idea, we must even forget ourselves; our entire soul life must be directed to that one idea for a long period, say for a quarter of an hour. It is not sufficient to perform such an exercise once, or even a few times. It must be repeated again and again and then according to the endowment of the individual there will gradually be revealed a change in our soul-life. We notice that through this we gradually develop a power of thinking which no longer destroys the brain. Anyone who goes through such an evolution will find that this meditation evokes no fatigue, and that the brain is not destroyed. That appears to contradict the fact that beginners in meditation so often fall asleep, but that is because when we first begin to meditate we are still connected with the external world, and have not yet learned to free our thoughts from the brain. When after repeated efforts, we are able to meditate without fatigue, then we have freed our thought from the physical brain, and then a transformation appears in the whole of our human life.

As formerly, when asleep we were outside our body, without consciousness so we are now outside it and are at the same time conscious. And, just as in ordinary everyday life we think of our ego as being within our skin, so after meditation we experience ourselves outside our body. The body becomes an
object on which we look down. Now, however, we learn to know it differently than in sleep we learn to know it as the sum of magnetic forces which chain us to our body. It is something into which we wish to dive down. And we recognise that these are the same forces which draw us each morning to our physical body, and which before birth we drew fur ourselves from the spiritual world when we sought a stream of heredity in which tofind a new physical body. We then learn why we felt drawn to our parents and ancestors.

Let us take one idea, one soul-experience, which is different from that we have, on passing from the Microcosm into the Macrocosm. When we look from the Macrocosm to our body, we say on confronting each of our experiences: “This is outside us.” But if we have developed the Pauline experience, we have already developed an element of soul which is something within us, yet external to us; and when we are outside our bodies we feel the Christ-experience as an inner experience. This may be called the first meeting with the Christ-Impulse in the Macrocosm.

But now we must discuss a second kind of Initiation-Force. Just as we had to release the power of thought, so we have to release that force of which we make use of in our speech. Materialistic science says that our organs of speech come from our brain centres. But my dear friends, it was not the Brocha-organ in the brain which developed speech, but the contrary; speech built up the Brocha-organ in the brain.

The power of Thinking works destructively, but speech, which comes from our social environment, works constructively. Now we can also take the force which built up this Brocha-organ in the brain, and release it. We do this when we permeate our meditation with feeling. When I meditate on this sentence: “In the Light radiates Wisdom”, that reflects no external truth; but it has a deep meaning, a deep significance. If we permeate our feeling with the following; “we will seek to live with Light that radiates Wisdom”, then we feel that we gradually grasp that power which generally comes to expression in words but which now lives in our soul. You have heard of ‘golden silence’, that refers to the fact that we have in our soul a force which creates the word. We can grasp this force, just as we can grasp the power of thought; and in so doing, we overcome Time, just as through grasping of the power of thought we overcome space. The memory, which in ordinary everyday life extends back to one's childhood, then extends into the pre-natal life. That is the way to get experiences of our life from the last death until the present birth, and is also the way to perceive the evolution of humanity; because we then perceive those forces which guide the development of the history of man. Then we learn to know life from birth right up to death. If we but develop the force of the Silent Word, we learn to know the spiritual basis of our life on earth. And here again it is the case that we come to an historic point, to the Mystery of Golgotha; because this is the path along which we come to the ascending and descending development of man, the point when Christ incarnated. We then recognise Christ as He is, in His very own forces. A special light then falls on the first lines of the Gospel according to St. John.

As through the freeing of our thought we unite ourselves with the Christ as He was on earth, so through the freeing of the Word we unite ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha.

And then a third force can become independent through meditation. Meditation can not only affect the brain and the larynx, but the blood-circulation in the heart. We feel this working in a weak form in such processes as blushing and turning pale. There a psychic element affects the pulsing of the blood and reachel to the heart. Now this soul-power can be drawn away from the pulsation of the blood and be made an independent power of the soul. This happens through Meditation, when the will unites itself with one's meditations. Again we meditate: “In the Light radiates Wisdom”; but now we form for ourselves the resolve of uniting our Will with it, so that we will to accompany this radiating wisdom right through the evolution of humanity. Now if we carry out such a Meditation, we reach the point when the forces of the all stream into the soul.

My dear friends, these forces can be grasped, one can draw them out of the blood, though not entirely; but they build a clairvoyant force through which we can transcend our Earth. We then learn to know the Earth as a reincarnating planet, which will incarnate anew and we human beings with it. In this way we grow through the spiritual, psychic world, right out into the Macrocosm.

In a certain way we experience how life between death and birth must be opposed to the life of the one incarnation; for what man experiences after death when free from his body, is experienced here by the Initiate. Let us take the chief characteristic of what offers itself in a condition free of the body, for that is the same as the life after death.

Living in the Microcosm we perceive through the physical organs of the senses; after death we look down on to the body as do the Initiates, but we cannot then perceive what the sense organs perceive. The Initiate can learn about the life between death and rebirth, because he has found here the transition from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm. We cannot converse, with the dead in our ordinary human speech, but if we have learnt to set the power of speech free from the body, then we learn to recognise in what way we can be together with the dead; and if we set free our power of thought, we can speak with those who are living between death and rebirth. In this way a seer could speak with the soul of one who had gone before. He had been an excellent man, but in a material sense had only concerned himself about his own people. He had lived without religious or Anthroposophical ideas. And so the Seer could experience from that man who had died: “I know that I lived with my family, with my own people, and they were the sunshine of my life. They are still living. I know it, but I can only see them up to that point of time when I left the earth. I can establish no connection with them now”. My dear friends, conditions are indeed complicated after death. The seer could see the following: The wife still showed in her being, something like the results of the influence of her husband. The husband could see these results, not as one person sees another, but as if reflected in a mirror. There certainly was a power of seeing but only as if one looked into a mirror and saw an image. That affects one in a terrible way, because one cannot see people as they really are; but just as we can see the physical body in existence, in the same way after death we must learn to see the soul.

A connection however, is still possible between the dead and the living on earth, if only the latter will permeate themselves with spiritual life, on this rests the benefits which we can show to the dead. If anyone has gone through the Gate of Death with whom our interests were bound up,—we can read to him;—we can imagine him standing before us. We read to him in a low voice, or we can send him thoughts, but he will only receive an impression if we send him ideas and concepts containing spiritual life.

Now the task of Anthroposophy will be understood when we realise that in this way we can wipe away the abyss which separates us from the dead. Even a soul which was at emnity with Anthroposophy can feel a benefit through such reading; for there are two sides to be distinguished in the life of our souls. There is what we have experienced there consciously, and the sub-conscious depths, which make their way up, like the dpeths of the sea, it only expresses itself in waves. For instance, there may be two brothers—one an Anthroposophist and the other an enemy. This can only be a fact in the outer world, because the inner process is, that a deep longing for what is religious exists in the soul of the second and he only seeks to deaden it by opposing Spiritual Science.

His conscious idea is a kind of opiate, the object of which is to help him to forget what is going on, in the depths of his soul. Death does away with all that, and we hunger especially after those sub-conscious longings of ours; so these readings of Anthroposophical writings is especially beneficial, because gradually there will come from that the consciousness of union with the dead. But even before we have that feeling the only risk we run is that the dead may not listen to us when we read eo them.

So we see that through the living grasp of Anthroposophical teaching the dead and the living in Microcosm and Macrocosm come into relationship. This occurs in yet another sphere; when the seer observes sleeping souls he sees that some souls go through the portal of sleep who have no spiritual interests; others souls go through the portal of sleep who during the day have taken in spiritual thoughts. A distinction can be seen between them, for sleeping souls are like seeds in a field; and the dead nourish themselves on that which is brought by the sleeping souls in the way of spiritual ideas. If when we go to sleep, we do not carry up into the spiritual world spiritual ideas and concepts we deprive the dead souls of their nourishment. With our reading we can give them spiritual stimulation; with the spiritual ideas we carry through with us on going to sleep we give the dead their nourishment.

And so, through what man creates in his own soul in this way, he throws a bridge across from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm. What we take into ourselves is as a grain of corn; the living mission, not merely the theoretic mission of Anthroposophy. I might represent as theory transformed into the elixir of life. Because immortality then becomes an experience; just as the seed is a guarantee for another seed, so do we develop spiritual, psychic powers which are the guarantee for our coming again. Not only do we understend but we experience immortality in ourselves. Thus from the time we grow grey-headed we experience that part of us which goes through the Gate of Death. In this sense Anthroposophy can become the elixir of life, can permeate us, as the blood permeates our physical body. Only then are Theosophy and Anthroposophy what they ought to be.

If we seek to recognise this and to gather it into the basic feeling that the human soul is just as much connected with the spiritual world as our physical bodies are connected with the physical world, then we may experience the feeling:

The Beings in the worlds of Space
Who alter in the course of Time,
Speak to the minds of Men.
The Soul of Man experiencing,
Presses beyond the boundaries of Space,
And, undisturbed by Time,
Enters the Realm of the Eternities.

Here is much complaint nowadays of ‘nervousness’ and all that this word implies; and we can scarcely be surprised at the statement that there is no man or woman nowadays who is not nervous. We can well understand even this declaration. These conditions manifest themselves in life in various ways: most easily in this way, that the person becomes what we might call a ‘psychological fidget’—that is to say, a man or woman who is unable to hold fast a single thought, but constantly jumps from one thought to another. This constant hurry of the inner life is one of the easiest forms of nervousness. There is also another form, where people do not know what to do with themselves—cannot make anything of themselves. Or again this: when they are called upon to make some decision, they never know what they shall do in the given situation. This latter nervousness can lead to still worse symptoms, till it expresses itself in manifold forms of disease, even imitating organic diseases—gastric disturbances, for instance—in a most deceptive way. Many another condition might be mentioned. Who does not know of these things in our time? We need not go so far as to speak of a ‘political alcoholism’ with regard to the great events of public life. Quite recently, there has been no little comment on public affairs in this direction. This very phrase was recently coined for the way the political affairs in Europe were conducted during recent months. People began to perceive how very unpleasantly the prevailing nervousness is making itself felt.

Now there can be no doubt that it will grow no better for mankind in the near future. The prospects are by no means hopeful; for there are many harmful factors and abuses, strongly influencing our present life, and passing like an epidemic from one man to another, so that others who are in good health generally, but who are weak, are as if infected by them. Among other things, it is extremely harmful for our time that many people who come into high and responsible positions have studied in the way one does. There are whole branches of scholarship, pursued in this way: For a whole year, the college student will spend his time and energy quite otherwise than really thinking what the professors are giving in their lectures. Then, when he has to know something for his examination, he will set to work and ‘cram’ for it during a few weeks; and the worst feature is that there is no real connection—no inner interest of the soul in the cramming, or rather, in the subject of the cramming. In our schools, the prevailing opinion of the pupils often is: ‘If only I could soon forget what I have just had to learn!’ What is the consequence? No doubt, in some respects, men are thus fitted to take a hand in public life. But they are not inwardly united with the thing that they are doing; they feel remote from it. Now there is nothing worse than to feel remote, in your heart, from the things that you are having to do with your head. It has a most adverse effect on the strength of the human ethereal body. The ethereal body becomes more and more enfeebled under such pursuits, precisely because of the very slight connection which then exists between the core of the man's soul and the activity that he engages in.

For one who takes it in a healthy way, Anthroposophy should have precisely the opposite effect. He will not merely learn that man consists of ‘physical body, ethereal body, astral body and Ego;’ he will behave in such a way that the several members unfold strongly and healthily. If a man makes a very simple experiment but repeats it with diligence, he will often find that the very slightest thing can work miracles. What I have just described is closely connected with the quick forgetfulness of many people. It is often said that such forgetfulness is a great nuisance in life. Anthroposophy says more than this; it shows that it is also harmful to health. Many things even bordering on very severe illnesses of human nature would be avoided if people were less forgetful. And who can claim to be exempt? Who has not to complain of forgetfulness in some respect? Assume, for instance, that a man begins to notice he can never find things where he put them. It may seem strange for us to be speaking of these things, but after all, they do occur in life; and there is a very good exercise for gradually curing such forgetfulness. Suppose, for instance, that a lady is in the habit of putting her brooch down somewhere, and presently discovers that she can never find it again in the morning. No doubt, you will say, the best thing to do is always to put it in the same place; but we will speak of a far more effective cure. She should say to herself: ‘Now, all the more, I will put it in different places; but as I do so, I will unfold the thought: I have put the thing there, and I will mark the surroundings well. And now I quietly go away; and I shall see, if I only do this once, I shall not always succeed in finding it again quickly; but if I do it often, I shall see that my forgetfulness by-and-by disappears.’ The effect of this exercise is that the Ego is brought into connection with the fact, with the deed I do, and that a picture is developed. This bringing-together of the soul and spirit—the Ego, the kernel of our being,—and the pictorial image, can most effectively sharpen one's memory. And this can be very useful for life; one will forget far less. Still more, however, can be attained. Let us assume that it became a kind of habit for people to hold such thoughts when they take things off or when they put things aside. It would represent a strengthening of the ethereal body. For, as we know, the ethereal body is in a certain sense the bearer of memory. We need not therefore be surprised that this will strengthen the ethereal body. Assume, however, that you give someone this advice, not merely because he is forgetful but because he shows certain signs of nervousness. You will see that it is a very good cure; he will gradually put aside certain so-called nervous conditions. Life itself in such a case will prove that the things Anthroposophy teaches are correct.

In human nature, as you know, the physical body and the ethereal body are immediately connected. Now there is one thing observable in our time, which moves one with compassion if one bears a healthy soul in one's breast. Have you ever seen people who have to write much in their profession—Post Office workers, for example—and who make strange movements whenever they are about to write? It need not go so far as that, for when it has gone so far, it is already a pretty bad condition. It may be no more than this: that whenever they are writing, they have to give themselves a kind of jerk—a repeated jerk for every upward or every downward stroke. You can tell it from the handwriting if it is written like that. Such a condition can only be understood by Spiritual Science. As to the relation of the two bodies, in a thoroughly healthy human being the ethereal body must always be absolutely able to enter into the physical; and the physical body must always be the other's servant. It is an unhealthy state of affairs if the physical body executes movements on its own account; it represents a preponderance of the physical over the ethereal. We are then faced with an inherent weakness of the ethereal body. This kind of relation between the physical and the ethereal body lies at the occult foundation of every kind of cramp or convulsion. In all such conditions, the physical body is dominant and performs all manner of movements on its own. Here again—provided these conditions have not got the upper hand too much—there is a way of helping. We must only reckon with the occult facts; we must believe in the existence and activity of the several members of man's being.

Suppose someone has got into such a condition that his fingers continually shake when he begins to write. It will certainly be good to advise: ‘Take a holiday, write less for a time, and you will get over it!’ But this is only half the necessary advice; one could do much more by adding: ‘Without making too much effort, try every day—quarter or half an hour would do—to alter your writing, so that you have to attend, and not write mechanically, as in the past. For instance, while you used to write f in this way, do it now more upright, with a different form. Cultivate the habit of painting the letters.’

If spiritual knowledge became more widespread, the superiors of such an unfortunate man would not say, when he came back from his holiday: ‘What a crazy fellow you are, you are writing quite differently.’ People would realise that this is a healthy thing. The point is that when a man changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to what he is doing—that is, in other words, to bring the centre and core of his being into connection with the thing he does. To do so is to strengthen the ethereal body; thereby we become healthier human beings.

It would not be bad deliberately to work for this in school education. Anthroposophy must here give a piece of advice to the educational world, though doubtless it will not be followed for a long time yet. Suppose that when you first taught children to write, you taught them a certain style of handwriting; then, after a few years, you saw to it that they assumed a different character of writing. This change—and the conscious attention it involves—would result in an untold strengthening of the ethereal body.

You see that we can do something in life to strengthen our ethereal body. Now this is of immense importance, for numerous morbid states are due to the weakness of the ethereal body. Nay, we may even assert that many forms of illness would take an entirely different course if the ethereal body were stronger. The course they actually take is due to the weakened ethereal body, which is characteristic of the man of today.

What we have here been indicating represents a definite way of working upon the ethereal body. When we do this, we apply an actual force to something—a force we could certainly not apply if we denied the existence of this ‘something.’ If, then, the effects of the force thus applied became apparent, surely it proves the existence of the ‘something’—namely, in this case, the ethereal body.

Another thing to strengthen the ethereal body is to perform yet another exercise for the improvement of memory. It may already have been mentioned; let me repeat it nevertheless. We can do infinitely much to strengthen the ethereal body if we go through something that is familiar to us, not only in the way we know it, but in backward sequence. Say, for example, in school we have to learn by heart a sequence of Kings or the like; it is extremely good to learn them also in the opposite direction. If we do this in a comprehensive way, we do much to strengthen the ethereal body. To think through a whole play backwards, for instance, is highly effective in strengthening the ethereal body.

You will soon see that in ordinary modern life people do not do such things as would contribute to strengthen their ethereal bodies. They do not give themselves a chance in the restless bustle of modern life; they do not come to that inner quiet which is needful for such exercises. In the evening, people are generally too tired to harbour such thoughts. But when Anthroposophy begins to penetrate into their souls, people will see how many things that are done in the bustle of modern life could well be spared; then it would not be impossible to gain the time for these strengthening and health-giving exercises. Moreover, people will quickly see the very good results that can be achieved if these things are already observed in education.

Another little exercise may now be mentioned. With certain things we do—no matter whether or no they are of such a nature as to leave a trace behind—it is a good exercise at the same time to look at the thing which we are doing. It is easy to do so, for instance, in writing. I am quite sure, many a person would soon wean himself of his hideous handwriting if he really contemplated the letters.

But there is another thing which it is quite good to do as an exercise, though it should not be prolonged. One should endeavour to watch oneself: how one walks, how one moves one's head, how one laughs, etc.; in short, one tries to get a clear notion of one's own movements and gestures. Very few people know what they look like from behind while they are walking. It is good to make this experiment; only it must not always be continued, for it would quickly lend itself to vanity. This exercise also tends to consolidate the ethereal body, and it works in such a way as to strengthen the control of the astral body over the ethereal body. You thus become able, if need be, to suppress certain actions or movements of your own free will. The point is, it is good to be able to do the things we habitually do, quite differently on occasion, so that we are not always obliged to do them in one way. One need not become a fanatical upholder of the indifferent use of the right and the left hand. But if a man is able now and then to do with the left hand what he commonly does with the right, he will strengthen the control of his astral body over his ethereal body.

The ‘culture of the will’, as we may call it, is notably important. I have already pointed out how often nervousness will take the form that people never know what they shall do; nay, they do not know what they shall desire, or even what they want to desire. They shrink from doing what they have resolved to do. We may regard it as a certain weakness of the will, but it is due to an insufficient command of the Ego over the astral body. Some people cannot bring themselves firmly to will what they should will. The way to strengthen one's will is not to carry out something one wishes—provided, needless to say, that it will do no harm to leave the wish unfulfilled. Examine yourself in life, and you will soon find countless things which it is very nice, no doubt, to satisfy, but equally possible to leave unsatisfied—when the fulfilment would give you pleasure, but you can quite well do without it. Set out in this way systematically, and every such restraint will signify an access of strength to the will; and that is, strength of the Ego over the astral body.

If we subject ourselves to this procedure in later life, we can still make good much that our education nowadays neglects. It is not easy, at this point, to find the right educational tact. If you are able to fulfil a pupil's wish and you deny it to him, you will awaken his antipathy; so, you might say, it seems doubtful if the non-fulfilment of wishes is a right principle in education, for you could easily call forth an all-too-great antipathy. What are you then to do? There is a way. Deny the wishes, not to your pupil but to yourself, so that the pupil perceives it; and as there is a strong imitative impulse, especially in the first seven years of life, you will soon see that the child will follow your example and deny wishes to himself.

A most important means of strengthening the control of the Ego over the astral body is to set forth what is to be said for and against one and the same thing. Look out into life, and you will see that people are constantly saying only the one thing. That is the usual state of affairs. But there is nothing in life which you can truly treat in this way; there are never no pros or cons. And it is good for all things if we acquire the habit of adducing the pros and the cons as well. Human vanity and egoism frequently favour what one is about to do; therefore it is also good to enlist the reasons against. The fact is this: Man would so like to be ‘a good man’; and he is convinced often that he will be, if only he does what there are so many reasons in favour of his doing, and leaves undone what there are so many reasons against. It is an uncomfortable fact, but there are many possible objections to practically everything you do! Truth to tell, you are not nearly as good as you believe. This is a universal truth—a truism, no doubt; but it is an effective truth if you make it a practice, with all things that you do, clearly to put before you what you might also leave undone. What you thereby attain is this:—No doubt you have sometimes met people so weak in their will that they would sooner leave others to run their affairs. They would far rather ask: What am I to do now? than find the reasons for their action in themselves. Let us assume that such a person, who is fond of asking others (what I am now saying, by the way, must also be conceived as having many cons as well as pros!) is confronted by two different people. One of them says: ‘Do this!’ the other says: ‘Don't do it!’ We shall see that the one counsellor gains the victory, namely, the one who has the stronger influence of will. This is a most significant phenomenon, for the Yes or the No is brought about by the will of an adviser, whose strength of will has gained the victory over the other's will. But now suppose that I stand quite alone, and in my own and inmost heart I face the Yes and the No, and then go and do the thing because I have given myself the answer Yes. This Yes will have unfolded a strong force within me. Thus when you place yourself in consciousness before a choice of alternatives, you let something that is strong overcome something that is weak. And that is important, for it greatly strengthens the control of the Ego over the astral body. You will do very much for the strength of your will, if you try to carry out what I am now describing. But there is also the shadow-side. For you will not strengthen your will, but only weaken it, if instead of acting under the influence of that which speaks for the one course or the other, out of mere slackness you do nothing. Seemingly you have then followed the No, while in reality you have merely been lax and easygoing. It will be good, not to attempt the choice when you feel limp and weary, but when you are inwardly strong and know that you can really follow what you place before your soul as the eventual pro or con. These things must be brought before the soul at the right time.

Another thing to strengthen the control of the I over the astral body is to dismiss from our souls everything that creates a barrier between us and our surroundings—not by withholding justified criticisms, but by distinguishing something that is to be blamed for its own sake from something that one finds exasperating because of its effect on oneself. The more one can make one's judgments, particularly about fellow-men, unaffected by their attitude to oneself, the better it is for the strengthening of the Ego in its control of the astral body. It is a good thing to practise this self-denial: not to consider bad in our fellow-men the things we can only consider bad because they are bad for ourselves; and, in effect, only to apply our judgment where we ourselves are not in question. You will see how difficult this is in life. For instance, when a man has lied to you, it is not easy to restrain your antipathy. Nevertheless, one need not go at once to others, to complain of him; but we can observe from day to day how he acts and speaks, and let this form a basis for our judgment, rather than what he has done to us. It is important to let things speak for themselves and to understand a person in himself, not through one particular action, but from the consistent pattern of his behaviour. You will soon find that even with a man whom you consider an exceptional scoundrel, many of the things he does are quite out of keeping with his conduct in other respects. It is good for the strengthening of our Ego, to meditate upon the fact that in all cases we might very well refrain from nine-tenths of the judgments we pronounce. It would be ample for life if only one-tenth of them were to be formed in our minds; it would by no means impoverish our life.

What I have told you today are apparently small details, but it must also be our task, now and then, to dwell upon these things. For then we see how very differently we must take hold of life than we generally do. It is not the most important thing to say that when a man is ill you should send to the chemist's for a medicine. The important thing is to order life in such a way that illnesses will become less and less oppressive; and they will become less oppressive if by such practices we strengthen the influence of the Ego over the astral body, of the astral body over the ethereal, and of the ethereal body over the physical. Self-education, and an influence upon the education of children, can follow from our fundamental anthroposophical convictions.

Many friends have come here to-day for the first time since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and I must therefore speak of it, even if only briefly, by way of introduction. Through this Christmas Foundation the Anthroposophical Society was to be given a new impulse, the impulse that is essential if it is to be a worthy channel for the life which, through Anthroposophy, must find embodiment in human civilisation. Since the Christmas Foundation an esoteric impulse has indeed come into the Anthroposophical Society. Hitherto this society was as it were the administrative centre for Anthroposophy. From its beginning onwards, Anthroposophy was the channel for the spiritual life that has been accessible to mankind since the last third of the 19th century. Our conception of the Anthroposophical Movement, however, must be that what takes its course on earth is only the outer manifestation of something that is accomplished in the spiritual world for the furtherance of the evolution of humanity. And those who wish to be worthily connected with the Anthroposophical Movement must also realise that the spiritual impulses are also at work in the sphere of the Anthroposophical Society itself.

What does it really amount to when a man has a general, theoretical belief in a spiritual world? To believe in theory in a spiritual world means to receive it into one's thoughts. But although in their own original nature thoughts represent the most spiritual element in modern man, the thoughts themselves are such that in their development as inner spirit during the last four to five centuries, they are adapted only to receive truths relating to material existence. And so people to-day have a spiritual life in thoughts, but as members of contemporary civilisation they fill it with a material content only. Theoretical knowledge of Anthroposophy also remains a material content until there is added to it the inner, conscious power of conviction that the spiritual is concrete reality; that wherever matter exists for the outer eyes of men, not only does spirit permeate this matter, but everything material finally vanishes before man's true perception, when this is able to penetrate through the material to the spiritual.

But such perception must then extend also to everything that is our own close concern. Our membership of the Anthroposophical Society is such a concern; it is a fact in the outer world. And we must be able to recognise the spiritual reality corresponding to it, the spiritual movement which in the modern age unfolded in the spiritual world and will go forward in earthly life if men do but keep faith with it. Otherwise it will go forward apart from earthly life; its link with earthly life will be maintained if men find in their hearts the strength to keep faith with it.

It is not enough to acknowledge theoretically that spiritual reality hovers behind mineral, plant, animal and man himself; what must penetrate as deep conviction into the heart of every professed Anthroposophist is that behind the Anthroposophical Society too—which in its outward aspect belongs to the world of maya, of illusion—there hovers the spiritual archetype of the Anthroposophical Movement. This conviction must take real effect in the work and activity of the Anthroposophical Society. Such a conception will in the future contribute in many ways to the provision of the right soil for that spiritual Foundation Stone which was laid for the Anthroposophical Society at the time of the Christmas Meeting.

And this brings me to speak of what I shall have to say to you in the coming days, for which this introductory lecture is intended to provide guiding lines. I want to show how at this serious point in its existence the Anthroposophical Movement is actually returning to its own germinal impulse. When at the beginning of the century the Anthroposophical Society came into being out of the framework of the Theosophical Society, something very characteristic was foreshadowed. While the Anthroposophical Society—then the German Section of the Theosophical Society—was in process of formation, I gave lectures in Berlin on Anthroposophy. Therewith, at the very outset, my work was given the hallmark of the impulse which later became an integral part of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Apart from this, I can remind you to-day of something else.—The first few lectures I was to give at that time to a very small circle were to have the title, “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma.” I became aware of intense opposition to this proposal. And perhaps Herr Guenther Wagner, now the oldest member of the Anthroposophical Society, who to our great joy is here to-day and whom I want to welcome most cordially as an Elder of the society, will remember how strong was the opposition at that time to much that from the beginning onwards I was to incorporate in the Anthroposophical Movement.

Those lectures were not given. In face of the other currents emanating from the Theosophical Movement it was not possible to proceed with the cultivation of the esotericism which speaks unreservedly of the reality of what was always there in the form of theory.

Since the Christmas Foundation, the concrete working of karma in historical happenings and in individual human beings has been spoken of without reserve in this hall [The temporary lecture-hall in the “Schreinerei” (workshop) at the Goetheanum.] and in the various places I have been able to visit. And a number of Anthroposophists have already heard how the different earthly lives of significant personalities have run their course, how the karma of the Anthroposophical Society itself and of the individuals connected with it has taken shape. Since the Christmas Foundation these things have been spoken of in a fully esoteric sense; but since the Christmas Foundation, also, our printed Lecture-Courses have been accessible to everyone interested in them. We have thus become an esoteric and at the same time a completely open society.

Thus we return in a certain sense to the starting-point. What must now be reality was then intention. As many friends are here for the first time since the Christmas Foundation, I shall be speaking to you in the coming lectures on questions of karma, giving a kind of introduction to-day by speaking of things which are also indicated, briefly, in the current News Sheet for members of the society.

As is clear from our anthroposophical literature, the development of human consciousness is bound up with the attainment of those data of knowledge which point to facts and beings of the spiritual world and with penetration into these facts. We shall hear how this spiritual world, the penetration into which has become possible through the development of human consciousness, can then be intelligible to the healthy, unprejudiced human intellect. It must always be remembered that although actual penetration into the spiritual world requires the development of other states of consciousness, the understanding of what the spiritual investigator brings to light requires only the healthy human intellect, the healthy human reason that endeavours to put prejudice aside.

In saying this, one immediately meets stubborn obstacles in the modern life of thought. When I once said the same thing in Berlin, a well-meaning article appeared on the subject of the public lecture I had given before a large audience. This article was to the following effect: Steiner maintains that the healthy human intellect can understand what is investigated in the spiritual world. But the whole trend of modern times has taught us that the healthy human intellect can know nothing of the super-sensible world, and that if it does, it is certainly not healthy!

It must be admitted that in a certain sense this is the general opinion of cultured people at the present time. What it means, translated into bald language, is this: If a man is not mad, he understands nothing of the super-sensible world; if he does, then he is certainly mad! That is the same way of speaking about the subject, only put rather more plainly.

We must try to comprehend, therefore, how far the healthy human intellect can gain insight into the results of spiritual investigation achieved through the development of states of consciousness other than those we are familiar with in ordinary life. For centuries now we have been arming our senses with laboratory apparatus, with telescopes, microscopes and the like. The spiritual investigator arms his outer senses with what he himself develops in his own soul. Investigation of nature has gone outwards, has made use of outer instruments. Spiritual investigation goes inwards, makes use of the inner instruments evolved by the soul in steadfast activity of the inner life.

By way of introduction to-day I want to help you to understand the evolution of other states of consciousness, first of all simply by comparing those that are normal in present-day man with those that were once present in earlier, primitive—not historic but prehistoric—conditions of human evolution.

Man lives to-day in three states of consciousness, only one of which, really, he recognises as a source of knowledge. They are:

Ordinary waking consciousness;

Dream consciousness;

Dreamless sleep consciousness.

In ordinary waking consciousness we confront the outer world in such a way that we accept as reality what can be grasped through the senses, and allow it to work upon us; we grasp this outer, material world with the intellect that is bound to the brain, or at any rate to the human organism, and we form ideas, concepts, emotions and feelings, too, about what has been taken in through the senses. Then in this waking consciousness we grasp the reality of our own inner life—within certain limits. And through all kinds of reflection, through the development of ideas, we come to acknowledge the existence of a super-sensible element above material things. I need not further describe this state of consciousness; it is known to everyone as the state he recognises as pertaining to his life of knowledge and of will here on earth.

For the man of the present time, dream consciousness is indistinct and dim. In dream consciousness he sees things of the outer world in symbolic transformations which he does not always recognise as such. A man lying in bed in the morning, still in the process of waking, does not look out at the rising sun with fully opened eyes; to his still veiled gaze the sunlight reveals itself by shining in through the window. He is still separated as by a thin veil from what at other times he grasps in sharply outlined sense-experiences and perceptions. Inwardly, his soul is filled with the picture of a great fire; the heat of the fire in his dream symbolises the shining in of the rising sun upon eyes not yet fully opened.

Or again, someone may dream that he is passing through lines of white stones placed along each side of a roadway. He comes to one of the stones and finds that it has been demolished by some force of nature or by the hand of man. He wakes up; the toothache he feels makes him aware of the decayed state of a tooth. The two rows of teeth have been symbolised in his dream-picture; the decayed tooth, in the image of the demolished stone.

Or we become aware of being, apparently, in an overheated room where we feel discomfort. We wake up: the heart is thumping vigorously and the pulse beating rapidly. The feverish movement of the heart and pulse is symbolised in the overheated room. Inner and outer conditions are symbolised in dream; reminiscences of the life of day, transformed and elaborated in manifold ways into whole dream-dramas, absorb the sleeper's attention. Nor does he by any means always know to what extent things are elaborated in the miraculous arena of his life of soul. And concerning this dream-life, which may play over into waking life when consciousness is dimmed in any way, he often labours under slight illusions.

A scientist is passing a bookshop in a street. He sees a book about the lower animal species—a book which in view of his profession has always greatly interested him. But now, although the title indicates a content of vital importance to a scientist, he feels not the faintest interest: and then, suddenly, as he is merely staring at what otherwise he would have seen with keen excitement, he hears a barrel-organ in the distance playing a melody which at first entirely escapes his memory ... and he becomes all attention.—Just think of it: the man is looking at the title of a scientific treatise; he pays no attention to it but is gripped by the playing of a distant barrel-organ which in other circumstances he would not have listened to for a moment. What is the explanation? Forty years ago, while still quite young, he had danced for the first time in his life, with his first partner, to the same tune; he is reminded of this by the tune which he has not heard for forty years, played on the barrel-organ! Because he has remained very matter-of-fact, the scientist remembers the occasion pretty accurately.

The mystic often comes to the stage of inwardly transforming a happening of this kind to such an extent that it becomes something entirely different. One who with deep and sincere conscientiousness embarks upon the task of penetrating into the spiritual life must also keep strictly in mind all the deception and illusion that may arise in the life of the soul. In deepening his life of soul a man can very easily believe that an inner path has been discovered to some spiritual reality, whereas in fact it is no more than the transformed reminiscence of a barrel-organ melody! This dream-life is full of wonder and splendour, but can be rightly understood only by one who is able to bring spiritual insight to bear upon the appearances of human life.

Of the life of deep, dreamless sleep, man has in his ordinary consciousness nothing more than the remembrance that time continues to flow between the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking. Everything else he has to experience again with the help of his waking consciousness. A dim, general feeling of having been present between the moments of falling asleep and waking is all that remains from dreamless sleep.

Thus we have to-day these three states of consciousness: waking consciousness, dream consciousness, dreamless sleep consciousness. If we go back into very early ages of human evolution—not, as I said, in historic times but prehistoric times accessible only to those means of spiritual investigation of which we shall be speaking here in the coming days—then we also find three states of consciousness, but essentially different in character. What we experience to-day in our waking hours was not experienced by the men of those primeval times; instead of material objects and beings with clear shapes and sharp edges, they saw all the physical boundaries blurred.

In those times a man who might have looked at you all sitting here would not have seen the sharp outlines demarcating you as human beings to-day; he would not, like a man to-day, have seen these contours bound by so many lines, but for his ordinary waking consciousness the forms would have been blurred; they would have lacked definition. Everything would have been seen with less precision, would have been pervaded by an aura, by a spiritual radiance, a glimmering, glistening iridescence extending far beyond the circumference that is perceived to-day. The onlooker would have seen how the auras of all of you sitting here are interwoven. He would have gazed into these glimmering, sparkling, iridescent auras of the soul-life of those in front of him. It was still possible in those days to gaze into the life of soul because the human being was bathed in an atmosphere of soul-and-spirit.

To use an analogy: if in the evening of a bright, dry day we are walking through the streets, we see the lights of the street-lamps in definite outlines. But if the evening is misty, we see these same lights haloed by all sorts of colours—colours which modern physics interprets quite wrongly, regarding them as subjective phenomena, whereas in truth they give us an experience of the inmost nature of these lights, connected with the fact that we are moving through the watery element of the fog. The men of ancient times moved through the element of soul-and-spirit; when they looked at other men they saw their auras—which were not subjective phenomena but a real and objective part of the human being. Such was one state of consciousness in these men of old.

Then they had a state of consciousness which linked on to this, just as with us the sleep that is invaded by dreams links on to the waking state; again it was not the same as our present dream condition, but everything that was material around it disappeared, vanished away. For us, sense-impressions become symbols in the state of dream consciousness: sunshine becomes fiery heat, the rows of teeth become two lines of stones, dream-memories become earthly or also spiritual dramas. The sense-world is always there; the world of memories remains. It was different for the consciousness of one who lived in primeval times of human evolution—and we shall realise by and by that this applies to all of us, for those sitting here were present then in earlier earthly lives. In those times, when the sun's light by day grew weaker, man did not see symbols of physical things, but the physical things vanished before his eyes. A tree standing before him vanished; it was transformed into the spiritual and the spirit-being belonging to the tree took its place.—The legends of tree-spirits were not the inventions of folk-fantasy; the interpretation of these legends, however, is an invention of the fantasy of scholars who are groping in a morass of fallacy.—And it was these spirits—the tree-spirit, the mountain-spirit, the spirit of the rocks—who in turn directed the eyes of the human soul into that world where man is between death and a new birth, where he is among spiritual realities just as here on earth he is among physical realities, where he is among spiritual beings as on earth he is among physical beings.—This was the second state of consciousness. We shall presently see how our ordinary dream consciousness can also be transformed into this other consciousness in a man of modern time who is a seeker for spiritual knowledge.

And there was a third state of consciousness. Naturally, the men of ancient times also slept; but when they awoke they had not merely a dim remembrance of having lived through time, or a dim feeling of continuous life, but a clear remembrance of what they had experienced in sleep. And it was precisely out of this sleep that there came the impressions of past earthly lives with their connections of destiny, together with the knowledge, the vision, of karma.

Modern man has waking consciousness, dream consciousness, dreamless sleep consciousness. Early humanity had also three states or conditions of consciousness: the state of consciousness in which he perceived reality pervaded by spirit; the state in which he had insight into the spiritual world; and the state in which he had the vision of karma. In primeval humanity, consciousness was essentially in a condition of evening twilight.

This evening twilight consciousness has passed away, has died out in the course of the evolution of mankind. A morning dawn consciousness must arise—into which modern spiritual investigation has already found its way. And by strengthening his own soul-forces man must learn to look at every tree or rock, every spring or mountain, or at the stars, in such a way that the spiritual fact or spiritual being behind every physical thing is revealed to him.

It can become an exact science, a source of exact knowledge (although people scoff at it to-day as if it were craziness or sheer delusion) so that when a genuine knower looks at a tree, the tree, although it represents a physical reality, becomes a void, as it were leaving the space free before his gaze, and the spirit-being of the tree comes to meet him. Just as the sun's light is reflected to our physical eyes from all outer, physical objects, so will humanity come to perceive that the spiritual essence of the sun, pervading the world with its life, is also a living reality in all physical beings. As the physical light is reflected back to our physical eyes, so from every earthly being there can be reflected back as a reality to our eyes of soul, the divine-spiritual, all-pervading essence of the sun. And as man now says: “The rose is red” ... the underlying truth being that the rose is giving back to him the gift he himself receives from the physical-etheric sun-nature ... he will then be able to say that the rose gives back to him what it receives from the soul-and-spiritual essence of the sun which streams through the world with its quickening life.

Man will again find his way into a spiritual atmosphere, will know that his own being is rooted in this spiritual atmosphere. He will come to realise that within the dream consciousness, which to begin with can yield only chaotic symbolisations of the outer life of the senses, there lie the revelations of a world of spirit through which we pass between death and a new birth; furthermore, that in the consciousness of deep sleep there weaves and lives in us as an actual and real nexus of forces that which, after waking, leads us into connection with the working out of our destiny, of our karma. What we live through in our waking hours as destiny, notwithstanding all freedom, is spun during our life of sleep, when with the soul and spirit, which have left the physical and etheric, we lead a life together with divine Spirits; with those divine Spirits, too, who carry over the fruits of earlier lives into this present life. And one who through the development of the corresponding forces of soul succeeds in penetrating with vision into the life of dreamless sleep, discovers therein the connections of karma. Moreover it is only in this way that the historical life of humanity acquires meaning, for it is woven out of what men carry over from earlier epochs, through the life between death and rebirth, into new life, into new epochs. When we look at some personality of the present or some other age, we understand him rightly only when we include his past earthly lives.

During the coming days, then, we shall be speaking of that spiritual investigation which, while concerning itself first with personalities in history but then also with everyday life, leads from the present life, or a life in some other age to earlier earthly lives.

You have come to this Youth Conference with all the questions and problems in your hearts that assail young people today everywhere in the world—some more, some less—ever since the turn of the century, the time which those who can see deeply into human evolution call the end of Kali Yuga and the beginning of an epoch of light.

We don't see much light yet. You can even say that events in these last two decades have become even darker and more chaotic than before. But just as in ordinary natural phenomena there is resistance in an object to changing either its motion or its lack of motion, inertia is also a property of human beings. We can observe this in the many people who don't seem to belong at all to the 20th century; sometimes we feel we must have seen them a hundred years ago or even earlier. Not only have they remained at a certain age but they are still (however ridiculous this sounds) at the same standpoint where they were before they were born.

Nevertheless we should look at the divine forces concerned with the destiny of the earth. Then we will discover that we have emerged from an epoch in time when we were unconsciously guided by creative spiritual forces that led our souls with supernatural strength. Now we have matured into a new era; certain spiritual beings have withdrawn, while others, whose central impulse is the growing freedom to be allotted to human beings, have begun to influence our development. Young people born since the turn of the century feel this in their unconscious, feel it inwardly, like an earthquake shaking human evolution. But people merely say, “It's the same as always. Youth continually rampages against everything their elders or traditions have brought about.” The clever ones put it like this: “The emperor's enemy is the crown prince.” Certainly in every epoch the young have rebelled against the old.

However, what is living and working today in young people, more or less unconsciously, has never before been experienced. And one must say, there has never been such a discrepancy, such a total contradiction, between what comes to the surface in response to this inner experience they are having and the actual inner experience itself. We have already seen the various groups and the movements young people are taking up—Wandervögel¹ and other youth groups—we've seen them all; they were attempts to escape from what older people call civilization, a flight to the powers which cannot yet be identified.

You see, it's been clear to me from the very beginning that in the deep subconscious of most of today's young people there is the peculiarly solid realization: that an earth-shaking change must take place in human evolution. Sometimes you can observe this quite intensely, as happened to me in Norway. A very young high school lad wanted to see me but was being discouraged away; people in the house thought such a young fellow would only bother me. (In these matters it's usually just the opposite.)

However, fate decreed that I should step out of my door just at that moment, and I realized that even though he was so young, in ninth or tenth grade, I should listen to him. “All of us High School students want to begin something our High School doesn't have, a publication for young people, doing everything ourselves. Couldn't you help us?” “I will help in every way possible,” I told him, “if you can get things started.” We talked together and what he said showed clearly that subconsciously in him was what older people call “the adolescent crisis” they can hardly understand.

I have asked many of these older people what they think about adolescence; their answer was usually, “Young people have always been rebels.” I have also asked many young people about the “adolescent crises” some of them claim to be taking part in—but they, too, haven't had much of an answer for me. Yet I know that many of them know very well this youth experience in their subconsciousness but are not able to describe it. Even though young people can say very little about it, it is clearly present within them. What they feel clearly and very strongly emerges, for one thing, on looking at a beautiful landscape. People in the past have always admired “scenery,” but not in the same way as the younger generation does today. Perhaps they go at it less perfectly but as they look out at nature, their distinct feeling is, “We are helpless. Even to come to a primitive kind of appreciation for nature, we should develop the most elementary forces within us!”

You see, when you are aware of such an attitude, you will feel deeply, very deeply indeed, the inner meaning of these youth movements. We all remember the powerful claims for nature and the natural order, for instance, by Rousseau and his disciples. That was also a youth movement, one that burst out like an explosion, much more alarming than any in our own time. What was the result of that early 19th century rebellion? Imagine! It was followed by the greatest amount of narrow-mindedness and pedantry than at any time in the last century. Its result was the loneliness that young people feel today within modern civilization. They feel that the world has grown old. The young feel this strongly. They feel even much more. (However, in this regard I put greater value on the mind than on feelings).

Today there is a lot of revolution and too much horrible willingness thereby to commit suicide. Young people born around the turn of the century find this sort of thing, if they are honest with themselves, not altogether what they are looking for. They feel that they did not grow up, even as children, alongside older people who could have helped them develop a really joyful enthusiasm for nature. Actually, we have had to see souls maturing alone into something quite wild. Therefore their urge: Away! Get away—anywhere! Leave behind everything the centuries have piled up on us!

Indeed, you notice that I'm speaking about these matters rather indecisively. Sometimes this is necessary in life—but at the same time one must be warmly concerned, even though indecisive. It's better not to falsify the issue by spelling it out with ordinary narrow-minded logic.

I saw this “youth crisis” in its very dawning; now it is already noonday. I observed it in its first misty light, when the youth of the 1870s were also full of enthusiasm and later kept their enthusiasm into what they regarded as grey middle age, still acting like the young people they had been. Such a young person—to put it concretely—I met in the 1880s, giving vent to his enthusiasm in an oration on the death of a workman killed in the 1848 revolution. As I listened to the oration, I thought to myself, “There is a conservative attorney general stuck inside that young man,” and this he really did become some years later. On the other hand, I knew several in that period who were not able to grow into the traditional professions awaiting them. I saw young people in those years die early when it seemed impossible to them to step into the human conditions of the time. There seemed to be an unconscious youth movement that I'd like to describe—please don't misunderstand the phrase—as filled with shame. Young people were not able to reveal what they felt. What was underneath did not rise to the surface. Rather than appear in daylight it turned sick inside. Above all, it could not be brought into the stream of ordinary life.

Years went by, decades even, and one could say the vessel was full and spilling over. The feeling of shame could no longer continue. Young people had to ask themselves the reason for their suffering and what they were actually longing for. This has been moving them into the various youth groups of our time.

Not so long ago a number of these young people came also into the anthroposophical movement. A singular understanding came about between the anthroposophical movement and what was living in their hearts. Today, although it's been only a short time, many of them have grown into the various activities of the movement. However, what we need from young persons is first and foremost the will to try to understand other people in the most human way. Otherwise we won't get beyond the endless unproductive discussions. The will to understand human beings humanly! All the subjects of the discussions we have with each other are downright unimportant; the essential thing is that our hearts recognize what the others are feeling. In this way we can find some agreement, can always discover how much we really agree. What is so necessary is that we fully and heartily understand others; it is also necessary that the individual leaders within the youth movements acquire more confidence in the integrity of the anthroposophical movement and its principles. Otherwise we will not be able to accomplish very much with our Youth Section.

This Section, I originally believed, I had to found for all those who clearly and honestly perceived in themselves “hunger for a truly modern life style.” If they can actually find their way to the anthroposophical movement, we will be able to achieve everything I wrote about in the Mitteilungen [Anthroposophical Newssheet] concerning youthful sagacity, something that should not be at all pedantic but rather distinguish itself through heartfelt action and heartfelt efforts at human understanding. You see, it was an attempt to search out and explore warmly what is alive in the young today. We tried first of all sending around a questionnaire to find out what young people imagined a Youth Section should be; we hoped to hear what thoughts were emerging or if not thoughts, even better, what strong, “balled-fist” feelings, what spade-thrusts of will. We were ready to accept anything like this—but there was no response. Now I have gone at it more rigorously and have sent out the following question to young people, which you yourselves may have read by now: “How do you imagine the world and humanity should be by 1935, if what you are now hoping for shall have a rightful place in it?” If someone could take this question seriously it would require plenty of good solid thought and sensitivity. How we are to proceed depends actually on our honest efforts, without a lot of blather.

What is this old world steering towards? If we're comfortable in it, we're not living in the three dimensions revealed by the threefold nature of the world order. Instead, we're living in clichés, in convention, in routine, and habit. Cliché, convention, routine—we find them everywhere in every sphere of life. We hear from childhood on how we are to relate to other people—just so or so, one particular way or another. But a young person can't agree to that, for since the turn of the century there has been a completely new impulse entering our souls.

Routine is what can be learned very quickly, for it remains just on the surface of things. Leave everything else for later on, people say. What, however, is very much needed in the world, is something that I could feel emerging many years before the end of Kali Yuga [The “dark ages” up to 1879, when the regency of the Archangel Michael began.]: one cannot be pressed into a profession or work in the old, traditional way. I took this very seriously. I myself never entered any specific profession. Had I done so, there would be no anthroposophical movement today, for this had to be created entirely free from tradition. Even the smallest link to something from the past would have made it impossible. Anyone who cannot understand this is an enemy of what we have tried to do from the very beginning.

The anthroposophical movement is therefore one of pure youthfulness. Shouldn't youth find its way to youth? If this anthroposophical movement is sincere and if young people find it necessary to be honest, what is needed above all?—Courage! Something one learns very fast or not at all. Real courage! The courage to say: the world as it is today must get a new foundation underneath it. This is clearly inscribed in the subconsciousness of the young; I have never seen anything different but what is written there: the world must be changed to its very foundation.

But you can cover up this inscription with negation, argumentative remarks and lots of discussion; you can cover it up and pervert what lies there in the subconscious that wants to be completely honest and courageous. The anthroposophical movement can well be the school par excellence to develop courage, since for many people today anthroposophy is not given first place but is rather something incidental. You can observe this at our lecture series and other events. It seems to be becoming more and more fashionable (and one has to get used to it somehow) to be invited to take part in workshops and seminars held in the country, as though on a holiday trip. And why shouldn't one have a bit of anthroposophy while there instead of band concerts?

But it is a symbol—not bad in itself but nevertheless a symbol—of the lack of thoroughgoing courage in grasping the living substance of anthroposophy, the spiritual essence of anthroposophy in its full reality, not just the shadow of anthroposophy. It is really a matter of our feeling life. I am not criticizing but rather pointing out symptoms.

The youth movement must be able to find its way to unite with what I have described as the great task of the century, the spur to action of the Archangel Michael. To do this, however, young people should learn to descend more deeply into themselves, while giving up all their abstract kind of dreaminess. Then the big problems will turn up. No narrow-minded man on the street will understand what you mean when you say: Michael has lost the cosmic intelligence; he himself has remained in the cosmos; now human beings must rise up and win back with Michael what he once had under his dominion. Young people will begin to understand this when they begin to understand themselves. To others, today, it will sound like abstractions dressed up in a poetic costume. But this it certainly is not. We must realize that the spirit is alive and real; we must learn how to deal with it. We have also to begin to feel how everything spiritual is different in our time than it was in any earlier time.

A century ago the morning sunrise, shining mistily, was an image of the spiritual world. Behind the glimmering image like a curtain one saw the spirit, alive and luminous. But during the 19th century up into our time this was changing. The sunrise has become flaming red. Out of the shining sun, flames break forth. If we describe for modern times the kind of sunrise Herder or Goethe wrote about we would be guilty of untruthfulness—for it has become altogether different. In Herder and Goethe's time it was a shining glimmer; today it is fiery. Out of the flames comes a summons to active, fervent spirituality. The spiritual world has taken on a new gesture towards our physical world.

If we can begin to understand these gestures of the spiritual world we can perhaps prevent the youth movement of the 20th century from becoming the sort of middle-class narrow-mindedness and pedantry that came after Rousseau. If today's youth can become enthusiastic about what is truly young, if today's youth, with understanding, can lay hold of the real spiritual world that is here, then Michael's time will come. If today's youth cannot do this, the middle-class narrow-mindedness and pedantry will be infinitely greater in our century than that which followed Rousseau. In all the many centuries before, there were never better or more proper citizens than in the 19th century; people in the earlier times never knew Rousseau or his ideas.

We have been talking a good deal here in Arnhem about the new education and the principles of Waldorf education.² The most important principle is to continue growing. Every day there's danger that things will get sour. We have to make sure that when we have to plan something new or get something done, we don't fall asleep sticking to our old habits. Let us try to divide our sleeping and waking, to keep a clear gulf between them. We must be able to sleep in the right way but also to be awake in the right way. Unfortunately we're continually sleeping when we should be awake. It is just not in our nature to tell ourselves over and over to wake up, otherwise all the reform movements and revolutions will be useless; it is almost always the best endeavors that suffer the most when they are taken over by narrow-mindedness and pedantry: a strong light produces a strong shadow. What should we do?—not think out something to be done one way or another, but rather to feel how different the sunrise is now in our time and how nature with its flaming color speaks to us of the spirituality that surrounds us.

Our hearts, too, have changed. We have a different kind of heart in our body. Our physical heart has become hard, but our etheric heart is more flexible. We must find the way to make use of this supersensible heart of ours. It then will help us to understand spiritual science. To put it plainly, just about everybody and his uncle are talking about spiritual science but only because most science can be taken in lazily. We have to be quite clear about it: spiritual science must come alive in our hearts. And the hearts of young people are perfectly formed to feel what is true in this sphere—if there's enough courage for such thoughts.

Friedrich Schiller³ with his warm enthusiasm had much to give the world. He died in very peculiar circumstances. There was an autopsy. His heart was examined; it was found to have become an empty pouch, completely dried up, burned out.

All our hearts will burn out like this if we can lay hold of them and make them new. And if we are to be serious about spirituality we will have to tell ourselves with a certain amount of courage: “Whenever we seem not to be able to live with the rest of the world, it is because we need to have a new kind of heart!”

However, this should not be just a phrase. Let us be awake to the fact that our new hearts should be aware of the world in quite a different way from the old hearts. If wetake this very seriously the youth movement will become something like a flame blazing towards the flames of the sunrise. This will not result from discussions about being young or from talk about inner feelings; in this regard peculiar things can happen. In Breslau the elderly members in their welcome called me “Papa”; in the youth group there they said I was the youngest of all, though I was three times older than most of them.

Indeed it is important to be able to admit this about oneself. The flames from within, the flames from outside, the two flames must strike against each other. It is not at all important to decide or define anything. It is important that we bring about a new kind of enthusiasm. It comes down to this: we should not only learn to sit down but we should learn to stand up. Nietzsche had an apt phrase for Carlyle, who impresses many people with his talent for enthusiasm. “Carlyle's enthusiasm,” said Nietzsche, “is the kind that takes off its coat.” In other words, Carlyle always had time to take off his coat whenever he was seized by enthusiasm. Carlyle always had time as he got warmly enthusiastic, without hesitation, to take off his coat. One can imagine how this fellow would pull on a silk vest after he has had time to get fully into his enthusiasm and slowly to take off his coat.

But the right enthusiasm is the kind that doesn't give you time to take off your coat; it makes you sweat, wearing your coat, and you don't even notice how you're perspiring! This is the right enthusiasm, my dear friends! It should overpower us so completely that we keep our coats on.

That enthusiasm we should feel compelled to bring into being out of the fullness and immediacy of life itself. We need today to overcome our heavy, sticky tiredness. It is actually lazy to insist on “being clear.” There may well be no time to become clear in the old sense of the word. But there is the real necessity to become enthusiastic—for enthusiasm will be able to accomplish everything. The word itself will then reach its true meaning. The German word Begeisterung carries Geist, spirit, in itself. That is self-evident: we need spirit. The English-Greek word enthusiasm has the divine within it (Gr. Theos). A god is in the word.

Grow inwardly with the flame that is kindled in you today, for then the Michael impulse will be achieved! Without fire, it cannot be achieved. But if you are to live and work, glowing through and through, you yourself will have to become a flame. The only thing not burned up by flames is a flame; when we can begin to feel we are becoming one, and cannot be burned up by other flames, we can safely let our physical heart remain behind as an empty pouch, for we have an etheric heart. It is our etheric heart that will understand that humanity is moving into a new epoch, into a life in the spirit. Our growing into this life in the spirit will form the youth movement, the youth experience, in all its strength.

• 1. we call them hippies today. Tr.
• 2. In these July days of 1924, Dr. Steiner was giving the course published in English as Human Values in Education, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1971
• 3. Poet and dramatist 1759-1805. See also Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Human Vocation, Lecture 2, Anthroposophic Press 1944.

Wherever we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of self-knowledge has been demanded of us. But as has been repeatedly emphasised on other occasions, self-knowledge is by no means as easy to achieve as many people believe—anthroposophists sometimes among them. The anthroposophist should be constantly aware of the hindrances he will encounter in his efforts. But the acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential if we are to reach a worthy goal in world-existence and if our actions are to be worthy of us as members of humanity.

Let us ask ourselves the question: Why is the achievement of self-knowledge so difficult? Man is a very complicated being. If we mean to speak truly of his inner life, his life of soul, we shall not begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We shall rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate more deeply into the marvellous creation of the Divine-Spiritual Powers known to us as Man.

Before we investigate the nature of self-knowledge, two aspects of the life of the human soul may present themselves to us. Just as the magnet has North and South poles, just as light and darkness are present in the world, so there are two poles in man's life of soul. These two poles become evident when we observe a person placed in two contrasting situations. Suppose we are watching someone who is entirely absorbed in the contemplation of some strikingly beautiful and impressive natural phenomenon. We see how still he is standing, moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from the spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that inwardly he is picturing his environment. That is one situation. Another is the following: a man is walking along the street and feels that someone has insulted him. Without thinking, he is roused to anger and gives vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there witnessing a manifestation of forces springing from anger, a manifestation of impulses of will, and it is easy to imagine that if the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been struck. We have now pictured two contrasting situations: in the one there is only ideation, a process in the life of thought from which all conscious will is absent; in the other there is no thought, no ideation, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will. Here we have examples of the two extremes of human behaviour. The first pole is complete surrender to contemplation, to thought, in which the will has no part; the second pole is the impelling force of will without thought. These facts are revealed simply by observation of external life.

We can go into these things more deeply and we come then into spheres in which we can find our bearings only by summoning the findings of occult investigation to our aid. Here another polarity confronts us—that of sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts of Anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—are organically and actively interwoven, but that in sleep the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and ego are outpoured into the great world bordering on physical existence. These facts could also be approached from a different point of view. We might ask: what is there to be said about ideation, contemplation, thinking—and about the will and its impulses on the one hand during waking life and during sleep on the other?

When we penetrate more deeply into this question it becomes evident that in his present physical existence man is, in a certain sense, always asleep, Only there is a difference between sleep during the night and sleep during the day. Of this we can be convinced in a purely external way, for we know that we can wake in the occult sense during the day, that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see into the spiritual world. The physical body in its ordinary state is asleep to what is then and there happening and we can rightly speak of an awakening of our spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the normal way. It can therefore be said: ordinary sleep is sleep as regards the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep as regards the spiritual world.

These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny we realise that in the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man has, as a rule, very little power or control over his will and its impulses. The will is very detached from daily life. Only consider how little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of your own thinking, of your personal resolutions. When someone knocks at the door and you say “Come in!”, that cannot be called a decision of your own thinking and will. If you are hungry and seat yourself at a table, that cannot be called a decision made by the will, because it is occasioned by your circumstances, by the needs of your organism. Try to picture your daily life and you will find how little the will is directly influenced from the centre of your being. Why is this the case? Occultism shows us that in respect of his will man actually sleeps by day, that is to say he is not in the real sense present in his will-impulses at all. We may evolve better and better concepts and ideas; or we may become more highly moral, more cultured individuals, but we can do nothing as regards the will. By cultivating better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will but as far as life is concerned we can do nothing directly to it, for in the waking life of day, our will is influenced only in an indirect way, namely through sleep. When we are asleep we do not think; ideation passes over into a state of sleep. The will, however, awakes, permeates our organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning because what has penetrated into our organism is of the nature of will. That we are not aware of this activity of the will becomes comprehensible when we remember that all conceptual activity ceases when we ourselves are asleep. To begin with, therefore, this stimulus shall be given for further contemplation, further meditation. The more progress you make in self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of the words that man sleeps in respect of his will when he is awake and sleeps in respect of his conceptual life when he is asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night.

Man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night because he only knows how to be awake in his life of thought. The will does not sleep during the night but it then works as it were in a fiery element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been used up by day.

Thus there are two poles in man, the life of observation and ideation, and the impulses of will; and man is related in entirely opposite ways to these two poles. The whole life of soul moves in various nuances between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to understanding it by bringing this microcosmic life of soul into relation with the higher worlds.

From what has been said we have learnt that the life of thought and ideation is one of the poles of man's life of soul. This life of thought is something which seems unreal to materialistically minded people. Do we not often hear it said: “Oh, ideas and thoughts are only ideas and thoughts!” This is intended to imply that if someone has [a piece] of bread or meat in his hand it is a reality because it can be eaten, but a thought is only a thought, it is not a reality. Why is this said? It is because what man calls his thoughts are related to what thoughts really are as a shadow-image is to the actual thing. The shadow-image of a flower points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with thoughts. Human thinking is the shadowing forth of ideas and beings belonging to a higher world, the world we call the Astral plane. And you represent thinking rightly to yourself when you picture the human head thus—it is not absolutely correct but simply diagrammatic. In the head are thoughts but these thoughts must be pictured as living beings on the Astral plane. Beings of the most varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming concepts and activities which cast their shadow-images into men, and these processes are reflected in the human head as thinking.

As well as the life of thought in the human soul, there is also the life of feeling. Feelings fall into two categories: those of pleasure and sympathy and those of displeasure and antipathy. The former are aroused by good deeds, benevolent deeds; antipathy is aroused by evil, malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different from, the mere forming of concepts. We form concepts of things irrespectively of any other factor. But our soul experiences sympathy or antipathy only in respect of what is beautiful and good, or what is ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in man in the form of thoughts points to the Astral plane, so everything connected with sympathy or antipathy points to the realm we call Lower Devachan. Processes in the Heavenly World, or Devachan, are projected, mainly into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for what is beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. So that in our feelings for the moral-aesthetic element, we bear within our souls shadow-reflections of the Heavenly World or Lower Devachan.

There is still a third province in the life of the human soul which must be strictly distinguished from the mere preference for good deeds. There is a difference between standing by and taking pleasure in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in action and actually performing some such deed. I will call pleasure in good deeds or displeasure in evil deeds the aesthetic element as against the moral element that impels a man to perform some good deed. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely aesthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do something good or bad. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give expression to moral impulses, these impulses are the shadow-images of Higher Devachan, of the Higher Heavenly World.

It is easy to picture these three stages of activity of the human soul—the purely intellectual (thoughts, concepts), the aesthetic (pleasure or displeasure), and the moral (revealed in impulses to good or bad deeds)—as microcosmic images of the three realms which in the Macrocosm, the great Universe, lie one above the other. The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world is reflected in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality.

 Thoughts: Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral Plane (Waking) Sympathy and Antipathy: Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan (Dreaming) Moral Impulses: Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan (Sleeping) 

If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two poles of the soul-life, we shall take the pole of intellect to be that which dominates the waking life, the life in which man is mentally awake. During the day he is awake in respect of his intellect; during sleep he is awake in respect of his will. It is because at night he is asleep in respect of intellect that he is unaware of what he is happening with his will. The truth is that what we call moral principles, moral impulses, are working indirectly into the will. And in point of fact man needs the life of sleep in order that the moral impulses he takes into himself through the life of thought can become active and effective. In his ordinary life today man is capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect; he is less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane for there he is dependent upon help coming from the Macrocosm.

What is already within us can bring about the further development of intellectuality, but the Gods must come to our aid if we are to acquire greater moral strength. We go to sleep in order that we may plunge into the Divine Will where the intellect does not intervene and where Divine Forces transform into the power of will the moral principles we accept, where they instill into our will that which we could otherwise receive only into our thoughts.

Between these two poles, that of the will which wakes by night and of the intellect which is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic appreciation which is continuously present in man. During the day man is not fully awake—at least only the most prosaic, pedantic individuals are always fully awake in waking life. We must always be able to dream a little even by day when we are awake; we must be able to give ourselves up to the enjoyment of art, of poetry, or of some other activity that is not concerned wholly with crass reality. Those who can give themselves up in this way form a connection with something that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up to such imaginings is like a dream making its way into waking life. Into the life of sleep you know well that dreams enter; these dreams in the usual sense, dreams which permeate sleep-consciousness. Human beings need also to dream by day if they do not wish to lead an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreaming takes place during sleep at night in any case and no proof of this is required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming and day dreaming is the condition that can come to expression in fantasy.

So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we are really awake brings us shadow-images of the Astral Plane when by day we give ourselves up to a thought—wherein the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions originate. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into our life of sleep and shadow-images from Lower Devachan are reflected into us. And when we work actively during sleep, impressing morality into our will—we cannot be aware of this actual process but certainly we can of its effects—when we are able to imbue our life of thoughts during the night with the influence of Divine Spiritual Powers, then the impulses we receive are reflections from Higher Devachan, the Higher Heavenly World. These reflections are the moral impulses and feelings which are active within us and lead to the recognition that human life is vindicated only when we place our thoughts at the service of the good and the beautiful, when we allow the very heart's blood of Divine Spiritual life to stream through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.

The life of the human soul as presented here, first from external, exoteric observation and then from observation of a more mystical character is revealed by deeper (occult) investigation. The processes that have been described in their more external aspect can also be perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of us today in his waking state and we observe him with the eye of clairvoyance, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually from the heart towards the head. Within the head these rays play around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland. These streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance, is perpetually resolving itself into etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance which streams upwards towards the head and glimmers around the pineal gland. This process—the etherisation of the blood—can be perceived in the human being all the time during his waking life.

The occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain, and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart. Now these streams, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the Macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical body and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ very drastically from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to occult observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their level best not to let this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular colouring of the streams which flow into human beings during sleep; in an individual of lower moral principles, the streams are quite different from what is observable in an individual of noble principles. Endeavours to dissemble are useless. In the face of the higher Cosmic Powers, no dissembling is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination towards moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in colour—various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet in colour. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downwards from above. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality there is around the pineal gland as it were a little sea of light. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral disposition is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man—the one Macrocosmic, the other, Microcosmic.

To estimate the significance of how these two streams meet in man is possible only by considering on the one hand what was said previously in a more external way about the life of the soul and how this life reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the aesthetic and the moral elements that stream downwards from above, from the brain toward the heart; and if, on the other hand, we grasp the significance of what was said about turning our attention to the corresponding phenomenon in the Macrocosm. This corresponding phenomenon can be described today as the result of the most scrupulously careful occult investigation of recent years, undertaken by individuals among genuine Rosicrucians. These investigations have shown that something similar to what has been described in connection with the Microcosm also takes place in the Macrocosm. You will understand this more fully as time goes on.

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, a similar process takes place in the Macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our minds to the Mystery of Golgotha—to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ.

This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of Nazareth it must be recognised as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted to our Earth, which in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the Earth's evolution—and it could take place only once. What came of this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of Earth evolution this blood passes through a process of “etherisation.” And just as our human blood streams upwards from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of Golgotha the etherised blood of Christ Jesus has been present in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the Earth is permeated by the blood—now transformed—which flowed on Golgotha. This is supremely important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the Earth could only have been as previously described. But since the Mystery of Golgotha it has always been possible for the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.

Because the etherised blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the Earth, it accompanies the etherised human blood streaming upwards from the heart to the brain, so that not only those streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can, however, come about only if a person is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse. Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every epoch of Earth evolution understanding must be acquired in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on Earth, preceding events were rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the Gospels. They received baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their previous lives—karma which had come to an end—might be changed; and in order that they might realise that the most powerful Impulse in Earth evolution was about to descend into a physical body. But the evolution of humanity progresses and in our present age what matters is that people should recognise the need for the knowledge contained in Spiritual Science and be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that this knowledge can be understood.

If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to receive and comprehend the event that has its beginning in the Twentieth Century: this event is the appearance of the Christ as an Etheric Being in contradistinction to the Physical Christ of Palestine. For we have now reached the point of time when the Etheric Christ enters into the life of the Earth and will become visible—at first to a small number of individuals through a form of natural clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next three thousand years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to pass in the natural course of development. That it will come to pass is as true as were the achievements of electricity in the nineteenth century. A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this will depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young—already preparation is being made for this—that some individual here or there has certain experiences. If he has sharpened his vision through having assimilated Anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise that what he saw was a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people—even in considerable numbers—are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there, will confer with them, will make His voice heard in such gatherings. These times are approaching, and the positive, constructive element now described will take real effect in the evolution of mankind.

No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture in our day; these achievements are essential for the welfare and the freedom of men. But whatever can be gained in the way of outer progress in mastering the forces of nature, is something small and insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the individual who experiences the awakening soul through Christ, the Christ who will now be operative in human culture and its concerns. Men will thereby acquire forces that make for unification. In very truth Christ brings constructive forces into human culture and civilisation.

If we look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that men built their dwelling places by methods very different from those used in modern life. In those days they made use of all kinds of growing things. Even when building palaces they summoned nature to their aid by utilizing plants interlaced with branches of trees and so on, whereas today men must build with broken fragments. All the culture of the external world is contrived with the aid of products of fragmentation. And in the course of the coming years you will realise even more clearly how much in our civilised life is the outcome of destruction.

Light itself is being destroyed in this post-Atlantean age of the Earth's existence, which until the time of Atlantis was a progressive process. Since then it has been a process of decay.* What is light? Light decays and the decaying light is electricity. What we know as electricity is light that is being destroyed in matter. And the chemical force that undergoes a transformation in the process of Earth evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become active and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third force will affect civilisation in a still more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ, the faster the earth will tend to become a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the Jupiter embodiment. Forces have to be applied for the purpose of destruction, in order that man may become free of the Earth and that the Earth's body may fall away. As long as the earth was involved in progressive evolution, no such destruction took place, for the great achievements of electricity can only serve a decaying Earth. Strange as this sounds, it must gradually become known. By understanding the process of evolution we shall learn to assess our culture at its true value. We shall also learn that it is necessary for the Earth to be destroyed, for otherwise the spiritual could not become free. We shall also learn to value what is positive, namely the penetration of spiritual forces into our existence on Earth.

* See also the section at the end of the text, containing answers given by Dr. Steiner to questions.

Thus we realise what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact that Christ lived for three years on the Earth in a human body specially prepared in order that He might be visible to physical eyes. Through what came to pass during those three years men have been made ready to behold the Christ who will move among them in an etheric body, who will participate in earthly life as truly and effectively as did the Physical Christ in Palestine. If men observe such happenings with undimmed senses they will know that there is an etheric body that will move about in the physical world, but is the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, nay even in a hundred, a thousand places at the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this further advance is that the two poles of which I have spoken, the intellectual and the moral, will more and more become one; they will merge into unity. This will come about because in the course of the next millennia men will become aware of the presence of the Etheric Christ in the world; more and more they will be influenced in waking life too by the direct working of the Good from the spiritual world. Whereas at the present time, the will is asleep by day, and man is only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of the next millennia, through the power which from our time onwards is working in us under the aegis of Christ, it will come about that the deeds of men in waking consciousness too can be directly productive of Good.

The dream of Socrates, that virtue can be taught, will come true; more and more it will be possible on Earth not only for the intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching but for moral impulses to be spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy; to establish it is very difficult.” Why is this? Because no morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognise moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change, because the moral fire streaming from the figure of Christ will intensify recognition of the need for moral impulses. Man will transform the earth by feeling with ever-increasing strength that morality is an essential part of it. In the future, to be immoral will be possible only for individuals who are goaded in this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric Powers and more-over aspire to be so.

In time to come there will be on Earth a sufficient number of individuals who teach morality and at the same time sustain its principles; but there will also be those who by their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil Powers and thus enable an excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual.

Then will come the epoch when the Earth passes into conditions of which, as in so much else, Oriental Occultism and Mysticism alone give some idea. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered strength. For many thousands of years Oriental Mysticism has spoken of this epoch, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken with special emphasis about that future condition when the earth will be bathed in a “moral-ether-atmosphere.” Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental Mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the Earth from Vishva-Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Thus Oriental Mysticism foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the Earth from the Being we call the Christ. And it was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental Mysticism were set.

Oriental Mysticism was able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual form it would take. The mind could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun, would appear in the wake of One beyond the ken of Oriental Mysticism. A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would happen to make it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the Earth, not in physically embodiment but as pure Akashic forms within the Earth's moral atmosphere. But then, so it was said, in 5,000 years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, the Teacher will also be there to make known to men what the nature of these wonderful forms of pure Fire and Light are. This teacher—the Maitreya Buddha—will appear 3,000 years after our present era and will speak of the Christ Impulse.

Thus Oriental Mysticism unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a wonderfully beautiful unity. It is also disclosed that he who will appear three thousand years after our era as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the Earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the Christian era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is he who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not yet as Buddha, but as Bodhisattva. Even now there proceeds from him who later on will be the Maitreya Buddha, the most significant teachings concerning the Christ Being and the Sons of Fire—the Agnishvattas—of Indian Mysticism.

The indications by which the Being who is to become the Maitreya Buddha can be recognised are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism and to Christian gnosis. The Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as Bodhisattva, can be recognised by the fact that in the first instance his early development gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality within him. Only those possessed of understanding will recognise the presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being between the ages of thirty and thirty-three, and not before. Something akin to a change of personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ Jesus began His mission in His thirtieth year, so do the Bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ Impulse, reveal themselves—in the thirty-third year of their lives. And the Maitreya Buddha himself, as transformed Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words of which no adequate idea can be given at the present time, will proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language that has first to be created, for no human being to-day could formulate words such as those in which the Maitreya Buddha will address humanity. The reason why men cannot be addressed in this way at the present time is that the physical instrument for this form of speech does not yet exist. The teachings of the Enlightened One will not stream into men as teachings only, but will pour moral impulses into their souls. Words such as will then be spoken cannot yet be uttered by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only in the spiritual worlds.

Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that the future holds in store. Those who take the process of man's evolution seriously resolve not to allow the soul's development to come to a standstill but to ensure that this development will eventually enable the spiritual part of the Earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like a corpse—for men could frustrate the whole process. Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire understanding of the life of the spirit through what we to-day call Anthroposophy. The cultivation of Anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge becomes something that we actually feel, something towards which we have responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this responsibility and have this resolve, when the mysteries of the world arouse in us the wish to become Anthroposophists, then our feeling is true and right. But Anthroposophy must not be something that merely satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we cannot live. Only then are our feelings what they ought to be, only then do we live as building stones in that great work of construction which must be carried out in human souls and can embrace all mankind.

Anthroposophy is a revelation of world-happenings which will confront the men of the future, will confront our own souls whether still in the physical body or in the life between death and a new birth. The coming changes will affect us, no matter whether we are still living in the physical body or whether it has been laid aside. Understanding of these events must however be acquired during life in the physical body if they are to take effect after death. To those who acquire some understanding of the Christ while they are still living in the physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes for vision of the Christ, whether or not they have already passed through the gate of death. But if those who now reject any understanding of the Christ have already passed through the gate of death when this moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation, for such understanding cannot be acquired between death and rebirth. Once the foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also during the period between death and the new birth.

And so Anthroposophy is not only something we learn for our physical life but is of essential value when we have laid aside the physical body at death.

This is what I wished to impart to you today as a help in answering many questions. Self-knowledge is difficult because man is such a complex being. The reason for this complexity is that he is connected with all the higher Worlds and Beings. We have within us shadow-images of the great Universe and all the members of our constitution—the physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego—are worlds for Divine Beings. Our physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego form one world; the other is the higher World, the Heaven world. Divine-spiritual Worlds are the bodily members of the Beings of the higher spheres of cosmic existence.

Man is the complex being he is because he is a mirror-image of the spiritual world. Realisation of this should make him conscious of his intrinsic worth. But from the knowledge that although we are reflected images of the spiritual world we nevertheless fall far short of what we ought to be—from this knowledge we also acquire, as well as consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of modesty and humility towards the Macrocosm and its Gods.

Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions at the End of the Lecture

Translated by George Adams

Question: How are the words used by St. Paul, “to speak in tongues” (Cor. I: 12), to be understood?

Answer: In exceptional human beings it can happen that not only is the phenomenon of speaking present in the waking state, but that something otherwise present in sleep-consciousness only, flows into this speaking. This is the phenomenon to which St. Paul refers. Goethe refers to it in the same sense; he has written two very interesting treatises on the subject.

Question: How are Christ's words of consolation received and experienced?

Answer: Men will feel these words of consolation as though arising in their own hearts. The experience may also seem like physical hearing.

Question: What is the relation of chemical forces and substances to the spiritual world?

Answer: There are in the world a number of substances which can combine with or separate from each other. What we call chemical action is projected into the physical world from the world of Devachan—the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. In the combination of two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a reflection of two tones of the Harmony of the Spheres. The chemical affinity between two substances in the physical world is like a reflection from the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. The numerical ratios in chemistry are an expression of the numerical ratios of the Harmony of the Spheres, which has become dumb and silent owing to the densification of matter. If one were able to etherealise material substance and to perceive the atomic numbers the inner formative principle thereof, he would be hearing the Harmony of the Spheres.

We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan and the Higher Devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, it comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane—into the evil Devachanic world—magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the sub-material—that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world—electricity arises. If what lives in the Harmony of the Spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force—which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer—is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known—a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge—it can only be hoped that before some discoverer gives this force into the hands of humankind, men will no longer have anything un-moral left in them.

Question: What is electricity?

Answer: Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space. Warmth will expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a fourth; it is of fourfold extension—it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.

Question: What happens to the Earth's corpse?

Answer: As the residue of the Moon-evolution we have our present moon which circles around the Earth. Similarly there will be a residue of the Earth which will circle around Jupiter. Then these residues will gradually dissolve into the universal ether. On Venus there will no longer be any residue. Venus will manifest, to begin with, as pure Warmth, then it will become Light and then pass over into the spiritual world. The residue left behind by the Earth will be like a corpse. This is a path along which man must not accompany the Earth, for he would thereby be exposed to dreadful torments. But there are Beings who accompany this corpse, since they themselves will by that means develop to a higher stage.

Reflected as sub-physical world:

Astral World—the province of Lucifer
Lower Devachan—the province of Ahriman
Higher Devachan—the province of the Asuras

Also known as The Present Crisis in Man's Development and The Science of the Spirit, Education, and the Practical Life. From: Lectures on Spiritual Essence and Its Working. Lecture 13 of 18 from the volume: Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above.

The times in which we live are so earnest that at present it is not in any way appropriate to think of personal matters. Allow me, first of all, to express briefly my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed president for her kind words and then to pass on to what I believe I must tell you, for it is a long time since we saw one another in Holland.

The times in which we live and its conditions are much more earnest than most people of the present are consciously aware of.

Here we can speak of these conditions of our times from those standpoints which result from a long study of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. We know that we live in an epoch whose characteristic peculiarity began to be evident in the 15th century. It was then that it slowly began to develop its peculiarities. Those who are initiated into the spiritual conditions of human evolution and can therefore have an insight into this course of development, know that the second half of the 19th century indicates a specially low point of human evolution in the modern and particularly in European culture. This low point may be characterised as the rise of a particular inthrust of egoism in all branches of civilised humanity, an egoism of a kind that was never there before. This wave of a special course of development then sent its ramifications into the 20th century, and now these ramifications undoubtedly continue to hold mankind under their spell.

In saying that a wave of egoism came over the whole modern civilisation, I do not speak trivially of what one generally defines as egoism, but I speak of egoism in a special sense, into which we shall penetrate a little in the course of this morning's considerations, and in a way that will be evident to those who are initiated in the true mysteries of more recent human evolution.

We already know the members constituting human nature. We know that the soul-members of human nature have been engaged for a long time in a special process of transformation, in a special course of development. We know that when we go back to very ancient times of human evolution we have to do with a particular forming of man's etheric body, during a very old time of development in India; a particular forming of the astral body then began, and a certain intermediate course of development took place during that epoch of European development which began about the year 747 in the south of Europe and which closed in the first thirty years of the 15th century. That time was the beginning of that epoch of human evolution in which we are still living. In the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, began that phase of human evolution in which the so-called intellectual and understanding soul (Verstandes und Gemütsseele) unfolded. Everything that humanity still prizes to-day as Greek culture; developed through the fact that at that very time the intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. However, while the wonderful Greek culture was unfolding, that which we call intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. It had not yet reached its climax. For such points are always in a certain way times of probation for the evolution of humanity. For the sake of their development, the Greeks had to pass through what one might call the youthful freshness of the intellectual or understanding soul. The Greek culture, so much admired by posterity, came into being out of this youthful freshness of an intellect that was not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human understanding. Of the characteristics pertaining to the intellectual soul, the Latin and Roman culture then took over something that was in a descending line of development and decadent. Those who have a deeper comprehension for that which lived in Roman culture know: There the intellect already reaches its culmination; there the intellect rises to a high point. On that account the Romans developed such abstract ideas; on that account the Romans developed something that did not as yet exist in the whole ancient East, that did not even exist, in the sense known in Europe, in the Greek culture: The Romans developed the ideas of jurisprudence, the juridical concepts.

To-day we consider the world very superficially and we translate our thoughts on “Jus”, on jurisprudence, which, in reality are the outcome only of the Roman intellectual soul, into something which we assume to have already existed in the ancient East, for instance in Hammurabi, and so forth. But that is not the case. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as well as the contents of other documents of that time, were, after all, something quite different from that which constitutes our modern juridical concepts. These are something abstract, something that is no longer so close to the human soul. Everything that thus constitutes the development of the intellectual soul reached its climax during a period in the civilisation of Europe which has really been studied very little from an external historical standpoint, although it is extraordinarily important and significant for those who wish to study human evolution in the meaning of spiritual science.

That striking year to which we can draw attention as being specially significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha is the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is that point of time when a fluctuating knowledge of the universe lived in Europe simultaneously with a fluctuating knowledge of humanity. These had nothing of the penetrating character of the knowledge of the universe that the Greeks still possessed and no proper comprehension of man's inner world.

We find instead that man sways either towards the longing for an extensive knowledge of the universe, or towards the longing for self-knowledge, knowledge of his own self. The human soul of the European peoples indeed passed through a great deal during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Roman life was then entering into its decay; it bequeathed to European humanity nothing but its language; it left behind its more or less fundamental material of culture. The life of humanity thus entered the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lasting up to the 15^th century, when our present epoch began.

From the preceding epoch, in which most of us in some way passed through one or more earthly lives, we brought over—partly through physical heredity, but particularly through the fact that we ourselves formerly were those incarnated souls—into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we took over this inheritance. This inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives in everything that constitutes our present civilisation.

We worked the intellect, the thinking, into our consciousness soul. That means a great deal. At the beginning of the fifth epoch, the consciousness soul enabling man to really permeate, really grasp his ego, first took hold of his thinking, his life of representations and his intellect. Humanity thus became intelligent and clever, but clever within the consciousness soul; within the evolution of humanity, this implies the finest possible elaboration of EGOISM.

We should not only rebuke this epoch of egoism, we should not only fall upon it with criticism, but in spite of the fact that it brings with it so many temptations and leads man into great soul-dangers and even into external danger, we should recognise this age of egoism as the one in which ego-consciousness comes to the fore with special incisiveness.

Man can thus take into himself a real feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is something that none of us possessed in our previous incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human evolution. We had to pass through egoism, that presents so many temptations, in order to reach that longing for freedom which is the prerogative of modern humanity. One of the most important things in Anthroposophy is the knowledge that we had to take in something in order to climb over an important stage in human evolution: the stage leading to the DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. For this very reason we should be aware that this crossing over is connected, with many temptations, with many dangers of humanity, both soul-spiritually and bodily. A knowledge going in the direction of Anthroposophy must enable us to take in fully the feeling of freedom, but at the same time to ennoble it, to permeate it again with a spiritual knowledge of the universe, which—in spite of the now existing mature ego-feeling, mature ego-consciousness—induces mankind to solve tasks that are not only egoistic tasks, but tasks pertaining to the whole evolution of humanity, indeed to the evolution of the whole earth, to the evolution of the whole universe.

In this connection we are now facing a great turning point in the whole civilisation of more recent times. The time of probation has indeed come! Great tasks confront mankind. But the recognition of these tasks is extremely difficult and is rendered still more difficult through the fact that we have just passed through the age of the great egoism.

We say that we sleep from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. That is right. We are then in a state of dulled consciousness. Most of you know sleep only in its negative aspect, that it dulls consciousness. Yet we do not judge the waking state in the same way. The time of being awake, the time from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, was really quite different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To-day people believe that they are awake in the same way in which, for instance, the people living about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were awake. That is not the case. Their whole soul-constitution was different. Man was then awake in a different way. He was much more strongly conscious of his body.

You see, modern man really knows very little indeed of his bodily processes. The Greeks, not the Greeks of a later time, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic and pre-Platonic times, still knew a great deal of the processes of their own body. For example, the really cultured Greek looked up to the sun. From the sun he received the light. He received at the same time a feeling that he was drawing in something etheric, that the light was being led on into his inner being. And when he was thinking, he said: The light, the sun thinks within me. The Greek of pre-Socratic times still felt this in a living way. He did not think so abstractly about thinking as we do to-day. He thought: The sun thinks within me: it allows its light to be drawn in by me. The light that shines upon the things outside, that makes the things outside visible, is active within me, by reflecting itself, as it were, within its own being, so that thoughts spring up in me. For the Greek, the thoughts within him were the light of the sun. At the same time, they were for him that element which lived in the macrocosm thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings. At the same time, they were for him that which really raised him to the Divine, above his ordinary dignity as a human being. He felt himself lifted above the earthly, when he thus experienced the sun's light within him as thinking. And when a particularly cultured Greek ate, he indeed considered his food, in which he took in something that he did not receive directly from the sun, but that came from the earth, as a necessity of life, yet at the same time he felt himself changing into the food, that became he himself, as it passed through his mouth, his oesophagus and digestive organs. He felt that he was one with the food, in the same way in which he felt that he was one with the sunlight. While he was digesting, he felt the earth's gravity. He felt, as it were, similar to the serpent, that he did not as yet highly appreciate, but that he still observed rather timidly—the serpent that twists away from the earth and digests in a particularly visible way, after having swallowed its food. That is how the Greek experienced what went on in his body: whether he experienced what was thinking within him as the sun's bright light, or whether he experienced within himself what chained him to the earth; i.e. the taking in of food. Through the intimate way in which his understanding was connected with his body the Greek felt with particular energy that which also lived within him as physical human being. You may also deduce this from the following:

When we paint human beings to-day in the ordinary way, as numerous painters of the present generation have done year after year, decade after decade in painting portraits, we really lie. We look at people outwardly and believe that then we bring forth something of what we experience. It is not true at all that we can experience something in that way! We could experience it only if we were able to conjure up within us the whole way of identifying ourselves feelingly with the whole of Nature as human beings, as it was the case with the Greeks. First of all, we must learn this anew, along an entirely different path than that of the Greeks.

Since the middle of the 15th century, we have acquired in an abstract-theoretical way a soul-constitution that no longer allows us to really penetrate livingly into our body, but that lives instead in concepts that do not stand visibly before us, because we have conquered thinking for the egoity, for the ego. We should realise this. And we should realise that we must once more take in spirituality from an anthroposophical spiritual science, so that the ego may once more be filled with something, and so that that which really lives within us may once more—but now in a different way—enter our life: that which the Greeks experienced in an immediate, elemental way; but that could not continue.

When the Greek walked, he walked as if led by a necessity of Nature, like the lightning flashing through the clouds, or the rolling thunder! He knew nothing whatever of freedom, but he knew man! Indeed, he knew more about man than we think he did. For instance, he knew how to coin words clearly indicating that man still knew something of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. The Greek words, or those derived from the Greek, indicate even to-day far more than those based on our therapeutic or pathological conceptions, that are no longer able to understand anything. Hypochondria for instance, means cartilaginosity of the abdomen. It is a name that the Greeks found through their full knowledge of the fact that in hypochondric people the activity of the soul-spiritual gives rise to cartilaginous formations in certain parts of the body. These names mean far more than modern men suppose, and more than can in any way be grasped through modern medicine, with its abstract way of thinking, even though it experiments, dissects, etc. We must first take up again everything that is real, that once more enables us to have an insight into the world! It is the task of a spiritual scientific deepening to reach once more real facts, realities.

You see, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the human beings passed through what constitutes, as it were, a physical self-knowledge, an insight into the human body, during that time—one might say approximately, during the first third of that time, occurs the greatest event of the earth's evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is the condition of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred?—The further we go back, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Persian and the ancient Indian epoch—this immediate knowledge of the whole human being. Then, this knowledge of the whole human being disappears. The last remains of that knowledge may be found at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared. Something of that instinctive, ancient knowledge of man still existed at that time. For instance, the personalities described in the Gospels as the Apostles, or the Disciples of the Lord, still possessed something of that old instinctive knowledge, which lived in their souls altogether instinctively, not clearly. Others too possessed such a knowledge. At that time it was to a great extent decadent, but at any rate it still existed. It was dying away, burning out, but enough remained of that ancient knowledge to enable a great number of men of that time to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha accordingly. This is particularly evident when the apostle Paul entered the evolution of the times, the apostle Paul who was initiated by divine powers and to whom the spiritual world became visible.

All this gave rise to conditions of time which still enabled man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain naive, instinctive way. Many people had already entered a later phase of development. Particularly the cultured Greeks and the cultured Romans had concepts that were already far too abstract in order [to] grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a really living way. Yet certain people had preserved the last remains of an old clairvoyant knowledge, particularly clairvoyant traditions, and they were still able to grasp that a super-earthly power, the Christ, had connected Himself with an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, was, as it were, the year in which last stragglers of those who were still able to have a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be found in Europe. But these stragglers could not understand it, for instance, through our anthroposophical spiritual science, for this did not, of course, exist at that time. They grasped it through an old knowledge that had remained from the Gnosis, and such like. A certain spiritual knowledge still existed. An ancient human inheritance lived in the human soul and this enabled man to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha.

What has remained of the Mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions!—The Gnosis became theology, a mere logical way of grasping the divine. Theo-Logy: a mere logical way of grasping the divine, no longer a contemplation of the divine!

Since the year 333, the capacity of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in a direct way became more and more decadent, until the fateful time of the 9th century, when, in the year 869, the Eighth General Oecumenic Council at Constantinople gave out the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but that it is instead a Christian's duty to acknowledge that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses a few spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy, as it was called, the only possible knowledge of the human being, according to which man consists of body, soul and spirit, was done away with dogmatically, and a dogma was enforced, according to which a Christian who truly believes must acknowledge that man only consists of body and soul.

Modern philosophers frequently state that their philosophy is based on an unprejudiced knowledge, and they speak on the one hand of the body, and on the other of the soul. They speak of the spirit in a very phraseological manner at the most, for they do not know the spirit. They would only know it, if they recognised the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. The “impartial philosophy” that is now being taught to such an extent—what is it, in reality?—It is the result of the dogma pronounced by the Eighth Oecumenic Council in the year 869.

We must see through this. We must be quite clear that when the modern civilisation arose, and even in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it was considered as dangerous to speak of the spirit and to draw attention to it. But at the present time it is necessary that we should draw mankind's attention to the spirit,—the spirit that has been declared to be the devil for a long, long time, within the civilisation of Europe! After the year 333, nothing but traditions remained of the old Christological knowledge—nothing but traditions!

Everything that constitutes art shows us even more clearly that it has remained tradition! Observe, for instance, Cimabue's paintings; there you will see a world that took on a completely different aspect in Giotto's paintings. In Cimabue's paintings lived something that may also be seen in Dante, something that could no longer be experienced by the human beings of a later time! Later on, this living within a spiritual world, that may still be seen in Cimabue, ceased. Later on, it was a hypocrisy to paint a golden background, but for a Cimabue this was quite natural. And now observe a Russian icon; it is not in any way painted after a model, for it is something in which the old traditions are still alive, traditions that come from a clairvoyance still existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and enabling man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time in which the traditions were maintained by using external instruments of power. And then came the 19th century, in which the ordinary soul-activity that brought forth such significant results in natural science and technology, was also applied to theology. But what became of theology through this? Christ-Jesus, the incarnation of a Being that does not belong to the earthly became “the simple man of Nazareth,” looked upon indeed as the most perfect man, but not as the bearer of a super-earthly Being. Theology became naturalistic. The more our modern theologians look upon Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, the less they feel induced to pursue Christological ideas, and the happier they are! Even in theology they do not wish to rise beyond the description of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, they do not wish to rise to an understanding of Christ as a super-earthly Being that dwelt in the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

To-day, those who have an insight into world-events from a spiritual standpoint, must see many things differently from the way in which they are judged by people who only see them outwardly. Central Europe, that is now passing through such a tragic destiny, was able—among other things which cannot be discussed here—to accept Adolf Harnack as a great scientist; the very man who reached the point of saying that God the Son should not be included in the Gospels! They should be read, he says, in such a way as to find in them only the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and this man's teachings concerning God the Father. Harnack's theology was intended to do away with our feelings of reverence for the spirituality of Christ. The theology which Harnack established in Central Europe really signifies the negation of Christianity, the denial of Christianity; it signifies the setting up of a world-conception clearly stating that we do not wish to have anything to do with the spirituality of Christ. It is significant to observe what has thus swept over modern humanity, with the result that the most distorted views now exist concerning the most important ideas of human life.

To-day we know what sleep is, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Yet we do not, as a rule, observe the other kind of sleep, in which we live from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when we walk about in our everyday life, steeped in illusions and dreams in regard to its most important facts. Indeed, in these modern times, we do not only sleep when we lie in our bed at night (this is actually the better kind of sleep), but we are also asleep in the sphere of egoism, when we lock ourselves up in our inner being, unwilling to know our human body and, at the same time, unwilling to progress to a spiritual self-knowledge. We sleep another kind of sleep during the time from falling asleep to waking up.

In order to understand this, we must indeed observe the nature of sleep from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up. What does then take place with the human being? Why does the modern intellect believe that as far as the human constitution is concerned sleep is the same for modern man as it was for the ancient Greeks?—The Greeks were not awake in the same way as we, and the Egyptians even less so, nor did they sleep as we do. This soul-constitution in particular should be studied for every epoch of time.

When, during sleep, the human soul, that is to say, the ego and the astral body, loosens itself from the physical and etheric bodies that remain lying on the bed—where does the soul, that is the ego and the astral body, really dwell while we are asleep?

Superficial explanations that a cloud may be seen hovering over the physical body (which is quite true, as far as an altogether external form of clairvoyance is concerned), do not suffice. This is not sufficient, for we must observe what takes place inwardly. We must observe what the soul really experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. In these modern times, the human soul then passes through experiences that are also lived through by the souls that are not as yet incarnated on the earth. Consider the following: Take a case that came to my notice just now, before I began my lecture: A daughter was born to an anthroposophist; one year ago, this little girl lived in the spiritual world as body and soul, and has since then made the endeavour to descend to the physical world. All those decades, that make us so much older than this little newly born girl, during all those years it lived in the spiritual world. And while we were asleep, we lived from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, in the world in which the little girl dwelt before conception, or birth. That is the world in which we dwell, when we are asleep, and there, the souls that are not yet incarnated pass through many experiences. While we are asleep, we pass with them through the fifth post-Atlantean age and through events resembling their own experiences.

From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live, on the other hand, in a world that we sleep away during our waking life; we live in everything that we inherited from our past earthly existences. We live together with what has remained behind from ancient India, Persia, or Egypt; we live with what we have experienced spiritually here on earth, and this is cramped together egoistically in our inner being. We bring it along with us into our present incarnation. During the day, we live with all these things, and sleep away the present. Indeed, the present contains many things that can only be grasped spiritually. We cramp ourselves egoistically in ideas that come from the past and adhere to them obstinately even in our language, in our speech. Languages contain a great store of ancient crystallized wisdom. Yet we rebel against any kind of influence that may be exercised upon our souls by this ancient store of wisdom. For instance, to-day we use the words “Messer”, knife, or “Schere”, scissors. When we use the word “Schere”, scissors, we do not as a rule think that it comes from a kind of “Scheren”, or shearing, that is announced in every barber's shop! And when we use the word “Messer”, knife, we do not think that it is really based on a moral idea, for it is connected with “Maass”, measure, and “Zumessen”, to mete out, or cut to measure. When a knife was used in ancient times, it was really used to “mete out” a gift for someone. A store of wisdom lies crystallized in the words we use, and this ancient spiritual life that is contained in the words now uttered so thoughtlessly, lives in the depths of our being. Whenever we speak, we really experience the life of ancient epochs.

Spiritually, we pass through ancient epochs of the earth, from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, but we pass through them in a sleeping condition. And from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we pass through events that are connected with the descent of human souls to their life on earth.

You see, these are realities, these are truths. These realities should be well impressed upon us, if we do not only wish to become acquainted with the forces of decay, but also with the forces of growth and progress. It would be so much better if, before going to sleep in the evening, a greater number of people were to do other things than those which they are accustomed to do! Consider what many people generally do, as last thing, before they go to bed! Yet a modern man should say to himself: I wish to enter the world that contains the forces of growth and progress, it is the world in which I can experience those forces that lead the human souls down to the earth, a world in which I can experience those forces spiritually.

From the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up we experience the forces pertaining to the future. For that reason, we should have a kind of craving for the teachings that speak of a spiritual world and that enable us to be conscious of the experiences of souls that are in a condition (but consciously) resembling that of souls who are asleep here on earth. The impulses for the progress of civilisation, for the healing of civilisation, must come from that world! The spiritual, political and economic impulses that should unfold as healing powers for our civilisation must come from that world! It is necessary, at the present time, that we should once more acquire the possibility of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, of grasping it in a spiritual way.

What is the essential, or let us say, one of the essential things (for there are, of course, many essential things in it), in the Mystery of Golgotha?—That a God, a super-earthly Being, took up His abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Beings of His kind have one characteristic quality: they cannot die. All those Beings of the higher Hierarchies, described in my “OCCULT SCIENCE”, the Angels, Archangels, etc. up to the highest Beings, the Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. do not die (read the description of their life's course in my books), they do not die as men die. What did Christ take upon Himself, Christ Who came from the higher Hierarchies?—He died within a human body. You see, here we have significant forces that pass over into the evolution of humanity upon the earth, Christ died in a human body; he passed through the experience of death, an experience unknown to the other gods who are connected with the earth. Up to the year 333, it was still possible to grasp this truth to a certain extent. Now we must learn to grasp it anew! We should grasp anew that a super-earthly Being shared with us the experience of death, thus passing over into the development of the earth. Yet at the same time we should have the great modesty of recognising that the experiences of this Being highly surpass what can be experienced through the soul-constitution of a human being.

The Christ descended from worlds where death is unknown. What Beings serve the Christ?—Among those who serve Him, there is not one who could make the same sacrifice, not one who could have come down to the earth, in order to pass through death. Beings that belong to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, right up to the higher Hierarchies, Beings connected with the evolution of the earth, are Christ's servants. We cannot perceive them, if we do not rise to a super-earthly knowledge of the higher Hierarchies. Through a knowledge of the spiritual worlds we should seek that which leads us to Christ. Spiritual science is needed above all in order to attain a new knowledge of Christ. For Christ is here, upon the earth, and He is surrounded by the world of the higher Hierarchies. Man's great temptation in modern times is the modern natural science with its great triumphs and its admission of purely external forces of Nature. Yet behind all these forces of Nature live the spiritual Beings! The assertions of natural science are certainly right, nevertheless the spiritual Beings that serve Christ live behind the forces of Nature, thinking and directing them. Christ lives in everything that constitutes the development of the earth. Super-earthly Beings serve Him—but these super-earthly Beings can only be recognised through spiritual science. Consequently an extremely important task evolves upon spiritual science: the renewal of Christianity.

All this shows you that to-day we cannot pursue spiritual science merely as a personal concern. To-day spiritual science concerns civilised humanity as a whole. Through an inner necessity, spiritual science was from the very beginning pursued in the circle that afterwards obtained the name of “Anthroposophical Society”, in a different way than in the Theosophical Society. The whole constitution of the Theosophical Society had, from the very outset, a sectarian character, something that reckoned with the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy therefore had the task of taking into account the consciousness of modern times, that which constitutes the external culture of humanity, and of pouring into it the results of a spiritual manner of contemplation. Little differences and strifes are of no importance whatever in the face of such a task. It was essential for me to maintain the purity of a spiritual movement that reckons with the whole science of modern times. Whether this or that person may or may not accept one or the other truth, is of no importance to me. Even though the whole world may abuse spiritual science and criticize it, I do not consider this as essential, for the essential thing is that the spiritual science that I advance should really harmonize fully, with the modern, scientific mentality, with the moral conscience of modern times. For this reason, I had to publish my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” before revealing the truths of Karma. I have often listened with great pain to theosophists who said: If this or that man suffers, if he suffers socially and belongs to a lower class or caste, it is his Karma and he has deserved it. This interpretation of the idea of Karma corresponded to the egoistical requirements of men who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Yet they did not think that we do not only live through our present life on earth, but that we shall also live through a future life. To-day we should not always look back on what we once possessed in past lives on earth, but we should also consider that in future lives on earth we shall be looking back on what we are passing through now—and this will then be an entirely new experience. Freedom fully harmonizes with the idea of Karma ... Everything that appears in the account-book of life is karmically connected.

You see, if I reckon up the debit and credit sides of destiny and strike the balance, I obtain life's balance; but this does not entail that the single items are subjected to the necessity of Nature. Just as the single items of a commercial account book do not depend on diligence, and so forth, and finally enable us to strike a balance, so freedom can very well be connected with the idea of Karma. We should not adopt an easy fatalistic idea when advancing the view of Karma as a fully justified idea. Spiritual science should therefore be in full harmony also with the conscience and the moral attitude of modern humanity. For that reason it was necessary to work more extensively with spiritual science, also during the time in which the catastrophe broke out in regard to everything that has been caused by the egoism of modern humanity, both soul-spiritually and physically.

Would it have been honest and straightforward to continue preaching that spiritual science can help mankind, and yet advance no social ideas at a time when social requirements became as urgent as they are to-day? Would human love not have progressed in the direction of a social knowledge? Shall we content ourselves with declamations on human love? Or should we not rather progress to real social impulses?

The fact that we can only see Christ's ministering spirits, clearly when we look into the spiritual world, is a result and a fundamental knowledge of spiritual science, a result of what I have told you to-day concerning waking and sleeping, concerning sleeping wakefulness and the awakening from sleep through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also enable us to grasp once more the Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with a modern mentality. And as a result, spiritual science must not restrict itself to some sectarian group, but if must be brought out into the world in the best possible way, according to our capacities and to our place in life! The centre at Dornach was not intended to be a sectarian centre, but one that renders fruitful every branch of science and life, social life and artistic life. Anthroposophy and its spiritual science must become a concern of the great masses of humanity, although its most important things and that which penetrates into the innermost depths of our heart, awakening our inner forces, are pursued within the narrower circles of our Groups. There, in those Groups, we gather forces, in order to develop a certain higher knowledge, which we must first take in there. It is a knowledge that must be developed, for to-day we live in a time in which mankind really does not know what it is seeking; it sleeps away the most important things of life. Nevertheless it is a time in which mankind seeks after a new knowledge of the spirit! Let us feel this deeply, as pioneers, I might say, of a spiritual renewal—as Anthroposophists.

For that reason I so warmly wish that also the Groups in Holland might pursue an earnest, diligent and untiring study of the knowledge that can be obtained in our movement, from out the spiritual worlds. I warmly wish that our Groups should study diligently. These studies should constitute the point of departure for bringing out Anthroposophy into the world—and each one must do this in his own way—so that mankind's longings may be satisfied through a spiritual contemplation directed towards Anthroposophy. For that reason, let us grasp the nature of the longings of modern man. Let us not think that we become materialistic, when we spiritualize matter! And let us clearly realise that mankind would face a great misfortune, if it fails to obtain the true knowledge that is able to avert that misfortune.

The Eighth Oecumenic Council of the year 869 drove away from human knowledge the contemplation of the spirit. Those who have an entirely materialistic mentality seek to prepare the next stage: they also wish to eliminate the soul and to establish the general dogmatic knowledge that man only consists of the body. Certain devilish initiates are now excogitating means of educating the human being materialistically, of preparing him materialistically as a body; they seek to attain their end not by means of psychic influences, but by means of ingredients and substances taken from Nature. They plan an experimental psychology and seek to adopt principles that are not those of the Waldorf School (for the Waldorf School principles are spiritual protests against modern materialism), and they already undertake all manner of experiments in order to test man's capacities. This is but a preliminary stage of what they really aim at. The child is no longer to be educated psychically, but with the aid of external, material means, so that its capacities may develop in a bodily way. Thus man would gradually become an automaton, unless we bear in mind at the right moment that the path that led to the elimination of the spirit must not be continued in the direction of the elimination of the soul as well. We must instead follow the opposite direction of the Eighth Oecumenic Council; we must once more follow the path enabling us to find the spirit anew, and to cultivate in human life, in every sphere of practical human life, only what we can discover through the spirit.

This is what I wish to implant into your souls, what I wish to implant into your hearts, my dear friends, after our long absence. Cultivate spiritual science first of all as a concern of the heart, in the way in which it should be cultivated individually, so that we may progress. Cultivate what you have thus taken in, and then bring it out to humanity in every sphere of life, bring out what you have thus taken in! You will then gradually find the path enabling you, in the present difficult and earnest time of probation, to do the right thing for humanity, according to your place in life.