The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday, we were able to discuss with a somewhat larger group the paths that lead to the higher worlds. Today, we may be permitted to say a few words about the higher worlds themselves. In particular, we want to pick out one of the most important chapters from the realm of the supersensible worlds and take a look at the processes that take place in a person between death and a new rebirth. This is one of the most important chapters in the realm of higher life because it concerns the most fundamental facts and processes of human development. And since the physical existence of man is connected and interwoven with significant processes in those worlds, one must penetrate into these secrets if one wants to understand the human being at all.

I would like to start by describing the life of a person between death and a new birth, but in order to understand what happens in this interim period, we must first consider the nature of the human being. For those who have been involved in anthroposophical studies for some time, the information in the introduction should not be new. But we must nevertheless consider these things very carefully from the outset in order to prepare ourselves for a complete understanding of the subsequent descriptions.

For anthroposophical spiritual science, the essence of man is not merely that essence of a material nature, as it appears to the external senses, which we can touch with our hands and which is bound to the physical world by physical laws. Spiritual science shows that this physical body of man is only part of his entire being, and that man has this physical body in common with the mineral world. We can see for ourselves outside in nature, everything that appears to be dead, mineral nature, consists of the same materials from which the human body is built. The same physical processes occur in stone and in the human body, but there is a big difference between the processes of ordinary, inanimate physical bodies and the nature of man. An external physical body, like a stone, has a form, and it retains its form until an external process, such as smashing or some other force, destroys the form. The human physical body, on the other hand, or that of any other living being, is destroyed in death by the inherent laws of physical and chemical substances, and the human body is a corpse in this case.

Spiritual science now shows us that in the state between birth and death, that is, during our physical lifetime, a second part of the human being is present as a constant fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. We call it the etheric body or life body. It is present in all of us. If this second link were not present in the human being, the body would only follow the physical forces in every moment; it would disintegrate. The fighter against this disintegration is the etheric body or life body. Only at death does this life body separate from the physical body. Man has this life body in common with every other living being; the animal has it, and the plant also has such a continuous fighter. In them too, there must be such a continuous fighter against decay.

If the physical body has been described as a first link of living beings, and the life body as a second, then man has a third link in addition to these. We are able to see this with our intellect alone, with logic. Let us assume that a person is standing before us. Is there nothing more in this space that he occupies, in this hand that he uses, than what has been mentioned so far? Oh, there is something more in it than just bones and muscles, than all kinds of chemical components that we can see with our eyes and feel with our hands. And each one of us also knows very well that there is something more to it. This something more is the sum of his suffering and his joy; everyone knows this something, for it is everything that takes place in sensations and feelings, from morning to evening, throughout one's entire life. There is an invisible carrier of these sensations, and we refer to it as the astral body or the human being's body of sensation. This astral body, which is not perceptible to the physical eye of man, is considerably larger than the physical body. To the clairvoyant consciousness, it is recognizable as a cloud of light in which the physical body is embedded. This third link of his being man has in common with the animal, because the animal also has an astral body.

But then there is still a fourth link in the human being, the crown of the earthly kingdom, the crown of human nature. We can see this fourth link when we trace an intimate movement of the human soul. There is one thing in man that can never approach him from the outside. It is this one name, the simple name 'I'. Only from the deepest depths of the soul can this name, this designation 'I', resound. Never can another human being say 'I' to a fellow human being. Man can only speak this to himself; it can only come from within him, from his own deepest inner being, and here something completely different, something divine, begins to resound through the name “I”. All great religions also felt that there is something sacred in the I. This is also clearly recognizable in the Old Testament. There the name 'I' is equivalent to the name of God. Only the priest was allowed to pronounce the name of God on particularly solemn occasions, at particularly solemn services, and when he reverently uttered the name 'Yahweh' in the temple, the name 'Yahweh' meant nothing other than 'I' or 'I am'. It was meant to signify that the God within man expresses himself. And only that being can utter these words in the soul to its soul in whose nature the divine essence reveals itself. The revelation of God in man is a fourth link in the human being. But we should not think that we are now God ourselves. It is a spark from the ocean of divinity that flashes in man. Just as a drop from the ocean is not the ocean itself, but only a drop from it, so the human ego is not God, but a drop from the divine substance: God begins to speak in the human soul.

Only the priest was allowed to pronounce the holy name, Yahweh, on particularly solemn occasions. To make this divine being resound in the soul of man, so that man can say, “I am,” is the crowning of creation. This I-bearer, the fourth link in human nature, makes man the first among the beings that are visible in earthly creation. That is why the ancient mysteries everywhere spoke of the holy tetrad, the first link of which is the visible physical body, the second link the etheric body or life body, the third link the astral body or sentient body, and the fourth link the I. These are the four links that we want to look at first. And human life, human consciousness, depends on the way in which they are connected with each other.

Only in day consciousness, in waking, do the four aspects of human nature interpenetrate. Then we have the physical body permeated by the etheric body, only finer and somewhat larger, rising above the physical body. Then we have the astral body, the carrier of our feelings, permeating the etheric body and, like a large shiny oval, surrounding the physical body, which is connected to the etheric body. And then we have the ego body. However, the four aspects of human nature only permeate each other when we are awake. When a person sleeps, the astral body with the ego carrier emerges, while the physical body, connected to the etheric body, remains in bed. In the morning, or when the person wakes up, the former two of the four members descend again and reconnect with the other two.

What does the astral body do at night in the ordinary person? It is not inactive. To the clairvoyant's eye it appears as a spiral cloud, and currents emanate from it, connecting it to the physical body lying there. When we fall asleep tired in the evening, what is the cause of this tiredness? The fact that the astral body uses the physical body during the day when we are awake and thus wears it out appears as tiredness. But during the whole of the night, while we are asleep, the astral body is at work dispelling the fatigue. That is why we feel refreshed after a good night's sleep, and it shows how important it is for a person to have a truly healthy sleep. It properly restores what has been worn out by waking life. The astral body also repairs other damage during sleep, such as diseases of the physical and etheric bodies. You will not only have observed this in yourself and in other people from your own life experience, but you will also have learned that every sensible doctor says that in certain cases sleep is an indispensable remedy for recovery. That is the significance of the alternating state between sleeping and waking.

Now we will move on to consider an even more important alternating state, that between life and death. As we have seen, as soon as sleep sets in, the astral body with the vehicle of the ego leaves the physical body connected with the etheric body. In ordinary life, this separation of the etheric body from the physical body hardly ever occurs, except in certain exceptional cases, which will be mentioned later. It is only at death that the physical body and ether body normally separate for the first time. Now, at death, not only does the astral body leave the four-part human being with the ego, as in sleep, but the three parts, ether body, astral body and ego, leave the physical body, and we have on the one hand the physical body, which remains behind as a corpse, is immediately attacked by physical and chemical forces and falls prey to destruction; on the other hand, we have a connection between the etheric body, astral body and I-bearer.

The question now arises as to how anyone can possibly know how these conditions develop at death. Well, if you followed yesterday's public lecture, you will understand that those people who are able to see into higher spheres are also able to report on the conditions after death. And means are available and ways are offered for every human being to acquire such abilities, which is why there is also the possibility of knowing what a person experiences when he passes through the gate of death. If any facts are reported that cannot be immediately verified by anyone, then only those who really know can decide on their correctness. But if the reproach were made to the one who knows by those who know not, that he too could not know anything, then the reproach of arrogance would lie entirely with those who know not and yet claim that one can know nothing. Thus only the one who knows can decide what can be known.

When a person has passed through death, he first has a feeling that he is growing into a world in which he becomes bigger and bigger and that he is no longer outside of all entities as in this physical world, not facing all other things, but, as it were, within them, as if he were crawling into all things. At the moment immediately following death you feel not a here and there, but an everywhere; it is as if you yourself were slipping into all things. Then there is a total recollection of your entire past life, which stands before you with all its details like a large tableau. This recollection cannot be compared with any recollection, however good, of your previous life, as you know it in earthly life, but this memory tableau suddenly stands before you in all its grandeur. What is the reason for this? It is because the etheric body is in fact the carrier of memory. As long as the etheric body was still enclosed in the physical body during earthly existence, it had to function through the physical body and was bound to physical laws. There it is not free; there it forgets, for there all memory steps aside that does not directly belong to the very next thing that the person is experiencing. But in death, as explained earlier, the etheric body, the carrier of memory, becomes free. It no longer needs to function through the physical, and so memories suddenly arise in an unbound way.

In exceptional cases, this separation of the physical and etheric bodies can also occur during life. For example, in cases of mortal danger, when drowning, when falling, that is, in such cases where the consciousness receives a great shock through the horror. People who have been subjected to such a shock sometimes report that for a few moments their whole life stood before them like a tableau, so that the vanished experiences from the earliest period of their lives suddenly emerged from oblivion with full clarity. Such stories are not based on deception, but on truth; they are facts. At that moment of the flash of the memory tableau, something very special happens to the person; only, with such a shock, consciousness must not be lost. At that moment of the crash or other horror that caused the shock, something occurs that the clairvoyant can see. Not always, but sometimes, the part of the etheric body that fills the head region emerges from the head, either completely or in part, and even if this only happens for a moment, it still frees the memory, because at such a moment the etheric body is freed from the physical matter that hinders uninhibited memory.

We can also observe a partial emergence of the etheric body on other occasions. If you press or bump any part of your body, a peculiar tingling sensation may occur, and we tend to describe this feeling by saying that the limb has fallen asleep. Children who want to describe what kind of feeling they have when this happens have often been heard to say: “I feel like seltzer water in my hand.” What does that mean? The actual cause is that the corresponding part of the life body has been removed from this limb for a while. The clairvoyant person can then perceive the elevated part of the etheric body near the physical body, like a copy of it. For example, when a person falls, the corresponding part of the etheric body is pushed out of the head by the falling movement.

At death, this tableau of memories occurs immediately and with full intensity because the entire physical body is abandoned. The duration of this tableau of memories after death is also known. It is three to four days. It is not easy to give the reasons for this. This period of time is different for each person and roughly corresponds to the ability of the person concerned to stay awake without falling asleep for as long as they could have done so during their lifetime.

After that, something else happens. What happens then is that a kind of second corpse is released. The human being now also leaves the etheric body behind; but he retains a certain essence of it, and that is what the person takes with him and retains for all eternity. Now, after discarding the etheric body, the time of the Kamaloka begins for the person, the Kamaloka state. If you want to understand what kind of state this is, you have to bear in mind that after leaving the physical and etheric bodies behind, the human being still has the astral body and the ego of his four limbs, and the question now arises for us as to what the astral body, with which the ego now lives into the time of the Kamaloka, is all about. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and pain, of enjoyment and desire, so these do not cease when the physical body is discarded; only the possibility of satisfying desires ceases, since the instrument for satisfying desires, the physical body, is no longer available. Everything that the person was as a sentient being in the physical body does not cease to be. The person retains all of this in their astral body. Let us think of an ordinary desire, and for the sake of simplicity, let us choose one of a rather banal nature, for example, the desire for a tasty dish. This desire is not based in the physical body, but in the astral body. Therefore, this desire is not discarded with the physical body; it remains. The physical body was only the instrument with which this desire could be satisfied. If you have a knife to cut with, that is the instrument, and you do not lose the ability to cut when you put the knife away. So at death only the tool for enjoyment is laid down, and therefore man is first in a state in which all his various desires are represented, which now must be laid down or rather must be learned to be laid down. The time when this happens is the Kamaloka time. It is a time of testing, and it is very good and important for the further development of man. Imagine you were suffering from thirst and you were in a region where there was no water, and of course no beer or wine, no drink of any kind at all. You would suffer from a burning thirst that cannot be quenched. In a similar way, a person experiences a certain feeling of thirst when he no longer possesses the instrument with which he was the only one able to satisfy his desires.

Kamaloka is a period of weaning for the person, since he must give up his desires in order to live in the spiritual world. This Kamaloka period lasts for a longer or shorter time for each person, depending on how well he has mastered the habit of giving up his desires. It depends on how the person has already acquired the habit of regulating his desires in life, and how he has learned to enjoy and to renounce in life. But there are pleasures and desires of a lower and a higher kind. We call those pleasures and desires, for the satisfaction of which the physical body is not the actual instrument, higher pleasures and desires, and these are not among those that a person has to get rid of after death. Only as long as a person still has something that draws him towards the physical existence - lower pleasures - does he remain in the astral life of the Kamaloka period. When nothing draws him back down after this period of disaccustoming, then he has become capable of living in the spiritual world, and then a third corpse emerges from the human being. The human being's stay in this Kamalokai period lasts approximately as long as a third of one's lifetime.

It depends on how old the person was when they died, that is, how long they had lived in the physical body. However, this time of transition is not always terrible or unpleasant. In any case, the human being becomes more independent of physical desires through it, and the more he has already made himself independent in life and acquired interests in the contemplation of spiritual things, the easier this time of the Kamaloka will be for him. It makes him freer, so that the human being becomes grateful for this time of the Kamaloka. The feeling of deprivation in physical life becomes bliss in the time of the Kamaloka. Thus opposite feelings arise, for everything one has learned in life one is glad to do without in the time of the kamaloka period. When, as already mentioned, the third corpse emerges from the human being, then everything that the person cannot use in the spiritual world floats away with this astral body. These astral corpses are visible to the clairvoyant and take twenty, thirty, even forty years to dissolve. Since such astral corpses are continually present, they occasionally pass through the bodies of the living, through our own bodies, especially during the night, when our astral bodies are separated from the physical bodies during sleep. Just as an extract, a certain essence, remains for all eternity for the actual human being after the ethereal corpse has left, so too does a certain essence remain for him for all eternity after the astral corpse has left, as the fruit of the last embodiment.

And now the time of Devachan begins for the person, the entry into the spiritual world, into the home of the gods and all spiritual beings. When a person enters this world, he experiences a feeling that can be compared to the liberation of a plant that grew in a narrow crevice and suddenly grows up into the light. For when man enters this heavenly world, he experiences complete spiritual freedom and from then on enjoys absolute bliss. What, in fact, is the time of Devachan? You can get an idea of it if you consider that man is preparing here for a new life, for a new reincarnation. In the physical world, in this lower world, man has experienced and learned so much, and he has taken these experiences with him. He has absorbed them like a fruit of life, which he can now freely process within himself. He now forms an archetype for a new life during the devachan period. This happens during a long, long time. It is a working on one's own being, and every working, every producing is connected with bliss. You can get an idea of the fact that every producing, every working is connected with bliss by observing a hen brooding an egg. Why does she do that? Because it feels like doing it. In the same way, it is a pleasure for a human being to weave the fruits of the past life into the plan for a new life in Devachan.

In the chain of reincarnations, the human being has indeed already gone through many lives, but at the end of a life he is never the same as he was at the beginning of that life. In this life, forced into the physical body, he must behave quite passively. But now that it is free, freed from the physical body, from the etheric body and from the astral body, it weaves an image into its eternal essence, and this weaving in is perceived as bliss, as a feeling that cannot be compared to anything that it can ever experience in the physical world as bliss. His life is bliss in the spiritual world. But do not think that the physical life has no significance in this spiritual world. When bonds of love and friendship have been formed from soul to soul in life, only the physical part is lost with death, but the spiritual bond remains and forms lasting, indestructible bridges from soul to soul, which condense into effects in the archetypes. These are then able to be lived out in the physical in the following re-embodiments. It is the same in the relationship that exists between mother and child. A mother's love for her child is the answer to the prenatal love of the child for the mother, who, because of the affinity of her soul with the child, felt drawn to her as a result of her longing for re-embodiment. What then takes place in the life, in the jointly experienced embodiment between mother and child, forms new, soul ties that remain. And everything that bound soul to soul is already woven into the spiritual life that you find when you enter the spiritual world after death. The life between death and a new birth is such that what was done in the previous physical life has an effect. Yes, even the favorite pastimes that a person was devoted to in life have an effect. But after death, the human being becomes freer and freer, because he becomes a preparer for the future, for his own future.

Does a person do anything else in the hereafter? Oh, he is very active in the hereafter. Someone might ask why a person is reborn and why he comes back to this earth at all if he can also be active in the hereafter. Well, this happens because re-embodiments never occur in such a way that a person is unnecessarily reborn in the course of them. He can always learn new things, and conditions on earth have always changed so that he enters completely different circumstances to gain experience for his further development. The face of the earth, the regions, the animal kingdom, the plant cover, all this is constantly changing in a relatively short time. Think back a hundred years. What a difference compared to today! It is not so long ago that every child learns to read and write by the age of six, as is the case in our society today. In ancient times, there were highly educated people who were at the head of the state and could neither read nor write. Where are the forests and animal species that populated the land five hundred years ago, which is now criss-crossed by railways? What were the localities like where our big cities are today, what were they like a thousand years ago? Only then is man reborn, only then does he enter into a new rebirth when conditions have changed so much that man can learn something new. Follow the centuries as the face of the earth is changed, torn down and built up by the intellectual powers of men. But there is also much that changes that cannot be worked on by the external intellectual powers of people. The plant cover and the animal world change before our eyes; they disappear and other species take their place. Such changes are brought about from the other world. A person walking across a meadow can see how a bridge is built over the stream, but he cannot see how the plant cover is built up. The dead do that. They are working to reshape and rework the face of the earth in order to create a different setting for themselves for a new reincarnation. After man has been busy with the preparations for the new reincarnation in this way for a long, long time, the moment approaches when it is to take place. What happens now? What does man do when he enters into his new incarnation? At that time man finds himself in his Devachan, and there he feels that he must first attach a new astral body to himself. Then, as it were, the astral substance rushes towards him from all sides, and depending on his character, it crystallizes around him, so to speak. You have to imagine it like iron filings being drawn to a magnet and grouping themselves around it. In the same way, the astral substance groups itself around the re-embodied ego. But then it is still necessary to choose suitable parents, and so the person is led to this or that pair of parents, but not merely in obedience to his own attraction. For in this process, exalted beings intervene and take action, who, in keeping with the present state of human development, have taken on the work of karmically ordering these relationships in a correct and just manner. If, therefore, parents and children occasionally appear to be out of harmony, there need be nothing wrong or unjust in that. Sometimes it is good for man to be brought into the most complicated conditions and to have to adjust himself to the strangest circumstances, in order to learn thereby.

The succession of these repeated re-embodiments is not, however, an endless one. There is a beginning and there is an end. Once, in the distant past, man did not descend to incarnations. He did not yet know birth and death. He led a kind of angelic existence, not interrupted by such drastic changes in his condition as are present today in the form of birth and death. But just as surely as man will come to a time when he has gained sufficient experience in the lower worlds to have acquired a sufficiently mature, enlightened state of consciousness to be able to work in the exalted upper worlds without being forced to descend again into the lower worlds.

After hearing the conditions presented here about repeated lives on earth, some people believe they should be afraid that the feeling of parental love could be affected by a mother learning that the child is not entirely of her flesh, because there is something about this child that is not of her, something foreign. But the bonds that span parents and children are by no means subject to chance and lawlessness. They are not new bonds. They already existed in previous lives and once existed in kinship and friendly connections. These bonds of love unite them permanently even in the higher worlds in eternal reality, and all people will one day be embraced in eternal love, even if they no longer descend into the cycle of re-embodiments.

There are certain reasons why I have recently been given the task of speaking to the branches of our Theosophical Society about a very specific topic, a topic that is intended to educate our dear members about certain facts that lie behind the development of humanity, about certain facts that can only really be known within the spiritual world, and that relate to complicated questions of reincarnation and world karma. It is quite right that we first proclaim the teachings of Theosophy in our branches, so to speak, in a more general way. We have already seen in the last lecture here that, so to speak, at the beginning of our work, we have to speak more generally about the processes between death and a new birth, and that we then have to modify, in a sense, what lies behind it in even more mysterious things. This is how we have to work in general. For the theosophical life is such that it only gradually allows us to ascend into the veiled sanctuaries of the becoming of the world and of humanity.

Today we will hear more details about these questions, which we usually can only answer by saying that there is reincarnation, there are repeated lives on earth; the innermost core of a person's being goes from life to life. This is generally correct, but only imprecise, it is, so to speak, spoken in broad terms. We are only just beginning to learn the subtler truths, for we are only gradually growing beyond the ABC of spiritual wisdom; we are still at the ABC. We must not entertain the idea that we have already gone very far beyond the ABC with what we have been able to master. But it will continue if patience and energy are available.

Today we first turn our gaze a little further back into the course of our human development. Once again we look back to the ancient time of the Atlantean development, to the time when our souls were embodied in Atlantean bodies. All the souls that are now embodied here in our bodies were once embodied in Atlantean bodies. We have talked about the way our souls perceived and recognized things back then; today we want to talk about something else, namely that there were already initiates in Atlantis who had accordingly advanced in what our ancestors in Atlantis had around them in the world, who were at a higher level of clairvoyance and were able to ascend to high degrees of knowledge and activity through the independent cultivation of their psychic abilities. These initiates worked in certain sacred sites. We can give these sacred sites a name, but it could only come about later. Because it was used by the stragglers of ancient Atlantis, it best describes those peculiar places that stood between places of worship or churches and schools. We can call these places of worship “oracles”. What was initially practiced in such oracles? There were the highly advanced individuals of Atlantean humanity. They sought out their disciples among the Atlantean population, those who were ready to be trained. These were accepted into the oracle sites and initiated into the secrets of the development of the world and humanity. They learned the truths that related to the spiritual background of the world, namely the spiritual background of our solar system. There was an oracle of Mars. All the heavenly bodies of our solar system interact. He who regards Mars only as a physical body knows little about the real workings of the world. Only he who recognizes the spiritual essence of Mars knows what forces are at work from Mars; he can glimpse a little into those places that lie behind the scenes of ordinary existence. And one can already know a great deal about the mysterious forces that direct our Earth once one has become acquainted with the secrets of Mars, for example. It is the case that, during the Atlantean development, certain initiates had to devote all their energies to researching the secrets of Mars. They could not have investigated the secrets of Saturn, Jupiter and Venus at the same time; for that there were other oracles. There was a Venus oracle, a Saturn oracle, a Jupiter oracle, a Mars oracle, a Mercury oracle, a Vulcan oracle. And there was one great oracle - this was the most significant oracle of ancient Atlantis - which investigated the secrets of the Sun and that which works from the Sun on to the Earth as a spiritual being. Equipped with the powers they thus investigated, the initiates could be the leaders of the masses in Atlantis. And the unified leader of all was the deepest initiate, the great leader of the oracle of the sun, who proclaimed what is as the spiritual essence in the sun, the one who could be called by the name “Christ”. It was already proclaimed in ancient Atlantis.

This initiate of the oracle of the sun had now been given a very specific task to accomplish in a very specific time. He had the task of selecting from the masses of the Atlantean population those people who, through their souls, were particularly suited to laying the foundations for the post-Atlantean culture. We have to imagine what it was like in ancient Atlantean times: calculating, counting, combining, judging and so on were not abilities that souls had at that time; these were abilities that humanity was only to develop later. At that time, the souls had the ability to develop a certain dimmed clairvoyance and certain magical powers. You know how the people of ancient Atlantis used the seed powers of plants in a similar way to how we use the powers of coal today. Just as there are coal stores at our train stations today, where we store the coal we use to heat the engines that push our trains forward, so the Atlanteans had stores for large collections of all kinds of seeds. Let us consider a seed. It has the power to drive the stalk upwards. The Atlanteans were able to coax these forces out, just as we can coax out the energy stored in coal. And just as we move our locomotives forward today with the energy of coal, so the Atlanteans moved their vehicles, which hovered close to the ground, with the seed powers. In every respect, the Atlanteans were different from today's people. They were great inventors, who were able to achieve much through the use of these seed powers. They were comparable to our great scholars and technicians - they, who at that time, in dim clairvoyance, gained special insight into the nature of the seeds.

These great bearers of the Atlantean culture were now the least likely to be chosen and to carry over what was necessary to become founding for the post-Atlantean culture. Rather, it was the simplest people who developed the beginnings of calculating, counting, combining, and so on, those in whom the qualities that made up the splendor of the Atlanteans were least developed. We can take comfort in this fact when today's scholars look down on us. Just as the great leader of old had to choose those who were simple people, so today those must be chosen who have a sense of the future impact of the Christ principle, whether or not they march at the head of external culture. As in those days the call of the great initiate Manu went forth to those who had the future qualities in their first form, so today the call goes forth from the spiritual side through the anthroposophical movement to prepare the souls for the next cultural epoch. Not among those who have the brilliant qualities of today's scholarship are the souls that can carry the culture over.

These great adepts of the solar oracle gathered these simple people around them in a region west of present-day Ireland, while the other migrations from west to east had long since taken place. [The postscript ends here.]

This evening's public lecture will discuss re-embodiment and karma, and it may be appropriate for us to choose a topic for our branch lecture that delves deeper into some questions of the law of karma and, in some respects, provides a more intimate supplement to what can only be given in general terms in the public lecture.

Karma, the great law of existence, the law of fate, can be discussed, so to speak, in the very first rudiments of spiritual science, because it is something that belongs to the most elementary things in the world view. But the more intimate questions are such that, in order to understand them, a familiarity with spiritual science is needed that can only be found if one has worked for a while in a study group and has not acquired empty theories, but what flows quite unnoticed from the spiritual teachings into the human soul: a certain kind of sensations and feelings. This is something that every spiritual aspirant soon notices: that spiritual science is something other than just another worldview, because it gives us concepts and ideas that are transformed into feelings and sensations in our hearts, and that we become different people through it, people with a completely different way of relating to our fellow human beings.

This kind of preparation is meant when we speak of a relative inner maturity, which one acquires in this way through spiritual science. We know that karma initially means the spiritual causation of a later event, a later quality or ability in a person, through a previous one. It does not matter whether this spiritual causation occurs in a life between birth and death, or whether it extends through the various earthly lives as the great law of fate for humanity, so that the causes for something happening in one life lie in a previous life or one that lies far in the past – this law, this all-encompassing law of fate, is what we call karma. If one wants to consider the details of karma, one can talk for many months and even longer, and only slowly and gradually can one grasp the things associated with it. Therefore, in a lecture one can only state the facts of the law of karma in a narrative way, and then the maturity of the spiritual seeker shows itself in that he can accept these things as facts, as results, and then reflect on them further and seek them out in life. The individual life shows the effects of karma in the most diverse ways; only the human view of life usually does not go very far. People usually observe themselves or their fellow human beings with attention for only a short period of life, because their view is not sharpened by the spiritual eye.

I would first like to discuss how little this is the case, so that you can get an idea of how the spiritual view can be developed in ordinary life. This will be done by means of a kind of personal experience. Some of you may already know that I have spent fifteen years of my life as an educator, with a wide range of educational responsibilities, including perhaps difficult ones, where problems arose that could only be solved through prolonged observation and study. It is obvious that in the course of such activities I had the opportunity to make observations, not only of the children directly under my charge, but also of their relatives, their cousins, who were always around. One sees how they grow up, and one can observe a large circle of people entering the world. Now, anyone who has followed life a little, sharpened with spiritual vision, can perceive many things in such details. For example, during the time when I was engaged in that activity, a widespread but then extremely respected medical bad habit was in vogue, which consisted of wanting to keep the children “in good shape” by giving them a small glass of red wine every day. It was fashionable at the time for doctors to have the little tykes take a glass of red wine with each meal. This prescription was conscientiously followed by the parents. Now I had the opportunity to observe such children, those who had been treated this way and those who had not. When you are in the prime of life, you can observe people who were still children when you met them in a variety of ways. The children who were treated to this wine back then are now people between the ages of twenty-six and twenty-eight.

So I have had the opportunity, in the most diverse ways, not only to look at a few years, but also to survey larger periods of time. The people who were one to three years old when I met them and are now twenty-eight years old can be divided into exactly two groups: those who were given their glass of red wine to “strengthen them for life,” and those who were not given it. The former have become people who today, in the physical sense, have to struggle terribly with their nervous system - in spiritual terms, with their astral body. They have become people who lack what is called: holding firmly to a goal in life, having backbone; while those who went without wine in their youth have become people who have backbone, who are firmly grounded, who know what they want, who don't need to go here and there for recreation when their business allows them the least, and who, because they have become fidgety people, don't get that recreation after all. The others, on the other hand, have become firmer individuals. I do not just want to point out how it is when you approach such a person again after years, but rather that life looks a little different when you look at it in terms of the connection between cause and effect, not just as far as the person's nose reaches, but also the larger and deeper connections of causes and effects.

This, too, is the highest form of observation of life when we try to observe people with regard to the qualities that are of an inner, karmic nature. Unfortunately, it is a fact that people do not usually connect the beginning of a person's life with its end. People do observe children, but who has the patience, where they have the opportunity to do so, to observe what follows the way a person's soul life was in the first childhood years and then again what life is like when the course of life is coming to an end? And yet there is a very definite karmic connection between the beginning and the end of life. Certain things that occur at the end of life or in the second half of life are based on very specific causes in the early years or youth of life.

Let us take a specific case, for example a person who, in early youth, is angry, hot-tempered, and easily inclined to become angry about something that happens in his or her environment. This anger, and especially the sudden anger that occurs in children, can take on two forms. It can be, so to speak, merely what is called a bad habit, which in a sense is merely an outburst, a rage-like outburst of excessive selfishness. But it can also be something else. One must learn, especially as an educator, to distinguish these two types from each other. A child's outburst of anger can also be what we encounter when a child sees an injustice happening around him. A child does not yet have the power of judgment, cannot yet say to himself with his mind what is happening. If one were to try to explain that what is happening is not wrong, one would soon become convinced that the child cannot yet understand this. Therefore, it is grounded in the world order, in the spiritual guidance of the world, that what later appears as the power of judgment comes to light in childhood in the form of affects, emotions. The child cannot yet understand what is happening, but it becomes angry. This anger, this affect is a preceding soul proclamation of what later is the power of judgment. These two types of anger and irascibility must be clearly distinguished from each other. Anger in the first case must be treated in such a way that the child lives out this anger as much as possible by really feeling the effects of this anger in the right way and also the wrong of the anger. For if, for instance, out of love, one always does for the child the things by which it gets the fulfillment of its will, then anger misses its effect. Anger always has an effect in the soul. Where anger arises in the soul and is not resolved by achieving what it strives for, it strikes back into the inner being. And that is good. That is why popular language, which often has a keen sense for such things, calls anger “poison” in various places where the German language is spoken. To be angry is to poison oneself. This word is truly taken from the facts of mental life. Anger enters the soul, and through the effect of anger within, when it strikes back, the excess egoism is pushed out. So even anger has its good. It is an educator of the human being, it works like a poison that dampens excessive selfishness.

Something quite different is the anger that arises when a child sees an injustice. This anger is a judgment in advance. It is justified. In this case, one must not merely try to punish – by punishing one would merely drive the anger back inside – but one must try to use this emotion in the child to gradually teach him understanding, to teach him the power of judgment. This anger can be overcome by developing the power of judgment. If a child becomes angry when witnessing an injustice, then the following would happen: The child would be introduced to a kind of understanding that the injustice is done by human nature; depending on his maturity, he would be given an explanation of what happened. Then such anger will also have its right effect. It will prepare the child to judge the world, because it is a harbinger of the power of judgment. This is said to draw attention to the fact that man is not always unjustifiably angry. Anger has its value for the development of man. Man must purify himself, he must overcome anger. Anger is something that has a beneficial effect when it is overcome. Man could never ascend to perfection without overcoming anger.

Now one might ask: Why is there anger in the world government? There is anger because one becomes strong by overcoming it; one becomes more powerful over oneself by overcoming it. If you observe someone who had that noble anger in their youth, in the years when idealism arises, when something filled them with anger because they were not yet able to see the deeper connections, then in their later years, you can see that in old age the good effect of this arises. On the other hand, anyone who in youth was unable to overcome anger, to purify himself, to become master of his passions, will not easily attain in later years that mild activity which touches so pleasantly. For mildness is precisely the effect of anger overcome. Mildness in old age is the effect of anger overcome in youth.

A quite different effect is produced by the soul quality of devotion, which likewise makes its appearance in youth. It consists in man's acquiring a feeling for what he is not yet able to comprehend. Wrath is a rejection of what we cannot yet understand; devotion is a looking up to what we cannot yet comprehend, an attitude of respect for what we are not yet equal to. No one can come to knowledge who cannot worship that which is above him in devotion. Devotion is the best path to knowledge. Men would never come to knowledge if they had not first worshipped from the dark background those spiritual powers that stand above them. Devotion is a force that leads up to what one wants to achieve. Therefore it is basically necessary that devotion be developed. The person who, in later life, can look back on many moments of devotion will look back on them with bliss. If it has occurred to you that in your early childhood you have heard your family talk about a family member who is said to be very revered, and if as a child you have also taken this feeling in, and the day approaches when you can see this personality for the first time – if you then have a holy awe to press the latch of the door behind which the revered person is to appear, that too is a very devout feeling, and we will have much of it in later life if we have had several such moods in our youth.

Devotion is the reason, the karmic cause of the power of blessing in later life, in the second half of life. That power, which flows out and enables us to be a comforter to others, is gained through nothing other than a devotional mood in youth. Look around you, wherever there is a person who comes to others who are sad, who then only needs to be there to comfort the sad with his mere presence, to be their comforter, to spread active love - you will find: the karmic cause for this active power lies in those devotional moods of youth. The power that is poured into the soul of the growing person as devotion is something permanent in him; it runs like a current through the soul and comes to light as a blessing power at a later age. We could consider many cases where the law of karma is already working distinctly between birth and death.

Let us now take a closer look at the law of karma in a specific case in a particular life. Suppose a young person had been studying. At the age of eighteen, the father would have gone bankrupt. The young person would therefore have to stop studying, he would be torn out of the profession for which he had been prepared; he would have to take a different career path. Now, of course, all professions are equal; we are only interested in the facts of the change of profession. So the young man had to become a merchant. Now, if you are not a student of life, you will say: Well, the event happened, and you will observe what happened before and what happened after. But only someone who really observes life with a keen eye will discover a connection between what came before and what came after. If the young man is now in the other profession and everything goes normally – I will not say that it always goes normally, but it can go normally – we will be able to see something different in the later years of life. At first, the profession is new to him. He grasps what is relevant to him. But already in the twenty-first year it will become apparent that something is different about this man compared to a man who has been prepared for the commercial profession from the very beginning: in the twenty-first year it already becomes apparent that he has less interest in what is incumbent upon him in his profession. Certain feelings arise in his soul and separate him from what he should be doing, so that he cannot do what is demanded of him with true satisfaction. If one now investigates the cause of this, one will perceive the following: When a particular point is reached where the course of life is changed, a life knot, for example when a change of occupation occurs, then according to the law of karma little is noticeable in the first few years. But then it comes, so that in the twenty-first year feelings, sensations, moods assert themselves, which can be explained from what comes from the preparations for the other profession in the eighteenth year, feelings that he has taken up but not led to realization. At first he suppressed them, but then they asserted themselves to such an extent that he no longer felt satisfied with his new profession. What was placed in him three years before the change of career will emerge three years after that change in such a way that the person concerned can no longer find the right satisfaction. And from there, things can happen in such a way that in the twenty-second year, the fourteenth year of life is repeated, and in the twenty-third year, the thirteenth. It can also turn out differently because everything in life intersects. In the twenty-third year, for example, he can start a household; interests arise that intersect with the past ones and make them run differently. But the law is still valid. Even when a new interest arises, the earlier interests are still there, having been deflected. From such an example you can see the course of the life process as it presents itself to spiritual science. It is the least that one can gain all kinds of insights through spiritual science; but the most important thing is that through it one can penetrate into the life process. Let us suppose – I never relate cases that have not occurred; one must acquire the habit of never inventing anything, but always choosing cases that have actually occurred – so a mother comes to me who has to lead her only son into another profession because his father has been taken from him. In today's world, the right thing is hardly likely to happen, because true observation of life can hardly be reconciled with today's view of life. If such a mother becomes acquainted with spiritual science, she learns to reckon with the law of karma and can become a good friend of the young man who is to be guided through the years of such a career change. This was the case some time ago. A mother came to me and said, “What is my best life's work?” I said she should use the next few years to gain her son's trust. Then she could use spiritual science to educate his mind so that she could help him when certain events occur. The feelings of piety that had been implanted in his soul would assert themselves strongly in all later years, and she would be able to see correctly what would certainly happen. If one day the son comes home and says, “I don't know what to do with my life, my job gives me no satisfaction,” then she will be able to trace it back to what happened earlier. She will recognize the cause and will instinctively find out how to help her son overcome his difficulty. She will certainly be better able to do so than if she had no idea how karma works and only believed that mood swings and depression arise out of something trivial. Nothing comes into being without a cause; but often the causes lie much closer than one might think. We just have to observe such a node, trace life back from there and see what takes a different course. It is like this: Imagine you have a violin string. You have stretched it and stroke it with a suitable object. The string produces a certain sound. If you now hold it in the middle, something happens on both sides: the string vibrates on both sides. There are events in life of which one can observe how what happens before is reflected afterwards.

The middle of life is also such a crossroads. What is prepared in youth comes out in old age. It is necessary to pay attention to these things so that one can gradually really get a feeling that spiritual science is not impractical, but that one's whole life can be shaped practically from a spiritual point of view. A mere life of love is of no use if wisdom is not combined with love. Love must combine with wisdom, with the realization of what is right. Love alone is not enough to live by.

We can mention another case that occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century and has been carefully examined. A mother raised her little daughter. She had seen how this little daughter started to take things, to steal. But she could not bring herself to punish her in her love, which is, after all, an excellent quality. The little daughter stole once or twice, a third time and did other things; and if you follow the course of her life, you will see that the child became a famous poisoner. Here you have love that is not united with wisdom. Love must be imbued with the light of wisdom. Love can only truly unfold when it is imbued with wisdom. How else can a friend help a young person to develop, to guide them through important moments in their lives, if one knows that there is a law that sometimes shows the causes of an event quite clearly, causes that would not be understood without knowledge of the law? It would be right not just to know in general terms that there is a law of karma, but to follow karma in detail by acquiring a correct worldview. The student of spiritual science must seriously endeavor to familiarize himself with the concrete working of these laws and know how they manifest in life. This is the most important thing: not to bandy phrases about Karma, but to get involved in observing the laws in life. This is necessary!

Now I would like to tell you something else. One can also single out a few cases that relate to karma that passes from one life to another. Of course, here too one can only limit oneself to individual cases. So let us consider a question regarding a person's inner karma, which comes about because basically a person must always be a dual entity in life. If you observe life, you will have to say to yourself: when a person comes into existence through birth, two things have to be distinguished. One is what he has inherited from his ancestors. For example, Schiller inherited the shape of his nose from his grandfather; but what is specifically Schiller's, he has not inherited, but that comes from his previous incarnations, his previous embodiments. On the one hand, there is the hereditary stream of that which is passed on through generations; on the other hand, there is that which the person takes from one life to the next. Those who have acquired an eye for the spiritual will always ask themselves how much a person has from their parents and how much comes from their previous incarnation.

In a rational sense, one cannot teach differently unless one can make this distinction. The art of education will only receive the right form when people have learned to distinguish between these two currents. Only at the end of the evolution of the earth will these two currents flow together so that the human being will be able to find the body into which he fits. At the present time this is not yet possible. If a complete fitting together of outer physicality and inner individual organization were to take place in our present time, it would be impossible for a person to die before normal age due to inner causes; because dying is not something accidental, but a disharmony, then premature dying could not occur, since harmony would prevail in man. But as it is, this disharmony between what has been inherited and what has been brought from a previous incarnation can become so strong that it causes death to occur earlier.

If people would only pay a little attention to spiritual teachings, they could grasp reincarnation with their own hands today – this is not to be taken figuratively, but literally – if only materialistic theories would interpret the corresponding facts correctly instead of incorrectly. This can be demonstrated in certain cases. There are people who have not progressed very far in their development, so that their feelings are still completely rooted in their sentient soul. Their whole consciousness is connected with the sentient soul. And this can be seen from people's outward gestures: they betray certain causes that lie in the astral body. When a person is still completely immersed in the sentient soul, when he feels really good inside, it happens, for example, when he has had a good meal, that he slaps his body with pleasure. This is a sign that he still has a too strong sentient soul. When a person is deeply immersed in the mind soul, this also manifests itself. Because the sense of truth is located in the mind, a person who is immersed in the mind soul or mind will pat himself on the chest when affirming a truth. A person who is deeply immersed in the consciousness soul will touch his nose when he is deeply pondering something. What relates to the sentient soul is expressed in the lower body; what relates to the mind or emotional soul is expressed in the chest, and what relates to the consciousness soul is expressed in the head: one also scratches behind the ears. I only mention this to show how what is in the astral body is expressed in the physical body.

Now the following can occur. Man can take into his consciousness the highest feelings and ideas and ideals that he can have at all in this cycle of time; for example, our ethical ideals, which alone should be proof enough for man of the existence of a spiritual world. If we are inspired by an inner voice for these ethical ideals, and devote ourselves to these high ideals, the stimulus for this cannot come from outside. Now this can go so far that a person elevates something that he feels without ideals to the level of these ideals, so that he does not live according to a particular idea out of a sense of duty, but because he can no longer do otherwise. For the one who allows himself to be permeated by a moral idea, it will come about that he becomes so immersed in this idea that he commands himself what is right in its sense. Thus the ideals must light up in the consciousness soul, then they flow down and become instincts.

When this happens, when man has so imbued his feelings with his ideals, then something special asserts itself. These instincts strive to express themselves all the way to the physical body. But between birth and death, man can no longer work on his physical body. So certain currents go through the chest to the head. If someone is enthusiastic about an ideal, is glowing for it and full of fire, so that he feels with love: that should happen - he will devote himself to it in this life, will do anything for it. But that is not all. Through this activity, currents go up to the upper part of the human head. These are forces that seek to work up to the physical body; but they can no longer change the head in this life, because even if one ennobles oneself in such a way, one's physical body is no longer capable of being shaped. But these forces still flow upwards. These currents remain with the person in his soul, and when the person passes through death and a new birth, he brings them with him into a new existence. This is where phrenology finds its individual justification: these acquired forces emerge in the bumps on the skull. You cannot say that this bump expresses this in general, but rather that which the individuality has often associated with it in this way during the previous life and which could no longer reshape the body, that is expressed here.

So these predispositions go through life between death and new birth, and we really grasp what the person has so often let flow into himself in the previous life. You really grasp reincarnation and karma when you feel the different bumps and humps on the head. But we must be aware that each person has their own laws; these humps must not be judged in general, but on an entirely individual basis. So, for example, we take a hump and know: it is the work that the person did on their soul in their previous life. So you can grasp karma and reincarnation, grasp them with your hands! In this way, you can learn from spiritual science right down to the shape of the body.

Just as the physical form lives on from a previous life into a later one, so do other things carry over. However, one must not look at all these things in a fussy way. One must not believe that the law of karma is as cut as a civil code; it can only be understood through extensive studies.

Let us consider a great misfortune that causes deep pain. We often look at it wrongly because we only ever look at the effect. We then see that an event has occurred that has made us unhappy and thrown us off course. We only see the effect. However, we should look for the cause. We might find the following: Yes, in a previous life there was the possibility of acquiring this or that ability. But we did not do it, we neglected it. So we passed through the gate of death without having acquired this ability. Now, in the following life, those forces, which are already karmic forces, drive us to misfortune. If we had acquired that ability in the previous life, the power would not have driven us to misfortune. It is through this misfortune that we now acquire this ability. Suppose this misfortune befalls us in the twentieth year, and in the thirtieth year we look back on it and ask ourselves: What made us acquire these or those abilities? Thus we recognize the purpose of this misfortune. We gain infinitely if we look at things not as an effect but as a cause for what they make of us. That is also an achievement of the doctrine of karma, to look at things as a cause. All these things are details of the law of karma. So you see that one should participate in anthroposophical life because one can learn a lot that otherwise remains only a general concept.

Something quite significant, which is connected with the law of karma, should still be pointed out. A person who comes into spiritual science and hears that there is the possibility of acquiring spiritual abilities, of growing up to the gift of clairvoyance, might ask: Why is it always so difficult to learn what spiritual science says? This question may be justified, but it really does arise mostly from a misunderstanding on the part of many people who become acquainted with spiritual science only superficially, a misunderstanding they have about the connection between physical and spiritual life. They know that physical life is by no means inserted into human life unnecessarily. It has its mission, just like the life between death and a new birth in the spiritual world.

Let us ask ourselves the question: What about two people, one of whom, due to his karma from a previous life, is unable to develop his clairvoyant gift in this incarnation, but has to content himself with diligently acquiring anthroposophical knowledge through study, so that he can see how these things are to be understood – so he could only progress through study – and another to whom the opportunity was given to develop his clairvoyant gifts and to penetrate into the spiritual world? The latter could have the following attitude. He says to himself: I see into the spiritual world, I can see spiritual beings, why should I then still study books? I know there is a spiritual world, so why should I study anthroposophy? It is unfounded and boring. It is a recurring fact that people who are karmically fortunate enough to be clairvoyant say to themselves: We don't want to learn anything more now; why should we study now what is only given in dry terms? One person is able to study all the harder, but he cannot acquire the gift of clairvoyance; the other despises study, but his karma is so favorable that he can become a clairvoyant. What about these people after death, what is the overall picture? A person who has attained the gift of clairvoyance between birth and death, who could see into the spiritual world and see different things, but did not want to learn the theoretical concepts, who did not want to grasp the spiritual scientific information with logical thinking, who despised all of this, has nothing of it after death. He is no better informed than he was without the gift of clairvoyance that he had during his lifetime. That person is even better off who has not yet been able to see clairvoyantly in his physical life, but who was not prevented from forming a logical concept of the spiritual world by reading.

However, this is not meant as an instruction to be lazy and do nothing to develop the spiritual senses. No one can know whether he will not yet acquire the gift of clairvoyance before his death. For those who have studied the spiritual-scientific world view, these concepts now transform into real insights. What one acquires here through concepts will not be lost, it remains. There is an obligation: No matter how highly initiated one is, if one could see so highly but could not penetrate what one has seen with concepts, one would still gain nothing from it. Man should not stop at mere looking, but should invest everything with concepts drawn from physical life. Human beings are called upon to really absorb within themselves all that they can experience on earth. That which is lacking in the spiritual world must be acquired in the physical world and must be carried up.

The above is connected with something much more significant. There is something that people could never have learned in the spiritual world. No event could ever have been learned in the spiritual world if man had not been led down to the physical earth and gone through the incarnations. All spiritual beings that do not incarnate cannot learn about one event: that is death. There is no death in the astral world and even higher; one cannot experience it there. Hence there is the old principle in esoteric philosophy: If gods want to learn how to die, they have to go to Earth to learn it. This is a very profound truth. And there is something else connected with death: Man would never have attained self-awareness. Only by repeatedly passing through the gate of death and shedding his covers at the end of each incarnation does he come to true awareness of the self. Man must learn to overcome death. Without death entering the world, man would not have come to know self-awareness. Thus death had to become the great teacher of the physical world. This is connected with a great event. If it had never descended to physical earth, if it had always remained up in the spiritual spheres, man would never have been able to experience what is the greatest event in the evolution of the earth: the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Christ event can only be experienced between birth and death. And precisely therein consists the greatness of this event, that a God descended from the heights of heaven and shared the fate of men. Only on earth could He fulfill this mystery. Never could the Mystery of Golgotha have been established anywhere in the spiritual world. To teach people the victory over death, a God had to descend from spiritual heights to die on earth. And this event, understood by man on earth, is the greatest thing that can flow into the earthly incarnation of man. This is the greatest thing that man can take with him when he leaves the physical earth through the gate of death. Man could never comprehend the magnitude of the Christ if he had not learned on earth what the Christ is. When he has learned this on earth, he can retain it and take it with him into the spiritual world.

Humanity could never have come to know the Christ if He had not descended, developed the physical body and had the opportunity on earth to understand the death of a God. This event had to take place, for it is of significance for all future times. Humanity will in turn develop backwards in the spiritual world. Before, it knew nothing of the Christ Impulse; on earth it had to learn it, and now it will be carried up, taken along by all those who on earth have acquired an understanding for it. With this understanding, which is gradually acquired on earth, with that event in the soul, man lives on in the following incarnations and also in those lives that elapse between death and birth. People will understand more and more what Golgotha is. The Christ will live more and more. And when the earth is physically destroyed, when only the souls, the spirits of people remain, they will look back on the evolution of the earth and say: We had to go through a development in a world where we prepared ourselves for the Christ. Then this mystery came, the development continued, we understood the event of Palestine better and better, we digested it in our lives between birth and death, and when this great mystery was understood, the earth was ripe to disappear again, because we incorporated what was the most important thing in the whole earth evolution. We had to be on earth, we had to go through it to experience what cannot be experienced anywhere else. Now it has been carried up into the spiritual world, but the origin of what is now in the spiritual world was down there.

This is how your souls will feel when they have gone through many incarnations, when the earth as a physical planet has died and people will have ascended to a new existence. What is the most important heirloom of earth's evolution? What is the most important thing that we have taken with us, and that can only be experienced and lived on earth? The Mystery of Golgotha. Now we have the Christ in us. That is the significance of the sacrifice, that the Christ descended and underwent that event which people experience as death: to become ever more self-aware, to gain ever more strength, in order to take on the karma of the power of the Christ to an ever greater extent.

Thus we see how karma works in this significant instance, and how the understanding of the Christ is connected with the entire earthly karma of humanity. And humanity is to receive the Christ within itself. Man cannot fulfill earthly karma without having attained this understanding of the Christ. And the achievement of the goal on earth will be a karmic effect of the acquisition of the understanding of Christ. Thus we can say: We will understand the smallest as well as the greatest event when we consider the law of karma.

There is no doubt that at the present time numbers of people are longing to know something of the spiritual worlds and even modern scientists have been at pains to discover paths leading to knowledge of the Supersensible. But in all these attempts to penetrate to the supersensible world, modern man finds stumbling-blocks created by the judgments issuing from modern scientific thinking with all the authority it commands; and in regard to the many sources from which people imagine that knowledge of the supersensible world can be derived, the prevailing opinion is that concerning the supersensible worlds there can be no exact knowledge in the sense of modern science, for none of the evidence put forward stands up to any valid test.

Now the anthroposophical Spiritual Science of which I am venturing to speak to you in these lectures, strives to reach exact, genuinely exact, knowledge of the supersensible world: “exact,” not in the sense that experiments are made as in domains of science concerned with the external world, but in the sense that inner faculties of soul otherwise slumbering in man during his everyday life and ordinary scientific pursuits are unfolded in such a way that the full clarity of consciousness implicit in really exact science is maintained throughout. Whereas, therefore, in exact scientific thinking, consciousness is maintained as it is in ordinary life and exactitude of method is strictly adhered to during investigation of the external world, in anthroposophical Spiritual Science we proceed by adopting an initial attitude of what I will call intellectual humility, saying to ourselves: “I was once a child and my faculties then fell far, far short of those I have acquired through education and through life and now possess as an adult human being.” It is quite evident that certain faculties which did not previously function have unfolded since childhood, and the question arises naturally: Is it not possible, then, that faculties are slumbering in the adult human being just as his present faculties were slumbering in his soul during childhood? Provided that certain methods are put into practice, these faculties can indeed be drawn forth from the soul.

In anthroposophical Spiritual Science these inner faculties must be drawn out in such a way that the methods whereby the actual approach to supersensible knowledge is made, are in line with our own development. The preparation for looking into the higher world presupposes exactitude of method. As I said in my last lectures here,¹ it is possible for “exact clairvoyance” to be acquired by methods as precise and systematic as those employed when the facts of ordinary knowledge are being used in the investigation of nature.

I shall speak less to-day of how this exact clairvoyance can actually be attained—I shall mention this merely in passing, for the two previous lectures dealt with the methods for the attainment of exact clairvoyance, and information about these methods is available from the book that has been translated into English under the title, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

I want to-day to indicate why it is that in his ordinary life the human being is unable to pene­trate into the higher worlds. This is denied to him, primarily because he is only capable of per­ceiving the world in the actual present. Our eyes can perceive the world and its phenomena, our ears can hear sounds in the immediate present only. So it is with all our senses. We can only know the past of our earthly life in recollec­tion or remembrance, that is to say, in pale, shadowy thoughts. Just think how living and concretely real were experiences undergone ten years ago and how pale and shadowy are our thoughts and recollections of them to-day.

Everything that lies outside the present moment can only live in man's ordinary conscious­ness in the form of shadowy remembrance. But this shadowy remembrance can be kindled and fired into higher reality through the methods which, as I have said, I do not propose to discuss in detail to-day—through methods of mediation in thought, concentration upon thoughts, self-training and the like.

A man who applies such methods to himself, learning thereby to live in his thoughts with all the intensity with which he otherwise lives in his external sense-impressions only, acquires a certain faculty of observing the world not only in the immediate present. Depending upon the aptitude of the individual concerned, exercises leading to this result must of course be practiced for a long time, in conscientious, systematic meditation and concentration. Many a human being, especially in the present age, already brings with him at birth the faculty which can be developed by these methods. This does not mean that the faculty is immediately evident at birth, but at a certain moment in life it emerges from within the human being and he knows that had it not come with him at birth it would have been impossible for him to acquire it in the ordinary course of his existence. This faculty consists in being able to live within the thoughts themselves, just as through his body, man lives in the physical world.

Such a statement must not be taken lightly. Let it be remembered that man owes to his living participation in the physical world everything that enables him to claim an existence of his own. When he reaches the stage where without depend­ing upon impressions received through the eyes, ears and other senses he can unfold an inner life as active and intense as the life of these outer senses, an inner life consisting not merely of shadowy thoughts but of inwardly living thoughts experi­enced with all the intensity otherwise implicit only in sense-impressions ... then he knows the reality of a second kind of existence, a different form of self-consciousness. I will call it an awakening—an awakening to a life not outside the body but within the innermost core of being, while the physical body is as quiescent and as insensible to impressions from outside as is otherwise the case only during sleep.

If we think about our own inner life and being, we find that in ordinary existence we really only know what has been conveyed to us via the senses. But sense-perceptions tell us nothing whatever about our inner life and being. With ordinary consciousness we cannot look inwards in the real sense. But when the new kind of self-consciousness in the realm of pure thinking is unfolded, we learn to look inwards just as in ordinary existence we can look outwards, into the external world.

The experience then arising can be described somewhat as follows:—As we look into the external world, the sun or some source of light must be there to illumine the objects around us. Through the light that is outside us, we perceive these objects. When, in the process of pure thinking, consciousness of this second existence awakens—it is however a process of actual “beholding” as colourful and rich in content as sense-perception—then we can become aware of an inner light ... not in a figurative sense but as a spiritual reality ... a light which illumines our own inner life and being just as in the ordinary way objects are illumined for us by some external source of light.

This condition of human experience, there­fore, may be called “clairvoyance,” “clear seeing.” And this clairvoyance in the spiritual self-consciousness that has now been awakened, engenders, in the first place, the faculty whereby a man is able once again to be consciously present in every moment he has lived through during his earthly existence.

The following, for example, is possible—I say to myself: When I was 18 years old, I had certain experiences. But now, when the new conscious­ness has awakened, I no longer merely remember these experiences; I can actually live through them again with greater or less intensity. Once again I am the human being I was at the age of 18 or 15 or 10 ... A man can transfer himself in consciousness into every moment of his life and he thereby unfolds an inner, illumined perception of what, in contrast to the spatial body in which the senses are contained, may be called a “Time-body.”

But this Time-body is ever-present, ever in operation; it is not experienced in a succession of separate moments, but as one complete whole. It is present in all its inner mobility. A vista arises before the human being of the whole of his previous earthly life, whereas in ordinary circumstances he merely recollects this earthly life in shadowy thoughts. The whole course of his earthly exis­tence lights up for him, but in such a way that he lives consciously in each single moment.

When this inner illumination arises, a man knows that he is the bearer not only of a physical, spatial body. He knows that he is the bearer of a second: ethereal body, a body actually woven from the pictures of his past earthly life, but pictures which, with creative power, shape this earthly life itself, shape and mould the very organism and its activities. He thus learns to know the reality of a second man within himself. This second man is conscious of living within a delicate, ethereal world of light—just as the spatial body lives in a physical world. The world is revealed in its finer, more delicate formations; the delicate, ethereal formations perceived in this way underlie everything physical.

Strange to say, it is only possible to keep very brief hold of what is experienced in this finer body. A man who by the development of exact clairvoyance has filled his ether-body, or “body of formative forces,” with light, is able to perceive the etheric reality of the world and of his own being; but in most cases he will find that the impressions pass away very quickly; they cannot be retained. And he is aware of a kind of anxiety to return as quickly as may be to the perceptions of the physical body in order to be assured of an inner sense of consolidation as a human being, as a personality. He experiences his own self in his ether-body. In this ether-body he also perceives etheric realities of the higher world. But at the same time, he finds how fleeting all these impres­sions are; he cannot keep hold of them for any length of time, indeed he must always resort to some means of help.

By way of example, let me tell you what pro­cedure I myself adopt in order to prevent the impressions of this etheric vision from vanishing too rapidly. Whenever such impressions come, I try not only to perceive them but to write them down; in this way, the inner activity is carried out not only by abstract faculties of soul but is strengthened by the act of writing down the impressions. The point of importance is not the subsequent reading of what has been written but the strengthening of the activity which, to begin with, is purely etheric.

In this way a quality so fluid and evanescent that it quickly passes away pours as it were into the ordinary human faculties. This condition is not induced unconsciously as in the. case of a medium, but in full consciousness. An ethereal quality is poured into the ordinary human faculties. This enables us, too, to understand something of great importance, namely, how we can “keep hold” of a supersensible, etheric world (later on we shall be speaking of other supersensible worlds) ... a world which embraces the course of our life hitherto and also the etheric realities of outer nature extending to the sphere of the stars. This ether-world becomes a reality and consciousness of the self within this ether-world arises; moreover, we know that it is impossible, without returning again to the physical body, to keep a hold on this world for longer than at most two to three days—even when the faculties have been developed to a high degree. Certain powers of which I will speak presently enable one who is an Initiate in the modern sense to perceive all this with clear vision; such a man knows, too, what it is that he is able in this way to hold within his ether-body, or body of formative forces, without the support of the bodily faculties. It is the same as the vision that arises before the higher self-consciousness when, as the human being passes through the gate of death, the physical body is laid aside and >begins to decay. This vision, too, for the reasons given above, can remain only for some two or three days after death.

Through the development of exact clairvoy­ance, therefore, the first conditions of existence into which man passes after death, can be experi­enced; they are experienced in advance, with conscious knowledge. The conditions which the Initiate is able to experience consciously in advance, set in for every human being when the physical body is laid aside at death. But in the ordinary way a man can retain consciousness of these conditions for no longer than two or three days—that is to say, for as long as he is able, having developed higher knowledge, to hold fast his ether-body, or body of formative forces. (I shall explain presently why it is that the human being is, nevertheless, conscious during the existence after death.)

For two or three days after death the human being has, in his ether-body, consciousness of the etheric world. Then this consciousness fades away; he becomes aware that the ether-body is falling away from him just as the physical body fell away and that he must pass into a different state of consciousness in order to live on after death as a conscious individuality.

The reality of what I am now describing to you as the first moments after death (they are the first moments of the cosmic existence to follow) can be affirmed by one who has acquired the faculty of seeing into the higher world, because he experiences in advance the conditions which in the normal life of man set in only after death. Because he has developed the intensified consciousness of self that is no longer dependent upon the body, he experiences in advance, in his present con­sciousness, these moments which immediately follow death. He is able to shed light upon his own higher existence and to realise that he has within himself the light which during the first two or three days after death will reveal to him a world quite different from the world revealed to him by his senses during earthly life between birth and death.²

This inner illumination is necessary before it is possible to survey that supersensible picture of the course of earthly life which, as I have said, lasts for a few days after death. A man must kindle within himself a spiritual light which shines inwards. Instead of being aware only of the present moment in the way made possible by the senses, he will then reach a higher stage.

The attainment of further knowledge of the Supersensible depends not only upon a change in perceptive consciousness but also upon a change in the state of ordinary existence. Our ordinary existence as human beings is enclosed within the spatial, physical body; the boundaries of our skin also constitute the boundaries of our actual life. Our life extends as far as our body. Within this field of experience, we cannot reach what I have so far been describing as knowledge of the higher worlds. Knowledge of the higher worlds can only be attained when ordinary experience is trans­cended by consciousness that is not confined within the boundaries of the spatial body but partici­pates in the life of the whole world around. This extended consciousness leads to knowledge of the higher worlds. As I have said, on this occasion I propose merely to speak about the methods through which a modern Initiate acquires exact knowledge of the higher worlds. The rest is to be found in the book mentioned above.

When we have acquired the faculty not only of experiencing a second existence in the life of thought—an existence that still remains within the confines of the spatial body—but also the faculty of living outside the body, a further stage is reached. It is attained when we are capable not only of letting thoughts live with full intensity in our consciousness but of eliminating them at will as the result of systematic exercises and practice. By this means, consciousness arises of experiences outside the body. Let me give a simple example.

Suppose we are looking at a quartz crystal. It is there before our eyes. A person who is trying to make himself into a medium or to induce some kind of self-hypnosis stares fixedly at the crystal and the impression it makes puts him into a state of confused consciousness. Such procedure is altogether alien to anthroposophical Spiritual Science. The exercises it adopts are of an entirely different character and can be described as follows:—We look steadily at, say, a crystal, until we can entirely ignore it as an object physically perceived, and re-orientate our attention. A crystal is there before us and we learn gradually to see it not with physical eyes but with eyes of soul; the physical eyes are open but are not used for the purpose of looking at the physical crystal and in this act of inner cognition the crystal in front of us is eliminated, as a physical object, from our vision.—The same procedure may also be adopted with a colour; it is there before us but we no longer look at it as colour, we eliminate it from our physical vision.

Such an exercise can also be applied to thoughts engendered in the immediate present by circumstances of external life, or to those which arise in the form of remembrances or recollections of earlier moments of earthly life.—Such thoughts are eliminated, emptied from the consciousness, so that we are simply awake and in a state of consciousness from which the external world is altogether excluded.

If such exercises are conscientiously carried out, we discover that it is possible for our life to extend beyond the boundaries of our spatial body. Then, in the real sense, we share in the life of the whole surrounding world instead of perceiving its physical phenomena only.

Thereby, in complete clarity of consciousness, an experience arises which may be compared with recollection of the life passed through during sleep. Just as acts of ordinary perception are limited to the immediately present moment, so is our ordinary life limited to the experiences that have arisen in the hours of our waking consciousness.

Just think of it—When you think back over your life, the periods of sleep are always blanks sofar as ordinary consciousness is concerned. Nothing that has been experienced by the soul during these periods of sleep is remembered; remembrance, therefore, is a stream in which there are constant interruptions, but this fact is usually ignored.

The experiences of the soul during sleep arise like intensified remembrances in consciousness which has awakened to such a degree that with it the human being is able to live outside his body. This condition leads to the second stage of know­ledge in the supersensible world and we become aware, to begin with, of what we experience as beings of soul when the physical body is asleep and quiescent, when it has no perceptions, when the will is not functioning and when the soul has, so to speak, temporarily departed from the body. In ordinary waking life we can in this way recollect the experiences through which we have passed while outside the body during every period of sleep. But it is very important to understand what these experiences really are. The experiences of the soul from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking are, of course, experiences in a realm outside the body, and actual awareness of them is possible only when consciousness of life outside the body has awakened. At this stage, knowledge comes to us not only of something which, like the “time-body,” is illumined by an inner light, but with the faculty of waking remembrance that is now illumined by exact clairvoyance, we learn to know what really comes to pass in us during sleep. This experience will, at first, cause astonishment. Living in the physical body with our ordinary consciousness, we have within us, lungs, heart, and so forth; from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking we have, in very truth, not a personal, human consciousness but a cosmic consciousness. In this higher state of consciousness, it is as though the after-images of the planetary and starry worlds were within us. This may sound strange, but it is perceptible reality at this stage of higher knowledge. We feel ourselves within the all-pervading cosmic life and contemplate the world from this cosmic vantage-point.

Experiencing as inner reality what was round about us in ordinary life, during every period of sleep we live through in backward sequence, all the experiences that came to us here, in the physical world, from the previous moment of waking to that of falling asleep. If, for example, after a normal day we go to sleep, we live backwards over the experiences of the day—first the experiences of the evening, then those of the afternoon, then those of the morning. Thus during sleep at night, we live backwards through all the experiences of the day.

The development of the exact clairvoyance of which I am speaking here, is connected with this power of conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep. Just as in the ordinary way we can remember things experienced years ago in full waking consciousness, by means of this exact clairvoyance we can call up remembrance of this backward sequence of the day's experiences. And so in actual fact, this exact clairvoyance is an extension of the ordinary faculty of recollection or remembrance. We look back upon our experiences during sleep, knowing that in sleep we have been living outside the boundaries of the physical body in a cosmic existence which is a reflection of the whole life of the universe; during this cosmic existence we live backwards through the happen­ings of the day. We find then, that the time taken by this backward review is shorter than that taken by the experiences themselves in physical life. When we are able in the real sense to investigate this realm of existence through systematic practice and increasingly exact knowledge, we discover that this backward review takes place three times more quickly than the physical experiences in our ordinary consciousness. Let us say that a man is awake for two thirds of his whole life and asleep for one third—During the one third spent in sleep, therefore, he lives through the experiences which, in the physical world, have occupied two thirds of his existence.

When exact clairvoyance enables us in waking consciousness to remember the life of sleep, we also realise that this backward review is significant, not so much in itself, but as a foreshadowing. Ask yourselves what you think about a recollection of something that happened to you 20 years ago—You say: “I experience it now in shadowy thoughts of remembrance; but the remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is not phantasy but a picture of an actual experience in my past earthly fife.”—Just as remembrance itself is the guarantee that it is related to a real experience in the past so the conscious recollection of the experiences of sleep is the guarantee that in itself it is only the foreshadowing of something belonging to the future.

Proof that a remembrance relates to something in the past is not needed. When exact clair­voyance has been acquired, it is equally unneces­sary to prove that the recollection of these night-experiences is not a phantastic picture of the present. It reveals in itself that it has to do with the future—indeed with that moment in the future when the physical body of a man will be actually laid aside at death, whereas now, in exact clair­voyance, it is only figuratively laid aside.

By this means, knowledge arises of what the human being experiences after death, when the three days of which I have spoken, have elapsed. This process also enables us to understand the significance of those two or three days after death when the human being is aware of living in a cosmic consciousness, when from the vantage-point, of the Cosmos he once again surveys the etheric picture of his life, looking back over the course of his earthly existence. We learn to know that these first days after death are followed by a life which runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. This same know­ledge, after all, resulted from conscious recollection of the experiences passed through during sleep. The etheric vision which persists for only a short time after death is followed by a life lasting some 20 or 30 years, or maybe less—according to the age reached in earthly existence. Approximately—for everything here is approximate—this life runs its course three times more quickly than earthly existence. If therefore a man dies at the age of 30, the life of which I am speaking now will last for about 10 years; if someone has reached the age of 60 and then dies, he lives through his life in the backward sequence of events, in 20 years ... but all these periods are approximate.

With exact clairvoyance these things become known, just as a past experience is known through an act of recollection or remembrance. Thus, we learn to know that death is followed by a life in the supersensible world during which we live through the whole of our past earthly life in back­ward sequence. Every night we live backwards through the events of the preceding day; after death we live back over the whole of our earthly life. We experience it all once again in its spiritual aspect and thereby unfold a true judg­ment of our own moral worth. During the period after death we unfold consciousness of our per­sonal, moral qualities, of our moral worth, just as here on Earth we are conscious of life in a body of flesh and blood. After death we live in a world that is conditioned by our own moral qualities and our deeds on Earth. By living through earthly life again in backward sequence and because we are not diverted from true moral judgment by instincts, natural urges and passions but survey our life from a purely spiritual stand­point, it is possible for us to form a true judgment of our own moral worth.

The forming of such a judgment requires the length of time of which I have just been speaking. When this period after death has come to an end, the backward-flowing remembrance of our moral life on Earth fades away and we must now pass onwards through the spiritual worlds with a different kind of consciousness. Knowledge of this different kind of consciousness can also be attained by exact clairvoyance.

The attainment of such knowledge depends upon the capacity not only to live outside the confines of the spatial body but to unfold a kind of consciousness entirely different from that belong­ing to the physical world. At this stage the human being discovers that a supersensible, purely spiritual state of existence follows the period during which judgment of the moral qualities is formed—this period lasts, as we have heard, for a third of the time spent in earthly life. This is followed by a different kind of existence, by a life that is purely spiritual. But before knowledge of it can be acquired, exact clairvoyance must have developed to a still higher stage.

If you think about the experiences undergone during sleep, you will realise that the human being does indeed lead a life outside his physical, spatial body. But he has no real freedom of movement in this life. He has to make his way through the experiences that have come to him during the hours of waking consciousness—only in reversed order. And a man who through exact clairvoyance has attained supersensible insight into these experiences—he too feels as though he is confined in a world which he is able to call up into his clairvoyant vision but in which he can­not move, in which he is fettered. Freedom of movement in the spiritual world—this is what must be acquired as the third stage of supersensible knowledge. Without such freedom of movement, it is not possible for spiritual consciousness in the real sense to arise.

In addition to exact clairvoyance, a power which I will call that of “ideal magic” must be acquired. I use this term in order to distinguish it from the unlawful form of magic which resorts to external means and is fraught with a great deal of charlatanism. A firm distinction must be made between such practices and what I now mean when I speak of “ideal magic.” I mean the following: —

When a man surveys his life with ordinary consciousness, he can perceive how in certain respects he changed with the passing of every year or decade. His habits have changed—slowly maybe, but definitely nevertheless. Certain faculties have developed, others seem to have disappeared. Anyone who honestly observes certain faculties of his earthly life can say to him­self that more than once he became a changed being. But this change has been wrought by life; he has surrendered himself to life and life educates him, trains him, moulds and shapes his soul.

A man who is intent upon finding his way into the supersensible world as a real knower, in other words one who strives to acquire the power of ideal magic, must not only be able to make his thoughts so inwardly forceful and intense that he becomes aware of a second existence as described above, but he must be capable of freeing his will, too, from bondage to the physical body. In ordinary life the will can only be brought into operation by making use of the physical body—be it through the legs, arms, or organs of speech. The physical body provides the basis for the life of will. But the following is possible and must, furthermore, be systematically carried out by anyone who as a spiritual investigator wishes to add to the power of exact clairvoyance that of ideal magic. He must develop such strength, of will that at a certain point in his life he can, at his own bidding, get rid of some habit and acquire an altogether different one. Even with the most resolute will, it may take a man several years to change certain forms of experience, but it is possible, nevertheless. Instead of allowing life in the physical body to be his educator, he can take this education and self-training into his own hands.

Exercises of will such as I have described in the book mentioned above, will lead one who is striving to be an Initiate in the modern sense to the stage where he is able not only to be conscious during sleep of what he has experienced by day. He will be able to induce a condition which is not that of sleep but is lived through in full, clear consciousness. At this stage he is capable of movement and action even during sleep; he is not, as in ordinary consciousness, a merely passive being while outside his body, but he can act and be active in the spiritual world. If he is incapable of this, he will make no progress during his sleep-life. One who becomes in the true sense a modern Initiate has acquired the faculties whereby he can also be active as a self-conscious human being in the life which runs its course between the onset of sleep and the moment of waking. And when the will becomes operative while he is actually living outside the body, he will be able gradually to unfold an altogether different kind of con­sciousness, namely, the consciousness that can actually perceive what the human being expe­riences during the period after death following the one described. With this more highly developed consciousness, vistas open out of the existence which follows earthly life and of the existence which precedes it. We behold a life which runs its course through a spiritual world just as physical life on Earth runs its course through a physical world. We learn to know ourselves as beings of pure Spirit in a spiritual world just as here, on Earth, we know ourselves as physical beings in the physical world. And it is now possible to ascertain the duration of this life—the period during which we assess our own moral worth.

By integrating will into the life of soul in this way through ideal magic, we learn to under­stand the nature of the consciousness that awakens in us as adult human beings, and to compare it with the dim consciousness of earliest childhood.

As you well know, ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of these first years of child­hood. The consciousness of the human being in this period of his life is dull and dim; his entry into the world is wrapped in sleep. The ordinary consciousness of an adult human being is clear and intense in comparison with the dim, dark consciousness of the first years of earthly life. But one who has acquired the power to put ideal magic into operation in the way described, understands the difference between his waking consciousness as an adult and this dim consciousness of early childhood; he knows that he rises to a higher level as he passes from the dim conscious­ness of childhood into the clearer consciousness of adult years. And with knowledge of how the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to that of adult life he is able to understand how his adult consciousness is related to that illumined consciousness which, imbued with the power not only of exact clairvoyance but also of ideal magic, makes him capable of moving freely in the spiritual world. He learns to move freely in the spiritual world just as after early childhood when he had no such freedom of movement, he learnt to move about freely in the physical body. In addition, therefore, to knowledge of how the consciousness of childhood is related to that of ordinary adult life, he learns to know how ordinary consciousness is related to a higher, purely spiritual consciousness.

Thereby a man is led to the realisation that in his life after death he is not only a spiritual being living among spiritual beings, but he can discover how long this life lasts. Here again I must quote as an example the recollection of an experience of earthly life. We realise that just as this recollection bears within it a reality belonging to the past, so this new experience bears within it the knowledge that the higher consciousness of the Initiate anticipates as it were this spiritual existence after death. And then we learn to know how this purely spiritual life is related to the earthly life that has stretched from birth to death.

When an Initiate looks back to his earliest childhood, he knows that as the years advance, the easier it is for him to look into the spiritual world. There are, of course, human beings who while still comparatively young have the power to see into the spiritual world. But this vision increases in clarity and exactitude with every year that passes. The faculty of entering into this other state of consciousness grows constantly stronger and with it comes clearer and clearer knowledge of the relation between the one state and the other. For example: a man has reached the age of forty and is only able, let us say, to remember back as far as his third or fourth year. By studying how the length of the period of the dreamlike consciousness of childhood is related to these forty years, we learn to recognise that the spiritual life after death will be longer than the span of an earthly life by as many times as this earthly life as a whole is longer than the dreamy life of earliest childhood; hence the life after death lasts for many centuries. The period during which the moral life is re-experienced and assessed after death is followed by a purely spiritual life during which man lives for many centuries as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings. During this period of existence, he has around him the tasks which belong to the spiritual world, just as here, in earthly existence, he has around him those which belong to the physical world.

When exact clairvoyance and the power to move freely in the spiritual world have been acquired, the nature of these tasks is revealed.—All the forces which finally lead over to a new life on the Earth are drawn from this spiritual world in which the human being lives after death. The future life on Earth stands there as a goal from the very beginning of the life after death. And this life on Earth as a human being ... it is in very truth a microcosm ... this micro­cosm is the outcome of great and mighty expe­riences in the spiritual world after death.

Now a seed in the physical world is minute—nevertheless it unfolds and later on will grow into a large plant or animal. It is also possible to speak of a spirit-seed which the human being unfolds and develops when his physical life on Earth is over. In communion with Spiritual Beings and out of the spiritual forces of the universe, he elaborates a spirit-seed for his new earthly life. This process is not a recapitulation of the past earthly life but embraces modes of activity and realities of being far greater and mightier than can ever exist on Earth. In his post-earthly existence, amid the experiences and realities of the spiritual world, the human being prepares his future earthly life.

I have spoken of the cosmic consciousness which arises in human beings after their death.—This cosmic consciousness is, after all, present every night during sleep, although in such dimness that, to use a contradictory expression, it is really an ‘unconscious consciousness.’—Because they have this cosmic consciousness in their post-mortem, spiritual existence, human beings live together not only with other spiritual beings who never come down to the Earth, having their abode in worlds of pure Spirit, but paramountly with all the souls who are either incarnate in human physical bodies or, having themselves passed through the gate of death, have also entered into the cosmic consciousness that is common to all.

The relationships woven on Earth between soul and soul, in the family, among individuals who have found one another inasmuch as they have met in physical bodies—all such ties in their earthly form are laid aside. What men experience as lovers, as friends, as associates of other human beings near to them in some way, in short, all experiences in the physical body—all are laid aside just as the physical body itself is laid aside. … But because these ties of family, of friend­ship, of love and affection have been unfolded here, on the Earth, they are transmuted after death into those spiritual experiences which help to build a later life.

Even during the period when the moral worth of the past life is assessed, the human being is working not for himself alone but for and in communion with souls who were esteemed and loved by him on Earth.

Through exact clairvoyance and through ideal magic these things become matters of actual knowledge, of direct vision, not of mere belief. Indeed, it may truly be said that in the physical world an abyss stretches between souls, however dear they may be to one another, for their meeting takes place in the body and the relationships between them can only be such as are determined by the conditions of bodily existence. But when a human being himself is in the spiritual world, the physical body belonging to one whom he loved and has now left behind does not constitute an obstacle to living communion with the soul. Just as the faculty for “seeing through” physical objects must be acquired before it is possible to gaze into the spiritual world, so the human being who has passed through the gate of death can penetrate through the bodies of those he has left behind, and enter into communion with their souls while they are still living on the Earth.

I wanted to speak to you in this first lecture of how perception of the supersensible life of man can be developed. I have tried to indicate that when we strive to unfold exact clairvoyance and the power of ideal magic, it is possible to speak with real knowledge of the higher worlds, just as exact natural science is able to speak about the physical world. As we learn to penetrate more and more deeply into these higher worlds—and undoubtedly there are human beings who by developing their faculties will be capable of this—we shall find that no branch of science, however highly developed, can deter us from accepting the knowledge which can be revealed through exact clairvoyance and ideal magic concerning man's existence not only on the Earth between birth and death but also between death and the return to earthly life through a new birth.

In the lecture tomorrow I shall speak of the impulse brought into the life of man on Earth by the Christ Event, the Event of Golgotha. It will then be my task to show that the knowledge of which I have been speaking, inasmuch as it is a concern of every single individual, sheds light upon the whole evolution of the human race on Earth and can therefore also reveal what the entry of Christ into earthly existence signified for man­kind.

The aim of these lectures is to show, on the one hand, that in speaking of supersensible know­ledge there is no need to be at variance with the exact scientific thinking of modern times. The theme of the lecture tomorrow will be that the Mightiest of all Events in the life of mankind on Earth—the Christ Event—is revealed in a new and even more radiant light to souls who are willing to receive knowledge of the supersensible world in the way set forth.

To-morrow, then, I shall be speaking of the relation of anthroposophical Spiritual Science to Christianity.

• 1. Knowledge and Initiation, 14th April 1922; Knowledge of Christ Through Anthroposophy, 15th April 1922.
• 2. The lectures were delivered by Dr. Steiner in three sections as indicated in the text, translations being given after each.

Sunday supplement of the Basler Nachrichten

Now that the Solothurn government has approved the model design of the new Goetheanum in principle, the Anthroposophical Society will begin its reconstruction in the very near future. In order to do justice to the suggestions for modification from the municipality of Dornach and the government, only a small amount of preparatory drawing and calculating work is needed before construction begins.

The new building will, however, differ greatly in form from the old Goetheanum. This is because it will not be made of wood like the old Goetheanum, but of concrete. The artistic sense must be allowed to express itself in the realization of the building idea. It is clear that the Goetheanum cannot be built in any old “style” determined by external factors. For it is meant to serve anthroposophy; and this is not a one-sided theoretical world view, but a comprehensive spiritual-spiritual way of life. When it presents itself to the world artistically, it can only do so by its spiritual view producing the style of art. Not building in this own style would mean denying the essence of anthroposophy in its own house.

An unbiased artistic observation will find that the Goetheanum style does not reject anything that is still significant today in historical styles; but it does not start from this or that 'inspiration' from given styles, but rather it is a matter of creating from the basic conditions of all sense of style. But the forms in which one can create a style are also dependent on the material. The old building was able to give its design in every detail to the space in which work was carried out, in the softness of the wood, from the spirit of anthroposophical contemplation; with concrete, forms had to be sought in which the space, by its very nature, could develop the formations that could accommodate the anthroposophical work. Essentially, straight lines and flat surfaces were used for the enclosing walls and roofing, which combine in their angular slopes to form the overall architectural concept. Only towards and in the portals do the lines and surfaces become somewhat smaller and their structure somewhat more varied. The whole building rises up on a ramp, which will have an artistic finish on all sides and will make it possible to walk around the building. As the visitor walks around it, the wonderful landscape of the surroundings will unfold before his eyes.

The building will enclose the following: a lower floor, which will house studios, lecture and practice rooms, workplaces, etc.; and an upper floor, which will contain the space designed for nine hundred to one thousand spectators or listeners. At the back, the lower floor is adjoined by a rehearsal stage, and the upper floor by the stage where public performances will take place. On the outside, the building is intended to be the artistic and true-to-life wrapping of what will unfold inside in terms of intellectual experience. Stylish staircases will lead up from the ground to the ramp at the portals. The necessary interior design of the two floors will have to follow the exterior forms; the roof – not in the form of a dome this time – will have to follow the lines and surfaces of the ascending auditorium on the one hand; on the other hand, it will have to be artistically integrated with the two stages and their storage rooms. Inside, the task will be to design the space for use as a lecture hall as well as a eurythmy and mystery theater. For example, the stretching of the space upwards in the configuration of columns can be seen. Thus, as in the old Goetheanum, what anthroposophy has to say can also be sensed in the building forms and in the overall architectural idea, in which it erects the house in which it is to work.

The fact that something monumental has emerged in the building idea has come about through the idea of the building; but what has been striven for in the whole and in every detail is not to be untrue in the building design, but to create in it an artistically completely truthful image of what is worked out within from spiritual knowledge. The builder is of the opinion that something is being created that the general, unbiased taste, which knows nothing about anthroposophy or wants to know, can definitely go along with.

But even if anthroposophy initially has its roots in the insights already gained into the spiritual world, these are only its roots. Its branches, leaves, flowers and fruits grow into all fields of human life and activity. With the thoughts that reveal the essence and laws of spiritual existence, it reaches into the depths of the creative human soul, and its artistic powers are evoked by the call. Art receives all-round inspiration. It allows the warmth that radiates from the contemplation of the spiritual to flow into the hearts: and the religious sense awakens in true devotion to the divine in the world. Religion receives a deep internalization. It opens its sources, and the human will, borne by love, can draw from them. It brings human love to life and thus becomes creative in impulses of moral action and genuine social practice. It fertilizes the view of nature through the driving seeds of spiritual insight, thereby transforming mere knowledge of nature into true knowledge of nature.

In all of this, anthroposophy generates a wealth of life tasks. These tasks can only reach the broader circles of human life if they start from their point of origin in a caring society.

The leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach called upon those individuals who believe that the anthroposophy cultivated at this Goetheanum seeks to correspond to the characterized tasks to bring the long-standing attempts to form anthroposophical societies to a satisfactory conclusion in a Christmas conference.

The call was answered in a way that could not have been expected. Seven to eight hundred people appeared at the “laying of the foundation stone” of the “General Anthroposophical Society”. What they did will be described in this supplement to the “Goetheanum” bit by bit.

It fell to me to open and preside over the meetings. And it became easy for my heart – this opening. The Swiss poet Albert Steffen sat next to me. The assembled anthroposophists looked to him with grateful souls. It was on Swiss soil that they had gathered to found the Anthroposophical Society. In Albert Steffen, they have long had a leading member in Switzerland to whom they look up with true enthusiasm. I saw in him Switzerland in one of her noblest sons; my first word was to give him and our Swiss friends the warmest greetings, and the second was to ask him to open the meeting.

It was a deeply moving beginning. Albert Steffen, the wonderful painter in words, the poetic visualizer, spoke. One heard and saw soul-stirring images like visions before one.

The laying of the foundation stone of the Goetheanum in 1913 stood there before the soul's eye. I cannot find words to express how it was for me in my soul when I saw this process, in which I was privileged to work ten years ago, in Steffen's painting.

The work at the Goetheanum, in which hundreds of devoted hands moved and hundreds of enthusiastic hearts beat, conjured up artistically perfect words before the mind.

And - the burning of the Goetheanum: the whole tragedy, the pain of thousands, they trembled when Albert Steffen spoke to us.

And then, in the foreground of another picture: the essence of anthroposophy itself, transfigured by the poet soul of Albert Steffen. In the background are its enemies, not being criticized, but simply presented with the creative power.

“Ten Years of the Goetheanum”; Albert Steffen's words about it went deep - one felt it - into the hearts of those gathered.

After this dignified prelude, it fell to me to speak of the form that the Anthroposophical Society will now have to take.

What should take the place of a conventional statute was to be said. A description of what people in a purely human context - as an anthroposophical society - would like to accomplish should take the place of such a “statute”. Anthroposophy is cultivated at the Goetheanum, which since the fire has only had makeshift rooms made of wood. What the leaders of the Goetheanum understand by this care and what effect they expect it to have on human civilization should be stated. Then how they envision this care in a free university for spiritual science. Not principles to which one should profess, but a reality in its own way should be described. Then it should be said that anyone who wants to contribute to what is happening at the Goetheanum can become a member.

The following is proposed as a “statute”, which is not a “statute” but a description of what can arise from such a purely human and vital social relationship:

1. The Anthroposophical Society shall be an association of people who wish to cultivate the soul life in the individual human being and in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.

2. The core of this Society consists of those individuals and groups who were represented at the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, Dornach, 1923. They are imbued with the conviction that a true science of the spiritual world, developed over many years and already published in important parts, really does exist at the present time and that today's civilization lacks the cultivation of such a science. The Anthroposophical Society is to have this task. It will try to solve this task by making the Anthroposophical spiritual science cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach, with its results for fraternity in human coexistence, for the moral and religious as well as for the artistic and general spiritual life in the human being, the center of its endeavors. ¹

3. The personalities assembled in Dornach as the basis of the Society recognize and approve of the view of the Goetheanum leadership, represented by the Executive Council formed at the founding meeting, regarding the following: “The anthroposophy cultivated at the Goetheanum leads to results that can serve as a stimulus for the spiritual life of every human being, regardless of nation, class or religion. They can lead to a social life truly built on brotherly love. Their appropriation as a basis for life is not tied to a scientific level of education, but only to an unbiased human nature. Their research and the appropriate evaluation of their research results, however, are subject to spiritual scientific schooling, which is to be attained in stages. These results are as exact as the results of true natural science. If they are generally recognized in the same way as the latter, they will bring about the same progress in all areas of life, not only in the spiritual but also in the practical realm."

4. The Anthroposophical Society is not a secret society, but a completely public one. Anyone can become a member, without distinction of nationality, class, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who sees something justified in the existence of such an institution as the Goetheanum in Dornach as a free school of spiritual science. The Society rejects all sectarian aspirations. It does not regard politics as part of its remit.

5. The Anthroposophical Society sees a center of its work in the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. This will consist of three classes. Society members who have been members for a period of time to be determined by the leadership of the Goetheanum will be admitted to the School upon application. They will then enter the first class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the second and third classes will follow if applicants are deemed suitable by the leadership of the Goetheanum.

6. Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to participate in all lectures, other presentations and meetings organized by it under the conditions to be announced by the board.

7. The establishment of the School of Spiritual Science is initially the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who is to appoint his co-workers and his eventual successor. 8. All the Society's publications will be public, as are those of other public societies.²

The publications of the School of Spiritual Science will make no exception to this public nature; however, the leadership of the School claims that from the outset it disputes the legitimacy of any judgment about these writings that is not based on the training from which they emerged. In this sense, it will not grant any judgment that is not based on corresponding preliminary studies, as is usual in the recognized scientific world. Therefore, the writings of the School of Spiritual Science will bear the following note: “Printed as a manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum Class... No one will be granted competence to judge these writings who has not acquired the foreknowledge claimed by this school through them or in a way recognized by it as equivalent. Other judgments will be rejected insofar as the authors of the corresponding writings do not enter into discussion of them.

9. The aim of the Anthroposophical Society shall be to promote spiritual research, and the aim of the School of Spiritual Science shall be to carry out this research. Dogmatism in any field shall be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.

10. The Anthroposophical Society holds an ordinary annual meeting at the Goetheanum every year, at which the Executive Council gives a full report. The agenda for this meeting is announced by the Executive Council with the invitation sent to all members six weeks before the conference. The Executive Council can convene extraordinary meetings and set the agenda for them. It shall send invitations to the members three weeks in advance. Applications from individual members or groups of such members must be submitted one week before the meeting.

11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups in any local or professional field. The Anthroposophical Society has its seat at the Goetheanum. From there, the Executive Council is to provide members or groups of members with what it regards as the tasks of the Society. It deals with the officials elected or appointed by the individual groups. The individual groups take care of the admission of members; however, the confirmations of admission are to be submitted to the Executive Council in Dornach and signed by it in confidence with the group officials. In general, each member should join a group; only those for whom it is absolutely impossible to find admission to a group should be admitted as members in Dornach itself. 12. The membership fee is determined by the individual groups; however, each group is required to pay [15 francs] for each of its members to the central administration at the Goetheanum.

13. Each working group shall draw up its own statutes; however, these shall not contradict the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.

14. The Society's organ is the weekly journal “Goetheanum”, which for this purpose shall include a supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of the “Goetheanum” will be distributed only to members of the Anthroposophical Society.³

The opening meeting on the morning of December 25 was closely connected with the festivities on the morning of the 25th, which bore the name: “Laying of the Foundation Stone of the General Anthroposophical Society”.

This could only be an ideal and spiritual laying of the foundation stone. The soil in which the “foundation stone” was laid could only be the hearts and souls of the personalities united in the Society; and the foundation stone itself must be the attitude that springs from the anthroposophical way of life. This attitude forms, in the way it is demanded by the signs of the present time, the will to find the way to the contemplation of the spirit and to life from the spirit through human soul-penetration. I would like to start here, with which I tried to shape the “foundation stone” in verse form and give the further description of the opening meeting in the next issue of this newsletter.

Human soul!
You live in the limbs
That carry you through the world of space
Into the being of the spiritual sea:
Practice spirit-remembering
In the depths of the soul,
Where in the ruling
Creator of the world
the own I
in the God-I
reveals itself;
And you will truly live
in the human-world-being.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights rules
in the depths of the world, generating being:
You power-spirits
Let from the heights resound
What finds the echo in the depths;
This speaks:
From the divine, humanity exists.
The spirits in the east, west, north, south hear this:
May human beings hear it.

Human soul!
You live in the heartbeat of the heart and lungs,
which guides you through the rhythm of time
into your own soul being:
Practice spiritual reflection
in soul balance,
where the surging world-becoming-deeds
unite the own I
to the World-I
unite;
And you will truly feel
in the work of the human soul.

For the Christ-will rules in the surrounding
in the rhythms of the world, bestowing soul;
You spirits of light
Let the east inspire
What is formed by the West;
This speaks:
In the Christ, life becomes death.
The spirits in the east, west, north, and south hear this:
May human beings hear it.
Human soul!
You live in the resting head,
Which opens up to you the thoughts of the world from the reasons of eternity.
the world thoughts:
Practice spirit-seeing
In thought-rest,
Where the eternal divine goals of world-being-light
To one's own self
To free will
Give;
And you will think truly
in human spirit reasons.

For the spirit world thoughts prevail
in the world being, light-invoking:
you soul-spirits
let from the depths request,
what is heard in the heights:
This speaks:
In the spirit's world-thoughts, the soul awakens. This is heard by spirits in the east, west, north, and south: May men hear it.

At the turning point of time
the light of the world's spirit
entered the earthly stream of being;
night-darkness
had been fully developed;
day-bright light
shone in human souls;
light,
which warmed
the poor hearts of the shepherds;
light,
which enlightened
the wise heads of the Magi.

Divine light,
Christ-sun
Warmth
Our hearts;
Enlighten
Our minds;
That good will come
From what we
From our hearts,
What we
From our minds
Want to lead.

• 1. The Anthroposophical Society is linked to the Anthroposophical Society founded in 1912, but seeks to create an independent starting point for the goals set at that time, one that corresponds to the true spirit of the present.
• 2. The conditions under which one comes to the School for training have been publicly described and will continue to be published.
• 3. Members may purchase the bulletins individually. The conditions for doing so can be found at the beginning of this first issue. Everything that relates to the implementation of the statutes in detail will be given in a special “rules of procedure”. These will be included in one of the next numbers of the announcements.

When Rudolf Steiner, in 1909, delivered the lectures published here in book form before the General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin, he intended them, as he expressed it, as a strengthening of the foundations of the European spiritual-scientific movement that he led. Such a strengthening, substantiated by cognition and minutely verified, had become indispensable in view of certain trends on the part of the Anglo-Indian theosophical movement that, fed on oriental occultism, failed to grasp the true spiritual life of the Occident in its essence and content. It saw the aberrations of materialistic civilization without understanding their deeper significance. It believed it could lead Europeans back to the sources of primeval wisdom, ignoring the historical evolution of Western peoples and their own particular tasks. It set up the ideal of an unworldly theosophy, a God-wisdom such as was sought with profound devotion and sacrificial ardor, through meditation and deeply spiritual ecstasy, by the German mystics in the Middle Ages and in the early dawn of modern times. But this goal was unattainable for the great masses of humanity; it could not be popularized without becoming shoddy.

True, the homeless souls of our day, suffocating in the close atmosphere of materialism, found hope in this oriental theosophy, but the path they discovered proved to be a blind alley. Critical European thinking with its demand for analysis and synthesis could not be satisfied with endless dogmatizing and the recounting of wonderful happenings; it wanted a consistently thought-out sequence of cause and effect, of becoming and dying within a series of ascending metamorphoses, up to the goal of higher development. The intensified Western sense of personality could not simply accept the statement of a cycle of events run off in an endless monotony of repetition, lacking all deeper significance, aiming only at the ultimate liberation from existence. As the European felt it, Creation would reveal itself by sending forth rays to a focal point, unite with it, and emerge in new raiment with added import, endlessly evolving new shapes and forms of life. This focal point of all evolution could be envisioned only in the power of the ego. Divine ego had permeated life; then came the time for the human ego—that drop from the ocean of the divine ego-being—to possess itself. Through transformation and according to laws governing earth-life, it had to be shaped and harmonized, to return eventually as an individual ego to the divine ego, retaining all it had achieved, in freedom uniting its will with the divine will, guided by knowledge and clear vision to a desire for this most exalted reunion. The human ego cannot escape from itself, cannot extinguish itself. It must seek and purify itself in eternal striving; during this process of awakening it must gradually redeem and lead back to the spirit the world of dross sloughed off during billions of years of ever new transformations. Failing this, it will fall a prey to the world of demons who will cast it back among the dross.

The task of present-day man is to seize hold consciously of this ego, which for eons has worked upon its sheaths and its essence. With the help of such remnants of the power of thought as remain after centuries of abstract thinking, and after the obscuration suffered by its living force through the shortsightedness of a mind fed on mere sense illusions, it must win back to itself; this task lends highest significance to human life that appears again and again in new incarnations. This is the path by which man, entrusted by Divinity with his freedom, gradually transcends the limits of an earth-bound mind and reaches his highest goal: to become once more the expression of the divine ego by returning to the spirit. It is the task of the Occident to lead the individual ego toward this goal by way of tireless research and free personal activity. Not flight from individualism expressed in personality, as Buddhism defines the principle of redemption, and as Neo-Buddhism tries seductively to dangle it before a weary Occident. No; it is a question of liberating the individual ego, for the time being enmeshed in personality; of the awakening of its own powers strengthened through active effort, so that it may become a fully conscious instrument of the divine will, which it recognizes—an instrument capable of collaborating with this divine will toward the divine goal. In spite of its connection with a theosophical current looking to the past and fraught with orientalism, anthroposophy has set up and clearly defined this way as indispensable. At the decisive turning point in human evolution—there where the descent of the divine ego to the human ego halted and the reascent commenced—anthroposophy points to the light streaming from the Mystery of Christ's human incarnation and His death of sacrifice.

In order that man might consciously achieve his human status, might learn to know the world and himself, might become ripe to grasp the concept of Divinity, this anthroposophical middle way from earth to the Divinity had to be cleared. The human being—of the earth, earthy, and torn two ways—can grasp this way only by the greatest effort of all the forces of his being. The attainment of communion with God by isolated, surpassing pioneers transcending their epoch—that does not suffice. If all humanity was to be led toward this goal, and thus the imminent danger of sinking into the subhuman be escaped, it was necessary for one to come who was able to point out this middle way and render it practicable for others: the way from the human to the divine Being, through the “Know thyself.”

The time has come for all humanity to become conscious of the old Mystery word. To bring this about, human personality, torn from its roots, had to undertake the long and arduous pilgrimage through the rough scrub of critical thinking by an intellect divorced from the spirit, down into the aberrations of materialistic obtuseness, and up to the portal of our mighty technical discoveries, at which the powers of the underworld are already knocking. This is the realm of the elementals opening up between spirit and nature. It is sending up forces whose incalculable, demoniacal efficacy remains un-dreamed of by the discoverers of their first manifestations; they will not be able to gauge it until they learn to penetrate the world of spirit. To do this they must first learn to know the human being—themselves. Anthroposophy can lead us to this goal by the path of serious work; without it we will know neither the abyss nor heaven, both of which are hidden in the human being. Know man; only then will you be able to travel the path that redeems hell and attains to heaven.

This road to a comprehension of the world and of man through knowledge starts in the cool region of philosophical thinking, which must confront life's enigmas with clearly defined concepts. Those whose souls are winged by the grace of direct feeling may find this road arduous and almost superfluous, yet it is a necessary one in our time. Mystical contemplation alone can no longer satisfy us in our search for life's purpose.

Rudolf Steiner smoothed this road by first creating the atmosphere that warms our heart and lifts up our spirit, thus clearing our vision for the heights of true theosophy and the wisdom of the Gospels. But he did not save us the effort, the climb up those steep steps to the peaks of knowledge. That is proved by the expositions set forth in this book. They are a vital component part of those publications of Rudolf Steiner that deal with the theory of knowledge, and they are important as well for a realistic establishment of the historic events that constitute the frame of his work.

Rudolf Steiner had already been active for seven years along the lines of the anthroposophic spiritual current that he had inaugurated. He had been called, begged for assistance, by members of the theosophical movement who felt strongly that something more was necessary to quench their thirst for knowledge—above all, an access to Christianity that could satisfy their thinking and their feeling. Rudolf Steiner was ready to give this, to illuminate the Occident's task in this spirit. It was upon these conditions—the assurance, on the part of the leading theosophists, of a totally non-dogmatic freedom of action and speech—that he consented to become the leader of the German branches. In this way seven years passed, the last two of which were darkly overcast by a suddenly arising dogmatic intolerance among the leaders of the Anglo-Indian current, who in no uncertain terms evinced their intention to render the spirit of the Occident pliant to their will. Rudolf Steiner wished to meet such difficulties solely on a basis of the forces of cognition, and in the general assemblies of the German Society he aimed to provide for his listeners ever firmer foundations for comprehending each case in point. At the same time he stressed the cyclical course of events that stems from something deeper than is apparent to superficial thinking. Probably none but a blunt-minded materialist will still refuse to see the cyclic significance of the number seven, which keeps recurring in countless images, symbolizing what is transitory, and playing so great a rôle in the evolution, not only of man but of humanity, as well as in its reflections, the historical events.

The unfolding of the consciousness soul in man commences as a rule after the completion of his twenty-eighth year, and something similar takes place in the organism of a human community. Now, as we are publishing these lectures, delivered over a period of three years before the General Assemblies of the Society, it is not without interest to continue with the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in the opening words of the first lecture. He said that the seventh anniversary of the founding of the Society furnished the right occasion for a more comprehensive presentation of anthroposophy, such as he would endeavor to give in the ensuing lectures, and he reminded his hearers that at the Foundation meeting, seven years before, he had already spoken on the subject of “Anthroposophy,” thus indicating the direction his work was to take.

The second seven-year cycle that followed witnessed the expression of the spiritual struggle arising from the refusal of the orientalizing Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society to abandon its intention of winning over the Occident to its spiritual creed. When it was no longer possible to pass up the ramparts of Christianity with a shrug, the Society created from its midst an Ersatz-savior for the souls longing for Christian truth: the Indian lad, Krishnamurti. This led to the secession of the more serious members of the theosophical movement, and to the independent Anthroposophical Society.

In 1916, at the termination of Rudolf Steiner's second cycle of activity in behalf of the spiritual rejuvenation of the Occident in a manner according with its own premises, Europe was ablaze in the abysmal flames of the world war. Upon the hills of Dornach, in Switzerland, arose the Goetheanum, center of activity for the representatives of nineteen nations who gave what they had in the name of humanity. This gave a strong impetus to the artistic element, while other departments of the work suffered through the obstacles imposed by the war. In view of her fourteen years' collaboration with Rudolf Steiner in building up the Society, the writer of these lines may be permitted to mention that this was the occasion of her resignation from the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, and that from then on she devoted herself more intensively to the artistic tasks. Along with this step, Rudolf Steiner, as whose executive it had been the writer's privilege to serve, transferred the leadership of the Society to the Vorstand officiating in Germany. This arrangement lasted until Christmas, 1923, when he founded the Society anew under the name of the General Anthroposophical Society, with its seat at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, and he undertook the leadership himself, with a Vorstand recruited in Dornach.

By Christmas, 1930, the fourth seven-year cycle had run its course. Rudolf Steiner had departed this earth shortly after that memorable refoundation, over which he was destined to preside but one year. Then Albert Steffen, the great poet and dramatist, became the recognized Head of the Anthroposophical Society. Albert Steffen who, together with those responsible for carrying on the spirit of the movement as it had been entrusted to them by Rudolf Steiner, suffered a period of harrowing inner struggle before this apparently obvious step could be taken. Spiritual necessities, as manifested in their earthly reflection, create many trials that must be converted into forces of consciousness. It is along such paths that we can achieve an individualized community-consciousness, and the fourth seven-year cycle was characterized by a struggle for just that end.

Now we have entered the fifth epoch of our anthroposophic life. May it see the grasping of this community-consciousness by wide-awake ego forces, in order that the purpose may be fulfilled that is inseparably linked with the anthroposophical movement for the spiritualization of humanity! Anthroposophy is a way of cognition that would lead the spiritual nature of man to the spiritual nature of the universe.

This way is that of a modern science of initiation. It is not our intention to found a new religion, but rather, we aim to serve as the advance guard of a crusade to enkindle in man the rousing force of the ego. In the face of all struggles and difficulties, we as anthroposophists strive for wisdom in truth.

These lectures on Anthroposophy as here published are reproduced, more than is usually the case, in a certain abbreviated form, for no shorthand version was available—only longhand notes. In spite of this fact, no anthroposophist will fail to recognize the value of these expositions. The two cycles on Psychosophy and Pneumatosophy are here given accurately from shorthand reports. The question of omitting the poems arose. [Cf. footnote, pp. 67 and 118.] They have but a loose connection with the text and in a sense were called forth by the occasion of the General Assembly. This, however, would have necessitated an adaptation of the text, and that was above all things to be avoided. As it is, the character of the original has been retained intact. In addition to its spontaneity it thus has a certain historical value, and this will also serve as an excuse for the inevitable deficiencies in the notes.

Thus, we offer this book to the public as an expression of the living word of that leader of humanity, so little understood, so greatly feared by his adversaries, who was the embodiment of kindness, wisdom and active force in our midst, and who created the conditions for the regeneration of Europe.

The lectures here published make in their substance a supplement to what Rudolf Steiner has given us in his book, ‘The Story of My Life’, and may be felt as forming a whole with it. Delivered with all the living flow of spoken word and narrative, they were not designed for a book; but the exceedingly important matter they contain, and the whole historic context, makes them a document of inestimable value, and not only for the Anthroposophist. He indeed learns to see in full light the conditions and circumstances of that movement to which he has attached himself; and so gains firm ground under his feet, through learning to recognize in these events a necessity that supersedes any sort of justificatory argument. But those people too, who otherwise know no more than the shallow judgments they hear uttered, or find printed in some reference book, may also be grateful for this occasion to acquire a real insight into the facts. Surely there must be an ever increasing number of human souls, who will eagerly seize such an opportunity to learn from personal experience that an answer can be found to those questions, which stand like sphinx-riddles before the inner eye, and that the way to the answer can be actually shown them.

No ground any longer exists for the eternal re-iteration in every paper and pamphlet, that the one salvation in mankind's desperate plight would he the appearance of a universal genius, one who should master all the multifarious branches of life and knowledge, co-ordinate and combine them, balance one with another, and thence new-create a civilization;—and that the only escape from uncertainty would be some breaking-through of the boundaries of knowledge,—but that this is impossible!

For this genius has been here amongst us; he has broken through the boundaries of knowledge. His work lies before us, and bears testimony that he has done so. No word of his, however intimately uttered, need shun the light; it can be thrown open to one and all. The moral power, the transcendent altitude of his whole life and. being shine forth from this work as luminously as the calm certainty of his all-embracing knowledge.

Why was it then that they shrank from no means to block and bar his way, to render him impotent by calumny, when mere silence no longer sufficed?

Why?—Because this age will not endure superiority, and hates it. Because it concedes no right of life to any-thing that transcends the common,—and thereby plays into the hands of those powerful organizations, whose interest it is to let nothing come to light which they themselves are not willing to give to mankind. The idol of the present day, materialistic science, is in their eyes more preferable. Those words still keep their truth, which Goethe dedicated to the Masters of Knowledge:

‘... What you call Knowing!’
‘Why, who dare give the child its proper name?
‘The few who had some knowledge of these things,
‘And, fool-like, set no guard on their full hearts,
‘Revealed their feelings, visions, to the herd,
‘—These from of old they crucified and burnt.’

No further explanation is needed for this hatred. It is the hatred that the world turns upon whatever is higher than itself. This hatred displays the face and works the works of the World's Adversary.

But now, when, the excesses of this hatred can scarcely be further surpassed; when the great messenger of human liberation is dead; when the base and selfish motives of the warfare on him have manifested themselves only too plainly,—there must now ever more and more come souls, who will desire to see further, to penetrate through all the rubbish and trace the process of the spiritual events, discover the source whence they emanated, and the first steps on the road. Those who are interested in the historic development of the movement will find in these pages the information they need, and will at the same time learn the self-evident explanation and very simple reason of what arose as a matter of course out of the existing circumstances: namely, the original association with that German society of theosophists who were looking about for a teacher possessed of knowledge. When someone is appealed to, and the accompanying conditions are accepted, why should he not go to the aid of those who call upon him? When he is solicited for guidance on the road, and when he never for a moment hesitates to make plain what this will mean for those who go along with him,—that it will mean completely changing old habits of mind, awaking to the demands of the times, developing a sense for the progress of evolution and for the mission of the Western World;—why then should one, who is secure of his own road, not take compassion on those who are groping leaderless, and point them the way to the Divine Leader and to their own liberation?

If Mrs. Besant, at the most critical moment of her life, when the ground failed beneath her feet, had not been blinded, all might yet have turned to good, and she might have found the missing bridge to the Christ, without needing to manufacture as substitute the little sham god who has now slipped through her hands. And with her, thousands in the Theosophical Society might have trod the road of inner deliverance.

On the Blavatsky question and its riddles, Rudolf Steiner alone has thrown light. For him, she meant no kind of stumbling block; for he saw the positive element in her work and influence, and knew how to direct this positive element into channels where, freed from all its aberrations, delusions and clogs, it could remain a fruitful factor of knowledge, without working harm. And thus Blavatsky, in her progress as an individuality, received her due meed of thanks, and had her Karma lightened. Her own inner self,—all that she was as honest soul and sturdy force,—will figure greater in history thus, than if she remained involved with the spiritualistic phenomena that represent the heavier weighted side of her Karma. It was difficult to make one's way to what one felt must be the true, inner core of her being, when one heard all the marvellous tales told about her by her intimate, as well as by her distant friends;—and so the present writer found in those days. Yet one received the impression of a quite peculiar power and big-ness from merely reading a few pages of Isis Unveiled or The Secret Doctrine, which were quite of a different calibre from anything in the whole collection of the Theosophical Society's writings. The key to this intricate character was given us by Rudolf Steiner; and although the reports of the year 1915 are very defective (for at that time we possessed no professional stenographer in Dornach), his lectures on this subject—despite their mutilations—will have to be published, in order to throw light on these puzzling phenomena.

H. P. Blavatsky was born in 1881. The centenary of her birthday falls in the present year; and one may imagine that many festivals and celebrations in honour of her memory will -be held by the theosophists in all countries. Blavatsky was a child of nature, with a temperament of great native vigour. She had suffered much under the conventionalisms, so foreign to her nature, of Anglo-American society; and to its representatives in turn she was merely a phenomenon, a semi-barbarian, not under-stood by any, the medium through which the border-world knocked at the door of the fast-closed world of materialism. What is more, she did not understand herself, and suffered horribly each time on awaking from states that eluded her consciousness. Those will do her memory best service, who interpret her in the light and connection of one who was involved with the first attempts of the occultists to break through the enchanted circle of materialism.—Not to let fall whatever has been accomplished, accompanied though it may be by mistakes and errors; but to rescue what is positive, and preserve it for the future;—this is the constant duty of every occultist who is spiritually mature; and this too is the light in which one must always understand that first association on the road, when the Anthroposophical Society kept company for a while with the Theosophical Society,—down to the day when Mrs. Besant would no longer tolerate any thwarting of her own personal aims.

Although Rudolf Steiner tells us in these lectures, that by the end of its second stage the anthroposophical movement had outgrown everything which had come over as a legacy from the Theosophical Society, yet still the fact remains, that the influx of new generations and of many theosophical members into our society has brought a constant recurrence of many previously outgrown and not very pleasing symptoms, which in the past he had applied himself with all severity to cure. It shows that people to-day are of the same make and kind as those who went before them, and that accordingly they must be expected to go through the same mistakes and the same nursery-epidemics,—only, unfortunately, with ever increasing self-assertiveness and greater determination to live-out their own peculiar bent. What, after all, were the faults which Rudolf Steiner so sharply censures in these lectures,—the adulation of Max Seiling (a little local episode), or Bhagavan Das (a mere whim of the hour),—compared to many phenomena that have made their appearance in the last few years? But he picked out such things as symptoms, to point out whither they lead, to lay bare the causes of these ever recurring signs of decay, and to show how societies may be wrecked when such things make their way into the leading circles. Of this last, he thought in those days there could be no question amongst us. But he left us too soon alone; and amongst those who had come too young, too soon to leader-ship, the old faults—humanly all-too-human—flamed up with double force.

It behoves us to come to self-recollection. Let us make ourselves out no better than we are. There is no need for shame-faced concealment of our faults; on the contrary; out of their darkness we must evoke the light that brings self-knowledge. Communal consciousness is hard to be won. The common ‘I’ can only grow up strong and firm amongst us on a soil of vigorous wakefulness, of will to active knowledge, of courage for truth. These things are not to be achieved in solitude and secrecy; they must be fought for and won in community. Honest mutual struggles will do us no harm, will gain us the respect of all well-wishers. And ill-wishers may look back and reflect what the Church went through and displayed in its communal life, notwithstanding all the strict discipline imposed from without; and what imperfections, what contradictions to its own ideals had there to be worked out in life! It will then be seen, that it is not the leader, not he who gives the impulse to a movement, who must be held responsible for the faults in the disciples of his doctrine, but the Species Homo, which needs many round-about roads and much rising and falling and oft-renewed climbing, before it can attain at last to its goal.

Anthroposophy is a way of education. The Anthroposophical Society certainly presents no model institute for the living demonstration of anthroposophic ideals. One might even say that in many respects it is a nursing-home; as is of course very natural in an age of sick and sorry humanity. There flock to it the halt and maimed of life, those crippled under the burden of the age. May we only have nursing-homes for the physically diseased? Is it not right, that there should be places, where human-beings may spiritually get upon their feet again? And this came to pass here in abundance. Letters there were in more than plenty and words of overflowing gratitude from people testifying, that through Anthroposophy and its Teacher they first had learnt to find life again worth living.—For people to find Anthroposophy, however, there had to be a society, where the work was carried on.

And so the Anthroposophical Society was a workshop; and a vast amount of work was done in it. Anthroposophy found means to bring fruit into all the branches of life, artistic, scientific, and practical, too. During the worst times of economic crisis, anthroposophists were very largely unsuccessful in carrying out what they had as an ideal in sight; but they had doubly strong obstacles to contend with. One must remember, that the people who flocked into the Society, and started working outwardly when the Society already had a name and stood for some-thing in the world, were people as the modern age has made them, not as the ideal of Anthroposophy would have them be; and so there were many, unquestionably, who succumbed again to the temptations and the practices of the day.

The young people who had been disappointed with their experiences in the organized ‘Youth-Movements’ and by what they failed to find there, not Only found here an answer to the problems that perplexed them, and not only sought to satisfy their aspirations in this new community Anthroposophy, but they also brought their own habits into the Society,—including much that they might have left behind them, to start in Anthroposophy afresh.

And so the Anthroposophical Society cannot yet be a model institute; it remains a place of education.—But does not mankind need places of education too, in the wider human sense, if it is to move onwards to a better future?

Turn the question then which way we will, the Society is a necessity. It must educate itself; and it must afford the possibility of being a place of education for mankind. The life-forces that have been laid in it, have strength to per-form this work, if people come together in it who are strong and capable and devoted,—people who know, that they must join together to work as a community for mankind in a larger sense, not to shut themselves off and indulge only in self-culture,—who know, that it would be but a thankless return to take what is given as a saving anchor for oneself alone; who know, that one takes with it also the obligation to pass this anchor on to others whose life's ship is in distress.

[ 1 ] Another collective work which represented the cultural attainments of the nineteenth century was published at that time by Hans Kraemer. It consisted of rather long treatises on the individual branches of knowledge, technical production, and social evolution.

[ 2 ] I was invited to give a description of the literary aspect of life. So the evolution of fantasy during the nineteenth century passed through my mind. I did not describe things like a philologist, who develops such things “from their sources”; I described what I had inwardly experienced of the unfolding of the life of fantasy.

[ 3 ] This exposition also was important for me in that I had to speak of phenomena of the spiritual life without having recourse to the experience of the spiritual world. The real spiritual impulses from this world that manifest themselves in the phenomena of poetry were left unmentioned.

[ 4 ] In this case likewise what was present to my mind was that which the mental life has to say of a phenomenon of existence when the mind is at the point of view of the ordinary consciousness without bringing the content of the consciousness into such activity that it rises up in experience into the world of spirit.

[ 5 ] Still more significant for me was this experience of standing before the doorway of the spiritual world in the case of a treatise which I had to write for another work. This was not a centennial work, but a collection of papers which were to characterize the various spheres of knowledge and life in so far as human egoism is a motor force in each sphere. Arthur Dix published this work. It was entitled Der Egoismus¹ and was throughout applicable to the time – the turning-point between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[ 6 ] The impulses of intellectualism, which had been effective in all spheres of life since the fifteenth century, have their roots in the “life of the individual soul” when these impulses are really genuine expressions of their own nature. When man reveals himself intellectually on the basis of the social life, this is not a genuine intellectual expression, but an imitation.

[ 7 ] One of the reasons why the demand for a social feeling has become so intense in this age lies in the fact that this feeling is not experienced with original inwardness in intellectualism. Humanity in these things craves most of all that which it has not.

[ 8 ] To my lot fell the setting forth for this book of Egoismus in der Philosophie.² My paper bears this title only because the general title of the book required this. The title ought really to have been Individualismus in der Philosophie.³ I sought to give in very brief form a survey of occidental philosophy since Thales, and to show how the goal of its evolution has been to bring the human individual to experience the world in ideal images, just as it is the purpose of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to set this forth with reference to knowledge and the moral life.

[ 9 ] Again in this paper I stand before the “gateway of the spiritual world.” In the human individual were pointed out the ideal images which reveal the world-content. They appear so that they may wait for the experience whereby the mind may step through them into the world of spirit. In my description I held to this position. There is an inner world in this article which shows how far mere thinking comes in its grasp of the world.

[ 10 ] It is evident that I described the pre-anthroposophic life of the mind from the most varied points of view before devoting myself to the anthroposophic setting forth of the spiritual world. In this there can be found nothing contradictory of my coming forward on behalf of anthroposophy; for the world-picture which arises will not be contradicted by anthroposophy, but extended and continued further.

[ 11 ] If one begins to represent the spiritual world as a mystic, any one has a right to say: “You speak from your personal experiences. What you are describing is subjective.” To travel such a spiritual road was not given me as my task from the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] This task consisted in laying a foundation for anthroposophy just as objective as that of scientific thinking when this does not restrict itself to sensible facts but reaches out for comprehensive concepts. All that I set forth in scientific-philosophic manner, and in connection with Goethe's ideas is subject to discussion. It may be considered more or less correct or incorrect; but it strives after the character of the objective-scientific in the fullest sense.

[ 13 ] And it is out of this knowledge, free of the emotional-mystical, that I have brought the experience of the spiritual world. It can be seen how in my Mysticism and Christianity as Mystical Fact the conception of mysticism is carried in the direction of this objective knowledge. And let it be noted also how my Theosophy is constructed. At every step taken in this book, spiritual perception stands as the background. Nothing is said which is not derived from this spiritual perception; but, while the steps are being made, the perception is clothed at first in the beginning of the book in scientific ideas until, in rising to the higher worlds, it must occupy itself more and more in freely picturing the spiritual world. But this picturing grows out of the natural-scientific as the blossoms of a plant from the stem and leaves. As the plant is not seen in its entirety, if one fixes one's eye upon it only up to the blossom, so nature is not experienced in her entirety if one does not rise from the sensible to the spiritual.

[ 14 ] Therefore that for which I strove was to set forth in anthroposophy the objective continuation of science, not to set by the side of science something subjective. It was inevitable that this very effort would not at first be understood. Science was supposed to end with that which antedates anthroposophy, and there was no inclination so to put life into the ideas of science as to lead to one's laying hold upon the spiritual. Men ran the risk of being excommunicated by the habit of thought built up during the second half of the nineteenth century.

They could not muster the courage to break the fetters of mere sense-observation; they feared that they might arrive at a region where each would insist upon his own fantasy.

[ 15 ] Such was my orientation of mind when, in 1902, Marie von Sievers and I entered upon the leadership of the German section of the Theosophical Society. It was Marie von Sievers who, by reason of her whole being, made it possible to keep what came about through us far removed from anything sectarian, and to give to the thing such a character as won for it a place within the general spiritual and educational life. She was deeply interested in the art of the drama and of declamation and recitation, and had completed courses of study in these art forms, especially in the best institutions in Paris, which had given to her talent a beautiful development. When I became acquainted with her in Berlin she was still continuing her studies in order to learn the various methods of artistic speech.

[ 16 ] Marie von Sievers and I soon became great friends, and on the basis of this friendship there developed an united work in the most varied intellectual spheres and over a very wide area. Anthroposophy, but also the arts of poetry and of recitation, to cultivate these in common became for us the very essence of life.

Only in this unitedly cultivated spiritual life could the central point be found from which at first anthroposophy would be carried into the world through the local branches of the Theosophical Society.

[ 17 ] During our first visit to London together, Marie von Sievers had heard from Countess Wachtmeister, an intimate friend of H. P. Blavatsky, much about the latter and about the tendencies and the evolution of the Theosophical Society. She was entrusted in the highest measure with that which was once revealed as a spiritual content to the Society and the story of how this content had been further fostered.

[ 18 ] When I say that it was possible to find in the branches of the Theosophical Society those persons who desired to have knowledge imparted to them from the spiritual world, I do not mean that those persons enrolled in the Theosophical Society could be considered before all others as being of such a character. Many of these, however, proved very soon to have a high degree of understanding in reference to my form of spiritual knowledge.

[ 19 ] But a large part of the members were fanatical followers of individual heads of the Theosophical Society. They swore by the dogmas given out by these heads, who acted in a strongly sectarian spirit.

[ 20 ] This action of the Theosophical Society repelled me by the triviality and dilettantism inherent in it. Only among the English theosophists did I find an inner content, which also, however, rested upon Blavatsky, and which was then fostered by Annie Besant and others in a literal fashion. I could never have worked in the manner in which these theosophists worked. But I considered what lived among them as a spiritual centre with which one could worthily unite when one earnestly desired the spread of spiritual knowledge.

[ 21 ] So it was not the united membership in the Theosophical Society upon which Marie von Sievers and I counted, but chiefly those persons who were present with heart and mind whenever spiritual knowledge in an earnest sense was being cultivated.

[ 22 ] This working within the existing branches of the Theosophical Society, which was necessary as a starting-point, comprised only a part of our activity. The chief thing was the arrangement for public lectures in which I spoke to a public not belonging to the Theosophical Society that came to my lectures only because of their content.

[ 23 ] Of persons who learned in this manner what I had to say about the spiritual world and of those who through the activity in one or another theosophical tendency found their way to this mode of learning – of these persons there was comprised within the branches of the Theosophical Society that which later became the Anthroposophical Society.

[ 24 ] Among the various charges that have been directed against me in reference to my work in the Theosophical Society – even from the side of the Society itself – this also has been raised: that to a certain extent I used this Society, which already had a standing in the world, as a spring-board in order to render easier the way for my own spiritual knowledge.

[ 25 ] There is not the slightest ground for such a statement. When I accepted the invitation into the Society, this was the sole institution worthy of serious consideration in which there was present a real spiritual life. Had the mood, bearing, and work of the Society remained as they then were, the withdrawal of my friend and myself need never have occurred. The Anthroposophical Society might only have been formed officially within the Theosophical Society as a special section.

[ 26 ] But even as early as 1906 things were already beginning to be manifest and effective in the Theosophical Society which indicated in a terrible measure its deterioration.

[ 27 ] If earlier still, in the time of H. P. Blavatsky, such incidents were asserted by the outer world to have occurred, yet at the beginning of the century it was clearly true that the earnestness of spiritual work on the part of the Society constituted a compensation for whatever wrong thing had taken place. Moreover, the occurrences had been left behind.

[ 28 ] But after 1906 there began in the Society, upon whose general direction I had not the least influence, practices reminiscent of the growth of spiritualism, which made it necessary for me to warn members again and again that the part of the Society which was under my direction should have absolutely nothing to do with these things. The climax in these practices was reached when it was asserted of a Hindu boy that he was the person in whom Christ would appear in a new earthly life. For the propagation of this absurdity there was formed in the Theosophical Society a special society, that of “The Star of the East.” It was utterly impossible for my friend and me to include the membership of this “Star of the East” as a branch of the German section, as they desired and as Annie Besant, president of the Theosophical Society, especially intended. We were forced to found the Anthroposophical Society independently.

[ 29 ] I have in this matter departed far from the narration of events in the course of my life; but this was necessary, for only these later facts can throw the right light on the purposes to which I bound myself in entering the Society at the beginning of the century.

[ 30 ] When I first spoke at the congress of the Theosophical Society in London in 1902, I said that the unity into which the individual sections would combine should consist in the fact that each one should bring to the centre what it held within itself; and I gave sharp warning that I should expect this most especially of the German section. I made it clear that this section would never conduct itself as the representative of set dogmas but as composed of places independent of one another in spiritual research, which desired to reach mutual understandings in the conferences of the whole Society in regard to the fostering of genuine spiritual life.

• 1. Egoism.
• 2. Egoism in Philosophy.
• 3. Individualism in Philosophy.

An article from Das Goetheanum, Volume 2, Number 17, Bn 36.4.08, GA 36. From a lecture on pedagogy during the French course at the Goetheanum, 16/17 September, 1922.

The present is the age of intellectualism. The intellect is that faculty of soul in the exercise of which man's inner being participates least. One speaks with some justification of the cold intellectual nature; we need only reflect how the intellect acts upon artistic perception or practice. It dispels or impedes. And artists dread that their creations may be conceptually or symbolically explained by the intelligence. In the clarity of the intellect the warmth of soul which, in the act of creation, gave life to their works, is extinguished. The artist would like his work to be grasped by feeling, not by the understanding. For then the warmth with which he has experienced it is communicated to the beholder. But this warmth is repelled by an intellectual explanation.

In social life intellectualism separates men from one another. They can only work rightly within the community when they are able to impart to their deeds—which always involve the weal or woe of their fellow beings—something of their soul. One man should experience not only another's activity but something of his soul. In a deed, however, which springs from intellectualism, a man withholds his soul nature. He does not let it flow over to his neighbour. It has long been said that in the teaching and training of children intellectualism operates in a crippling way. In saying this one has in mind, in the first place, only the child's intelligence, not the teacher's. One would like to fashion one's methods of training and instruction so that not only the child's cold understanding may be aroused and developed, but warmth of heart may be engendered too.

The anthroposophical view of the world is in full agreement with this. It accepts fully the excellent educational maxims which have grown from this demand. But it realises clearly that warmth can only be imparted from soul to soul. On this account it holds that, above all, pedagogy itself must become ensouled, and thereby the teachers' whole activity.

In recent times intellectualism has permeated strongly into methods of instruction and training. It has achieved this indirectly, by way of modern science. Parents let science dictate what is good for the child's body, soul and spirit. And teachers, during their training, receive from science the spirit of their educational methods.

But science has achieved its triumphs precisely through intellectualism. It wants to keep its thoughts free of anything from man's own soul life, letting them receive everything from sense observation and experiment. Such a science could build up the excellent knowledge of nature of our time, but it cannot found a true pedagogy.

A true pedagogy must be based upon a knowledge that embraces man with respect to body, soul and spirit. Intellectualism only grasps man with respect to his body, for to observation and experiment the bodily alone is revealed. Before a true pedagogy can be founded, a true knowledge of man is necessary. This Anthroposophy seeks to attain.

One cannot come to a knowledge of man by first forming an idea of his bodily nature with the help of a science founded merely on what can be grasped by the senses, and then asking whether this bodily nature is ensouled, and whether a spiritual element is active within it. In dealing with a child such an attitude is harmful. For in him, far more than in the adult, body, soul and spirit form a unity. One cannot care first for the health of the child from the point of view of a merely natural science, and then want to give to the healthy organism what one regards as proper from the point of view of soul and spirit. In all that one does to the child and with the child one benefits or injures his bodily life. In man's earthly life soul and spirit express themselves through the body. A bodily process is a revelation of soul and spirit.

Material science is of necessity concerned with the body as a physical organism; it does not come to a comprehension of the whole man. Many feel this while regarding pedagogy, but fail to see what is needed to-day. They do not say: pedagogy cannot thrive on material science; let us therefore found our pedagogic methods out of pedagogic instincts and not out of material science. But half-consciously they are of this opinion.

We may admit this in theory, but in practice it leads to nothing, for modern humanity has lost the spontaneity of the life of instinct. To try to-day to build up an instinctive pedagogy on instincts which are no longer present in man in their original force, would remain a groping in the dark. We come to see this through anthroposophical knowledge. We learn to know that the intellectualistic trend in science owes its existence to a necessary phase in the evolution of mankind. In recent times man passed out of the period of instinctive life. The intellect became of predominant significance. Man needed it in order to advance on his evolutionary path in the right way. It leads him to that degree of consciousness which he must attain in a certain epoch, just as the individual must acquire particular capabilities at a particular period of his life. But the instincts are crippled under the influence of the intellect, and one cannot try to return to the instinctive life without working against man's evolution. We must accept the significance of that full consciousness which has been attained through intellectualism, and—in full consciousness—give to man what instinctive life can no longer give him.

We need for this a knowledge of soul and spirit which is just as much founded on reality as is material, intellectualistic science. Anthroposophy strives for just this, yet it is this that many people shrink from accepting. They learn to know the way modern science tries to understand man. They feel he cannot be known in this way, but they will not accept that it is possible to cultivate a new mode of cognition and—in clarity of consciousness equal to that in which one penetrates the bodily nature—attain to a knowledge of soul and spirit. So they want to return to the instincts again in order to understand the child and train him.

But he must go forwards; and there is no other way than to extend anthropology by acquiring Anthroposophy, and sense knowledge by acquiring spiritual knowledge. We have to learn all over again. Men are terrified at the complete change of thought required for this. From unconscious fear they attack Anthroposophy as fantastic, yet it only wants to proceed in the spiritual domain as soberly and as carefully as material science in the physical.

Let us consider the child. About the seventh year of life he develops his second teeth. This is not merely the work of the period of time immediately preceding. It is a process that begins with embryonic development and only concludes with the second teeth. These forces, which produce the second teeth at a certain stage of development, were always active in the child's organism. They do not reveal themselves in this way in subsequent periods of life. Further teeth formations do not occur. Yet the forces concerned have not been lost; they continue to work; they have merely been transformed. They have undergone a metamorphosis. (There are still other forces in the child's organism which undergo metamorphosis in a similar way.)

If we study in this way the development of the child's organism we discover that these forces are active before the change of teeth. They are absorbed in the processes of nourishment and growth. They live in undivided unity with the body, freeing themselves from it about the seventh year. They live on as soul forces; we find them active in the older child in feeling and thinking.

Anthroposophy shows that an etheric organism permeates the physical organism of man. Up to the seventh year the whole of this etheric organism is active in the physical. But now a portion of the etheric organism becomes free from direct activity in the physical. It acquires a certain independence, becoming thereby an independent vehicle of the soul life, relatively free from the physical organism.

In earth life, however, soul experience can only develop with the help of this etheric organism. Hence the soul is quite embedded in the body before the seventh year. To be active during this period, it must express itself through the body. The child can only come into relationship with the outer world when this relationship takes the form of a stimulus which runs its course within the body. This can only be the case when the child imitates. Before the change of teeth the child is a purely imitative being in the widest sense. His training must consist in this: that those around him perform before him what he is to imitate.

The child's educator should experience within himself what it is to have the whole etheric organism within the physical. This gives him knowledge of the child. With abstract principles alone one can do nothing. Educational practice requires an anthroposophical art of education to work out in detail how the human being reveals himself as a child.

Just as the etheric organism is embedded in the physical until the change of teeth, so, from the change of teeth until puberty, there is embedded in the physical and etheric a soul organism, called the astral organism by Anthroposophy. As a result of this the child develops a life that no longer expends itself in imitation. But he cannot yet govern his relation to others in accordance with fully conscious thoughts regulated by intellectual judgment. This first becomes possible when, at puberty, a part of the soul organism frees itself from the corresponding part of the etheric organism. From his seventh to his fourteenth or fifteenth year the child's life is not mainly determined by his relation to those around him in so far as this results from his power of judgment. It is the relation which comes through authority that is important now.

This means that, during these years, the child must look up to someone whose authority he can accept as a matter of course. His whole education must now be fashioned with reference to this. One cannot build upon the child's power of intellectual judgment, but one should perceive clearly that the child wants to accept what is put before him as true, good and beautiful, because the teacher, whom he takes for his model, regards it as true, good and beautiful.

Moreover the teacher must work in such a way that he not merely puts before the child the True, the Good and the Beautiful, but—in a sense—is these. What the teacher is passes over into the child, not what he teaches. All that is taught should be put before the child as a concrete ideal. Teaching itself must be a work of art, not a matter of theory.