The Rudolf Steiner Archive

What seems most disconcerting to many people who are not yet familiar with anthroposophy is that it not only has something different to say than what we are accustomed to hearing in the natural sciences and in life today, but that it also has to say it in a different way, in a different form. And in a sense, it is precisely this different mode of expression, this different form, that people find most difficult to forgive in anthroposophy. They immediately begin to measure and criticize what anthroposophy has to say against what they are accustomed to and what they otherwise have in today's science and in today's life.

What I have just said will probably have to be emphasized most today, when I have to speak to you about the way and the methods by which anthroposophy arrives at its research results. These methods are, of course, quite different from the methods of external observation and also from the usual methods of thinking. Today, when we talk about scientific methodology, we are accustomed to being told about things that come to us from outside: observations, experiments, and so on. And in the treatment of observation and experiment, we then see the methods of research.

This is not the case with anthroposophy, especially when it comes to the foundations of anthroposophy. And that is what I am mainly talking about today. Of course, when anthroposophy spreads to the individual sciences, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and so on, as can be seen from the discussions that have already taken place here, then the methods of spiritual research, which I am speaking about today, will touch on some point with the experimental and observational methods that one is otherwise accustomed to in the clinic, in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on. But today we shall be dealing with the foundations, so to speak, with the way of entering into the soul state through which one can present anthroposophical results to the world at all. It is absolutely essential that research in the field of anthroposophy can only be carried out when the researcher has developed his soul forces, his powers of knowledge, further than they are in ordinary life, in ordinary science. One must develop what I would call intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty can be characterized in the following way. Think back to when you were a child, think of the dull mental experiences of early childhood. You will have to say to yourself that the clear overview of life and the world around you, which you acquired in later life, was still missing then. The ability to orientate yourself in the world was still lacking. All this one has developed within oneself. Compared to one's childhood, one has become a completely different person, not only physically and bodily but also mentally and spiritually. Abilities have sprouted from within that now serve one in life and in science. Just as the human soul is now, so one says to oneself: Certainly, education and life have drawn certain abilities out of my inner being since my childhood. But now I am finished. Now I have certain abilities with which I want to know the world, with which I want to place myself in the world as a human being who acts, who does things; with which I also want to judge my religious and moral impulses. One does not say to oneself: What has happened to the human soul from childhood until now could perhaps continue to happen. One could just as well say: I could extract further abilities from my soul. Then I would consciously make a person out of myself with quite a different soul capacity, a person who might differ from the normal person of today just as I differ from the child in my present state of soul.

As I said, it takes intellectual modesty to say what I have just characterized at a certain point in one's life and then to put it into practice. To put it into practice in such a way that one really tries to make progress, to bring up abilities hidden in the soul to the goal of further research. For how could the results of research in today's science, how could the moral-religious impulses in today's life have taken hold in the world if all people had developed only with the soul-condition that they had in childhood?

And so it is absolutely necessary for anthroposophical spiritual scientific research to take the position quite seriously: I want to bring out of my soul abilities that are dormant in my soul today, just as the abilities that are now manifest once lay dormant in my soul during childhood.

I will still have to explain that not everyone who really wants to commit themselves to anthroposophical research, or who wants to be active in it, must also become a researcher in the sense I have just indicated. But in order to achieve real results, real outcomes, something like what I have said must take place. When these research results are then presented to the world, they are perfectly accessible to common sense and can be tested by it; just as anyone who is not a painter can judge a picture artistically. So, to understand anthroposophy, it is not necessary to go through everything that I will have to describe today, but it is necessary for research. And it is also necessary to discuss it for the reason that, to a certain extent, the anthroposophical researcher has to account to his fellow human beings for how he arrives at his results.

Now I would like to start from the most fundamental point, from which one can start in this day and age if one wants to characterize the anthroposophical research method. Basically, you can find everything that is the first, let's say, axiom, that is the first, most elementary thing to understand the anthroposophical research method, in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, yes, in even older of my books. This “Philosophy of Freedom” was published in 1894, and was actually written much earlier. It may perhaps even surprise some who know this book that I make this claim, and yet it is true: the most elementary understanding of anthroposophical research methods can be gleaned from this “Philosophy of Freedom”. What one draws from it as an elementary understanding must then, however, be further developed. Only the most elementary things can be found in this “Philosophy of Freedom”. But these most elementary things can be found.

In this “Philosophy of Freedom” I have tried to determine where the moral impulses, the ethical, the moral impulses of man actually come from. Now, because I will only be able to briefly characterize this “Philosophy of Freedom” today, I will characterize it in a slightly different way than it is done in the book itself, tying in with some of the things I have said here in the previous days.

I believe that anyone reading this “Philosophy of Freedom” will find that there is something like mathematical thinking in it - strange as it may seem, but there it is - a mathematical thinking in that this “Philosophy of Freedom” actually aims to find the human impulse of freedom and the moral impulses. But the way in which this “Philosophy of Freedom” attempts to talk about the moral world is not qualitatively different from that which is present in us as a state of mind when we do mathematics. I have characterized this mathematizing in the preceding days. I have shown how it is drawn from the depths of the human soul, how we then, as it were, forget ourselves, how we forget that we have drawn mathematical space out of ourselves, and how we then live in this space with our view of space. I also said: People are initially interested when it comes to their own human abilities, not so much in what state of mind one is in when one mathematizes. I would say that there are only a few people in the world who, if I may use the expression, have the right respect for mathematization. For example, Novalis, a profound, amiable, extraordinarily sympathetic poet, had this proper respect for mathematization. Anyone who allows Novalis' poetry to take effect on them has the impression: there is a wonderful lyrical momentum, there is a complete enthusiasm, there is poetry in the soul. And when Novalis, the wonderful lyricist, starts talking about mathematics, he says something like: In mathematics we have, basically, the most beautiful, the greatest, the most powerful human poetry! I know how few people admit this at first. But, as I said, the amiable, profound lyricist Novalis knew – because he was a mathematician – what is stirred in the soul when one does not merely solve individual mathematical problems in a mechanical way, even if they are problems of function theory, number theory and the like, or of synthetic geometry; he knew how the soul feels when it is so enraptured that it forgets itself and knows itself in the space outside.

But now one thing is possible. It is possible, in fact, if one is familiar with this state of mind of mathematical thinking that Novalis speaks of so wonderfully, and can then put oneself in a position to gain something completely different from the same state of mind, namely the experience of moral impulses. In other words, if one succeeds in grasping and experiencing moral problems with the same inner clarity and the same inner certainty with which one solve, let us say, the Pythagorean theorem, to grasp and experience moral problems, then one knows: one is in the spiritual, in the supersensible world with this grasping of moral problems, and one speaks of the fact that in this supersensible world moral intuitions flow into the soul with the moral impulses. One knows that one is feeling one's way within the moral world, that one is feeling one's way in a supersensible world, which has nothing to do with what can be perceived externally through the senses. One knows that one is in a world where, firstly, one experiences one's deepest inner moral impulses directly; where one is one with them; where, because one is one with them, they are intuitive insights. And one knows a second thing. One knows that no matter how long one looks around in the sensory world, no matter how astutely one thinks and observes and experiments, what one, if I may say so, discovers in the mathematical world as moral intuitions cannot come from any sensory external world; it comes to one from the supersensible world. But that means, in other words, that it is inspired. The real, the deepest moral impulses that a person can receive from the supersensible world are intuitions that are at the same time inspired for our soul. And although they are not visual, do not appear in pictures, they are nevertheless there in the same way as sense perceptions themselves. Just as sensory perceptions are in the realm of the sensual, so too are moral impulses in the supersensible realm. That is to say, they are imaginations. And anyone who has discovered in which world the moral element, as also meant by Novalis, is experienced, knows that this moral element appears in this field, that it appears to the person who is completely removed from the sensory world as intuitions, which are both inspirations and imaginations. In short, by trying to gain a moral foundation for human life from the supersensible world, one learns to recognize how the soul must experience if it wants to be in the supersensible world. And it must be said that for today's human being - I have explained how it is different for the person who undergoes the yoga practice, or who undergoes the practice of grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and so on - for today's human being, it is first of all the best way for a person to get to know how to leave their physical body and live in a purely spiritual world, if they live in a purely supersensible world in the way that I have tried to indicate in my Philosophy of Freedom.

I know that very many people are not satisfied with such a way of living in the spiritual world, because in this world only moral truths appear, which one prefers to accept as commandments, as conventional facts, and so on. But I am not here to talk further about the “Philosophy of Freedom”, but only about the elementary methodical. But once you have become familiar with this special way of being in the supersensible world, you are encouraged to go further, to try to see whether it is not also possible for other areas of life to penetrate into a supersensible world in relation to the sensory world. And then one gradually comes to the point where methods of inner soul development are really possible, which lead people up the path to see the whole cosmos and human inner knowledge in such a way, otherwise, in the sense of the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one only looks at the moral, where one does not yet want to admit that it is a matter of the supersensible, if one does not go into the actual foundation of the matter.

The methods by which one ascends into the supersensible world in other fields consist in further developing the ordinary soul powers as one has them in ordinary life and in ordinary science. And these soul powers are, after all, first of all, if we characterize them externally in abstract terms, thinking, feeling and willing. We distinguish these three soul abilities, thinking, feeling and willing, but in the unified life of the soul they are not strictly separated from each other. One would actually have to say: when we speak of thinking, of mental images, we are speaking of a 'soul ability in which, for example, the will and also feeling are present, but it is mainly thinking that is present. In the will, on the other hand, thoughts are definitely present, but it is mainly will that is present. Thus, it is only the most salient feature that is referred to in the individual soul abilities, while everywhere below the surface, one might say, the other soul abilities also lie.

This becomes particularly important when it comes to the further development, the evolution, of the ability to think, of the power of thought. For this, we must be clear about the following. First, we must be clear about our relationship to the things around us and to ourselves in ordinary life and in ordinary science. We perceive the world through our senses, through our eyes, ears, and so on. We live with a certain inner intensity in these sensory perceptions. Then we form mental images of what we perceive with our senses. We move away from the things we perceive with our senses. In our mental images, there remains an afterimage of what we experienced with our senses. But consider how dull and shadowy the thought, the mental image, is compared to what we experienced with full vitality in our sensory perception. These mental images that are linked to sensory perceptions are dull and shadowy. And we are accustomed in life and even in ordinary science to let the sensory perceptions speak to us and to passively surrender to these sensory perceptions so that they awaken in us the mental images that make what we have perceived through the senses permanent. And then, more or less clearly, even after a long time or throughout our whole life, we can in turn bring up from the depths of our soul or our human being, as memories, what we have experienced externally through the senses. The mental images that are otherwise linked to the sensory perceptions and that are faint and shadowy in comparison to the sensory perceptions can also arise from us, from memory. We experience inwardly in the life of mental images what we perceive outwardly through the senses; we experience it again through memory. It should be clear, very clear, that just about all ordinary life, even that which is immersed in science, proceeds in this way in terms of imagining: that we expose ourselves to the liveliness of sensory perceptions, that we then get dull mental images, but that we can bring up again from our human being in memory that which we have received from outside as impressions. Our inner life is mostly nothing more than more or less transformed, metamorphosed mental images in the sense of external perception.

I will not go into the deeper nature of memory today, because I want to describe how what I have just characterized in terms of mental images can be further developed. It can be further developed by thinking in a way that does not merely tie in with external sense perceptions, but by thinking through the methods that I have mentioned in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in my “Secret Science”: meditation, concentration, and so on - the names are not important. You will find a detailed description of how to proceed in the books mentioned. I will now only explain the principles.

While thoughts usually arise when we passively devote ourselves to perceptions or when the echoes of experiences resurface from memories, to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher, one tries to do so through inner arbitrariness, as one has learned to do when mathematizing, when solving mathematical problems, so that one carries out everything fully consciously, not in a dreamy, hallucinatory state – that would be the opposite of what I will describe today – but in full awareness, devoting oneself to thinking and imagining, so that one learns to rest on mental images that one has arbitrarily brought into one's consciousness. It is good to bring into the center of your consciousness mental images that are as clear as possible, not those in which you can experience all kinds of nebulous, mystical stuff, but those that you can easily grasp. What matters then is not what kind of mental image you have, but the soul activity that you develop in this meditation. Just note: if you continually tense a muscle when you need it for work, the muscle becomes strong. The same thing happens with your soul's thinking power when you repeatedly concentrate on mental images that you bring to the center of your consciousness. The power of thought becomes stronger and stronger and finally reaches a point where you can say: “Now I am able to have my mental images as vividly as I otherwise only have external sensory impressions.” Mind you, I do not have hallucinations or illusions. These come from the unconscious. I now live in such vivid inner mental images as are otherwise external sensory perceptions, but I live in them with full consciousness, not with that dreamy mood of the soul, that mystical, nebulous mood of the soul, as it is present in hallucinations or visions. It must be a mathematical state of mind, through which one can immerse oneself in such inner experiences from mere mental images, which one otherwise only has when one is devoted to external sensory perception. One must compare, to say it again, the vividness and intensity of external sensory perception with what one otherwise experiences only pale and shadowy in thought. But in the way I have described, one learns more and more to be inwardly present with thoughts that have only been raised inwardly, as one is otherwise only present when some external sense impression stimulates one. No more pale, shadowy thoughts - inwardly vivid thoughts! The soul's power of thought has been strengthened. One has summoned a new power from the depths of one's soul. One has strengthened one's thinking power. When one has strengthened one's thinking, one has reached the first step of supersensible knowledge. In my books I have called this the imaginative stage of knowledge. One has reached the stage of imagination. This stage of imagination shows one, by means of the very vivid mental image that one now has: something is connected with this mental image.

Let us once again take up our ordinary sensory life and our ordinary mental images. Today we perceive something. We are vividly immersed in this perception. We form a pale, shadowy mental image. After a week, say, prompted by something or also free-rising, as one might say, this mental image arises again from memory. It comes out of us, to put it trivially. The fact that I once had the sensory experience is the cause of the same mental image emerging again later from my inner human being in memory. Now, after my practice, I am able to have thoughts that are intensified in my consciousness, which I call imaginative thoughts because they occur with the vividness, with the intensity of images, because they are really like sensory images, even though they are only thoughts at first. But just as otherwise, through the fact that I have thought about an external experience – if I just stare at it, no memory comes to me later, only if I have thought about it – a memory can come from my own being, so through the fact that I now have a thought, and to an increased extent in the soul, something comes to me from my own being, which at first looks like a memory, but which is not a memory. Something is now arising that is not a reminiscence of an external sensual experience, but something that I have never before perceived arising from within me at all. If I may put it this way: just as memories of ordinary experiences arise otherwise, so now, through the power of intensified thinking, that which I have never before seen inwardly arises from within. And I will very soon recognize what that is that is arising. I try, by continuing to meditate, to bring it to ever greater and greater clarity in this inner arising, and I finally come to understand what this inner arising actually is. I come to it: this inner ascent is I myself, as I have developed in the time since my birth here on earth.

Otherwise we have only the stream of memories, from which individual ones arise that are otherwise down there in the unconscious. I do not mean these memories. These memories are indeed what also arise in ordinary consciousness. But what is now arising, called forth from the inner being through the power of intensified thinking, that is not just thought, memory thought, it is that which leads me much deeper into my inner human nature than the power of memory. It is something that leads me, so to speak, deeper into the layers of my inner being than memory thoughts do. It is something that shows me how, as a small child, I used abilities that I had in my soul to shape my organism plastically from the brain outwards. This is what shows me how, as a somewhat older child, I used my ability to speak to further develop my inner self in a plastic way. In short, my innermost life comes before my soul in a grand, powerful tableau, the like of which I have never seen before. And what now comes before my soul is not just an image. Please bear this in mind. It is not just an image, but something that I recognize by grasping it, that it is connected with my growth forces, with that which grows in me, which also lives in me in the nourishing forces, in the circulation, in the breathing forces, which is in fact an inner, supersensible body in relation to the physical body. I am now getting to know a second person in me. I am learning to recognize that I can say the following to myself: You carry your outer body with you, it is extended in space, it has arms, feet, a head and so on. That is a spatial body. But what you have now discovered through your meditation, through imaginative recognition, that is an organism that lives in time, not in space, a time organism.

It is difficult for today's man when one speaks to him of such a time organism. But this time organism really is present in us as a second person, and we may call it an organism. Because you come to it, let's say, when you've become an old fellow, as I may say of myself, you know, you have a certain soul configuration. This soul configuration, which you now carry within you, is connected with a soul configuration perhaps in the fifth or sixth year of life. And just as my left hand is connected in my spatial organism, for my sake, with some part of my brain in this spatial organism, and just as the brain is in this spatial organism so that the individual parts relate to each other, so the individual parts of the time organism relate to each other in time, not in space. I carry this time organism within me. I have called it the etheric body or formative forces body in my books. This formative forces body is a time organism. It is the first thing we discover on the path of imaginative research. We survey our previous life on earth in its inwardly creative, supersensible forces. We do not speculate about a life force, but we look at our past life on earth as an internally organized tableau, as a time organism, as the formative body. Older, less conscious views of these things, which were more intuitive, more instinctive, but which knew something of these things in their intuitions, called this time body, this body of formative forces, the ether body. It is not the terms that are important, but what is meant by these things. In this etheric body, one has a reality, a time reality within oneself, and no one understands the formation of the human being without understanding this etheric body. And the most significant thing about this etheric body is that, at the moment we are ready, we can see our previous life on earth as if with a spiritual vision in this life tableau, which is the formative forces body, and we also stop distinguishing between subjective and objective. We could draw a diagram of the etheric body, or formative body, which we carry within us and which is a fluid temporal body. But we must realize that we are then depicting in a single instant something that is constantly flowing. Just as one cannot depict lightning, one cannot depict this etheric body either. One can only paint a moment that is captured. We must realize that our human formation depends on this body of formative forces. And in the moment when we become aware that this etheric body within us is a body of forces, without knowing the inner structure of which we cannot understand the human being, we realize that the same forces that work within us as such an etheric body also permeate the world as etheric forces; that subjective and objective cease to have any meaning; that this formative body of forces is connected with the great course of time of the universe; that we are part of this great universe. We begin to speak of the etheric processes of the universe, for these become clear to us at the moment when we arrive at such a vivid mental image, as we otherwise only have external sense perceptions in a vivid way. And we can achieve this through meditation. In short, we enter into an etheric world. But at the same time we learn to recognize the first supersensible thing in ourselves. We do not yet come out of earthly life, but we learn to recognize that which is supersensible in us within earthly life.

If we now want to progress, we must continue our exercises. These exercises consist of many, many details. I have described it in the books and will only state the principles here. The first thing in these exercises was to strengthen the power of thought, to come to develop imaginative thinking, a thinking that is as alive as otherwise only the experience of sensory perception. The second thing that must be trained can be characterized as follows: the person who, in full consciousness, develops such imaginations through which he then gets to know the ether world, the formative forces, also comes to understand that these imaginations, these images – for as images one's own life to date appears in a large tableau, the outer world appears in a universal tableau -, that these images, despite being evoked quite arbitrarily, hold one more strongly than the ordinary, pale, shadowy thoughts. Most people know that these pale, shadowy thoughts unfortunately all too quickly fade into obscurity — especially before an exam, it is usually the case. But if you have just applied a strong force in your thoughts, then the thoughts hold you, they do not want to let go. You must now, in order to get ahead, not remain at this level. With the same arbitrariness with which one has called these images, these imaginations into the soul, with the same strength and arbitrariness one must also be able to remove them again, to send them out of the soul, so that one can have in the soul what I would now like to call: emptiness of consciousness.

Just realize what this emptiness of consciousness looks like in ordinary life. When empty consciousness occurs in ordinary life, there is usually no consciousness left, you fall asleep. The ordinary consciousness falls asleep when it becomes empty of sensory impressions, memories and so on. But that is precisely the difference between this ordinary consciousness and what one has already attained in imaginative knowledge: one learns to muffle, to muffle these imaginations completely, and yet one is now facing the world in an absolutely alert state. I would like to say: it is all expectation. One is awake, but has nothing in one's consciousness because one has extinguished the imaginations with the great strength that was necessary. One waits, alert, for what will now arise. And when one has created an empty consciousness by first having to extinguish an intensified power of thinking, then this empty consciousness does not wait in vain. Then the supersensible world penetrates into this 'empty consciousness', penetrates in exactly the same way as the sensory world penetrates through our eyes and ears, through our warmth organism and so on. We discover that a supersensible world surrounds us, and this penetrates into the empty but alert consciousness as the spiritual world, just as we previously had the sensory world around us. In doing so, the original consciousness of everyday life, that is, common sense, always remains present alongside this heightened consciousness, because we carry out all of this with absolute awareness. This is in contrast to the state when someone hallucinates and has visions, because in doing so, their entire consciousness is absorbed in individual visions. This is not the case with the consciousness I am talking about. The everyday consciousness, through which we are firmly rooted in life, in ordinary science, remains with us at every step, constantly present as a controller. Those who say that what is described as anthroposophical consciousness could also be based on visions or hallucinations do not know what it is about. They speak without inquiring what it is about.

But if a supersensible world now penetrates through the empty consciousness from our environment, then we are also able to perceive more about ourselves than just the tableau-like etheric body described above. Now we are able to look beyond birth and conception. By being able to erase what the whole formative forces body is, we see through the empty consciousness nothing more of the whole human being between the birth and the present moment of experience. For when we have learned to expunge the imaginations and to have empty consciousness, then we can also expunge everything that fills us as an etheric body and look back at ourselves with empty consciousness. The ordinary human being remains for the onlooker, who can observe him. But this elevated consciousness now penetrates into the world in which we were before we descended from the spiritual and soul world and accepted an earthly body from our parents and great-grandparents. Now we look into the world in which we, before we were clothed with a physical body, were united with those spiritual substances that are in the spiritual world. Now we learn to recognize how we were before we descended into physical life. Now we learn to recognize another thing supernaturally.

First, by looking at ourselves as physical beings on earth, we have our spatial body, the physical body; we have the second body, which we grasp through imaginative knowledge, which is a supersensible one, but does not lead beyond earthly life; but now we have the third body. Because it leads into the world of stars, it is called - it is only a terminology - the astral body. One gets to know the actual soul being of the human being. One gets to know this third, the second supersensible entity of the human being. But we also have this in our body in earthly life. It is veiled in the physical body. It was present before our birth or our conception. Through observation, one then comes to an understanding of one side of the human being's eternity. We have lost so much of this one side of the human being's eternity that modern languages hardly have a word for it anymore. We speak of immortality, of that which we have through the traditions, but which were only the traditions of the last millennia, we speak of the extension beyond death. That one can also speak of an extension beyond birth would necessitate that we also know about the other side of eternity and coin the word unbornness, for this unbornness is the other side of eternity.

Now, in this way we have ascended to such insights, which now cannot enter our soul condition otherwise than by getting to know something that is completely closed to our ordinary consciousness. I have already described to you how empty consciousness must enter and how the contents of the supersensible world must come into this empty consciousness from the spiritual world, just as the sensory world otherwise penetrates into the eyes and ears. This second step of supersensible knowledge I call inspiration: inspired knowledge. Through inspired knowledge we now come directly into the supersensible world. Above all, we learn to recognize ourselves as supersensible beings in our prenatal existence. We also learn to recognize the spiritual environment. And now something very significant occurs. I would like to sketch it out for you today, and it will be explained in more detail in the next few days. Take the relationship between our environment and our own inner world. We can describe it by saying that for ordinary consciousness, the material world is out there. If we now look at the human being objectively, we can say that when a person looks into this material world through their eyes and perceives other things through their ears, material things and facts are out there, and inside the soul are its ideational, feeling and willing contents. By perceiving the material, he carries this outer material world in his soul's inner being pictorially, as an image, soulfully fine, soulfully thin. In the moment when we learn to grasp the spiritual world around us in our empty consciousness, something new also arises for our inner being.

Suppose I now see this material world as permeated by the spiritual world for the inspired consciousness. Now it is not pictorially occurring in the inner being of man, what is seen out there as spiritual, but now one learns to recognize the spiritual outside, as it is reflected in the inner being of man, and there it is reflected as his physical organs, as lungs, liver, heart, kidneys and so on, as all that which is materially in the first instance in the inner being. There is a complete reversal, a reciprocity. While the material world is reflected in us in a spiritual-soul way for ordinary consciousness, the spiritual world is reflected in us through our organs. We get to know ourselves inwardly as physical human beings by becoming aware of the spiritual world around us. Before that, one does not understand the physical human being. Before that, through anatomy, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver externally, but not how they are connected to the external world. Through anatomy and physiology, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver as if we were to learn that a person has all kinds of mental images inside them, but is unaware that their inner images relate to the outside world. They do not know that these organs relate to the spiritual external world. This is the origin of what becomes possible, for example, as the effect of spiritual science in a rational medicine. Because only now do you really get to know the human being, you get to know the inner nature of his organism. There is no way to get to know it before. You can only recognize it externally.

This is the second step on the path to supersensible knowledge and research, and it is the step of inspiration. A third step is reached by appealing to the will. One can also develop this will, in particular by first becoming quite clear about what this will is all about in ordinary life. It has already been mentioned, also from other sides in these days, that man is actually a continually sleeping being in relation to his will nature. If I just raise my arm, I first have the mental image of the goal that I want to raise my arm. But what then happens, as I plunge this thought of the goal into the human being and bring about the arm movement through the will, that initially eludes the human capacity for knowledge. I become aware again, and again through the perception, the raised arm, but the will remains as unconscious to ordinary consciousness as the states that we live through while asleep remain unconscious to the sleeper himself. We are actually awake in ordinary consciousness only for our imaginative life; we are asleep in ordinary consciousness for our will life. But we can raise this life of the will into the waking state. The exercises for this are very different from the exercises that are initially thinking exercises, as I have described them. And the best way to show this difference is to make it clear to you by means of a characteristic feature.

Those who want to achieve something through such exercises, for example in observing the etheric body, must indeed undergo preparation. The preparatory exercises are described in the books mentioned. These concern, for example, the preparation for a quality that I would like to call presence of mind. Presence of mind in ordinary life consists of being able to make quick decisions in the face of a situation. But this must become a habitual quality for someone who wants to ascend into the spiritual worlds. Because what can be perceived there is not so easy to perceive. In fact, very diligent practitioners, if I may call them that, believe: I cannot perceive anything. They cannot do it because they are not sufficiently prepared for presence of mind, for the things flit by so quickly that one must grasp them quickly. Most people have such poor soul abilities that when they should turn their attention to what they should experience spiritually, it is already gone. It is therefore a matter of presence of mind.

Exactly the opposite quality must be developed for will exercises. There it is important to apply the perfect will in the most elementary way in ordinary life, when walking, grasping, moving, in fact when doing anything, when performing actions, deeds. As long as one only develops the will inwardly in life, there is actually only a wish, not a will. A real will is always connected with an organic process, I could also say with a combustion process. The truly complete will actually changes the organism. It is linked to the organism in the metabolic process. But what about our ordinary will? We are not able to see through it at all. The impulses of the will take place, we look into our inner being, we are spiritually opaque to these impulses of the will. We look into a darkness in relation to the will. But we can lighten this darkness. We can make ourselves spiritually transparent. But this requires a lot of patience, because now we have to extend our exercises over long periods of time. I will tell you a simple exercise, the more complicated ones can also be found in the books mentioned. So let's take a simple exercise: for example, I have a habit, I write in a certain way, I have a handwriting. Once you've become an old guy, you don't like to get used to a different handwriting. It takes effort, it takes inner effort. It is something that remains within you, although it is expressed on the outside by writing. But all the volitional processes involved in changing one's handwriting take place within. Apart from the fact that I would not advise doing this particular exercise too much, even for external reasons – I just want to illustrate something with it, not give instructions on how to forge handwriting. But if one could train one's will to such an extent that one could change something that is so interwoven with a person as handwriting or other habits, in short, if one could make oneself a completely different person through inner awareness, through the cultivation of the will, one could make the will transparent. It takes years to achieve this. In particular, it is good to take the trouble to incorporate certain qualities that one initially only perceives as beautiful but does not have, by resolving, for example: “You will spend the next eight years training yourself with all your might to acquire certain qualities that you do not have, certain special ways of expressing yourself.” What I am describing seems easy, but one would like to say with Faust: “Yet the easy is difficult”. And the one who does such exercises will see that it is difficult to turn the will in this way through strong self-discipline in a different direction. In short, what otherwise only comes to life in moments when the will becomes full by expressing its existence outwardly in action, when applied to the development of the will itself, leads us to really look within ourselves through such exercises, you can find more details about these exercises in the books, to make ourselves completely transparent in relation to the will. By way of comparison, I would like to try to make clear to you what is achieved by this. How do we actually see through our eyes? Only because the eye is selfless, because it does not assert its own substantiality. It is transparent. The moment the eye partially gives up this selflessness, asserts itself, it can no longer serve us to see. It must extinguish itself.

Now I am not going to claim that for ordinary life our physical body is sick and needs to be made healthy through exercises. It is not like that. For life and for ordinary science, our body is naturally healthy, but it is useless for supersensible perception. For that, it must be transformed. Not that it remains constantly transformed. The person with the ordinary, healthy human understanding always remains alongside. It is also not a matter of one person dissolving into the other, of the ordinary, healthy human being disappearing. Both the developed personality and the original personality with the healthy human understanding remain alongside one another, so that the latter acts as a controller for the former. But for the higher consciousness, which must already be empty, we come to the point where our body is no longer there for the soul to perceive. We see, as it were, through our body. We see how the will works in us.

In ordinary science, one does not see how the will works. Therefore, one assumes that there are motor nerves. They do not know that the will works directly. It has been said today that the real discovery of the facts that exist here can only be made when one has come to make oneself transparent like a sense organ, so that the whole human being becomes like a single sense organ, permeable in soul and spirit, as the eye is transparent to light. Just as we first become free through intensified thinking and first reach the body of formative forces and then the prenatal astral body, so now, having trained the will in this way, we come to know the other side of our eternal being. By making our physical body transparent, we are able to summon the image – I say expressly: the image – of what happens to us at the moment of death. At that moment we leave our physical body, which is handed over to the physical elements. The soul and spirit pass over into the spiritual world. This moment, when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we perceive it at the moment when our physical body becomes transparent to the soul. In intuitive knowledge, this third stage of supersensible knowledge, our body becomes transparent. Therefore, we get to know ourselves in the state in which we are after death, when we no longer have the physical body. For we can now see beyond it by having risen to it in the third, intuitive stage of knowledge, by disregarding the physical body. Now we get to know the other side of the soul's eternity. We get to know immortality through direct contemplation.

Anthroposophy is not a form of philosophical speculation. In order to get to know immortality, it does not start from the usual consciousness, but it assumes that the abilities slumbering in the soul, the slumber of which one becomes aware through intellectual modesty, can be awakened and thus rise to see the spiritual world. One learns to recognize the universe spiritually. You get to know your own eternal being spiritually. And when you get to know these two sides in yourself, you learn to recognize what a person is like between birth and death, when the soul is hidden under the bodily processes. on the other hand, recognize the spiritual and soul life that we unfold when we are outside the body before birth or after death, then insights into our true self also arise. And then we learn to recognize that which goes through repeated earthly lives. However, I will have to talk about this important result of anthroposophical research, about repeated earthly lives, tomorrow.

As you can see, the path of supersensible knowledge, the anthroposophical path of research, involves first entering the world of formative forces through imaginative knowledge, so that we recognize the supersensible that is already in us in ordinary physical life, but in a supersensible way: the body of formative forces. Then, through the ascent to inspired knowledge, we get to know the astral body, that is, the soul body; we get to know entering into the body and, in turn, emerging from the body through death; then we also get to know the human ego. One now enters into a concrete spiritual world, into a world of spiritual beings. For that which one recognizes as a spiritual world, for which the organs are developed, with the empty consciousness, but which is still awake, is a world in which spiritual entities are next to our own spiritual entity, next to our own spiritual-soul being. One looks into a spiritual world in this way. And now one realizes: If one wants to explore this spiritual world, one must develop these three degrees of supersensible knowledge, must draw from the soul imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. They reveal themselves, they structure themselves in degrees, when one wants to know the Cosmos in its spiritual content in itself as spiritual entity.

One has already received a hint of an impression when one searches through the moral world in its actual essence. There one comes, basically, to be in the same world, even if only for the moral impulses, as one otherwise is when one has the imaginative, the inspired, the intuitive world before oneself. Only it is so present for the moral that only the moral impulses are in it. But these can be found when one has passed through imagination and inspiration to intuition. But it is given to us human beings on earth that this world alone, the world of the moral, which we need for life on earth, can be present to our ordinary consciousness in its supersensible nature before the mind's eye. And anyone who understands the real existence of the supersensible nature of the moral can, if they only develop what they learn here in an elementary way as cosmology and anthropology, advance to a real spiritual insight into the world, so that the spiritual formations, then the spiritual inner life of other spiritual beings and then the interweaving with the spiritual world, as we are interwoven here with the other realms, and that his own eternal soul essence also really comes before the soul's eye. This is what one can get to know by studying the “Philosophy of Freedom” not just in theory but by really experiencing it. It is the same as reading the axioms of Euclid on the first page of a geometry book and getting an idea of what is to come. Just as the whole of geometry follows from these axioms, so the whole spiritual world is present, as it were, in the nature of things, in the real insight into the moral world. But no one should think that he knows the nature of the spiritual world just because he knows the nature of moral impulses. He only knows the axiomatic, the elementary.

What is described here as a method of research for the supersensible worlds is indeed something that alienates most people today. But the one who is at home in these matters says to himself: How much of our present-day spiritual life began as something alienating and then became a matter of course. One need only really know the spiritual history of humanity and one will be able to say: Today, most people see what must be said as something absurd, ridiculous, as something funny. Later, a time will come when it will be taken for granted, just as the Copernican system was first taken as a curiosity, then became a matter of course. But people will feel – and feelings are precisely the most important thing that should arise from the life of the anthroposophical worldview – that this anthroposophy truly does not want to oppose what justified natural science or other science is in the present day. For what does it want to be at bottom? This question should emerge from what I have discussed today about the research methods of this anthroposophy: What does it want to be, this anthroposophy, also in relation to the other sciences, as in relation to universal human life? What does it want to be?

Now, when we have a person in front of us, we see their outer facial features, their physique, their gait, their movements, their gestures. We cannot be satisfied with simply stating: This is how he walks, this is how he looks, and so on. We see this as an external physiognomy, but we only have a complete experience of this person when we add to this external experience his soul and spirit, his soul, when we see the soul through the outer form and outer movements. But if we understand things aright, we also have in external science what is described to us by the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being. Just as one does not deny that man must also be observed in his external form through the senses if one wants to experience his soul, so one does not deny that through external science the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being must be explained, described, and grasped by means of external science, if one asserts that behind all this there is something that can be regarded as the soul of nature, the soul of the cosmos.

And so it is that just as a reasonable person who recognizes the soul of man does not negate his body, his outer form, his physiognomy, the reasonable anthroposophist does not negate the outer science. On the contrary. He wants to be fully immersed in it. He only wants the outer science to have a soul for the further development of humanity, just as the complete human being carries the soul in his physical body. Yes, he maintains that it needs soul. And anthroposophy does not want to be an opponent of the spirit of today's science, but wants to become the soul of this scientific endeavor in the future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delegates' conference ¹ in preparation for the founding of the International Anthroposophical Society

Stuttgart, September 13-17, 1923

Invitation in No. 6 of the “Mitteilungen, herausgegeben vom Vorstand der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland”, Stuttgart, July 1923

To the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany

We hereby invite all members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, in particular the members of the extended board and the trusted representatives, to a general meeting to be held in Stuttgart between September 10 and 15 of this year. We are not yet able to present you with a detailed program for this conference, but we have the great pleasure of informing you that Dr. Steiner has accepted an invitation to give a series of lectures from September 12 to 15.

Applications for this main conference can already be sent to the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, Stuttgart, Champignystraße 17.

Dear Friends!

Since the delegates' meeting, Dr. Steiner has spoken in various places, for example at the two general meetings of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, about the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must set itself a new task that will also gain it the respect of the outside world. The question is most forcefully raised in the eight lectures he gave in Dornach from June 10 to 17. In this issue of the “Mitteilungen” we are bringing a summary report of these lectures and would like to draw particular attention to the passage at the end: “How to give the Anthroposophical Society a certain character should be discussed everywhere.”

Such discussions have been the focus of many circles since then, and what we have been able to learn from the letters we have received has been extremely valuable to us, and we are very grateful for them. Now it will certainly move hearts to an even greater extent, just as it has here in Stuttgart, and we are confident that we will succeed in gathering the fruits of this summer's work from all sides at the main conference, so that we can then approach the work of the coming winter, which will certainly be particularly difficult, from the new perspective.

We see the necessity of resuming public work as quickly as possible with powerful lectures on the essence of anthroposophy in all major centers. We have a new style in mind for such lectures, a new language, so to speak. The students of anthroposophy, who have been drawing on the living spirit for so long, should present themselves in such a way that no one can say that it is a copy of what Dr. Steiner has said or written. We have to throw a lot of our own power of persuasion into the balance to prove the power of anthroposophy on living human beings.

To appear in this way, each individual needs a society behind them, whose organization ensures uniformity of approach. Already today, the fruitful seeds of a natural structure are emerging spontaneously in different places. We hear, for example, from our friends in central Germany that they hold quarterly meetings so that a number of working groups can exchange experiences and report to each other through their representatives. The friends on the Rhine have achieved the same, despite the endless complications caused by the occupation. Here in Stuttgart, we can look back with great satisfaction on the meetings that have taken place every four weeks, with friends from all the surrounding towns coming here to work together.

If we consciously develop the tendencies that are present here, we will be able to achieve what we cannot achieve through correspondence or sending printed material. We have written and received countless letters at the Anthroposophical Society's office and can confidently say that, aside from purely “bureaucratic” matters, which are justified and necessary in their place, the best that we have to say and give each other cannot be expressed. But if we imagine that we are creating about six to eight centers throughout Germany that can be regularly reached by all members living in a larger district, then perhaps six to eight letters are enough to achieve regular and rapid communication with all friends. Travel would also become more feasible if mutual visits and, in particular, the participation of the local board were possible at such gatherings in the larger districts.

The main conference will be able to deal with such questions. Furthermore, we want to establish the extended board and the body of trusted individuals; and these matters will in turn point to the internal work of the individual working groups. For example, the important question of an introduction to anthroposophy should be mentioned: “We have to work our way through to the individual guidelines, which will then work as the self-evident.” This is how it says at the end of the seventh of the Dornach lectures.

Overcoming the “three points”, which in their fundamental nature are reminiscent of older occult societies, is perhaps the greatest task that the Dornach lectures present to us. We hope to be able to present you with a draft in the near future that is intended to emphasize three guidelines: 1. what those who approach from outside can see as the purpose of the society, 2. what the people united in the society want to set themselves as a task, 3. what the society wants to achieve in all areas of life.

If we can summon up the right self-reflection for what has led each of us to anthroposophy, then we will also find the right words that can be heard by the “homeless souls”.

Time is short and the tasks are great.

With warm regards,

The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany 1. A.: Dr.-Ing. Carl Unger. Dr. Walter Johannes Stein.

Circular letter from the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany to the working groups in Germany and Austria and to the trusted representatives:

Stuttgart, July 31, 1923

Champignystraße 17

Dear Friends,

Today we can give you more details about the main conference in September, to which you were invited in the June issue of the “Mitteilungen” (No. 6), although the program cannot yet be given its final form.

With regard to the date, there has been a slight postponement in that the conference will not take place between September 10 and 15, but from Thursday, September 13 to Monday, September 17, 1923. The conference is planned in such a way that the extended board, the trusted individuals, and the working group leaders will meet and deliberate from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. (based on special announcements to the participants).

The main lectures, in particular those by local co-workers, are planned for the afternoons from 4 to 6 o'clock. These will be followed by discussions.

In the evenings, lectures will be given by Dr. Steiner and possibly by other speakers, starting at 8 o'clock.

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The following topics will be discussed during the morning and afternoon sessions:

I. The Anthroposophical Society and its spiritual task internally and externally. The following topics are planned:

1. Confidential organization, extended board, etc.
2. Regional associations of working groups
3. Lecture system
4. “Introductory courses”
5. Lecture transcripts
6. Membership admission
7. Financial matters.

II. Combating opponents.

III. Formation of anthroposophical societies in individual countries and founding of the international society in Dornach.

IV. Rebuilding the Goetheanum.

We request that working groups register their reports (especially on I and II) and any presentations by September 1 at the latest, so that they can be taken into account when finalizing the agenda. We also request that any other requests regarding the program be communicated to us as soon as possible. Anthroposophical Society in Germany The Executive Council:

Dr. Carl Unger.
Dr. W.J. Stein

To the representatives of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany!

Dear Friends!

We hereby invite you to a meeting of representatives that will precede our conference. On Thursday, September 13, 1923, at 10 a.m., we want to meet at the Gustav-Siegle-Haus in Stuttgart to discuss the goal of the conference. Only if the guiding idea is nurtured and supported by all the trusted representatives at this meeting will we succeed in holding a conference in which social consciousness is stirred. In the future, the board and extended board, together with the trusted figures, will have a lot to actively shape.

At this preliminary meeting, we plan to first constitute the two bodies of the extended board and the trusted figures. Each of these two bodies must see itself as a body and become aware of its task.

To create an awareness of the Society, it is important that the extended board members, who are spread throughout Germany, feel that they are fully acting representatives of their body and also express this to the outside world. There should be an awareness that the working groups (branches) are divisions of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, and that they are responsible for the inner work. They should not appear in public. All public events should be organized by individual members of the extended board on behalf of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. Thus, the Society is representatively represented to the outside world by the board and extended board.

The trusted representatives accept the members. In doing so, they also develop an external effect. The person is accepted into the Anthroposophical Society (initially not into any branch). The Executive Council carries out the admission, and the person of trust proposes by signing the application for admission. So every member initially becomes a free-standing member, i.e. a member of the Society. Only then can they become a member of a branch, i.e. a member of an esoterically working group. This is just an example to show the nature of the person of trust's activity.

It is planned to have every membership card countersigned in Dornach (this suggestion comes from Dr. Steiner), so that ultimately every single member will feel that they are a member of the international society, which will have its center in Dornach. However, this will not be decided until the international society's conference at Christmas.

As you can see, it is important to prepare the national societies for this international merger. But these organizational matters, important though they are, will be of secondary importance. The most important goal of our conference is the discussion of the Society's goal and the revision of the three guiding principles contained in the draft principles.¹

These three guiding principles still contain some of the sectarianism of the Theosophical Society and are therefore not appropriate as guiding principles for a true world movement. If our Society is to expand in a way that is appropriate to its present task, then no one should be required to profess belief in the guiding principles. Instead, any person who has an interest in the existence of a Society that is legitimately seeking paths to the supersensible worlds in order to enrich life and its practical individual aspects through supersensible knowledge should be able to become a member. But there are many more people who want something like this than there are members of our society, and such a reorganization of society would therefore result in a very extraordinary expansion of it. In this expansion, however, everything will depend on the trust leaders' knowledge of human nature and on the help they receive from the entire membership. In the future, all kinds of sectarian measures for admitting members, such as demanding that they complete introductory courses, read certain books, etc., will have to be eliminated, and everything will depend on the knowledge of human nature. The trusted personalities will have to learn to seek and find people who belong to us by nature, not those who have belonged to a doctrine and now profess it. It will be necessary to overcome this tendency to develop the vestiges of a religious belief.

We will have to discuss all this and much more that the friends themselves will want to accomplish. But we hope that such a preliminary discussion can create a unity and warmth that will give the course of the whole conference anthroposophical warmth and youthful momentum.

Kind regards
I.A.: Dr. Walter Johannes Stein

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• 1. From Rudolf Steiner's announcement of his journey to this conference after his lecture in Dornach on September 10 and the documents reproduced below, it is clear that this conference was understood as a “delegates' conference”.
• 1. See references below.

[With the exception of the three lectures by Rudolf Steiner, which were recorded in shorthand, there are no minutes of the Stuttgart September Conference. Carl Unger gave the following full report in the public German weekly “Anthroposophie” (5th year, No. 13, September 27, 1923):

The Anthroposophical Society has existed for 10 years, but it looks back on a life of 21 years; it is coming of age. It was founded as a special society when it became clear that those members of the Theosophical Society who saw the fulfillment of their theosophical ideals in the spiritual science of Dr. Rudolf Steiner should no longer be tolerated in the Theosophical Society; but it already came into being at the time when Dr. Steiner was called upon to seek to spread his research within the framework of the Theosophical Society. Thus the Anthroposophical Society exists through the coming together of people who have found the fulfillment of their life's longing in the work of Rudolf Steiner. But its coming of age wants to mean more! The individual stands in the history of his time, and it is not so long ago that the work of outstanding personalities can have a history-forming effect. In our time, the individual means a great deal if he is a unified personality. The coming together of individuals into a mass in meetings, associations, parliaments usually has a devastating effect on the individual. However, the Anthroposophical Society as a society wants to mean more than any of its members could individually; it wants to have a serious impact on history by enhancing individuality. The conference held at the Gustav Siegle House in Stuttgart from September 13 to 17 marked the beginning of the Anthroposophical Society's awareness of its significance for the world and its historical task. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is directed to all people. If it is to form the spiritual content of a society, then this society must be founded from the outset as a world society. Anthroposophy as such and the works of Rudolf Steiner are spread throughout the world. But it is connected with the world catastrophe of recent years that the independent anthroposophical national societies are now rapidly forming in quick succession, which, in their spiritual center at Dornach in the re-emerging Goetheanum, the creative center of Dr. Steiner, are coming together to form a large world society, despite all the divisive forces that seek to tear man from man and people from people. In recent years, much has been undertaken within the anthroposophical movement to demonstrate the fertility of anthroposophy in all areas of life: university courses, congresses, scientific and economic justifications have reached wide circles; the free Waldorf school and the wonderful art of eurythmy have led to unexpected successes; the artistic impulses of the Goetheanum have truly not been lost, even if Rudolf Steiner's magnificent mystery poems must now wait even longer before they can reappear on the stage in the form appropriate to them. All this is needed by the Anthroposophical Society as a human and spiritual center; it is to be the gathering place for the true spiritual values of the present time. A strong and healthy society should give Anthroposophy a home in the hearts of its members. But it will have to build a strong house to stand against the onslaught of its opponents, a solid wall of living souls, for perhaps for a long time to come the spirit needs firm places in the land of men, which is being devastated by the un-spirit.

We do not want to give a protocol-like report of the conference here, but rather point to the central question that was at the heart of all the lectures and discussions: How will the Anthroposophical Society organize its work in order to fulfill its tasks in the midst of a disintegrating world? The question here is not one of final formulations or organizational measures. Certainly one must be able to express what one wants; certainly one needs forms of working together, but the life of such a society is formed in the real relationships between individuals and groups of people; what one must do is ultimately decided by the individual case.

“The Anthroposophical Society wants to be a community of people for the cultivation of genuine spiritual values in the present day; in the Anthroposophical Society, the paths to the spiritual world are sought and the dissemination of genuine spiritual science is served.”

The ¹ “Principles” of the Anthroposophical Society were discussed. But more important, the conference recognized that people today need supersensible knowledge and that the world needs a society that truly seeks the paths to the spiritual world. The obstacles that arise in the consciousness of the contemporary human being in the face of these needs must be overcome through the work of society itself. Anthroposophy appeals to the faculty of free judgment; it seeks to answer free questions. The Society now wishes to open its doors wide to all who seek the paths to the spiritual world. The days of the old secret societies, which sought to bind people with oaths, are past. The Anthroposophical Society welcomes people of the present age into its ranks on the basis of free trust and free responsibility. The Society should give people what they need; it must organize its work so that they find what they seek.

For its dealings with the world, the Society needs an organization of trust. Its guidelines have been negotiated, but the important thing is how it is handled in each individual case. For this, anthroposophy provides a sense of fact and knowledge of human nature. The admission of members is carried out by the trusted individuals directly into the society, which is precisely how it will keep itself free from the sectarian tendencies that are so widespread today. But the inner work takes place in working groups, which are formed in a wide variety of ways out of a real will to work. Larger associations should help to represent the society to the outside world. The Society's organs everywhere should safeguard the interests of the Society over and above all local and regional differences. These were the topics discussed, and the conference unanimously approved the points of view proposed by the Executive Council. Much attention was paid to recognizing the opponent and to the problem of combating the opponent, and we hope that the effects of this will soon be felt.

Dr. Steiner gave three evening lectures: “The Human Being in Past, Present and Future” [in GA 228]. They introduced the history of humanity as a development of consciousness in a new way, and their momentum gave the whole conference its spiritual support. The towering figure of this leader of humanity offers tremendous prospects for the future. Dr. Steiner personally intervened almost not at all in the negotiations, but what he spoke was of the most urgent admonition, and his presence meant for all the deeply felt need to profess him and his work. The rallying cry, which had been published in this newspaper shortly before the conference by the board and a circle of trusted individuals, touched everyone's heart, and when the motion was put forward that the conference should take up and carry this rallying cry forward on its own initiative, the entire assembly rose as one man and enthusiastically expressed its approval.

The breaks between the official negotiations, and even some hours at night, were amply filled with discussions in smaller groups. The Waldorf School Association gathered its members and guests. The Clinical Therapeutic Institute organized tours. The Institute for Scientific Research presented the latest results of research, especially the epoch-making work of L. Kolisko: “Physiological and Physical Proof of the Effectiveness of Smallest Entities”, the scope of which is incalculable. The most beautiful celebrations were offered by Marie Steiner with the circle of Dornach eurythmy artists. Two performances for the conference participants and four more for the public in the stage hall at Landhausstrasse 70 made a particularly strong impression through the eurythmic rendition of poems by Albert Steffen. The way in which poetry and eurythmy resonate spiritually with each other was rarely experienced so vividly. The art that Anthroposophy brings to revelation is one of its most powerful life effects. The large hall of the Gustav-Siegle-Haus, with seating for 1300, was always filled and overflowing when Dr. Steiner gave his powerful public lectures. This conference brought together only members of the Anthroposophical Societies, but again there were not enough seats in the hall. Those who could, came from the most distant parts of Germany, despite the great difficulties and the insecurity that one had to reckon with. And now, after the conference, we can say: They will all come again, even if the difficulties increase tremendously; they may have to come on foot, but they will be there when important matters of the Anthroposophical Society are again at issue.

Draft statutes for the German national society, presumably put up for discussion at the conference

Anthroposophical Society in Germany Honorary President since February 3, 1913 Dr. Rudolf Steiner

Statutes

1. Founding of the Anthroposophical Society.

The Anthroposophical Society was founded on December 28, 1912 in Cologne. The founding took place when a committee of three individuals took over the overall management. The members of the Society joined this committee in free consent to the founding act. The founding took place as an international overall society. It was intended that individual departments, associations and the like be formed within its framework. Subsequently, individual independent national societies were founded.

The original founding board has been expanded through co-option to a board of nine members. At the delegates' assembly in Stuttgart in February 1923, these members took over the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. Thus the Anthroposophical Society in Germany was founded as a national society. At the same time, the Free Anthroposophical Society in Germany was also founded.

At the conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, held in Stuttgart in September 1923, the actions of the board, which had since been co-opted to include ten people, were confirmed and the decision was taken to affiliate with the global society to be founded, with its center in Dornach. Furthermore, the board was authorized to draw up the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany.

2. Aims and tasks.

The Anthroposophical Society was founded on the conviction that the results of modern scientific research, despite their great significance for human culture, can only work for the spiritual progress of humanity if a spiritual science, which already exists to a significant extent today, promotes healthy research directed towards the supersensible. The personalities united in the Anthroposophical Society therefore regard as the most important task of the Anthroposophical Society:

The cultivation of Anthroposophical spiritual science and the promotion of its effectiveness in the most diverse areas of life.

In the fields of education, medicine, natural science, art and religion, the Anthroposophical Society has achieved significant results.

Only by applying these principles to the individual areas of life can the work of the Anthroposophical Society lead to the goal of creating a new brotherhood as people work together across the earth. In this way, it can enable the individual to gain an independent world view through an understanding of the different world views and religions of all peoples and times, and in this way it will convey an understanding of the spiritual essence of the human being and the spiritual foundations of nature and the world.

The center of the Anthroposophical Society's endeavors is the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, and the work that emanates from it in the realms of science, art, and religion.

3. Membership.

Those who are interested in the stated aims and tasks can become members of the Anthroposophical Society. Membership is applied for by submitting an application for admission.

This application for admission will usually bear the signature of a trusted person (see below), but it can also be submitted directly to the board. Admission is granted by the board's recognition. The board determines the amount of the admission fees and the membership dues.

4. Board.

The Executive Board is responsible for the overall representation of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, both internally and externally. It is composed in such a way that the institutions that have emerged from the anthroposophical movement can find their representation in it.

The members of the Executive Board hold office for an indefinite period; the term of office of the individual members of the Executive Board may end:

1) by resignation,
2) by a majority of the duly convened General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany no longer agreeing with the performance of their duties.

The extension or supplementation of the executive council occurs through cooption. The office of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is currently located at Champignystr. 17, Stuttgart, where the executive council is also currently based. The executive council must determine the managing members from among its members. The official organ of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is the “Mitteilungen” (announcements) published by the executive council.

5. The extended executive council.

The executive council has formed an extended executive council by appointing individuals from the various regions of Germany. The members of the extended executive council are responsible for representing the interests of the Society internally and externally in the immediate vicinity of their place of residence. The regional associations (see below) can make proposals to the executive council for the appointment of members of the extended executive council. The members of the extended board are also trusted personalities (see below). The members of the extended board hold office for an indefinite period; the execution of their office can come to an end: 1) through resignation, 2) through a resolution of the board.

6. Trusted personalities.

The board has appointed trusted individuals [see page 463] who are responsible for accepting members' registrations. They guarantee to the board the members they propose. The appointment of further trusted individuals will either be made by the board or by one member being designated by seven other members or individuals seeking admission as their representative and being recognized as such by the board. The trusted personalities, together with the members of the extended board, form a body that can be convened by the board for special meetings to discuss the affairs of the association. The board will also organize a meeting of this body if at least 12 trusted personalities request it. The trusted personalities have their character as such for an indefinite period. Their function can be terminated:

1) by resignation,
2) by decision of the executive council,
3) by decision of the majority of a properly convened assembly of the body of trusted individuals.

7. Working groups.

General membership must be acquired individually by each member and means that the Executive Council recognizes an individual as belonging to the Anthroposophical Society.

The work of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is carried out in local working groups, which can be formed by individuals who have acquired general membership freely coming together in any locality. These working groups require recognition by the executive council.

At least 7 members belong to the formation of working groups; if there are fewer than 7 members in one place, they can join together to form a center. The working groups and centers can unite to form associations, depending on the needs of the area in which they are formed.¹

8. General Assembly.

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is convened and led by the board. It is considered duly convened if the invitation has been sent three weeks in advance.

The board will also call a general assembly if this is requested by at least 12 of the working groups recognized by the board. All members of the Anthroposophical Society have access to the General Assembly. The trusted representatives and the delegates of the working groups recognized by the Executive Council are entitled to vote. Each recognized working group can appoint one delegate for 7-50 members; two delegates for 51-100 members, and so on. The centers can each appoint one delegate. The General Assembly decides by a simple majority.

The General Assembly discusses the agenda to be sent by the Executive Committee with the invitation; it has the right to express its approval of the actions of the Executive Committee for the period since the previous General Assembly. Motions for the General Assembly are to be submitted to the Executive Committee no later than three days before the General Assembly.

9. Relationship to the General Anthroposophical Society.

To be decided in the course of the negotiations in Dornach.

[The following “Draft of the Basic Principles of the Anthroposophical Society”, published in “Mitteilungen...” No. 8, October 1923, and reproduced here in facsimile, is based on Rudolf Steiner's “Draft of the Basic Principles of an Anthroposophical Society” from 1912/13 (see under “References”). The German national society was thereby following the decision of the “International Assembly of Delegates” from July 20-23, 1923, that “any elaborations of statutes by the national societies, insofar as the current ‘draft’ had to be changed or supplemented” (see page 571) should be presented in Dornach at the founding meeting of the “International Anthroposophical Society” at Christmas 1923.]

• 1. See pages 635 ff.
• 1. Such associations (regional associations) currently exist for Central Germany, Hesse, Palatinate, the Lake Constance area, Southwest Germany, and Rhineland-Westphalia. For Northern Germany and Silesia, such associations are in the process of being formed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dear friends! ¹ If it is necessary to discuss certain questions of the Society's constitution in the individual countries, this is due in particular to the fact that the anthroposophical movement has undergone a certain development in recent years. The Anthroposophical Movement began more or less with the spiritual life that it seeks to convey, and for a long time it worked together with the Theosophical Movement. And in recent years it has become the case that the anthroposophical movement as such is standing before the whole world with a certain necessity and is being judged a lot - and therefore also, which must be a self-evident side effect, is being met with a lot of hostility. The whole form of the anthroposophical movement, not inwardly but outwardly, is different.

Now, in a spiritual movement such as anthroposophy, everything is connected with inner laws, so that one does nothing other than what arises out of the necessity of spiritual life itself, as one recognizes it. So of course in this movement itself no consideration can be given to what comes from outside, whether it be opposition and hostility or recognition. The meaning of the anthroposophical movement must flow purely from the subject itself. One must do nothing but what one recognizes as necessary for a particular age, based on the spiritual life. Any consideration of external factors, be it recognition, be it success, be it contradiction and hostility, leads to a weakening of the spiritual life that should be fostered in such a movement. And that necessarily always gives rise to a kind of conflict: one must follow one's inner forces and, of course, in order for the movement not to perish, one must do what can advance the movement in the world. This always results in a conflict that requires constant vigilance on the part of the members. And so the constitution of the Society must be such that this vigilance is possible, that, as it were, a kind of vacuum is created for such a spiritual movement, an empty free space in which it can truly unfold. This is only possible if the individual groups and the connections between the groups are organized and administered in the right way.

Now, no spiritual movement can flourish in our time that is some kind of special movement of humanity. There is simply an occult, let us say, law that every truly viable and fruitful spiritual movement is universally human, that is, in trivial terms, what is called international in everyday life, is universally human. In the present day and age, if a group of people, rather than the general public, becomes in some form or other the, in a sense, group-centered, egoistic bearer of a spiritual movement, then in that moment universal human progress is harmed, not helped, and not truly furthered.

This matter is not really open to discussion, any more than a law of nature is open to discussion. It is a spiritual law that every spiritual movement that really furthers humanity must be generally human.

Of course, this does not prevent it from being fair to all human groupings. One can be just as fair to one's own nation as to the others. Every nation naturally has more or less of its great impulses to bring to the whole of humanity. And to believe that the international is linked to a disregard for one's own nation, that is not at all justified. It is precisely within the international that the points of view are given to assess one's own nation in the right way and to put it in the right light.

If, therefore, what Mr. Collison has said corresponds to a real, non-illusory judgment, then it is, of course, a deviation, should two groups form as a result, in that one group cannot abandon itself to its national feelings, would like to see a kind of selflessness in it, even to the point of opposing the valuable aspects of its own nation. If you are truly grounded in anthroposophy, if you truly understand the essence of anthroposophy, then it cannot be a matter of even entertaining a different opinion about these things.

Just as there can be no conflict in the world – forgive me for saying this triviality – about the fact that mountain air is good and sea air is good; if people have different constitutions, then one needs mountain air, it is perhaps good for a certain type of disposition to fall ill, the other needs sea air, it is good for him. Just as one cannot understand why someone sent to live in the mountain air rants terribly about the sea air, so one cannot expect that enthusiasm for one's own nation should in any way affect one's international, that is, unbiased judgment of everything in the world that has to do with the cooperation, not the antagonism, of nationalities. So in the real understanding of what the deepest anthroposophical impulse must be, such a dichotomy cannot arise. And of course it must be said: the most essential task of anthroposophical branches is precisely to avoid such dichotomies, to come to an understanding about these things. If things always go so that one group turns against the other and always says, if they do this or that, it is against what Dr. Steiner says, they are not real anthroposophists — if these things then go on in the underground and only ever talk about the fact that there are not homogeneous groups and no general groups, then nothing particularly fruitful can arise. But why should it not be possible for such things to be sorted out through the openness of the discussions in the anthroposophical branches? You see, that is what I would call — in addition to observing the way the outside world relates to anthroposophy, whether in a hostile or friendly way: vigilance within an anthroposophical branch.

One can be awake in life, or one can be asleep. I do not mean the usual states here – we will talk about that in the lecture [in GA 228] – but rather the states in relation to what is happening in the world. One can be asleep even though one appears to be awake on the outside. But to be asleep really means nothing more than to divert one's attention from something. When we really sleep at night, it also means nothing more than diverting our attention from everything that can occupy us in the earthly world. We then turn our attention to things for which we do not yet have the perceptive faculty in the present human evolution. That is why sleeping [to what is happening in the world] means nothing more than diverting our attention from something. But as anthroposophists we must take a keen interest in what is going on in the world. The world is interested in anthroposophy; if we are not interested in it, the world will become antagonistic. This requires vigilance. And it is in the spirit of this vigilance that the Anthroposophical Society as a whole must now be constituted. That is why I have been emphasizing for some time the need to organize the individual national societies into national associations. Such national associations have been formed in Switzerland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Norway, and this year they will be established in Austria and the Netherlands, and so on. And it is of the utmost importance that such a national society also be formed here and that these individual national societies in turn join together to form the International Anthroposophical Society, which in the future can have its center in Dornach. As was planned at the delegates' meeting in July 1923 in Dornach, the merger to form the international society is to take place at Christmas in Dornach.

But this can only happen if the national societies have organized themselves in advance, because only something that has already been formed can join together. And so it would be good if the constitution of the English Anthroposophical Society emerged from the negotiations of this meeting as a national body, with the tendency to then merge with the international society at Christmas and then have the national center in London and the international center in Dornach, Switzerland. That would be good.

That is basically all I can recommend myself. Of course, everything that is to be done in detail and in particular must depend on what the friends here consider to be best.

If I may point out anything, it is that in the future there must be a much stronger connection, a much stronger collaboration, between anthroposophists in all countries. Again and again, wherever I go, I am made aware that there is a real longing to hear about what is happening here or there. Today, anthroposophists live, one can truly say, almost in the whole civilized world, but they know very little about each other. Sometimes it is so strong that someone living on one street does not even know that someone else lives around the corner. They know nothing about each other. And one longs for an international organ of communication. But this cannot be created out of the idea, but only when the national groups are really there and have come together as an international group. Then we in Dornach will also really find the possibilities for creating such an understanding across the whole world. Until now, it has always been aimed at in the abstract. When the journal Das Goetheanum was founded in Dornach, the idea was of course that it should convey messages everywhere. Yes, but first it has to be received! First everything has to be reported to Dornach, and then it can be passed on from there. Then we also get international perceptions and international opinions. That would be the way to go. But it cannot be done from here; it can only be achieved through genuine international cooperation.

A national group like this has also been set up in France under the General Secretariat of Mlle. Sauerwein.

As for the other issues discussed here, it seems to me that not a single obstacle emerges from all the individual statements made, that Mr. Collison has the very best prerequisites for his General Secretariat. I cannot see that anything speaks against it. The things that he himself has expressed here, namely about Freemasonry, do not seem to me to be at all decisive. Because – please forgive me for having to be trivial about such things, but they are things of everyday life, and in everyday life some everyday things happen. Please forgive me for having to be trivial about this – I have always said, when it was a matter of whether someone should come into the anthroposophical movement from some other movement – in this case, freemasonry was meant – what matters is not what someone is in some other movement, but that when he enters this anthroposophical movement, he is a good anthroposophist. So it is really not a matter of whether someone also belongs, let us say, to a shoemakers' guild or a locksmiths' guild – I am not making any comparisons, I am just stating the principle. It does not need to be the case that, just because he belongs to a shoemakers' or locksmiths' guild and so on, it in any way detracts from what is anthroposophical in him. If he is a good anthroposophist, that is what matters for the anthroposophical movement. Whether he is a good, bad or mediocre freemason is of no concern to the Anthroposophical Society. And I actually find it somewhat strange that people pay attention to the judgments that one or the other has, if Mr. Collison's suspicions should be correct – otherwise it would be modified –; I always say: among anthroposophists this does not happen, but in general life it does happen that one or the other makes an unwise judgment. And it would be an unwise judgment to make the value of a member as an anthroposophist dependent on whether he is a Freemason or not.

I answered Mr. Collison's question in the Netherlands from this point of view. I said that a number of the oldest and most valuable members are Freemasons. I cannot imagine how an obstacle could arise from some form of Freemasonry for belonging to the Anthroposophical Society. I cannot imagine it at all. I think the Anthroposophical movement wants to be something in itself. It would not be able to bear fruit in the world if it did not work positively out of itself, let me use the expression, out of its own seed. That is what matters: what it works positively. How it appears when compared with one thing or another is not important. When I buy a suit, it is important that it suits my taste and arises out of my intentions. What does it matter if someone comes and says: “That suit doesn't look like the one the other person is wearing.” The point is really not to wear the other person's suit, but one's own. You don't put on freemasonry when you become an anthroposophist. So it is actually quite impossible to make this judgment.

But of course there is something else behind such a thing. It becomes - forgive me for saying so - in my opinion anthroposophy is not always valued highly enough by the members. There is a tendency in present-day humanity to always value more highly that which is older, which has more fuss about it, which acts more mysteriously, and so on, and to disparage that which appears openly and honestly simple, judging it by the standard of the fuss and the like, which presents itself in an indeterminate way. It is a kind of disparagement of the anthroposophical movement when it is judged in such a way that one says: it can be harmed by the fact that this or that member comes from this or that other movement. — It would have to be terribly weak if it could be harmed by such things!

So I think what is really behind it is that somewhere or other there is always a secret longing to say: this person or that person is not a good anthroposophist. —Then you look for reasons. We are always looking for reasons for what we like or dislike. We do not base our liking on the reasons, but we look for reasons for what we like or dislike. We look for reasons and then find, for example, that the other person is a Freemason and therefore cannot be a proper Anthroposophist, and so on. — One should see whether he is an Anthroposophist, a genuine one, and only then come to the judgment that he belongs or does not belong; one should not look at whether he is a Freemason or something like that.

This always reminds me of a judgment I heard in enlightened Weimar – but I don't mean that ironically, it's something I really heard once in the market square: Two women were talking, and one said of someone that he was a liberal. The other said, “What, a liberal is he? I've known him for years, he's a shoemaker!”

The thing is, though, that you would be judged in much the same way if you said: Freemasons can't be part of the anthroposophical movement!

It's not that I, myself, if it weren't for the opposition or hostility, would refrain from judging other contemporary movements. Of course, the moment hostility, open or secret, comes from some movement, then it is a matter of taking a stand. But as long as that is not the case, it is not possible to take any stand on other movements, officially or unofficially. And that is even one of the inner laws of development of such a movement as anthroposophy. If you are constantly pushing to one side and looking to the other, you do not have the freedom to proceed positively from your own inner seed of the matter. You have to try to surrender completely to your inner impulses, not to go outwards. And I think that should be the basis of the negotiations. And if this is the actual basis of the negotiations, then I think everything will go quite well.

I believe that Mr. Collison will accept the General Secretariat from this point of view, which will undoubtedly be his. He is the man who has done the most for the translation and distribution of anthroposophical literature here in England and in the colonies; he will also be able to represent and best serve the impulsive power of the Society here in the future. It is obvious that a man like Mr. Collison cannot write every letter himself, nor be present at every meeting or council. He must therefore have a truly capable secretary. The way in which the board is composed here is something that the hearts of the members, who take the position just described and forget for a while what other difficulties there are here, will best find out for themselves from their community. I believe that this is the best way to address the question at hand.

Dr. Steiner on the proposal to add his name to the Anthroposophical Society:

Just a few words on this: because of the form that the anthroposophical movement has taken over the years, as I mentioned earlier, it is always a difficult question for me to relate to something that is named externally. I have already pointed out that the anthroposophical movement has certain laws of its own for a spiritual movement of this kind, and that is what naturally makes me think again and again when I am dealing with a question like the one that Mr. Dunlop put to me a few days ago, or actually months ago, at last year's meeting, and so it is necessary for me to say a few words about the matter here.

Externally, the anthroposophical movement must be vigilantly represented. Internally, as I have already said today, it must work purely from its own germ and do nothing but that which is in accordance with real occult laws. This is why, for a long time now, in relation to everything that is really going on between me and the anthroposophical movement, I have wanted to be nothing in relation to society other than what arises from what I am absolutely necessary for within society.

So, within society itself, so to speak, I want to be nothing other than what comes about by doing certain things that have to be done by me.

In a certain respect, this will also apply to Dr. Steiner, with whom this has been discussed again and again for years, that she too should be considered, should be named, if one may say so, as that which must be done by her.

From this the position arises by itself. And this position should be improved neither by choice nor by anything else – or mostly it is only worsened – but it should be so that everything that exists in the relationship arises directly from the way in which the personalities are needed.

Now, of course, it is important that this be understood as the basis entirely within society, then, with regard to what one considers necessary, one can fully appreciate such reasons as those put forward by Mr. Dunlop. And insofar as it is understood in society that they are only the reasons that Mr. Dunlop has presented, in the representation, also the ideal representation of the company to the outside world - the identification of the company with me in a certain respect - insofar as these are the only reasons that perhaps make it desirable today that I do not resist accepting what is offered here for this area, I want to do it. But that is just one thing: accepting, taking on this name. The other thing, however, is that society really understands that I draw no other conclusion from such an official designation than the one I have drawn from the obviousness of the facts so far: I do not want to gain any other power, any other prestige, any other authority that may be reminiscent of a right by such a naming, but only want to work in society as it arises from the matter itself. I only want to be in society what I must be one day because the things that come into consideration want to be made by me. And that is what makes the matter a duality. Both sides must be given sufficient consideration.

If that is the case – and that is indeed the intention of Mr. Dunlop, the reasons have emerged from it – then there is nothing to prevent Mr. Dunlop's proposal from being accepted. I do not believe that it will lead to anything other than what I cannot deviate from, not even a single step. The anthroposophical movement must remain an inner one, must in certain respects bear the esoteric character, so that nothing else is done by myself than what directly arises from the matter. So the matter must be viewed only really thoroughly in this way: I do not strive for any other power than that which arises from the matter itself. I must do this because of the laws of spiritual movement. And precisely in view of the way in which the Anthroposophical Society and movement are situated in the world today, it must be most strictly observed that we do not deviate from what is prescribed by the inner laws of the movement itself.

• 1. No minutes of the proceedings exist, except for Rudolf Steiner's address, which was taken down in shorthand by Helene Finckh.

Report on the First Public Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart

My dear friends!

As I said yesterday and the day before, I will not be giving a regular lecture today, but intend to speak about what has happened in Germany in relation to our Anthroposophical Movement. Above all, I have to report on the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress.

This Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress is indeed a milestone for our Anthroposophical Movement. It has shown that today we can speak of an Anthroposophical Movement that is desired by the world and that fully corresponds to certain longings that exist in the world. This Anthroposophical Congress was entirely the sporadic idea of the leading personalities in Stuttgart. I myself had very little to do with this Stuttgart congress, its intention or its overall organization. With the exception of being present at an initial consultation and having individual aspects of the program discussed with me, the congress was entirely the initiative of the Stuttgart leaders, above all Ernst Uehli. The point was that for Ernst Uehli and those who joined him in holding the congress, the main thing was to first hold a kind of examination to determine the extent to which the anthroposophical movement as such can take root in our time, in the consciousness of people of our time. And I myself, as you may know, was not even present in Stuttgart at the very beginning of the congress. I only arrived on the evening of the second day, when I was to give my own first lecture there. So everything concerning the organization of this congress was taken care of in Stuttgart. And it turned out that this congress really did become a kind of milestone for our anthroposophical movement, because it was attended by far more people than we had expected. 1600 people took part in this congress.

Now, my dear friends, try to find a conference these days that 1600 people attend! From the outset, the conference was not just intended for members of the Anthroposophical Society, but was intended for a broad audience, for all those who are currently interested in the anthroposophical movement. And so this conference is a kind of milestone because it has brought together people who are interested in the anthroposophical cause in general, and because it was not just held for the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

It has become apparent in the most eminent sense that the interest that exists today in anthroposophy extends far, far beyond the membership of the Anthroposophical Society, which has now grown to over eight thousand members. But, as I said, this is about the anthroposophical movement as such. I ask you to bear this in mind, especially in connection with some things that I will have to say later.

When I came to Stuttgart, I was informed that the beginning of the congress had been promising in terms of content, that a lecture by Dr. Unger, in particular, had been extremely well received, and it was clear that there was not just a general sensational interest in what was to come to light at the conference, but that people really did have an inner relationship to what was presented. In particular, it was clear that the majority of those present took the endeavors seriously that aim to truly introduce anthroposophy into contemporary scientific life.

But one has only to imagine how difficult this task is. Nowhere is there more aversion to - if I may put it this way - an invasion of something new than in scientific circles. Nowhere is there more talk of dilettantism and amateurism than in these scientific circles. Nowhere is there more reluctance to allow a voice to anything that cannot prove its right to be heard by its own qualities than in these circles. Whether this reluctance is justified or not is not what we want to discuss today; today we just want to point out the fact. But one can say: If it were possible to get more and more positive collaborators, people who, with a completely scientific training, can bring the cause of anthroposophy into the world, then the situation is such that one can say that anthroposophy has the potential to achieve this goal of penetrating into the individual sciences and being taken seriously in them.

We must also be clear about how those who, in the usual sense, practice criticism or want to pass judgment on something like what took place in Stuttgart are completely at a loss and deeply hostile to such a thing. The benevolent assessments were those that actually remained silent. The others have continued to put forward all sorts of things from their unobjective, untruthful bases, which basically had nothing at all to do with what was discussed at this congress.

At this congress, a lecture activity was initially developed in a very serious way. In the mornings, lectures were given on the various branches of science from an anthroposophical point of view. Philosophical, scientific, medical and historical problems were discussed, as were economic, linguistic and historical-philosophical problems. And it is fair to say that the seriousness with which the issues were treated here must have made a serious impression on 1600 people. In this respect, the fact that 1600 people were simply brought together was something eminently significant.

Just imagine what the helpless journalists – I mean the helpless journalists in the face of such a thing – would have done if a congress had taken place under some old flag, in whatever field, at which 1,600 people were present!

We then organized the matter in such a way that in the morning the positive lectures on the most diverse branches of scientific life were held. The afternoon lectures were arranged in a special way, in such a way that one imagined that one of the luminaries of contemporary science had given a lecture or written a book here or there, and that a counter-presentation from an anthroposophical point of view should now be given against this lecture or this book. These counter-lectures were held in the afternoons. So, the idea was not to speak in some kind of theoretical way from some kind of background, but to introduce oneself in a very specific way: from this or that direction of contemporary science, this or that would have been discussed by very specific representatives, and one would have had to comment on it.

These co-presentations were, I believe, an especially good idea. And above all, these co-presentations have given us all sorts of extraordinary things worth listing. I leave it to others to judge other co-presentations; I would just like to mention two of these co-presentations here, as I have already done in other places.

First, there was a lecture by Dr. von Heydebrand. This lecture was directed against something that has been advocated by so-called experimental psychology and pedagogy of the present day. This is something that almost dominates today's pedagogical direction: experimental pedagogy, experimental psychology. And Dr. von Heydebrand had set out to give a counter-lecture. This counter-lecture – I do not shy away from making such judgments because it is necessary to make such judgments in the present – was indeed an epoch-making act. In this counter-presentation, we were dealing with a complete destruction of what is unjustified in experimental psychology and experimental pedagogy; of what is currently occupying all pedagogical circles so much and which, basically, is only proof of how the human soul has become inwardly alienated from the human soul, and how one wants to get at the child's soul through all kinds of external machinations, because the human soul is so alien to the child in teaching. It is no longer possible to approach it inwardly; man has gradually acquired an intellectualistic soulless nature; therefore, by experimenting on the child externally — which, in fact, in individual cases, it should not be denied, bears good fruit, especially when it is immersed in anthroposophy. We try to achieve what we can no longer achieve inwardly in an outward way, and we do not even know how to put the useful results of experimental education and experimental psychology into the right perspective.

My dear friends, if Dr. von Heydebrand had given this lecture at a teachers' conference, or even at a teachers' club, it would have been discussed at length in all the teachers' journals. The pros and cons would have been debated at length. This is the kind of judgment that one has to form at some point. We must be clear about one thing: what has emerged from earlier times, what was still significant just a few years ago, what was still a matter of time, must be replaced by something else; and we must decide to recognize where there is recognition to be had. We will not make progress in our movement, my dear friends, if we move forward in isolation from the world and do not consider what our movement can actually be in the here and now. We must be clear about the fact that it is of great significance that such an achievement is being brought into the world by the Waldorf teaching profession. That is what characterizes anthroposophy and the anthroposophical movement today. Anyone who today tries to find something radical in what is recognized as spiritual life will not be able to find it, and we must have the courage to make initial judgments.

My dear friends, if the Anthroposophical Society wants to fulfill its task, it must not limit itself to engaging in sectarianism in small circles here and there, but must go with the great tasks of the time. Then, however, this Anthroposophical Society must decide to offer disinterested recognition – not of the person, but of the matter – where such disinterested recognition is justified. And one must also have the courage to say: Here is an epoch-making achievement! That is what I wanted to mention as an aperçu emerging from the Stuttgart conference.

My dear friends, it cannot be the sole task of an Anthroposophical Society to hold introductory courses; they must be held, of course; everything that is customary must be done; but it cannot be the only task to do such things, but the task is to keep an open and alert eye for what is really emerging from the bosom of the anthroposophical movement and what is happening that fits into the overall spiritual movement of the present day. And only when we do not just sit down at such a congress and listen, sleepily listen, as if it were taken for granted, when we then go away and in our branches begin to , but if we actually spread the possibility within the entire Anthroposophical Society of bringing what is happening to direct consciousness, then the Anthroposophical Society fulfills its real task in relation to the present-day Anthroposophical Movement. It is not only important that we read books, not only that we pass on what is in the books, but that we grasp the movement as a living one, that we become aware that something like this lecture has happened; that we have to be a living work, that we have to come to such an understanding of the anthroposophical movement as an immediate reality, as something living.

And I would like to mention a second lecture. This is the one that Emil Leinhas gave in response to Wilbrandt's latest book “Economics”. I would like to say that this lecture by Emil Leinhas on Wilbrandt's “Economics” needs to be discussed from a wide variety of perspectives. You see, in Robert Wilbrandt we are dealing with a university political economist who is perhaps the most amiable and likeable of this body of political economists at the university, and his book “Oekonomie” is, after all, something that, in addition to the theoretical discussions, also contains many human nuances. Therefore, it is a book that is characteristic in the best sense, not in the worst sense, of contemporary university economics. But precisely by giving the counter-lecture against this book, Emil Leinhas was able to show how this whole economics, which even appears in an amiable way in one respect, how this whole economics is absolutely useless for anything alive. Our universities reflect on economic matters. These reflections seep out until they shape the popular lay theories that then take hold of millions and millions of people, who are now pouring over the civilized world in a destructive manner. The whole hollowness, the whole uselessness of this national economy has been exposed here, and indeed by a man who has spent his whole life immersed in the living economy, who always emphasizes, when asked, that he never actually attended a university, but who has gained all that he has gained from direct practice; a practitioner who, however, through his practical genius, has understood that which is contained in the “key points of the social question” and is inaugurated with it, to consider it with full seriousness; he has succeeded in delivering something in this co-presentation - I would characterize it as follows: If this had been said at any other congress, even in a restricted assembly for my sake, the first columns of all the major newspapers would have been talking about it for weeks, and then only further weeks with many pros and cons would have come. Because in fact, the whole university economics will be destroyed on the ground if what has come to light in this co-lecture is further developed.

My dear friends, if things are taken as they have often been spoken of here, then one must say: the courage must be mustered within the Anthroposophical Society to take a stand on such things, to make an initial judgment, to immediately recognize the value of such a thing, in order to feel in the Society as in such a community where something like this happens. Because it is not just a matter of developing theories, but of shaping a very specific life. We must have the courage to say what is and what is going on within the Anthroposophical Society. As I already indicated, the whole Corona cannot just sit there and then endure these things and afterwards take it for granted that two epoch-making deeds have occurred at such a congress. If we sleep through this as something self-evident, then, my dear friends, little by little the Anthroposophical Society will prove to be something that will gradually become a serious obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical cause. This Stuttgart Congress must at least teach that the Anthroposophical Society must not be an obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical movement. Today we can say that the anthroposophical movement is here, in the world. The Anthroposophical Society has been here for decades. Today it must grow into the anthroposophical movement. In a sense, it has seen the anthroposophical movement growing beyond it. It must grow into it, and it can only do so if it finds the courage to really recognize the things that need to be recognized. I consider myself particularly fortunate that we now have Emil Leinhas as managing director at the head of the “Kommender Tag” in Stuttgart - this has come about through various circumstances. After my return from Berlin, it was my task to assist in the appointment of Emil Leinhas as General Director of “Kommender Tag.” It must be considered a significant matter that this could happen immediately after this epoch-making “act” had been performed. But it must be said again and again about such things: What can the individual do when the sounding board is not there?

These things must be understood, because only when they are understood will they be met in the right way. And then the help will be there that even the most capable person needs if they are to apply their abilities in a single place. But at any rate, it should be clear in the souls of anthroposophists that it means something that a personality is now at the helm of the 'Der Kommende Tag' enterprise, whose capacity for such a task is to be discussed in the way that I have tried to do here tonight. I am reporting in this way, my dear friends, because I see the necessity for the Anthroposophical Society to grow into its necessary task, to grow into what the Anthroposophical Society can become when its stars are seen in the right way. The anthroposophical movement, by virtue of what it has been from the very beginning, tolerates no kind of sectarianism, no kind of obscurantism; it tolerates only an open, truthful, honest effort to work into the civilization of the present. But for this it is necessary to have the courage to fully recognize human values.

That, my dear friends, is what I would like to say in this regard. The Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart showed that anthroposophy can indeed have a broad cultural impact, and so it was not only our task to give two very well-attended eurythmy performances at the “Wilhelma Theater” in Stuttgart, but we also followed up the lectures presentations with short satirical and humorous eurythmy performances, in such a way that the mood that had developed in response to the serious presentations could continue during the short eurythmy performances that followed immediately.

So, what might it have been like? First came the serious lecture, where each afternoon we dealt with contemporary spiritual currents. One could be outraged by what was unhealthy, or perhaps even see the humor in what was coming out of this or that corner. When the eurythmic-satirical performances followed after a quarter of an hour's break, one could simply continue in this mood, but it then just erupted into laughter. It is always a very beautiful continuation when something that must be taken seriously can continue in laughter in a very dignified way. And from the mood with which 1600 people received all these things, one could see that strings in the soul are actually struck when the arrangements are made in just such a way - if I may use the philistine expression.

Then the intervals between the lectures were filled with negotiations: negotiations among the students, negotiations among the medical doctors, and so on, and so on, among the natural scientists, among the teachers. I could not be present at these negotiations because I was always involved in eurythmy rehearsals during this time. This is often overlooked, that things also need to be prepared. But overall, it seems that these discussions also took place in an extremely objective and animated manner.

During the course of the conference, we also had an anthroposophical assembly. Of course, the actual General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society still cannot be held due to the current circumstances. So, in a sense, we had an independent anthroposophical assembly that was only open to members of the Anthroposophical Society. The living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society were discussed at this assembly. It became clear that the Central Board had to reorganize itself. I say had to reorganize itself because those who know the principles of the Anthroposophical Society as I drafted them at the time will already know that this is the right expression. The Anthroposophical Central Council is not based on election, but on the fact that the first three members of the Central Council simply went public and asked for members, so that those people who wanted to come did come and joined the Central Council of their own free will. I recall the words of our friend Michael Bauer, who said at the time: We are standing here, and anyone who wants to join, may do so! It is therefore something that is based on freedom in the broadest sense, but which should prevent impossibilities from occurring with regard to the composition of such a central committee.

You know that the first members of the central committee were: Dr. Unger, Dr. Steiner and Michael Bauer. Michael Bauer was sickly and for a long time was unable to fully perform the duties of a member of the Executive Council. Dr. Steiner resigned earlier because from a certain point on she did not want to associate matters of a purely business nature with my name, because everything concerning the Anthroposophical Society must be done independently of me. I have always emphasized that I attach a certain importance to the fact that I myself am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society. So Dr. Steiner resigned years ago, and she requested Mr. Walther in Berlin to manage the business until such time as the central board could be reorganized, so that Dr. Unger was left alone on the central board, so to speak. When the Stuttgart conference approached, Mr. Walther resigned his office into the hands of the central committee, namely into the hands of Dr. Steiner, who had entrusted it to him as her successor. The problem was that Dr. Unger was now actually alone and had to co-opt the other two members. And of course something like that has to happen – I would like to say – with the consent of a certain majority, but they don't need to be elected in a certain philistine sense. And so the Stuttgart Central Council came about – it is called the “Stuttgart” because it has to be together if it is to be effective – so the Stuttgart Central Council came about through Dr. Unger, Emil Leinhas and Ernst Uehli. These personalities are, in their work, a sufficient guarantee that everything that must lead to certain results, which are necessary today for the anthroposophical movement, but can also lead to them if the necessary support is provided by the membership, will now happen from the center of the Anthroposophical Society.

I was then asked to say my piece at this anthroposophical meeting; but I had to point out precisely those things that are connected with what I have already said here today: that a living life must actually come about within the Anthroposophical Society, such a living life that what is happening is really seen and presented to the world everywhere. There will be enough to present to the world if the individual branches really take up what the central committee approaches them with, since it is the central committee's responsibility to ensure that this vibrant life reaches every single member. But that must happen. I can say: my speech, which I was asked to give, became a kind of diatribe; but that is what was expected of me after some of the things I have said over the years. Because, my dear friends, there has not always been enough preparatory work for what needs to be demanded. This unsparing, uncompromising recognition of what is happening, and above all the effort to judge when such things happen, as in the case of Miss Doctor von Heydebrand or Emil Leinhas, that, that is not sufficiently widespread. We will first have to get used to these things, because they cannot rest on that eye-rolling following, which has always formed out of a certain nebulous mysticism, and which works in small circles here or there or also in larger circles; these things have no real significance for the seriousness of the anthroposophical movement. What is to be recognized in the anthroposophical movement must be based on sound judgment and, above all, on something that is viable in the present state of the world.

So the tenor of the anthroposophists' assembly was actually that the anthroposophists were asked to take on the anthroposophical movement, to not lose this anthroposophical movement out of their hands, so to speak. To do that, the Anthroposophical Society needs to be reformed. And there is every reason to hope – and the names vouch for this – that the present central council will indeed leave all the drivel and ramblings unconsidered. : disregarded; of course it cannot be forbidden, that goes without saying - disregarded all the prattling and rambling in order to devote itself to the serious great tasks that really exist in all areas of life. But he must also find a willing response. And just as little as the individual can do anything, so three wise men can do something if the others do not exceptionally accommodate them and, above all, join in. It is this living interaction that must come into the anthroposophical movement as a reform before anything else.

The Stuttgart Congress, which was also dedicated to the memory of Goethe, took place in just such a way. I would like to mention only what, so to speak, was a kind of underlying theme running through the discussions at this congress.

My first lecture, which I gave on Monday, August 29, immediately after my arrival in Stuttgart, started with a description of the prevailing agnosticism of our time. What actually prevails in the present is a worship of agnosticism. You find it in the natural sciences, you also find it in the historical sciences, in the economic sciences, you find it in art, you find it in religion – you find this agnosticism everywhere. And it is only in the last third of the nineteenth century that a person who was a serious thinker was actually only considered to be one who was an agnostic, who said: It is right to observe the world of phenomena, to abstract the laws of nature from this world of phenomena, but for knowledge to renounce both what the phenomenon is in the world of external phenomena and what is deeper in the world. No Gnosticism, Agnosticism, that is what has emerged in all fields. One need only mention two pillars of agnosticism in Central Europe, as has already been mentioned here: the lecture given forty-nine or fifty years ago in Leipzig by the natural scientist Du Bois-Reymond, who concluded with the now famous words “Ignorabimus”, “We shall not know”, namely, we shall know nothing about that which is behind the external phenomena and which we call matter, and we shall know nothing about what is in the depths of human nature itself. That was the proclamation of agnosticism for Central Europe. For the West, Spencer and others have done it.

In the present day, all life is fundamentally dominated by this agnostic mood. In the field of history, this agnosticism found expression in the person of Leopold von Ranke, who said that one should follow the phenomena of history from the oldest times, as far as records are available, to the present day; but then there is the phenomenon of Christ Jesus; as Ranke says, he belongs to the “primal elements”. Here history cannot set about it, here history must pronounce its “Ignorabimus”, here we will never know anything.

Thus, in the face of that which, according to our anthroposophical view of all historical development on earth, basically stands as the primal factum on which all others depend, in the face of this primal factum, one of the greatest historians, Leopold von Ranke, “Ignorabimus,” as one of the greatest naturalists of modern times, Du Bois-Reymond, would say when he raised himself to the level of the essential entities that are active in the workings of nature, as the former said, “Ignorabimus”.

This agnosticism was not opposed by the work of the entire Stuttgart congress, not by the old Gnosticism, as slanderous people say, not by anything old at all, but by something completely new, something that has flowed from the spirit of contemporary science, that does not tie in with old traditions, which is thoroughly the spirit of the present, which must not be confused with all the mumbo jumbo and drivel that is constantly linked to ancient Egyptian and Oriental, but which is directly from the present, but which is a gnosticism against agnosticism.

And now, my dear friends, if I turn to the content of the Stuttgart conference, I would say that the general mood of the conference showed that the people who, for decades, have been the sign [gap in shorthand] that these have representatives among them again, have people within them who accept a new Gnosticism, who have an understanding for it, an understanding for the word: Man is there to know – and to act fully consciously and deliberately out of this knowledge. Gnosticism, in turn, has land in the world. This should be the conclusion drawn from what came to light in Stuttgart, for the reason that, although Gnosticism is also discussed elsewhere, it is done in an unscientific way; in Stuttgart it was done in a strictly scientific way, and not only in an abstract-general but in a strictly scientific way, in the most concrete fields of medical science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics and so on. So this Stuttgart congress was held under the sign of asserting Gnosticism against agnosticism.

I believe, my dear friends, that after what had preceded it, those who had not yet seen the Goetheanum in Dornach, when I presented the pictures of the Goetheanum in a slide lecture, could feel that these people were already in the right mood to sense what is actually wanted here in Dornach for contemporary civilization, as they could also feel from the eurythmy performances and other things, that anthroposophy is not some nebulous mysticism to which individual mavericks turn, but something that is primarily working on the great tasks of the time and in all different fields, for example, in the fields of art and the arts. That is what I would like to say to your souls, my dear friends.

Of course, many of you were not present at the Stuttgart Congress. But that is not the point. I used his example only to draw attention to the way in which members of the Anthroposophical Society should now take a living stand on what is happening, what is happening every day; how they should not just make themselves the bearers of theories or of something that satisfies them personally, but how they should feel as members of the Anthroposophical Society. If the members feel that they are members of this Anthroposophical Society, then what must come about will come about: the Anthroposophical Society will grow into the Anthroposophical Movement; because that is what we need, my dear friends.

Now, my dear friends, you see, there are also other symptoms that testify to the fact that the anthroposophical movement as such is now self-supporting. It is indeed precisely because of what happened in Stuttgart that much has been done to ensure that we have an anthroposophical movement today. But now that the anthroposophical movement is here, it is working through its own strength. This is shown, for example, by the fact that my Berlin lectures in the “Philharmonie” were not arranged by any anthroposophical group or branch or even by any anthroposophists, but entirely from outside, from the world, by people completely uninvolved in the Anthroposophical Society, namely from the Wolff'schen Konzertbureau, without anyone from the Anthroposophical Society having any part in the arrangement, and this lecture was truly sold out many days before it took place, and I was requested by the organizers, who were not Anthroposophists, to repeat it on the 22nd in Berlin. And I was asked to give these lectures in ten other German cities, immediately following that event, which was also not organized by the Anthroposophical Society or anything like that. Now, my dear friends, I could not do all that. I had all sorts of other tasks; many of you are here today. And so I could not give the second lecture and, of course, now that I have tasks burning on my fingers, I could not even do anything to give these lectures in the other ten German cities. I had to postpone it all. And I would say that it is necessary, my dear friends, that it be postponed. Why? Yes, my dear friends, because I have to return to the concerns here. Of course, I am always happy to return to what Dornach has become, but because I have to return to the concerns here! I spoke of these concerns when the general assembly of the “Goetheanum” was held here. At the time, I made an appeal to the members, which said: It is truly necessary that, now that the Mittelland can no longer make sacrifices because of the foreign currency issue, sacrifices be made from elsewhere so that we can continue this building in Dornach. Otherwise, as I said at the time, we will have to close this building within a short time. You can imagine that I could not possibly travel around Germany with a calm heart and simply forget these worries.

So far, I have not heard much that my appeal at the time has been met. Of course, my dear friends, I know all the things that are said as a justification for this lack of response, so to speak, but I also know how many things are not done that could already be done. And finally, it should not be the case that the central point remains in a state of limbo when the movement in those areas that are currently most in turmoil and suffering takes the course that I have just been able to tell you about. Well, I hope that you can imagine in your own souls what it would mean now that, precisely where everything is at its lowest point with regard to the old, people are longing for the new, how precisely there, I would say, how from the very core of the world's being the call comes that one should not abandon what wants to arise here as a central point.

Since that General Assembly, a few months have passed, and it should actually be seen whether that appeal has borne any fruit, or whether it must be the case that the anthroposophical movement must simply flee there – it does not need to flee, but I can put it that way – to where it is desired.

You may say: This has now become a diatribe. Yes, but my dear friends, we are also facing a serious matter, and in such a serious matter it is not always possible to speak only of beauty, but rather to speak the truth. But I would like to separate the latter completely from what the moral side of the matter is, which after all consists in the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must become an instrument that is the bearer of the anthroposophical movement. Then we can go through all the enmities that are blossoming in such abundance in all possible places in the world. But within the Anthroposophical movement itself, this must become our attitude, especially in view of what has happened in Germany.

You see, my dear friends, a whole series of eurythmy performances has been grouped around my lecture in Berlin. These eurythmy performances — how they were reported to you just a few weeks ago in the “Basler Nachrichten”! What vulgar attacks these eurythmy performances have suffered! Eight days ago today, we had a eurythmy performance in Berlin at the “Kammerspiele” theater. It was sold out many days in advance, and in the days leading up to it, requests for tickets kept coming in — the phone didn't even want to stop ringing —. It was completely sold out. And it can be said that this eurythmy performance was a success, a real, unfeigned, honest success, which can perhaps only be compared with the successes that Gerhart Hauptmann has had in the Deutsches Theater in recent decades, a completely undivided success. And the same was true of the performance that took place the day before in our own space on Potsdamer Strasse. The Potsdam venue is not smaller than the “Kammerspiele”, but larger, and it was not just for anthroposophists, but for the general public. I was unable to attend the following performances. There have been two more performances in Berlin so far, and I have been told that the success is increasing. Yesterday there was a performance in Dresden, but I have not yet received any report on how it went. Then two more performances will take place in Berlin.

So you see, we can move forward. What follows from anthroposophy as an art form is what is needed today. Don't think that I am deluding myself; I know how much sensationalism and how much sensation there is in these things, but that doesn't matter in this case because the thing is not calculated on sensation because the matter is serious, and if the supporters of the matter take it seriously, then now is the time to keep the matter warm; otherwise, of course, what has been achieved will mean a kind of culmination, and it will pass because there is a lot of sensation on the part of the outside audience. But many of those who today take up the matter only as a sensation will one day become serious people if the Anthroposophical Society finds the strength to support the matter.

So the fact that something has been achieved does not mean anything other than that a possibility has been given. But for us today, this possibility is a task, a task that will certainly lead forward if we show ourselves to be up to it. And it is a matter of rising to this challenge. In order to emphasize this in the right way, my dear friends, I wanted to give you this report today, which should stand out from the series of regular lectures, and which should show how the Anthroposophical Society should think about its reform and its progress. And basically, it should be one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to constantly take care of what is happening, to know what this Anthroposophical Society actually is. My dear friends, the essence of the Anthroposophical Society is not something that is mentioned here or there in a brochure or that appears in the title “Principles of the Anthroposophical Society”, one, two, three and so on. The essence of the Anthroposophical Society is what happens every day. What is printed as statutes and so on — well: in all philistine honor. I don't want to say anything else. But that is not reality; reality is what happens every day in reality, and furthermore, how what happens every day lives in our souls. And so the Anthroposophical Society should take it upon itself to care about what happens, to know what is going on.

Sometimes this Anthroposophical Society seems very strange to me. You ask: Anthroposophical Society, yes, what are its principles? Then you want to have a little booklet that tells you what it is. It seems to me as if I were presented with an 18-year-old person and did not take him or her as a living human being with all that he or she is, and say: I want his or her baptismal certificate, I want his or her birth certificate; in these I find everything worth knowing, and perhaps some notes that were made at the time or in the course of his or her life. That is what matters: always living in the present, because the eternal must be realized in the present, and not in things that have become acts.

It is something that matters – I hope that others will do it differently – it is important to me to emphasize these two achievements of the Stuttgart Congress that I have highlighted today; but everything that happens should be evaluated and understood in this way.

Really, my dear friends, I know that something like this can be misunderstood. It can be misunderstood on the numerous sides where ill will against us is so strong today. Recently in Dornach we had a special occasion to reflect on who now has authority in relation to the representation of a matter, and to which names one should turn. Nothing was found that was right, and in fact, all the names have been used up. Those who still had a full sound in 1914 are gone, especially if you look at it seriously. Now one should also dare, one should have the courage to say: something is coming! For try to find a teacher today who gives a lecture like Fräulein Doctor von Heydebrand! Try to find an economist or a political economist who gives a lecture like the one Emil Leinhas gave in Stuttgart! We must have the courage to recognize the significance of something even when we have the opportunity to listen to it ourselves, and not just accept it as an order from some authority, even if that authority is the fact that the people concerned hold a professorship or are directors of some famous bank or belong to this or that group, and so on. We also need the courage to judge. This is precisely what the Stuttgart conference and all the events in Germany are now proving. We must have no respect for what today, in any case, cannot begin to do, such as the Stuttgart conference, the Stuttgart congress. But we must have all the more feeling for what is actually there as living life.

And so, my dear friends, I would ask you to take this to heart, what happened in Stuttgart, for these things must have an effect. Hopefully in the future we will be able to bring about a congress here in Dornach; but for that we must maintain the continuity of the building of Dornach. For that we must really be able to continue building the building of Dornach. You will say: We have had courses here at the School of Spiritual Science and so on. We certainly have had those, but we also had them in Stuttgart; I did not speak of them today, but rather of the Stuttgart congress, which addressed everyone oriented to anthroposophy and which was attended as a congress, and which was something else again, which above all showed: There, there they come, there they have their longing. We cannot really say that about the summer course that immediately preceded it, and I would very much like to say so, because anthroposophy must not be a matter of necessity, which it is to a large extent in the Central European countries. Anthroposophy must be a matter of insight, of insight into the necessity for humanity to renew its spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to show by this example today.

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

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

I have another question, something completely different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today we shall occupy ourselves with a general theme, and indeed with the question of the significance and the tasks of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science in the present, and then, on Tuesday, with a more individual theme concerning individual destiny and being.

We have indeed often emphasised that Anthroposophy has a special task and significance for mankind in the present age. Whoever occupies himself with anthroposophy as a thinking human being must put this question again and again to himself: What aims does this spiritual movement pursue, and how are they related to the other tasks of our age? These tasks can be illuminated from the most diverse points of view, as we have often done. Today we will try to grasp the evolutionary path of mankind at that point on which we ourselves stand, to look a little into the future, and then ask ourselves: What task has anthroposophy with especial reference to the evolutionary stage of mankind at which we stand at present?

We know that since the great Atlantean Catastrophe, which entirely transformed the earth as man's dwelling-place, up to our own time, five great epochs of civilisation are to be distinguished. We have often designated these five epochs of culture as the old Indian, old Persian, the Chaldaic-Egyptian, the Greco-Latin epoch, and then the epoch in which we ourselves stand, the fifth, which prepared itself in—let us say—the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, and in the middle of which we now are. We must be clear that such divisions are naturally not meant as if any one epoch of evolution sharply came to an end, and then a new one began, but that the one gradually and slowly passes over into the other, and long before one such epoch has run its course, the new one already prepares itself within it.

Thus we can say of our own epoch of culture, of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: there is already now being prepared, and indeed in a very significant way, that which will constitute the real characteristic of the sixth epoch of civilisation. And in general, human beings of our present age will separate themselves into two parts: those who today form no idea of all this, who know nothing of the preparation of the sixth epoch, who live as it were blindly, for the day, and those who form ideas for themselves that something new is preparing, and who also know that what is being prepared is fundamentally something which must be accomplished through human beings, must be prepared by mankind. We can in a certain connection place ourselves in the time as a human being and say we are doing what is generally the custom, what the others do, what our parents have educated us for, or, we can so place ourselves that we know consciously the following: “If you will consciously be a link in the chain of humanity, then you must do something—either in yourself or in your environment—which contributes to what must come, i.e., to prepare the sixth period of culture as much as in you lies.” The possibility of thus making preparations for the sixth period of culture can only be understood by entering a little into the character of our own epoch. For this, the comparative method offers itself as the best.

We know that these epochs of time are essentially different from each other, and in the course of years, in our anthroposophical movement, we have brought forward various characteristics whereby they are distinguished. We have pointed to the old Indian Period of civilisation, and have shown that the soul-qualities of man then were different from what they later were, how man then was still endowed to a high degree with clairvoyant consciousness. And we have shown that evolution through the following epochs consisted in man losing this clairvoyance ever more and more, and having to limit his power of perception and understanding more and more to the physical world. We have seen how the fourth epoch of civilisation was slowly prepared, in which man, as it were, appeared entirely in the physical world, so that that Being Whom we call Christ Jesus could incarnate in the physical world as a being, as a human being of the physical world. We have then seen how since that time, through a certain stream, the following appeared: how all human powers strengthened themselves still further in the physical world, how indeed the materialistic tendency of our age, the whole urge of man only to hold as valid what offers itself in the physical surrounding world, is connected with a further descent of man into the physical world. But by no means should things remain thus in evolution. Humanity must ascend again into the spiritual world, ascend with all the attainments men have acquired, with all the fruits of the physical world. And Anthroposophy should be just that which can bring to people the possibility of again ascending into the spiritual world.

Now we can say: “Immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe, there were numerous human beings who knew through their direct powers of perception: Around us is a spiritual world. We live in a spiritual world.” Fewer and fewer became the human beings who knew this; more and more were the powers of man limited to the perception of the senses. But if, on the one hand, today, the power of perception for the spiritual world is the least conceivable, yet, on the other hand, something is preparing in our age which is so significant that already for a great number of people, quite different faculties will exist in that incarnation which follows the present one. As the faculties of man have changed during the five epochs of culture, so they will also change into the sixth, and a great number of people today will clearly show already in their next incarnation through their whole mood of soul, that their faculties have essentially changed. Today, we will make clear to ourselves how different these souls of human beings will be in the future, with a great number already in the next incarnation, with others, in the incarnation following.

We could also look back in another way into past epochs of human evolution. Then we would see that the farther we go back to the ancient clairvoyance, at the same time, the more we have united with the human soul, what one can call the character of group-soulness [Gruppenseelenhaftigkeit]. It has often been pointed out to you that the consciousness of the group-soulness was existing in the ancient Hebrew people in an eminent degree. He who felt himself—really consciously felt himself as a member of the ancient Hebrew people—said to himself—especial attention has been drawn to this—” As an individual man I am a transitory phenomenon, but in me lives something that has an immediate connection with all the soul-being which has streamed down since the racial father Abraham.” A member of the old Hebrew people felt that. We can indeed esoterically admit as a spiritual phenomenon what was thus felt by the old Hebrew people. We understand better what then happened if we keep the following in mind.

Let us consider an old Hebrew initiate. Although initiation was not so frequent among the ancient Hebrews as among other peoples, we could not characterise such a real initiate otherwise—not merely one initiated into the theories and the Law, but an initiate really seeing in the spiritual worlds—than by taking into consideration the entire racial peculiarity. It is the custom today in external science, which busies itself with documents without any misgiving, to take everywhere what stands in the Old Testament, to test it by all kinds of external records, and then find it unsubstantiated. We shall have occasion to point out that the Old Testament gives the facts more faithfully than external historical records. In any case, spiritual science shows that a blood relationship of the Hebrew people can really be demonstrated back to the racial father Abraham, and that the assumption of Abraham as racial father is fully justified. This was something especially known in the old Hebrew secret schools: Such an individuality, such a soul-being as that of Abraham, was not merely incarnated as Abraham, but is an eternal being, who remained existing in the spiritual world. And in truth a real initiate was inspired by the same spirit, as he who inspired Abraham, and he could testify for him of himself, that he was permeated by the same soul-nature as Abraham. There was a real connection between every initiate and the racial father Abraham. We must hold that fast: that expressed itself in the feeling of membership of the old Hebrew people. That was a kind of group-soulness. One felt what expressed itself in Abraham as the group-soul of the people. One felt group-souls similarly in the rest of humanity. Mankind in general goes back to group-souls. The farther we go back in human evolution, the less do we find expressed the single individuality. That which we still find today in the animal kingdom: that a whole group belongs together—that was existing among mankind, and appears ever clearer and clearer, the farther we go back to ancient times. Groups of human beings then belonged together, and the group-soul was essentially stronger than what constituted the individual soul in the single human being.

We can now say: Today in our time, the group-soulness of people is still not yet overcome, and whoever believes that it is completely overcome does not keep in mind certain finer phenomena of life. Whoever keeps it in mind will very quickly see that certain human beings not only appear alike in their physiognomy, but that also the soul-qualities are similar in groups of human beings: that one can, as it were, divide human beings into categories. Each person can still today be reckoned into a certain category; with reference to this or the other quality, he will belong perhaps to different categories, but a certain group-soulness is not only valid because the races exist, but also in other connections. The boundaries drawn between the single nations fall away more and more; but other groupings are still perceptible. Certain basic characteristics stand so connected in some people, that he who will only look, can still today perceive the last relics of the group-soulness of man.

Now we, in our present age, are living in the most eminent sense, in a transition. All group-soulness has gradually to be stripped off. Just as the gaps between single nations gradually disappear, as the single parts of different nations understand each other better, so also will other group-soul qualities be shed, and the individual nature of each single person come to the foreground more and more.

We have therewith characterised something quite essential in evolution. If we want to grasp it from another side, we can say: That idea whereby the group-soulness chiefly expresses itself loses meaning ever more and more in the evolution of mankind, i.e., the idea of race. If we go back beyond the great Atlantean catastrophe, we see how the human races are prepared. In the old Atlantean age human beings were grouped according to external characteristics in their bodily structure, far more strongly than today. What we call races today are only the relics of those important distinctions between human beings as were customary in old Atlantis. The idea of race is only really applicable to old Atlantis. Since we deal with a real evolution of mankind, we have never employed the idea of race in the most eminent sense for the post-Atlantean age. We do not speak of an Indian race, a Persian race, etc., because that is no longer correct. We speak of an old-Indian period of civilisation, of an old-Persian period of civilisation, etc. And it would be utterly devoid of sense if we would speak of our time preparing a sixth race. If relics of the old Atlantean distinctions, of their group-soulness, are still existing in our time, so that one can still say the racial division continues to work on—that which is preparing for the sixth period of time consists just in the character of race being stripped off. That is the essential. Therefore it is necessary that that movement which is called the anthroposophical movement, which should prepare the sixth period of time, adopts in its basic character this stripping off of the character of race—that especially it seeks to unite people out of all “races,” out of all nations, and in this way bridges over these differences, these distinctions, these gaps, which are existing between various groups of human beings. For the old racial standpoint had in a certain connection a physical character, whereas what will fulfil itself in the future will have a much more spiritual character. Therefore it is so urgently necessary to understand that our anthroposophical movement is a spiritual one, which looks to the spirit, and overcomes just that which arises from physical distinctions, through the force of a spiritual movement, It is, of course, thoroughly comprehensible that any movement has, as it were, its childish illnesses, and that in the beginning of the theosophical movement, matters were so represented as if the earth fell into seven periods of time—they were called Root-races—and each of these Root-races into seven sub-races, and that would always repeat itself, so that one could always speak of seven races, and seven sub-races, etc. But one must get beyond the illnesses of childhood, and be clear that the idea of race ceases to have any meaning, especially in our age.

Something else, in addition, is being prepared—something connected with the individuality of man in a quite special way—in man becoming ever more and more individual. It is only a question of this occurring in the right sense, and the anthroposophical movement should serve to this end, that human beings become individualities—or we could also say personalities—in the right sense. How can it do this?

Here we must look to the most striking new quality of man's soul, which is preparing. The question is often put: Well, if reincarnation exists, why does a person not remember the former incarnations? That is a question which I have often answered. Such a question appears as when one brings along a four-year-old child, and because it is a human being, and cannot reckon, one would say: Man cannot reckon. But let the child become ten years old, and then it will reckon. It is thus with the human soul. If today it cannot remember, yet, the time will come in which it can remember—the time when it has the same powers as he possesses who is initiated today. But just today that transition is happening. There exist today a number of souls who are so far on in our time, who stand close to the moment where they will remember their former incarnations, or at least the last one. A whole number of human beings today are, as it were, before the self-opening of the door to that embracing memory, which comprises not only the life between birth and death, but the previous incarnations, or at least, the last, in the first place. And when, after the present incarnation, a number of human beings are reborn, then they will remember this present incarnation. It is merely a question of how they remember. Anthroposophical development should give help and direction to remember in the right way.

In order to characterise this anthroposophical movement from this point of view, it must be said: Its character is that it leads man to realise in the right way what one calls the human “I,” the innermost member of the human being. I have often pointed out that Fichte rightly said, most human beings would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava on the moon, than as an “I.” And if you consider how many people there are in our time who make any idea at all of what is in the “I,” i.e., of what they themselves are, then in general, you would come to a very dismal result.

When this question arises, I have always to call to mind a friend I had more than thirty years ago, and who as a quite young student was completely inoculated at that time by the materialistic mood—today it is more modern to say “monistic” mood. He was already injected by it, in spite of his youth. He always laughed when he heard something was contained in man which could be designated as spiritual being; for he was of the view, that what lives as thought in us, was produced by mechanical or chemical processes in the brain. I often said to him: “Look, if you earnestly believe this as a content of life, why do you continually tell lies?” He really lied, continually, because he never said: “My brain feels, my brain thinks, but: I think, I feel, I know this or that.” Thus he built up a theory which he contradicted with every word—as every man does; for it is impossible to maintain what one imagines as a materialistic theory. One cannot remain truthful, if one thinks materialistically. If one would say: My brain loves you, then, one should not say “you,” but, my brain loves your brain. People do not make this consequence clear. But it is something which is not merely humoristic, but something which shows what a deep basis of unconscious untruthfulness lies at the basis of our present education.

Now, most people really would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon, i.e., as a piece of compact matter, than as that which can be called an “I” And today one naturally comes least of all to a grasp of the “I” through external science, which indeed, as such, must think materialistically, according to its methods. How can one attain this grasp of the “I”? How can one gradually get an idea, a concept of what he instinctively feels, when he says: I think? Solely and alone through this, that he knows by means of the anthroposophical view of the world, how this human being is constituted, how the physical body has Saturn character, the etheric body Sun character, the astral body Moon character, and the Ego, Earth character. When we keep in mind everything we thus get as ideas out of the entire cosmos, then we understand how the “I,” as the real Master-worker, labours at all the other members. And so we come gradually to an idea [Begriff] of what we profess with the word “I.” We gradually struggle up to the highest ideas of this “I,” if we learn to understand [verstehen] such a word. We not merely feel ourselves as a spiritual being if we feel ourselves within an “I,” but when we can say: In our individuality lives something which was there before father Abraham. When we cannot merely say: I and father Abraham are one, but: I and the FATHER, i.e., the Spiritual, weaving and living through the world. What lives in the “I,” is the same spiritual substance that weaves and lives through the world as Spirit. Thus we gradually work our way up to understand this “I,” i.e., the bearer of the human individuality, that which goes from incarnation to incarnation. In what way, however, do we grasp the “I”? Do we grasp the world at all through the anthroposophical view?

This anthroposophical view of the world arises in the most individual way, and is, at the same time, the most un-individual thing that can be conceived. It can only arise in the most individual way by the secrets of the cosmos revealing themselves in a human soul, into which stream the great spiritual beings of the world. And so the content of the world must be experienced in the human individuality in the most individual way, but at the same time, it must be experienced with a character of complete impersonality. Whoever will experience the true character of cosmic mysteries must stand entirely on the standpoint from which he says: Whoever still heeds his own opinion, cannot come to Truth. That is indeed the peculiar [eigenartige] nature of anthroposophical truth that the observer may have no opinion of his own, no preference for this or the other theory, that he may not love this or the other view more than any other because of his own especial individual qualities. As long as he stands on this standpoint, it is impossible for the true secrets of the world to reveal themselves to him. He must pursue knowledge quite individually, but his individuality must develop so far, that it no longer has anything personal, i.e., anything of his own peculiar sympathies and antipathies. This must be taken strictly and earnestly. Whoever still has any preference for these or the other ideas and views, whoever can incline to this or the other because of his education or temperament, will never recognise objective truth.

We have attempted here, this summer, to grasp Oriental wisdom from the standpoint of Western learning. We tried to be just towards Oriental wisdom, and truly presented it in such a way that it received its full rights. (The East in the Light of the West, cloth, crown 8vo, pp. 222. 7s. 6d) One must strongly emphasise that in our time it is impossible for independent spiritual knowledge to decide through any special preference for either the Oriental or the Occidental view of the world. Whoever says according to his different temperament he prefers the nature, the laws of the world as existing in the Oriental or correspondingly in the Occidental view, has not yet a full understanding for what is here essential. One should not decide, e.g., for the greater significance of, let us say, the Christ, as compared with what Oriental teaching recognises, because one inclines to the Christ through one's Occidental education or one's temperament. One is only fitted to answer the question “How is the Christ related to the Orient?” when from a personal standpoint the Christian is as indifferent to one as the Oriental. As long as one has preference for this or the other, so long is one unsuited to make a decision. One first begins to be objective when one lets the facts alone speak, when one heeds no reasons derived from personal opinion, but lets facts alone speak in this sphere.

Therefore something meets us in the anthroposophical world-view, if it meets us today in its true form, which is inwardly woven with the human individuality, because it must spring out of the “I”-force of the individuality, and on the other hand, must be independent, so that this individuality is again quite indifferent. That person in whom anthroposophical wisdom appears must be unconcerned by it, must be independent of it. This is essential, that he has brought himself so far, that he forces nothing of his own colouring into these matters. Then they will indeed be individual, because the spiritual cannot appear in the light of the moon, or the stars, but only in the individuality, in the human soul; but then, on the other hand, this individuality must be so far on that it can exclude itself in the production of what constitutes the wisdom of the world. Thus that which appears to mankind through the anthroposophical movement will be something which concerns each human being, no matter from what race, nation, etc., he is born, because it applies itself only to the new humanity, to man as such, not to an abstract, general man, but to each single human being. This is the essential. As it proceeds out of the individuality, out of the kernel of man's being, so it speaks to the deepest kernel of man's being, so it grasps this kernel of man. As we usually speak from man to man, fundamentally it is only surface speaking to surface, something which we have not united with the innermost kernel of our being. Understanding between man and man, full understanding, is hardly possible today in any other sphere, than in that where what is produced comes from the centre of man's being, and, when it is understood aright by another, speaks again to his centre. Hence in a certain connection, it is a new speech that is spoken by Anthroposophy. And if today we are still obliged to speak in the various national languages what has to be announced, the content is a new speech, which is spoken by anthroposophy.

What is spoken today outside in the world is a speech which is only really valid for a very limited sphere. In ancient times, when people still looked into the spiritual world through their old, dreamy clairvoyance, their word then meant something which existed in the spiritual world. The word signified something which existed in the spiritual world. Even in Greece, things were still different from what they are today. The word “idea” used by Plato signified something different from the word “Idea,” as used by our modern philosophers. These modern philosophers can no longer understand Plato, because they have no perception of what he called “Idea,” and they confuse it with abstract concepts. Plato still had something spiritual before him, even if already rarefied; it was still something quite real. Then also, one still had in the words the sap of the spiritual, if one may express it thus. You can trace that in the words. If anybody today uses the word “wind,” “air,” then he means something external, physical. The word wind here corresponds to something external, physical. If, e.g., in old Hebrew, the word wind, “Ruach,” was employed, one did not merely mean something external, physical, but a spiritual, which swept through space. When man breathes in today he is told by materialistic science that he simply inhales material air; in ancient times, one did not believe one inhaled material air, but then one was clear that one inspired something of spirit, or at least, of soul. Thus the words then were absolutely designations for spirit and soul. That has ceased today; today speech is limited to the external world, or at least, those who seek to stand at the peak of the age busy themselves seeing only a materialistic meaning, even behind those things where it is still obvious they are derived from soul and spirit. Physics speaks of an “impact” of bodies. It has forgotten that the word “impact” is derived from that which a living being performs out of its inner living nature, when it pushes another being. The original significance of words is forgotten in these simple things.

And so today, our speech—and this is most of all the case with scientific speech—has become a speech which is only able to express what is material. Because of this, what is in our soul while we speak is only comprehensible to those faculties of our soul which are bound to the physical brain as their instrument. And then the soul understands nothing more of all that is designated with these words, when it is disembodied. When the soul has gone through the gate of death, and no longer employs the brain, then all scientific considerations of today are forms quite incomprehensible to the disembodied soul. It does not even hear or perceive what one expresses in the speech of the time. This has no longer any meaning for a disembodied soul, because it only has meaning for what is the physical world. That again is something which is still more important to consider in what one can call the mode of thinking, the method of representation. It is even more important to consider it there than in theory, because it is a question of life, not of theory, and it is characteristic that one can see in the theosophical movement itself how materialism has crept in. Because it is the mode of the time, it has often crept into the theosophical view, so that real materialism prevails even in theosophy itself, e.g., when one describes the etheric or life-body. Whereas a person should exert himself to come to a grasp of the spirit, one mostly describes it as if it were a finer matter; and the astral body also. One starts as a rule from the physical body, goes further to the etheric or life-body, and says: that is built after the pattern of the physical body, only finer—thus one progresses to Nirvana. Here one finds descriptions which take their images from nothing else than the physical. I have already experienced that when one wanted to express the good feeling present in a room among those present, one did not do so directly, but one said: Fine vibrations are existing in this room. One did not heed that one materialises what exists spiritually in a mood if one thinks the space filled with a kind of thin cloud, permeated with vibrations. That is what I should like to call the most material way of thinking possible. Materialism has even got by the neck those who want to think spiritually. That is only a characteristic of our time, but it is important that we are conscious of it. And therefore we must pay especial heed to what has been said: that our speech, which is always a kind of tyrant for human thinking, has implanted in the soul a tendency to materialism. And many, who today would so willingly be thorough idealists, express themselves entirely in a materialistic sense, misled by the tyranny of speech. That is a speech which can no longer be understood by the soul as soon as it no longer feels itself bound to the physical brain.

There is, indeed, something else, you may believe it or not. For one who knows occult perception, real spiritual perception, the method of presentation often employed today in theosophical-scientific writings causes real pain—because it appears irrational to him, if he begins to think, no longer with the physical brain, but with the soul, which is no longer bound to the physical brain, i.e., which really lives in the spiritual world. As long as one thinks with the physical brain, so long can he go on characterising the world thus. As soon, however, as one begins to develop spiritual perception, then, to speak of things in this way ceases to have any meaning. Then indeed it even causes pain if one must hear the utterance: There are good vibrations in this room, instead of: A good feeling prevails here. That at once causes pain in anyone who can really see things spiritually, because thoughts are realities. Space then fills itself out with a dark cloud, if one forms the thought: Good vibrations are in this space, instead of: A good mood is prevailing.

It is now the task of the anthroposophical way of thinking—and the method of thought is more important than the theories—that we learn to speak a language, which is really not merely understood by the human soul so long as it is in a physical body, but understood also when this soul is no longer bound to the instrument of the physical brain; for instance, either by a soul still in the body, but able to perceive spiritually, or by a soul gone through the gate of death. And that is the essential! If we bring forward those ideas which explain the world, which explain the human being, then that is a speech which cannot merely be understood here in the physical world, but also by those who are no longer incarnated in physical bodies, but live between death and a new birth. Yes, what is spoken on our anthroposophical basis, is heard and understood by the so-called dead. There they are fully one with us on a basis where the same speech is spoken. There we speak to all human beings. Because in a certain connection, it is chance whether a human soul is in a body of flesh, or in the condition between death and a new birth. And we learn through anthroposophy a speech comprehensible to all human beings, whether they are in the one or other condition. Thus we speak a speech within the field of anthroposophy which is spoken also for the so-called dead. We really contact the innermost kernel of man, the innermost being of man, through what we cultivate in a real sense in anthroposophical considerations, even if they appear apparently abstract. We penetrate into the soul of man. And because we penetrate to the soul of man, we liberate man from all group-soulness, i.e., man becomes in this way more and more capable of really grasping himself in his ego, his “I.” And that is the characteristic, that those who come to anthroposophy today, who really take up anthroposophy, appear in comparison with others who remain far from it, as if through anthroposophical thoughts, their ego would crystallise as a spiritual being, which is then carried through the gate of death. With the others, in that place where the I-being is, which remains there—which is now there in the body, and which remains after death—there is a hollow space, a nothingness. Everything else which one can take up as ideas today, will become more and more worthless for the real kernel of man's soul-being. The central point of man's being is grasped through what we take up as anthroposophical thoughts. That crystallises a spiritual substance in man; he takes that with him after death, and with that he perceives in the spiritual world. He sees and hears with it in the spiritual world, with it he penetrates that darkness which otherwise exists for man in the spiritual world. And thereby it is brought about that when through these anthroposophical thoughts and way of thinking man develops this “I” in him today, which now stands in connection with all the world wisdom we can acquire—if he develops it—he carries it over also into his next incarnation. Then he is born with this now developed “I,” and he remembers himself in this developed “I.” That is the deeper task of the anthroposophical movement today, to send over to their next incarnation a number of human beings with an ego in which they remember themselves as an individual ego. They will be the human beings who form the kernel of the next period of civilisation. These people who have been well prepared through the anthroposophical spiritual movement, to remember their individual “I,” will be spread over the whole earth. For the essential in the next period of culture will be that these people will not be limited by single localities, but spread over the entire earth. These individual people will be scattered over the whole earth, and within the whole earth sphere will be the kernel of humanity, who will be essential for the sixth period of civilisation. And so it will be the case among these people, that they will know themselves as those who in their previous incarnation strove together for the individual “I.”

This is the right cultivation of that soul-faculty of which we have spoken. This soul-faculty so develops, that not only those just described will have this memory. More and more human beings will have this memory of their former incarnation—in spite of their not having developed the “I.” But they will not remember an individual “I,” because they have not developed it, but they will remember the group-ego, in which they have remained. Thus people will exist, who in this incarnation have cared for the development of their individual “I”—they will remember themselves as independent individualities, they will look back and say: You were this or the other. Those who have not developed the individuality will be unable to remember this individuality.

Do not think that through mere visionary clairvoyance one acquires the faculty of remembering the previous ego. Humanity was once clairvoyant. If mere clairvoyance sufficed, then all would remember, for all were clairvoyant. It is not merely a matter of being clairvoyant—humanity will already be clairvoyant in the future—it is a matter of having cultivated the ego in this incarnation, or not. If one has not cultivated it, it is not there as an inner human being; one looks back, and remembers as a group-ego, what one had in common. So that these people will say: Yes, I was there, but I have not freed myself. These people will then experience that as their FALL, as a new Fall of mankind, as a falling back into conscious connection with the group-soul. That will be something terrible for the sixth period of time; to be unable to look back to oneself as an individuality, to be hemmed in by not being able to transcend the group-soulness [Gruppenseelenhaftigkeit]. If one will express it strongly, one could say: The whole earth with all it produces (this holds at least as an image) will belong to those who now cultivate their individuality; those, however, who do not develop their individual “I,” will be obliged to join on to a certain group, from which they will be directed as to how they should think, feel, will, and act. That will be felt as a fall, a falling back, in the future humanity.

So we should regard the anthroposophical movement, the spiritual life, not as mere theory, but as something which is given us in the present, because it prepares what is necessary for the future of mankind.

If we grasp ourselves aright in that point where we are now, whence we have come from out the past, and then look a little into the future, then we must say: Now the time is come where man begins to develop the human faculty of remembering backwards. It is only a question of our developing it aright, i.e., that we train in us an individual “I;” for only what we have created in our own soul can we remember. If we have not created it, then there only remains to us a fettering memory of a group-ego, and we feel it as a kind of falling down into a group of higher animality. Even if the human group-souls are finer and higher than the animal, yet they are but group-souls. Humanity of an early age did not feel that as a fall, because they were intended to develop from group-soulness to the individual soul. If they are now held back, they fall consciously into it, and that will be the oppressive feeling in the future of those who do not take this step aright, either now or in a later incarnation. They will experience the fall into group-soulness.

The real task of anthroposophy, is to give the right impulse. We must thus grasp it within human life. If we keep in mind that the sixth period of time is that of the first, complete conquest of the racial idea, then we must be clear, that it would be fantastic to think that even the sixth “race” starts from one point on the earth, and develops like the earlier races. Progress is made by ever-new progressive methods of evolution appearing. By progress we do not mean that what was valid as ideas for earlier times should also hold for the future. If we do not see this, the idea of progress will not be quite clear to us. We will as it were fall again and again into the error of saying: So and so many rounds, globes, races, etc., and it all goes on revolving round again and again in the same manner.* (*This refers to the descriptions set forth in the books of the “Theosophical Society,” 1909.) One cannot see why this wheel of rounds, globes, races, etc., should always revolve again. It is a question of seeing that the word “race” is a term only having validity for a certain time. This idea no longer has any meaning for the sixth period. Races have only in themselves the elements which have remained from the Atlantean age.

In the future, that which speaks to the depths of man's soul will express itself more and more in the external nature of man; and that which man on the one side as a quite individual being has acquired, and yet, again experiences unindividually, will express itself by working out even to the human countenance; so that the individuality of man—not the group-soulness—will be inscribed for him on his countenance. That will constitute human manifoldness. Everything will be acquired individually, in spite of its being there through the overcoming of individuality. And we will not meet groups among those who are seized of the ego, but the individual will express itself externally. That will form the distinction between human beings. There will be such as have acquired their egoity; they will indeed be there over the whole earth with the most manifold countenances, but one will recognise through their variety how the individual ego expresses itself even into the gesture. Whereas among those who have not developed the individuality, the group-soulness will come to expression by their countenance receiving the imprint of the group-soulness, i.e., they will fall into categories similar to each other. That will be the external physiognomy of our earth: a possibility will be prepared for the individuality to carry in itself an external sign, and for the group-soulness to carry in itself its external sign.

This is the meaning of earthly evolution, that man acquires more and more the power of expressing externally his inner being. There exists an ancient script in which the greatest ideal for the evolution of the “I,” the Christ Jesus, is characterised by the saying: When the two become one, when the external becomes like the inner, then man has attained the Christ nature in himself. That is the meaning of a certain passage in the so-called Egyptian Gospel. One comprehends such passages out of anthroposophical wisdom.¹

After we have attempted today to grasp the task of anthroposophy out of the depths of our knowledge, we will consider something on Tuesday which as a spiritual problem—as a specially individual affair of man—can lead us to his destiny, to his being.

• 1. f. Dr. Steiner's Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 6, published by Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company.