The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In viewing the soul of man, we find its inner element composed of thinking or forming of mental representations, feeling, and willing. You know that these three soul-activities have been often discussed by me. Nevertheless, I should like to say a few words today about this threefold constitution of the human soul, inasmuch as it is in especial connection with the present cycle.

Life in the waking state is essentially concerned with our mental activity. Of what we are thinking we are fully conscious in the waking state. If you ask yourself: Are we as conscious of the feelings that we experience in the waking state as we are of the mental representations? the answer would have to be in the negative. In a certain sense, feelings are apprehended but dimly and vaguely by waking consciousness. And if you compare the experiences of your world of feelings with those confronting you in the manifold imagery of the dream-world, you will find the same degree of consciousness in the world of feelings that you do in the world of dreams. In the world of feelings, we dream in a different way; yet also in that world it is still only dreaming.

We may be easily misled regarding the character of this world of feeling by translating that which is felt into mental representations. We make a mental image of our feelings. In this way, the feelings are raised into waking consciousness. Yet the feelings, as such, are no more conscious than dreams.

What remains still more unconscious—it might be said, wholly unconscious—are man's will-impulses. Try to visualize what you know of the faculty generally called willing. Suppose that you stretch out your hand in order to grasp something. First, you have a mental image of the fact that you are going to stretch out your hand. This is what you intend to do. But how this intention streams down into your whole organism; how it is imparted to the muscles, the bones, so that your hand be enabled to grasp an object: of all this you know as little as you know, in your ordinary consciousness, of what happens to your ego during sleep. Only after grasping the object, you become aware—again by means of a mental image—of having carried out a movement.

What lies between the mental image forming the intention and the image engendered within you after this intention has been acted upon externally, what happens within your organism between these two stages is hidden by a sleep which takes possession of you even in the waking state. Willing is a matter of sleeping, feeling a matter of dreaming. And only mental activity, thinking, is a matter of real waking.

Here we have, even in the waking state, the threefold human soul: the waking soul that forms mental images; the dreaming soul that feels; and the willing soul that sleeps. Hence man can never know, out of his ordinary consciousness, what goes on in those regions where the will is weaving and living.

If, however, we illuminate by the methods of anthroposophical research the regions where the will is pulsating, we discover the following: The intention of carrying out a will-impulse is primarily a thought, a mental image. At the moment when this intention streams down into the organism, something is produced which might be called a process of inner combustion. Invariably, this combustion is kindled in the organism along the entire path followed by the will-impulse. The combustion of metabolic products existing within you brings forth the movement used by the arm in order to carry out a will-impulse. Hence someone who wills an action undergoes, in a physical sense, a burning-up and consuming of his metabolic products. The metabolic products must be renewed for the reason that they are being constantly burned up, consumed by the will-impulse.

It is different in mental activity. Here a constant depositing of salt-like particles takes place. Earthy, salt-like, ash-like particles are excreted from the organism. Thus, in a physical sense, thinking or mental activity is a depositing of salt. Willing is a combustion. To the spiritual view, human life appears as a continuous depositing of salt from above, and a combustion from below. This combustion has the effect of preventing by the fire within our body—if I may express it in this way—our perceiving, by means of our ordinary consciousness, the real nature of will. This combustion puts us to sleep in regard to our will, or will-impulses.

And what becomes invisible to our ordinary consciousness while we are asleep? If by the methods of spiritual research, we illuminate the organic fire constantly being kindled through the will, we perceive that this fire contains the effects of our moral behavior during previous earth-lives. What lives in this fire may be designated as human destiny, human karma.

It is actually true that a certain fact may assume an entirely different significance if looked at from a correct, spiritual viewpoint instead of an external, sensible-intellectual one.

For instance, a man may become acquainted, in a certain year of his life, with another man. This is generally considered as accidental. And it really seems as if the two persons had been led together by the accidents of life and become acquainted at a chance moment. Things, however, happen otherwise. If we use the methods of spiritual research and look into the whole connection of human life, if we look into everything made invisible by the previously mentioned process of combustion, we then find that an acquaintance made in a man's thirty-fifth year has been longed for and striven for by this man during his entire life according to a definite plan. If we follow someone's life from his thirty-fifth year back into his early childhood, we may uncover and reveal what paths were pursued in order to arrive at the point where the other man was encountered. All this has been carried out in accordance with a plan harbored in the unconscious.

If we look at a human being's destiny in this way, it is remarkable to discover what wiles were occasionally employed by this person in order to arrive at a certain place, in a certain year, and to encounter a certain person. Anyone having real insight into human life cannot help but say that, if someone is undergoing an experience, he himself has sought it, with all the force at his command, during his entire earth-life.

And why do we seek a particular experience? Because this seeking has been poured into our soul out of former lives. These former earth-lives, however, do not show their effect inside our waking thought-consciousness. They show their effect in that state of consciousness constantly lulled to sleep by the process of combustion. Although striving unconsciously, we are nonetheless striving for the attainment of our earthly experiences.

Now, if something of this kind is said, various objections may arise in our thoughts. First of all, the following argument might be raised: If all this be true, then our whole life is determined by destiny; we have no freedom. But do we lose our freedom through the fact that our hair is blond and not black? This, too, is predestined. We are nevertheless free, even if our hair is blond instead of black—although we might possibly prefer black hair; we are nevertheless free, even if we cannot pull down the moon, as we might have longed to do as children. We are nevertheless free, even though we have sought certain experiences since the beginning of our earth-life. For not all of human life is composed of such destined experiences; these experiences are always joined to freely chosen experiences.

And these freely chosen experiences joined to the others are found by spiritual science in a different place.

I have often spoken of the three stages of spiritual knowledge: Imagination, when we first view a world of images; inspiration, when this world of images is penetrated by spiritual reality and essence; intuition, when we stand amid spiritual reality and essence.

If the human being, in the course of his spiritual research, attains imagination and hence sees before him the tableau of his life, something else always becomes visible at the same time. One cannot be attained without the other. We cannot attain imagination, real spiritual knowledge of the life lived by us heretofore on earth, without seeing emerge, in a strange, memory-like manner, the experiences undergone by us during sleep between going to sleep and awaking. I have told you of what these experiences consist.

When attaining imagination on the one hand, we attain, on the other, by means of the inner silence enveloping our soul, an especially profound view of what the human being experiences during sleep. I have already described to you many things experienced by us during the sleeping state. What, however, is mainly set before our inner eye in sleep concerns destiny, as it forms itself anew.

If we illuminate the sleep that encompasses our will even in the waking state, we can see at work the karma resulting from previous earth-lives.

And, if we see in their true light the experiences undergone by us between going to sleep and awaking, we recognize how the karma that will be realized in our next earth-life is being woven out of the free deeds performed by us in the present earth-life.

You might believe that those able to fathom the realm of sleep might be perturbed when saying to themselves: Your own moral conduct during the present earth-life is preparing your karma. Yet this fact is no more perturbing than the knowledge that the sun has risen, climbed to its highest position at noon, sunk in the evening below the horizon, and will repeat the same course on the morrow. The lawfulness rising from the depth of slumber does not perturb us; because through freedom all that has been formed in the sleeping state of the present earth-life can, in the most manifold ways, be brought forth during the next earth-life.

And, when we envisage that which begins to weave itself in sleep, hidden from our ordinary consciousness, as new karma, we can clearly see karma at work in the subconscious states of our will—clearly see karma being spun anew.

We can also see how the past is being interwoven in the human being with the future; we can see how that which is veiled to the waking human being by sleep in the day-time, that is to say, the inner secrets of his will, is being spun together with that which is veiled to him by sleep at night: namely, the inner secrets of his ego and astral body as they have separated themselves from the physical and etheric bodies and are taking part in weaving the future karma.

Consider that the things thought by man in his ordinary waking state are mostly concerned with outer matters. These outer things thought by us remain fixed, by means of our soul-life's ordinary content, in our memory.

All this, however, represents only the surface of our soul-life. Beyond this thought-level lies a soul-life of much greater profoundness. Whatever we experience during the waking state as our thinking, we experience in the etheric body, the formative-force body. All that happens at a deeper level in the astral body and the ego can be experienced only by consciously penetrating the events passed through by the astral body and the ego when they have separated themselves from the physical and etheric bodies and fallen asleep. Then the future karma is being spun.

In the day-time, this future karma is veiled to us by the outward thoughts contained in the etheric body. In the depth of the soul, however, it is being woven together, also during the day, with that which dwells in unconscious, sleeping will as the karma emerging from the past. Hence the karma of the human being can be accurately divulged.

Here we find several interesting facts. The age of the human being's earliest childhood is especially revealing for the observation of karmic connections. The resolutions of children appear to us as utterly arbitrary; and yet they are not at all arbitrary.

It is indeed true that the child's actions imitate what goes on in the child's surroundings. I have indicated in my public lecture how the child, completely at one with his sense-organism, inwardly experiences every gesture, every movement made by the people around him. But he experiences every gesture, every movement, in its moral significance. Hence a child who is confronted with a choleric father experiences the immoral element connected with a choleric temperament. And the child experiences, through the subtlest movements of the people around him, the thoughts that these people harbor. Hence we should never permit ourselves to have impure, immoral thoughts in a child's presence and say: Such thoughts are permissible, because the child knows nothing about them. This is not true. Whenever we think, our nerve-fibers are always vibrating in one way or another. And this vibration is perceived by the child, especially during his earliest years. The child is a subtle observer and imitator of his surroundings.

The strangest and—it might be said—the most interesting fact, in an exalted sense, is the following: The child does not imitate everything, but takes his choice. And this choosing is done in a very complicated manner.

Let us assume that the child has before him a hot-headed, choleric father who does many things that are not right. The child, wholly one with his sense-organism, must absorb all these things. Since his eye cannot protect itself, it must perceive what takes place in the child's surroundings.

What the child absorbs, however, is absorbed only in the waking state. Eventually the child goes to sleep. Children sleep a great deal. And during sleep the child is able to choose: What he wants to absorb is sent out of his soul into his body, his physical organism; what he does not want to absorb is ejected during sleep into the etheric world. Thus the child takes into his bodily organism only those things that have been predestined for him by his destiny, his Karma. The working of destiny is seen with especial vividness in the child's very first years.

A person with a merely intellectual bent often feels that he is tremendously clever and the child tremendously stupid. After acquiring insight into the world, we discard this opinion and begin to realize how stupid we have become since our childhood. Our present cleverness, as opposed to that of childhood, is a conscious one. Yet far, far greater than all the wisdom given to us in later years is the wisdom with which the child, as was previously described, chooses between that which, according to the destiny resulting from former earth-lives, he must incorporate into himself, and that which he may eject into the general etheric world. And what is brought by man from former earth-lives into his present one becomes especially visible during the first years, when the question of freedom does not matter as yet. At the age when the consciousness of freedom arises, we have already brought into the present earth-life most of what had been destined to be garnered from previous earth-lives. And if someone has a certain experience at the age of thirty-five, he has blazed a trail towards this experience since his first childhood years. The first steps of life are the most important and essential for all that is determined by destiny.

I have tried to point out how wise we were as children and how, fundamentally, we become less and less wise as life continues. Our consciousness expands: hence we value conscious rationalism, and do not value the child's unconscious wisdom. Only by acquiring the science of initiation are we taught how to value this wisdom.

I have called attention to these things in the very first chapter of my booklet: Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity [Anthroposophic Press, New York.] Official philosophy has taken me severely to task on this score. It is important, nevertheless, that we are capable of looking at the first years of childhood in the right way.

People, once they have understood these things, will attain a sounder judgment on something that is mentioned today again and again, but not understood in the least: the question of inherited qualities.

In present-day literature and science the tendency is to base everything on qualities that have been inherited from the parents. If we once realize how the child, in a karmic sense, gathers from previous earth-lives whatever his wisdom urges him to select, we shall comprehend the correct relation between that which is determined by destiny and that which represents external inheritance and garb. For this inheritance is nothing but an external garb. That the latter exists will not seem strange to those comprehending in the right way how the human beings connect themselves, at a certain point between death and a new birth, with the sequence of generations. Turning their glance from the Beyond to the earthly realm, they are able to foresee who their parents are going to be. From the Beyond, we help to determine the qualities that our parents will have. Hence it is no wonder that we inherit these qualities. Yet—as was previously described—we make our choice concerning the qualities that we inherit.

To observe the human being during his first childhood years is a study as interesting as it is exalted. I must use this expression again and again. You will remember that I called your attention to the three things learned by the child in his first years: walking, which includes so many things that were discussed yesterday, speaking, and thinking. These three faculties are attained by the child.

Now let us observe correctly how the child takes his first steps. He may put down his little legs and feet firmly or gently; advance courageously or timidly; bend his knee vigorously or with less vigor; use his index finger or his little finger more frequently. Those who have the right insight into what is connected with walking, what is connected with the sense of equilibrium through which the child orientates himself in the three spatial directions—all those will recognize that the child's karma is symbolically expressed in his attempts at walking. We see a certain child, as he learns how to walk, put down his little feet with firmness. This shows us that he has proved himself as brave and courageous in various situations belonging to previous earth-lives. This brave and courageous quality coming from previous earth-lives is expressed, in a sensible image, by the firm manner in which the child plants his little feet on the ground. Thus we may observe just in the child's first attempts at walking a miraculous image of human karma. A man's personal karma is especially expressed by the manner in which he learns how to walk.

In the second place, we learn how to speak. We imitate what is spoken around us. Every child does this in his own way; yet all human beings who learn how to speak their mother tongue within a lingual province imitate just this one language. Hence we find that the human being's folk destiny is expressed by the way in which the child adapts himself to the imitation of sounds. The child, when learning how to walk, expresses his individual destiny; when learning how to speak, his folk destiny. And, when learning how to think, he expresses the destiny of universal mankind living in a certain period all over the globe. Thus a threefold destiny is interwoven in man.

It is true that we clothe our thoughts with diverse languages. Yet, when penetrating across language to the thoughts, we assume that these can be understood by every person anywhere in the world. A Chinese and a Norwegian language exist; nonetheless there is no difference—except an individual one—between Chinese and Norwegian thoughts. For it must be admitted that thoughts as such, with regard to their truth or untruth, are the same everywhere. They are differently colored for the sole reason that human beings express themselves through language and individual traits. The thought-content, however—not the form—is alike for all men. By adjusting himself to thought-life in his third stage, the child adjusts himself, at a certain point, to all of mankind. Through language, he adjusts himself to the folk destiny; through his orientation in three spatial directions (by learning how to walk, how to handle objects, and so forth) he adjusts himself to his personal, individual destiny.

In order to understand man's being in the right way, these things must be viewed from all sides. Now I should like to explain to you by means of another fact how the whole of human life is constituted.

Let us go back to the sleeping state; to those experiences undergone by us between falling asleep and awaking. Here we go back, with our ego and astral body, into the spiritual world; we go back to the starting-point of our life. Yet the ego and astral body are weaving our future destiny.

When the ego and astral body return again to the physical body, then destiny has been woven anew night by night. Man's ordinary consciousness, however, does not yet know anything of this destiny. He enters again into his physical and etheric bodies. In the etheric body, he had left behind his thoughts. We only assume that we do not think while lying in bed. We think unceasingly, but unbeknown to ourselves, because our ego and astral body dwell outside our thoughts. Thinking is an activity of the etheric body. You can easily observe this fact even in every-day life. For instance: you have heard, for the first time, a symphony that excited you greatly. If you are inclined to wake up during the night, you will do so again and again, always finding yourself amid this symphony's sounds, which continue to vibrate within your etheric body. These vibrations do not cease. It is not necessary that your ego be present while the symphony reverberates within you. If your ego were present, you would be aware only of the etheric body's vibrations. It is the same with other thoughts. You are thinking all night long while lying in bed; since your ego is away, however, you do not know that you think.

I can even disclose to you that waking life often spoils our thinking. Generally, our thoughts are much keener when our ego is away at night. This is true, whether you believe it or not. Most people's judgment on life is much sounder at night than in the day-time. If the etheric body, which is in harmony with the laws of the universe, thinks by itself and man does not ruin these thoughts, then man's thinking, no longer muddled up by the ego (as happens so often in the day-time) becomes much sounder.

While our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric bodies, we are engaged in weaving our future karma. What as ego and astral body lives and weaves outside us between falling asleep and awaking must pass through the portal of death; it must enter and pass through the super-sensible world. It is true that the astral element is subsequently merged with the ego, which thus undergoes a change of substance and must continue its way alone. Yet all that which has been weaving, in the sleeping state, outside the physical and etheric bodies must pass through the portal of death and must, between death and a new birth, pursue its path across the stages described by me during the recent days. My description has shown you how the ego passes through a stage where it works in unison with the beings of the higher Hierarchies, in order to prepare the spiritual germ of a future physical body.

This work necessitates the experiencing of profound wisdom between death and a new birth—an experience that can be undergone only if sharing a spiritual activity with beings of the higher Hierarchies.

Many other things must be merged with the karma, as it is woven between falling asleep and awaking, in order to unite all the elements into a future physical body. For you must consider what kind of path has to be pursued. All that is being woven as karma dwells in the ego and astral body. It must descend into those regions possessed by us, in the next earth-life, as the unconscious will-regions. All these elements must be thoroughly blended with our entire bodily organism. During the ordinary sleeping state, the ego and astral body have as yet but little of what they must attain during their transition between death and a new birth.

From the sleeping state, the ego and astral body must return to the physical body; and, when they wake up, they do not quite understand how to deal with this physical body. For, having received this body as the result of a previous earth-life, they do not know how to immerse themselves into it in the right way.

Because the astral body and ego can form the physical and etheric bodies only in the next earth-life, working on them in childhood during the first and second seven-year period and because the ego and astral body will only then encompass all that can work in the right way on the physical body: therefore now, when the ego—on falling asleep—has just absorbed the human being's moral conduct and karma has just begun to weave itself, this ego, on awaking, does not rightly understand all the things contained in the physical body.

The ego, when again immersing itself in the physical body, is utterly unconscious. Yet, as it passes through the region of mental activity, confused dream-images arise. What do these signify? Why do they correspond, in many cases, so little to life? Because the ego and astral body try to immerse themselves in the physical and etheric bodies, but find it difficult to do so. This discrepancy between that which the ego cannot do, but which it should do according to the wise principles of the physical and etheric bodies—this discrepancy is expressed by the confused images dreamed by us just before awaking. These dreams show us pictorially how the ego tries to bring what it has not yet attained into a certain harmony with the physical body and etheric body. And only when the ego, suppressing consciousness in regard to the will, immerses itself in subconscious regions, and hence no longer relies upon its own wisdom, can it enter again into the physical body without producing confused mental images.

If the ego, on awaking, plunged into the physical body when fully conscious, or half conscious as in dreams, then the most terrifying dreams would arise from man's entire physical body. Only the circumstance that we plunge, at the right moment, into the unconscious will subdues the fleeting dream-images and lets us sink down as proper egos and proper astral bodies into the regions of the unconscious will.

It is quite clear to anyone looking at these things without prejudice that every dream can show us the disharmony existing in the present life between what the ego and astral body have acquired in this present life and the fully developed physical and etheric bodies. First that which has been woven as moral element must unite itself, during the transition between death and a new birth, with the spiritual germ of the physical body. Then, whatever has been woven in the present life between falling asleep and awaking, becomes so powerful that it is really able to sink down during the next childhood life, during this dreamy, half asleep childhood life, into the physical and etheric bodies, using them as tools for earth-life.

We carry within us the result of preceding earth-lives. Only all that we carry below in our will-organism as forces of the preceding earth-life is concealed by an inner fire which consumes our physical substance and products. Yet these forces, although consumed by fire, are nonetheless active. We pursue our path across the world by means of our karma. There exists an especial path for every single experience. By choosing, from childhood on, what we want to imitate from the surrounding world, and by so doing, initiating an event that may not occur until our fiftieth year, and at the same time by exerting our will for the purpose of bringing about this experience, we undergo within ourselves a combustion of that which is bodily substance. And, because the fire renders us unconscious with regard to our life-path, our inner perception transposes what is really a continuous course of destiny into something appearing to us like momentary desires, instincts, urges, varieties of temperament, and so forth. Below courses the life-path determined by destiny. The fires are always flaming forth anew. We, however, can only see the fires' surface. And on this surface, out of the seething flames, as it were, there comes to life what dwells in our souls as passions, desires, instincts. Here is only the outer semblance, the outer revelation of that which weaves in the depths as human destiny.

What men observe are the single passions, the single instincts, the single desires, momentary likes and dislikes, deeds carried out or not carried out because of momentary sympathy or antipathy. In making such observations, however, we behave like someone who has a sentence before him and says: “Here I see g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s,t,h,e,w,o,r,l,d.” All he can do is to spell the single letters. Then another person comes and says: “The letters spelled by you mean God rules the world.” Just as spelling differs from reading, so does ordinary science differ from spiritual science.

Ordinary psychology is able to spell. By looking at a human life, it finds certain instincts and urges in the child. The scientist, who only knows how to spell, registers these things, and thus it continues during the human being's entire existence on earth.

Those understanding spiritual science are able to read. Looking beyond the fire's surface, they see what is below: man's destiny-determined life-path.

Between ordinary psychology, such as it is still practiced today, and genuine knowledge of human soul-life there is a difference akin to that between spelling and reading.

We could make ourselves understood with less difficulty, if we could only tell the others that they are wrong. But, if someone spells g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s, it is impossible to tell him: “What you say is wrong.” For it is perfectly correct. Only the other, lacking the knowledge that the letters can be combined and read, will say to us: “You are a crazy fellow. All that I can see is g,o,d, and so forth. It would be utterly foolish to combine the letters.” He cannot understand that we are not only able to spell but also to read.

This fact makes our position very difficult. The anthroposophist could easily reach an understanding with the others; he does not have to refute them. Neither is he entangled into polemics against external science. If this science, however, begins to call him a crazy fellow—then, naturally, he is forced to state that this is wide of the mark and point out his willingness to consider as valid what the others want to consider as valid. Only he would have to exclude the following principle: Whatever this or that person does not see is non-existent. For this principle is no criterion of truth. And those persons who hold to it should first ascertain whether others can see what they themselves cannot see.

In view of these things, those standing on anthroposophical ground must be able to fathom this difficult relationship between Anthroposophy and other world views. At most, we could come to the conclusion that the one tolerating nothing but g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s, should be considered as semi-illiterate. Likewise, we might possibly say to the one who could not wean himself of the habit to spell out the single instincts, urges, passions, temperaments, and so forth: “You are a semi-Philistine, a semi-blockhead. The trouble with you is that you cannot soar.” We could not tell him, however, that he was wrong.

The issue between Anthroposophy and other world views is of such nature that no understanding can be reached until those, who know only how to spell, will have a mind to learn how to read. Otherwise no mutual comprehension is possible; and for this reason all the customary debates lead to no result whatsoever. This fact is noticed by very few opponents of Anthroposophy. In my opinion, it is essential that these things should be known to you.

The opponents of Anthroposophy increase with every month. Yet they are unable to find a foothold. For, since Anthroposophy always agrees with them, but they refuse to agree with Anthroposophy, they cannot attack very well what the Anthroposophist says. And for this reason they attack his personality: defame it, tell lies about it. Unfortunately, polemics tend more and more towards such a form. This must be envisaged by those standing on anthroposophical ground.

You must consider that a very odd assortment of antagonistic books exists now-a-days. Many of their authors, who have read anthroposophical literature, may have found out that I myself, in certain passages of my own books, mention all the objections that could be raised. I engage in polemics against myself, in order to show how that which I affirm could be blotted out. Hence all possible objections against Anthroposophy can be found in my own books. Consequently, many of my opponents busy themselves with copying the arguments which I myself, in my own books, have cited against Anthroposophy. They then distribute these writings to others in order to attack Anthroposophy. Thus you can find hostile writings plagiarizing my own books and simply copying my words when I say: this or that objection could be raised. The fact that the anthroposophist himself has to point out all the arguments that can be advanced against him makes his opponents' task rather easy.

I mention these things not for the purpose of harrowing my opponents, but in order to characterize how one must progress if one desires to read life-experiences (with regard to the will-impulses) instead of merely spelling them out. Spelling only shows us what momentarily wells up in the form of urges, of animal life expressed by desires, passions and wishes. Those able to combine these letters and read them will penetrate every individual human destiny. This human destiny is working at the source of life; and, by means of this destiny, the human being joins himself to the ever continuing course of mankind's whole evolution. And only by comprehending in this way a single human being's entire life are we able to comprehend human history. During the following days, we shall contemplate mankind's history; contemplate it as the life of mankind in its destiny before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. And we shall also see how the Mystery of Golgotha has influenced mankind's development on earth.

First, however, I had to erect a foundation and show what is at work within the human being. Only thus can it be recognized in the right way how the gods and the Mystery of Golgotha are at work within the individual man, within his entire destiny.

Today, following on from yesterday's reflections, I would like to say a few words that may serve to summarize some of the things that have been said over time, in order to give a kind of summary explanation of the Mystery of Golgotha. Of course, when speaking about this central point of human life in modern times, one can only give something aphoristic, something episodic, so to speak, a section of all that we have to work through in abundance in order to understand this Mystery of Golgotha.

If one wants to understand the Mystery of Golgotha aright, then one must realize that the whole of the older mystery being, which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, gradually petered out and had already dried up to a very great extent by the time the Mystery of Golgotha was to take place, that this ancient mystery being, in its very essence, pointed to this central event on earth, to this Mystery of Golgotha. If one allows oneself to be properly affected by what I have tried to present in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, one will find that in the symbolic-ritual mode of presentation, which was practised in the old mysteries, the most diverse secrets of the world were enacted with dramatic power before the neophyte, before the one to be initiated. But at the center of all the rites and symbolism practiced in the mysteries to deepen human knowledge was the secret of the human being dying within the body, who, so to speak, anticipates death, who dies to everything that he can live if he only orients himself towards the sensory world, and who then, out of an inner soul strength, awakens to a higher life precisely through this passing through dying, through this experience of dying.

The way in which this was presented in the mysteries, in order to stimulate people's inner experience, was very similar to what later actually took place in Palestine as the Mystery of Golgotha. And one could say: at the center of earthly evolution stands the cross raised on Golgotha. There humanity can look and see the Christ going through death, but in an image that has directly spoken an eternal language to the neophytes, to those to be initiated. This Mystery of Golgotha was anticipated in the ancient mysteries, so that these ancient mysteries were in a sense a preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha itself. In a certain sense, it is cosmic, and can take place individually in a single human being.

What takes place in a single human being when they truly undergo the experience of initiation? That which is born with them, which carries the inherited qualities, which can be cultivated in the ordinary sense of the word through ordinary education, descends into the unconscious. It dies away, becomes paralyzed, and out of the depths of the soul arises the higher self of man, the self that does not belong to this physical world, but which is called to carry out a mission in this physical world. What takes place in the inner being of man is an individual process, a resurrection of the better, the higher self of man. Before that, he does not have this higher self in his consciousness. If we now extend this process to the whole earth, if we think of the whole earth as a kind of living being, of conscious living being, as it actually is in reality, then we have to say: Up to the Mystery of Golgotha in the course of the historical development of mankind did not have its higher self, for this higher self did not move into the earth with that which developed out of the earth, and thus did not live in the old pagan wisdom, nor in Jewish wisdom either. It did not live with the earth at all. And now this higher self of the Earth dwelled in the man Jesus of Nazareth, as we know, through the baptism of St. John at the Jordan, and since the fulfillment of the Mystery of Golgotha, it has been an effective impulse in earthly life. Through this, earthly life has attained its higher self. Thus one can say: Microcosmically, a certain special inner process takes place in every human being who only strives for and wants it; macrocosmically, the same process is given for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. What the microcosmic awakening of the higher self is in man, the Mystery of Golgotha is macrocosmically. But this already implies that the Christ-being, which dwelt in the man Jesus of Nazareth, was not on earth before, but descended from spiritual, from cosmic heights and united with the earth evolution.

But something else is also given. It is given that in order to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha, a different knowledge is needed, a different realization than that which man gains from the contemplation of external nature, which man receives by looking around in ordinary life. A transformation of man is necessary. And the transformed man can then attain a kind of knowledge through which he comprehends the Mystery of Golgotha. This Mystery of Golgotha stands as a fact of world history, but one must always distinguish between this fact, which stands there in the course of the historical becoming of humanity, and between the comprehension of this fact, what concepts a person can muster to understand this fact, this Mystery of Golgotha. When the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, the ancient mystery wisdom had, in a sense, already faded away. But remnants of it still existed. And those who still possessed such remnants, who still had tradition or even inner vision and could communicate the results of this inner vision to other people, were called upon to contribute something to the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. In other words, the ancient mystery wisdom was used to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. On the one hand, there is the fact, the Mystery of Golgotha, and on the other hand, there is what people tried to do to understand this Mystery of Golgotha.

Lest I be misunderstood, I would like to add here again: It is not necessary to be clairvoyant to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha; but it is necessary to understand the results obtained through clairvoyance with the help of common sense, and thereby to gain in one's soul concepts, perceptions, ideas that go beyond the world of the senses and embrace the supersensible world as well. Just as one does not need to be a spiritual researcher oneself in order to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha, but one needs to take in what comes from spiritual insight in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with the help of these concepts, which are meaningless in the face of the mere sensual world, in the same way an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be taken in from the ancient mystery wisdom. That which was originally mystery wisdom was used in the first centuries of Christianity to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. And finally, nothing but mystery wisdom flowed into the Gospels. This is what I have just tried to present in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. In a sense, the Gospels were the ancient mystery wisdom applied to the mystery of Golgotha. The best concepts, ideas and inner soul experiences that people had were collected in an attempt to understand this mystery of Golgotha in the right way.

That was in the first centuries of Christianity. But this mystery wisdom has since been completely lost. If it is presented to people today and they are appealed to their common sense, they can no longer understand anything of this mystery wisdom. It speaks in a language that is no longer accessible to the present human being. One only gradually comes to an understanding of the traditions from the mystery wisdom that have been preserved when one recognizes the same field again through newer spiritual science, which was present in atavistic recognition as ancient mystery wisdom. This newer spiritual science can be thoroughly understood by the healthy human mind, but not the old mystery wisdom, which can only be understood when one has worked one's way into the results of the newer spiritual insight. And so it came about that as people lost more and more touch with the ancient mystery wisdom, they also lost the means to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. The mystery wisdom dried up, and the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be grasped.

We see this in a large part of contemporary theology. This theology wants to understand the mystery of Golgotha from the same source of knowledge from which, for example, natural science is built today. We have often said here that people are increasingly pushing for the impossible, trying to completely obliterate the Christ and only understand Jesus of Nazareth, or, as one of these theologians says, the “simple man from Nazareth”. Christ has been lost to theology because, from the point of view of external sensual science, Christ in Jesus simply cannot be understood. The old supersensible science, the heritage of the mysteries, has been lost to man. Even in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, the last great mysteries, such as those in France, were destroyed by the invading Romanism, which is the embodiment of matter-of-factness everywhere. In the last century before the emergence of Christianity, the ancient Druid mysteries were destroyed by Roman troops at a certain site in France. Hundreds and hundreds of initiates were transported from life to death in a few days. One can say that it was an inquisition long before the Catholic Inquisition. And if only history were not a fable convenue, we would know of other things than are usually told about the Roman Caesar, for example, we would know of his persecution of the ancient mystery ways, and we would see in him one of those who set themselves the task of rooting out whatever mystery inheritance had come into the time. Nevertheless, echoes of the old mystery wisdom always remained, even into the Middle Ages and up to the 18th century, and with the help of this old mystery wisdom one could still understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain way. The impossibility of understanding the Mystery of Golgotha only arose in the 19th century. And in the 19th century we actually see the modern “theology develop in such a way that more and more the concept of Christ is lost, that fewer and fewer people understand something of the actual essence of the Mystery of Golgotha, namely those people who make an effort to really understand something, who do not accept things at the dictation of an external church.

What, then, can it actually be when we consider the science of initiation in the present day in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha? It can only be that mystery wisdom be found again, so that through this new mystery wisdom the Mystery of Golgotha can once more be understood by people. It is really so: if evolution were to continue in the same way as it has led to Western natural science, to Galileism, to Copernicanism, then the Mystery of Golgotha would completely disappear from the increasingly barbaric life of the West. This is what should be taken most seriously in the present day. If the official ideal of knowledge as it is held today were to become generally accepted, we would have a situation in the West in which, relatively soon, there would be a civilization — if one could still call it that — that one would actually have to call barbarism, that no longer knows anything, that no longer speaks of the Mystery of Golgotha. It could be that within this barbarism, the cult of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, would have been preserved by external means of power. But those who think would no longer associate any meaning with the actions that take place there. They would perceive them as external things, as the ceremonies that the ancient Germans performed in relation to their Odin and so on were perceived as external things in a certain period. That would rob the evolution of the earth of its meaning, for this evolution of the earth can only have its meaning through the effect of the Mystery of Golgotha.

I would like to express this as I have often done. Let us assume that a Martian came down to this earth who had not experienced anything of the earth, because among the Martians nothing would have been experienced of the earth's conditions, and he would see everything that is present on the earth here. He would find it quite incomprehensible. But at the moment when he would see a reproduction of Leonardo's 'Last Supper' and contemplate what is depicted there, he would be able to connect it with life on earth. I often wish to mention this because in this picture, in a particularly expressive representation, everything that belongs to the Mystery of Golgotha is in fact of universal significance, of such significance that by correctly understanding it, one grasps the meaning of life on earth. But first one needs the concepts, the ideas, in order to understand that which is fact. These concepts and ideas are lacking in today's external education. They must be known again. They must live again from within people; and they have disappeared in such a way that we should not long for a renaissance of old ideas today. That would not help today's humanity. We do not need a renaissance, we need a naissance, we need a complete rebirth of spiritual life, not a revival of the old, but a birth of a new one we need.

In contrast to this, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, can refer to its actual foundations. What then is the basis of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? Let us look at the world around us. We see it developing in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. In recent times, natural science has produced a great deal about what takes place in the development of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. It will continue to produce much that sheds light on the evolution of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. These natural sciences have not produced anything special about the human being. For if you really delve into what natural science has produced about man from a description of his anatomy, his physiology and so on, you will find that this natural science actually only considers what makes man appear as the final link in the animal series. As a natural science, it is quite right, but it only considers what makes man appear as the highest link in the animal series, as it were, as the most perfect animal. But natural science does not consider anything that actually makes man appear to us as man, that sets him apart from the other kingdoms of the universe that surround him. Our spiritual science is truly concerned, not in an amateurish way, but in a conscientious and searching way, with a deepening of what natural science has to say about the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal. And if people today would only listen to what anthroposophy has to say, they would not think that anthroposophy is a cult, that it is something cultivated by a few “aunts”. Rather, they would see that it is something quite different, that in terms of the rigour of science and research it can fully compete with the methods of natural science, and that what it produces is only richer than what external science gives.

Is it not actually laughable when natural science fights against anthroposophy? Anthroposophy does not take anything away from natural science. It stands before natural science and says: Yes, you are right in the field you are researching. It only adds what it then researches about the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. And who has the right to deny what they have not yet researched, if one does not dispute what they have researched! One cannot really imagine a stronger tyranny than that which is exercised over what one has not researched and does not want to research. But where does anthroposophically oriented spiritual science end up when it researches the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms in its method? It comes to realize that what can be found by the scientific method, by observing the external sense world, can certainly be applied to the knowledge of man, but only in such a way that it explains in concepts what is dying in man: how man dies, how he already begins to die when he is born, how he is in descending development. If you want to understand the withering away of man that begins at birth, and that comes to an end in a single moment at death; if you want to study this entire descending development, then look at nature, then research all the laws of nature. And when you have investigated all the laws of nature and apply them to man, then you get the dying laws of man, then you get that which dies (knows) in man.

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Now, on the other hand, it must be said that at the moment of birth, not only is there a dying away, but also an ascending (red). You cannot find this ascending development through today's scientific observation, however much you may have shaped it into an ideal. That which is being revived in the human being, which is always there alongside this dying away, cannot be grasped from the sensory; it can only be grasped from the supersensible. Anthroposophy must add the knowledge of the supersensible to the sensory so that the human being can be understood at all. You can see from this that if you want to get to know man at all, you have to appeal to the science of the supersensible. You only get the human being as a mortal being when you look at the sensual. The Christian religions, which have never been concerned with real knowledge, saw the rise of natural science, which deals with mortal man; so, as I already indicated yesterday, they deal with the immortal, with that which does not die, and place it before the soul egoism of man.

The matter is different when one deals with what an ascent, an evolution is, with what becomes and becomes and becomes more and more from the birth of man and what reaches its culmination on earth when man passes through the gate of death. Since one must appeal, because one must appeal, not to feeling, not to faith, but to knowledge, one must speak of the Unborn, of the Unbirth, a word of which I have often said that it must gradually enter our vocabulary. Just as with the word “immortal,” so too the word “unborn” must enter into the vocabulary of modern people, for we are no more born in relation to our higher being than we are dying in relation to this higher being. But the traditional religions were only concerned with what is sensory science. They negate death with a mere word, with mere hopes and with mere faith. They do not point to what can be spiritually recognized; they condemn what can be spiritually recognized through supersensible methods and research.

This is essentially a characteristic of what we call here anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is essentially dependent on ascending to the supersensible. But by ascending to the supersensible, it brings to humanity something that is akin in essence to the ancient mystery wisdom, which can therefore lead again to an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, in the context of the whole course of development of the present day, we are dependent on seeking anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in order not to let the insights of the Mystery of Golgotha disappear altogether.

No matter how much what is done today at our universities as natural science approaches its ideals, it cannot stop the disappearance of the Mystery of Golgotha. No matter how much that which is developing as history approaches its ideal, it cannot stop the disappearance of the mystery of Golgotha. And one can actually say that for the one who looks into what prevails in our public education today, it is quite clear: everything tends to make the understanding of the mystery of Golgotha disappear. The traditional religions will never be able to stop this disappearance, because they only preserve the empty words of that which once had a meaning, but which can no longer make sense to the human mind unless it is rediscovered through consciously applied spiritual research. From this you can see how intimately connected the progress of understanding the Mystery of Golgotha is with the evolution of true spiritual knowledge. Such things would not be said if they did not impose themselves as something that must necessarily be grasped by the present. If one were to develop this spiritual science only out of subjective curiosity about the supersensible, one would feel far too modest to say that the progress and understanding of Christianity depends on the advancement of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is only because this fact is so absolutely compelling, because one cannot escape it if one has a real sense of what is happening, that one speaks it out and is not afraid of being accused of immodesty and perhaps fantasy by those people who do not want to look at the seriousness of the times.

Today the times are so serious that one cannot but knock at the door of the deepest truth, behind which lie those truths that humanity needs today. Western civilization, with its American offshoot, will degenerate into barbarism if the understanding of Christ is not preserved. But as humanity has done it, and as it is still minded to continue it today, the understanding of Christ will disappear. Only in those who today realize that it is necessary to arrive at a new understanding of the spirit, at a new path in the knowledge of the supersensible, only in them is there a true, earnest and strong will to preserve the understanding of the Christ Mystery for humanity. But there will be no social life, as it is understood today out of dull, often perverse instincts, if the understanding of Christ is completely lost. For this social life will only develop if people can live together in one mind. What can this commonality be? This commonality can only be what Paul already referred to with the words: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” As many people as will be able to say, “Not I, but the Christ in me”, will be able to come together as members of one humanity, without distinction of nationality or other differentiations, and establish a new social life.

We see that many people are striving towards this today. We see individual nations once again unfurling the flag of nationality, as it were. What is the essence of such a development? I have already characterized it here from certain points of view. The essence is the old religion of Yahweh. It consisted in Yahweh being the leader of the people, and indeed the one Yahweh was a leader of the Jewish people. Today, when nations put their nationality first, they all come only to the Yahweh, only each has its own form of Yahweh. It cannot be the true Jahve, but only a mirror image. A figure can be mirrored many times. Actually, it is the case that people in the present, because they have lost the old mystery wisdom that could point to the mystery of Golgotha, have all more or less accepted the Jahve religion under the leadership of the liberal-secular “chief rabbi” Wilson! He who spoke of the mirage of the “League of Nations,” that is, of an abstraction in place of the concrete Christ impulse that runs through human minds, has found faith, until he destroyed it, through his own behavior, admittedly very soon, among those who are still able to think a little.

What matters is that people find their way out of Jahvistic nationalism and towards a universal grasp of Christ, towards that which reveals man only as man, but does not impoverish him in relation to nationality, but rather enriches him. This is only possible if we first pave the way to an understanding of the supersensible. Only when we have the ideas and concepts that lead into the supersensible can we also understand the mystery of Golgotha, which is an event that has to do with the supersensible, not with the sensual world. What has taken place in the sensual world from the mystery of Golgotha is only the outer reflection. What really happened is not grasped by anyone who only grasps the outer reflection; it is only grasped by someone who can raise his thoughts, his ideas, into the supersensible world. What does one grasp then, if one does not want to raise oneself to the supersensible in the newer way?

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If we imagine the beginning of the earth here (see drawing), then we grasp that if we only elevate ourselves to what is the content of natural science today, that which was once the wisdom of the ancient mysteries, then descends, and which will have reached its nadir in the third millennium (O). No matter how much natural science we pursue, in the West we are barbarians and in the 3rd millennium we will also be barbarians in America. We then only grasp that which dies in earthly life, and we only live that which dies in earthly life. We then try to derive everything from the observation of the earthly, but we only come to the mortal. We need to grasp the point where the cross is raised on Golgotha and to comprehend what happened there, what was still grasped by the remnants of the old mystery wisdom, but which gradually faded, which is now already dark, and which must now be illuminated (blue) by what arises on the new, on the anthroposophical path as a path into the supersensible. The rescue, the understanding of the event of Golgotha, is closely related, as it were, to the anthroposophical deepening of humanity, to a new real knowledge of the essence of man. Hence the name anthroposophy, which means: wisdom that arises when man finds himself in his higher self.

You can't really find a more concise name than “anthroposophy” if you want to describe knowledge that is not about humans, like ordinary history, anthropology or the like. But if we want to point to what is known in man: when man does not see through his eyes or hear through his ears, but wants to recognize through his soul and spirit, when we want to point to what the higher man can know, then it must be called not “science of man” but “science of man”, as the science of the higher man, as anthroposophy. And anthroposophy transposed into the macrocosm is Christology! What happens to the individual human being when he proves suitable to absorb anthroposophical knowledge, happens to universal humanity when it increasingly decides to grasp the event of Golgotha in its true spiritual essence. Is it not, on the other hand, most peculiar that those who most violently oppose this clear confession of the Mystery of Golgotha are precisely those who claim to officially interpret the Mystery of Golgotha for humanity? But this fact exists and must be faced. We must look at it, we must not close our eyes to it, but by opening our eyes to it, we must get ideas about how to approach a truly honest advancement of Christianity. However, I still hear the words that a famous church prince, Cardinal Rauscher, once spoke in the Austrian House of Lords in the 1860s: “The Church knows no progress!” This basically states the Church's program, the program that I was able to give you a rough idea of yesterday. I believe that those who deal with such things as the emergence of new spiritual ideas, even those who deal with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, take far too little account of what it actually means when the traditional religious denominations rise up against something that can only found the progress of Christianity. Unfortunately, it is far too little known that, for example, an author of every such Catholic book, even if it is about philosophy and logic, has to get the imprimatur of the archbishop! And if you know it, you take it as a randomly picked fact and are not at all aware of the implications of it. Therefore, one does not judge in the right way what is now running up against the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that has been inaugurated from here. And that is why I am obliged to refer you again and again to what the enemies of the truth, the enemies of the truth to be striven for today, repeatedly and repeatedly put forward.

Today I need only read you a small sample, but you will be able to have enough of this small sample if you have an appreciation of what is actually happening when, on the one hand, you hold in your heart what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science honestly wants in relation to Christianity, and on the other hand, you see how those who call themselves Christians encounter this spiritual science. Here is an announcement of the publication – it has appeared in a violet cover – which is a summary of the “Spectator” articles:

(Sent in.) “The secret of Dornach.” “After six years of existence, 'The Mystery of Dornach' is now finally being uncovered more and more thoroughly by a number of Catholic newspapers: first by the Basellandschaftliche Sonntagsblatt, then recently by the Protestant Schulblatt and the Catholic Schweizerschule, and today by a series of articles in the 'Schweizerisches Protestantenblatt' under the title 'Theo- und Anthroposophie'. This is how esu explains, among other things:...” You really can't read all this anymore, you can't get it all anymore, what is being brought up by the other side! “It was only a few years ago, in 1914, that an anthroposophical branch broke away from the Theosophical Society in Basel, whose head and representative is Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who built a theosophical place of worship and a theosophical or anthroposophical university for mystics and adepts in Dornach at a cost of several million. This new foundation is called the “Secret Order of the Star in the East”, also the Goetheanum, formerly the Johanneum. Dr. Steiner has published numerous writings about this sect, and in Basel he occasionally gives propaganda lectures that are well attended (so far), as well as in various cities in Switzerland, Germany, Russia and Austria.

This sample is again from a strictly Catholic newspaper, the “Basler Volksblatt”! You see, things are sent out into the world that lie in such a frivolous way that they are capable of presenting as the signature of Dornach that which I have fought against from the very beginning – the “Star of the East”. So they lie in the most frivolous way, by attributing to us what we have fought from the very beginning as nonsense, as frivolity. This is “Catholic truthfulness” here in the area, because it seems that it is seen as Catholic truthfulness, because at the same time you will find a report about the Dorneck-Thierstein militia. It says:

"From the area. Dorneck-Thierstein Shield Force (introductory) The general assembly of the Dorneck-Thierstein Shield Force, which met in Grellingen on June 27, 1920, had now proven that all the pessimistic ‘ifs and buts’ that had been held against it in the past were not yet in place in our Schwarzbubenland. What a joyful surprise went through the hall when the Reverend Mr. Pfarrer and editor M. Arnet...». Dr. Boos has called him a liar and a spiritual poisoner here. I do not know whether anything has been done on that side in response to this statement by Dr. Boos – from here, from this place – which happened some time ago. Has anything been done? (Interjection from Dr. Boos: No, nothing!) So nothing has been done yet, even though Father Arnet von Reinach was called a liar and a poisoner of minds from this very spot. And now: “What a joyful surprise went through the hall when the Reverend Mr. Pfarrer and editor M. Arnet from Reinach and the Reverend Mr. Pfarrer Hauß from Münchenstein stepped into our midst with a small group of guards. The enthusiasm was even greater when Father Gallus Jecker, Superior of the Mariastein Monastery, appeared in the simple Benedictine robe,” and so on, and now comes the following: ”Reverend Father Arnet of Reinach was given the floor for his presentation. In short and pithy sentences, as a true sentinel, he outlined the main features of the storms that the Catholic But time and again, enlightened and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, men arose to take up the fight against falsehood and unbelief, so that in the end the Catholic Church always achieved the final victory.

So here is the “fight against falsehood” taken up in the most frivolous way, with lies told about the opposite of what is fact! Then one speaks in such phrases: “After the speaker had briefly discussed the Theosophical question, he pointed out mainly that our Catholic people should study more Catholic reading instead of novels of all kinds.” Then it goes even further: “Reverend Mr. Pfarrer Hauß spoke with convincing sharpness on the basis of examples about the necessity of the shield defense groups. Fr. Gallus O.S.B. warmly and ideally welcomed the awakening of the Catholic youth. Every village should have a protective forest of enthusiastic Catholics, young and old, to protect the village and the community from these terrible avalanches of unbelief. Regarding theosophy, Rumpel pointed to the Catholic conference of north-west Switzerland in Dornach. He was of the opinion that this day would be particularly suitable for founding the anti-theosophical movement, which is developing not only on the Catholic but also on the Protestant side, so that the entire Christian-minded Swiss population can be effectively influenced in the near future. The agitation center in Dornach must be fought at all costs. The main points of the annual program of the Dorneck-Thierstein shield-bearers are briefly mentioned: “Promotion of the Catholic press” – this Catholic press, which delivers such samples! – “through individual work in the communities, mainly at the turn of the quarter. Strong support for the fight against Steiner's ‘theosophy’, fight against materialism, the Jewish domination of the press and literature, socialism and liberalism. Promotion of the missionary work. Support for the Catholic school issue (choice of Catholic teachers, etc.). Fight against civic education. Elimination of fire brigade rehearsals on Sundays” and so on.

You see what is called ‘truth’ here! But the matter is hidden in all sorts of masks. At the same time, here you will find a report from Arlesheim about some kind of meeting where it says: “It [the school and community center] can also continue to serve cultural purposes in a different way, by housing Arlesheim's two largest public libraries, those of the Verkehrsverein and the Catholic Volksverein. Finally, it also wants to help alleviate the housing shortage and provide more accommodation than before. Did they dream that the increase in accommodation would one day give way to a “mysterious” foreign infiltration from the Dornach hill? The citizens and residents of Arlesheim will therefore see things clearly at the next municipal assembly, as they once did when refusing a certain building subsidy to the Anthroposophists and so on.

Now, basically, by citing such examples, one only describes the “truthfulness” of a large part of contemporary humanity, because ultimately these are the leaders, and the led are sometimes not so much better than the leaders. They are usually much better when the leaders are like that. But since they still want to be led, even if they are better, nothing special can come of it.

Unfortunately, it always has to be against one's own will that such things are mentioned here. But it must always be stated on the one hand what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants and should do, especially in the face of the mystery of Golgotha, and on the other hand, what is running against it. And there is a great deal of opposition, and what can be mentioned here is only some of the worst of it. All the more reason for us to take what we have grasped of the anthroposophical impulses and absorb it into our hearts and our will. For it depends on whether people decide to seek the path to the spirit again whether or not there will be a Christianity in the future. Christianity must be based on the words of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Only in truth can one find wisdom – that was the motto we wrote when we tried to have “principles” printed for the Anthroposophical Society. But can contemporaries who speak untruth in this way in any way invoke Christ Jesus, who was certainly not the error, untruth and death! Let us understand in the right way what the Christ-word is: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Therefore, let us take up the sense for truth in our hearts, in our minds. Only in this way will we find the possibility of promoting and cultivating a right further development of Christianity. Untruth will certainly not be able to do that.

Thoughtful statesmen and observers of world-politics know full well that the greatest and most real problems of the present, and of the immediate future, concern the relationship of the East and West. They are problems of life and death, in the material as well as in the spiritual sense.

Our Western scientific civilisation, with its commerce and industrialism, must expand. Its inner impulse is to expand over the earth; moreover, it has apparently the outward power so to do. But the East is not meeting this expansion passively. On the contrary, there is every sign that the East is awakening to take a very active part in determining the forms and conditions under which this expansion shall take place. Here arises a question fraught with the gravest possibilities for good or evil. Will the Western and Eastern civilisations, deeply different as they are, blend and harmonise? Will a fuller humanity arise and develop in this process? Or will they clash in spiritual conflict, and at last in external warfare?

A spiritual humanity movement in our time—and such is the movement which has arisen out of Anthroposophy—must meet this question in full consciousness. For it is, ultimately, a spiritual question. It can never be answered in the sense of progress, unless and until something of a spiritual knowledge of humanity filters down into our public life. ‘The public affairs of today,’ says Rudolf Steiner, writing on the eve of the Conference at Washington, ‘comprising as they do the life of the whole world, ought not to be conducted without the infusion of spiritual impulses.’¹

We, in the West, are carrying our industrial civilisation farther and farther, more and more intensely, to the East. We are accustoming the Eastern peoples to deal with us in the forms in which we are familiar both as regards political and economic intercourse. These outward forms of our civilisation, from railways and banks to Parliaments and Conferences, the Eastern peoples may or may not be ready to accept. Whether they harmonise with us in inner impulse, or whether the very contact with these external Western features rouses in them a deep and fiery resistance, is a very different question. Here, again, it is well for us to hear the warning and the hopeful summons conveyed in the words of Rudolf Steiner. To quote again from the above-mentioned article:—‘Asia possesses the heritage of an ancient spiritual life, which for her is above all else. This spiritual life will burst into mighty flame if, from the West, conditions are created such as cannot satisfy it ...’

The Asiatic peoples will meet the West with understanding if the West can offer them thoughts of an universal humanity thoughts that indicate what Man is in the whole universal order and how a social life may be achieved in conformity with what Man is. When the peoples in the East hear that the West has fresh knowledge on those very, subjects of which their ancient traditions tell, and for the renewal of which they themselves are darkly striving, then will the way be open for mutual understanding and co-operation. If, however, we persist in regarding the infusion of such knowledge into pubic activity as a fantastic dream of the unpractical, then in the end the East will wage war upon the West, however much they may converse about the beauties of disarmament.

The West wishes for peace and quiet to achieve her economic ends and these the East will never understand unless the West has something Spiritual to impart.

In the West there is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development. From the treasures she has collected by her natural-scientific and technical mode of thought, the West has power to draw forth a spiritual conception of the world, though what she has drawn forth in the past has led her only to a mechanistic and materialistic conception.

‘On the redemption of spiritual values in the West it will depend, whether mankind will overcome the chaos of today or wander in it helplessly.’

These are inspiring words; we feel that they give expression to world impulses, world dangers, and world destinies. They are an adequate indication of the task that an anthroposophical movement must set out to perform, or, at any rate, to place before the men and women of today. It is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development, the treasure that lies hidden beneath the cold exterior of Western scientific intellectuality—it is this that Anthroposophy seeks to reveal: it is this to which it would awaken the consciousness and conscience of the world. As a result of the methods of development that have so often been described in these pages, Anthroposophy arrives at a transformation of Western science into a ‘higher science’: one that is not merely ‘scientific’ and ‘technical’ (able to grasp the dead and inorganic world of our immediate environment), but cosmic and all-human. Thoughts of a universal humanity, thoughts indicating what Man is in the whole universal order—these are the fruits of Anthroposophy. And it is from such thoughts alone that an all-human society—a thing absolutely that necessary in our age for the survival of civilised mankind—can receive life and form and impulse.

Our age has a fundamental striving towards internationalism. Internationalism, as men like Wells have pointed out, is, if nothing else, a necessity imposed on us by our economic development; though, indeed, our need and striving for it are far more deeply rooted. But the international ideal has so far only been expressed in abstract forms. Wilsonian idealism and Marxian idealism alike are born of an intellectual and abstract consciousness. The good intention is there, but the means for its fulfillment are lacking.

For the forces that make for harmony between men and nations live deeper than the intellectual mind. They are far more deeply situated in the souls of men. I may be intellectually convinced that ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is the most excellent of moral precepts; I may have the sincerest ethical intention to live according to it; and yet, if I do not understand my neighbour, I may find myself unable to suffer him, or to restrain my aggravation with him. Once, however, I understand him—not an abstract, but a concrete and individual understanding—I have planted in my soul a force that is deep enough to dispel aggravation, and make for harmony and love.

An individual and concrete understanding of the nations is what we need an understanding that is intimate and sympathetic, like the understanding of an individual man. Nothing short of a spiritual science can provide us with such an understanding. For a nation is not manifested as a physical entity; it lives in what is spiritual. We may know it to be real by its effects, but we can never grasp it, define it, and see it, in the physical. The artist alone, short of the spiritual scientist, will come near to understanding it, for he is gifted to perceive, in the physiognomy of things, the signature of the spiritual being that lies beneath them. Hence, even in our time, the works of great artists—Dostoievsky, for instance—are the most valued means we have of fostering a true and real internationalism. But the artist's instinct and expression are not enough for us; we need a definite knowledge and enlightenment—one that contains the artistic, perceptive, imaginative quality, it is true, but a conscious knowledge, firmer than instinct, more universal than isolated genius.

Mention has often been made in these pages of the threefold constitution of the human being. It has been indicated how the human, physical organism shows this threefold nature in the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the assimilative system. These three systems, with their characteristic processes, are the physical counterparts of the three main activities or functions of the soul: thinking (conception, ideation, including sense perception), feeling, and willing respectively. Anthroposophical science shows how the different human races and peoples are by no means identical with respect to their development of the three systems in the human organism. Without going into the more intimate differentiations, which exist, three main types may be distinguished. These are first, the Eastern, or Oriental; secondly, the Middle European and thirdly, the Western, or Occidental (West European and American).

The Eastern peoples, especially those of Southern Asia, live essentially in connection with the inner forces of the earth. The forces which seethe and surge beneath the surface of the earth, and in the roots and fruits of plants and trees; the thriving, living forces of the earth: these have, as it were, their continuation in the assimilative, digestive system of the human being, and are connected with the surging and flowing of the human will. The Oriental is especially related to the assimilative system. He lives naturally and instinctively in the will process, that is related to the surging inner forces of the earth. His peculiar spirituality is like an expression of the earth itself. And when he forms a conscious ideal of higher striving and development, it is in connection with the next ‘higher’ system of the human being: the rhythmic Organisation. For man, when he seeks a conscious ideal of development, reaches out to what lies just beyond his natural instinctive gifts. The Eastern man, who lives naturally in the assimilatory-digestive system, seeks an ideal in the development of the rhythmic life. The paths of Yoga, all the characteristically Eastern paths of higher training, seek a spiritual development through the rhythmic man, through the special regulation of the breath, the circulation of the blood.

Now, if we consider the Mid-European, we find that he lives instinctively and naturally in that very element which the Oriental seeks to cultivate when forming a conscious ideal of higher development. The Mid-European is essentially the rhythmic man; his natural element is a certain inner harmony and rhythmic wholeness. The ancient Grecian civilisation essentially belongs to the Mid-European element in this respect. The balance and control, the aesthetic harmony of the spiritual and material that is evident in Grecian art (by contrast with the more uncontrolled imaginativeness of Oriental art), already indicates this great Mid-European impulse. In Goethe, the representative man of Middle Europe, we find it developed to the highest degree This natural development of the rhythmic, or middle, man tends to make the Mid-European (like the great German idealists of a hundred years ago, and unlike the external Germany of recent times), if he remains true to himself, the mouthpiece of a certain all-humanity; just as the Eastern man, in his great spiritual productions, is the mouthpiece of the Earth. The tendency to understand and to express man as man, this is characteristic and natural for the Mid-European element. The Mid-European has a feeling for the human relationship of ‘I’ and ‘You,’ the rhythmic interplay between men.

As the Eastern man, who lives naturally in the life of the assimilatory system, idealises the rhythmic element in his conscious striving for higher development, so does the Mid-European strive upwards, from the rhythmic organisation which he has by nature, to the conscious development of the life of thought connected with the Head system, the system of nerves and senses. The Mid-European idealises the life of thought. Dialectic, logic, scientific education, the development of pure thought and philosophy—through these, the Mid-European seeks consciously for a higher spiritual development. He works from the rhythmic system, in which he lives, into the life of thought: like the Eastern man, who works from the assimilatory system in which he lives into the rhythmic life. And as the Eastern man, as a result of his spiritual striving, comes to express the Earth forces with which his connection is so intimate, so as to be, as it were, the Earth's interpreter to humanity, in like manner the Mid-European, as a result of his development, comes to be the interpreter to mankind of Man as such.

The Western man, the man of Western Europe and America, has by nature what the Mid European seeks consciously. He lives in the system of nerves and senses: in the thought process, in intellectuality. He is essentially the Head-man. He tends instinctively into the region of abstraction. Thus it is that Rabindranath Tagore, speaking as a thoughtful Eastern observer, though not with any antipathy, compares him to a ‘spiritual giraffe.’

For the Western man, when he seeks a conscious ideal, the danger lies near at hand to leave the human sphere altogether, to lose himself in abstractions. There is in effect only one possibility for the fruitful development of our Western humanity; it is, to find the connection with the spiritual cosmos. What lives in man's thought life is cosmic in its origin. Starting from the thought-life, the nerves and senses organisation in which he naturally lives, the Western man must find a conscious relation to the spiritual universe. The Western man can be, as it were, the interpreter of the Universe, as the Mid-European is the interpreter of Man and the Easterner of the Earth.

We should find all this confirmed if we compared, for example—not pedantically, but with a certain artistic perception—the quality and colouring of Western and Mid-European science. What lives in the great scientists of Western Europe is a certain cosmic feeling; their whole manner of expression shows that the revelation of cosmic facts is to them a cherished element. With the great Mid-European scientists, on the other hand, though they be dealing with, or even discovering, facts of the same cosmic order, we feel that they live more in the formalistic element of thought; it is this that they chiefly feel and value,

The Natural Science of our times, however, has no means to penetrate and interpret the cosmos save by a few mathematical formulae and mechanistic abstractions. Hence the Western man finds himself starved by the materialistic and intellectualistic age. The result is that he is driven to seek refuge in experiments, speculations, and extremes of every kind. He tends to become sectarian, and to devote himself to ‘crank pursuits’; he seeks through a materialistic ‘spiritualism’ the spiritual life that he needs, but has not the means to reach. It is only the Spiritual Science cultivated by Anthroposophy that reveals and provides what he requires. Hence the immense significance of this Spiritual Science for Western peoples.

On the other hand, the Western man, living instinctively and naturally in the thought process with its cosmic origin, turns and finds an outlet in economic and industrial life. And with his economic greatness he expands his sphere of influence over the whole earth. By virtue of the cosmic quality, which is his, he becomes the ‘man of the world’ par excellence. He comes in touch with all the different peoples, and inspires a certain respect and confidence wherever he goes. From his contact with the Eastern peoples, there is kindled in him a great longing for what he lacks—the ever-present sense of the spiritual and the divine in things. He brings back Oriental cults and teachings, and begins to idealise various kinds of Eastern mysticism, by very reaction from his own matter-of-factness and intellectuality.

It is here that the necessary union of all three sections of mankind must set in, essentially a spiritual union, not founded, like racial kinship, on ties of blood, but founded on a common spiritual understanding. The individual man—be he a member of East, Middle, or West—who has, through Spiritual Science, begun to learn and to understand the nations, has an impulse of love and harmony implanted in him—an impulse far more powerful, more lasting, and effective than was ever possible by the mere recognition of an abstract ideal of internationalism. A nation to him is no longer a mere name or collective term, associated, perhaps, with strong sympathies or antipathies. It means a reality, which he knows, and of whose being he is convinced.

He stands in awe—as, learning Spiritual Science, one cannot but stand in awe—before the wisdom that is poured out into the World, manifesting as it manifests in the diversity of plants in outer Nature—in the diversity of human races and peoples of the earth, with their gifts and possibilities and missions. He has the foundation of knowledge for intelligent co-operation with other nations. From the thankfulness and reverence inspired by the contemplation of this wisdom, the seed of spiritual Love is born in his feeling. This is the ‘Holy Spirit of Truth,’ the real liberator of man.

• 1. See Dr. Steiner's articles in the Goetheanum weekly, and translation of an article published in The Threefold Commonwealth journal, Vol. II, No. I. This article also appeared in The New Age

My dear friends! It is quite natural that where personalities with very different starting points are together, difficulties of understanding arise, and such difficulties must arise, especially on the most important points. I can only try to overcome these difficulties little by little by guiding you slowly towards the things. In the long run, nothing can be achieved in these matters with ordinary questions and answers, and so it seems necessary to me, also with regard to the questions that have been raised, that I continue a little longer in the way of looking at things that I presented to you here yesterday afternoon, and which, at the point where we are now, makes it necessary for us to engage somewhat with the work of redemption as such. This was also one of the questions that was asked in the form of: What is the difference between the Lutheran idea of redemption and that which arises, for example, from anthroposophical contemplation?

This question cannot actually be asked so simply, and in particular it cannot be answered so simply. Rather, it must be characterized on the basis of its foundations. It is particularly necessary to be clear about the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church precisely in the understanding of the work of redemption, but that there are also many other nuances to be considered in the understanding of this matter outside of these two broad categories. I must therefore discuss the act of Salvation as such, and then we will see how the concept is initially nuanced in Catholicism and in the Protestant Evangelical Church.

Now, we have the work of redemption in the first place in such a way that it confronts us in the deed of the Mystery of Golgotha. This deed of the Mystery of Golgotha, understood and presented as an objective historical fact, is what must first be brought together in the form of the question with what this work of redemption is in relation to man; let us say: In what way is the deed of Golgotha a work of redemption for man, from what does it redeem him, and so on? — But this question cannot really be answered any differently for today's consciousness of time than by also taking into account the subjective factor of how the work of redemption is experienced in the individual Christian personality. Those who have only a superficial knowledge of anthroposophical life, and who confuse much of the content of anthroposophy with what they encounter in the various theosophical views of the present day, very easily, I might even say very carelessly, characterize the opposition as follows: The Christian doctrine of redemption is the redemption through Christ Jesus and can therefore only be sought in the relationship of man to Christ Jesus, while the [theosophical] doctrine of redemption actually presupposes self-redemption, because in the successive in successive earthly lives, he would perform all deeds connected with his karma in such a way that he would lead [himself] out of a sinful existence into a sinless one; so there is self-redemption.

Take the numerous, and indeed intelligent, personalities – and in the present day their number is increasing day by day – [who convert from the Evangelical Protestant Church to the Catholic Church.] You can be sure that if something real does not happen in time, there will be a great influx from Evangelical Protestant areas to the Catholic Church in the future. It is becoming more and more apparent that what, in certain respects, leads to a kind of nullity in the Protestant Church that still exists today, as was so aptly characterized yesterday evening, is felt by many somewhat deeper people today, and this leads them back into the fold of the Catholic Church. It is absolutely the case that if we pay attention, we can experience this today in large numbers, and if something right does not happen, we will experience it, as I said, very, very strongly. My dear friends, discussing these things is something that could cost people very dearly in the near future. Always wanting to discuss and not considering that under this discussion the majority, precisely in the form of the most intelligent personalities, disappears. To single out one example, we need only look at a personality such as Friedrich Schlegel, the German romantic who returned to the Catholic Church. If we want to understand what actually led a personality like Friedrich Schlegel back into the fold of the Catholic Church, we have to look at the person as a whole. What led such a personality back into the bosom of the Catholic Church was basically the mystery of the sacrifice of the Mass; at least, from what I know of Friedrich Schlegel, I have never been able to form any other view than that it was the mystery of the sacrifice of the Mass. He came to this realization at a certain point in his life: everything that was given to me in a theoretical way while I belonged to the Protestant community is actually an outer work, something that does not place me in any reality; the moment I understood - so he said to himself — how a mystery is actually accomplished in the sacrifice of the Mass, whereby the mystery of Golgotha can be present in its reality at every moment, I knew how I could be religiously placed in a reality. — That is roughly the feeling that we can imagine of Friedrich Schlegel's conversion, if you will, to Catholicism.

Now, we are dealing with the fact that the path from the mystery of Golgotha to the individual believers is mediated by the priest in such a way that what happened at Golgotha is transferred from the ordained priest to the individual believer through the sacrament. The process itself is one that takes place entirely outside of subjectivity. And then, within Catholicism, we have to move on to a completely new area, I would say, if we now want to find the subjective correlate to that which takes place as something completely objective, as something that takes place in the external world. The only thing that matters in the Catholic Church is that simply by the existence of this church, a process has been created that unfolds in time and connects the individual Catholic, no matter what age he lives in, with the Mystery of Golgotha through the continuity of the church. We have, then, first of all, to look at the actual process itself, and see what has been accomplished in the course of time, from the Mystery of Golgotha to the moment when anyone receives the sacrament. We must therefore see in this process an essential element, something that is needed by the divine government of the world in order to guide earthly evolution to its goal. This must then be strictly separated from what happens within the Catholic Church. The further is to educate the individual through instruction and other means that are permitted within the Catholic Church, to bring him to an inner, and indeed to a full inner understanding of what is actually happening to him as a Catholic. He must therefore be taught to be seized by that which, however, happens to him in full objectivity. I know very well that this seems a bit radically expressed, but it is absolutely necessary to express it not as some would like to express it, who believe they have to excuse Catholicism before the world, but as it is expressed by those who are actually the ecclesiastical authorities. It is also about the individual being brought to an understanding, to an active understanding of the context of what is emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha through the means of grace of the sacrament in the individual, in his time and in his place, in the sanctification of each work, in the understanding of activity. At the most, it can be understood by the individual as a sin if he receives the sacrament unworthily; he can thereby commit a sin, but he cannot prevent the objective content of the event, the objective process of the event. Thus, for example, according to the Catholic view, I can receive a sacrament unworthily and thereby incur a grave sin, but I cannot prevent the process that takes place in all objectivity. I can also incur a grave sin as a Catholic priest if I administer the sacrament as an unworthy priest, but I cannot possibly prevent the effect of the sacrament. If I had to say at first that only in isolated cases can what I believe to be an indication of an objective event, namely that the aura around the transubstantiated host after transubstantiation , can at most be understood to mean that someone who today informs themselves about these things through supersensible vision can gain insight from such appearances, from such observations, that it is not as the Catholic Church presents it. But let us first get an exact idea of how the Catholic Church presents it.

Now, what I said in this sense, that one goes to see, so to speak, whether what the Catholic Church thinks is true, the Catholic Church would consider that a terrible sin, it would see it as the work of the devil. The Catholic interpretation would be to say: If someone goes around checking whether the host has an aura around one priest and not around another, then he is possessed by the devil, who wants to whisper an erroneous idea into his ear about what actually exists in Catholicism. So what I have just said is, in the sense of the Catholic Church, nothing more than a deception that comes from the enemy of Christ Jesus. That is how the Church must see it, and it cannot see it any differently if it remains within the bounds of its own understanding and if it does not want to apologize to the world. The views that one must have are quite strict. The Catholic Church makes this possible by including Romanism in its conceptual world, which can do such a thing; it makes it possible to find very sharp conceptual contours for these things. In fact, these things appear much sharper when they are presented in a Romance language. If you express them in a Romance language, for example in Latin, then it is the case that these conceptual contours can be produced with extraordinary clarity, even in modern Romance languages. However, as in modern French, the concept can evaporate and it flows out into a mere empty shell of a word. But even a mere empty phrase can represent something quite sharply defined, so that one must say: In those areas where priests are trained in the correct concepts, they are trained to a very, very sharp definition, and in such a way that this desire to grasp concepts firmly actually dries up all of life. I myself have seen the difficulties that some Catholic priests go to in order to understand it, priests who celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass daily. They usually start from a careful Aristotelian definition in order to understand how the material substance of the bread and wine can actually be transformed into the real body and blood of Christ Jesus, but of course a truly educated Catholic priest cannot have the slightest doubt that this is the case. He can only strive to get ideas that can explain it to him in some way; of course he is allowed to research this, but he must not doubt the content of the dogma. The goal of science is something quite definite for the Catholic, but within the limits of what lies between human abilities and the goal, the Catholic is absolutely free. Therefore, Catholic science also always relies on its freedom and then recognizes from certain points of view that the goal is not actually a contradiction in terms of the freedom of science, because this goal is of course also present elsewhere. This is something that is always coming back to. It is absolutely clear, for example, that if we have hydrogen in one test tube and oxygen in the other, that through a certain process the two combine to form water, and it is only our task to penetrate this inevitably established fact with our concepts. It is the same with the truths of revelation; they are also there, and they must likewise simply be permeated with the concepts. Science, according to Catholic scholars, is no freer in the field of natural science than in the field of revelation. In the one case, nature provides the objective, in the other case, the content of revelation. And if we add to this that the believing Catholic has no different relationship to revelation than to nature, that it is basically the same to him whether something is revealed to him through what appears as revelation, let us say, the Golgotha mystery and so on, or whether, on the other hand, things are revealed to him through his intellect, these two revelations are simply the same for him, and science is completely free for both. If you call it free in one case, you must also call it free in the other.

It must be clearly understood that the difference lies much deeper than in the field that is the subject of much discussion today, because the discussion is rather easy. As foolish as it was often believed among materialists, for example, that these things could be dismissed by discussing them with great arrogance, things are not so foolish; this must be noted again and again. If one approaches, for example, the arguments of David Friedrich Strauß with an open mind, which Nietzsche also characterized very well in his booklet 'David Friedrich Strauß, the Philistine and the Writer', and if, on the other hand, one also what appears with all possible old good traditions within the Catholic Church, then one must find, with an unbiased judgment, that what appears in David Friedrich Strauß is quite clearly below the level at which the Catholic discussion as such moves.

These things only make sense when they are said in a certain context. What I had to characterize as the actual Catholic is, of course, juxtaposed on the other side with what is meant by “mysticism” in the usual sense of the word, that mysticism which actually clearly leads back to inner experience, which also understands communion with Christ as an inner experience. Here we are actually dealing with the individual human being, who, simply by virtue of his particular nature and character, can have this 'unio mystica', behind which what takes place in the sacrament – which is the main thing in the Catholic sense – basically sinks to the level of an outer work, indeed for many mystics it disappears altogether. In fact, the connection with the objective fact of Calvary is completely lost, and all that is actually worth striving for is reduced to some subjective process. So, if you make the necessary efforts to do so, or if you are blessed or have some other kind of predisposition, you can experience the Christ within yourself through subjective experience, and often do not even realize that in this way you are intellectually and emotionally withdrawing from the world to the subject, and that you are actually completely losing the objective Christ with this subjective mysticism.

But it was precisely during the time when Luther was active that there was a strong urge for this mysticism, especially in the decisive area of religious development. And it may be said that a large part of the struggle through which Luther passed consisted in his having on the one hand to look to what was given him simply by his starting point from the Catholic priesthood, and on the other hand to what he particularly observed in something like his study of the “Theologia deutsch” or other mystical endeavors - after all, it was everywhere present in the early days of the Lutheran era - so it was according to the purely subjective experience that for him contained the danger of now completely losing Christ and falling prey to the mere devilish work, his subjective experience. For Luther could not regard the subjective experience, which completely loses the Christ, as anything other than the work of the devil, and in it he saw directly the danger of an arousal on the part of the devil, who aims to present the image of Christ inwardly to man, but to take away the Christ. Indeed, Luther must have felt, the adversary could find no better way to take Christ from humanity than to educate all people to the purely subjective experience of Christ. Of course it is quite possible to eliminate the objective Christ from the world by making it clear to people, in the most absolute pure experience, that if they inwardly experience Christ, that is enough. For Luther this experience of Christ would have taken away from him all objectivity, the whole of the objective process; for him it would have meant a taking away of Christ from mankind by the adversary of Christ.

This, my dear friends, is, if I may express myself in religious terms, a means of the evil spirits to dissuade us from the supersensible world, to instill images of the supersensible world into us and let us be satisfied with the images of the supersensible world. Anyone who is grounded in genuine spiritual science knows that materialistically tinged visions do not represent a connection with the spiritual world, but a turning away from the spiritual world, a casting out of the spiritual world. So when, for example, let us say, the anthroposophist, who sees things impartially, comes to atavistic or to morbid, pathological visions, it is his task not to remain in this visionary state, but to fight this visionary state with all his might, because the visions do not lead not lead to the supersensible, they lead away from the supersensible; and it is, I might say, only a distillate of that visionary experience which emerges in the false mysticism that wants to come to Christ through inner experience; it is only a distillate. Because people are basically incapable of having real visions, they make up fantasy content, which then actually throws people back on themselves.

In contrast to this, there is what can be felt as the relationship of man to Christ in the Lutheran sense, and this is that, first of all, the sense of the reality of the external work is lost, that is, the focus is on the historical-temporal, in the physical sense temporal church, and that in place of this church, not a non-church, but the invisible church is placed. In Catholicism, then, we have in the first place the visible church, which is nothing other than the work of Christ, and which sees in the outward world of temporal facts a definite and continuous trend extending from the event of Golgotha to the individual believer. On the other hand, we have the turning away from this closed current, so to speak, the reduction of what is a merely temporal process to a supra-temporal process. Thus, in the individual Catholic believer, let us say, for example, when he receives Holy Communion from the priest, a connection is made directly with the Mystery of Golgotha throughout the entire development of time. If he takes the matter strictly, the one who communicates according to the Roman Catholic ritual – in fact, according to any Catholic ritual – can imagine that this communion is carried out directly by Christ through the priest. He must be directly aware of the immediate presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper through the temporal mediation of the church, which has never given up this continuity. On the other hand, in the Lutheran ritual, communion can only be seen as a connection between the human being and the supernatural, and also with the supernatural, which is given by Christ himself, so that this connection is not a temporal but a trans-temporal act, through which the individual is brought into a direct relationship with Christ, not through the mediation of time, but directly, and that this relationship is mediated through faith. It is the case that the person with whom the communicant is connected through a timeless act proves, in subjective consciousness, to be identical with the one who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. There is actually no other consistent interpretation of the matter. It is about this: someone communicates at the altar, and through this they are brought into direct contact with the supersensible. Grace is at work at that moment; through grace, through the working of grace, faith is now aroused in that moment. But faith is not just an abstract, subjective belief; rather, faith is something that contains reality within itself. And through this faith, the communicator encounters the Christ, who has gone through the mystery of Golgotha, in that, through a special effect of grace, his faith is given to him in the immediate presence of the Christ and through this faith he is brought into the right kind of connection with the supersensible world in communion.

Of course, these things are also interpreted in the most diverse ways, and you can indeed read the most diverse interpretations about these things today. I must confess to you that I have read many such interpretations, the majority of those that appear today, and that are precisely from people who live in the consciousness of the present day. Most of these interpretations actually seem to me to avoid arriving at a very clear, coherent idea, so that one can do extremely little with them if one is accustomed to arriving at coherent ideas in these matters. It is not possible to accept what appears as faith in Luther's work as a mere subjective belief, as we are accustomed to in today's science, but it is necessary to see that in the act of faith through a gift of grace, the power of Christ is present in Luther's work. In a kind of trans-temporal act, one encounters on earth the same one who went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

But with that, my dear friends, we have given the great difference that exists between mysticism, as I characterized it to you earlier, and what the presence of the act of faith is in the consciousness, in the soul of the human being within the Lutheran confession. The mystic must incline more and more to regard the whole matter as a completely subjective one, as a completely personal relationship with Christ, whose objectivity actually eludes him. The Lutheran believer must say to himself: If I can have the right faith, then I must at the same time be a chosen one, I must be predestined to have in my faith not only the powers that can spring from my personality, but in this act of faith the power of Christ Himself, which is not given to me by something inward, but which comes to me entirely from without, but never through some kind of process that takes place in such a way that I could also see it externally, that I could visualize it through some temporal context, but which is actually a trans-temporal process that must be presented as something that could never enter into the process of historical becoming, of historical development. Thus, in the course of temporal-historical becoming, what appears as a supra-temporal act in the act of faith simply cannot be contained in it. So in this sense, no visible church could actually form a real ascent to what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha, because the only truly Protestant way of saying it is: In the act of faith, a supra-temporal act takes place; if now, in addition, the church is there to lead up to the Mystery of Golgotha in a temporal way, this purely temporal act, this continuity within the church actually means only one direction, which has nothing to do with the supra-temporal as such, other than that it is somehow the bearer of this supra-temporal.

Consider the consequence of this. If, in the sense of Catholicism, the essence of the temporal mediation by the church is seen to be that it must happen, then the continuity must not be allowed to break anywhere, then the apostolic succession must not be allowed to end anywhere, then only the ordained priest can ordain the other priest, and then only the one ordained by an ordained priest can be a priest, then we are led to the necessity of maintaining the continuity of the Church, because the temporal act is at the same time the supersensible act, which cannot be broken anywhere. That is the Catholic view.

If we turn to the Protestant view, the essential thing is a supra-temporal act, because that which is temporal in the church is only the 'vehicle of this supra-temporal act. So the succession can break somewhere. When the supra-temporal takes place in the individual personality through the supra-temporal act of grace, then this leads through the act of grace each time up to the Mystery of Golgotha. One encounters the Christ, and it does not matter what temporal mediation is present. For example, if the act beyond time takes place in the right way, historical continuity can be broken. It is not at all necessary for the act beyond time to be supported by any kind of temporal succession. That is how sharply things are opposed to one another. You must not fail to recognize this. And even if one or the other does not feel that way, it is simply the case that one really does shrink from ultimate consequences; and certain solutions will only come about if one decides not to confuse these things, not to blur the difference, but to present it to the soul in all clarity.

If we now continue in the anthroposophical sense, we see on the one hand the Catholic Church as it is today. I am speaking for the present time; what I say would not apply to the Catholic Church, say, in the 12th century. I speak for the present time, because we are dealing with resolutions that you are also making in the present time, and the development in the anthroposophical sense could not be something that would make it possible for us to say what we are saying today at a different time, but we have to speak directly from what is necessary for the present time. On the one hand, Catholicism, in which anthroposophy can see nothing other than what brings the supersensible world down into the sensory realm, an earthly manifestation of that which can never be completely absorbed into the earthly, which, through its earthly manifestation, can only be so that it is falsified in its actual meaning. Thus, in Catholicism, we see, on the one hand, something emerging that draws the [supratemporal] into the temporal element, and we cannot help but say: today's consciousness has not yet reached the point that it has created complete clarity about these matters in a sufficiently large number of people. It is simply the case that because in Catholicism there is no stronger contrast between the trans-temporal and the temporal, because the trans-temporal can appear in the temporal, can be within it, because a temporal appear and at the same time represent in its reality something beyond time, then it may well be the case within Catholicism that the real event emerges for that which the true [supersensible] event is.

Only out of such an awareness could I, for example, speak of many things in my theory of knowledge that could not have been expressed out of any other awareness. Thus we see how deeply justified the claim is for the act of faith to be a timeless act. And if we now consider the relationship to Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha, anthroposophy, through its cosmology, recognizes the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha, it recognizes the real passage of the extraterrestrial Christ-being through the deeds and experiences of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, from the side of knowledge, what comes from cosmology flows into that which the human being experiences in himself through the timeless act. What comes from cosmology is then a full confirmation that we are not dealing with something subjective, but that we are dealing with a process that is taking place in the development of the earth. And now we come to the point where we have to say, from the anthroposophical point of view, that if, for example, [the connection] with the supratemporal takes place in the right way in communion, then through this act communion is also established with the historical deed on Golgotha, established in a supratemporal way, and the appeal to the temporal mediation is not necessary as such, because something objective has happened for the evolution of the earth through what has happened for the earth and for humanity through the mystery of Golgotha. Anthroposophy simply leads us to say: With the Mystery of Golgotha, an integrating process for the whole of earthly evolution has taken place; after the Mystery of Golgotha, the whole of earthly evolution is something different than it used to be. The Christ Himself descended from supermundane spheres to the earthly realm and has been partaking in the process of earthly evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the evolution of the earth itself, He has thereby initiated a supra-temporal process that has been present ever since and that does not depend on the temporal establishment of the Church. Thus, what can be encountered as a mere article of faith from the invisible church, acquires a content through anthroposophical knowledge, which must simply present the activity of Christ in the evolution of the earth as a reality.

My dear friends, when the activity of Christ is present in earthly reality, then it is present; the only question is whether one can find the Christ objectively working in the earthly process. One need not find him through some institution, which can only be a mediator. One must find him through what happens to oneself as a result of the institution. One can find him at any time, in any place, since the Mystery of Golgotha, and a church can be the mediator alone. When it appears as a church, it will sanctify itself as a church precisely by sanctifying its faithful. So one can say: the anthroposophical view is simply that, in religious terms, [finding Christ] depends on what happens on the path one takes to Christ, but that an unconditional reliance on succession succession within the church current would be a falling down into that which was entirely justified within the pre-Christian development of humanity, which only radiates through Catholicism into the development of humanity since the Christ event.

My dear friends, for those people to whom, in some local context, say, in the ancient Orient, a god approached — I say a “god” because the gods in the ancient Orient were, after all, in relation to Christ, we would today say, “sub-gods” — this very different god who approached must have appeared to them as the real source for everything divine in this tribe. One had to maintain continuity with him within the earth; once this god had appeared, one had to somehow find a ceremonial disguise that would never break away. Let us say that it was possible to offer this god the sacrifice of fire on the altar. If this meant that one had approached this god, if this meant that contact with this god had been established within the sensual entities, then this fire, once kindled on the altar of sacrifice, could never be allowed to go out, for with the physical flame the god would also have vanished. This fire had to be continuously maintained, the one fire had to be lit at the other; its flame had to endure in time, because in this way the god was preserved, who was “fired” into this material.

In a more spiritualized form, this then comes to us within the Catholic Church, which has preserved old customs, in the continuity of priestly ordination, and it comes to us within the individual church that contains the eternal flame. In every Catholic church there is a flame that must never be extinguished, a small candle that must always be lit from one that is still burning. And if today we see the small candle in the eternal lamp by which Galileo Galilei observed the laws of the pendulum in the church of Pisa, , then this flame, burning today, was kindled from that which burned earlier, and this goes all the way up to the first flame, so that in every single flame of a single church one should see that which was first kindled by the apostles themselves. There also had to be a material community for each individual flame, ascending to the one that was first kindled in the bosom of the apostles.

We see, on the one hand, Catholicism with its great danger of materializing everything, of bringing everything down into the temporal-material, and, on the other hand, Protestantism with the danger of atomization, which must be avoided. And that must be the big question in your endeavors: How can we avoid atomization, that each individual has his or her own confession, which leads to the impossibility of building a community? Because everything that must be understood as a timeless act that can be achieved by each individual tends towards that, and as a result, the Protestant Church carries the danger of atomization within itself. The Catholic Church runs the risk of completely destroying the existence of the individual, of only recognizing him as a link in the materialized Christ process. The Protestant Evangelical Church is in danger – in what it has now become, which it was not at the time of Luther – of pushing the individual so far that any community building becomes impossible, so that the church disintegrates into its atoms and that there will no longer be any possibility of pastoral care, that the Church would have to face its dissolution, its nullity, and in view of the present situation this would have to happen very soon if nothing is done to counteract this trend.

Thus, on the one hand, we have materialization, and on the other, spiritualization. Both are great dangers for the development of religious life in the civilized world. And so today we are faced with the possibility that on the one hand someone may arise and say as a Catholic: The Church is everything and she must not be shaken! — and on the other hand someone may say: The Church is nothing!

All this is expressed in the most diverse nuances, and it is expressed in the most diverse nuances. For example, among certain Protestants there is a constant tendency to become Catholic; on the other hand, among Catholics there is always a tendency to become Protestant. I do not say to “protest”, but to “protestantize”. We are indeed living in a chaos inside. It is extremely difficult, for example, for someone who is looking for clear concepts to understand how it really is in the mind of a personality like the one who opposed Dr. Geyer yesterday and simply asserted the resurrection as an historical fact based on the testimony of eyewitnesses. That is precisely the question: are the eyewitnesses credible? How do we come to understand the fact as an historical fact? The whole question of the [possibility of a] falsification of historical facts is dismissed because it is convenient to do so, and we have certainly contained a Catholicizing tendency within Protestantism, just as, on the other hand, Protestantizing tendencies are contained in Catholicism, especially when they express themselves subjectively, but without the pastors actually coming to a real departure from the church.

The following draft of a declaration of collaboration in a religious renewal was presented to Rudolf Steiner on October 4, 1921.

First version of a declaration of cooperation in a religious renewal:

I declare my determination to cooperate in the efforts for a comprehensive and effective religious renewal, as initiated by the organizers of the religious teaching course led by Dr. Rudolf Steiner from June 12 to 16, 1921 in Stuttgart, in accordance with the following guiding principles.

1. I recognize that anthroposophy is, in decisive respects, the new worldview that must be presupposed for a religious renewal today and that it has the necessary sources of knowledge for the new cults to be developed.

2. I declare my willingness to prepare and found independent congregations by implementing the cultic forms and suggestions for sermons and teaching gained from anthroposophical sources of knowledge. I will only seek to establish ties within the church where the purity of the impulse is not endangered.

3. To become qualified for the responsible priestly profession, I am willing to familiarize myself with the spirit of sacramental priestly work through intensive training.

4. For the present time, I recognize the following conditions for the pastoral work in question, based on scientific training: thorough theological training, an academic final examination; for non-theologians who, by way of exception, can be admitted on the basis of personal aptitude, participation in a four-month theological course organized by the leadership is required.

5. I undertake to use my best endeavors to recruit serious and suitable co-workers. After obtaining the consent of the Central Office, the person to be recruited may be approached and the material made accessible to him, under the condition of confidentiality. After completing the Dornach Course in September-October 1921, the commitment to the present declaration and the guarantee of a committed co-worker is required to join the co-workers. Every new co-worker should, as far as possible, be enabled to participate in a conference to be held at a location to be announced at the beginning of January 1922.

6. Only committed employees are entitled to purchase the course transcripts, and then only on condition that they treat them in strict confidence and return them to the management immediately upon request. Special copies of the course transcripts are available for advertising purposes (see point 5 for instructions).

7. I agree, for the sake of unity of action, not to use any cultic forms before the jointly determined date. In the event that I revoke my commitment, I forfeit all rights to use anthroposophically based rituals.

I will treat as confidential all material communicated to me orally, in writing or in print, as well as the names of all personalities involved in the movement.

Discussion after the Seventeenth Lecture

I will then ask you to ask further questions. And now, perhaps, I may conclude with a few words about the document with the seven points that was handed to me and that, of course, actually concerns not so much me as those who would come to sign this document. I also have no influence over anything that is to be decided on the basis of this document. I would just like to note that certain difficulties have arisen for me in three points, I believe in the 4th, 5th and 7th points. I didn't have to read it very quickly, but certain difficulties arose for me in points 4, 5 and 7, which I believe are only one difficulty. Of course, I don't need to read the points to you, I just want to read the fourth one, because this difficulty should be overcome.

“For the present time, I recognize the following conditions for the pastoral work in question, with regard to scientific training: thorough theological training, a final academic examination; for non-theologians who, by way of exception, can be admitted on the basis of personal aptitude, participation in a four-month theological course organized by the management is required.”

This point cannot be implemented without at the same time finding a way of appointing the organizers to decide on it. This point cannot be followed without having impeccable authorities who can bring about a decision in these matters. So that seems to me to be actually missing here, who has to decide on this. It is not the case that this can simply be decided after the expression: “Thorough theological training, an academic final examination”, but who allows it? And “for non-theologians... participation in a theological course organized by the management is required”. Who is the management? At least I couldn't find any clear indication of this. The fifth point reads: “I undertake to recruit serious, suitable collaborators to the best of my ability. After obtaining the consent of the central office, the person to be recruited can be approached and the material made accessible to him, provided this is done in confidence.” So at the very least, a central office would have to be set up properly, also in line with point 7: ‘[...] for the sake of unity of purpose’ and so on. Of course, it is also necessary that at least from the beginning a flawless central office must be created, and that you must create it in such a way that it takes care of those points that concern the law - because we immediately fall into the law when we stipulate in this way, and with that comes apostasy from God. We also come into the necessity of succession, so the mode between you would also have to be discussed in detail, in which way you create a flawless succession to that which you again establish in a flawless way as a central office in Berlin. In such a matter it is not possible to proceed in a purely associative manner, but in the creation of such a matter I consider it necessary to bring the whole seriousness of the matter before the soul. You can hardly do that without realizing that if you take on such strict conditions as those formulated in points 1, 2 and 3, you must actually create a very serious institution for the outside world, which must be more than what is achieved through the current association-based approach. For as a rule, firstly, the individual does not take care of it, and secondly, it is constantly being changed, so that what is there from the spirit of those first chosen is turned upside down by the next people. You have to ensure that what you set down here cannot be turned upside down by your successors. This is something that, in addition to this, should be discussed in a very serious way.

Emil Bock: We actually meant that these sentences should only have provisional validity, and we also meant to create a central office...

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, but I think that it is part of the creation of an institution of any kind to be absolutely clear about this central office. I think you should not part here without...

Emil Bock: That should happen when the signatures are available.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, can that be done? I don't want to say anything other than advice; consider what I am saying as nothing more than advice. It would have to be discussed among you whether the individuals who sign this do so before the central office is created or whether they sign it after the central office is created. In the first case, you are committing yourself to a number of sentences whose execution you do not know; in the second case, you are committing yourself to belonging to a certain reality. I do not want to exert any influence, but you must consider whether you want to sign statutes that you write and profess, or whether you are performing a real action. You will only carry out the real action when you have set up the central office, because that is where everything starts for the whole movement. Of course, either of the two possibilities can arise, but there is an enormous difference.

Emil Bock: It was actually only intended as a suggestion.

Rudolf Steiner: This has far too much weight. I must say that if someone is to put their name to points 1, 2 and 3 - (the text is read out again) - if you sign such important points, you must be aware that it is, so to speak, a decision for life. It means a decision for life.

One participant believes that the question of how the central office should be created can actually only be dealt with by a group of people who want to work on it; it would not be acceptable for people to join the discussion who had no intention of participating in the work.

Rudolf Steiner: So you think it is a matter of first signing this thing in order to then create the central office from the circle of those who have signed it? Of course, that can be the case too. But it would still have to be a cohesive undertaking, otherwise you create an intermediate period between what one is committed to for life and, isn't it, the actual real work. Of course, those who really work in this way can subscribe to that. But in my opinion, if it is really subscribed to, if it is subscribed to very seriously, it is such a decisive step for life that one cannot help but create this central office from the center.

Emil Bock: We thought that it would not be possible for a central office to present itself. We do not think we have the right to do so.

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps it will not be so difficult, given the way you have come together. You must first recognize each other. My opinion is that you are founding the central office at the same time as you sign. I even see it as a unified act. I think it cannot be that one first gives a formal signature. Only by giving one's signature does one become a co-worker in a very real Zeitströmung, otherwise this signature has no meaning, so that the signing would be identical with the creation of a central office.

Emil Bock: There is the question of how this central office should be created.

Christian Geyer: I don't think it's possible for us to discuss such important matters without these things being prepared in a small group. (Pastor Geyer follows up with the question of whether the work to renew religious life is not possible within the church organization, along the lines of Rittelmeyer's work in Berlin, or whether this ceases to be the case the moment this central office is brought into being.) I believe that this question must be thoroughly discussed in another circle by a small group and only then can it be put forward for general discussion.

Rudolf Steiner: I assumed that something like this had happened because I find in point 2 what concerns the position on church communities. It is stated in point 2 in such a way that I cannot imagine a greater precision: “I declare my willingness to prepare and found free communities by realizing the cult forms and suggestions for preaching and teaching gained from anthroposophical sources of knowledge. I will seek to establish ties within the church only where the purity of the impulse is not endangered by doing so.” — I cannot imagine it more precisely, everything is given in reality; therefore I have assumed that the wording has essentially been discussed in a small circle.

Christian Geyer points out that he has already experienced significant religious movements that have become so strong that the church was faced with the question of either letting them go or absorbing them into its organization. He finds that nothing has yet been said about the relationship between free communities and the church community.

Rudolf Steiner: But actually it has. I think it is clear, because [it says], “I will only seek to establish ties within the church where this does not endanger the purity of the impulse.” So that would be self-contained: if someone in such a free community says that it does not endanger the purity of the impulse, it is possible that he will work in such a community within the church. That is actually contained in the sentence.

A participant: It would therefore be a matter of including in this document a passage that would describe the central leadership in detail.

Rudolf Steiner: You see, you must take it that I do not want to have the slightest influence on what is to be done in the spirit of such a document. But I have read it, and I consider its contents so serious for the one who signs it that nothing but something tremendously serious can follow from it, that an act can follow. I must place that on one side, and in this direction I can only give advice. On the other side I must place something else. If I had time, I would give you a collection of all the things that have come to my attention in the course of the existence of the anthroposophical movement in the form of such documents within this society, where people have set out to do this or that. There is nothing else but such documents lying in my paper collection, and most of them have been forgotten by those who signed them at the time. Of course, these are the most extreme cases, but they represent the other side of the coin. I think that we are now at such a serious point in time that if we even think of going as far as signing such a document, we must also immediately move on to real action. I don't mean that you will form so many churches the day after tomorrow. That is not what I mean, but the actual working towards it, even if it is only possible in a small circle, the actual working towards a specific, very concrete goal. The concrete goal is there, but at the same time the possibility of very serious work must be created, which is not mere association or other work, but which is aware of accomplishing a world-historical deed. That is what I mean.

Emil Bock: That has actually been our intention, and it is actually quite clear that we do want to create the central office we have been talking about. We also discussed it this morning.

Rudolf Steiner: Is the earlier also meant in this sense? I just mean that if you sign such points, then at the same time you create the necessity to have the central office, otherwise you cannot read the individual points. The text refers to the central office; this wording already presupposes the central office.

A participant: May I perhaps draw a parallel? I would like to recall the founding of the Anthroposophical Society. I believe that something similar must happen here. At that time, three personalities took responsibility for bringing such a society into being, and I think that the process here should also be that a number of personalities find the courage to make a start and then say: We want this and that. Who will join us? I believe that a number of people who might naturally emerge from the Stuttgart Circle will find the courage to simply constitute themselves as the Central Council.

Rudolf Steiner: There is, of course, a difference between the Anthroposophical Society and what would have to arise here; it is a significant difference. You see, what is today the Anthroposophical Society used to be within the framework of the Theosophical Society, the great Theosophical Society, and I never treated it any differently than I did later on with the Anthroposophical Society. In such a society complete freedom must prevail; above all, when one is dealing with such a spiritual movement as the Anthroposophical Society, freedom must prevail in such a way that the leaders, above all, can never be enslaved. As soon as a society comes into being, the leaders actually lose their freedom; that is the danger. Therefore, societies like the Anthroposophical Society must actually do everything to ensure that the leaders do not lose their freedom. Of course, for many years I could only achieve this by simply doing as I pleased, which was probably what was intended by the spiritual world. I always took the principle of 'those who go along, go along; those who do not want to go along, do not go along and do not stay'. Everyone joins of their own free will; but those who have something to lead also have their free will. There can be no democracy or anything like that. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, it was founded only in a somewhat more detailed way on the same basis as within the Theosophical Society, with the three of them in Munich saying: “We three are are here now – Dr. Unger, Dr. Steiner, Mr. Bauer – those who want to go with us to lead an Anthroposophical Society go with us; those who are right with us go with us, those who are not right with us do something else.

If you think about things thoroughly, you will find that there is no other way than this one, everything else leads to the enslavement of the free spiritual life. The moment any kind of agreement becomes necessary, the spiritual life is immediately enslaved. I really recommend that you think about this in this area; you will see that there is no other way than this one. You must not forget that the conditions of a society such as the Anthroposophical Society, which is completely involved in the field of comprehensive spiritual life, are somewhat different from what you want to establish. Therefore, you must consider the matter very carefully. The Anthroposophical Society, insofar as it adheres to me – I myself have preserved my freedom to such an extent that I am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society; there is a very profound reason why I am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society, and I occasionally emphasize this very sharply – that I am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society. So, the Anthroposophical Society, I have always understood it, comes into the world as a new creation, a completely new creation in every respect, as a new creation of the anthroposophical, for example. So within any statutes of the Anthroposophical Society, there could be no question of anything similar to your fourth sentence: “For the present time I recognize the following conditions with regard to scientific training...” So that makes it quite clear that there really are absolute differences. A distinction must be made, and we must first become clear about it. And that in the first point [required]: “I recognize that anthroposophy is the basis for a new worldview in crucial points,” one would not even be allowed to say that if, so to speak, one demanded it from the members of an Anthroposophical Society; it would not even occur to one to demand the anthroposophical worldview from the members. If someone is an atheist out of their own free will and joins the Anthroposophical Society in order to freely engage with what is being done there, then they can certainly do so. In reality, it is perhaps the only way to realize what Anzengruber says: As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist! — That is a famous atheistic oath.

But you have to be clear about the fact that what is [right] in the Anthroposophical Society is not actually possible for you, because you create out of a certain continuity, you recognize certain prerequisites. But I, for example, would not believe that the first point must be adhered to in such a strict way. I would not, for example, agree with the statement: “I recognize that in decisive points, anthroposophy is the new worldview that must be presupposed for a religious renewal today.” From my point of view — but I am only saying what I mean — I would prefer to say, for example: I recognize that for a religious renewal today it is necessary to turn one's attention to those phenomena that claim today, from original sources, to come from the supersensible world, such as Anthroposophy. I would think that the matter would be better that way. But, as I said, I do not want to influence anyone. And I certainly don't want anthroposophy to be represented in the world today by saying that it should be taken up, although I also believe that what I have said is more in the spirit of anthroposophy than if it were made into a kind of dogmatics, even if in a very free sense, which it is not in reality.

These are the things I wanted to say.

Corrected version of the Statement

I declare my determination to work in accordance with the following guiding principles in the efforts towards a comprehensive and far-reaching religious renewal, as initiated by the organizers of the religious teaching course led by Dr. Rudolf Steiner from June 12 to 16, 1921 in Stuttgart.

1. I recognize that today every effort towards religious renewal must go hand in hand with the effort towards a new world view that can claim to come from original sources in the supersensible world, such as anthroposophy.

2. I declare my willingness to prepare and found free communities by realizing the cult forms and suggestions for sermon and teaching that I have gained from anthroposophical sources of knowledge. I will only seek to establish ties within the churches where I am certain that the purity of the impulse will not be endangered.

3. For the sake of unity of action, I undertake not to use any of the cultic forms in any other way or at an earlier time than will be determined by common agreement.

4. In order to become qualified for the responsible priesthood, I am willing to familiarize myself with the spirit of sacramental priestly work through intensive training.

5. I am prepared to do my best to recruit serious, suitable co-workers.

6. I will treat as confidential all material communicated to me orally, in writing or in print, as well as the names of all individuals involved in the movement.

7. Should I fail to fulfill the above obligations, I will renounce the use of any anthroposophically based rituals.

8. I join those personalities who, during the Dornach Course in October 1921, entrusted Lic. Emil Bock with the leadership of of the work, with the proviso that he ensures that the necessary work is carried out in conjunction with Lic. Dr. Rittelmeyer (if the latter agrees) and the personalities who will continue to be co-opted.

The leadership initially has the following tasks:

a. Facilitating the exchange of ideas among all co-workers.

b. The direction of the promotional activity, which for the sake of order will be handled as follows:

The participants of the Dornach Course who could not sign the present declaration in Dornach will be kept in contact through a circular letter organization. Their signatures can be accepted at any time without further ado.

New co-workers must commit to this declaration and be sponsored by a co-worker who has signed up to the Dornach Course.

Every new co-worker should endeavour to attend a three- to four-day conference that will take place at the beginning of January 1922 at a location yet to be determined.

c. The administration of all course transcripts, which are the intellectual property of Dr. Steiner and can only be accessed with his consent, and of other material. Only signatories of this declaration are entitled to purchase the transcripts. Disclosure to those to be recruited is only possible after consultation with the management. In special cases, the management can make the transcripts available to course participants who have not yet signed.

d. The scientific prerequisites will be determined on a case-by-case basis. As a rule, in order to realize the common goal in public, a thorough theological education and an academic final examination are currently required. Non-theologians are encouraged to participate in introductory courses organized by the leadership.

[Even before the report written by H. J. Heywood-Smith about the Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland on April 22 was sent out by the Society in a circular dated May 14, Heywood-Smith had sent a short report to the Friends in England with the following cover letter dated May 1: “Haus Friedwart, Dornach, May 1, 1923

Enclosed is a brief report on the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. You will see from it that Dr. Steiner hopes that such gatherings will also be held in other countries, when Anthroposophists unite to set themselves a worthy task that the whole world cannot help but respect.

It has been four months since the destruction of the Goetheanum by fire and the consequent homelessness of Anthroposophy, and yet nothing has been done to rebuild the structure. Is it not clear from Rudolf Steiner's earnest words that the worthy task that the Society as a whole should take on and work on with all its strength and energy is the rebuilding of the Goetheanum? Would this not be a positive act in response to the attacks of the enemies of anthroposophy?

Would you call a meeting of the members of the groups as soon as possible and discuss with them what the doctor expects of such a meeting, and if they agree, take a decision to the effect that it is their firm intention to rebuild the Goetheanum in Dornach and that they wish the work to begin immediately. Such a resolution, passed by groups in several countries, would contribute to the fulfillment of the first condition under which the building could be rebuilt. The resolution should be sent to Dr. Steiner, Villa Hansi, Dornach, Switzerland, as soon as possible, for Dr. Steiner asked the members not to leave the assembly room before they had set themselves a real task, but unfortunately the assembly in Dornach ended without this having happened.

With best regards
H.J. Heywood-Smith

In our time, outside the circles of the anthroposophical movement, there is little understanding of how to arrive at a true view of the soul. I am saying something that may sound incomprehensible to some people, because it is often assumed that one knows what soul is, what one is dealing with when one speaks of the soul, and so on. And on the other hand, such a statement can in many cases be taken for granted in the sense that centuries- and even millennia-old views of the human soul have finally run their course and that a view of the human soul must wait until scientific research is so advanced that it is able to provide information about the soul.

Now, however, I would like to counter these two objections today with nothing more than the assertion of the recently deceased linguist Fritz Mauthner, whom I have mentioned several times: that people in the present day often believe that they have an insight into this or that, whereas in fact they only have words. And it is for this reason that Mauthner wrote a “critique of language”. He wanted to show that today's civilized humanity in particular has an inherited language. We have expressions for all sorts of things. But if you look more closely at what is behind the words, there is actually nothing there. We have the word, we think we are designating something with the word, but in reality we are not designating anything.

Now, of course, it is nonsense to apply this criticism of language to scientific knowledge. For no one will be of the opinion that, whether one knows much or little, let us say, about a horse, one could be misled about the thing horse by the expression “horse” in some language. Everyone knows perfectly well that you cannot ride on the word horse, but you can ride on the real horse. And that makes it clear from the outset that, with regard to things that exist in nature, a critique of language is rather inconsequential, because one will always know the difference between the word and the thing with regard to external observation. I do not believe that someone who wants to ride out will sit on the word 'white horse' instead of the real white horse.

But it is really different with everything in our present civilization that, on the one hand, refers to the soul, to the life of the soul, to the facts of the life of the soul, and, on the other hand, refers to the ethical, to the moral demands of humanity. Here one must indeed say: there is actually only a belief that realities lie behind the words. Therefore, one can also understand that Mauthner thought deeply: Should one even still use the word “soul”? There is nothing real behind it, as when a person speaks of a horse with the word horse. People no longer have any insights into the life of the soul. Therefore, one should not only omit the soul from the science of the soul, as a 19th-century psychology of the soul did, one should completely eradicate the word soul, and speak of “spiritual phenomena” in such a way as to refer to something indeterminate. If one wants to say that there are three entities, Karl, Fritz, Hans, who are sons of the same father and the same mother, and wants to refer to them superficially and sweepingly, then one says: siblings. Why should one, Mauthner asks, say soul when one only knows so little about mental phenomena? The word soul designates nothing; one should say “Geseel”. If this view were really to gain currency, the delusion would be done away with that in speaking of the soul one had something more or other behind it. For in the future one would no longer say that man has an immortal soul. During his life on earth man has a soul within him, I am touched in my deepest soul, and so on.

Things are indeed extremely serious for those people who are seriously seeking a view of the spirit, much more serious than one usually thinks. In any case, they prove how much people should listen up in the present when it is asserted somewhere that the right means should be sought again to reach the reality of the soul.

Today we say that the soul abilities are mainly thinking, feeling and willing. But people should just honestly realize what they mean by these terms thinking, feeling and willing. It would soon dispel their belief that they are looking at something real. Today I would just like to speak about how anthroposophy can clarify that with ordinary consciousness one is not at all able to look at something fully real in this respect. And what I would like to hint at today in this regard, I will then explain in more detail in the next lecture, because today it is still my duty to point out another aspect.

If a person looks honestly into themselves today, they must admit that what they carry within them in terms of thoughts is mostly taken from the outside world. These thoughts are more or less only mirror images of what makes an impression on the human senses in the external physical-sensual reality. Just try to do the self-observation experiment clearly and ask yourself: How many thoughts are there in this human consciousness that point to something other than the words we have: thinking, feeling, willing, God, immortality and so on, that point to something in the spiritual life of ordinary civilization that is not mirrored from the outside world? People only strive to understand everything in terms of how it can be mirrored by the external world. And if you want to explain the spiritual to many people today, they actually demand visual aids for the spiritual as well, perhaps a film or something similar, because they say: if it is not illustrated to us, if we are not presented with sensory images, then we do not understand anything about the spiritual!

In such moments, when people demand that the spiritual be clothed in sensual images, they are more honest than when they speak as experts on the soul. If we take together much of what I have often discussed here in this house, then we will be able to realize that when we look back on our thinking, we have only one side of this thinking. In this sense one can even speak of a reality — but one can speak of a reality in this way, as when one gets to know a person only from behind. Imagine the grotesque thing: you only know a person from the back! Then you know him, but you do not know his nature. At most, you can sometimes grasp something of his nature. But then cases like that of the student who once came to Heidelberg as a young badger, registered with the famous Professor Kuno Fischer, and now, in his great joy, before going to the lecture hall, rushed to the barber's, had himself dressed up, and because he is so full of the fact that he is going to hear the famous man, also talks to the barber about it. The barber says, “Yes, today Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard!” The student asks him, “How do you know that Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard today?” Yes, when he writes something on the blackboard, he has his hair parted at the back before the lecture; that's when he turns around!

Well, when there are such clear signs that the character is expressed in the parting of the occiput, then one can indeed learn something about the inner personality, even if one only gets to know it from behind. But firstly, it is perhaps not particularly significant, and secondly, it is the case with most people that one does not learn very much.

With regard to our thinking, the most important part of our soul for life on earth, we only perceive, if I may put it this way, the back side. The front side escapes ordinary observation. For when one approaches the observation of human beings with anthroposophy and asks oneself: Is it all about thinking, that one forms abstract ideas about the external things grasped by the senses? — then one comes to the conclusion that this is not all about thinking, but thinking, apart from representing this sum of abstract thoughts, is also still another sum of forces. Thoughts cannot actually do anything, and one actually thinks best when one does nothing, when one sits quietly, when one cultivates calm. Thoughts are powerless, like mirror images are powerless. But if you now follow the human being, from infancy until he has grown taller, and if you later follow the growth processes that are still present in the human being - even if the human being is no longer growing taller, growth processes are still there - if you look at what the forces of growth are in the human being, then these are the same forces, now seen from the other side, that show themselves backwards in abstract thought. Man sends abstract thoughts outwards; inwards they are the forces that shape his brain. In the early childhood years, the brain is formed plastically. The forces that otherwise work as growth forces are the forces of thinking. And just as you have to imagine the front side if you see a person from behind – if you are allowed to imagine that they are a complete person – you have to imagine the concrete, real power of thought that goes into the human being and works on the human being in addition to abstract thinking.

That is the essence of a pedagogy based on healthy anthroposophy: the teacher knows that it is not enough for the child to receive this or that abstract idea from this or that person. There is a big difference between whether the child receives a living, pictorial, active idea or a dead idea. The dead idea has a retarding effect on the growth processes, the living idea has a promoting effect on the growth processes. And so we come to the fact that thinking shows one side, which, powerless, only reflects the outer world, and, when we look inward, we see a living side that permeates the whole organism of the human being and that is only the other side of his growth, the spiritual counter-image of his growth. And if one continues to research, one finds that what is represented by the other side - in relation to the human being it is the rear side, but in relation to thinking it is the front side - is not brought down by dead thinking, which only appears to us from the front, but by living thinking from its pre-earthly existence.

In fact, the transition from the pre-earthly existence to the earthly existence is such that, in the pre-earthly existence, the human being freely develops a system of forces that works in all directions in the spiritual world. Then he descends into the earthly existence. There this thinking, which is active and ruling in the spiritual world, transforms itself into the inner organizing forces of the body, and outwardly it sends, as it were, the reflecting surface onto which the earth projects its images. That is the fact. But now it is indeed the case that after a person has completed the time between death and a new birth in a satisfactory manner, he then has no task for this living thinking in the spiritual world. This living thinking has its great task in the time between death and a new birth. When this task is completed, the phenomenon occurs over there, which I have often described to you: the soul turns to earth life. But then this thinking has a new task: the task of forming the human body. And that is the significance of man's earthly thinking, of man's thinking that comes from the spiritual, that it is directed towards the human body in a formative way. Thus, in our true, in our real thinking, we have an heirloom from the spiritual world, but one that is only something on earth, because in the spiritual world it has lost its purpose. We have to thank this for the fact that our thinking can become so clear on earth. If this thinking still had a task as it had in the spiritual world, it could not become so clear on earth.

But let us turn to the other faculty of the human soul, to feeling. You will all notice - quite apart from what I myself have said about it here in this room: feeling is not as clear as thinking. Feeling is something that occurs in a different form, but in the same way as dreaming. The state of mind during feeling is basically the same as during dreaming, except that feeling occurs in a completely different form. Why is that so? Well, in feeling, just as in thinking, we only have the back side for this earthly life. But the front side is not only directed towards the human body, but, as man descends to earth from the pre-earthly existence, from the existence between death and a new birth, he also retains what lies behind feeling as an heirloom. But that still remains turned towards the spiritual, it does not just have an earthly task. Therefore, every night when a person falls asleep, he does not take his thinking with him into sleep, but he does take his feeling with him. And if you look at dreams in the right way, they are images because logical thoughts do not live on; but feelings live on. With every sleep, a person delves into the whole spiritual world. Man does not take his thoughts with him, but he does take his feelings, and even more so his volitions.

Understandably, during the day there is nothing to be done with the will. I have often said that a person can make a plan, he has a thought. But how the thought slides down into the body, how the will to move the hand continues to work, remains as dark as the state remains dark in sleep. But for that, a person retains the most from the eternal for his will. And again, one can see from the activity of the human being, for if the human being does not move, there is not a will present, but only a desire. Seen from the other side, the will represents something completely eternal. Thinking also represents something eternal, but it has been transformed into an earthly activity. The will, however, remains in the Eternal and is active in man's destiny through repeated earthly lives, in Karma.

I just wanted to give you an introduction to how one penetrates to a real teaching of the soul, so that behind the words thinking, feeling and willing there are realities, so that one points to reality. Just as the word horse refers to the outer physical horse, so when one penetrates anthroposophically into the life of the soul in this way, one can come to reality, to realities. That is the way, and on this way will come at the same time what I emphasized at the end of the last lecture here: that Anthroposophy will never will be understood when it is theory, but only when, in acquiring the anthroposophical, the human being becomes a different being, the human being is truly transformed; when he becomes a different being altogether in ethical and human relationships.

What is being striven for in this way is now confronted with something else. And now I come to what I am obliged to tell you, because Anthroposophy is already in the world and one must be alert to what is happening. We must not always have closed windows, but must also look out, and so it is a spiritual and intellectual duty to speak about these things. For everywhere today, where people believe that they have obtained clear concepts only from science, anthroposophy is dismissed with the assertion: that is fantasy, speculation, that is fantasy. And those people say that they alone have clear thinking. Apart from the fact that when one approaches anthroposophy, one naturally gains inner certainty from the truth by pursuing the anthroposophical, one must sometimes also look at how clear today's thinking actually is! I would like to discuss this with you first of all using an example, for the reason that the anthroposophist should be aware of what is today's culture or civilization. I will take an example that says something. If, let us say, one examines the logic of a person who writes in the newspapers, not much is said by that. But I take a prominent naturalist of the present day and say explicitly that I do not want to say anything malicious or disparaging, because I fully recognize that we are dealing with an important naturalist and with a serious matter that he discusses. And in this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the clarity that prevails in this regard.

In October 1910, the well-known naturalist Max Rubner gave the rector's speech at the University of Berlin, entitled: “Our Goals for the Future”. He talks about the spiritual goals of the future, and it is not just anyone who speaks, but someone who is immersed in research and who must be seen as a serious and diligent researcher from the point of view of today's civilization. At the end of his speech, he also addresses the students and tries – well, in a way that is beautiful in his own way – to make it clear that they should study. But he does this with the “clear” concepts — I mean “clear” in quotation marks — that are possible for such a researcher today, based on today's thinking. I would like to draw attention to a few points. First of all, he says, addressing the students: “We all have to learn; we come into the world with nothing but our instrument for intellectual work, a blank page, the brain, differently predisposed, differently capable of development; we receive everything from the outside world...”

So, an often-encountered view today, which says: Look, if you want to talk about the soul life, look at your brain, which is a blank slate that has to get everything from the impressions of the outside world. So when we are born, we have our brain as a blank slate, we have to expose ourselves to the impressions of the world, then they go into us, then the slate is written on. So, he says to his students, just expose yourselves to the impressions of the world with freshness, courage and vigor, and then the page you brought with you will be written on.

In the next sentence, he tells them how to do it. He says: “No brain wants to grasp everything that its ancestors have experienced and learned, what billions of brains have considered and matured in the course of human history, what our spiritual heroes have helped create...”

So the students should only pay attention to what the spiritual heroes have created. But now the spiritual heroes are suddenly creating, so now the unwritten brains have to oppose the written brains of the spiritual heroes! You see, as soon as you put two sentences together, one on page 23 and the other on page 24, they are no longer correct! For if the heroes of the mind were also blank brains, it would not be possible to speak of their impressions on the blank brains in such a way as to suggest that these brains have created anything, for that is precisely what is being denied: everything must be received from the outside world. But now the outside world is also considered to include what human brains create. One must indeed go into such things.

But then it goes on to say: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” Now, put the two sentences together: “We receive everything from the outside world,” and the second: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” This is not the speech of an ordinary newspaper writer, this is the speech of a truly meritorious researcher of the modern age. You see, it is basically irrelevant if you now want to point out the way in which such a personality characterizes how the brain works. “[...] there is always something refreshing about working in a new, previously untilled field of the brain.” That is why he tells his students to sometimes look around for other subjects that they have not yet looked at: “[...] some areas of the brain only yield results when they are repeatedly plowed, but ultimately bear the same good fruit as others that open up more effortlessly.”

Well, after all, the soil that is plowed does not produce the plow. If you want to dwell on these thoughts, you can no longer grasp any thought at all. But now Rubner finds that this thinking is quite natural.

In order to show you the significance of what he is saying, I would like to say something in advance. When someone does sports, we see him in various movements. If you are particularly interested, you can even take a snapshot of these movements. But if we take an unbiased view of things, we have to admit that if we follow the internal organic processes that take place while someone is doing sports, what happens inside between nerve and muscle as a kind of process of destruction and restoration is, firstly, much more important for what it means to be human, but also infinitely more interesting than what can be captured in a snapshot. I am not saying anything against sport as an external physical exercise. But what the athlete is inwardly is truly much more interesting than what he is outwardly. It is only in what he achieves within the organism that it begins to become interesting.

Now it so happens that the opposite is the case with the movement of the human limbs as it is with thinking. In thinking, what is done, what happens, what the fact is, is the essential, and what lies in the organization is the unessential. In sports, what takes place externally in the facts is the less interesting part; what the organism does internally is the more interesting part. In thinking, what is interesting is what thinking presents itself as, what thinking really is; what the organism does in the process is something more or less simple. Therefore, when you understand things, you can no longer speak of thinking in the same way as of muscle movement.

But if all this becomes superficial, external, what do you say? Then you explain things like this: “Thinking strengthens the brain, and the latter (the brain) increases in performance through exercise, just like another organ, like our muscle strength, through work and sport. Studying is brain sport.

You see, our civilization is caught out in its most important element, in thinking about things, if you grasp it in such a place. You don't wake up to what is actually happening in the present through something else.

Now I would like to introduce you to a personality who, through her way of thinking, which can truly be called ingenious within certain limits, has some excellent negative thoughts about our present civilization, and who understands how to characterize it well: how it is ultimately an impossible formation and shaping of thought that has brought our civilization to decay and ruin. And I must say: the man who wrote the book about the “decay and reconstruction of culture”, Albert Schweitzer, is in a position to judge such things. Anyone who is familiar with Albert Schweitzer's book “The History of the Life-Jesu Research,” published in 1906, for example, and the way in which Schweitzer knows how to address even the most apocalyptic of subjects, so that he is already well ahead of the other theologians, must admit that Schweitzer can have a sound judgment of what contemporary intellectual life is actually worth. Now he has written this book, the first part of which has just been published. The first chapter is entitled: “The Fault of Philosophy in the Decline of Culture.” And truly razor-sharp are the sentences that are intended to characterize our present intellectual life, our life of civilization. The very first sentence is: “We are living in the era of the decline of culture. The war did not create this situation. It itself is only one manifestation of it. What was spiritual has been translated into facts, which in turn react on the spiritual in every respect in a deteriorating way.” A person who has insights into the worthlessness of present-day culture! And further: ”We lost our way in culture because there was no reflection on culture among us... So we crossed the threshold of the century with unshakable illusions about ourselves.” And now he asks himself: Why is this symptom of the decline of culture there? Why are we living in a cultural decline? And he says to himself: If we look back just a short time, to the time when intellectualism was in its first stage of flowering, people still had a “total worldview.” They still spoke of ethical and moral goals in such a way that they lay in the same sources as the laws of nature. They contemplated the laws of nature and then ascended to the sources of morality with the same views, thus having a “total worldview” that encompassed both the moral and the natural.

You will remember how often I have pointed out that the decline of our culture has been caused by the fact that we have a one-sided view of nature, which posits the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar at the beginning of our existence on earth, where everything has formed out of a primeval nebula. Man also formed out of this primeval nebula, then what is called moral ideals arose - illusions - and when the heat death occurs one day, which must occur according to purely physical laws, there will be a large field of corpses, but what emerged as cultural ideals or moral ideals will be buried with them. Thus, our morality is no longer part of the world view. It is no longer part of it; it has become something that can only be captured in abstract thoughts. Schweitzer also knows that basically this has become the case around the middle of the 19th century. He is quite clear about it: “Now it is obvious to everyone that the self-destruction of culture is underway... The Age of Enlightenment” - by this he means the period when intellectualism first flourished - ”and rationalism had established ethical and rational ideals about the development of the individual into true humanity, about his position in society, about its material and spiritual tasks, about the behavior of nations towards each other and their absorption into a humanity united by the highest spiritual goals... But around the middle of the nineteenth century, this engagement of ethical rational ideals with reality began to decline. In the course of the following decades, it came more and more to a standstill. The abdication of culture took place without a fight and without a sound. Its thoughts lagged behind the times, as if they were too exhausted to keep pace with it."

And now Albert Schweitzer wants to make it clear that if people no longer have effective thoughts, culture must perish. Since effective thoughts seem to be contained in philosophy, he attributes the reason for the decline of culture to philosophy. He knows, and expresses it in this book, that although Flege and Kant are read by only a few, their ideas dominate the ideas of thousands, because they pass unnoticed through all possible into the broadest masses of humanity, and one does not exaggerate when one says today: If only the most popular books have begun to be read by the simplest mountain farmers, then Kant is already in them. One only believes that philosophy works on those who read the philosophers. That is just outer Maja.

That is why Schweitzer says: “The decisive factor was the failure of philosophy.” But now he treats this philosophy with some compassion and says to himself: Philosophy should have thought, but since thinking had gone astray, since thinking had been forgotten, one need not be surprised that philosophy could no longer think either. So he treats philosophy a little more mildly. “It did not become clear to philosophy that the energy of the cultural ideas entrusted to it was beginning to be questioned. At the end of one of the most outstanding works on the history of philosophy published at the end of the nineteenth century - the same one that I once discussed here - “this is defined as the process in which ‘step by step, with ever clearer and more certain awareness, reflection on cultural values has taken place, the universal validity of which is the subject of philosophy itself’. In doing so, the author forgot the essential: that in the past, philosophy not only reflected on cultural values, but also allowed them to be transmitted as active ideas in public opinion, while from the second half of the nineteenth century they increasingly became a guarded, unproductive capital for it.

But now he becomes mild. After all, what can the philosopher do if he no longer thinks because everyone else does not think: “That thinking did not manage to create a world view of optimistic-ethical character and to base the ideals that make up culture in such a view was not the fault of philosophy, but a fact that arose in the development of thought. But philosophy was guilty of our world because it did not admit this fact to itself and remained in the illusion that it really maintained a progress of culture."

Schweitzer no longer blames the philosophers for no longer being able to think, since it has become a general habit of people not to think anymore. But he does blame the philosophers for not having noticed this at all. They should have noticed it at least.

"According to its ultimate purpose, philosophy is the leader and guardian of general reason. It would have been its duty to admit to our world that the ethical ideals of reason no longer found support in a total worldview, as they used to, but were for the time being left to their own devices and had to assert themselves in the world through their inner strength alone... Philosophy philosophized so little about culture that it did not even notice how it itself, and the times with it, became more and more cultureless. In the hour of danger, the guard who was supposed to keep us awake slept. So it happened that we did not struggle for our culture.

Well, I think I have already told you many things about this sleeping from a variety of points of view.

In the next chapter, Schweitzer discusses the elements in us that inhibit culture. He comes to some very interesting conclusions. He finds, for example, that man has become unfree as a result of what he has absorbed as culture in recent times. Well, one can sympathize with him on that point, because people have gradually come to really only follow certain bellwethers, to swear by the authority of science, and so on. But now Schweitzer claims that the human being is not collected in his thinking. I don't think we need discuss this much either; Schweitzer is probably right that the power to collect has really declined a lot in our civilization. But then he calls the human being incomplete. Now, people will say, if he already finds us unfree and so unsettled; that we are not even supposed to be whole people, we cannot concede that to him! But he means it this way: What a person learns today, that is a specialty, be he a scholar or be he somehow a different person, so that only certain sides of his abilities are developed, not the total human being. Therefore, we go around as incomplete, not at all as complete people. And then he finds, as a fourth, that humanity has decreased to the highest degree. He cites beautiful examples. But he is generally of the opinion that unfree, uncollected and incomplete people do not develop humanity in their ethical lives either. He also finds a culture-inhibiting element in over-organization, in the eradication of human individuality. How much does the individual still depend on today? It depends only on what is prescribed by any organization. Schweitzer rightly accuses our time of over-organization as a particular tendency.

But now he also wants to move on to answering the question of how to achieve culture again. What must be done to achieve culture again? He then asks: What must the culture we achieve be like? — And he says: It must be ethical and optimistic. Now, imagine you want to build a house for yourself. You go to a builder who says: You have to describe to me what the house should be like so that I can make the plans for you. — So you tell him: The house should be solid, weatherproof, beautiful, and so that you can live comfortably in it. — Well, you can't make plans with that, but you think you have said something when you say: The house must be solid, weatherproof, beautiful and so that you can live comfortably in it. But you can't do anything with these statements. Nor can you do anything with the statement: A worldview must be ethical and optimistic. It's the same, exactly the same.

Once, when I was a little boy, there was a court case in a village where I lived. Some chickens had been stolen from a prominent member of the community. The judge wanted to know what the sentence should be and needed a description of the chickens. So he asked the man concerned what the chickens were like. “Well, they were beautiful chickens.” Yes, that's not enough. You have to tell us something so that we can get an idea of what the chickens might have been worth. Well, they were really quite beautiful chickens. Yes, but, you have to know whether the chickens were skinny or fat... – Well, they really were quite beautiful chickens. – And so it went on, nothing at all could be elicited from the man except that they were quite beautiful chickens. |

Now here we have a quite outstanding spirit who trenchantly characterizes the decline of culture in an extraordinarily fine and apt way, who even knows a great deal that people today do not even want to admit to themselves. For example, he knows the following – it is good that it is also said by someone other than just the anthroposophist: 'The summary of knowledge and the assertion of its consequences for the world view is not his concern. In the past every scientist was also a thinker who had a certain significance in the general spiritual life of his generation. Our time has arrived at the ability to distinguish between science and thinking. Therefore we still have freedom of science, but hardly any thinking science at all.” It is indeed good to hear it from someone else for a change. But you see, despite all this insight, he does not get any further than the beautiful chickens. Extremely characteristic! Something that reappears as a truly fruitful worldview must be ethical, optimistic, firm, weatherproof, beautiful, and such that one can comfortably live in it!

Yes, he gets very far in this negative characterization. He notices that there are people who have already felt that this thinking, this brain sport, does not lead to the sources of existence. Therefore they said: Well, let us give up all this thinking and arrive at the truth by way of feeling or belief, by a mystical path. He sees that, and being a keen thinker himself, to a certain extent, he asks a remarkable question. The question is: “Philosophical, historical and scientific questions, which he was not able to answer, overwhelmed his earlier rationalism like an avalanche and buried him on the way. The new thinking world view must work its way out of this chaos. Let everything that actually is take effect on itself, passing through all kinds of reflection and recognition” - yes, if only he went through a little recognition and reflection now: the house should be beautiful and weatherproof - ”it strives towards the ultimate meaning of being and life, whether some of it can be unraveled,

The final knowledge, in which man comprehends his own existence in universal existence, is said to be mystical in nature. By this is meant that it no longer comes about through ordinary reflection, but is somehow experienced.

But why assume, he says, that the path of thinking ends at mysticism? Reasoning, as practiced up to now, has always stopped when it came close to mysticism...

Now one asks oneself: What does Anthroposophy want? To start from clear, mathematically clear thinking, not to stop at mysticism, but to penetrate, thinking, into the regions that are to be opened up for the eternal. Even then people still say that the house should be solid, weatherproof and comfortable to live in – when it is already standing in front of their noses, but they cannot find their way into it. This can be said without any modesty, but these are not the worst, these are the best, these are the sharp thinkers! We must not close our eyes to such things. We must not keep beating about the bush, saying that we must make this or that person understand what anthroposophy is, when people talk like this.

But further: “Thought carried to its conclusion thus leads somewhere and somehow to a living mysticism that is necessary for all human beings to think...” Right building leads to the good house, the way I want it! Now, he finds that people are unfocused, and so he wants to make it clear what people should do to get beyond this terrible state that culture has fallen into: “In itself, reflecting on the meaning of life has a meaning. If such reflection arises again among us, the ideals of vanity and passion, which now proliferate like evil weeds in the convictions of the masses, will wither away without hope. How much would be gained for today's conditions if we all just spent three minutes each evening looking up thoughtfully at the infinite worlds of the starry sky...' It does not say in the footnote: 'The details can be found in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, oh no, but it says that somehow we have to get to the point that there are people who take three minutes to collect their thoughts - “..look up thoughtfully to the infinite worlds of the starry sky and, when attending a funeral, would devote themselves to the mystery of death and life instead of walking behind the coffin in thoughtless conversation...”

It then concludes with the following, after first drawing attention to the fact: But something, which is now a world view, should not actually be said to people; we do need such a world view - I just want to know what we need it for if we are not supposed to say it to people! “The great revision of the convictions and ideals in which and for which we live cannot take place by talking into the people of our time different, better thoughts than those they have..."

It is not right that one should speak better thoughts into the minds of people than they have, but rather one must leave them to themselves! Reflect, think of other things when you walk behind a coffin, reflect! - Yes, then people will just continue to do what they have been doing so far: they will not know what to reflect on in the three minutes and so on.

"Previous thinking sought to understand the meaning of life from the meaning of the world. It may be that we have to resign ourselves to leaving the meaning of the world open to question and to give our lives a meaning from the will to live, as it is in us... “It may be! - “Even if the paths by which we have to strive towards the goal still lie in darkness, the direction in which we must go is clear. Together we have to think about the meaning of life, to struggle to arrive at a world- and life-affirming worldview in which our drive, which we experience as necessary and valuable, finds justification, orientation, clarification, deepening, moralization and strengthening, and then becomes capable of setting up and realizing definitive cultural ideals inspired by the spirit of true humanity. — They'll be beautiful chickens!

No one will be able to say that I want to practice caustic, deliberately negative criticism. I chose the first example of Professor Rubner because I wanted to choose a personality whose scientific achievements would be recognized. I chose the second example so that I could say that I regard the person who wrote this book as one of the sharpest thinkers, as a personality who is most justified in speaking in this way. I do not want to criticize adversely, that is far from me. One must endeavor to point out characteristically what is. But when Albert Schweitzer says: Philosophy should have been on guard, but it was asleep, then we can't help but say: He continues to sleep.

Let's wait and see what the second part is like, but the first part promises that the second part will not be much different. He continues to sleep, only dreaming out of his sleep. They are desires, they are not realities. Our striving must be to go beyond mere illusions, beyond phrases, to arrive at realities. You see how the words of our language have been squeezed dry. So we have to proceed as we started this evening, by talking about the soul, then we will put content back into the words. Otherwise, as Schweitzer says: philosophy is not to blame for the decline of culture, but it is to blame for not having noticed it. Well, of course Albert Schweitzer is not to blame either for the fact that our words have been so squeezed out that they no longer contain any concepts or realities. But he is to blame for not noticing this at all. He does not notice that he is talking in completely squeezed-out words.

I felt obliged to draw attention to the cultural decline in such a cutting way in response to Albert Schweitzer's recently published cultural act – I don't mean this maliciously, I mean it quite seriously. I was obliged to point out what the situation must actually be like in order to gain a real judgment of what is not happening on the one hand and should be happening on the other. After we have gone through this episode, we want to continue talking about specific topics of anthroposophy.

At the opening of this conference, I want to extend my warmest greetings to you all. Had you come some four or five months earlier, I would have welcomed you in the building we called the Goetheanum, which stood over there. The artistic forms of its architecture and its interior design would have been a constant reminder of what was intended to go out into the world from this Goetheanum. However, the misfortune that befell us on New Year's night and inflicted such grievous pain on all who loved this building, has robbed us of the Goetheanum. And so, for the time being, we shall have to nurture the spirit—without its proper earthly home—that would have reigned within this material, artistic sheath.

It gives me great joy to welcome those of you who have come from Switzerland, and who have displayed, through your coming, real evidence of your interest in our educational goals, even though they have been received recently in Switzerland with enmity. With equal joy and gratification I want to welcome the many friends of Waldorf Education—or those wishing to become its friends—who have come from Czechoslovakia. Your presence confirms to me that education involves one of the most crucial questions of our time, and that it will receive the impetus it needs and deserves only if it is seen in this light by the various members of the teaching profession.

Furthermore, I welcome those of you who have come from other countries, and who show, through your presence, that what is being worked toward here in Dornach is not just a matter of cosmopolitan interest, but is also a matter of concern for all of humanity.

And finally I want to greet our friends, the teachers of the Waldorf School. Their primary goal in coming here is to contribute to this conference from their own personal experience. They are deeply connected with our cause, and expressed the wish to support this conference. This is greatly appreciated.

Today, as an introduction, I want to prepare the ground for what will concern us during the next few days. Education is very much in the news today, and many people connected with educating the young are discussing the need for reform. Many different views are expressed—often with considerable enthusiasm—about how education should go through a change, a renewal. And yet, when hearing the various ideas on the subject, one cannot help feeling a certain trepidation, because it is difficult to see how such different views could ever lead to any kind of unity and common purpose, especially since each viewpoint claims to be the only valid one.

But there is another reason for concern. New ideas for education do not cause undue concern in themselves, for the necessities of life usually blunt the sharp edges, causing their own compensations. When one hears nearly everyone call for a renewal in education, yet another problem comes to mind—that is, where does this praiseworthy enthusiasm for better education spring from?

Isn't it prompted by people's memories of unhappy childhood days, of their own deep-seated memories of an unsatisfactory education? But as long as the call for educational reform comes only from these or similar feelings, it merely serves to emphasize personal discontent with one's own schooling. Even if certain educational reformers would not admit this to themselves or to others, by the very nuance of their words they imply dissatisfaction with their own education. And how many people today share this dissatisfaction! It is little wonder if the call for a change in education grows stronger every day.

This educational dilemma, however, raises two questions, neither of which is comforting. First, if one's education was bad, and if as a child one was exposed to its many harmful effects, how can one know what constitutes proper educational reform? Where can better ways of educating the young be found? The second question arises from listening to what certain people say about their own education. And here I want to give you a practical example because, rather than presenting theories during this conference, I want to approach our theme in practical terms.

A few days ago a book appeared on the market that, in itself, did not draw my particular interest. Nevertheless it is interesting because in the first few chapters the author, an outstanding person who has become world-famous, speaks very much about his early school days. I am referring to the memoirs of Rabindranath Tagore,¹ which have just been published. Although I do not have the same interest in this person that many Europeans do, in regard to educational matters his memoirs do contain some noteworthy and pertinent details.

I am sure that you would agree that the most beautiful memories of one's early school days—however wonderful these may have been—will hardly consist of fragmentary details of what happened in certain lessons. Indeed, it would be sad if this were so, because what affects children during lessons should become transformed into life habits and skills. In later life we should not be plagued by the details of what we once learned at school, for these must flow together into the great stream of life. Couldn't we say that our most beautiful recollections of school are concerned with the different teachers we had? It is a blessing if, in later years, one can look back with deep, inner satisfaction at having been taught by one or another admired teacher. Such an education is of value for the whole of one's life. It is important that teachers call forth such feelings in their pupils; this also belongs to the art of education.

If we look at some of the passages in Tagore's memoirs from this perspective, we find that he does not talk of his teachers with much reverence and admiration. To quote an example, he says, “One of our teachers in the elementary school also gave us private lessons at home. His body was emaciated, his face desiccated, and his voice sharp. He looked like a veritable cane.” One might easily imagine—especially here in our Western civilization, often criticized strongly in the East—that the wrongs of education would hardly be so vehemently emphasized by an Asian. But here you have an example of how an Eastern personality, now world-famous, looks back at his school days in India. And so I shall use a word that Tagore also mentions in his book—that is, “miserable school.” The meaning of this expression is not confined to European countries, but seems to express a worldwide cultural problem. Later on we shall have to say much more about what teachers must do to kindle genuine interest for what they bring to their pupils.

But now I shall give you another example from Tagore's memoirs of how his English teacher approached this task. Tagore writes, “When I think back on his lessons, I cannot really say that Aghor Babu was a hard taskmaster. He did not rule us with the cane.” To us, such a remark would point to times long past, long superseded. The fact that Tagore speaks so much in his book about the cane indicates something we would consider culturally primitive. I believe that such a comment is justified when reading Tagore's description, not just about one of his teachers “looking like a veritable cane,” but also when he points out that another teacher actually did not use the cane. Speaking of this other teacher, Tagore continues, “Even when reprimanding us he did not shout at us. But, whatever his positive sides may have been, his lessons were given in the evening, and his subject was English. I am sure that even an angel would have appeared to a Bengali boy like a true messenger of Mamas (The God of Death), had he come to him in the evening after the `miserable school' of the day, kindling a comfortless, dim lamp, in order to teach English.”

Well, here you have an example of how a famous Indian speaks about his education. But Tagore also writes about how each child brings certain needs to education. He points out in a very practical way how such needs should be met, and how this did not happen in his case. I will leave it to you to interpret this situation in Western terms. To me it seems very good to look at such matters from a global perspective, matters that—if quoted in a European context—could very well arouse strong criticism. Tagore continues:

From time to time Aghor Babu tried to introduce a refreshing scientific breeze into the dry routine of the class room. One day he pulled from his pocket a little parcel wrapped in paper, saying, “Today I want to show you one of the Creator's wonderful works of art.” Unwrapping the paper, he showed a human larynx, which he used to explain to us the wonders of its mechanism.

I still remember the shock this gave me, for I had always thought that speech came from the entire human being. I did not have the slightest inkling that the activity of speaking could thus be isolated from the whole human organism. However perfect the mechanism of each single part might be, surely it would always amount to less than the complete human being. Not that I consciously realized this, but at the bottom of my feelings it was distasteful. The fact that the teacher had lost sight of such a truth must have been the reason why his pupil could not share in his enthusiasm for this kind of demonstration.

Well, this was the first shock when the nature of the human being was introduced to the boy. But another one, worse still, was to follow. Tagore continues:

On another occasion he took us into the dissecting room of the local medical school.² The corpse of an old woman was lying on a table. This in itself did not particularly disturb me. But an amputated leg, which was lying on the floor, completely threw me off my balance. The sight of a human being in such a state of fragmentation seemed so dreadful, so utterly lacking in sense to me, that I could not shake off the impression of this dark and expressionless leg for many days to come.

This example illustrates the reaction of a young person introduced to anatomy. Fundamentally speaking, this procedure is adopted in education only because it is in line with the orthodox scientific approach. And since the teacher has indeed gone through scientific training, it is naturally assumed to be a wonderful idea to demonstrate the mechanics of human speech with a model of the larynx, or to explain physiological anatomy with the aid of an amputated leg, for contemporary scientific thinking does not consider it necessary to look at the human being as a whole.

However, these are not yet the primary reasons for selecting certain passages from Tagore's memoirs—of which we will say more later on, not because of their connection with Tagore, but because they belong to the theme of our conference. First, I want to make another point.

Anyone judging Tagore's literary merits will correctly recognize in him an outstanding individual. In the autobiography of this distinguished author we read about his dreadful education. Doesn't this encourage a strange thought—that his poor education did not seem to harm his further development? Couldn't one conclude that a thoroughly bad education doesn't necessarily inflict permanent or serious harm? For did Tagore not demonstrate that despite this, he was able to grow into a good, even a famous person? (Examples like this could be multiplied by the hundreds, though they may be less spectacular.)

Considering the myriad impulses for educational reform, one could easily be pulled in two directions. On the one hand, how can anyone possibly be in a position to improve education if one has had the misfortune of suffering from a bad one? On the other hand, if “miserable school” has not prevented someone from becoming, not just a good, but even a great and famous person, then a bad education cannot do permanent harm. Is there any point in lavishing so much care on attempts to improve education? From a superficial perspective, one might conclude that it would be better to occupy oneself with matters that are more useful than educational reform.

If anthroposophy, which has been much maligned, were merely to offer even more ideas for educational reform, as is generally done, I would not even consider it worthwhile to attempt these in practice. But in reality, anthroposophy is something very different from what most people imagine it to be, for it springs from the deepest needs of our present culture.

Anthroposophy does not proceed, as so many of its enemies do, by shamefully denigrating everything that does not agree with its own principles. Anthroposophy is more than prepared to recognize and acknowledge what is good, wherever it is found. More of this later, for, as I have said already, today's content is intended only as an introduction.

Anthroposophy points to the importance of the scientific achievements of the last three to four centuries and, above all, to those of the nineteenth century, all of which it fully recognizes. At the same time, however, anthroposophy also has the task of observing how these great scientific successes affect the human soul. It would be foolish to think that the ideas of a relatively few scientifically trained experts have little consequence for society as a whole; for even people who know little or nothing about science are influenced by contemporary science in their soul mood and in their life's orientation. Even people of a strictly orthodox religious faith, born of tradition and habit, nevertheless owe their world orientation to the results of orthodox science. The attitude of modern people is colored increasingly by the scientific view with all its tremendous achievements, which cannot be praised highly enough.

Yet the constitution of the human soul has been strangely affected by modern science. Having revealed more and more of outer nature, science has, at the same time, alienated human beings from themselves. What happens when the human being is observed from a scientific perspective? Our attention is drawn first to what has already been discovered very thoroughly in the inert, lifeless world. Then the human being is analyzed according to physiological and chemical components and what was established in the laboratories is then applied to the living human being.

Or else our attention is directed to other realms of nature, to the plant and animal kingdoms. Here scientists are fully aware that they have not been able to establish laws as convincing as those applied to inorganic nature. Nevertheless—at least in the animal realm—what has been discovered is then also related to the human being. This is the reason why “the man in the street” sees the human being as the final evolutionary stage of animals. The evolutionary ladder of the animal species ends with the emergence of the human being. The animals are understood up to a certain point. Their bony structures or muscular configurations are then simply transferred to the human being who, as a result, is considered to represent the most developed animal.

As yet, no true picture of the human being has arisen from these methods, and this will become poignantly clear to us when we focus on education. One could say that whereas in earlier times human beings occupied a central position within the existing world order, they have been displaced, crushed by the weight of geological data, and eliminated from their own sphere by the theory of animal evolution. Merely to trace back one of the ossicles of the human middle ear to the square-bone (Quadratbein) of a lower animal is praised as real progress. This is only one small example, but the way human physical nature reflects the soul and spiritual nature seems to have been entirely disregarded by modern research.

This kind of thing easily escapes notice, because the orthodox approach is simply taken for granted. It is a by-product of our modern culture, and properly so. Indeed, it would have been a sad situation if this change had not occurred, for, with the soul attitude that prevailed before the age of science, humanity could not have progressed properly. Yet today a new insight into human nature is called for, insight based on a scientific mode of thinking, and one that will also shed light on the nature of the entire universe.

I have often tried to show how the general scientific viewpoint—which in itself, can be highly praised—nevertheless can lead to great illusions, simply because of its innate claims of infallibility. If one can prove science wrong on any specific point, the whole thing is relatively simple. But a far more difficult situation arises when, within its own bounds, a scientific claim is correct.

Let me indicate what I mean. What led to a theory such as that of Kant-Laplace?³ Using this theory—which has been modified recently, and is known to practically every educated person—scientists attempt to explain the origin of our Earth and planetary system. In their calculations, some of these scientists went back over long periods of time. When one scientist spoke of some twenty million years, soon enough he was considered naïve by others who spoke in terms of two hundred million years. Then other scientists began to calculate the length of time of certain processes taking place on Earth today. This is a perfectly correct thing to do, because from a strictly material point of view there is nothing else one can do. Sedimentation or metamorphosis of rocks was observed and, from the data gained, a picture was built up that explained certain changes, and the length of time involved was then calculated. For example, if the waters of Niagara Falls have been falling on the rocks below for such and such a period of time, one can calculate the degree of erosion of these rocks. If one now transfers this calculation to another spot somewhere else where considerably more erosion has been found, one can calculate the time this must have required through simple multiplication. Using this method, one might arrive at, let's say, twenty million years, which is quite correct as far as the calculation is concerned.

Similarly, one may start with the present time and, according to another well-known theory, calculate the time it will take for the Earth to become subject to heat death, and so on.

Yet, such a procedure might equally well be applied to a very different situation. Observe, for example, how the human heart changes from year to year. Noting the differences, one could investigate—following the same method applied in the case of Niagara Falls—how this heart must have looked some three hundred years ago, and what it would look like some three hundred years from now. Technically speaking, this method would be analogous to that of determining the times of geological changes and in this sense it would be correct. Observing the heart of a person aged about thirty-five, one would be basing one's calculations on an organ that has been functioning for a considerable length of time. However, one obvious detail has been overlooked—that this particular heart did not exist three hundred years ago, nor will it be there three hundred years from now. Though mathematically speaking the calculation is correct, it has no relationship to reality.

In our current intellectual age we are too preoccupied with whether or not something is correct, whether or not it is logically correct; but we have lost the habit of asking whether it conforms to actual real-life situations. We will confront this problem again and again this week. But it can happen sometimes that, when we follow apparently correct theories, even fundamental issues are simply overlooked. For example, you may have witnessed—I am not implying that as teachers you have actually carried out this experiment yourselves, for present company is always excluded when negative assertions are being made—you may have witnessed how the rotation of the planets around the Sun was graphically illustrated even to a class of young children. A piece of cardboard is cut into a disc and its center is pierced with a pin. A drip of oil is then put onto its surface before the disc is floated on water. When the pin is twirled around to rotate the floating disc, little droplets of oil will shoot off at a tangent, making “little planets”—little oil planets—and in this way a most convincing model of a planetary system has been fabricated. Needless to say, this experiment is supposed to prove the accuracy of the Kant-Laplace theory. Well, as far as one's own morality is concerned, it is virtuous enough to be self-effacing, but in a scientific experiment of this sort, the first requirement is certainly not to omit any essential detail—however small—and to include all existing criteria. And isn't the teacher spinning the disc the most important factor involved? Therefore, this hypothesis would make sense only if it were assumed that, long, long ago, a gigantic schoolmaster once twirled round an immense world-pin, thus spinning our entire planetary system! Otherwise one should not use such a hypothetical experiment.

And so, many elements of an unrealistic soul attitude can be detected where science appears to be most correct, where its findings cannot be contested. Consequently these elements of error easily creep into education. For those who teach are inevitably a product of their own time, and this is as it should be. When they come across such geological calculations or astronomical analogies, everything seems to fit together very nicely. Sometimes one cannot help but feel amazed at the incredible ingenuity of scientific interpretations that, despite their apparent power of conviction, nevertheless, can lead us away from reality. However, as educators we must never deviate from actual reality. In teaching, we face reality all the time, and this must spur us on to greater knowledge of human nature as it really is. In a certain sense this failure to penetrate human nature has already crept into modern-day educational thinking and practice.

I would like to illustrate this point with an example. Whenever you are dealing with children in the classroom, you will find that some are more gifted in one or another subject than others. Most of you will be familiar with the current thoughts and methods regarding this problem. I am referring to them here only to establish mutual understanding. There are different degrees of abilities in children. And how are these dealt with, especially in today's most progressive centers for educational science? From your study of educational literature you probably know about the so-called correlation coefficients recently introduced in schools. According to this method, the correlation coefficient one is written down if a pupil shows an equal aptitude for two different subjects. (Such a thing actually never occurs, but hypothetically it is simply assumed.) If, on the other hand, a natural gift exists for two subjects that are mutually incompatible, the correlation coefficient zero is given. The idea of this method is to test and measure the pupils' various gifts. For example, you may find that drawing and writing carry the correlation coefficient of, let us say, .7. This means that more than half the children who are gifted in drawing also have a natural skill for writing. One also looks for correlation coefficients in other combinations of talents. For example, writing is linked to a pupil's ability to deal with the mother tongue and, in this case, the correlation coefficient is .54. Arithmetic and writing carry the correlation coefficient of .2, arithmetic and drawing .19, and so on. From this it can be seen that arithmetic and drawing are the least compatible partners, whereas writing and drawing are matched most frequently. A natural gift for both the mother tongue and for drawing is found to be equally present in approximately fifty percent of the pupils.

Please note that, on principle, I do not object to this kind of scientific research. It would be wrong to declare that such things should not be investigated. As a matter of fact, I find these things extraordinarily interesting. I am not in the least against such experimental or statistical methods of psychology.

But if their results are directly implemented in education, it is as if you were to ask someone to become a painter without mentioning the importance of having to deal with color. It is as if one were to say instead to such a person, “Look, here is a good book on esthetics. Read the chapter about painting and, in itself, that will make you into a good painter.”

A well-known painter in Munich once told me a story that I have quoted several times. While he was a student at the local arts school, Carriere, [Moritz Carriere (1817–1895) German thinker; published Aesthetics in 1815.] the famous professor of esthetics, was lecturing in Munich. One day the painter and some of his fellow students decided to go and see this famous expert who also lectured on painting. But one visit was enough for them, because, as they put it, all he did was “crow with esthetic delight.”

This is how it strikes me if people think they can benefit their educational practice with the kind of thing mentioned above. Though these experiments may be interesting from a scientific perspective, something very different is needed for the practical classroom situation. It is necessary, for example, that teachers can penetrate human nature so deeply that they can recognize the origin of the skills for drawing and writing within the inner functions, or recognize what enables a pupil to speak the mother tongue well. To achieve such a faculty, a living observation of the human being is required, which eventually may lead one to discover how specific capacities flow out of some children for, let us say, drawing or the skill for their native language. Here, statistics are of little use. One must take a cue from what children reveal of themselves. At most, such statistical evidence may serve as an interesting confirmation afterward. Statistics do have their value, but to believe that they are tools for educational practice only shows the degree of one's alienation from real human nature.

Today, many people look at statistics as a key to understanding human beings. In certain areas of life this is justified. It is possible to build a statistical picture of the human being, but such a picture will not allow us to understand the human being in depth. Think, for instance, of how useful statistics are in their appropriate sphere, such as in insurance. If I want to take out a life insurance policy, I will be asked how old I am, and I must give evidence for the state of my health, and so on. From such data the level of my premium can be worked out very neatly, depending on whether I happen to be a youngster or an old fogy. My life expectancy is then calculated and these details meet exactly the needs of the insurance business. But what if, in my thirty-seventh year, I had taken out a life insurance policy for, let us say, twenty years? Would this make me feel obliged to die at the age of fifty-seven, simply because of what was calculated on paper? To enter fully into the stream of life is something very different from following certain established criteria, however logically correct they may be, or however beneficial they may be in their proper sphere.

When considering the question of aptitude for writing and drawing in children who have recently entered school, one must remember that they have reached the stage of their second dentition. In the coming lectures you will hear more about the different stages of children's development, and about how their ages can be divided into three groups: the period from birth to the change of teeth; from the second dentition to puberty; and the time following puberty. Later we shall go into more detail about what happens in children during these three periods.

For now let us consider this question of writing and drawing. Science, having scrutinized so minutely the three kingdoms of nature that surround us, now transfers the knowledge gained to the human being. Knowledge of the outer world and the mode of thinking about outer nature now becomes the key to understanding the human individual. And yet, if one observes the human being within the human sphere, one will come to recognize the true situation. One only needs the courage to do so with the same accuracy and objectivity used to study outer nature. Current research shows such courage only when observing external nature, but shrinks from applying the same methods in the study of the human being.

Let's look at how the child develops from birth to the change of teeth. This change of teeth is a unique event in life, inasmuch as it occurs only once in life. Now, if you can experience something similar to the feelings Tagore expressed when he saw the amputated leg, you will realize that what is revealed in the change of teeth does not just happen in the jaws, but encompasses the entire human being. You will feel that something must be pervading the whole child until around the age of seven, and that some activity must reach a climax in the change of teeth. This activity is there in its original form until the seventh year, and then it is no longer present in its original state.

When studying physics, for example, scientists have the courage to speak of latent heat as distinct from the various forms of liberated heat. According to this concept, there must be some form of heat that cannot be determined with a thermometer, but can be measured after it has been released. When characterizing these phenomena that occur in nature, scientists have shown courage in their interpretations. However, when the human being becomes the object of study, this courage is no longer there. Otherwise they would not hesitate to state: What has been working until the seventh year in the child, working toward liberation during the change of teeth, must have been connected with the physical organism before becoming freed and reappearing in a different guise as the child's inner soul properties. This same process can also be recognized in other areas of the child's bone formation. One would realize that these newly emerging powers must be the same, although transformed, as what had been active previously in the child's physical organism.

Only courage is needed to look at the human being with the same cognitive powers used to study outer nature, but modern science will not do this. However, if we do this, our attention is drawn toward all that belongs to the bony system, to everything that hardens the human form to give it structure and support. Orthodox physiology might eventually go this far—if not today, then certainly in due time. The most important branches of science are going through considerable changes just now, and the time will come when they will follow the course indicated.

But something else must also be considered. In later years, the child will be introduced to many different subjects, such as geometry. In today's intellectual age, one has an abstract concept of three-dimensional space, to choose a very simple example. One imagines: three lines at right angles to one another hovering about in space and extending to infinity. It is possible to form such a concept abstractly, but in such a case it is not inwardly experienced. And yet, three-dimensional space wants to be experienced as reality. This does happen in a young child, although unconsciously, at the crawling stage when, losing its balance time and again, it will eventually learn to acquire the upright position and achieve equilibrium in the world. Here we have a case of actual experience of three-dimensional space. This is not merely a question of drawing three lines in space, because one of these three dimensions is identical with the human upright position (which we can test by no longer assuming it—that is, by lying horizontally or sleeping). This upright position signals the most fundamental difference between the human being and the animal, because, unlike the human backbone, the animal's spinal column runs parallel to Earth's surface. We experience the second dimension unconsciously every time we stretch our arms sideways. The third dimension moves from our front toward the back.

In reality these three dimensions are experienced concretely as above and below, right and left, forward and backward. What is done in geometry is merely an abstraction. Human beings do experience with their bodies what is shown in geometrical constructions, but only during the age when they are still largely unconscious and dreamy. Later on, these experiences rise into consciousness and assume abstract forms.

With the change of teeth, the forces that cause an inner firmness, an inner consolidation and support, have reached a certain climax. From the moment when the child can stand upright until the inner hardening processes manifest in the change of teeth, the child inwardly tries, although unconsciously, “body geometry” as an activity akin to drawing. When the teeth change, this becomes a soul activity—that is, it enters the realm of the child's soul. We might understand this transformation better through an analogy; just as a sediment falls to the bottom when a chemical solution cools, and leaves the upper part clearer, so there is also a physiological aspect to the hardening process—the sediment, as well as its counterpart: the clear solution within the child's soul realm, which manifests as a faculty for geometrizing, for drawing, and so on.

After this period, we can see the child's soul qualities streaming outward. Just think about how such a discovery engenders real interest in the human being. We shall observe this streaming out in greater detail, and how it is reflected back again, later on.

In this respect everything in life is linked together. What we do to the child not only has an immediate effect, but influences the whole lifetime. Only a few people are prepared to observe a human life as a whole, but most focus their attention on present circumstances only. This is the case, for example, when one creates an experiment concerned only with the present. On the other hand, have you ever observed how the mere presence of some old people can be like a blessing for the others present? They need not even say a word. Goodness radiates from their presence simply through what they have become. And if you now search the biography of such old people, you may find that when they were children they learned to feel reverence quite naturally, without any outer compulsion. I could say equally that they learned how to pray, by which I mean praying in its widest sense, which includes a deep respect and admiration for another human being. I would like to express this thought in the form of a picture. Those who have not learned to fold their hands in prayer during childhood, cannot spread them in blessing in old age.

The different phases of life are all interconnected and it is of great importance in education to take this into full account. We learn a great deal about the child when we recognize how soul forces well forth after they have completed their task of working in the physical body up to the end of the first seven-year period.

Psychologists have made the strangest hypotheses about the interplay of soul and body, whereas one period of life actually sheds light on another. What we can see in the child between the change of teeth and puberty will tell us something about the soul forces previously engaged in working within the child's physical realm. Facts speak for themselves and shed light on one another. Think of how such things will stimulate interest in education! And genuine interest in the human being is needed in education today. Far too many people think about the relationship of body and soul—or of soul and body—only in abstract terms. And because so little of real value has emerged, a rather amusing theory has been formulated—that is, the theory of the so-called psycho-physical parallelism. According to this theory, processes of soul and body run side by side on a parallel course. There is no need to bother about points of intersection, no need to bother about the relationship between body and soul at all, because they supposedly meet at infinity! That is why this theory sounds like a joke.

However, if one allows the guidance of practical experience, one can discover the actual interrelationship between body and soul. One only needs to look over a person's whole life-span. Let us take the example of someone who develops diabetes or rheumatism at a certain age. When trying to find a remedy for such an illness, usually only the present conditions are considered; this, in itself, is quite justified. It is certainly proper to make every effort to heal a sickness whenever it occurs. But if one surveys the whole life of the patient, one may discover that many times diabetes is due to a memory that was overtaxed or developed in the wrong way between the change of teeth and puberty. Health during later years is largely conditioned by the way a person's soul life was developed during childhood. The way a child's memory is trained will affect the metabolism after a certain period of time. For example, if undigested vestiges of memory remain in the soul of a child between seven and fourteen, they will be released approximately between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five as physical residues, which can then lead to rheumatism or diabetes.

It is not an understatement to suggest that teachers should have at least a modicum of medical knowledge at their disposal. It is not right for them to leave everything concerning the child's health to the school doctor, who usually doesn't even know the children. If any profession in our time requires a wider background, education needs it most of all.

This is what I wanted to tell you as an introduction to our conference theme, so that you can judge for yourselves when you hear people say that anthroposophy now dabbles also in education, whereas others believe that it has something valid to say on the subject. Those who are ready to listen will not be swayed by those who have the opinion that there is no real need for education, or that there is no point in discussing it simply because their own experiences in this area have been so frustrating. Anthroposophy begins with an entirely different attitude. It does not simply want to correct old ideas, but begins with a true picture and knowledge of the human being, because, in keeping with human progress, these things have become necessary today.

If you go back to the earlier forms of education, you will discover that they have all arisen from the general culture of their time, from the universal nature of human feelings and experiences. We must rediscover a universal approach, flowing from human nature itself. If I had my way, I would give anthroposophy a new name every day to prevent people from hanging on to its literal meaning, from translating it from the Greek, so they can form judgments accordingly. It is immaterial what name we attach to what is being done here. The only thing that matters is that everything we do here is focused on life's realities and that we never lose sight of them. We must never be tempted to implement sectarian ideas.

And so, looking at education in general, we encounter the opinion that there are already plenty of well-considered educational systems; but since we are all suffering so much from the intellectualism of our times, it would be best if the intellect were banished from education. This is very correct, but then it is concluded that, instead of developing a science of education, again we should appeal to our inherent pedagogical instincts. However desirable this may sound, it is no longer possible today because humankind has moved to a further stage of development. The healthy instincts of the past are no longer with us today. A new and unbiased look at education has to be backed by fully conscious cognition, and this is possible only if our understanding can penetrate the very nature of the human being. This is what anthroposophy is all about.

One more point: intellectualism and abstractions are rampant today to the degree where there is a general feeling that children should be protected from an education that is too intellectual, that their hearts and feelings should also be educated. This is entirely correct, but when looking into educational literature and current practice, one cannot help noticing that such good intentions are not likely to go very far because, once again, they are formulated in a theoretical and abstract way. It is even less clear that this request should be made, not just on behalf of the child, but should be addressed also to the teachers and, most of all, to the pedagogical principles themselves. To do this is my goal. We must not give mere lip service when stating how we wish to educate the heart of the child and not just the intellect, but we should ask ourselves how we can best meet this challenge.

What do we have to do so that education can have a heart again?

• 1. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Indian Bengali poet and novelist; won Nobel prize for literature in 1913; knighted by England, but resigned knighthood (1919) in protest against English repression in Punjab.
• 2. There can be no doubt that Aghor Babu wanted to give his boys a special treat.
• 3. Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827) French astronomer and mathematician. Immanuel Kant (1724–1895) German philosopher.

Today there are still many people who maintain that a spirit-soul life may exist after death, but they wonder why we should concern ourselves with it now. We can simply live on earth with all that it offers and simply wait and see whether other forms of existence do come about after death!

Spiritual science shows, however, that during life between death and rebirth man encounters certain beings. Just as here he meets the many beings of the various kingdoms of nature, so after death he meets the beings of higher hierarchies and certain elemental beings. If a person goes through life without any sense of judgment, this is due to the fact that between death and rebirth he was unable to meet those beings who could have given him the appropriate forces to enable him to be morally and intellectually effective in this life. But the possibility and the ability to meet certain beings between death and rebirth depends on the last life. If during earthly life we do not occupy ourselves with thoughts relating to the super-sensible, if during our life we have been completely immersed in the external sense world, if we only lived in our intellect inasmuch as it was directed to the physical world, then we make it impossible for ourselves between death and a new birth to encounter certain beings and to receive abilities from them for a subsequent life. The realm beyond remains dim and dark for us, and we are unable to find the forces of higher hierarchies in the darkness. Man, then between death and a new birth, passes by those beings from whom he should receive forces for his next earthly life.

From whence comes the light by means of which we can illumine the darkness between death and rebirth? Where do we find it? Between death and rebirth no one gives us any light. The beings are there and we can only reach them providing we have kindled the light in our last earthly life by means of our interest in the spiritual world. After death we are unable to penetrate the darkness unless we have taken the light with us through the gate of death.

This shows how incorrect is the statement that we need not concern ourselves with things of a spiritual nature, but that we can afford to wait for what happens. In fact, if we wait and see, we shall only encounter darkness!

Earthly life is not merely a transitional stage. It has a mission. It is a necessity for the beyond, as indeed the beyond is for earthly existence. The lights for the life beyond must be carried upward from the earth. It may also happen that down here people remain dull to the super-sensible world, that they simply miss the opportunity to develop certain faculties, that they fail to create instruments for the next incarnation.

A person who lacked a certain ability in this or that sphere during life goes through the gate of death. Now you see what a hopeless situation it all makes. If nothing were to intervene, the person would become less and less able. For if a person has deliberately dulled himself toward the spiritual world in one incarnation, he will be even less able in a following life to prepare organs for himself. If nothing else were to occur, things would take their course along an ever steeper slope of decline.

Something else, however, does intervene. A man who goes through life with deliberate dullness in one incarnation will find that Lucifer approaches him with his powers in the spiritual world after the second earthly life. If Lucifer did not approach him at this point, he would stumble through the thickest darkness. Because he has lived as described, Lucifer can approach him and can illumine the forces and beings needed for the next earthly incarnation. The result is that they are colored with luciferic light. Now following the dull existence, and after having been led by Lucifer between death and rebirth, he enters a new earth existence. He is now fully equipped with talents and abilities which prepare his organs so that everywhere he is open to luciferic temptations on earth.

Now such a person may be clever, but his cleverness will be cold and calculating; above all it will be permeated by selfishness, by egoism. This manifests itself to the seer in many instances where people are clever but actually cold and selfish in their activity. When one meets them they are always seeking their own advantage and do all they can to place themselves in the limelight. A consideration of such people shows that in the spiritual world they were led by Lucifer. In the pervious incarnation they led a dull existence that was followed by a stumbling in the darkness after death and this was preceded by yet another life on earth during which they deliberately closed themselves to the spiritual world.

Such an insight reveals a sad prospect for materialists. Our contemporaries who are materialistically inclined and reject all concern for the spiritual world and consider the soul life as ending with death, can expect an existence as just described. It is of little consequence to gather abstractly certain thoughts about the interrelations of various earth lives. An exact, concrete survey reveals the most manifold connections between former and later earth lives and the life in the spirit that follows each incarnation. We should hold onto the fact that life on earth is of considerable importance for life after death.

Life on earth has yet another significance. It is only on the earth that we can meet certain beings, and man belongs above all among them. Unless the link is established between man and man on earth, it cannot occur in the spirit world. The relationships between human beings are forged here and continue in the spiritual world. If we miss the opportunity to meet certain individuals on earth who were predestined to be in incarnation, we cannot make up for it during the period between death and rebirth.

Let us take the example of Gautama Buddha. He was that human personality who lived during the sixth century B.C. as the son of a king, and who rose in his twenty-ninth year from the rank of bodhisattva to that of Buddha. This means that he became a Buddha and no longer needed to incarnate in physical human form. The Gautama Buddha thus accomplished his last earthly life. A considerable number of people met this individuality on earth during that time, and also in earlier incarnations people had been in contact with the Bodhisattva. All these connections could be continued later in the spiritual world. The connection to Gautama Buddha, which bore the character of a pupil to teacher relationship, could be continued in the spiritual world. But there were souls who during the evolution of humanity never made a connection with Gautama Buddha on earth. These souls, even if they now have reached a considerable degree of development, cannot at all easily come in contact in the spiritual world with the being of Buddha, with the soul of the one who was incarnated as Gautama Buddha. For Gautama Buddha what may be called a replacement appears; he has a replacement if one has been unable to make a connection with him on earth.

The Buddha has had a special destiny since he rose to buddhahood and no longer needed to return to the earth thus continuing to dwell in a pure spiritual region. He remained in touch with earthly happenings, however, and worked from the spiritual worlds down into the earthly sphere. We know that the being of Gautama Buddha radiated into the Jesus child spoken of in the Gospel of St. Luke. The super-sensible being of Buddha streamed into the astral body of the Luke Jesus child. It worked from the super-sensible down into earthly realms. Human beings on earth could no longer find access to him. Only those could make a contact with the being of Gautama who, like Francis of Assisi, for instance, had gone through a higher form of development. Before he entered life on earth, and previous also to the last life between birth and death, the being of Francis of Assisi lived in a mystery center situated in the southeast of Europe. In this center there were no physical teachers, but teachers belonging to the super-sensible hierarchy of whom Buddha, or more accurately, of whom the soul that had been incarnated in Buddha, was one. The pupils in such mystery centers had already developed lofty faculties for beholding the super-sensible world. Such pupils are able to be taught by teachers who work only from the spiritual world. Thus Buddha taught in that mystery center, and Francis of Assisi in a former incarnation was his faithful and devoted pupil. At that time Francis of Assisi absorbed everything that later enabled him to receive the light-filled impulses of the higher hierarchies, and that then allowed him to appear in incarnation as the great mystic who was to exert such a strong influence on his age. This was all due to the fact that the soul of Francis of Assisi, through the higher faculties he possessed at the time, was able to establish a connection with the Gautama Buddha after the Buddha was able to work down from the super-sensible world upon him.

For ordinary human beings who are dependent on life as it unfolds through the senses and the intellect, such a meeting is not possible. In that case what has been said earlier applies. We cannot meet a person in the spiritual world unless we have first met him on earth.

The exception that we have just considered in relation to the Buddha brings forth yet another. Although it is impossible for ordinary individuals to meet others in spiritual realms with whom they have not had a previous connection on earth, yet if a person has received the Christ impulse and permeates himself with it, he can nevertheless meet the Buddha after death. For the position of this being is a special one.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century another planet was involved in a crisis of development similar to that of the earth when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. As the Christ appeared on earth from higher realms at the time of Golgotha, so Buddha appeared on Mars during the Mars crisis of the seventeenth century. After Buddha had completed his incarnations it was no longer necessary for him to return to the earth, but he continued his activities in other realms. The Buddha wandered away from earthly affairs to the realm of Mars. Until then Mars had been the chosen center of forces designated by the Greeks as fearfully warlike. This mission of Mars came to an end in the seventeenth century. Another impulse became necessary and the Buddha accomplished a Buddha crucifixion there. The Buddha Mystery on Mars did not take the same course as the Christ Mystery on earth, but Buddha, the Prince of Peace, who, during his last earthly life had spread peace and love wherever he went, was transferred to the belligerent realm of Mars. The fact that a being who is fully permeated by forces of peace and love was transferred to a realm of strife and disharmony may in a sense be regarded as a crucifixion. For the seer two happenings come together in a most wonderful way. One beholds, on the one hand, the eighty-year-old dying Buddha, and this death has a deeply moving, deeply stirring quality. Buddha died in 483 surrounded by silver rays on a wonderful moonlit night, radiating peace and compassion. That was his last earthly hour. And then he was active again in the way described. The seer discovers him kindling the compassionate, silvery moral light of Buddha on Mars at the beginning of the seventeenth century. These two wonderful events are deeply related in the course of world history.

The human souls who have received the Christ impulse into themselves in the corresponding manner here on earth travel through the cosmic universe after death. We all go through these cosmic realms. To begin with, we go through the planets of our planetary system. We experience a Moon period, a Mercury period, a Venus period, a Sun period, a Mars period, a Jupiter period and a Saturn period. Following these we go into the surroundings of our planetary system and then later commence our return journey. Now we encounter those forces and the beings from whom we must receive what we need to build up our next earthly life. He who has received the Christ impulse on earth can also receive what streams from the Buddha in his passage through the Mars sphere. This belongs to the exceptional case in which souls who have not been together with Buddha in earlier incarnations nevertheless have the opportunity of meeting him between death and rebirth.

Supersensible perception reveals that a number of personalities who lived during the seventeenth century owed their remarkable talents to the fact that during their prenatal life in the spiritual world they received an impulse from Buddha. At present the ability to receive such talents is still limited among human beings because it is only comparatively recently that the Buddha accomplished the Mystery on Mars. In future, human souls will be more and more capable of receiving the Buddha impulse from the Mars sphere. But in the nineteenth century there were already some personalities—and this was disclosed to those able to perceive it—who were able to develop their faculties here on earth as a result of the influences they received from Buddha through their passage in the Mars sphere. The course of life between death and rebirth is indeed complex and wonderful.

Unless man is able to take with him the light to illumine his experience between death and rebirth, he stumbles in the dark. This also holds good for this exceptional case. A person who departs from the earth through the gate of death without having taken the Christ impulse into himself, who wished to know nothing of it, will not have the slightest intimation of the influences of Buddha during his next life in the spiritual world as he passes through the Mars sphere. For him it is as if the Buddha were not present. It should be borne in mind that we encounter the beings of the Higher Hierarchies, but whether or not we perceive them and establish the right connection with them depends on whether we kindled a light in our last earthly existence so that we do not pass them by and are able to receive impulses from them. That is why it is a complete fallacy to maintain that it is unnecessary to concern oneself with the beyond during earthly existence.

You will gather from the foregoing that from a higher aspect life on earth really constitutes a special case. We live embodied within a special organism on earth between life and death. Apart from an earthly incarnation one can speak of an “embodiment” between death and rebirth, or rather of an “ensouling.” What I have elaborated in connection with the spiritual world also applies to the earth. Consider that a human being living between death and rebirth may pass through the Mars sphere without entering it in the slightest connection with the beings who inhabit Mars. He does not see them, and they are not aware of him. This is true of the earth also. Beings belonging to other planets, just as man belongs to the earth, are continually passing through the earth sphere. The inhabitants of Mars spend the normal course of their life on Mars, and during their experience, which corresponds on Mars to the period between death and a new life but yet is different, they pass through the planetary spheres. So that in fact inhabitants of other planets are continually passing through our earth sphere. Human beings are unable to establish any contact with them because they live under quite different conditions and because they will in the main not have made the least connection with these beings on Mars.

What would be the conditions necessary in order to meet the beings from other planets as they pass through the earth sphere? One would have had to develop points of contact with them in their own planetary realms, but this is only possible if on earth one has already reached the stage of being able to contact beings other than those of the earth as a result of the development of super-sensible powers.

Thus the possibility is there for those who have undergone a higher development to encounter the beings who wander through from other planets. It may sound peculiar and yet it is so, that for those who have intercourse with the wanderers from Mars and learn to know of the nature of that planet, the strange theories that physics and astronomy weave about Mars inhabitants appear most comical, for the facts are quite different.

I bring forth these things so that you can widen your gaze from earthly existence into other realms extending beyond the visible beings that surround us to be beings who cannot be perceived unless we develop the organs to behold them. But between death and rebirth we also cannot establish a connection with conditions belonging to the mission of the earth unless we have first contacted them by way of the earth.

What is spiritual science or anthroposophy from a cosmic aspect? He who weaves theories might easily believe that spiritual science is something that can be taught and learned in all realms of the cosmos, but that is not the same. Each realm has its own particular task and it does not repeat itself in other realms. The creative powers have so made the earth that only here can certain things arise. Spiritual science can only arise on earth. Nowhere else can it be learned. It is a revelation of the super-sensible world but in such a form as can arise only here on earth.

One might well say that supposing all this to be true, surely one could be instructed about the super-sensible in the spiritual world in a form other than that of spiritual science! One can certainly think this, but it is not true. For if a person is at all predisposed to gain a genuine connection with higher worlds, he can do so only by means of spiritual science. If he fails to draw near to spiritual science or anthroposophy on earth, no other form of existence will help him to get to know it. But no other form of existence will help him to gain a genuine human connection with the super-sensible worlds, either.

This need not plunge us into despair about the many people who are still refusing to know anything about anthroposophy. They will return and establish a connection with it at a later stage. Anthroposophy has been established on the earth in such a way as to impart to people what has to be known about the super-sensible worlds in accordance with the nature of man. Only one form of communication is possible and that is by way of human beings. If a person goes through the gate of death without having heard anything of spiritual science on earth, he can become familiar with it through the fact that he knew a person who had a connection with spiritual science. This is a round-about path but a possible one.

Let us take the example of two people who were on friendly terms during their earthly life. One has made a connection with anthroposophy, the other not. The latter dies. The former can help him considerably by reading to him, by making him familiar with what surrounds him after death. A person can read an important work of spiritual science with the dead and, as the seer will confirm, the dead listens attentively.

It is also a fact that a simple person who has only just come in touch with spiritual science may be better able to read to a deceased person whom he genuinely loved than the seer who, though able to find the soul of the dead, had no affectionate connection with him in this life. From time to time it may also happen that seers give themselves the task of reading to the souls of the dead whom they have not known. Yet more often than not one is unable to read to a dead person with whom one has had no previous connection on earth.

These facts will impress upon you the importance of spiritual communities such as the anthroposophical one because here we find to a certain extent a replacement for what may be called a kind of living together and getting in touch.

Should such communities not exist, each soul after death would have to rely entirely on being read to by people close to them. Only such spiritual communities where spiritual ideals are commonly fostered can expand this sphere. Thus it can and does happen that one meets an anthroposophist who, because of what he has previously learned, is able in a special way, to read a spiritual content with much concentration or to let such thoughts pass through his soul. One might approach him, mention to him that a person who dies was also an anthroposophist, belonged to the same society, and show him a sample of the writing of the deceased. It may suffice that by seeing the writing or by hearing a favorite verse of the deceased, the more developed anthroposophist is able to read to such a soul in a most fruitful manner, though he did not know him on earth. It is indeed a fine task for a spiritual community to bridge so strongly the gap between the living and the dead.

Today anthroposophists still conceive of many tasks that lie merely on the physical plane because materialistic ways of thought are still prevalent among them, though theoretically they may have absorbed the science of anthroposophy. The true spiritual tasks will present themselves when spiritual science will have penetrated the soul more deeply. People will be found to take on the task of helping the dead so that they may evolve. A beginning has been made within our movement and what already has been achieved in this sphere can give us a high degree of satisfaction.

In fact, in certain circumstances when an anthroposophist goes through the gate of death carrying spiritual thoughts with him, he may be able to serve the dead and could become their teacher. This, however, is more complicated than is usually imagined. It is easier to do this from the earth because the communities that are formed after death depend entirely on the groups that were formed before death.

If two people, for instance, lived with one another on earth, the one an anthroposophist and the other not, the one who had an aversion towards spiritual science will long for it after death. If may happen that the anthroposophist who remains behind on earth concerns himself until his death with the departed soul by reading to him. Now after a certain period of time the anthroposophist also goes through the gate of death. He is then re-united with the other in the spiritual world. An echo of the earlier connection on earth is now felt, and this presents a difficulty. There was no difficulty as long as the one was on earth and the other in the spiritual world. Dissonances arise again as they did in the earthly relationship now that they are once more united. Just as on earth the one soul did not wish to know anything about spiritual science, so it becomes again the case in the world beyond. This shows to what extent the relationships after death are dependent upon the previous earthly connections. These matters are exceedingly complex and cannot be merely thought out intellectually.

Such instances clearly reveal the mission of spiritual science. The gulf between the living and the dead must be bridged. Under certain conditions the dead can also work into the earthly sphere, as the living are able to send their influence into the spiritual world, and we can investigate how the dead work into the physical world.

As a matter of fact, people know little of what surrounds them on earth. How do they view life? The events of life as they unfold are strung on a thread, as it were. Some are considered to be causes, others effects, but beyond this little thought is given to the matter. It may sound strange that the actual things that happen form the smallest content of real life. They only represent the external content. There is yet another sphere of life apart from the things that happen, and this is of no less importance for life.

Let us take an example. A person is in the habit of leaving home punctually every morning at eight. He has a definite way to go, across a square. One day circumstances are such that he leaves three minutes later than usual. He now notices something strange on the square, under the colonnade where he used to walk every day. The roof of the colonnade has collapsed! Had he left at the accustomed time, the falling roof certainly would have killed him.

There are many such instances in life. We often find that had circumstances been different, this or that might have taken quite another course. We are protected from many dangers. Much of what could happen does not come to pass. In life we consider the external realities, not the inner possibilities. Yet these possibilities constantly lie concealed behind the actual events. The events of a particular day only constitute the external reality of life. Behind them lies an entire world of possibilities.

Take the sea as an example. In it there lives a multitude of herring but for them to arise, not only as many eggs as herring had to be present. An endless number of eggs are destroyed. Only a relatively small number of herring come to life. So it is with the whole of life. What we experience from morning until night constitutes only a portion of an enormous number of possibilities. We are continually led past certain possible events that do not actually happen. When a possible event passes us by, this marks a special moment for us. Consider the instance of the man. If he had left his house at the usual time he would have been killed by the roof of the colonnade. Such possibilities constantly accompany us in life. Such a moment, when a man would have been struck had he arrived three minutes earlier, marks an opportune occasion for the spiritual world to light up in him. He may then have an experience that can bring him together with the dead. Today people are not yet aware of such occasions because fundamentally they only live on the surface of life.

Spiritual science aims gradually to become a life elixir. Man then will not only behold external reality but he will pay attention to the stirrings in his soul life. There he will frequently find the voices of the dead who still want something from the living.

As we have an example of how the living can influence the dead by reading to them, so we also see how the dead can influence the living. A time will come when man will converse spiritually with the dead. People will speak with the dead, and they will listen to the dead. Death only marks a change in the outer form of man; his soul develops further. At present we experience as yet a most imperfect condition of mankind inasmuch as men are unable to communicate with their fellow men who dwell in another form of life. When spiritual science is no longer a theory but has permeated souls, a living communion with the dead will continually be possible. In fact, conditions, which in a sense obtain only for the seer at present, will gradually become the common heritage of the whole of humanity.

You may say, “Well, that may be so for the seer. He can find human beings between death and rebirth.” Actually, this presents considerable difficulties today because the general lack of belief in the spiritual world, the lack of connection to the spirit, creates hindrances also for those who could establish a relationship to the spiritual world.

There are certain things that can take place unhindered only if they belong to the common possession of humanity. A man may be an outstandingly gifted master-builder. If nobody engages his services, he will not be able to build. This also can be the case for the seer. He may possess the faculties to ascend spiritually to the realm of the dead but if this process is hindered owing to the fact that communion with the dead is impossible for most people, the seer will only be able to succeed in establishing a contact in a few exceptional instances.

My dear friends, I wished to show you how spiritual science can be a life-giving impulse. More than anything we may learn theoretically, it is important to cultivate a feeling for the task of spiritual science in relation to the future of humanity. This enables each one who belongs to the anthroposophical movement to gain an impression of what he is really doing. He gains an impression of the tremendous task that has to be achieved by spiritual science or anthroposophy. This also enables one to connect oneself earnestly and worthily to spiritual science, not in a light-hearted way, as to something that is to refresh one but as an impulse which will become of ever increasing importance as mankind advances into the future. I wished to evoke a feeling for this by today's considerations.

Lecture at the 2nd general assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

When the Johannesbau Association followed on from our last general assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society here in Berlin with a meeting, I had a few words to say to you about how the Johannesbau should be situated in the overall development of art, and in particular architectural art: that it should be seen, in the sense in which we also otherwise view what we want to achieve in the field of theosophy or anthroposophy, as something necessary in the whole spiritual development of humanity, so that what is to happen through theosophy or anthroposophy does not appear as some kind of arbitrariness, does not appear as something that we give birth to out of ourselves as some kind of arbitrary ideal, but appears as we derive it as a necessity from that writing, which reveals to us the necessary path of the human spirit through the development of the earth.

Now, one can choose many points of view to present this necessity that has just been characterized. At that time, I showed from a certain point of view how this necessary placing in human history of what is intended by the Johannesbau is to be understood. Today, another point of view will be chosen so that my considerations today will, in a certain respect, supplement what was presented here in December 1911.

Architecture is actually bound to a very specific premise if we understand architecture in the sense that man wants to create a shell, as it were, using some material, through some forms or other measures, be it for profane living and working, be it for religious activities or the like. In this sense, the art of building, architecture, is absolutely bound up with what we can call soul-life, is connected with the concept of soul-life, arises out of soul-life and can be grasped by grasping the whole extent of soul-life.

Now, over the years of working in spiritual science, the soul has always presented itself to us from three points of view: from the point of view of the sentient soul, from the point of view of the mind or emotional soul, and from that of the consciousness soul. But then this soulfulness also appears to us when it first announces itself, as it were, but does not yet really exist as soulfulness when we speak of the sentient or astral body. And again, the soulfulness appears to us when we say that the soulfulness has developed to such an extent that it seeks a transition to the spirit self or manas. If you look at my theosophy, you will find the threefold soul in it as a sentient soul, a mind or emotional soul and a consciousness soul, but you will find the sentient soul adjacent to the sentient body, so that the sentient soul and sentient appear as two sides of one and the same, the one side more soul-like, the other more spiritual; and then you will find, combining again, consciousness soul and spirit self; the consciousness soul representing the more soul-like side, while the spirit self represents the more spiritual side.

Those who, as anthroposophists, gradually find their way into such an understanding of these terms, as our esteemed friend Arenson has very beautifully explained in these days, will not be able to stop at the words sentient soul, mind or consciousness soul and only seek to find one or other definition for these words , but as a true anthroposophist will long to gradually develop in his mind many, many concepts, feelings and insights, which the one feeling leads to the other and so on, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding, which in the case of these concepts is structured in the most diverse directions.

For the seer himself, the words quoted include, one might say, entire worlds. Therefore, in order to understand such concepts, one must also take into account what has been presented about human development, for example in the post-Atlantic period: that the sentient body has particularly developed in the ancient Persian culture, the sentient soul in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the mind or emotional soul in the Greco-Roman period, the consciousness soul in the time in which we ourselves live, and that we see the next period of time, so to speak, as already approaching in its development, yes, that we ourselves, with what we want as anthroposophy, theosophy, are working on the approach of this next period of time, which in a certain way should show us the connection between consciousness soul and spirit self or manas.

Architecture, as has been said, is closely linked to the concept of the soul. Now, someone might ask: shouldn't architecture then also be linked to the development of the soul, as it has just been characterized? And should not the forms and designs of architecture show certain peculiarities in their succession that are connected with this development of sentient body, sentient soul, and so on? And would one not then have no justification at all for speaking of architecture in the case of certain periods, for example the first post-Atlantic period, which particularly brought the etheric body to development? For if architecture is bound to the soul, it should only begin to dawn when it begins to develop. So one would assume that it begins to emerge in the sentient body, because that is, as it were, the other side of the soul; and before that, one would have to refer to times in which an actual art of building, in the sense in which we characteristically understand architecture, did not exist at all.

Now it is difficult in itself to answer this question from the point of view of external history, because everything that goes back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period can hardly be gleaned from historical monuments and traditions, but can only be derived from clairvoyant research. Even the period of Zarathustra, which we call the original Persian period, lies so far back that historical research is out of the question, let alone the period that we know to be connected with the development of the etheric body, namely the original Indian period.

However, one can also have strange experiences with this matter if one approaches the very clever people of the present day with it. Recently, for example, one of these clever people said that these post-Atlantean periods, as they are recorded in my esoteric science, for example, are untenable, because anyone who is familiar with the linguistic monuments of India would never believe that Indian culture had progressed as far ahead of Egyptian and Chaldean culture as it is presented in this esoteric science. Well, one can only be surprised that such very clever people of the present day have not yet managed to read a book written in their mother tongue with understanding, even if they can sometimes read Sanskrit. For it is expressly stated in esoteric science that the culture of India, including the Vedic culture, which is the subject of external science, is not the one spoken of in esoteric science as the ancient Indian culture, the first culture of the post-Atlantean time, but that in the case of the Vedic culture we are dealing with a time that can be counted as belonging to the third post-Atlantean cultural period, which thus runs parallel to the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The original Indian culture, on the other hand, was one of which no external documents and no external monuments and the like exist and of which only the last echoes are contained in the Vedas. I will not dwell on this any further, but say this only because one or the other of you might hear this objection and perhaps not immediately have the concepts and ideas at hand that can refute such an objection.

So the question I have just hinted at remains, namely that in the first post-Atlantic period we have to go back to times when an actual art of building, as for the later periods, could not yet be possible. But then we come to a strange boundary point, to which external research also points; we come, so to speak, to a preliminary stage of architecture: the building of spaces for religious, for worship activities in caves, carved into the rock, as can be found in India or Nubia. This is indeed the age that stands on the boundary of the development of the soul from the physical. These cave dwellings confirm what spiritual research suggests we can expect in terms of the development of the soul: it is only in the period of human development in which we see the soul developing out of the physical that we also see the first real higher architecture developing out of what were previously rock caves and underground rock caves that had been hewn out of the earth itself.

In this respect, the earth appears like the physical realm into which the human soul first works, as it also happens in the development of the human being itself, where the soul works into the physical, the sentient soul into the sentient body. And in the transition from cave rooms to architectural works that encompass human activities, we also see the importance of the transition from the culture of the sentient body to that of the sentient soul.

There will come a time when what Theosophy or Anthroposophy provides will be elaborated for all branches of human knowledge, for all branches of human development. And it will be found that everything that other human worldviews present one-sidedly is cobbled together from some inadequate concepts and ideas, while spiritual science or anthroposophy shows the comprehensive whole with which one can shine a light everywhere. One can be completely reassured, even if people do not yet believe this today. That is not the point, but rather that time will provide the evidence for it. We just have to give it time. These confirmations will gradually be realized in all areas of life and development. This also applies to architecture.

And if we now go through the post-Atlantean development, we see that, in the course of time, the individual developmental epochs are, so to speak, bound to the soul, to the development of the sentient soul, then to that of the mind or feeling soul, and then to that of the consciousness soul, right up to our time. And in our own time we can see the time approaching, even if it is still only in the preparatory stage, when the spirit soul or manas will be worked out of the consciousness soul, so that we stand, as it were, at the opposite end of the process to that in the post-Atlantean epoch when we passed from the bodily to the soul realm. Just as the sentient soul was worked out of the sentient body in those days, so we are now facing a time in which we have to work our way out of the soul and into a spiritual realm. For architecture, this means that we can expect the opposite again. That is to say, just as in those earlier times caves were hewn out of the rocks as the preliminary stages of human architectural works, so now, in the present rising time, we have to work into the spirit in order to create the complement, the counterpart to it.

Let us now try to visualize the following, initially without more precise details about the time frame, since everyone can form for themselves what is necessary for parallelism. Let us consider the development through the sentient soul, mind or intellect soul, and consciousness soul, so initially the development through the sentient soul. Through being endowed with the sentient soul, the human being enters into a reciprocal relationship with the world around him. Through the sentient soul, what is present in the world as reality passes, as it were, into the human soul, into the human inner being itself. The external becomes an inner experience by way of the sentient soul. Therefore, there should now be something in the development of architectural art that, as it were, quite naturally emerges from cave construction and shows something in itself that is characteristic of the sentient soul. That is to say, it should be built in such a way that one wants to represent both an exterior and an interior.

Here we need only recall the construction of the pyramids and similar buildings, and we can even think of more recent scientific research that has shown how astronomical-cosmic relationships are reflected in the dimensions of the pyramids, and then we have an idea of what it is all about. The more we study the pyramid, the more we discover its strange structure based on cosmic relationships. Astronomical dimensions are reflected in the ratio of the base to the height, for example. And anyone who studies the pyramid gradually comes to the conclusion that with the pyramid, the pyramid priests expressed everything that could be expressed in a structure as a perception of cosmic conditions. The pyramid was built as if the earth wanted to experience within itself what is perceived from the cosmos. Just as the sentient soul brings the external reality to life within itself and presents what is outside as an inner reality, repeating in its own way what is outside, so the pyramid repeats external cosmic relationships in its proportions and forms, for example, in the way sunlight falls within it. Just as external reality finds a kind of representation in the human being through the sentient soul, so the pyramid looks like a large sentient organ of the entire earthly culture in relation to the cosmos.

Let us move on. How should architecture behave in a cultural stage in which the characteristic is the intellectual or mind soul? The mind or soul of mind is the inner soul in man that has the most work to do within itself, that builds on the already inner foundation of the sentient soul to further develop this inner soul, but does not yet go so far as to bring it together again into the actual I; thus it spreads and expands the soul, so to speak, without allowing it to culminate in the center of the I. The person who has developed precisely this soul element comes to us through the richness of his soul life, through the many inner soul contents and experiences that he has fought for and achieved; he has less of a need to build systems out of his inner experiences, but rather gives himself over to the breadth of these inner experiences. The intellectual soul is a life of the soul that bears itself inwardly, closes itself inwardly, and totalizes itself inwardly.

What kind of architecture would be needed to correspond to such a soul? It would have to be an architecture that, unlike the construction of a pyramid, does not so much resemble a kind of image or representation of cosmic conditions, but is more of a self-contained, total being; something that supports itself and which, so to speak, entirely in keeping with the intellectual soul or soul of feeling, shows the breadth of development in the way the individual parts are supported, and is less concerned with integrating what is there in the breadth of development. No one who is familiar with the nature of the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling, as it has just been characterized, can doubt that Greek and also Roman architecture can be understood as an external image of the life of the soul of intellect or soul of feeling.

Let us consider Greek architecture, for example Greek temple architecture, as we have often done before, by understanding it as the house of the god himself, so that the god dwells within it and the whole house presents itself as the dwelling of the god, the whole inwardly rounded as an inward totality. We have even been able to say from our contemplation of the Greek temple: This Greek temple does not claim that a person or a community of people is inside it. It is the dwelling place of the god and can stand alone, closed, as a totality in itself, just as the mind or soul is an inner totality, a self-contained inner life, which does not yet go to the ego, but which, albeit unconsciously, is the manifestation of the god in man. And when we see how in Greek temple construction one part supports the other, how everything is based on the columns striving upwards and supporting the beams, how the mutual forces are combined into a totality without the whole any way systematically toward a unity, toward a point, we find in it - and in Roman architecture the same is actually the case - that breadth, that expanse, which we find in the intellectual or emotional soul itself.

What is striking about Greco-Roman architecture is that it is based on statics, on the pure statics of the individual forces that unfold in a supporting or burdening way. But there is one thing you can forget about a Greek temple: you can forget that it has a “heaviness”. For anyone who feels naturally will or can at least feel that the columns are something that grows out of the earth. And with that which really grows out of the earth, with the plant, one does not have the feeling of oppressive heaviness. That is why the column in the Greek temple gradually strives to become similar to the stem of a plant, even if this only becomes visible in the Corinthian column. And that is why, in terms of perception, the column is not a burden, but rather a support.

But when you then come to the beam, to the architrave, you immediately have the feeling that this weighs on the column, that is, the structure is permeated by inner static equilibrium. And anyone who has developed their inner life will also have the feeling that the perceptions, feelings and concepts they have arrived at, which they have worked towards internally, are supported internally in the same way that the column supports the beam. Because at the time when Greco-Roman architecture originated, the intellectual soul or soul of mind was particularly developed in humanity, therefore, when the soul wanted to express itself in the language of architecture, it naturally strove to express what it had experienced internally in the static structure. Not with the intention, but in the way the human soul nature expressed itself, it was in the architecture to create a reflection of the soul.

And then gradually the development progressed to the consciousness soul. It is essential for the consciousness soul to summarize what the soul experiences in the total feeling: “You are! And you are this one person, this one personality, this one individuality.” By living in the soul of mind or feeling, God lives in you; but you allow God to live in all the vibrations of the soul, you are certain of him, so you do not have to summarize it as in one point and you do not have to bring yourself to consciousness: “You are identical with your divine.” But this is something that must be done in the consciousness soul. In this, it is not the case that the person rests inwardly within themselves as in the mind or feeling soul, but in the consciousness soul, the person reaches out from themselves in order to unfold their I arbitrarily into reality, into existence.

If you have a feeling for the formation of words, you can literally see how the words that have just been spoken as the characteristic of the consciousness soul form themselves almost automatically into the Gothic pillar and the Gothic arch, where the enclosing shape presents us with a structure that no longer expresses calm, inward persistence, but rather, through its forms, the striving to emerge from mere inward stasis. How great is the difference between the beam, which is carried in full static calm by its column, and the mutually supporting arches, which come together at the apex and hold each other, where everything pushes towards a point, just as the power of the human soul is concentrated in the consciousness soul.

And anyone who can empathize with the ongoing process of human development, especially when observing Italian or French architecture, feels how, in the transition from the development of the intellectual or emotional soul to the development of the consciousness soul, it is no longer a matter of a calm, static support and supporting itself out of its inner totality, and one no longer strives for inward unity in form, as in Greek architecture, but rather seeks to pass over into the dynamic, as it were, to emerge from one's skin, in order to enter into connection with the reality of the outer world, as in the consciousness soul. Gothic arches open up to the light of heaven in long windows. This is not the case in Greek architecture. In a Greek temple, it would make no difference to the perception whether light fell into it or not. The light is only incidental. This is not irrelevant to the Gothic cathedral; the Gothic cathedral is inconceivable without the light refracted in the stained glass windows. Here we can feel how the consciousness soul enters into the totality of the world and strives out again into general existence. The Gothic style is thus the architectural striving that is characteristic of the age of the development of the consciousness soul.

And now we enter our own age, in which a world view that does not arise out of arbitrariness but out of the necessities of human development must realize that the human being must work his way out of the soul and into the spirit again, that the human being rests in the spirit of himself. The Gothic building, with its special architecture of the wall broken through by the windows, with its opening up for what can come in, for what must now come, appears as no more than the forerunner of this process! Like the right-hand harbinger of what is to come - where the wall necessarily leads to a structure and in this respect is also only a filler, a decoration, not an enclosure, like the walls of the Greek temple - like a harbinger, this Gothic building appears to be what must now become the new building for the enclosure of the coming Weltanschauung, the new building whose essential characteristics I have already hinted at here and there and some of whose essential features have even already been attempted, for example in the Stuttgart building.

The essential thing will be that the complement to the preliminary stage of architecture, to cave construction, where the rock itself materially closed off what had been hewn into it, will now appear; that our new building opens up on all sides, that its walls are open on all sides, not, however, to the material, but open to the spiritual. And we will achieve this by designing the forms in such a way that we can forget that there is any city or the like besides our building. Such an attempt has already been made in the Stuttgart building; its walls are open despite the material closure, open to the spirit. In the new building, too, we will design the forms, the decorative, the picturesque, in such a way that the wall is broken through, so that we can feel our way through color and form: Despite being closed in, our spiritual and mental outlook expands into the world at large. Just as the proportions of the cosmos were taken up in the pyramid, we take what we can experience through anthroposophy and theosophy and create forms, colors, outlines, figures for it , but we create all this in such a way that precisely through what we create on the walls and conjure up on the walls, these walls themselves disappear, and we experience the closed space in such a way that we can feel the illusion everywhere: It expands out into the cosmos, into the universe, just as the consciousness soul, when it merges with the spiritual self, expands out of the merely human into the spiritual.

In the new architecture, the significance of the individual column will also change completely. If, as in the Greek temple, we are dealing with static conditions, with conditions in which inwardness is of primary importance, then it is natural that the column forms and the capital forms should be repeated. For how could one imagine a column in one place as being different from another in the neighborhood if they have exactly the same function? It must be designed in the same way as the other. It cannot be any different, because every column has the same function.

If we are now dealing with a new architecture that reaches out into the cosmos, which is differentiated in the most diverse ways on all sides, and we are to forget that we are in an inner space, then the columns take on a completely new task, a task that is somewhat like that of a letter that points beyond itself by forming a word with the other letters. Thus the columns combine, not in a diversity, but like the individual letters to form a weighty writing that points outwards to the cosmos, from the inside outwards. And so we will build: from the inside out! And just as one capital follows the other, so they will join together and express something as a totality. This will be something that leads beyond the room. And what we will otherwise install, for example inside the dome, will be installed in such a way that we will not have the feeling of We are closed in by a dome, but that the whole painting seems to pierce the dome, carries it away into infinity. To do this, however, one will have to learn to paint a little in the way that Johannes Thomasius paints for Strader's sensibility, so that Strader gets the feeling: “The canvas, I want to pierce it, to find what I am supposed to seek.”

You will realize that in the mystery plays not a single word is written in vain, but always from the whole, and that all the things we want necessarily follow from the preconditions of our culture. Today I just wanted to evoke a feeling for the fact that in the entire treatment of the walls, the architectural motifs, the columns, and in the use of everything decorative, the new architecture must aim at the destruction of the material, so to speak overcome the wall and outwards, so that the picturesque must also overcome the wall; I wanted to evoke a feeling that all this must occur and be attempted through the new architecture and that this is a necessity in view of the course of human development, as we recognize it as a necessary one.

However, given the necessity of such a building in the course of human development, it seems pathetic that it is so difficult to actually carry out the building, and pathetic too are all the objections raised by the authorities in Munich, including those of the artists who have been called upon to judge it and who have said that the building would overwhelm its surroundings. Perhaps they felt a little queasy about the building overwhelming the neighborhood, about it growing out of it into a very wide environment. They will initially feel oppressed by it.

Such objections, raised by artists who believe themselves to be at the cutting edge of their time, seem grotesquely comical when viewed from the perspective of human development. Our dear friend, who is helping us here as an architect, said that the master builder should not let himself be forced by the client, but should create as a free artist, as he wishes. That is a nice principle, because let's say the client orders a department store, he would not be very satisfied if the “free artist” built him a church. Now, there are many such buzzwords. But one is limited by task and material. The term “free artist” simply makes no sense here. For I would like to know what the “free artist” will do if he intends to execute a plastic work of art from free artistry, to mold clay and create a Venus, and instead of Venus a sheep comes out? Is he then a free artist? Does the word 'free' have the slightest meaning in art when Raphael was commissioned to paint the Sistine Madonna and it ended up being a cow? Raphael would have been a 'free' artist, but he would not have created a Sistine Madonna! Just as one only needs one tongue for certain things, here too only one tongue is needed. For such reasoning has nothing to do with the necessary real conditions of human development, but rather it depends on whether one has a truth in mind that relates to doing, to working. For truths that are to be fruitful, that are to be 'true', must be grounded in the necessities of human development. However, they will always be applicable to what Schopenhauer said about truth entering into human development. For Schopenhauer said: “In all centuries, poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, and yet it is not its fault. It cannot take the form of the enthroned general error. So it looks up with a sigh to its patron, Time, who beckons victory and fame to it, but whose flapping of his wings is so great and slow that the individual perishes from it.

Let us hope, dear friends, and let us do our part, because it could be good for our cause, that our guardian spirit takes pity on us and turns his gaze to us, so that we, recognizing the necessity of our structure, may soon be able to truly create this shell for anthroposophy or spiritual science, which corresponds to the development of humanity.

For esoteric development—the true path to knowledge—the individual must find the way to understanding what it means to live in a world in which the senses, the whole physical organization, in not a facilitator; that is, to live with the psychic-spiritual, which is man's true identity, in a spiritual world. In order to do so there are many different more or less meditative exercises, mental exertions meant to affect the soul.

And to give a picture of what a human soul can pass through on the way from experiencing the physical sensory world to experiencing the spiritual world is what will be provided in these class lessons by means of the various considerations and the summarizing of such considerations in individual verses, which may then be meditated upon according to each member's possibilities and needs.

Once a certain time has passed the communications given in these class lessons, which, as I have often stressed, are real communications from the spiritual world, will coalesce in such a way that those who have participated—it is also karma for those who could be here—will have a complete picture of the first stage of esoteric development.

As a result of the various indications which are given here we can gradually rise above our earthly existence to an experience of the cosmos, we can develop the feelings which carry us out into those distant reaches of the universe from which the spiritual comes to meet us. But as long as we confine ourselves to using our senses and reason only in connection with the sense-perceptible world which surrounds us, it will be impossible for us to grasp what the spiritual world reveals as the truth accessible to man.

You see my dear friends, as I have often stressed, human common sense can understand everything offered by anthroposophy, if it exerts itself sufficiently and is free of prejudice. But it is just in reference to this common sense where a touchstone exists concerning whether or not someone is really destined by their karma nowadays to participate in anthroposophy.

There are two possibilities. One is that the person hears about anthroposophical truths, lets them work on him and considers them to be self-evident. It is obvious that everyone sitting here today belongs to that group. For if someone who does not belong to that group wishes to participate in a lesson as a member, it would not be honest of them. And honesty is the most important aspect of esoteric life—complete truthfulness penetrating the human soul and spirit.

There is another group of people who find what is presented by anthroposophy to be fantastic, somehow belonging only to visionaries. These people show by their behavior that they are not able, according to their karma, to sufficiently separate common sense from physicality and the senses to be able to grasp sense-free truth, sense-free knowledge.

It is therefore the extent to which common sense is bound to corporeality or not which determines such a great divergence between people. For if you honestly consider that you possess a common sense which understands anthroposophy, then at the moment it grasps anthroposophy honestly, it does so independently of corporeality. And this healthy common sense which grasps anthroposophy honestly is the beginning of esoteric striving. And we should treasure the fact that healthy common sense which understands anthroposophy is the beginning of esoteric striving. It should not be overlooked. For when one starts with this understanding through healthy common sense and then follows the indications given in the appropriate schools, one proceeds farther and farther along the esoteric path. You can use whichever of the verses provided here which you consider appropriate for you. But you should apply them together with the indications as to how they relate to the inner life of man.

Today I would like to again provide an indication of how you can leave the body—if only by means of so slight a jolt that you don't even realize it.

We should develop the ability to observe and study the minerals and plants in our environment to the extent that we feel them within—if only by means of thinking—and become truly aware of how this earthly environment is related to us, that due to our wearing a physical body we are directly related to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms around us. And then we ask the question in all honesty: Why? Why did I absorb the physical substances of the earth just by being born? Why do I drag myself through life from birth till death in order to end physical life once my organism is no longer able to process its physical elements? We must deeply feel our relationship to our physical environment starting from such a personal enigma. Then, however, we will also feel more and more what the starting point for esoteric life can be. Then we feel that in physical earthly life we are blindly groping in the dark.

And finally, my dear sisters and brothers, consider the people of today who have been placed in earthly life after birth and educated according to the usual methods and called to this or that work due to purely external circumstances. They do not understand the relationship of this work to the totality of human existence. Perhaps they do not know much more than that they work in order to eat. They do not realize that in the plants they eat cosmic forces from the distant boundaries of the universe are present which pass through the human organism and therefore in a certain sense undergo a cosmic evolution. Many people today cannot even begin to glimpse this process due to the materialism of the times. But to admit that by the mere consideration of earthly relationships one stands spiritually blind in life and lives in the dark—that is the starting point for true esoteric development.

And then change the direction of your gaze from what surrounds you on the earth to the star-studded heaven—either in thought, or if you really want to be affected by it, in reality. Behold the planets, behold the stars, fill yourselves with the infinite transcendence of what shines back to you from the universe, and say to yourself: as human beings we are related just as much to what radiates down from the universe as we are to what surrounds us in the physical environment.

Then by gazing up to the star-studded heaven, we really have the feeling that we do not live in darkness, but that we are freed from life in the darkness by rising with our soul-spiritual being to the stars, rise to what the stars represent as pictures in their constellations. And, you see, if we can really enter meditating into this vision of the star-filled sky it becomes a plenitude of imaginations. You know the old pictures in which not only the constellations have been painted, but in which they have been recapitulated symbolically as animals. Not only the star group that is in Aries, or in Taurus has been represented, but also the symbolic images of the ram and the bull are included.

Today people think: Well, it was arbitrary on the part of those ancient inhabitants of the earth that just because the constellations were so named that the corresponding pictures were added. But that was not the case at all. In reality in ancient times the shepherds in the fields did not merely gaze up at the star-studded sky with physical eyes, but also in dream-consciousness or sleep-consciousness out there with their flocks they turned their souls with closed eyes towards outer space. They did not see the constellations which physical eyes see. But they actually perceived those pictures, those imaginations which fill universal space—albeit somewhat differently from what was later painted.

We can no longer go back to what the simple shepherds experienced by instinctive clairvoyance. But we can do something else. With far greater thoughtfulness we can imagine ourselves into the star-filled sky. We can feel the depth and at the same time the awesome majesty of what radiates back to us. And gradually we can come to a sense of veneration for what is expanding out there in cosmic space. And the more ardent the veneration is the more clearly can the experience be that the outer sense-images of the stars disappear and the star-filled sky becomes an Imagination for us. But only then, when the star-filled sky becomes an Imagination for us, do we feel ourselves carried away by our soul's vision.

You see, still in Plato's time one felt something special about the physical eye when it is observing. Plato himself described seeing as follows: When I look at a person something leaves my eye and encompasses him. People in ancient times sensed that something streams out of the eye and encompasses the object. The etheric streams out. Just as when I stretch out my hand and grasp something I know that I am connected to my hand until reaching the grasped object, so in the times of instinctive clairvoyance people knew that something etheric goes out from the eye and encompasses the thing looked at. Today people think, well,the eye is here, the object seen is there. So the object sends out ether-waves which drum against the eye and the drumming is perceived by some kind of soul—about which even the materialist talks about here, but without having any idea of what it is. But that is not true. It is not a mere impact on the person emanating from the object, but really also an emanation of the person's inner etheric substance.

And we perceive our ether body as belonging to the universe when the star-filled sky becomes for us the grand open page of the universe on which the imaginative secrets of cosmic being are written—if we are able to read it.

And then the feeling comes to us: When you are here on earth you are in the robust sense-perceptible reality. But you are blind, you live in darkness. When you rise up with your sensibility then you live in what otherwise only shines down to you from the distant universe, and you live in the illusion of the distant universe. But at the same time you take your own etheric being out into the distant flooding stream of this illusionary world.

And the illusion ceases to be illusion. It cannot be a nothing if we immerse ourselves in it. When we have this feeling—I will draw it—.

We live as blind people in the darkness of earthly existence, (white arc); then we journey out into the distant universe (yellow rays), at the end of which we can feel the cosmic Imaginations by means of reverence for the brilliance of the stars (red waves).

So now that we have journeyed out we are together with our etheric being within the imaginative cosmic web. If we can accomplish this, then we are no longer in the physical body. We have traveled through the etheric emptiness to experiencing the cosmic Imaginations.

You see, it's like when in the physical world someone writes something down and, because we have learned to read, we read it. By being out in the cosmos—the gods have written the cosmic imaginations for us in the cosmos—when we arrive we see the imaginations from the other side (arrows). At first we live here on the earth (inner circle). Then we draw ourselves up to the cosmic imaginations (outer wave-circle).

Yes, my dear friends, my sisters and brothers, the zodiac speaks a meaningful language when we do not observe it from the earth—Arias, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo—but rather when we encircle it from without. And it is a task of our consciousness to encircle it from without. Then we begin to read the cosmic secrets, which are the deeds of the spiritual beings. In a novel we read of the deeds of men. When we look at the zodiac from the other side and read what from the earth we see virtually from behind, as Moses was told that he always had to look at God from behind, that is, from the earth. Initiation consists of seeing from the other side—not a matter of gawking, but of reading. And what we read are the spiritual deeds of the spiritual beings who brought it all about.

And when we have silently read long enough, when our souls have concentrated deeply on this reading, then we begin to hear in a spiritual way. Then the gods speak with us. When the gods speak with us we are within the spiritual world.

Now you see, my dear sisters and brothers, the initiate can tell you: the soul can rise up to the cosmic heights, receive the cosmic imaginations, read them from the other side, the spiritual deeds, become capable of hearing in a spiritual way the language of the gods.

But if you really immerse yourself in what the initiate relates with your whole heart, your whole feeling, if you don't just listen to it greedily and say: Well, if I also could do that I'd like it, it would be interesting—but I'm not going to bother. But you receive it as something which you can revere, which you can love, which you can repeatedly meditate on, then it is the path to enter esoteric life yourself.

And you will find this path by meditating profoundly on the words:¹

1. I live in the dark domain of the earth,
2. I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
3. I read in the deeds of the spirits,
4. I hear in the speech of the gods.

When experienced with the necessary deeply meditative feeling this works wonders in the human soul, transforms the human soul. It must rhythmically flow through the soul again and again, for it leads the human being through his own interior cosmic being.

But it is necessary that such a thing be deeply interiorized. And even though it still speaks more to the head, the heart should also participate in the whole process of going out into the etheric universe, then into the spiritual universe, that is, on the other side of the universe. It is necessary in such a process that we take our hearts with us in the experience and that it stimulate in you the feelings which can come quite naturally by this excursion into the outer universe. But these feelings must be really stimulated. It is therefore good to look deeply into what the words say:

I live in the dark domain of the earth,
I wander in the brilliance of the stars
I read in the deeds of the spirits.
I hear in the speech of the gods.

Then you try to imagine that someone is speaking to you from a spiritual depth, as though you were not thinking it, but as though you were hearing it, as if another being were speaking. You really imagine that another being is speaking to you from an unknown depth. Then you try to develop the right feelings for what you have heard.

These feelings live in the second part of the verse:²

5. The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,
6. The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me

When I am aware that I live blindly in the darkness of the earth, I long to get out. Then the brilliance of the stars becomes the comforter which expands my being:

The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me.

Now from the other side:

7. The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,

—when I read them—

8. The speech of the gods is creating to me.

Only you must use it correctly. Imagine yourself vividly in this meditating which you are doing. As though someone were speaking to you from spiritual depths is how you hear the lines of the first verse. You bring the corresponding feeling to each verse, so that you experience in the meditation: first listen, then bring feeling; listen, then bring feeling; and so on.³

I live in the dark domain of the earth,
The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,

I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me.

I read in the deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me.

I hear in the speech of the gods,
The speech of the gods is creating for me.

It is a meditation in dialog in which you always objectify the first line, but the second you feel as though streaming out of your heart. Now you try again to visualize how one acts and weaves into the other, and then try to feel with your will what you can experience through the dialog.⁴

From depth of spirit resounds:

I live in the dark domain of the earth,

The heart replies:

The darkness of the earth creates longing in me.

The will senses the impulse in the dialog between lines 1 and 5:

9. The earth's darkness extinguishes me.

After this dialog has taken place we recall the connection of lines 2 and 6:

I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me.

10. The brilliance of the stars awakens me.

Afterward we recall what resounds from spiritual depths and the heart's reply:

I read in the deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me.

The will now senses:

11. The deeds of the spirits call to me.

into the spiritual world.

And now the most sublime, where we feel ourselves in dialog with the gods themselves, where the gods not only let us read, but speak:

I hear in the speech of the gods,
The speech of the gods is creating for me.

12. The speech of the gods engenders me.

—brings me forth, engenders me.

Now imagine the whole meditation. It runs as follows: dialog—line for line with a spiritual being present in the dim spiritual depths that always speaks the top line of the verse. And the heart always replies:

I live in the dark domain of the earth,
The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,

I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me,

I read in the deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,

I hear in the speech of the gods,
The speech of the gods is creating for me.

Now I recall each one and add the outpouring of will as a remembrance of what had just gone before:

I live in the dark domain of the earth,
The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,
The earth's darkness extinguishes me.

I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me,
The brilliance of the stars awakens me.

I read in the deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,
The deeds of the spirits call to me.

I hear in the speech of the gods,
The speech of the gods is creating for me,
The speech of the gods engenders me.

Conviction results from the dialog in meditation, from recalling the dialog and in strengthening the recollection by means of the will.

If, firstly, with inner devotional feeling, secondly with complete soul and interest we have done what I have just described, if we do it not as mechanical meditating but as a true experience of the soul, then this means of creating a relation to the spiritual world really does have an awakening effect on the soul.

Also in the case of the last verse, which in the way I have described should really be experienced as remembrance of speech and answering speech—speech of the spirit and answering speech of the heart, we must correctly feel how, firstly, consciousness, which we wish to achieve, is extinguished by the earth's darkness. We must sense how a moment of extinguishing sleep overcomes consciousness, and how upon awakening, at the second line, we hear the spirits calling us to them, how afterward we feel: the spirits have called us so that they can bring us forth, engender us in the spiritual world by their own cosmic word.

If these nuances of inner experience flow through the soul—and the representations of the spiritual being who speaks to us are included—and the heart reciprocates with its dedication to the spiritual being, then yes, then the stimulation exists in the soul which will gradually lead this soul onto the esoteric path. And we must be clear that as we experience these three verses in our souls in the way in which I have described as best we can, something powerful takes place in the subconscious mind. If we sincerely live in these three verses as I have described, then when the first line resounds, our soul unconsciously passes through the starting-point of earthly life when the etheric body was first formed.

If we can vividly imagine what from the spirit resounds:

I live in the dark domain of the earth,

then we approach—in the unconscious—with this hearing in spirit, the moment in which our etheric body was formed; and from pre-earthly existence, from life between death and a new birth, acts the force with which we sincerely reply from the heart:

The darkness of the earth creates longing in me;

because we have the longing for the spiritual as a heritage from pre-earthly existence.

And again we are transported to the beginning of earthly existence. And what acts from our hearts is inspired by the previous earthly existence.

I wander in the brilliance of the stars:

We are transported to the beginning of our earthly life. The real comfort the brilliance of the stars can give when we are transported back is in our heart's reply:

The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me.

And then:

I read in the deeds of the spirits:

We are transported back to the earth's beginning. Remember how we are taught by spiritual beings in pre-earthly existence.

The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,

Among whom I lived and wandered before I descended to the earth.

I hear in the speech of the gods:

We heard them during the period between death and a new birth. We sense that what the gods say is not mere information as is what men say; we realize that the speech of the Gods is creative:

The speech of the gods is creating for me.

But then, if we can see it so, lines 9, 10, 11, 12 also acquire the correct meaning:⁵

I live in the dark domain of the earth,
The earth's darkness extinguishes me,
The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,

—deletes me from my present earth life for I am led back, through the region between death and a new birth, to my earlier incarnation. I divine this; therefor my consciousness is extinguished, for my consciousness was, until now, that of my current incarnation. In this moment of sleep I am transported back so I can divine: I am wandering in my previous incarnation.⁶

I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of the stars awakens me
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me,

I am brought back to what I was in the previous incarnation as though awakened in it. My karma arises before me, the connection of destiny arises before me, it arises before me from the other side.⁷

I read in the deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits call to me
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,

to fulfill my karma with the forces which derive from my previous earth-life.⁸

I hear in the speech of the gods,
The speech of the gods engenders me.
The speech of the gods is creating for me,

Everything I am becomes clear to me when my earlier earthly existence penetrates the present one and shines through it and wanders through it and pulses through it. For here I am. My present I is in a process, it is a seed which will have meaning once I have passed through the gates of death. What shines and works in me from the previous earthly existence into the present one makes me into a human being, engenders me as an existing human being.

If we have the conviction that it is so, that—although we believe only to be in the ordinary world of physical existence—our soul really makes the journey back to the previous earth-life, then we will be aware of the gravity of what we are experiencing. And through this awareness a warmer, luminous current streams through our thinking, feeling and willing. And with that inner magical feeling, which is necessary for the meditation to work in the right way, our meditation will prevail. We may call it a magical feeling for it cannot be compared with any feeling we have on earth, because it is completely independent of all corporeality. If we cannot yet leave the physical body behind with our thinking, this magical thinking which we experience through the gravity of our soul's activity is present in the purely spiritual world.

According to the way we experience these things, our esoteric striving is fulfilled. And that is what I was obliged to lay before your souls today, my dear sisters and brothers.

In conclusion I would like to say one more thing. It should not happen that someone passes on the verses and the information given here without first asking permission. Only with permission may these things be passed on from one to another or to a group. It is especially frowned upon, my dear friends, that these verses or their interpretation be sent by post. They may not be sent by post, and I ask that this be strictly observed.

• 1. The first part of the verse is written on the blackboard.
• 2. The second part is written on the blackboard.
• 3. An arc is drawn connecting lines 1 and 5; another connecting 2 and 6, another connecting 3 and 7, and another connecting lines 4 and 8
• 4. The third part of the verse is arranged in connection with the first and the second parts while lines 9, 10, 11 and 12 are written on the blackboard.
• 5. Line 9 is written again, this time on the arc connecting lines 1 and 5.
• 6. Line 10 is written again, this time at the arc connecting lines 2 and 6.
• 7. Line 11 is written again, at the arc connecting lines 3 and 7.
• 8. Line 12 is written again, at the arc connecting lines 4 and 8.