The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anyone looking beyond the immediate interests of the day feels that mankind is confronted by tasks such as have appeared only at important turning points in historical evolution. These tasks concern all people and touch all spheres of life. There are persons in the world who are inclined to perceive the seeds of decay and death everywhere in spiritual life, and who see a possibility of progress only in a rebirth of spiritual forces. To others, the decay proceeds only from the fact that there are widely extended groups of people who have turned away from well-tested traditions. But these are convinced that the old will have to seek new paths in order to lay hold of the heart and mind of man.

Social conditions have assumed a form which has led to shocking catastrophes and which conceals germs leading to new and overwhelming calamities. In consequence, for millions of people a material distress has resulted which words are powerless to describe, and only those who believe in the possibility of new methods in world economy can hope for alleviation.

A great conflict between the Occidental world and the world of the Orient is imminent. Many individuals are looking with anxious eyes at the possible consequences of the significant call sounding forth from America. How will that country, how will England, play the leading roles which have devolved upon them? How will the summons of these western powers be answered by what is to them the mystically dark Asiatic soul of the Japanese?

These are problems upon the solution of which depend, in the nearest future, the weal and woe of mankind; problems which involve the most commonplace every day experiences as well as the highest spiritual interests.

What is stated here contains something many people feel to be true. Confronting this, however, stands something else. Although we confess that a great deal ought to happen, a great weariness has invaded human souls; a lack of faith in human fortitude.

Much is being proposed from many sides; a belief that something might alleviate the great distress of the times gives no solution. In many quarters, indeed, people believe they know quite well what is needed; but such certainties have no effect upon the wills of human beings.

Before the great European catastrophe overtook the world, what eulogies could be heard about the spiritual and material progress of mankind! In view of the chaos which has engulfed the civilized world, how powerless does all that once lived in this progress now appear!

This experience might bring about a painful disillusionment, and yet we would doubt the human being himself if we halted before such a disillusionment. Indeed, many of the eulogists of the progress of the modern age have believed in the power of the spirit, since faith in the power of the human spirit lives even in materialism. Those who consider materialism the only sane thing believe that they have attained to their viewpoint through the power of the spirit.

We should feel in its full significance the fact that the materialistic paths travelled by this power of the spirit have led to a precipitous downfall of civilization; that world happenings have taken a course and brought results with which human beings cannot cope. It is only a step from the correct perception of this fact to a recognition of the necessity for this human spiritual power to seek other paths, paths leading deeper into reality.

Anyone who talks in this way encounters, as a matter of course, strong opposition. “What do you hope for now,” someone asks, “from a revolution in the spiritual life? Tell us how the world is to be relieved of her economic distress? First of all, people need bread; when this is provided, the way to the spirit will be found.”

Such a remark appears self-evident; and, on account of its “apparent” self-evidence, it evokes considerable applause. Yet it is only an illusion, not reality. For all economic conditions in human life are, in the final analysis, the result of spirit- borne human work. If the consequences are bad, the blame rests upon a spirit unequal to its tasks.

We shall understand this truth in its present significance only when, in spite of the turmoil of the age, we refuse to indulge in a blind criticism rejecting modern spiritual progress; that is, only when we recognize the good in modern progress. It is thus that we shall arrive at a direct insight into the reasons why this human progress is, in certain spheres, not commensurate with the course of cosmic progress.

Human progress is evident largely in the sphere of nature knowledge, and in the mechanical and technical sciences controlled by nature. Humanity has acquired sufficient power of thinking to engage in a study of mechanics, botany, archaeology, and so forth. The justification of this thinking power then operating in its own proper sphere should not be denied. But it uses the human spirit in order to master what lies outside the spirit. It comprehends nature through the spirit, while forgetting the spirit itself. Thus, science never grows weary of emphasizing that it presents nature to the human being the more faithfully the less it encourages him to color his ideas about nature with his spirit. It is not possible here to speak of the value of a knowledge of nature gained this way. But a humanity which educates itself largely by means of this soul activity is not able to produce ideas which have the sustaining force of the will. Will works in the human being by means of the spiritual force pulsating through it. And a spirit which is directed only to the unspiritual loses the sustaining power of its own being. The spirit which busies itself with nature can be strengthened in its own power, but cannot, in this manner, give itself a sustaining content.

Those who wish to place an independent spiritual conception on a par with a conception of nature believe themselves compelled to take this equality as a starting point. They do not mean by this a spiritual conception which continues to spin out what has been acquired from nature, but a spiritual knowledge which recognizes the spirit and its world as a living world, just as eyes, ears, and an intellect based upon them recognize nature as an unspiritual reality.

But the present-day world is able to speak of the living spirit only because of the traditions of the past. In bygone ages people were convinced that not only visible beings walk this earth and fashion the world's historical existence, but they were aware of the presence of active invisible spiritual beings in this world. They were aware by direct experience not only of living in a world of nature, but of living in a world of spirit. The modern human being has substituted an unreal thought experience for this spiritual experience. He is aware only of a world of thought; he is no longer directly conscious of the living events of the spirit. Indeed, the human being who has been educated in natural science rejects all knowledge of the spirit, and thus is dependent solely upon what of spiritual knowledge has been handed down from bygone ages. That, however, gradually fades away, loses its sustaining power in the human soul.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy believes itself capable of acquiring a knowledge of the living spirit. It speaks of a spirit which lives in the human being, and not solely of thoughts which lead a picture existence in him. The fact that spirit reveals itself in the human being is for this spiritual science a result, just as in present natural science that which the intellect understands, based upon sense perception, is a result. This spiritual science does not speak of a nebulous spirit into which only the abstract intellect is interjected, but of a real spirit world with individual beings and facts; just as natural science speaks of individual plants, individual rivers, and other individual facts of nature.

This spiritual science believes that it may approach present- day tasks from two sides.

One approach is the cognition that spiritual science is knowledge and can be felt as such by all who permit themselves, through a healthy power of judgment, to be stimulated toward a satisfactory human relationship with the world and life; that, consequently, spiritual science does not bear the character of those methods of modern science which lead into this or that branch of knowledge, without the possibility of the human being gaining from that particular branch thoughts about his own nature and destination, or of his coming to a vigorous unfolding of his will. Spiritual science believes itself able to illumine thoughts, shape feelings full of devotion, and fashion a will filled with spirit. It speaks to the soul of every individual human being without considering the difference in degree of his education, because it seeks, indeed, its source in the pure spirit of science. Moreover, it reaches results to which every soul can respond with appreciation, out of a healthy judgment of human nature.

The other approach is fruitful for various fields of science and art, and for the religiously and socially inclined life.

The various sciences have, through their mode of research, arrived at a point where they need to be permeated by a living spiritual essence. The arts have their naturalistic epoch behind them; only out of the spirit can they again acquire a content which is not merely a superfluous imitation of nature. In the practical consequences of the Marxian mode of thought, social mass impulses have proved themselves impossible. They need the social forces which the individual human being discovers on his path to the spiritual life. Spiritual science will open the soul depths to religious experience, which otherwise would wither. By its very nature, spiritual science cannot itself create religion. We misunderstand spiritual science if we ascribe to it such intentions. But to the human being who can no longer discover religion in ancient spiritual movements, it will prove again that religion is the wellspring of a true humanness.

Spiritual science would give humanity what it needs, in order that ideas should again follow the course of world events. With such thoughts we shall certainly expose ourselves today to the easy reproach that we wish to say: Whoever would find his way into the needs encompassing all present-day people and life conditions has only to ask the Anthroposophists; they know how to solve all problems. Anyone who really knows how to live in the spirit of Anthroposophy, in the way intended by those who live at the Goetheanum [At Dornach, Switzerland], really does not suffer from megalomania, nor even from a lack of modesty; but would, quite modestly, point to what is lacking in the activity of modern mankind, and what must be sought in order that spiritual force, imbuing not only the head but the whole human being with soul force, may contribute to the great tasks now felt by many to be urgent. To be sure, such a mode of thought leads to something different from what is still expected by many people who place these tasks before their soul. Thus, the Occident and the Orient will come to a proper understanding only out of a spirit-imbued life, and not upon the bases upon which men build today. Nor will economic needs be alleviated until the right spirit points our direction.

This volume contains material which for many years was circulated in manuscript form among priests and doctors. The audience to whom the lectures were given was restricted to priests and doctors as they really were intended to serve the esoteric needs of these two professions. In this respect it gives insights into how Steiner went about laying the foundations for an esoteric path connected with a particular vocation. It is reasonable to assume that had he lived longer he would have delivered similar courses to other professional groups. Of particular significance is the giving of a mantric verse for the support of the vocational activity (see last lecture), a verse specific to the vocation. The receiving and working with such a verse would presumably be connected with the task and responsibilities an individual would assume when he or she worked out of one of the Sections of the School for Spiritual Science in the realm of a particular vocation.

Needless to say, the material assumes a certain maturity in anthroposophy which at a minimum means a familiarity with the basic books. Anyone attempting this cycle without such a background is advised to do the necessary studies before trying to read this volume.

Each one of you will doubtless be aware that the title of this lecture is taken from Goethe's Faust. You all know that in this poem we are shown how Faust, the representative of the highest human effort, enters into a pact with the evil powers, who on their side are represented in the poem by Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell. You will know, too, that Faust is to strike a bargain with Mephistopheles, the deed of which must be signed with his own blood. Faust, in the first instance, looks upon it as a jest. Mephistopheles, however, at this juncture utters the sentence which Goethe without doubt intended should be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Now, with reference to this line in Goethe's Faust, we come to a curious trait in the so-called Goethe commentators. You are of course aware how vast is the literature dealing with Goethe's version of the Faust Legend. It is a literature of such stupendous dimensions that whole libraries might be stocked with it, and naturally I cannot make it my business to expatiate on the various comments made by these interpreters of Goethe concerning this particular passage. None of the interpretations throw much more light on the sentence than that given by one of the latest commentators, Professor Minor. He, like others, treats it in the light of an ironical remark made by Mephistopheles, and in this connection he makes the following really very curious observation, and one to which I would ask you to give your best attention; for there is little doubt that you will be surprised to hear what strange conclusions commentators on Goethe are capable of drawing.

Professor Minor remarks that “the devil is a foe to the blood”; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then—and quite rightly—draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend—and indeed, in legends generally—blood always plays the same part.

In an old book on Faust it is circumstantially described to us how Faust makes a slight incision in his left hand with a small penknife, and how then, as he takes the pen to sign his name to the agreement, the blood flowing from the cut forms the words: “Oh man, escape!” All this is authentic enough; but now comes the remark that the devil is a foe to the blood, and that this is the reason for his demanding that the signature be written in blood. I should like to ask you whether you could imagine any person being desirous of possessing the very thing for which he has an antipathy? The only reasonable explanation that can be given—not only as to Goethe's meaning in this passage, but also as to that attaching to the main legend as well as to all the older Faust poems—is that to the devil blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.

We can here suppose nothing else than that the representative of the powers of evil believes nay, is convinced that he will have Faust more especially in his power if he can only gain possession of at least one drop of his blood. This is self-evident, and no one can really understand the line otherwise. Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because the devil is inimical to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.

Now, there is a remarkable perception underlying this passage, namely, that he who gains power over a man's blood gains power over the man, and that blood is “a very special fluid” because it is that about which, so to speak, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the man between good and evil.

All those things which have come down to us in the legends and myths of various nations, and which touch upon human life, will in our day undergo a peculiar transformation with regard to the whole conception and interpretation of human nature. The age is past in which legends, fairy-tales, and myths were looked upon merely as expressions of the childlike fancy of a people. Indeed, the time has even gone by when, in a half-learned, half-childlike way, it was the fashion to allude to legends as the poetical expression of a nation's soul.

Now, this so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red tape; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with something very much more profound, and that as a matter of fact the legends and fairy-tales of the various peoples are expressive of wonderful powers and wonderful events.

If from the new standpoint of spiritual investigation we meditate upon the old legends and myths, allowing those grand and powerful pictures which have come down from primeval times to work upon our minds, we shall find, if we have been equipped for our task by the methods of occult science, that these legends and myths are the expressions of a most profound and ancient wisdom.

It is true we may at first be inclined to ask how it comes about that, in a primitive state of development and with primitive ideas, unsophisticated man was able to present the riddles of the universe to himself pictorially in these legends and fairy-tales; and how it is that, when we meditate on them now, we behold in them in pictorial form what the occult investigation of today is revealing to us with greater clearness.

This is a matter which at first is bound to excite surprise. And yet he who probes deeper and deeper into the ways and means by which these fairy-tales and myths have come into being, will find every trace of surprise vanish, every doubt pass away; indeed, he will find in these legends not only what is termed a naive and unsophisticated view of things, but the wondrously deep and wise expression of a primordial and true conception of the world.

Very much more may be learned by thoroughly examining the foundations of these myths and legends, than by absorbing the intellectual and experimental science of the present day. But for work of this kind the student must of course be familiar with those methods of investigation which belong to spiritual science. Now, all that is contained in these legends and ancient world-conceptions about the blood is wont to be of importance, since in those remote times there was a wisdom by means of which man understood the true and wide significance of blood, this “very special fluid” which is itself the flowing life of human beings.

We cannot today enter into the question as to whence came this wisdom of ancient times, although some indication of this will be given at the close of the lecture; the actual study of this subject must, however, stand over to be dealt with in future lectures. The blood itself, its import for man and the part it plays in the progress of human civilization, will today occupy our attention.

We shall consider it neither from the physiological nor from the purely scientific point of view, but shall rather take it from the standpoint of a spiritual conception of the universe. We shall best approach our subject if, to begin with, we understand the meaning of an ancient maxim, one which is intimately connected with the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes flourished. It is an axiom which forms the fundamental principle of all spiritual science, and which has become known as the Hermetic Axiom; it runs, “As above, so below.”

You will find that there are many dilettante interpretations of this sentence; the explanation, however, which is to occupy us today is the following:—It is plain to spiritual science that the world to which man has primary access by means of his five senses does not represent the entire world, that it is in fact only the expression of a deeper world hidden behind it, namely the spiritual world. Now, this spiritual world is called—according to the Hermetic Axiom—the higher world, the world “above”; and the world of the senses which is displayed around us, the existence of which we know through the medium of our senses, and which we are able to study by means of our intellect, is the lower one, the world “below,” the expression of that higher and spiritual world. Thus the occultist, looking upon this world of the senses, sees in it nothing final, but rather a kind of physiognomy which he recognizes as the expression of a world of soul and spirit; just as, when you gaze upon a human countenance, you must not stop at the form of the face and the gestures, paying attention only to them, but must pass, as a matter of course, from the physiognomy and the gestures to the spiritual element which is expressed in them.

What every person does instinctively when confronted by any being possessed of a soul, is what the occultist, or spiritual scientist, does in respect of the entire world; and “as above, so below” would, when referring to man, be thus explained: “Every impulse animating his soul is expressed in his face.” A hard and coarse countenance expresses coarseness of soul, a smile tells of inward joy, a tear betrays a suffering soul.

I will here apply the Hermetic Axiom to the question: What actually constitutes wisdom? Spiritual science has always maintained that human wisdom has something to do with experience, and that painful experience. He who is actually in the throes of suffering manifests in this suffering something that is an inward lack of harmony. He, however, who has overcome the pain and suffering and bears their fruits within him, will always tell you that through suffering he has gained some measure of wisdom. He says:—“the joys and pleasures of life, all that life can offer me in the way of satisfaction, all these things do I receive gratefully; yet were I far more loath to part with my pain and suffering than with those pleasant gifts of life, for ‘it is to my pain and suffering that I owe my wisdom.’ ”

And so it is that in wisdom occult science has ever recognized what may be called crystallized pain—pain that has been conquered and thus changed into its opposite.

It is interesting to note that the more materialistic modern research has of late arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Quite recently a book has been published on “The Mimicry of Thought,” a book well worth reading. It is not the work of a theosophist, but of a student of nature and of the human soul. The author endeavors to show how the inner life of man, his way of thinking, as it were, impresses itself upon his physiognomy. This student of human nature draws attention to the fact that there is always something in the expression on the face of a thinker which is suggestive of what one may describe as “absorbed pain.”

Thus you see that this principle comes to light again in the more materialistic view of our own day, a brilliant confirmation of that immemorial axiom of spiritual science. You will become more and more deeply sensible of this, and you will find that gradually, point for point, the ancient wisdom will reappear in the science of modern times.

Occult investigation shows decisively that all the things which surround us in this world—the mineral foundation, the vegetable covering, and the animal world—should be regarded as the physiognomical expression, or the “below,” of an “above” or spirit life lying behind them. From the point of view taken by occultism, the things presented to us in the sense world can only be rightly understood if our knowledge includes cognition of the “above,” the spiritual archetype, the original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded. And for this reason we will today apply our minds to a study of that which lies concealed behind the phenomenon of the blood, that which shaped for itself in the blood its physiognomical expression in the world of sense. When once you understand this “spiritual background” of blood, you will be able to realize how the knowledge of such matters is bound to react upon our whole mental outlook on life.

Questions of great importance are pressing upon us these days; questions dealing with the education, not alone of the young, but of entire nations. And, furthermore, we are confronted by the momentous educational question which humanity will have to face in the future, and which cannot fail to be recognized by all who note the great social upheavals of our time, and the claims which are everywhere being advanced, be they the Labor Question, or the Question of Peace. All these things are pre-occupying our anxious minds.

But all such questions are illuminated as soon as we recognize the nature of the spiritual essence which lies at the back of our blood. Who can deny that this question is closely linked to that of race, which at the present time is once more coming markedly to the front? Yet this question of race is one that we can never understand until we understand the mysteries of the blood and of the results accruing from the mingling of the blood of different races. And finally, there is yet one other question, the importance of which is becoming more and more acute as we endeavor to extricate ourselves from the hitherto aimless methods of dealing with it, and seek to approach it in its more comprehensive bearings. This problem is that of colonization, which crops up wherever civilized races come into contact with the uncivilized: namely—To what extent are uncivilized peoples capable of becoming civilized? How can an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? And in what way ought we to deal with them? And here we have to consider not only the feelings due to a vague morality, but we are also confronted by great, serious, and vital problems of the very fact of existence itself.

Those who are not aware of the conditions governing a people—whether it be on the up- or down-grade of its evolution, and whether the one or the other is a matter conditioned by its blood—such people as these will, indeed, be unlikely to hit on the right mode of introducing civilization to an alien race. These are all matters which arise as soon as the Blood Question is touched upon.

What blood in itself is, you presumably all know from the current teachings of natural science, and you will be aware that, with regard to man and the higher animals, this blood is practically fluid life.

You are aware that it is by way of the blood that the “inner man” comes into contact with that which is exterior, and that in the course of this process man's blood absorbs oxygen, which constitutes the very breath of life. Through the absorption of this oxygen the blood undergoes renewal. The blood which is presented to the in-streaming oxygen is a kind of poison to the organism—a kind of destroyer and demolisher—but through the absorption of the oxygen the blue-red blood becomes transmuted by a process of combustion into red, life-giving fluid. This blood that finds its way to all parts of the body, depositing everywhere its particles of nourishment, has the task of directly assimilating the materials of the outer world, and of applying them, by the shortest method possible, to the nourishment of the body. It is necessary for man and the higher animals first to absorb the oxygen from the air into it, and to build up and maintain the body by means of it.

One gifted with a knowledge of souls has not without truth remarked: “The blood with its circulation is like a second being, and in relation to the man of bone, muscle, and nerve, acts like a kind of exterior world.” For, as a matter of fact, the entire human being is continually drawing his sustenance from the blood, and at the same time he discharges into it that for which he has no use. A man's blood is therefore a true double ever bearing him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that he can no longer use. “Man's liquid life” is therefore a good name to have given the blood; for this constantly changing “special fluid” is assuredly as important to man as is cellulose to the lower organisms.

The distinguished scientist, Ernst Haeckel, who has probed deeply into the workings of nature, in several of his popular works has rightly drawn attention to the fact that blood is in reality the latest factor to originate in an organism. If we follow the development of the human embryo we find that the rudiments of bone and muscle are evolved long before the first tendency toward blood formation becomes apparent. The groundwork for the formation of blood, with all its attendant system of blood-vessels, appears very late in the development of the embryo, and from this natural science has rightly concluded that the formation of blood occurred late in the evolution of the universe; that other powers which were there had to be raised to the height of blood, so to speak, in order to bring about at that height what was to be accomplished inwardly in the human being. Not until the human embryo has repeated in itself all the earlier stages of human growth, thus attaining to the condition in which the world was before the formation of blood, is it ready to perform this crowning act of evolution—the transmuting and uplifting of all that had gone before into the “very special fluid” which we call Blood.

If we would study those mysterious laws of the spiritual universe which exist behind the blood, we must occupy ourselves a little with some of the most elementary concepts of Anthroposophy. These have often been set forth, and you will see that these elementary ideas of Anthroposophy are the “above,” and that this “above” is expressed in the important laws governing the blood—as well as the rest of life—as though in a physiognomy.

Those present who are already well acquainted with the primary laws of Anthroposophy will, I trust, here permit a short repetition of them for the benefit of others who are here for the first time. Indeed, such repetition may serve to render these laws more and more clear to the former, by hearing them thus applied to new and special cases. To those, of course, who know nothing about Anthroposophy, who have not yet familiarized themselves with these conceptions of life and of the universe, that which I am about to say may seem little else than so many words strung together, of which they can make nothing. But the fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: “If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!”

And so it is with our contemporaries when they pass judgment on theosophical truths. If these truths should in the ears of many sound like mere words, words to which they cannot attach any meaning, the fault need not necessarily rest with Anthroposophy; those, however, who have found their way into these matters will know that behind all allusions to higher Beings, such Beings do actually exist, although they are not to be found in the world of the senses.

Our theosophical conception of the universe shows us that man, as far as he is revealed to our senses in the external world as far as his shape and form are concerned, is but a part of the complete Human being, and that, in fact, there are many other parts behind the physical body. Man possesses this physical body in common with all the so-called “lifeless” mineral objects that surround him. Over and above this, however, man possesses the etheric or vital body. (The term “etheric” is not here used in the same sense as when applied by physical science.) This etheric or vital body, as it is sometimes called, far from being any figment of the imagination, is as distinctly visible to the developed spiritual senses of the occultist as are externally perceptible colors to the physical eye. This etheric body can actually be seen by the clairvoyant. It is the principle which calls the inorganic materials into life, which, summoning them from their lifeless condition, weaves them into the thread of life's garment. Do not imagine that this body is to the occultist merely something which he adds in thought to what is lifeless. That is what the natural scientists try to do! They try to complete what they see with the microscope by inventing something which they call the life-principle.

Now, such a standpoint is not taken by theosophical research. This has a fixed principle. It does not say: “Here I stand as a seeker, just as I am. All that there is in the world must conform to my present point of view. What I am unable to perceive has no existence!” This sort of argument is about as sensible as if a blind man were to say that colors are simply matters of fancy. The man who knows nothing about a matter is not in the position to judge of it, but rather he into whose range of experience such matters have entered.

Now man is in a state of evolution, and for this reason Anthroposophy says: “If you remain as you are you will not see the etheric body, and may therefore indeed speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge’ and ‘Ignorabimus’; but if you develop and acquire, the necessary faculties for the cognition of spiritual things, you will no longer speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ for these only exist as long as man has not developed his inner senses.” It is for this reason that agnosticism constitutes so heavy a drag upon our civilization; for it says: “Man is thus and thus, and being thus and thus he can know only this and that.” To such a doctrine we reply: “Though he be thus and thus today, he has to become different, and when different he will then know something else.”

So the second part of man is the etheric body, which he possesses in common with the vegetable kingdom.

The third part is the so-called astral body—a significant and beautiful name, the reason for which shall be explained later. Theosophists who are desirous of changing this name can have no idea of what is implied therein. To the astral body is assigned the task, both in man and in the animal, of lifting up the life-substance to the plane of feeling, so that in the life-substance may move not only fluids, but also that in it may be expressed all that is known as pain and pleasure, joy and grief. And here you have at once the essential difference between the plant and the animal; although there are certain states of transition between these two.

A recent school of naturalists is of opinion that feeling, in its literal sense, should also be ascribed to plants; this, however, is but playing with words; for, though it is obvious that certain plants are of so sensitive an organization that they “respond” to particular things that may be brought near to them, yet such a condition cannot be described as “feeling.” In order that “feeling” may exist, an image must be formed within the being as the reflex of that which produces the sensation. If, therefore, certain plants respond to external stimulus, this is no proof that the plant answers to the stimulus by a feeling, that is, that it experiences it inwardly. That which has inward experience has its seat in the astral body. And so we come to see that that which has attained to animal conditions consists of the physical body, the etheric or vital body, and the astral body.

Man, however, towers above the animal through the possession of something quite distinct, and thoughtful people have at all times been aware wherein this superiority consists. It is indicated in what Jean Paul says of himself in his autobiography. He relates that he could remember the day when he stood as a child in the courtyard of his parents' house, and the thought suddenly flashed across his mind that he was an ego, a being, capable of inwardly saying “I” to itself; and he tells us that this made a profound impression upon him.

All the so-called external science of the soul overlooks the most important point which is here involved. I will ask you; therefore, to follow me for a few moments in making a survey of what is a very subtle argument, yet one which will show you how the matter stands. In the whole of human speech there is one small word which differs in toto from all the rest. Each one of you can name the things around you; each one can call a table a table, and a chair a chair. But there is one word, one name, which you cannot apply anything save to that which owns it and this is the little word “I.” None can address another as “I.” This “I” has to sound forth from the innermost soul itself; it is the name which only the soul itself can apply to itself. Every other person is a “you” to me, and I am a “you” to him. All religions have recognized this “I” as the expression of that principle in the soul through which its innermost being, its divine nature, is enabled to speak. Here, then, begins that which can never penetrate through the exterior senses, which can never, in its real significance, be named from without, but which must sound forth from the innermost being. Here begins that monologue, that soliloquy of the soul, whereby the divine self makes known its presence when the path lies clear for the coming of the Spirit into the human soul.

In the religions of earlier civilizations, among the ancient Hebrews, for instance, this name was known as “the unutterable name of God,” and whatever interpretation modern philology may choose to place upon it, the ancient Jewish name of God has no other meaning than that which is expressed in our word “I.” A thrill passed through those assembled when the “Name of the Unknown God” was pronounced by the Initiates, when they dimly perceived what was meant by those words reverberating through the temple: “I am that I am.”

In this word is expressed the fourth principle of human nature, the one that man alone possesses while on earth; and this “I” in its turn encloses and develops within itself the germs of higher stages of humanity.

We can only take a passing glance at what in the future will be evolved through this fourth principle. We must point out that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego, or actual inner self; and that within this inner self are the rudiments of three further stages of development which will originate in the blood. These three are Manas, Buddhi, and Atma:

Manas, the Spirit-Self, as distinguished from the bodily self;

Buddhi, the Life-Spirit;

Atma, the actual and true Spirit-Man, a far-off ideal to the man of today; the rudimentary germ now latent within, but destined in future ages to reach perfection.

We have seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones in the (musical) scale, seven series of atomic weights [in the Periodic Table of the chemical elements], and seven grades in the scale of the human being; and these are again divided into four lower and three higher grades.

We will now attempt to get a clear insight into the way in which this upper spiritual triad secures a physiognomical expression in the lower quaternary, and how it appears to us in the world of the senses. Take, in the first place, that which has crystallized into form as man's physical body; this he possesses in common with the whole of what is called “lifeless” nature. When we talk theosophically of the physical body, we do not even mean that which the eye beholds, but rather that combination of forces which has constructed the physical body, that living Force which exists behind the visible form.

Let us now observe a plant. This is a being possessed of an etheric body, which raises physical substance to life; that is, it converts that substance into living sap. What is it that transforms the so-called lifeless forces into the living sap? We call it the etheric body, and the etheric body does precisely the same work in animals and men; it causes that which has a merely material existence to become a living configuration, a living form.

This etheric body is, in its turn, permeated by an astral body. And what does the astral body do? It causes the substance which has been set in motion to experience inwardly the circulation of those outwardly moving fluids, so that the external movement is reflected in inward experience.

We have now arrived at the point where we are able to comprehend man so far as concerns his place in the animal kingdom. All the substances of which man is composed, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc., are to be found outside in inanimate nature also. If that which the etheric body has transformed into living substance is to have inner experiences, if it is to create inner reflections of that which takes place externally, then the etheric body must be permeated by what we have come to know as the astral body, for it is the astral body that gives rise to sensation. But at this stage the astral body calls forth sensation only in one particular way. The etheric body changes the inorganic substances into vital fluids, and the astral body in its turn transforms this vital substance into sentient substance; but—and this I ask you to specially notice—what is it that a being with no more than these three bodies is capable of feeling? It feels only itself, its own life-processes; it leads a life that is confined within itself.

Now, this is a most interesting fact, and one of extraordinary importance for us to bear in mind. If you look at one of the lower animals, what do you find it has accomplished? It has transformed inanimate substance into living substance, and living substance into sensitive substance: and sensitive substance can only be found where there exist, at all events, the rudiments of what at a later stage appears as a developed nervous system.

Thus we have inanimate substance, living substance, and substance permeated by nerves capable of sensation. If you look at a crystal you have to recognize it primarily as the expression of certain natural laws which prevail in the external world in the so-called lifeless kingdom. No crystal could be formed without the assistance of all surrounding nature. No single link can be severed from the chain of the cosmos and set apart by itself. And just as little can you separate from his environment man, who, if he were lifted to an altitude of even a few miles above the earth, must inevitably die. Just as man is only conceivable here in the place where he is, where the necessary forces are combined in him, so it is too with regard to the crystal; and therefore, whoever views a crystal rightly will see in it a picture of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. What Cuvier said is actually the case, viz., that a competent anatomist will be able to tell to what sort of animal any given bone has belonged, every animal having its own particular kind of bone-formation.

Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cosmic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcosmically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form. The consciousness of such living creatures is, of course, but dim. Yet this very vagueness of consciousness is counterbalanced by its far greater range, for the whole cosmos is felt in the dim consciousness of an elementary being. Now, in man there is only a more complicated structure of the same three bodies found in the simplest sensitive living creature.

Take man—without considering his blood—take him as being made up of the substance of the surrounding physical world, and containing, like the plant, certain juices which transform it into living substance, and in which a nervous system gradually becomes organized. This first nervous system is the so-called sympathetic system, and in the case of man it extends along the entire length of the spine, to which it is attached by small threads on either side. It has also at each side a series of nodes, from which threads branch off to different parts, such as the lungs, the digestive organs, and so on. This sympathetic nervous system gives rise, in the first place, to the life of sensation just described. But man's consciousness does not extend deep enough to enable him to follow the cosmic processes mirrored by these nerves. They are a medium of expression, and just as human life is formed from the surrounding cosmic world, so is this cosmic world reflected again in the sympathetic nervous system. These nerves live a dim inward life, and if man were but able to dip down into his “sympathetic” system, and to lull his higher nervous system to sleep, he would behold, as in a state of luminous life, the silent workings of the mighty cosmic laws.

In past times people were possessed of a clairvoyant faculty which is now superseded, but which may be experienced when, by special processes, the activity of the higher system of nerves is suspended, thus setting free the lower or subliminal consciousness. At such times man lives in that system of nerves which, in its own particular way, is a reflection of the surrounding world.

Certain lower animals indeed still retain this state of consciousness, and, dim and indistinct though it is, yet it is essentially more far-reaching than the consciousness of the man of the present day. A widely extending world is reflected as a dim inward life, not merely a small section such as is perceived by contemporary man. But in the case of man something else has taken place in addition. When evolution has proceeded so far that the sympathetic nervous system has been developed, so that the cosmos has been reflected in it, the evolving being again at this point opens itself outwards; to the sympathetic system is added the spinal cord. The system of brain and spinal cord then leads to those organs through which connection is set up with the outer world.

Man, having progressed thus far, is no longer called upon to act merely as a mirror for reflecting the primordial laws of cosmic evolution, but a relation is set up between the reflection itself and the external world. The junction of the sympathetic system and the higher nervous system is expressive of the change which has taken place beforehand in the astral body. The latter no longer merely lives the cosmic life in a state of dull consciousness, but it adds thereto its own special inward existence. The sympathetic system enables a being to sense what is taking place outside it; the higher system of nerves enables it to perceive that which happens within, and the highest form of the nervous system, such as is possessed by mankind in general at the present stage of evolution, takes from the more highly developed astral body material for the creation of pictures, or representations, of the outer world. Man has lost the power of perceiving the former dim primitive pictures of the external world, but, on the other hand, he is now conscious of his inner life, and out of this inner life he forms, at a higher stage, a new world of images in which, it is true, only a small portion of the outer world is reflected, but in a clearer and more perfect manner than before.

Hand in hand with this transformation another change takes place in higher stages of development. The transformation thus begun extends from the astral body to the etheric body. As the etheric body in the process of its transformation evolves the astral body, as to the sympathetic nervous system is added the system of the brain and spine, so, too, does that which—after receiving the lower circulation of fluids—has grown out of and become free from the etheric body now transmutes these lower fluids into what we know as blood.

Blood is, therefore, an expression of the individualized etheric body, just as the brain and spinal cord are the expression of the individualized astral body. And it is this individualizing which brings about that which lives as the ego or “I.”

Having followed man thus far in his evolution, we find that we have to do with a chain consisting of five links, affecting:—

1. The Physical Body;
2. The Etheric Body and
3. The Astral Body.

These links are:

1. The inorganic, neutral, physical forces;
2. The vital fluids, which are also found in plants;
3. The lower or sympathetic nervous system;
4. The higher astral body, which has been evolved from the lower one, and which finds its expression in the spinal cord and the brain;
5. The Principle that individualizes the etheric body.

Just as these two latter principles have been individualized, so will the first principle through which lifeless matter enters the human body, serving to build it up, also become individualized; but in our present-day humanity we find only the first rudiments of this transformation.

We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these materials into living forms; how, further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world.

Now, when this metamorphosis extends to the etheric body, blood is formed. The blood vessels, together with the heart, are the expression of the transformed etheric body, in the same way in which the spinal cord and the brain express the transformed astral body. Just as by means of the brain the external world is experienced inwardly, so also by means of the blood this inner world is transformed into an outer expression in the body of man. I shall have to speak in similes in order to describe to you the complicated processes which have now to be taken into account.

The blood absorbs those pictures of the outside world which the brain has formed within, transforms them into living constructive forces, and with them builds up the present human body. Blood is therefore the material that builds up the human body. We have before us a process in which the blood extracts from its cosmic environment the highest substance it can possibly obtain, viz., oxygen, which renews the blood and supplies it with fresh life. In this manner our blood is caused to open itself to the outer world.

We have thus followed the path from the exterior world to the interior one, and also back again from that inner world to the outer one. Two things are now possible. (1) We see that blood originates when man confronts the external world as an independent being, when out of the perceptions to which the external world has given rise, (2) he in his turn produces different shapes and pictures on his own account, thus himself becoming creative, and making it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come into life. A being in whom this process had not yet taken place would not be able to say “I.” In the blood lies the principle for the development of the ego. The “I” can only be expressed when a being is able to form within itself the pictures which it has obtained from the outer world. An “I-being” must be capable of taking the external world into itself, and of inwardly reproducing it.

Were man merely endowed with a brain, he would only be able to reproduce pictures of the outer world within himself, and to experience them within himself; he would then only be able to say: “The outer world is reflected in me as in a mirror.” If, however, he is able to build up a new form for this reflection of the external world, this form is no longer merely the external world reflected, it is “I” A creature possessed of a spinal cord and a brain perceives the reflection as its inner life. But when a creature possesses blood, it experiences its inner life as its own form. By means of the blood, assisted by the oxygen of the external world, the individual body is formed according to the pictures of the inner life. This formation is expressed as the perception of the “I.”

The ego turns in two directions, and the blood expresses this fact externally. The vision of the ego is directed inwards; its will is turned outwards. The forces of the blood are directed inwards; they build up the inner man, and again they are turned outwards to the oxygen of the external world. This is why, on going to sleep, man sinks into unconsciousness; he sinks into that which his consciousness can experience in the blood. When, however, he again opens his eyes to the outer world, his blood adds to its constructive forces the pictures produced by the brain and the senses. Thus the blood stands midway, as it were, between the inner world of pictures and the exterior living world of form. This role becomes clear to us when we study two phenomena, viz., ancestry—the relationship between conscious beings—and experience in the world of external events. Ancestry, or descent, places us where we stand in accordance with the law of blood relationship. A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what these ancestors have bequeathed to him is in his blood. In the blood is gathered together, as it were, all that the material past has constructed in man; and in the blood is also being formed all that is being prepared for the future.

When, therefore, man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant, he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dreamily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep. At such times the activity of his brain is in abeyance and during states of the deepest somnambulism this applies also to the spinal cord. The man experiences the activities of his sympathetic nervous system; that is to say, in a dim and hazy fashion he senses the life of the entire cosmos. At such times the blood no longer expresses pictures of the inner life which are produced by means of the brain, but it presents those which the outer world has formed in it. Now, however, we must bear in mind that the forces of his ancestors have helped to make him what he is. Just as he inherits the shape of his nose from an ancestor, so does he inherit the form of his whole body. At such times of suppressed consciousness he senses the pictures of the outer world; that is to say, his forebears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their remote life.

Everything in the world is in a state of evolution, human consciousness included. Man has not always had the consciousness he now possesses; when we go back to the times of our earliest ancestors, we find a consciousness of a very different kind. At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external world work in his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipient as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood; his memory is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of today is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his inner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise. There then lived within the blood not only what the senses had received from the external world, but also that which is contained within the bodily form; and as that bodily form was inherited from his ancestors, man sensed their life within himself.

If we think of a heightened form of this consciousness, we shall have some idea of how this was also expressed in a corresponding form of memory. A person experiencing no more than what he perceives by his senses, remembers no more than the events connected with those outward sense-experiences. He can only be aware of such things as he may have experienced in this way since his childhood. But with prehistoric man the case was different. Such a man sensed what was within him, and as this inner experience was the result of heredity, he passed through the experiences of his ancestors by means of his inner faculty. He remembered not only his own childhood, but also the experiences of his ancestors. This life of his ancestors was, in fact, ever present in the pictures which his blood received, for, incredible as it may seem to the materialistic ideas of the present day, there was at one time a form of consciousness by means of which men considered not only their own sense-perceptions as their own experiences, but also the experiences of their forefathers. In those times, when they said, “I have experienced such and such a thing,” they alluded not only to what had happened to themselves personally, but also to the experiences of their ancestors, for they could remember these.

This earlier consciousness was, it is true, of a very dim kind, very hazy as compared to man's waking consciousness at the present day. It partook more of the nature of a vivid dream, but, on the other hand, it embraced far more than does our present consciousness. The son felt himself connected with his father and his grandfather as one “I,” because he felt their experiences as if they were his own. And because man was possessed of this consciousness, because he lived not only in his own personal world, but because within him there dwelt also the consciousness of preceding generations, in naming himself he included in that name all belonging to his ancestral line. Father, son, grandson, etc., designated by one name that which was common to them all, that which passed through them all; in short, a person felt himself to be merely a member of an entire line of descendants. This sensation was a true and actual one.

We must now inquire how it was that his form of consciousness was changed. It came about through a cause well known to occult history. If you go back into the past, you will find that there is one particular moment which stands out in the history of each nation. It is the moment at which a people enters on a new phase of civilization, the moment when it ceases to have old traditions, when it ceases to possess its ancient wisdom, the wisdom which was handed down through generations by means of the blood. The nation possesses, nevertheless, a consciousness of it, and this is expressed in its legends.

In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising, as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed, the initial steps along this line have already been taken.

But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which [was] obtained in times of old.

At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and the man began to live his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.

The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: “That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee.” This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: “Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself.” For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.

When two groups of people come into contact, as is in the case of colonization, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or not an alien form of civilization can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.

It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.

Modern science has discovered that if the blood of one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the blood of the one is fatal to that of the other. This has been known to occultism for ages. If you mingle the blood of human beings with that of the lower apes, the result is destructive to the species, since the one is too far removed from the other. If, again, you mingle the blood of man with that of the higher apes, death does not ensue. Just as this mingling of the blood of different species of animals brings about actual death when the types are too remote, so, too, the ancient clairvoyance of undeveloped man was killed when his blood was mixed with the blood of others who did not belong to the same stock. The entire intellectual life of today is the outcome of the mingling of blood, and the time is not far distant when people will study the influence this had upon human life, and they will be able to trace it back in the history of humanity when investigations are once more conducted from this standpoint.

We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.

Man is so constituted that when blood mingles with blood not too far removed in evolution, the intellect is born. By this means the original clairvoyance which belonged to the lower animal-man was destroyed, and a new form of consciousness took its place.

Thus in the higher stage of human development we find something similar to what happens at a lower stage in the animal kingdom. In the latter, strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills that which is intimately bound up with kindred blood, viz., the dim, dreary clairvoyance. Our everyday objective consciousness is therefore the outcome of a destructive process. In the course of evolution the kind of mental life due to endogamy has been destroyed, but in its stead exogamy has given birth to the intellect, to the wide-awake consciousness of the present day.

That which is able to live in man's blood is that which lives in his ego. Just as the physical body is the expression of the physical principle, as the etheric body is the expression of the vital fluids and their systems, and the astral body of the nervous system, so is the blood the expression of the “I,” or ego. Physical principle, etheric body, and astral body are the “Above”; physical body, vital system, and nervous system are the “below.” Similarly, the ego is the “above,” and the blood is the “below.” Whoever, therefore, would master a man, must first master that man's blood. This must be borne in mind if any advance is to be made in practical life. For example, the individuality of a people may be destroyed if, when colonizing, you demand from its blood more than it can bear, for in the blood the ego is expressed. Beauty and truth possess a man only when they possess his blood.

Mephistopheles obtains possession of Faust's blood because he desires to rule his ego. Hence we may say that the sentence which has formed the theme of the present lecture was drawn from the profound depths of knowledge; for truly—

“Blood is a Very Special Fluid.”

It would be a grave error if one were to believe that the question as to the meaning of life and existence could be put in such a simple way that one could ask: “What is the meaning of life and existence?” and then someone could give a simple answer in a few words, saying perhaps: “This or that is the meaning of life.” In this way no real feeling, no idea could ever be gained of the sublimity, majesty, and power which lie behind this question as to the meaning of life. It is true that an abstract answer might be given, but you will realise by what I say later on how little satisfactory such an answer would be. It might be said that the meaning of life consists in the fact that spiritual beings to whom we look up as Divine Beings gradually bring man to the stage where he is permitted to co-operate in the evolution of existence, so that man who was imperfect in the beginning of his development and was incapable of taking part in the whole construction of the universe, might in the course of evolution gradually be trained to participate more and more in this evolution.

That would be an abstract answer, telling us very little. Rather must we penetrate into certain secrets of existence and life, if we would grasp something like an answer to a question of such far-reaching importance. So we may take as a basis the facts considered yesterday: penetrating yet a little more deeply into the mysteries of existence. When we observe the world around us, it is not really enough that we see growth and decay. Yesterday we drew attention to the fact that this growth and decay affect our souls mysteriously when we ask ourselves what is the meaning of it all. But there is something that is a still more difficult problem. We see already in the origin and growth of things something that is highly remarkable, which if only observed superficially gives us a feeling of sadness and of tragedy. If, with the knowledge gained from the physical world, we look into the depths of the ocean or into the vast fields of any other form of existence, we know that countless germs of life arise and that but few of these become fully developed beings. Only think how many germs of different fish are produced yearly in the sea which do not reach their goal of development, but disappear again before reaching it, and how only a small number of these germs attain maturity.

Yesterday we turned our attention to the fact that everything which comes into existence perishes again. But now the other fact forces itself on our attention, that out of a limitless domain of immeasurable possibilities but few realities emerge, and that already in the origin of things there is something enigmatical, in the fact that what strives to come into existence cannot really develop.

Let us take a concrete case. If we sow a field with corn, we see springing up a great number of ears of corn. We know quite well that out of every single grain in these ears of corn a new ear of corn can come into existence.

And now we ask: “How many of all those grains of corn we see on the corn-field reach this goal?” Let us think for a moment of the numberless grains which go quite a different way from that which is their object, namely to become ears of corn in their turn. In concrete form we can therefore assert that the life surrounding us only comes into existence as such, through the fact that, in its birth, it seems to push down numberless life-germs as if into an abyss of non-fulfilment. Everywhere in our surroundings, what exists is built on a groundwork of infinitely rich possibilities which may become realities in the ordinary sense of the word. Let us keep in mind that on such a foundation of possibilities realities do arise, and let us regard this as one view of the mysterious life-existence that is presented to us.

Now we shall look at the other side of the picture which also exists, but of which we are only aware when we enter deeply into spiritual truths. The other side is that which presents itself to man when he follows the path to Anthroposophy. This path is sometimes described, as you know, as dangerous. And why? Simply for the reason that if we wish to follow the path to spiritual knowledge we enter a realm which may on no account be accepted off-hand in the form in which it presents itself to us.

Let us suppose that a man were following the spiritual path by methods known to you, and which are to be found in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and that such a person reached the point when what we call imaginative pictures arose out of the depths of his soul. We know what imaginative pictures are. They are visionary images, confronting a man when he is following the spiritual path as an entirely new world. If a man is really seriously following this path, he comes to the stage at which the whole of the physical world around him grows dim. In the place of this physical world there appears a world of moving images, a world of surging impressions of the nature of sounds, smell, taste and light. This presses on and whirls within our spiritual horizon and we experience what may be called imaginative visions which then surround us on all sides and constitute the world in which our souls live and move.

Now let us suppose that a man were convinced that in the visionary world which appeared before him, he had something entirely real; such a man would be subject to a very grave mistake. And here we are at the point where danger begins. The realm of visionary life is immeasurable as long as we do not ascend from Imagination, which conjures up a visionary world, to Inspiration. It is the latter which first tells us to direct our attention to one particular picture, to turn our spiritual gaze to it, and that then we shall experience truth; and the countless other pictures that surround this one must vanish into lifeless space. This one picture will arise from countless others and will prove itself to be an expression of the truth.

Thus, when we find ourselves on the spiritual path, we enter a realm where countless visions are possible and we must develop, so that we can select, as it were, out of this realm of infinite possibilities of vision, those which express a true spiritual reality. No other guarantee is possible than the one just mentioned, for if anyone were to come and say: “I enter a realm infinitely rich in visions, tell me which are true and which are false, can you not give a rule whereby I can distinguish the one from the other?”—no genuine occultist or spiritual investigator would answer these questions with a rule, but he would have to say: “If you wish to learn to discriminate, you must go on developing yourself. Then it will happen that it will be possible for you to direct your vision to that which remains. The visions which endure are those that have reached a certain level; but those which must be wiped out by you are merely images of mist.”

Now danger lies in the fact that many people feel themselves extremely pleased and comfortable in the realm of visions. When once surrounded by a visionary world they do not trouble to develop themselves further, or go on striving, because this visionary world pleases them extremely well. But it is impossible to attain reality in the spiritual life when we simply surrender ourselves to this feeling of bliss, to revelling, as it were, in the visionary world. We cannot then ascend to reality of truth. It is necessary to go on striving with all the means at our disposal; for only then does spiritual reality really emerge out of the limitless possibility of visions. Now compare the two things which I have described. On the one hand, the world without, where we find numberless possibilities for life-germs, whereof only a few can attain their goal; on the other hand the inner world to which the path of knowledge leads us: an infinite world of visions which is to be compared with the world of infinite possibilities for the life germs. A few of these are such visions to which we at last attain, and which may be compared to the few real lives which emerge from among the numerous life-germs. These two things correspond completely; they belong entirely to each other in the world.

Now let us carry this thought a little further: “Is that man right who is faint-hearted and sad about life and existence because in this life numberless germs can only, so to speak, half emerge and but few reach their goal?” Is it possible for us to be sad about these facts? Is it possible to say: “All around there is a wild struggle for existence from which only a few accidentally escape?” Let us consider our concrete example of the cornfield. Let us suppose that all the grains of corn which grow there were really to reach their goal and become ears of corn. What would be the result? The world would then be impossible, for the things which are nourished on the grains of corn would have no food. In order that certain things or beings well known to us may reach their present stage of development, other things or beings have to fall short of their goal, have to sink down into the abyss as far as their own destiny is concerned. But notwithstanding that, we have no reason for sadness, for if we concern ourselves with the world, if we concern ourselves with its existence, the world consists only of beings and those beings must be able to find nourishment. If they are to be nourished, then other beings must sacrifice themselves. Therefore, only few life-germs can really reach their goal. The others must go another way. They have to go a different way because the world has to exist, because it is really the only way in which the world can be wisely ordered. We are thus surrounded by a world which is such as it is because certain beings sacrifice themselves before they have reached their goal. If we follow the way of those which are sacrificed, we find them within other beings which are more highly organised; beings who have need of this sacrifice in order that they may exist. Here, in a nutshell, as it were, we can grasp the meaning of existence, which is so seemingly difficult to understand in the coming forth of beings into existence and their annihilation. Yet we have discovered that it is precisely in this that wisdom and meaning in existence are revealed, and that it is only our reflection that does not go far enough, when we lament that so many things must apparently disappear without reaching their goal.

Now let us turn to the other, the spiritual side. Let us take what we have called the limitless world of visions. Here we must in the first place understand what this boundless world of vision really means. It is not simply false in such a sense that we can say: that which disappears is false, that which finally remains is true. Not in this sense is this world false. That would be as short-sighted a judgment as if we were to believe that the life-germs which do not come to fruition are not really life-germs at all. Just as in external life the fact confronts us that only a few beings reach their goal, so it is only possible for a few things out of the limitless spiritual life to enter our horizon. And why?

This question as to the “why” will be extremely instructive for us. Let us suppose that a man would simply surrender himself to the visions floating in on him in immeasurable variety. If once this visionary world is opened, the visions pour in incessantly, one after another, they come and go and surge and flow into one another. It is quite impossible to shut ourselves off from the pictures and impressions which pulsate around us in the spiritual world. But on closer observation we find something very peculiar in a person who thus simply surrenders himself to this visionary world. In the first place we find when we encounter a person who does not want to develop any further, but just wishes to remain at the visionary stage, that he has experienced something, that he has had this or that experience.

Good, we say, you have experienced things that are realities to you. Excellent, that is a manifestation from the spiritual world. But very soon we shall notice that when another person comes and tells us what visions he had in connection with the same thing, and this second one is no further advanced than the first, that his visions about the same thing have quite a different form, so that two different statements may be presented on the same subject. Indeed, we may even make worse discoveries. We find that such men who wish to remain at the mere visionary world even give different statements about one and the same matter; that sometimes they tell us one thing and sometimes another. Only it is unfortunate that visionaries generally have bad memories and have forgotten what they related the first time. They are not themselves aware of what they have related. In short, we have to do with a numberless variety of phenomena. If, as human beings with our present ego we would rightly judge of everything which presents itself in the visionary world, we should have to compare an infinite number of visions. But that would lead to no result. It must be taken as a principle that this visionary world is in the first pace a manifestation of the spirit, but that it has not the slightest value as information. However many visions may come to us, they are manifestations of the spiritual world, but they are not realities. If they are to become truths, the different visions of many persons would have to be compared and that is impossible. Instead of that there is the possibility of further development to the stage of Inspiration, we find that all their statements are alike. Then there are no more differences nothing which appears differently to different persons. Then the experiences are actually the same in the case of all who have reached the same stage of development.

Now we pass to the other question, which also in a certain way corresponds to what we find in the outer world. There the few life-germs which reach their goal can be compared to the many which sink down into the abyss. We know that this loss is necessary in order that the outer world may exist. But how is it in the spiritual world, with these visions and inspirations? Here we must first of all understand that what we have before us, when we have selected the visions, stands before us as a spiritual reality, that in them we have not mere images which only give us knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word. That is not the case, and the fact that it is not so I shall make clear to you by a very important example. I shall explain how the selected visions stand in relation to the world just as we previously made it clear to ourselves how the life-germs which have reached their goal stand related to life-germs in general. These are used as nourishment by the others. How is it now with the selected visions, with those which really live in man as visions?

Here I must draw attention to one thing. You must not believe that the person who has become clairvoyant has reached a point at which the world of the spirit lives in him and does not live in others. You must not think of clairvoyance in such a way that you say: “Here is a clairvoyant and here is another person; in the soul of that clairvoyant lives the expression of the spiritual reality, but not in the soul of the other.” That would not be right. Rather must you say, if you would express it correctly: “Here we have two men, the one is clairvoyant, the other not. That which the clairvoyant sees lives in both. In the non-clairvoyant as well as in the clairvoyant the same things, the same spiritual impulses live; these things are also present in the soul of the non-clairvoyant.” The clairvoyant only differs from the non-clairvoyant in the fact that he sees them, whereas the other does not. The one bears them within him and sees them, the other bears them within him and does not see them. Whoever believes that the clairvoyant has something within him which the other has not would be making a great mistake. Just as the existence of a rose does not depend on whether man sees it or not, so it is with the clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant and in the soul of the non-clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant, although the latter does not see it; the distinction consists in the fact that the one sees it and the other does not. Thus the fact is that there live in the souls of all men on earth all the things which the clairvoyant can perceive by means of his clairvoyance. Let us impress this on our minds before going on. We shall now pass on to an apparently different realm of observation which will later bring us back again to what has been said. We shall turn our attention to the animal world. The animal world surrounds us in manifold forms, in forms of lions, bears, wolves, lambs, sharks, whales, etc. Man distinguishes between these animal-forms by forming ideas of them, by forming the idea of the lion, the wolf, the lamb, etc. But now we must not confuse that which man forms as an idea with what the lion or the wolf is in reality. In Anthroposophy we speak of so-called group-souls. All lions have a common lion group-soul, all wolves a wolf group-soul. It is true that certain abstruse philosophers say, that that which the animals have in common only exists in ideas, that “wolf-hood” does not exist externally in the world. That is not true. Whoever believes that the “wolf-hood” as such, that is, that which exists objectively in the spiritual world as the group-soul, does not exist apart from our ideas, has but to consider the following. In the outer world there are beings which we call wolves. Let us now assume that the soul nature and characteristics of the wolf result from the kind of substance which forms the body of the wolf. We know that the substance of an animal’s body changes continually. An animal assimilates new substance and eliminates the old. In this way the consistency of the substance changes continually. But what matters is the fact that something is present in the wolf which changes the substance it assimilates into wolf-substance. Let us suppose that with all the means and methods of science we had found how long the wolf needs to renew his substance. Let us suppose further that we shut up a wolf for that time and feed it on nothing but lambs, so that for the time necessary to renew the substance of its physical body, it was fed on nothing but lamb-substance. If the wolf were nothing more than the physical substance from which its body is built, then it ought to have become a lamb by that time. But you will not believe that the wolf by eating lamb for ever so long becomes a lamb. So you will see that the ideas we form of the different animals correspond to realities which are superphysical in regard to that which is in the outer sense world.

It is the same with all animals. The group-soul, that which lies behind the whole animal species, causes one animal to be a wolf, another a lamb, one a lion, and another a tiger. We must however form clear ideas regarding the group-souls. The ideas which we generally form of the animal world are very incomplete. That they are incomplete is due to the fact that man in his present condition penetrates but very little into realities, that he really only clings to the surface of things. Were he to penetrate more deeply, then on forming the idea of a wolf, he would have not only the abstract idea in his mind, but he would have the state of feeling which corresponds to this idea. With the idea, a state of feeling would be evoked, and while forming the idea of the wolf man would experience that which constitutes wolf-nature; he would feel the ferocity of the wolf, the patience of the lamb.

That this is not the case to-day is due to the fact that man, after having come under the Luciferic influence, was prevented by the gods from having the “life” as well as the “knowledge.” He was not to eat of the “Tree of Life.” Therefore he has only the knowledge and cannot experience the reality of the life. This he can only do when, in an occult or spiritual way, he penetrates into this realm. Then he not only has the abstract idea, but lives in that which we describe with the expressions “the ferocity of the wolf” and “the patience of the lamb.” Now you will understand how great is the difference between these two things; how all these things are surging within us because our ideas are permeated by the most inward life of the substance of the soul. But these ideas the occultist and the clairvoyant must form for himself; he must rise to these ideas. When the clairvoyant has ascended thus far it may he said that something of the soul-substance is already living in him. Indeed a living reflection of the whole animal world that is without does live within him. One might say here: “How fortunate it is for those who have not become clairvoyants.” But I have already pointed out that in this connection the clairvoyant does not differ from other men. What is in the one is also in the other. The difference is that the one sees it and the other does not. The whole world of which I have spoken is really within the soul of every man, only the ordinary man does not see it. This whole world surges up out of the hidden depths of the soul, makes man restless, throws him into doubt, draws him hither and thither, and makes him unbalanced in his desires and instincts. That which does not rise beyond a certain threshold and which only faintly finds expression, is none the less present. The person whose mental disposition makes him sensitive to these influences is so connected with the world that these feelings possess him, enter into his life struggles and bring him into serious relations with men and other beings. This is a fact—and why?

If this were not so, then the development of our earth along with the animal kingdom would in a certain respect come to an end. The animal kingdom, as it is, would then have been a kind of final stage, it could not have progressed. All the group-souls of the animals which live around us would not be able to carry their development over into subsequent incarnations of our earth. That would be a remarkable thing. These group-souls of the animals would be in the position (pardon the comparison, but it will make it clear to you what is meant) of a community of Amazons where never a man was allowed, which would of necessity die out as a community of human beings. It is true that it would not die out spiritually, for its soul would pass over into other realms, but as a community of Amazons, this would be its fate. In the same way the community of the animal group-souls would have to die out if nothing else were there. For that which lives in the animal group-souls must be fertilised, and it cannot otherwise bridge the gulf in earthly evolution, which leads to the Jupiter incarnation, if not fertilised as I have described. The outer forms of the animals of the earth die out, but the group-souls are fertilised and appear on Jupiter ready for a higher state of being and thus they attain their next stage of development.

What is it that takes place through man’s furthering down here the development of the living form of the group-souls? He provides thereby the fertilising seed for souls which otherwise could not develop further. If we keep this in mind, then we can say: Hence we see that where man looks on the animal kingdom outwardly, he evolves from within certain inner impulses which have to be stimulated from without; these are fertilising seed for the animal group-souls. These impulses, which are the fertilising seed for the animal group-souls, arise through stimulus from without. But not from outward stimulus do the visions of the clairvoyant arise, nor those visions either which are selected as real. These exist only in the spiritual world, and live within the souls of men.

But you must not believe that nothing takes place in the spiritual world when out of a multitude of grains of corn certain of them are consumed, while but few develop again into heads of corn. While the grains are consumed, the spiritual part connected with the grain passes over into man. This is most evident to clairvoyant vision when directed towards a sea in which there are many fish-germs, and it is seen how few develop into full-grown fish. In those which develop into full-grown fish small flames may be observed, but those which do not develop physically, which disappear into the abyss physically, develop huge flaming light-forms. In these the spiritual element is so much the more considerable. So it is also with the grains of corn which are eaten. The material part of them is eaten. When crushed, a spiritual force which fills the space around, issues from those grains of corn which have not reached their goal. It is just the same for the clairvoyant, when he looks at a man who is eating rice, or something similar. When he assimilates the material, the spiritual forces connected with the corn flow forth in streams. All this is not such a simple matter for spiritual observation, especially when the nourishment is not of a vegetable kind. But I will not enter into this to-day, because Anthroposophy must not agitate for any party movement, and therefore not even for vegetarianism!

Thus it is that spiritual beings are linked together. Everything that apparently perishes, gives up its spiritual part to the environment. This actually unites with what lives within man when he becomes clairvoyant, or is by any other means in his visionary world; and the selected visions (after Inspiration) are what fertilise the spiritual part that has been forced out of those life-seeds that do not reach their goal; the visions fertilise it and bring it to further evolution.

So our inner nature, through that which it inwardly evolves, is in continual relationship with the outer world, and works in connection with this outer world. This outer world would be condemned to perish, could not develop further, if we did not bring to meet it fertilising germs. Outside in the world spirituality exists, but only a half spirituality, as it were. In order that this spirituality outside may have offspring, the other spirituality that is within us must approach it. That which lives within us is by no means a mere reflection of the other, perceived mentally, but something that appertains to it. It unites with that which is outside us, and evolves further, just as the north and south poles have to come together as magnetism or electricity in order that something may be achieved. That which takes form in our inner world of visions must unite with that which flashes forth from those things which apparently perish. These are wonderful mysteries, which are however, gradually solved, and which show us how the inner is connected with the outer.

Now let us glance at what surrounds us in the outer world and at what we possess as selected visions, singled out from the measureless possibility of visions. That which we exalt as a vision that is worthy serves for our inner development. That which sinks down when we overlook all the immeasurable field of visionary life, that which disappears, does not sink away into nothingness; it merges with the outer world and fertilises it. What we have selected from the visions serves to our further development. The other visions leave us, and unite with what is around us, with the life which has not reached its goal. Just as living beings must assimilate that which has not attained to life, so we must absorb that which we do not hand over to the outer world in order to fertilise it. This has also its aim. All that is continually coming to birth spiritually in the world must perish, if we do not let our visions go, and do not select those only which are revealed in accordance with Inspiration. Now we come to the second point, to the danger of the visionary life. What does the person do who simply takes the innumerable and varied visions for truth, who does not select what is right for him, and extinguish by far the greater number of the visions! What does such a person do? He does spiritually the same as a man would do (when we interpret it physically you will at once see what he does) who, confronting a cornfield would not use the greater part of the corn for nourishment but who would utilise all the grains as seed. It would not be long before there was no room on the earth for all the corn. Such a thing could not go on, for all other creatures would die out, there would be no nourishment left for them. It is the same with the man who looks on everything as truth, who does not destroy a single vision and retains everything within him. He does the same as if he were to gather all the grains of corn and sow them again. Just as the world would soon be covered with nothing but cornfields and grains of corn, so the man who did not select his visions would be overwhelmed by them.

I have described what is around us, physically as well as spiritually, the animals and also the ideas which man forms of them. I have also shown how man has to assign an aim to his visions, and how this visionary world must be united with the outer world, in order that evolution may proceed. But how is it now when we turn our attention to man? He meets an animal, considers its group-soul, and says: “wolf,” that is, he has formed the idea “wolf,” and while saying “wolf” the picture has arisen in him of which the non-clairvoyant, to be sure, has not the “feeling-substance,” but only the abstract idea. That which lives in the “feeling-substance” unites with the group-soul and fertilises it at the moment the man pronounces the word “wolf.” If he were not to pronounce the name, the animal kingdom as such would die out. And the same holds good for the vegetable kingdom.

What I have described with regard to man, holds good for him alone; not for the animals, nor for the angels; these have quite other missions. Man alone exists in order that with his own being he can confront the world around him, so that life-giving germs may arise that find expression in “names.” It is thus that the possibility of further development is implanted in the inner nature of man. Let us now go back to the starting point we chose yesterday. Jahve or Jehovah was asked by the ministering angels for what purpose he wished to create man. The angels could not understand why. Then Jehovah gathered the plants and the animals and asked the angels what were the names of these beings. They did not know. They have tasks other than fertilisation of the group-souls. Man, however, was able to tell the names. In this way Jahve shows that He has need of man, because otherwise creation would die out.

In man those things evolve which have come to an end, and which have to be stimulated anew in order that evolution may go forward. Man had therefore to be created, so that the life-giving germ might be born which finds expression in “names.”

Thus we see that we are not placed in creation without a purpose. Think man away, and the transitional kingdoms would not be able to develop further. They would meet the fate which would befall a plant world that is not fertilised. Only through the fact that man is placed into Earth existence, is the bridge built between the world which was and the world which is to be, and man takes for his own path of development that which exists as “name” in the vast sum of created beings; thus does he bring about his own ascent together with that of the rest of evolution.

Here, but in no simple abstract way, we have answered the question, “What is the meaning of life?” although, after all, the abstract answer is contained therein. Man has become a co-worker with spiritual beings. He has become so through his whole nature. What he is has come about through his whole nature. He must exist, and without him there could be no creation. Knowing himself to be a part of creation, man thus feels that he is a participator in Divine spiritual activity.

Now he knows also why his inner life is such as it is, why outside is the world of stars, the clouds, the kingdoms of nature, with all that spiritually belongs thereto, and within there is a world of the soul. He now sees that these two worlds belong to one another, and that only through their mutually reacting on each other does evolution proceed. Outside in space, the infinite world is unfolding to our view. Within is our soul-world. We do not notice that that which lives within us shoots forth and blends with that which is outside, we are not aware that we are the stage on which this union is carried out. What is within us forms as it were the one pole, what is outside in the universe—the other; these two must unite in order that the evolution of the world may proceed. Our meaning, the meaning of man, consists in this—that we take part in it. The ordinary knowledge of the normal consciousness knows little of these things. But the more we progress in the knowledge of such things, the more we become conscious that in us lies the point where the North and the South Poles of the world (if I may make the comparison) exchange their opposite forces, and unite, so that evolution may advance. Through the teaching of the spiritual world we learn that in us is the stage where the adjustment of forces takes place. We feel how within us, as in a focal point, the Divine world of spirit dwells, how it unites with the world outside, and how these two mutually fructify one another.

When we feel ourselves to be the scene where all this takes place, and know that we take part in it, we find our right place in life, grasp the whole meaning of life and realise that that, which at first is unconscious in us, will become more and more conscious through our progress in Anthroposophy. All magic is based on this. While it is not given to the normal consciousness to know that something within us unites with something outside, it is given to the magic consciousness to see it all. That which belongs to the outer world develops of its own free will. Hence it is necessary that a certain state of maturity be reached and that what is within should not be indiscriminately mixed up with what is without. For as soon as we ascend to a higher stage of consciousness, what lives in us is reality; it is appearance only as long as we live in the ordinary normal consciousness. We shall participate in Divine spiritual activity. But why shall we thus participate? Is there then, after all, sense in the whole thing if we are only an apparatus for balancing opposing forces? A very simple consideration shows us how the matter stands. Suppose that here is a certain quantity of force: one part within, the other without. That they confront each other is not owing to us. At first we keep them apart. Their coming together depends on us. We bring them together within ourselves. This is a thought that stirs the very deepest mysteries within us if we consider it rightly. The gods present the world to us as a duality: without is the objective world, within us the life of the soul. We are present and are those who close the current, as it were, and thus bring the two poles together. All this takes place within us, on the stage of our consciousness.

Here enters freedom for us. With this we become independent beings. We have to regard the whole universe not merely as a stage, but as a field for co-operation. It is true that this induces a thought which the world does not easily understand, not even if it be presented philosophically, for that is what I tried to do years ago in my booklet Truth and Science, in which it is stated that first the sense-activity appears and then the inner world, but that union and co-operation between them are necessary. There the thought is developed philosophically. I did not at that time try to show the spiritual mysteries behind, but the world did not at that time understand even the philosophy of it.

Now we see in what way we have to think of the meaning of our life. Meaning enters into it. We become co-actors in the world process. That which is in the world is divided into two opposing camps and we are placed in the midst in order to bring them together. It is by no means the case that we have to imagine this as a work within narrow limits. I know a humorous gentleman in Germany who writes much for German periodicals. Lately he wrote in a newspaper that it was necessary for the evolution of the world that man should ever remain at the point of not being able to solve the ordinary problems of existence and that it would not be right if he should be able intellectually to grasp and solve them. For if man should have solved the intellectual problems there would be nothing left for him to do. Thus there must always be a doubt about these intellectual problems and imperfect things must always occur. But this man has no idea that when the normal consciousness has come to an end, consciousness itself progresses and a new polarity appears which represents a new task, the poles of which have to be again united. How long will they take to be united? Till man has actually reached the point at which the Divine consciousness has been recapitulated in his own consciousness.

Now, after we have gained an idea of the immeasurable greatness of the problems, we can proceed to the abstract answer, for we know that in us fertilising germs are springing up for a spiritual world, which without us would not be able to develop further. Now we shall see also how it is with regard to the meaning of life, for now we are working on a broad basis. Now we can say: “Once, at the beginning of evolution, there was the Divine consciousness.” It was there in its infinity. Therewith we stand at the beginning of existence. This Divine consciousness first forms copies of itself. In what way do the copies differ from the Divine consciousness? In that they are many, whilst the Divine consciousness is one. Further, in that they are empty, whilst the Divine consciousness is full of content, so that in the first place the copies exist as a multiplicity, and further they are empty, just as our empty Ego was confronted by a Divine Ego that contained a whole world. But this empty Ego becomes the stage where the Divine contents which are divided into two opposing camps continually unite, and because the empty consciousness is continually bringing about adjustment it becomes more and more filled with what was originally in the Divine consciousness. Thus evolution proceeds in such a way that the individual consciousness becomes filled with what in the beginning was contained in the Divine consciousness. This is brought about through the perpetual adjustment of individuals.

Has the Divine consciousness need of this for its own development? So ask many who do not quite understand the meaning of life. Does the Divine consciousness need this for its own perfection, for its own development? No, the Divine consciousness does not need it. It has everything within itself. But the Divine consciousness is not egoistic. It wishes that an infinite number of beings may have the same content as itself. But these beings must first fulfil the law, so that they may have the Divine consciousness within them and that thereby the Divine consciousness may be multiplied, That which existed at the beginning of world-evolution as unity then appears in multiplicity, but in course of time it falls away again on the path of complete permeation with Divinity.

Evolution as it has now been described was really always so as regards humanity; it was so during the Saturn period; it was similar during the Sun and Moon periods. We have explained it clearly to-day as regards the earthly period. On Saturn this activity created the first rudiments of the physical body and at the same time fructified in an outward direction; on the Sun it created the first beginnings of the etheric body and so on. The process is the same, only it becomes more and more spiritual. There remained outside ever less and less which still needed fructification. As humanity evolves further, ever more and more will enter into life and ever less will remain outside that has still to be fructified. Therefore, in the end, man will have more and more within him of what had been outside. The outer world will have become his inner world. Making things “inward” is the other side of forward development.

To unite Divinity with what is external, to make inward what is external—these are the two directions in which man makes progress in evolution. He will resemble Divinity more and more and will at last become more and more inwardly enriched. In the Vulcan stage of evolution everything will have been fructified. Everything external will have become internal. To become inwardly enriched—is to become Divine. That is the aim and the meaning of life.

But we only get at the truth of the matter when we think of it in such a way that we do not merely set up abstract ideas, but really enter into details. Man must go deeply into the matter and so enter into details, that when he pronounces the name of plants or animals, something rises within him that unites the content of the word with that which lies at the basis of the plant or animal germ, and then lives on in the spiritual world. Our view of life needs improvement in the course of its evolution; for what has Darwinism performed in this direction? It speaks of the struggle for existence, but it does not take into account that that, which, from its point of view, is defeated and destroyed, is also undergoing further development. The Darwinist sees only the beings which reach their goal and the others which perish. The spirit, however, flashes out of those which perish so that it is not only that which conquers in the physical struggle which is developing. That which apparently perishes goes through a spiritual development. That is the important point.

In this way we penetrate into the meaning of life; nothing, not even that which is defeated, or that which is eaten, is destroyed, it is being spiritually fertilised and springs up again spiritually. Much has disappeared in the whole course of the evolution of this earth and of humanity without man having anything directly to do with it. Let us take the whole of pre-Christian development. We know what this pre-Christian development was like. In the beginning man came forth from the spiritual world and gradually descended into the physical sense-world. That which he possessed in the beginning, that which lived in him, has vanished, just as have the life germs which have not reached their goal. Throughout human evolution we see countless things sink down as into an abyss. Whilst innumerable things are perishing in the outer development of human civilisation and of human life, the Christ-Impulse is developing above. Just as man develops life-giving germs for the world that is around him, so does the Christ-Impulse give what is necessary for the development of that which apparently perishes in man. Then the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. This is the fructification from above of what has apparently perished. Here actually a change takes place in that which apparently had fallen away from the Divine and sunk into the abyss. The Christ-Impulse enters and fertilises it. And from the Mystery of Golgotha onwards, we see in the course of the further development of the earth a renewed blossoming and a continuation through the fructification received with the Christ-Impulse.

Thus what we have learned about polarity is also proved true in this greatest event of the earthly evolution. In our epoch the seeds of civilisation sown in the old Egyptian civilisation are coming to life. They are there in the earth evolution. The Christ-Impulse has come and has fertilised them and as a result of this fertilisation we have a repetition in our own epoch of the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation. In the civilisation which will follow our own, the old Persian civilisation will re-appear fructified by the seed of the Christ-Impulse. In the seventh age the old Indian civilisation, that lofty spiritual civilisation which came from the holy Rishis, will reappear in a new form, fructified by the Christ-Impulse.

We see in this continuous development, that what we have learned with regard to man may also become a reciprocity; an inner and an outer, a spiritual and a physical, mutually fertilising each other. Fertilisation with the Christ-Impulse is active above and below. Below the progressing earthly civilisation; from above, entering with the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christ-Impulse.

Now we can also understand the meaning of the Christ-Event. The earth has to participate in the cosmic mysteries just as the individual man has to participate in the Divine mysteries. Through this, polarity was implanted in man, as it is in the earth. That which is above the earth and that, which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, first united with the earth, have evolved like two opposite poles. Christ and the earth belong to one another. In order to be able to unite they had first to develop apart from one another. Thus we see that it is necessary, in order that things may really come to fruition, that they differentiate into polarities, and that the polarities then reunite in order that life may progress. That is the meaning of life. If we look at it like this, then it is true that we feel ourselves standing in the centre of the world, feel that the world would be absolutely nothing without us. As deep a mystic as Angelus Silesius made the remarkable statement which at first may astound people: “I know that without me no God can live; were I brought to naught, he would of necessity have to give up the ghost.” Sectarian Christians may disagree with such a statement, but they should not forget the historical fact that Angelus Silesius, even before he became a Roman Catholic (which he did in order according to his opinion to stand entirely on the ground of Christianity), was a very pious man, and yet he pronounced this dictum. Whoever knows Angelus Silesius will know that this statement was not prompted by impiety. All things in the world would stand opposed to other things, like poles that cannot meet, were man to be thought away. Man stands in the midst and forms a part of it. If man thinks, the world thinks in him. He is the stage on which the action takes place; he only brings the thoughts together. When man thinks and when he wills, it is even so.

We can now estimate what it means when, directing our gaze into vastness of space we say: It is Divinity that fills it, and Divinity is that which must be united with the Earth-seed. “In me is the meaning of life!”—man may exclaim. The gods have set before them certain aims; but they have also chosen the stage on which these aims are to be carried out. The souls of men are the stage. Therefore, if the human soul looks but deeply enough into itself, and does not only try to solve problems in the vastness of space, it finds within itself the stage where gods are accomplishing their deeds—and man himself is taking part in them. That is what I tried to express in the words which can be found in my Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation how in man’s inner being the gods work, how the meaning of the world finds expression in the soul of man and how the meaning of the world will live on in the soul of man. What is the meaning of life? It is, that this meaning lives in man himself. This I tried to express in the words which the soul addresses to itself:—

“Within thy thinking cosmic thought doth live,
Within thy feeling cosmic forces play,
Within thy will do cosmic beings work;
Abandon thou thyself to cosmic thought,
Experience thyself through cosmic force,
Create thyself anew from cosmic will.
End not at last in cosmic distances,
By fantasies of dreamy thought beguiled.
Do thou begin in farthest spirit-realms
And end in the recesses of thy soul.
The plan Divine then shalt thou recognise
When thou hast realised thy Self in thee.”¹

If we wish to say something that is true, not something which has merely occurred to us, it must always be said out of the depths of spiritual secrets. That is extremely important. Therefore you must not think that words which are used in occult works, be it in the form of prose or poetry, arise in the same way as do words in other works. Such spiritual or occult works which really spring from truth, truth about the world and its mysteries, come into existence when the soul really allows world-thoughts to speak through it, really lets world-feelings not its own personal feelings inflame it and has really created these feelings and thoughts from beings of cosmic or universal will.

It is part of the mission of the Anthroposophical movement that man should learn to discriminate between what is sounding forth out of the cosmic mysteries and that which his own arbitrary imagination has invented. Ever more and more the development of civilisation will rise to the point where, in the place of arbitrary invention, there will appear that which lives in the human soul in such a way that it is the other pole of the corresponding spirituality. Things created in this way are in their turn life-giving seed which unite with the spirit. They have a purpose in the world process. It gives us quite a different feeling of responsibility as regards what we do ourselves, when we know that what we bring about are living germs—not sterile ones which simply perish. Then we must allow these germs too to spring up from the depths of the World-Soul.

Now it may be asked: But how is this to be attained? By patience. By approaching more and more to the stage where all personal ambition is killed out. Personal ambition tempts us ever more and more to produce that which is merely personal, without listening to that which is the expression of the Divine. How are we to know that the Divine is speaking in us? We must kill out everything that only comes from ourselves and first of all we must kill out every tendency to ambition. This generates the right polarity in us and produces real fructifying germs in the soul. Impatience is the worst guide in life. It is that which destroys the world. If we are successful in this, you will see, as I have been explaining to you, that the meaning of life is reached in the way described, through the fructification of what is outward by that which is inward. Then we shall also understand that, if our inner nature is not right, we sow wrong fertilising seed in the world. What is the result of that? The result is that deformities are born into the world. Our present civilisation is rich in such deformities. All over the world, books are written to-day one could almost say by steam-power; whilst even in the eighteenth century a celebrated author wrote: “A single country to-day produces five times as many books as the earth requires for its good.” To-day it is much worse. These are things which surround the present civilisation with spiritual entities which are not fit for life, which would not and should not come into existence, if man had the requisite patience. That will also come to birth within the human soul as a kind of opposite pole—patience: so that the human soul does not simply scatter around what is merely a product of ambition and egoism!

This must not be taken as a kind of moral sermon, but as the representation of a fact. It is a fact that productions springing from ambition and desire for renown give rise in our souls to such seeds as bring deformities to birth in the spiritual world. To suppress these and also gradually to transform them is a fruitful task for the far future. It is the mission of Anthroposophy to accomplish this task, and it is the meaning of life, that in doing so the anthroposophical world conception should take its place in the whole meaning of life; that everywhere meaning should flow in on us in life, that everywhere life should be full of meaning. What Spiritual Science desires to teach men is this: that we are in the midst of this meaning, and can express it truly thus:—

“Within thy thinking cosmic thought doth live,
Within thy feeling cosmic forces play,
Within thy will do cosmic beings work;
Abandon thou thyself to cosmic thought,
Experience thyself through cosmic force,
Create thyself anew from cosmic will.
End not at last in cosmic distances
By fantasies of dreamy thought beguiled.
Do thou begin in farthest spirit-realms
And end in the recesses of thy soul,
The plan Divine then shalt thou recognise
When thou hast realised thy Self in thee.”

That, my dear anthroposophical friends, is the meaning of life, as man must understand it at present. This is what I wished to consider with you. If we understand it fully and make it entirely our own, the souls which have become Divine will make it effective in your souls.

What is difficult to understand in these lectures you must ascribe to the circumstance that Karma obliges us to restrict such an important subject as “The Meaning of Life” to two short lectures; much could therefore merely be hinted at, which can only be developed in the soul of each one for himself. Consider this also as a polarity: an impulse must be given which through meditation is developed further, that through this further development all our intercourse acquires meaning—reality; it ought to become so full of meaning that our souls should be able to play one into the other. It is of the essence of real love that it is also an equilibrium of polarities. At the point where anthroposophical thoughts find entrance to a soul, the other pole is stimulated and agreement found. It is this that can work like an anthroposophical “Music of the Spheres.” When we work thus in harmony with the spiritual world, when we really are living anthroposophical life, we also live united in this life.

This is the way in which I should like you to take our meeting here in these two days. Such spiritual subjects are an expression of the Spirit of Love and are consecrated to the Spirit of Love amongst true anthroposophists. This love, through the touchstone we possess, will be instrumental in the exchange of our spiritual content; it will be something through which we not only receive, but through which we are also stimulated more and more to anthroposophical efforts. In this way Anthroposophy will become a means of spreading a love that touches the inmost depths of the human soul. Such love lives on. For as members of the Anthroposophical Movement, we have something that causes the love of those who are separated in space to endure until Karma again unites us on the physical plane. So we remain united and find the true cause for remaining so in the fact that with all the best in our souls, with the best of our spiritual powers, we have together risen to Divine spiritual heights. In this way, we also desire, my dear friends, to continue to be united with one another.

• 1. See Four Mystery Plays

During the year 1924, before his last illness in September, Rudolf Steiner gave over eighty lectures on Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies to Members of the Anthroposophical Society in the following places: Dornach, Berne, Zurich, Stuttgart, Prague, Paris, Breslau, Torquay and London.

All these lectures were intended to be material for study by those already familiar with the teachings and terminology of Anthroposophy. The following extract from the lecture of 22nd June, 1924, calls attention to the need for exactitude when passing on such contents:

"The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and discussion of anything that has to do with the subject entails—or ought at any rate to entail—a sense of deep responsibility. Such study is in truth a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence, even of the phenomena of nature ... These difficulty and weighty matters entail grave consideration of every word and every sentence spoken here, in order that the limits within which the statements are made shall be absolutely clear ..."

A list of relevant literature will be found at the end of the volume, together with a summarised plan of the Complete Edition of Rudolf Steiner's works in the original German.

We are going to continue on the same theme, as this will provide a background for the evaluation of the significant events which now present themselves to the human mind, events in which humanity is now caught up and which are more significant than is often realized today. I have sought to show that momentous occurrences in the spiritual world form the background to these events. I have also spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early 1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the human realms. As I said, from that time onwards they have been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are now moving among us.

Inevitably the question must arise as to the actual nature of the battle which raged in the spiritual regions between the 1840s and the 1870s, and of the activity of the spirits of darkness since November 1879.

The story of what was behind this significant battle, or we might say behind the scenes of world history, can only unfold slowly and gradually. Today we shall first of all consider some ways in which a reflection of the battle was cast on human regions. I have often drawn attention to the great turning-point in the evolution of modern cultural spheres which came in the early 1840s. This was the turning-point which brought the full impulse for the development of materialism. Materialism could only develop in consequence of major occurrences in the spiritual world which then continued in a downward direction and gradually caused materialistic impulses to be instilled into humanity. If we consider how events in spiritual regions were reflected here on earth, two things are particularly evident.

The first is that the purely physical intellect and a culture based on this showed a tremendous upsurge in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, much more so than people imagine today—future observers will see this more clearly. It is reasonable to say that anyone who studies the evolution of humanity and has an eye for more subtle elements in human life will note that there has never been such an upsurge in subtlety of conception, acumen and critical faculties for the adherents of materialism as during those decades. All the thinking I have characterized, thinking that leads to technical inventions, to criticism and to brilliant definitions, is physical thinking and is bound to the brain. A materialist who wanted to describe human evolution would have reason to say: ‘Humanity has never been as clever as during those decades.’ It really was clever. If you study the literature—here I mean not only fine literature—you will find that at no other time were ideas so well defined and critical thinking so well developed as in those years, and this was in all kinds of areas. We see a mirror-reflection develop in human souls of the aims certain spirits of darkness were seeking to achieve in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century, always hoping for victory.

They sought to get possession of an ancient inheritance of humanity. This was something we referred to yesterday: Through millennia, the progressive spirits of light guided humanity by means of blood bonds. They brought people together in families, tribes, nations and races, uniting those who belonged together on the basis of truly ancient human and world karma. With their feeling for those blood bonds people then also had a feeling for missions which went a very long way back in the world, missions designed to make the blood bonds—which, of course, came from the earth—part of the general human karma. If one turns one's attention to the spiritual world during the 1820s and 1830s, when the souls which were later to enter into human bodies were still in that world, one finds that the souls which were about to descend had certain impulses which, among other things, were due to the fact that for millennia they had been bound to particular families, tribes, nations and races each time they were on earth. From the 1840s onwards these souls were meant to make the decision to enter into particular bodies. For the spirits of light who sent their impulses into human souls were, of course, guiding human evolution according to the old blood bonds. And so the human souls in the spiritual worlds had certain impulses to follow the ancient human karma on entering into bodies which were to be the population in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The spirits of light were using the old measures of controlling and guiding those souls.

The spirits of darkness wanted to gain control over this. They wanted to drive the impulses of the spirits of light from those human souls and bring in their own impulses. If the spirits of darkness had won the battle in 1879, the relationship between human bodies and souls would have been utterly different from what it actually has become in people born after 1879. Different souls would have been in different bodies, and the plan according to which human affairs on earth were ordered would have been according to the ideal of the spirits of darkness. But it is not. Thanks to the victory that Michael won over the dragon in the autumn of 1879, this could not happen.

During the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the battle was reflected on earth in the particular acumen, critical faculty and so on, which I have described. As I have said before, mere speculation does not get us anywhere; it needs genuine spiritual observation. Speculation could never show that the very qualities of the physical intellect which I have mentioned are a reflection here on earth of the battle over reproduction, over the way in which generation follows generation. These things have to be observed. Anyone who thinks that the right connections between the physical and the spiritual worlds can be found by using the physical intellect is very much in error. This approach will normally give the wrong result, because the rules of logic used are those of the physical sciences. These apply only to the physical world, however; they do not apply to the relationship between the physical and the spiritual worlds. This, then, was one way in which the battle for the blood was reflected.

The other way—this again is something I have mentioned before—was the emergence of spiritualism in the 1840s and later. Certain groups, and they were far from small, sought to explore the connections with the spiritual world by using mediums, that is essentially by physical means. If this had succeeded, if the spirits of darkness had been strong enough to gain the victory over Michael's adherents in 1879, spiritualism would have spread enormously. For spiritualism gets its impulses not only from the earth, but is also governed by influences coming from the other world. It is important to be very clear that this is not a matter of choice; it is not possible to be easygoing and say: ‘Either we accept such things or we refuse to accept them.’ It certainly is not like this. The things that happened in spiritualistic circles partly represented a significant intrusion of the spiritual world; they certainly arose from impulses which came from the spiritual world and were often closely bound up with human destinies. They were nevertheless a mirror-reflection of the battle which had been lost in the spiritual region. This is also why spiritualism lost momentum and became so strangely corrupted after that point in time. It would have been the means by which people's attention would have been drawn to the spiritual world, and it would have been the only means if the spirits of darkness had gained the victory in 1879. If they had won, we would live in a world of indescribable acumen which would apply to all kinds of different spheres in life. Speculations on the Stock Exchange, which are sometimes quite dimwitted nowadays, would have been made with incredible acumen. This is one aspect. On the other hand, people far and wide would have sought to satisfy their spiritual needs by using mediums. So there you have what the spirits of darkness intended: physical acumen on the one hand, and a way of seeking connection with the spiritual world based on reduced consciousness on the other. Above all else, the spirits of darkness wanted to prevent spiritual experiences, living experience of the spirit, from coming down into human souls; this was bound to come about gradually after their fall in 1879.

The kind of spiritual experience which is utilized in the spiritual science of anthroposophy would have been impossible if the spirits of darkness had been victorious, for they would then have kept this life and activity in the spiritual regions. It is only because of their fall that instead of merely critical, physical intelligence and the mediumistic approach, it has been and will increasingly be possible to gain direct experiences in the spiritual world. It is not for nothing that I recently told you how the present age is dependent on spiritual influences to a far greater extent than people believe. Our age may be materialistic and want to become even more materialistic, but the spiritual worlds reveal themselves to human beings in many more places than one would think. Spiritual influences can be felt everywhere, though at the present time they are not always good ones.

People often find it embarrassing to admit to others their knowledge of spiritual influences, but many things they do, or initiate, are done because something appeared to them in a dream which was a genuine spiritual influence. Ask poets why they have become poets. Speaking of the time when they first began to be poets they will tell you that they had spiritual experiences which came as in a dream, and this gave them the impulse to be creative. Ask people who have started journals why they did so—I am giving you facts—and they will speak of what they call dreams, though this was actually the transmission of impulses from the spiritual to the physical world. And there is much more of this, also in other areas, but people will not admit to it, for they think if they tell someone: ‘I've done something or other because some spirit or other appeared to me in a dream,’ the other person will call them idiots. This, of course, is not a nice thing to hear. It is the reason why we know so little about what really goes on among people today. The things which now happen sporadically in one place or another are merely the vanguard of what will happen more and more: spirituality will come to human beings because Michael won his victory in 1879. The fact that we have a science of the spirit is also entirely due to this. Otherwise the truths concerned would have remained in the spiritual worlds; they could not have come to dwell in human brains and would not exist for the physical world.

You have been given images which may serve to demonstrate the intentions of the spirits of darkness in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s when they fought the followers of Michael. These spirits have been down here among human beings from the autumn of 1879. They have failed to achieve their aims: spiritualism will not become the general human persuasion; people will not grow so clever from the materialistic point of view that they fall over themselves with their cleverness. The spiritual truths will take root among human beings.

On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.

It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible.¹ I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life—‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists.

A beginning has already been made, though only in the literary field where it is less harmful. As I have mentioned,² learned medical experts have published books on the abnormalities of certain men of genius. As you know, attempts have been made to understand the genius of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Viktor Scheffel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Goethe, by showing them to suffer from certain abnormalities. And the most astounding thing in this field is that people have also sought to understand Jesus Christ and the Gospels from this point of view. Two publications are now in existence in which the origins of Christianity are said to be due to the fact that at the beginning of our era there lived an individual who was mentally and psychologically abnormal; this individual went about in Palestine as Jesus Christ and infected people with Christianity.

These, as I said, are the beginnings in the field of literature. The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption—oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered—people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field—the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the spirits of light.

The first step must be to throw people's views into confusion, turning their concepts and ideas inside out. This is a serious thing and must be watched with care, for it is part of some highly important elements which will be the background to events now in preparation.

I am choosing my words with great care. I am saying ‘in preparation’ because I am fully aware that to say ‘in preparation’, after the events which have taken place in the last three years, is something significant. Anyone who is able to see more deeply into these matters knows them to be preparations. Only superficial people can believe that this war, which is not a war of the old kind, will tomorrow or the day after be followed by a peace of the old kind. You have to be very superficial to believe this. Many will believe it, of course, if outer events appear to be in accord with the notions some people have; they will fail to realize what actually lies dormant beneath the surface.

It is interesting to consider the decades from the 1840s onwards, both in general and in detail. We have had a general characterization of them in these last weeks, and I have to some extent gone over this again today. A study of representative figures—the spiritual impulses which power evolution come to expression in such figures—will show that the general insights gained also prove true in individual instances. Let me give you an example which may seem to be a minor one. It is something I also mentioned last year.³

Numerous commentaries have been written on Goethe's Faust. Oswald Marbach's⁴ commentaries do not lack depth; they are in some respect profound. It is fair to say that the people who have been least profound are the literary historians, for it is their academic duty to understand such matters, which, of course, tends to be an obstacle to real understanding. Oswald Marbach wrote well about Faust because he was not really a literary historian. He lectured on Goethe's Faust, mathematics, mechanics and technology at Leipzig University, and at the present time the mysteries of the cosmos are easier to penetrate by studying Marbach's mechanics and technology than by applying the ‘modern science’ of historians and literary historians. However, we do find something quite peculiar in the case of Oswald Marbach. He spoke on Goethe's Faust during the 1840s but had ceased to do so by the end of the 1840s, nor did he speak about it in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He only started to lecture on Goethe's Faust again in the late 70s. In between he spoke only on mathematics, mechanics and technology, that is he devoted himself to the sciences which offered the best opportunity, especially at the time, to foster one's acumen and critical faculties. It is most interesting to see how he refers to this in his preface: “Thirty or forty years ago, I used to lecture on Goethe's Faust at Leipzig University—the book was published in 1881—but I have only taken the subject up again in recent years (1875). Why such a long interval? Many factors were involved, outer and inner ones, both subjective and objective. I grew older and finally old and so did my students: semester by semester they grew more and more morose. (People were getting more clever, but for anyone who looked more deeply also more morose!) Open interest of the spirit in the spirit was getting less and less and we lived in an age when usefulness counted more than beauty. For thirty years I yielded to necessity rather than to my own inclination and put philosophy and poetry aside, teaching the exact sciences of mathematics, physics and mechanics instead.”

This was the time of materialistic acumen. One sentence in the preface is tremendously interesting, for it points directly to what mattered at this time. Marbach states that in his conscious mind he always thought he was doing exactly what he wanted to do in the past, whether interpreting Faust or lecturing on technology. However, when he took up Faust again to interpret the work, he had to confess he had been under an illusion, for he had merely obeyed the spirit of the time. It would be good if many people could realize the extent to which they are under illusions. For it was the ideal of the spirits of darkness before 1879, and has been even more so since they walk among us in the human realms since 1879, to spin a web of illusion over human beings and into human brains and let illusions stream through human hearts.

Something else is of interest when one considers such an individual who is representative, as it were, of the influences which heaven brought to bear on earth. He says—and this is in accord with history—that in the 1840s he would mostly speak about Faust, Part 1 at the university, for there was no interest in Part 2. When he started to lecture on Faust again—and we can now say this was after Michael's victory over the dragon—his exposition would mostly be on Part 2. The age of acumen and critical faculties was indeed a time when access to Part 2 of Goethe's Faust was difficult. Even today this work, which is one of the greatest affirmations of Goetheanism, is relatively little understood. Efforts at understanding are, of course, liable to make us feel ill at ease, for nowhere else is the atmosphere in which people live today treated with such humour, such irony, as in Part 2 of Goethe's Faust. People live in a social atmosphere today which has been gradually evolving since the sixteenth century. They hail everything which has been achieved from the sixteenth century onwards as great and glorious achievements of our time and positively wallow in those achievements. Goethe was not only a man of his time; he was inwardly able to look ahead to the twentieth century and wrote Part 2 of Faust for the twentieth, twenty-first and later centuries. This will be only understood in the future. Hidden below the surface is a humorous and ironical look at developments since the sixteenth century, written in grand style. Consider the way Goethe lets the much admired advances on which civilizations live today be presented to Faust as a contrivance of Mephistopheles. Thus not only the paper spectre of the golden florin,⁵ but all the glorious developments from the sixteenth century onwards were the creation of Mephistopheles. In time to come, humanity will see the magnificent irony with which the creations of that time are treated in Part 2 of Faust. On the one hand, we have Faust in his quest for the spirit, and on the other, Mephistopheles, representative of the spirits of darkness, who invents everything humanity has come to depend on and will depend on more and more, especially in the twentieth century.

Much which will help us to be on our guard may be found hidden in Part 2 of Faust. It is a profoundly significant symptom that someone who had used physics, mechanics, mathematics and technology to learn the secrets of the age felt drawn to speak about Part 2 exactly when the victory had been won over the dragon. For decades before this he would speak only of Part 1, which alone could be understood at the time.

We have seen, especially also in the course of last year, that anthroposophy is gradually helping us to bring life into things which Goethe was only able to present in images, and to discover their deeper meaning in Part 2 of Faust.⁶ Anthroposophy clearly cannot be derived from a study of Faust, but it is certainly true that anthroposophy throws a new and much clearer light on the impressive images Goethe has given in Part 2, and in his magnificent discourses in Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years.

Here we touch on a trend which will have to gain ground under the influence of the progressive spirits of light as time goes on, to counter the efforts of the spirits of darkness; and it will gain ground if human beings are on their guard against the spirits of darkness. These last three years have been a challenge to be watchful and on our guard, though the numbers of souls able to perceive the call are as yet far from adequate. We have been able to see the opposite trend at work here, there and everywhere. It is particularly when spiritual life is beginning to be possible that the spirits of hindrance are very much to the fore. We have seen characteristic things and we shall see more of them. Even just to hint at such things is liable to create continuous misunderstanding. The spiritual atmosphere in which people live today is impregnated with the will to misunderstand to such an extent that one's words are immediately interpreted as something different from what they actually mean to convey. One has to use human words, and these have all kinds of associations.

Today, so many people base their judgement on national passions that if one has in some way to characterize someone who belongs to a particular nation, simply as a human individual who is here on earth, this is taken amiss by people who also belong to that nation, despite the fact that something said about individuals who are involved in current events, for example, has nothing to do with one's views of some nation or other. The belief that the tempest now raging is caused by the things that everybody is talking about today is especially harmful because it is especially senseless. The causes are much more deeply hidden and initially have really nothing to do with national aspirations in some respects—please note I am saying in some respects. National aspirations are merely made use of by certain powers, but the majority of people are so superficial that they do not want to know about this. It will be some time before an objective view is taken in this area.

Large sections of humanity find it easiest to ascribe greatness and far-sightedness to ideas which have arisen in a brain as limited as that of someone just out of teacher training college who is let loose not just on a class of school children, but in this case on the whole of humanity. As I said on a number of occasions, it did not need this terrible time which has come upon us to form an objective opinion on Woodrow Wilson from the point of view of spiritual science. I spoke of this in the lectures I gave in Helsingfors in 1913; you can read it up in The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita.⁷ There I spoke of the world schoolmastery of Woodrow Wilson and the shallow superficiality of the man. In those days, however, you were outside the Spirit of the time when you spoke about Woodrow Wilson like this, for his grammar-schoolboy essays on independence, culture and literature were then still being translated into European languages. It will be a long time yet before people will feel embarrassed at taking seriously the grammar school level policies of Woodrow Wilson.

Spirits of darkness are at work everywhere to befog human minds. One day people will waken from the mists and vapours in which they are now asleep and they will find it hard to understand how people could have allowed themselves to be kept on leading-reins by Woodrow Wilson and his wisdom in the early twentieth century without feeling embarrassed. A moment of waking will only come when people begin to feel embarrassed at policies which are possible today.

It is difficult to say truth-inspired things today because they sound too much in opposition to the ideas which have been inculcated into people's heads. And it is difficult to form an independent judgement in the atmosphere which has been produced not only during the last three years, but also through everything I have called a social carcinoma in the lectures I gave in Vienna.⁸ It is necessary to take these things with profound seriousness and not apply to them the concepts and ideas which people have been in the habit of using as their criteria. It will be necessary to realize that the present time demonstrates the inadequacy and indeed the utter uselessness of the ideas humanity has come to accept, and that in terms of world history it is indecent for people to base their judgement on the very ideas which have led to present events when those events clearly show them to have been wrong. Do people think they can cure the ills of the present time by applying the same principles which have brought them about? If so, they are utterly deceiving themselves.

Humanity has a certain sum total of cultural achievements which come from older times. These are now being used up. Every day brings evidence of their being used up without anything new taking their place. People are so little prepared today to understand and see through such things in their full seriousness. Many are still thinking exactly the as they did in 1913, in the belief that the understanding they had in 1913 will also be adequate for 1917; they do not have enough sense of reality to see that this kind of thinking has a great deal to do with the events of the year 1917, having brought them about, and that it cannot cure the ills we experience now, in 1917.

The need of the present time is that we go deeply into the events which have occurred since the fall of the spirits of darkness; we must gain as much insight as possible into the events of the 1880s, 1890s, and the first two decades of the twentieth century. People are utterly confused in their judgement with regard to them.

Neither do they have a real idea of the radical difference in the way people felt and reacted after 1879 compared to the way they did before 1879. Going into something like Part 2 of Goethe's Faust will also help us to progress; this work could not be understood in Goethe's time because it is a critique of what Goethe perceived to be the content of the twentieth century. Characteristically, someone like Oswald Marbach only found access to Part 2 after the fall of the spirits of darkness.

These are the insights and impulses which will help us to grow inwardly so that we may meet the needs of our time. Many of the needs sown before 1879 have not come to fruition, and in connection with this there is a significant question which should really cast its shadow on every human soul. Today I want to put it merely as a question.

The events in which we are caught up today indicate where humanity stands now. What matters now is not merely to understand them, but to find a way out of them. Yet while there is so little will to penetrate the deeper, real impulses which have led to the present age, practical minds will not be able to understand these matters. It is wrong to think that no one has sufficient insight into the current situation. People simply do not want to listen to them, just as they do not want to know about such a thing as Goetheanism, which is also like the voice of the twentieth century. Yet this voice will only be rightly understood if people seek to understand, seriously and in all dignity, the profound significance of the fall of the spirits of darkness in the autumn of 1879. To understand the present time, it will be necessary to understand the spiritual evolution of humanity. That is why I spoke of Oswald Marbach, whose poem I gave you last year to let you see how he looks at the past and ahead to the future. He wrote the poem to mark the anniversary when Goethe found entry into communities then called Masonic or the like, though in the eighteenth century this meant something different from what it means today. Goethe's viewpoint allowed him insight into many of the mysterious impulses which go through the world, things that people are too superficial to want to see. Oswald Marbach wrote these verses to mark the anniversary of Goethe finding his way to the world of the spirit:

With you, my brother, father, sublime master,
We now join hands across a hundred years
To mark the steadfast love which does unite
And closely bind all independent minds;
Greatest of spirits, mind most independent,
All our endeavour is to reach your heights;
We dedicate ourselves to you! We dedicate our sons,
So that one day achievement be the crown.
You strove as we now strive; yet the soul of your endeavour
To gain self-knowledge that will lead to wisdom
Was always life itself with vigour lived,
Was power creative, actively progressing
To works which rise into the light,
In glorious beauty for eternity:
Like Israel you struggled against God
Until you won the victory o'er yourself!
The mystery which now for ever binds us
Will not be told to unenlightened souls;
Yet make it known to all the world
In deeds of purest love that never tire,
In the clear light which spirit gives to spirit,
In life eternal which shall never fade.
Lead on then, Master! Where you went before
We're drawn to follow in most ardent longing.

Such is the mood that must unlock the ‘gates of fulfilment’.

• 1. See fourth to last paragraph of lecture 5.
• 2. See lecture 5.
• 3. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlaeuterungen zu Goethes “Faust”. Band I. GA 272. Not available in English.
• 4. Oswald Marbach (1810–1890), Professor of Technology in Leipzig, poet and writer; head of ‘Balduin zur Linde’ Freemasons' Lodge. Goethes Faust, Teil I and II erklaert, 1881.
• 5. Faust 2, Act 1, Scene 2: in the imperial palace, Mephistopheles tells the emperor and his advisers that paper money will solve the financial crisis. Scene 4 describes the rapid spread of paper money.
• 6. During 1916, the work on stage productions with eurythmy of scenes from Part 2 of Goethe's Faust which had started in 1915, culminated in a number of performances. See the lecture of 4 November 1916 (GA 172) in The Karma of Vocation, tr. by 0. D. Wannamaker, rev. by G. Church. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 7. Steiner, R. The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita. Tr. by G. M. Adams, rev. by D. M. Bugbey. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 8. See Note 2 of lecture 1.

One of the concepts which must occur to us when we speak of the relation of Christ to the human soul is undoubtedly that of sin and guilt. We know what an incisive significance it had in the Christianity of St. Paul. Our present age, however, is not well adapted for gaining a really deep inner understanding of the wider connections between the concepts “death and sin” and “death and immortality” which are to be found in Paul's writings. That cannot be expected in our materialistic times. Let us recall what I said in the first lecture of this course, that there can be no true immortality of the human soul without a continuation of consciousness after death. An ending of consciousness with death would be equivalent to the fact, which would then have to be accepted, that man is not immortal. An unconscious continuance of man's being after death would mean that the most important part of him, that which makes him a man, would not exist after death. An unconscious human soul surviving after death would not mean much more than the sum of atoms which, as materialism recognizes, remain even when the human body is destroyed.

For Paul, it was an unshakable conviction that it is possible to speak of immortality only if individual consciousness is maintained. And since he had to regard the individual consciousness as subject to sin and guilt, he would naturally think: If a man's consciousness is obscured or disturbed after death by sin and guilt, or by their results, this signifies that sin and guilt really kill man—they kill him as soul, as spirit. The materialistic consciousness of our time of course is remote from that. Many modern philosophical thinkers are content to speak of a continuance of the life of the human soul, whereas the immortality of man can be identified only with a continuing conscious existence of the human soul after death.

Here, certainly, a difficulty may easily arise, especially for the anthroposophical world-view. To approach this difficulty we need only look at the opposition between the concept of guilt and sin and the concept of Karma. Many anthroposophists get over this simply by saying: “We believe in Karma, meaning a debt which a man contracts in any one of his incarnations; he bears this debt with him, as part of his Karma, and discharges it later; so, in the course of incarnations, a compensation is brought about.” Here the difficulty begins. These people then easily say: “How can this be reconciled with the Christian acceptance of the forgiveness of sins through Christ?” and yet the idea of the forgiveness of sins is intimately bound up with true Christianity. We need think of one example: Christ on the Cross between the two malefactors. The malefactor on the left hand mocks at Christ: “If thou wilt be God, help thyself and us!” The malefactor on the right says that the other ought not to speak thus, for both had merited their fate of crucifixion, the just award of their deeds; whereas He was innocent and yet had to experience the same fate. And the malefactor on the right went on to say: “Think of me when thou art in thy kingdom.” And Christ answered him: “Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

It is not permissible merely to gainsay these words or to omit them from the Gospel, for they are very significant. The difficulty for anthroposophists arises from the question: If this malefactor on the right has to wash away the Karma he has incurred, what does it mean when Christ, as though pardoning and forgiving him, says: “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise”? An objector may say that the malefactor on the right will have to wash away his Karmic debt, even as the one on the left. Why is a difference made by Christ between the malefactor on the right and the one on the left? There is no doubt at all that here the anthroposophical conception of Karma meets a difficulty that is not easy to solve. It can be solved, however, when we try to probe more deeply into Christianity by means of spiritual science. And now I shall approach the subject from quite another side, a side already known to you, but it can bring certain remarkable circumstances to light.

You know how often we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman, and how Lucifer and Ahriman are represented in my Mystery Plays. If one begins to consider the matter in a human-anthropomorphic sense and simply makes of Lucifer a kind of inner and Ahriman a kind of outer criminal, there will be difficulty in getting on; for we must not forget that Lucifer, besides being the bringer of evil into the world, the inner evil that arises through the passions, is also the bringer of freedom. Lucifer plays an important role in the universe, and so does Ahriman.

When we began to speak more of Lucifer and Ahriman, our experience was that many of those associated with us became uneasy; they still had a feeling of what people have always thought of Lucifer—that he is a fearful criminal to the world, against whom one must defend oneself. Naturally, an anthroposophist cannot go all the way with this feeling, for he has to assign to Lucifer an important role in the universe; and yet again, Lucifer must be regarded as an opponent of the progressive gods, as an enemy who crosses the creative plan of those gods to whom reverence is rightly due. Thus, when we speak of Lucifer in this way, we are ascribing an important role in the universe to an enemy of the gods. And we must do the same for Ahriman.

From this point of view it is easy to understand the human feeling that leads a person to ask: “What is the right attitude to adopt towards Lucifer and Ahriman; am I to love them or to hate them? I really don't know what to do about them.” How does all this come about? It should be quite clear from the way in which one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman that they are Beings who by their whole nature do not belong to the physical plane but have their mission and task in the Cosmos outside the physical plane, in the spiritual worlds. In the lectures given in Munich in the summer of 1913 [Eight lectures with the title The Secrets of the Threshold], I laid particular emphasis on the fact that the progressive gods have assigned to Lucifer and Ahriman roles in the spiritual world; and that discrepancy and disharmony appear only when they bring down their activities into the physical plane and arrogate to themselves rights which are not allotted to them. But we must submit to one fact which the human soul does not readily accept when these matters are under consideration, and it is this: Our human judgment holds good only for the physical plane, and—right as it may be for the physical plane—it cannot be simply transferred to the higher worlds. We must therefore gradually accustom ourselves in Anthroposophy to widen our judgments and our world of concepts and ideas. It is because materialistically minded men of the present day do not want to widen their judgment, but instead prefer to keep to judgments which hold good for the physical plane, that they have such difficulty in understanding Anthroposophy, although it is all perfectly intelligible.

If we say, “one power is hostile to another”, then on the physical plane it is quite right to say, “enmity is improper, it ought not to exist”. But the same thing does not hold good for the higher planes. There, judgment must be widened. Just as in the realm of electricity positive and negative electricity are necessary, so is spiritual hostility necessary in order that the universe may exist in its entirety; it is necessary that the spirits should oppose one another. Here is the truth in the saying of Heracleitos, that strife as well as love constitutes the universe. It is only when Lucifer works upon the human soul, and when through the human soul strife is brought into the physical world, that strife is wrong. But this does not hold good for the higher worlds; there, the hostility of the spirits is an element that belongs to the whole structure, the whole evolution, of the universe. This implies that as soon as we come into the higher worlds we must adopt other standards, other colorings for our judgments. That is why there is often a feeling of shock when we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman on the one hand as the opponents of the gods, and on the other hand as being necessary for the whole course of the cosmic order. Hence we must, above all things, hold firmly in our minds that a man comes into collision with the cosmic order if he allows a judgment which holds good for the physical plane to hold good for the higher worlds also.

Now the root of the whole matter, which must again and again be emphasized, is that the Christ, as Christ, does not belong with the other beings of the physical plane. From the moment of the Baptism in the Jordan, a Being who had not previously existed on Earth, a Being who does not belong to the order of Earth-beings, entered into the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus in Christ we are concerned with a Being who could truly say to the disciples: “I am from above, but ye are from below”, which means: “I am a Being of the kingdom of Heaven, ye are of the kingdom of Earth.”

And now let us consider the consequences of this. Must an earthly judgment that is entirely justifiable as such, and that everyone on Earth must maintain, be also the judgment of that Cosmic Being who, as Christ, entered the Jesus body? That Being who passed into the body of Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan applies not an earthly but a heavenly judgment. He must judge differently from men.

And now let us consider the whole import of the words spoken on Golgotha. The malefactor on the left believes that in the Christ merely an earthly being is present, not a Being whose realm is beyond the earthly kingdom. But just before death there comes to the consciousness of the malefactor on the right: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is another; think of me when thou art in Thy kingdom.” At this moment the malefactor on the right shows that he has a dim idea of the fact that Christ belongs to another kingdom, where a power of judgment quite different from that obtaining on the Earth holds sway. Then, out of the consciousness that He stands in His kingdom, Christ can answer: “Verily, because thou hast some dim foreboding of my kingdom, this day (that is, with death) thou shalt be with me in my kingdom.” This indicates the super-earthly Christ power that draws up the human individuality into a spiritual kingdom. Earthly judgment, human judgment, must of course say: “As regards the Karma, the right-hand malefactor will have to make compensation for his guilt, even as the one on the left.” For heavenly judgment, however, something else holds good. But that is only the beginning of the matter, for of course it might now be said: “Yes, then the judgment of Heaven contradicts that of the Earth. How can Christ forgive where earthly judgment demands karmic justice?”

This is indeed a difficult question, but we will try to approach it more closely in the course of this lecture. I lay special emphasis on the fact that we are touching here on one of the most difficult questions of occult science. We must make a distinction which the human soul does not willingly make, because it does not like following out the matter to its ultimate consequences, and there are indeed some difficulties in so doing. We shall find it, as I have said, a difficult subject, and you will perhaps have to turn the question over in your minds many times in order to get at its real essence.

To start with, we must make a distinction. We must first consider how, through Karma, objective justice is fulfilled. Here we must clearly understand that a man is certainly subject to his Karma; he has to make karmic compensation for unjust deeds, and if we think more deeply about it, we can see that he will not really wish it otherwise. For suppose a man has done another person wrong; in the moment of doing so he is further from fulfillment than he was before, and he can recover the lost ground only by making compensation for his unjust act. He must wish to make compensation, for only by so doing can he bring himself back to the stage he had reached before committing the act. Thus for the sake of our own progress we are bound to wish that Karma should be there as objective justice. When we grasp the true meaning of human freedom, we can have no wish that a sin should be so forgiven us that we would no longer need to pay it off in our Karma. For example, a man who puts out the eyes of another is more imperfect that one who does not, and in his later Karma it must come to pass that he does a correspondingly good deed, for only then will he be inwardly again the man he was before he committed the sin. So if we rightly consider the nature of man, we cannot suppose that when a man has put out the eyes of another it will be forgiven him, and that Karma will be in some way adjusted. Hence there is rightness in the fact that we are not excused a farthing of our Karma, but must pay our debts in full.

But something else comes in. The guilt, the sins, with which we are laden are not merely our own affair; they are an objective cosmic fact which means something for the universe also. That is where the distinction must be made. The crimes we have committed are compensated through our Karma, but the act of putting out another person's eyes is an accomplished fact. If we have, let us say, put out someone's eyes in a present incarnation, and then in the next incarnation we do something that makes compensation for this act, yet for the objective course of the universe the fact will remain that so many hundred years ago we put out someone's eyes. That is an objective fact in the universe. As far as we are concerned, we make compensation for it later. The stain that we have personally contracted is adjusted in our Karma, but the objective fact remains—we cannot efface that by removing our own imperfection. We must discriminate between the consequences of a sin for ourselves, and the consequences of a sin for the objective course of the world. It is highly important that we should make this distinction. And I may now perhaps introduce an occult observation that will make the matter clearer.

If one surveys the course of human evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha and approaches the Akashic Record without being permeated with the Christ Being, it is easy, very easy indeed, to be led into error, for one will find records which very often do not coincide with the karmic evolution of the individuals concerned. For example, let us suppose that in, say, the year 733 some man lived and incurred heavy guilt. The person now examining the Akashic Record may at first have no connection with the Christ Being. And behold—the man's guilt cannot be found in the Akashic Record. Examination of the Karma of this man in a later incarnation reveals that there is something still in his Karma which he has to wipe out. That must have existed in the Akashic Record at a certain point of time, but it is no longer there. A strange contradiction! This is an objective fact which may occur in many cases. I may meet a man today, and if through grace I am permitted to know something about his Karma, I may perhaps find that some misfortune or stroke of fate that has fallen on him stands in his Karma, that it is an adjustment of earlier guilt. If I turn to his earlier incarnations and examine what he did then, I do not find his guilty deed registered in the Akashic Record. How does this come about?

The reason is that Christ has taken upon Himself the objective debt. In the moment that I permeate myself with Christ, I discover the deed when I examine the Akashic Record. Christ has taken it into His kingdom and He bears it further, so that when I look away from Christ I cannot find it in the Akashic Record. This distinction must be kept clearly in mind: karmic justice remains, but Christ intervenes in the effects of the guilt in the spiritual world. He takes over the debt into His kingdom and bears it further. Christ is that Being who, because He is of another kingdom, is able to blot out in the world our debts and our sins, taking them upon Himself.

What is it that Christ on the Cross of Golgotha really conveys to the malefactor on the left? He does not utter it, but in the fact that He does not utter it, lies its essence. He conveys to the malefactor on the left: What thou has done will continue to work in the spiritual world, and not merely in the physical world. To the malefactor on the right He says: “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” This means: “I am beside thine act; through thy Karma thou wilt have later on to do for thyself all that the act signifies for thee, but what the act signifies for the universe, that”—if I may use a trivial expression—“is my concern.” That is what Christ says. The distinction made here is certainly an important one, and significant not only for the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, but also for the time before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Some of our friends will remember that in earlier lectures I have called attention to the fact that Christ really did descend to the dead after His death; this is not a mere legend. He thereby accomplished something also for the souls who in previous ages had laden themselves with guilt and sins. Error now comes in if a man, without being permeated with Christ, investigates in the Akashic Record the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. He will continually make errors in his reading of the Akashic Record. Hence, for example, I was not at all surprised that Leadbeater, who in reality knows nothing about Christ, should have made the most abstruse statements concerning the evolution of the Earth in his book, Man: How, Whence and Whither. For only through permeation with the Christ Impulse is the soul capable of really seeing things as they are, and how they have been regulated in the evolution of the Earth on the basis of the Mystery of Golgotha, though they occurred before it.

Karma is an affair of the successive incarnations of man. The significance of karmic justice must be looked at with our earthly judgment. That which Christ does for humanity must be measured by a judgment that belongs to worlds other than this Earth-world. And suppose that were not so? Let us think of the end of the Earth, of the time when men will have passed through their earthly incarnations. Most certainly it will come to pass that all debts will have to be paid to the last farthing. Human souls will have had to balance their Karma in a certain way. But let us imagine that all guilt had continued to exist in the Earth-world, that all guilt would go on working there. Then at the end of the Earth period human beings would be there with their Karma balanced, but the Earth would not be ready to develop into the Jupiter condition; the whole of Earth humanity would be there without a dwelling place, without the possibility of developing onwards to Jupiter. The fact that the whole Earth develops along with man is a result of the Deed of Christ. All the guilt and debt that would otherwise have piled up would cast the Earth into darkness, and we should have no planet for our further evolution. In our Karma we can take care of ourselves, but not of humanity as a whole, and not of that which in Earth-evolution is connected with the whole evolution of humanity.

So let us realize that Karma will not be taken from us, but that our debts and sins will be wiped out from the Earth-evolution through what has come in with the Mystery of Golgotha. Now we must, of course, realize clearly that all this cannot be bestowed on man without his cooperation—i.e., cannot be his unless he does something. And that is clearly brought before us in the utterance from the Cross of Golgotha which I have quoted. It is very definitely shown to us how the soul of the malefactor on the right received a dim idea of a super-sensible kingdom wherein things proceed otherwise than in the mere earthly kingdom. Man must fill his soul with the substance of the Christ Being; he must, as it were, have taken something of the Christ into his soul, so that Christ is active in him and bears him into a kingdom where man has, indeed, no power to make his Karma ineffective, but where it comes to pass through Christ that our debts and sins are blotted out from our external world.

This has been wonderfully represented in painting. There is no one upon whom a picture such as “Christ as Judge at the Last Judgment”, by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, can fail to make a deep impression. What really underlies such a picture? Let us take, not the deep esoteric fact, but the picture that is here presented to our souls. We see the righteous and the sinners. It would have been possible to present this picture differently from the way in which Michelangelo, as a Christian, has painted it. There was the possibility that at the end of the Earth, men, seeing their Karma, might have said to themselves: “Yes, I have indeed wiped off my Karma, but everywhere in the spiritual, written on tablets of brass, are my guilt and my sins, and they weigh heavily on the Earth; they will destroy the Earth. As far as I am concerned I have made compensation, but there the guilt stands, everywhere.” That would not, however, be the truth. For through the fact of Christ's death upon Golgotha, men will not see the tablets of their guilt and sin, but they will see Him who has taken them upon himself; they will see, united with the Being of Christ, all that would otherwise be spread out in the Akashic Record. In place of the Akashic Record, the Christ stands before them, having taken all upon Himself.

We are looking into deep secrets of the Earth's existence. But what is necessary in order to fathom the true state of things in this domain? It is this: that men, no matter whether they are righteous or sinful, should have the possibility of looking upon Christ, that they should not look upon an empty place where the Christ should stand. The connection with Christ is necessary, and the malefactor on the right shows us his connection with Christ by what he says. And although the Christ has given to those who work in His spirit the behest to forgive sins, this never means encroaching upon Karma. What it does mean is that the earthly kingdom will be rescued for those who stand in relationship to Christ, rescued from the spiritual consequences of guilt and sin, which are objective facts even when a later Karma has made compensation for them.

What does it signify for the human soul when one who may so speak says in the name of Christ: “Thy sins are forgiven thee?” It means that he is able to assert: “Thou hast indeed to await thy karmic settlement; but Christ has transformed thy guilt and sin so that later thou mayest not have the terrible sorrow of looking back upon thy guilt and seeing that through it thou hast destroyed a part of the Earth's existence.” Christ blots it out. But a certain consciousness is necessary, and those who would forgive sins may rightly demand it—a consciousness of the guilt, and consciousness that Christ has the power to take it upon Himself. For the saying: “Thy sins are forgiven thee” denotes a cosmic fact and not a karmic fact.

Christ shows His relation to this so wonderfully in a certain passage—so wonderfully that it penetrates deep, deep into our hearts. Let us call up in our souls the scene where the woman taken in adultery comes before Him, with those who were condemning her. They bring the woman before Him and in two different ways Christ meets them. He writes in the Earth; and He forgives, He does not judge; He does not condemn. Why does He write in the Earth? Because Karma works, because Karma is objective justice. For the adulteress, her act cannot be obliterated. Christ writes it in the Earth.

But with the spiritual, the not-earthly consequence, it is otherwise. Christ takes upon Himself the spiritual consequence. “He forgives” does not mean that He blots out in the absolute sense, but that He takes upon Himself the consequences of the objective act.

Now let us think of all that it signifies when the human soul is able to say to itself: “Yes, I have done this or that in the world. It does not impair my evolution, for I do not remain as imperfect as I was when I committed the deed; I am permitted to overcome that imperfection in the further course of my Karma by making compensation for the deed. But I cannot undo it for the Earth-evolution.” Man would have to bear unspeakable suffering if a Being had not united Himself with the Earth, a Being who undoes for the Earth that which we cannot change. This Being is the Christ. He takes away from us, not subjective Karma, but the objective spiritual effects of the acts, the guilt. That is what we must follow up in our hearts, and then for the first time we shall understand that Christ is in truth that Being who is bound up with the whole of Earth-humanity. For the Earth is there for the sake of mankind, and so Christ is connected also with the whole Earth. It is a weakness of man, as a consequence of the Luciferic temptation, that although he is indeed able to redeem himself subjectively through Karma, he cannot redeem the Earth at the same time. That is accomplished by the Cosmic Being, the Christ.

And now we understand why many anthroposophists cannot realize that Christianity is in full accord with the idea of Karma. They are people who bring into Anthroposophy the most intense egoism, a super-egoism; certainly they do not put it into words, but still they really think and feel: “If I can only redeem myself through my Karma, what does the world matter to me? Let it do what it will!” These anthroposophists are quite satisfied if they can speak of karmic adjustment. But there is a great deal more to be done. Man would be a purely Luciferic being if he were to think only of himself. Man is a member of the whole world, and he must think about it in the sense that he can indeed be egotistically redeemed through his Karma, but is not able to redeem the whole Earth-existence. Here the Christ enters. At the moment when we decide not to think only of our ego, we must think about something other than our ego. Of what must we think? Of the “Christ in me”, as Paul says; then indeed we are united with Him in the whole Earth-existence. We do not then think of our self-redemption, but we say: “Not I and my own redemption—not I, but the Christ in me and the redemption of the Earth.”

Many believe they may call themselves true Christians, and yet they speak of others—anthroposophical Christians, for instance—as heretics. There is very little true Christian feeling here. The question may perhaps be permitted: “Is it really Christian to think that I may do whatever I like and that Christ came into the world in order to take it all away from me and to forgive my sins, so that I need have nothing more to do with my Karma, with my sins?” I think there is another word more applicable to such a way of thinking than the word “Christian”; perhaps the word “convenient” would be better. “Convenient” it would certainly be if a man had only to repent, and then all the sins he had committed in the world were obliterated from the whole of his later Karma. The sin is not blotted out from Karma; but it can be blotted out from the Earth-evolution, and this it is that man cannot do because of the human weakness that results from the Luciferic temptation. Christ accomplishes this. With the remission of sins we are saved from the pain of having added an objective debt to the Earth-evolution for all eternity. Only, of course, we must have a serious interest in this. When we have this true understanding of Christ, a greater earnestness will manifest itself in many other ways as well. Many elements will fall away from those conceptions of Christ which may well seem full of triviality and cynicism to the man whose soul has absorbed the Christ-conception in all seriousness. For all that has been said today, and it can be proved point by point from the most significant passages of the New Testament, tells us that everything Christ is for us derives from the fact that He is not a Being like other men, but a Being who, from above—that is, from out of the Cosmos—entered into Earth-evolution at the baptism by John in Jordan. Everything speaks for the cosmic nature of Christ. And he who deeply grasps Christ's attitude towards sin and debt may speak thus: “Because man in the course of the Earth's existence could not blot out his guilt for the whole Earth, a Cosmic Being had to descend in order that the Earth's debt might be discharged.”

True Christianity must needs regard Christ as a Cosmic Being. It cannot do otherwise. Then, however, our soul will be deeply permeated by what is meant in the words, “Not I, but Christ in me.” For then from this knowledge there radiates into our soul something that I can express only in these words: “When I am able to say, ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, in that moment I acknowledge that I shall be raised from the Earth-sphere, that in me there lives something that has significance to the Cosmos, and that I am counted worthy, as man, to bear a super-earthly element in my soul, just as I bear within me a super-earthly being in all that has entered into me from Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions.”

The consciousness of being permeated with Christ will become of immense importance. And with St. Paul's saying, “Not I, but Christ in me”, a man will connect the feeling that his inner responsibility to Christ must be taken in deep, deep earnestness. Anthroposophy will bring into the Christ-consciousness this feeling of responsibility in such a way that we shall not presume on every occasion to say: “I thought so, and because I thought so, I had a right to say it.” Our materialistic age is carrying this further and further. “I was convinced of this, and therefore I had a right to say it.” But is it not a profanation of the Christ in us, a fresh crucifixion of the Christ in us, that at any moment when we believe something or other, we cry it out to the world, or send it out into the world in writing, without having investigated it?

When the full significance of Christ comes home to mankind, the individual will feel that he must be more and more conscientious, must prove himself worthy of Christ, this Cosmic Principle, within him.

It may be readily believed that those who do not want to receive Christ as a Cosmic Principle, but are ready at every opportunity to repent an offence, will first tell all kinds of lies about their fellow men and will then want to wipe out the lies. Anyone who wishes to give worthy proof of the Christ in his soul will first ask himself whether he ought to say a certain thing, even though he may for the moment be convinced of it.

Many things will be changed when a true conception of Christ comes into the world. All those countless people today who write, or disfigure paper with printer's ink, because they briskly write down things of which they have no knowledge, will come to realize that by so doing they are putting the Christ in the human soul to shame. And then the excuse will cease: “Well, I thought it was so, I said it in good faith.” Christ wants more than “good faith”; Christ would fain lead men to the truth. He Himself has said, “The truth will make you free.” But where has Christ ever said that it is possible for anyone who is thinking in His sense to shout out or put forth in writing something or other of which he really knows nothing? Much indeed will be changed! A great deal of modern writing will be ruled out when people proceed from the principle of proving themselves worthy of the saying: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The cancer of our decadent civilization will be rooted out when silence falls on those voices which, without real conviction, cry everything out into the world, or cover paper with printer's ink irresponsibly, without being first convinced that they are speaking the truth.

The “Christian conscience”, as we may call it in a certain sense, will arise in increasing measure as human souls become more and more conscious of the presence of Christ, and the saying of Paul becomes true: “Not I, but Christ in me!”

More and more will souls be imbued with the consciousness that a man ought not to say merely what he “thinks”, but must prove the objective truth of what he says.

Christ will be for the soul a teacher of truth, a teacher of the highest sense of responsibility. In these ways He will permeate souls when they come to experience the whole import of the saying: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

In the last lecture we dealt with the sense of speech, and today we will examine the sense of concept. The term “concept” is, of course, not intended here as pure concept, but in its everyday meaning. That is, I hear a word spoken and I visualize its meaning. This sense could also be called the sense of visualization.¹ In order to understand how this sense comes about we must glance back once more to the sense of tone or hearing and to the sense of speech or sound, asking ourselves what it means “to have a sense of speech.” How does the perception of sound² come about? What particular process takes place when we perceive a sound like “a” or “i”? To grasp this we must understand the apparatus of sound perception, and we will give a few indications that you will be able to substantiate later.

In music we distinguish between the single tone, the melody, and the harmony. Harmony implies perception of tones occurring simultaneously, melody calls for the mental co-ordination of a sequence of tones. The mechanism of sound perception can be comprehended by studying the relation between the tonal element in sound and sound itself.

Suppose we could raise into consciousness what we accomplish subconsciously in perceiving sound. We would then no longer be dealing merely with a sense perception but with a judgment, with the formation of a concept. If we were able, in hearing a melody, so to crowd the single tones in time as to perceive them simultaneously, to cause past and future to coincide; if in the middle of a melody we already knew what was to follow, knew this so vividly as to draw the future into the present, then we would have consciously converted the melody into a harmony. We are not able to do that, but what we cannot execute consciously actually takes place unconsciously in the sense of sound. When we hear an “a” or an “i” or other sounds, a subconscious activity momentarily transforms a melody into a harmony. That is the secret of sound; it is melody transformed into harmony. This marvelous subconscious activity proceeds in approximately the same way as the various refractions in the eye are carried out according to physical laws, which is another process we can call to consciousness after it has taken place.

But this subconscious activity that instantly converts a melody into a harmony is not enough; something more is needed if the sound is to come forth. A musical tone is not a simple thing. A tone is a musical tone only by virtue of its harmonics³ (overtones) that sound with it, however faintly, in contrast to noises, which have no harmonics. In a harmony, therefore, we hear not only the separate tones but the harmonics of each tone as well. Accordingly, if we crowd a melody into a harmony, we have not only the separate notes of the melody crowded into simultaneity, but the harmonics of each note as well. Now, the final step. Through the agency of that subconscious activity, the attention of the soul must be distracted from the fundamental tones of the melody. These must in a sense be aurally disregarded, and only the harmony created by the harmonics be comprehendingly heard. A sound comes into being when a melody is transformed into harmony and then the fundamentals disregarded, attention being directed exclusively to that harmony of the harmonics. What these harmonics then yield is the sound “a,” “i,” etc. In this way we have explained sound perception as taking place in the same way that sight does in the eye.

The next question is difficult but important. How does the perception of visualization come about? How does it happen that when we hear a word we understand its meaning by means of the word itself? That this is a question by itself can be seen from the fact that in different languages the same thing is designated by different sounds. While the sound we hear is a different one in every language (amor and Liebe), it nevertheless points the path to an identical underlying conception. Whether the word used is amor or Liebe, it appeals to the sense of visualization underlying it. This underlying sense of visualization is always uniform, regardless of all the differences in the sound formations. But now, how is this perceived?

In studying this process, the perception of visualizations or conceptions, we should keep in mind our premise that conceptions reach us by way of sounds. To enable a conception to come about, attention must be still further diverted; the whole harmonic series must be ignored. At the moment when the soul as well is unconsciously distracted from the harmonics, we perceive what has incorporated in the sounds, what pertains to them as conception or visualization. This implies that the visualization reaching us through sounds—the visualization that, as something universally human, pervades all sounds and languages—comes to us slightly colored, toned down.

Incorporated in this harmonic series, which creates the timbre and intensity and the various sounds in the different languages, which vibrates into the human organism, are the Folk Spirits. These manifest themselves through the sounds of the language. Language is the mysterious whispering of the Folk Spirits, the mysterious work upon the fluids, that vibrates into our organism through the harmonics. But what underlies the harmonic series is the universal human element, the common spirit of man that suffuses the whole earth. The universal spirit of man can be perceived only when each of us, from his own particular locality, ignoring the harmonics, listens for what is inaudible, for what belongs in the realm of conceptions.

In the course of historical evolution, men did not acquire the capacity to comprehend what is universally human until they learned to recognize common factors by disregarding, as it were, the shades of sounds. Only in our life of conceptions can we begin to grasp the Christ Spirit in His true being. The spiritual beings whose task it is to proclaim Him in manifold forms—His messengers to whom He has assigned their missions and tasks—are the Folk Spirits of the various folk individualities. This thought has found very beautiful expression in Goethe's fragment, Die Geheimnisse.

That will give a picture of what the sense of visualization is, bringing us to an important milestone. We have exhausted what we have in the way of ordinary senses, finally arriving at the study of the subconscious human activity that is able, through the force of the astral body, to push from consciousness even the harmonic series. It is the human astral body that pushes aside this harmonic series as though with tentacles. If we achieve this power over the harmonics, which means nothing else than the ability to ignore them, it signifies increased strength in our astral body.

But even this does not exhaust the capacity of the astral body; it is capable of still higher achievements. In the cases we have so far discussed, the appearance of a visualization has presupposed the overcoming of an outer resistance; something external had to be pushed back. Now we find the astral body to be endowed with still more power when we learn that its astral substance enables it not only to push back what is outside, but also, when there is no outer resistance, to stretch forth, to eject, its astral substance through its own inner strength. If one is able thus to stretch forth the astral tentacles, so to speak, with no resistance present, then there appears what is called spiritual activity; the so-called spiritual organs of perception come into being. When the astral substance is pushed out from a certain part of the head and forms something like two tentacles, man develops what is called the two-petaled lotus flower. That is the imaginative sense, the eleventh.

In proportion to his capacity for stretching out his astral tentacles, man develops other spiritual organs. As his ability to thrust out astral substance increases, he forms a second organ in the vicinity of the larynx, the sixteen-petal lotus flower, the inspirational sense, the twelfth. In the neighborhood of the heart the third organ develops, the twelve-petal lotus flower, the thirteenth, the intuitive sense. These three senses, the imaginative, the inspirational and the intuitive, are additional, astral senses, over and above the physical senses. Beyond these there are still higher, purely spiritual senses, but let them here be merely mentioned.

The question now arises as to whether these three astral senses are active only in more highly developed, clairvoyant people, or has the ordinary human being anything that can be called an activity of these senses? The answer is that everybody has them, but there is a difference. In clairvoyants these senses operate by stretching out like tentacles, while in ordinary people their effect is inward. At the top of the head, for instance, just where the two-petal lotus flower forms, there are tentacles of this kind that reach inward and cross in the brain. In other words, ordinary consciousness directs them inward instead of outward. All that is outside us we see, but not what is within us. Nobody has seen his own heart or brain, and it is the same with spiritual matters. Not only are these organs not seen, but they do not even enter consciousness. They can therefore not be consciously employed, but they function nevertheless; they are active. Here consciousness makes no decisions whatever regarding reality.

These senses, then, are active. They direct their activity inward, and this impulse directed inward is perceived. When the imaginative sense pours inward there arises what in ordinary life is called outer sensation,⁴ outer perception of something. We can have an outer perception only because what appears in the imaginative sense works its way into us. By means of this imaginative sense we are able to “sense” a color, and that is not synonymous with seeing a color, or analogous to hearing a tone. When we see a color, we say, for instance, it is red. But through the activity of the imaginative sense we can also have a sensation connected with it—that color is beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.

The inspirational sense also directs its activity inward, and this produces a more complicated sensation: feeling. The entire life of feeling is an activity of the inspirational organ streaming inward.

When the intuitive sense pours inward, thinking proper arises, that is, thought forming. So the order of the processes is: We sense something, we have a feeling connected with it, and we form thoughts about it.

Thus we have ascended from the life of the senses to the soul life. Starting from without, from the sense world, we have seized hold on the soul of man himself in its activities of sentience, feeling and thought. Were we to continue along this path, examining the still higher senses that correspond to the other lotus flowers—they can hardly be called senses any more—the entire higher life of the soul would be revealed to us in their interplay. When, for example, the eight- or ten-petal lotus flower directs its psychic activity inward, a still more delicate soul activity is engendered, and at the end of the scale we find the most subtle one of all which we call pure, logical thought. All this is produced by the working of the various lotus flowers into the inner man. Now, when this inward motion is transformed into an outer motion, when the astral tentacles stretch outward and criss-cross, directing, as so-called lotus flowers, their activity outward, then that higher activity comes into being through which we rise from the soul to the spirit, where what normally appears as our inner life (thinking, feeling and willing) now makes its appearance in the outer world, borne by spiritual beings.

We have arrived at an understanding of the human being by ascending from the senses by way of the soul to what is no longer in him, to spirit acting from without, which belongs equally to man and to surrounding nature, to the whole world. We have ascended to the spirit. As far as we have gone, I have described the human being as an instrument for perceiving the world, experiencing it with his soul and grasping it spiritually. I have not described something finished, but something that is active in man. The whole interplay of forces and activities of the senses, the soul, and the spirit is what shapes the human being as he stands before us on earth. How does this come about? We can give but brief intimations, but such as we find substantiated on all sides.

What we see before us in observing a human being merely with our senses really does not exist at all; it is only an optical illusion. Spiritual-scientific observation actually perceives something quite different. Remember that sensibly we cannot perceive ourselves completely. We see but a part of our surface, never our back or the back of our head, for example. But we know, nevertheless, that we have a back, and we know it by means of the various senses, such as the sense of equilibrium or of motion. An inner consciousness tells us of the parts we cannot perceive externally. Indeed, there is a great deal of us that we cannot perceive unless the appropriate organs are developed.

Let us further consider the portion of the human being that he himself can perceive sensibly—with the eye, for instance—and let us delimit it. Through what agency is he to perceive it? Actually, all that we can see of ourselves with our eyes we perceive through the sentient soul; the sentient body would not be able to perceive it. It is the sentient soul that really comprehends. The portion of the human being that he sees with his eyes, which the sentient soul confronts, is nothing but the image of the sentient body, the outer illusion of the sentient body. We must, of course, extend the concept a bit to cover those portions of the body we can touch though not see, but there, too, we have the image of the sentient body. Perception comes about through other activities of the sentient soul. The latter extends to every point at which outer perception occurs, and what it perceives there is not the sentient soul but the illusion of the sentient body. Could we perceive this, we would see that astrally something endeavors to approach but is pushed back.

This image of the sentient body comes about as follows. From back to front there is co-operation of the sentient soul and the sentient body. When two currents meet, a damming up occurs, and thereby something is revealed. Imagine you see neither current, but only what results from the whirling together of the two. What shows as a result of this impact of the sentient soul thrusting outward and the sentient body pressing inward from without, is the portion of our external corporeality that the eye or other outer sense can perceive. We can actually determine the point on the skin where the meeting of the sentient soul and sentient body occurs. We see how the soul works at forming the body. We can put it this way. There is in the human being a cooperation of the current passing from back to front and the opposite one, resulting in an impact of sentient soul and sentient body.

In addition to these two currents there are those that come from the right and from the left. From the left comes the one pertaining to the physical body; from the right, the one pertaining to the etheric body. These flow into each other and intermingle to a certain extent, and what comes into being at this point is the sensibly perceptible human being, his sensibly perceptible exterior. A perfect illusion is brought about. From the left comes the current of the physical body, from the right that of the etheric body, and these form what appears to us as the sensibly perceptible human being.

In like manner we have in us currents running upward and downward. From below upward streams the main current of the astral body, and downward from above the main current of the ego. The characterization given of the sentient body as being bounded in front should be understood as meaning that it operates in a current upward from below, but that it is then seized by the current running forward from the rear, so that in a certain sense it is thereby bounded.

But the astral body contains not only the one current that runs upward from below as well as forward from the rear, but also the other one running backward from the front; so that the astral body courses in two currents, one upward from below and the other backward from the front. This gives us four intermingling currents in the human being.

What is brought about by the two vertical currents? We have one current running upward from below, and if it could discharge unobstructed we would draw it thus as in the diagram, but this it cannot do. The same is true of the other currents. Each is held up, and in the center, where they act upon each other, they form the image of the physical body.

Actually, it is due to the intersection and criss-crossing of the currents that the threefold organization of man comes into being. Thus the lower portion that we ourselves can see should be designated as the sentient body in the narrower sense. Higher up lies what in the narrower meaning we can call our senses. This portion we can no longer perceive ourselves, because it is the region where the senses themselves are located. You cannot look into your eyes but only out of them, into the world. Here the sentient soul, or its image, is active. The face is formed by the sentient soul. But the two currents must be properly differentiated. The lower currents, streaming from all sides, are held down from above, and this lower part we can designate the sentient body. Below, the impulses proceed largely from without; while above, it is principally the sentient soul that makes itself felt. From above there streams the ego, and at the point where this current is strongest, where it is least pushed back by the other currents, the intellectual soul forms its organ.

Now, in addition to this ego current we have one from left to right and one from right to left. Again the whole activity is intersected. There is further a current running through the longitudinal axis of the body, effecting a sort of split up above. At the upper boundary a portion of the intellectual soul is split off, and this is the form of the consciousness soul. There the consciousness soul is active, extending its formative work into the innermost man. Among other things, it forms the convolutions in the grey matter of the brain.

The nature of this spiritual being helps us to understand what exists in man as form. That is the way in which the spirit works on the form of the human body. It evokes all the organs plastically, as the artist chisels a figure out of stone. The structure of the brain can be comprehended only with the knowledge of how these separate currents interact in man; what we then see is the joint activity of the various principles of the human being.

Now we must go into a few details in order to show how these facts can be fruitful when they will have become the common property of a true science. We have learned that up above there came into being the organs of the consciousness soul, the intellectual soul, and the sentient soul. The ego acts downward from above; the main portion of the astral body, upward from below. In their mutual damming up, a reciprocal action takes place that extends along the whole line, so to speak; it forms the longitudinal axis of the body, and the effect of this will be a different one at every point of the line. When the ego, for instance, is called upon to perform a conscious act, this can only be done at the point where the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul have developed their organs. Through the intellectual soul, for example, reasoning comes about, and a judgment must be localized in the head because it is there that the appropriate human forces find expression.

Now let us assume that such an organ is to come into being, but one in which no reasoning takes place, in which the intellectual soul has no part, an organ independent of the work of sentient, intellectual and consciousness souls, in which only the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego have a part—an organ in which an impression received from the astral body is immediately followed by the reaction of the ego, without reasoning. Suppose that these four members of the human being—astral body and ego, etheric body and physical body—are to cooperate without any delicate activity such as reasoning or the like. What would be the nature of an organ in which these four currents work together? It would have to be an organ that would not reason. The reaction of the ego would follow directly, without reasoning, upon the impression received by the organ in question from the astral body. That would mean that the ego and the astral body act together. From the astral body a stimulus proceeds to the ego, the ego reacts upon the astral body.

If this is to be a physical organ it must be built up by the etheric body. From the left would come the current of the physical body, from the right, that of the etheric body. They would be dammed up in the middle and a condensation would result.

In addition, the currents of the ego and the astral body, from above and below respectively, would undergo the same process.

If we draw a diagram of such a structure, where in one organ the currents of the physical and etheric bodies are dammed up against those of the ego and astral body, the result is nothing less than the diagram of the human heart with its four chambers:

That is the way the human heart came into being. When we consider all that the human heart achieves—the co-operation of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego—it will be borne in upon us that the spirit had to build the human heart in this way.

Here is another example. We have learned that in visual activity there is really a subconscious thought activity present. Conscious thought activity comes about only in the brain. Well, how must the brain be built in order to make conscious thought activity possible? In the brain we have the outer membrane, then a sort of blood vessel membrane, then the spinal cord fluid, and finally the brain proper. The latter is filled with nerve substance, and when sense impressions are communicated to this nerve substance through the senses, conscious thought activity arises. The nerve substance is the outer expression of conscious thought activity.

When an organ is to be created in which not a conscious but a subconscious reaction to an external impression is to take place, it would have to be built in a similar way. Again there must be a sheath and something like a blood vessel membrane against the back. The spinal cord fluid must dry up and the whole brain mass be pushed back to make room for a subconscious thought activity undisturbed by a nervous system. Were the nerve substance not pushed back, thinking would take place there; when it is pushed back, no thinking can take place. Thus an external impression is first digested by subconscious thinking on the part of those portions not interlaced by the nervous system, and only later does it penetrate to the instrumentality of sentience, feeling and conscious thought.

The result of this pushing back of the brain, so to speak, to the rear wall is that the brain has become an eye. The eye is a small brain so worked over by our spirit that the nerve substance proper is pushed back to the rear wall of the eye and becomes the retina. That is the way nature's architects work. A single plan governs in building really all of the sense organs; it is merely modified in the case of each organ as occasion demands. At bottom, all sense organs are small brains formed in different ways, and the brain is a sense organ of a higher order.

There is one more detail to be studied, but first we will interpolate a few elucidating remarks in the nature of theoretical cognition, which in turn will clarify the standpoint of anthroposophy.

We have said that the standpoint of anthropology lies below, among the details of the sense life, that theosophy stands upon the summit, and anthroposophy half-way between the two. In a general way, anyone can become convinced of the existence of the sense world by means of his senses, and with his mind understand the laws governing there. For this reason most people believe unhesitatingly anything resembling their sense experiences, which can be checked. It could easily be demonstrated that formally there is no difference whatever between the spiritual scientist's statements concerning the existence of spiritual worlds and the belief that there was such a person as Frederick the Great. Formally there is no difference between the belief that there are Spirits of Will and the belief that there was a Frederick the Great. When someone constructs for you the life of Frederick the Great from external data, you believe that there was a person with the attributes set forth. The human being gives credence to what is told him, provided it resembles what he finds in his own environment. The spiritual investigator is not in a position to deal with such things, but it is none the less true that there is no difference in the attitude assumed toward such communications. We have described the standpoints of anthropology and of theosophy. Ours is between the two. A feeling of confidence and faith in theosophy's message is fully justified by our sense of truth; there is such a thing as well-founded acceptance of theosophic truths.

Coming to the third possibility, the standpoint lying between the other two, we find that from this vantage point we can distinguish intelligently that there is a sense perception; I believe because I can see it. There is a spiritual perception; I believe because the spiritual scientist tells me it is there. But there is a third possibility. Here is a hammer; my hand grasps it, picks it up, and raises it from the horizontal to the vertical position. We then say that it was moved and raised by my will. That will not strike anybody as remarkable, for we see the underlying will embodied in the man that raises the hammer. But supposing the hammer were to raise itself up, without being touched by a visibly incorporated will. In that case it would be foolish to imagine such a hammer to be the same as other hammers. We would have to conclude that something invisible was at work in the hammer. What conclusion would we draw from this embodiment of a will or other spiritual force? When I see something in this world acting as it could not act according to our knowledge of the laws of outer form, I am forced to conclude that in this case I do not see the spirit in the hammer, but it is reasonable to believe in it; in fact, I should be a perfect fool not to believe in spiritual activity.

Suppose you are walking with a clairvoyant and encounter a human form lying motionless by the way. With the ordinary senses it might be impossible to determine whether it was a living being or a cardboard dummy, but the clairvoyant would know. He would see the etheric and astral bodies and could say that that is a living being. You would be justified in believing him, even though you could not perceive the etheric and astral bodies yourself. But now the figure stands up, and you see that the spiritual scientist was right. That is the third possibility.

Now I will tell you a case that you can observe and verify in ordinary life—close at hand in one sense, though not in another. We have considered the various currents in the human being and found them to run as follows:

From left to right, the currents of the physical body.
From right to left, those of the etheric body.
From the front backward, those of the sentient body.
From the rear forward, those of the sentient soul.
From above downward, those of the ego.
From below upward, those of the astral body.

The ego, then, acts downward from above; so how would its physical organ have to lie? The physical organ of the ego is the circulating blood; and the ego could not function downward from above without an organ running in the same direction in the human body. Where the main direction of the blood-stream is horizontal, not vertical, there can be no ego, as in men. The main direction of the blood-stream had to raise itself in man to the vertical in order to enable the ego to lay hold on the blood. No ego can intervene where the main blood-stream runs horizontally instead of vertically. The group ego of animals can find no organ in them, because the main blood-line runs horizontally. Through the erection of this line to the vertical in man, the group ego became an individual ego.

This difference between men and the animals shows how erroneous it is to set up a relationship inferred from purely external phenomena. That act of rising from the horizontal to the vertical is an historic incident, but it could no more have taken place without an underlying will, without the co-operation of spirit, than the raising of the hammer could have done. Only when a will, a spiritual force, courses through the blood can the horizontal line pass over into the vertical, can the upright position come about and the group soul rise to become the individual soul. It would be illogical to recognize the spiritual force in one case, that of the hammer, and not in the other, in man.

That is the third possibility, a middle way of conviction, as it were, through which we can verify all theosophic truths. The deeper we penetrate into these matters, the clearer it becomes that this middle path to conviction is universally applicable—this middle way that fructifies ordinary experience through spiritual science. External research will be stimulated by spiritual science. Comparing the results of genuine spiritual-scientific research with outer phenomena, we are forced to the conclusion that all external processes are really comprehensible only if we take into account, without prejudice, the experiences of spiritual science. Thus to observe the world without prejudice, that is the standpoint of anthroposophy. It receives fruitful impulses from above, from theosophy, and from below, from anthropology; it observes the facts of the spiritual world and the things of this world, and explains the latter by means of the former. The building of each of our organs can be explained through spiritual activity, just as we described the transformation of the brain into an eye, and the build of the heart.

By showing how spiritual facts and earthly things are interwoven, how spiritual truths are verified in outer phenomena, anthroposophy leads to the conviction that it is senseless not to acknowledge the higher truths that spiritual science is in a position to bring us.

• 1. The verb vorstellen means imagine, in the loose sense (“I can imagine”), but we have no noun in English that exactly reproduces Vorstellung. “Visualization” must serve, but the reader should understand that its application is not limited to the visible; it covers abstract ideas as well as concrete objects—anything we “call to mind.” The terms “visualization,” “conception” and “mental picture” are here used interchangeably.
• 2. Always the spoken sound is meant.
• 3. Dr. Steiner refers here to something much more definite than what is suggested by our “overtones,” a term that has almost lost its original significance. The harmonic series as it is known in the field of music is the series of intervals into which a vibrating body (a string, a column of air, etc.) divides itself unassisted by artificial means. Under favorable conditions some three to five of these harmonics can be detected by a keen ear. They come out most clearly in large church bells.
• 4. There is no wholly satisfactory English equivalent for the noun, Empfindung, though the adjective empflindlich is exactly “sensitive.” The term “sensation” is used in this translation (occasionally varied by “sentience”), but it should be understood that only the meaning it has, for example, in “a sensation of warmth” is here applicable, never that in “the news created a sensation.” In other words, it is the noun corresponding to the adjective “sentient,” not “sensational,” and to the verb “to sense.”

Yesterday we concentrated on the condition of the human astral body and I between going to sleep and waking up. Let us pick up the thread again. I said that if we consider the human physical and ether body during sleep and compare this to the I and astral body we have to say: The will-endowed or will-related I is given form out of the relationship it develops to the spirits of the other world during sleep. Using a diagram to show the I being given form, I said that if we see the furrowing given to the I (Fig. 42, light colour - white in diagram) as a kind of photographic negative—ignoring aspects of scale—the structure of the human brain would be like the Positive. The astral body would have to be envisaged as coloured by the soul element in its environment; I have shown this schematically by using a number of different colours (Fig. 43).

As I said yesterday, this does not cover the behaviour of the physical and ether bodies during sleep. Let us add this today. The human physical body is seemingly known in modern science, but it really and truly is only seemingly. Scientists take little account of the great difference between the human being in limbs and metabolism and the human being in the head. The constitution of the head person is a reflection of what the individual has been between death and rebirth. Again all aspects of scale are left aside.

Modern scientists take the structure of the physical brain to derive from the paternal and maternal organizations. Considering the matter from a number of different points of view, we have already realized that this is not the case. Put somewhat crudely and in radical terms, human beings develop in the physical world because initially substance is thrown into chaos in the maternal body. Into this chaotic matter, which is now outside the laws of both chemistry and physics, the powers to make the embryo what it will be are implanted out of the universe. The powers the individual has gained in the time between death and rebirth are inoculated, if I may put it like this, into these powers. The way I’d really like to put it is: With regard to form, the human being is implanted in the maternal body. Only the bed for the new human being is created in the maternal body, and the universe is constituted in such a way that if the opportunity is created for something specific to evolve, then this specific something will evolve.

The inner structure of the human head is such that in the first place it reflects what has been furrowed and coloured here during the previous life on earth, but in addition the whole universe may also be said to be re-created in this head. Modern science really does not have a very good grasp of the process by which insight and perception is gained. It is better to say: The complexity of the human brain really is a recreation of the universe. The form principles existing in the head cannot be penetrated by the 1 and astral body. They live an independent life in the human head, as I have shown before. Human beings know themselves to be I and astral body exactly because these two have an independent life. I and astral body can really only connect with the human being in limbs and metabolism. There they flourish, making us essentially into will-endowed creatures. This means that the human being of limbs and metabolism is essentially the dwelling place of the principle which on death returns to the world of the spirit. That world receives the individual human I and astral body and takes them onwards to new stages of existence. The human head, on the other hand, holds everything that comes from earlier lives, and from lives between death and rebirth, elements which have taken form in the head organization, as it were, and made themselves at home in it. The human head relates to the past, the human limbs and metabolism to the future. The rhythmical human being moves to and fro between past and future.

We need to see the physical human being in this light if we are to understand the form and structure of the limbs and their inner life. We then understand why the organization of the head is actually always breaking down, paralysing itself, whilst the organization of limbs and metabolism is always building itself up. We shall also understand why the organization of limbs and metabolism has to be connected with the chemical and physical nature of the earth, a connection which comes to expression in nutrition.

The human being of limbs and metabolism takes in elements which have a real need to develop further. In waking life, however, this human being needs to reckon with the forces that come from the earth itself. In this aspect we are subject to the earth’s gravity and to other earth forces. We are subject to the forces which enter into us with the food we eat. In this regard, therefore, we may be said to be entirely creatures of the earth. The evolution of form in limbs and metabolism had no part in what the individual lived through between death and rebirth, before entering into the present life on earth. This is the reason why the human being of limbs and metabolism also is not able to adapt to the spiritual universe outside when we are awake in life. In the waking state this aspect of the human being is given up to the physical earth.

This is not the case during sleep, however, for the human head contains the form principles of everything connected with the individual’s past, including life between death and rebirth. The forms of the organs in the human head contain subtle, fleeting images of the whole cosmos.

In waking life, the head, being all these images of the universe, is not able to influence the human being of limbs and metabolism. As the seat of the major sense organs, the head is continuously communicating with the earth world outside. In waking life, everything we see or hear influences us via the head. During sleep, the human head is not merely provided with physical nourishment. Physical nutrition, which essentially also happens in waking life, is not what matters most; something else is most essential for the human physical body during sleep.

The eye, for example, is not only the organization which provides for vision but at the same time it is also an image of the spiritual powers of the cosmos. Between death and rebirth the individual lives in the cosmos of soul and spirit. Like all organs in the head, the eye has a double function. The first is to enable communication with the outside world through vision, which happens during waking life. In the life of sleep, the eye and its surrounding parts, above all the surrounding nerves and blood, influence the physical organism in its metabolic and limb aspects. The powers of the eye closed in sleep influence the kidney system, for example, imbuing it with the cosmic image. Other organs in the head imprint other aspects of the cosmos on the human system of metabolism and limbs. For the physical body, therefore, the time we spend in sleep serves mainly to let the powers of the head structure the human being of metabolism and limbs (Fig. 42, reddish arrows). It is particularly during sleep that structuring powers radiate continually from the head to the lower human being, so that in sleep the soul and spirit aspect of the head is indeed the structurer of the human being of metabolism and limbs.

We have quite the wrong idea of creation if we see it as being limited to particular moments. We are in fact being created all the time. We are created out of the spirit every night; our system of metabolism and limbs is given structure and life out of the spirit night after night.

As you know, in modern materialistic science only the opposite of this is known, i.e. that the powers of the metabolism influence the used-up brain. That is only half the story, however, for as this effect is brought to bear from below upwards, the human being is enlivened out of soul and spirit in a process that takes the opposite direction. It is important to realize that these marvellous processes working from above downwards are governed by a high level of consciousness as we sleep, a level we human beings will not achieve until evolution on the planet Vulcan. It is the level of consciousness of the spirit human being. This level of consciousness is truly present in the human being today. It takes effect during sleep in the way I have just described. At our present level of consciousness we are not able to know our true nature well enough to be aware, under normal conditions, of the reality and activity of a level of consciousness which is infinitely higher than the conscious awareness we have of our daytime activities.

Real appreciation of such things is certainly dependent on human beings becoming more deeply religious through the science of the spirit. If people pursue activities in life that allow their true nature to be neglected so that it withers away, if they do not seek to implant in their physical bodies what can be implanted in them during life on earth, they bring destruction to something in themselves which, unknown to them in ordinary conscious awareness, is a much higher form of consciousness than they themselves are able to have.

Looking out into the universe we perceive a world which, if we gain real understanding, makes us go down on our knees in admiration. We must have the same attitude as we look, with real understanding, into the working of powers in our own inner nature that are greater than human powers. This, then, gives you an approximate indication of the situation in which the human physical body finds itself during sleep.

Apart from the physical body we also have an ether body (Fig. 42, hatched area). In the waking state this is continuously exposed to influences coming from the I, which is active in the world, and the astral body, which is connected with the I. In the waking state we always see the colours arising and fading away again and the other colouring effects which take place in the astral body and go across into the ether body. In fact, we see the ether body adapt itself to the astral body. We also see something enter into the ether body which is the I in its structuring. In short, in the waking state we see I and astral body play into the ether body. When asleep, the human being as I and astral body is outside the ether body, and the colouring of the astral body and structuring of the I do not enter into it. The ether body is then left to its own structuring principles. The way this comes to expression is that in sleep, the ether body assumes a structure that is an image of the universe and does so in a truly magnificent way.

The main substance of the etheric body is taken up by human beings as they move from pre-birth life to physical life on earth. Its composition depends on how the individual lived between death and rebirth. Everything the human being receives into himself from the universe—shown in symbolic form, as it were, in spiritual science as something the human being has taken in of the heavens from North, South, East, West—all this the etheric body bears within it. For the reasons given above, the ether body is unable to make this apparent in the waking state, but it does so in sleep. The human being is all memory then, to begin with memory of life on earth.

Occasionally people are aware that on entering into their etheric body they enter into a sea of images; they consider it part of their dreams. Anyone who has made the effort, however, to observe the sea of images which a person passes through, as it were, in the process of waking up, and observe the experiences made at that time, discovers that this ether body really contains the whole of our life on earth when we are asleep. In our sleep we are really alive and active in everything we have gone through in the ether body from the time we were born. It has however been structured for the ether body by cosmic powers. As astral body and I are not playing into it at this time, the ether body radiates what has been inculcated, inoculated into it at birth. The human ether body grows radiant (Fig. 43, yellow arrows).

This radiance of the human being in sleep is something truly significant. When the sun has gone down and the earth world is immersed in darkness of night, it represents the soul radiance of humanity, quite distinct from the physical radiance of the sun. Unfortunately, however, this soul radiance also contains everything the human being implants into the ether body via the astral body and I during life because he is bad, elements which are destructive and cause the ether body to wither. The evolution of the earth could not progress, however, without this radiance coming from human beings.

Someone equipped with the necessary organs who was out there in the cosmos, observing the earth from out there, would say: During the day you see the sunlight reflected from the part of the earth where the sun is shining; but when night covers part of the earth, the earth phosphoresces. The phosphorescence comes from the human ether bodies. The earth needs all this to progress in its evolution. If no human beings were asleep on earth, the vegetative powers of the earth would die down much more rapidly than they actually do. Human beings certainly do not exist on earth just for their own sake; they are not without significance for the way the earth as a whole is structured. For the whole of their life on earth, sleeping human beings radiate from their ether bodies into earth evolution what they have taken up in the world of the spirit between death and rebirth.

Thus we are able to say: For the physical body, radiation is from above downwards; for the ether body it is from the inside outwards. Human sleep definitely also has cosmic significance.

This is why I had to tell you yesterday that when an I and astral body return to the ether body it feels like autumn, and when they are free of the body in sleep it feels like spring or summer. It is indeed true that human beings become more sun-like or wintry in soul and spirit as the astral body goes in and out.

We may say, therefore, that during sleep the nature of the human ether body is such that the powers human beings gather between death and rebirth in the cosmos have a structuring effect on the earth. Again the level of consciousness is higher than that normally available for people’s waking activities. The consciousness of the life spirit is at work in the ether body’s activity during sleep. This is a level of consciousness human beings will only develop when our planet earth has reached its Venus metamorphosis.

We can see, therefore, that the relationship of I and astral body on the one hand, and physical body and ether body on the other, is such that they do not work together during sleep, but only from the time we wake up until we fall asleep. The relationship changes, with the swing of the pendulum moving between collaboration and non-collaboration. It is also the case that at the moment when I and astral body approach the physical and ether bodies on waking, and at the moment when they withdraw again on going to sleep, the interaction which occurs is governed by yet another level of consciousness which is above that used in human waking activity. We are able to influence our waking up and going to sleep in a certain, indirect way. But the subtle processes between I and astral body on the one hand and physical and ether bodies on the other as we go to sleep and wake up again are something our conscious human mind is not able to perceive.

I’d like to show this interaction with these arrows going in opposite directions (Fig. 43, blue). In this direction, in this interaction, as it comes to expression especially on waking up and going to sleep, though in a certain way it also continues in waking life and even during sleep, a principle comes into its own which we can say applies mainly to the astral body. We are able to say that the situation is such that the astral body is stimulated in a cosmic sense. Remember that from going to sleep to waking up the astral body is coloured in accord with its moral reactions, as I have shown yesterday. On waking up it enters into an ether body structured by the cosmos. It has to follow it and adapt to it. And we are able to say that cosmic astral powers influence human astral powers. This can be observed quite clearly in a specific case.

Imagine someone who has not gone through life between death and rebirth—which is true in the case of animals—and was newly created at birth, which is what Aristotelian philosophy postulates. This individual would not bring the effects of earlier lives on earth and between death and rebirth into the new life. His eyes, his senses would roam over experiences in the outside world, but he would have no concepts based on geometry and mathematics to make connections between them. This is just one instance, one of those where geometry, which holds true for the cosmos, enters into interaction with principles that apply only in the earth environment. Rational concepts of mathematics and geometry enter into empirical experience gained on earth. This interaction is continuous, and it takes place in such a way that the spirit self is the consciousness active in it. Observing the world from a mathematical point of view, people have no idea, of course, that as they do so, the spirit self has them by the scruff of the neck. They fail to take note of this because they limit themselves to the reflection of it which exists in ordinary human consciousness.

When the human being is finally neither sleeping nor in the process of waking up or going to sleep, when I and astral body have entered fully into ether body and physical body, we have the ordinary level of present-day conscious awareness, when we are given up to everything that is outside of spirit human being, life spirit and spirit self. When humanity will have reached the level of existence which it will have when the earth has gone through its metamorphosis into Jupiter existence, as described in my Occult Science, it will no longer be the case that people use geometry to create a cube in an external way, and then discover that this ideal cube form fits a salt crystal. Human beings will be given up to the outside world to such an extent that they will be in the salt themselves, as it were. There won’t be any salt of this kind on Jupiter, of course, but analogies like this help us to get a clearer picture of human life as it will be in the future.

Using the method we used yesterday to consider astral body and I, we can therefore also gain an idea of how physical and etheric body are during sleep. The physical body is actually self-structuring in limbs and metabolism during sleep, the ether body world-structuring.

Thinking back to what we were considering yesterday, we have to say: The human astral body moves out of the physical and ether bodies during sleep. The powers of soul in the universe stream into it, and the way they enter into it depends on the inner life of mind and soul. If someone is in sympathy with all that is good, the most beautiful powers of the universe will be able to enter. If people develop their inclinations towards evil, their astral bodies will wither away. During sleep, the astral body assumes different nuances of colour for different levels of feeling and inner responsiveness (Fig. 43, reddish, yellow, pink, mauve). We may say that individual people sparkle up in their astral bodies during sleep depending on the way they are. The astral body represents our inner state of heart and soul during waking hours. This, as it were, pours into the soul universe, and human beings experience themselves in this pouring-out process in so far as their inner state has changed, but in a situation where they encounter the world of the spirit in that inner state.

If human beings were able to enter into the consciousness of the life spirit when their astral bodies are active and alive out there, they would be able to speak to that which happens with their astral bodies. This actually happens, but at an unconscious level. Who would be speaking, if humans beings suddenly achieved the level of consciousness of the life spirit in their sleep? The only way of putting this is to say: The human astral body would be speaking, as judge over good and evil in the human being. So that we really have to say: In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul. Rightly understood, this statement is important for human life. It is a truth that shines out as if from beyond the threshold of the world of the spirit, a truth human beings should call to mind as often as possible.

Take the corresponding situation for the I. The I moves out of the physical and ether bodies, structuring itself in accord with the powers of the universal entities in the sphere of the spirit. It becomes what it can become in the light of how it lives in the physical body. If it were to come awake to the spirit human being level of consciousness, it would not merely speak to itself, as the astral body would if suddenly given the life spirit level of consciousness; the I would be given the level of consciousness which is active in the physical body it has left behind, sending powers from above downwards. If, then, human ‘I’s had this level of consciousness when out of the body during sleep, human beings would know not only the totality of judgements passed on them but they would see that which they are in the process of becoming, now as images, which will be the seed for future lives on earth.

I cannot think of any other way of putting this in a sentence than this: The I becomes its own sacrifice, a sacrifice brought by the spirit which is active in the body. A sacrifice may be such that it is accepted with pleasure, which may also be the case for the I when it is given structure out there. A sacrifice may also be such that it is rejected. These are the extremes. Mostly, of course, human beings experience something which lies more in the middle. But a sacrifice may be rejected, having been found unworthy. If human beings present themselves to the spirits of the universe in such a way that they have to wither away greatly because of experiences they had in their physical and etheric bodies during waking hours, they become rejects.

You see, therefore, that the idea of sacrifice is certainly applicable in this case. And it seems to me that these two statements: In sleep, the astral human being becomes the judge of the soul, and: The I becomes its own sacrifice, are extraordinarily important if we are to understand human nature fully.

If we consider what the instinctive judgements of humanity have achieved in the past, judgements made not with the clarity of mind we must use today to search for anthroposophical knowledge of the spirit, but from instinct, we become aware of images representing significant original wisdom possessed by humanity. I have spoken of this before. They come to expression in ancient myths and sayings and also in the rites which have survived in different religious systems.

This is why we feel profound reverence for traditional religious paintings and images of ancient rites if we understand them rightly. Essentially it is true to say that religious feeling can only come alive again in human hearts if insight into the world gained through the science of the spirit—insight that is more than mere words, but perceived in its deepest meaning—takes hold not only of the head, but of the whole human being. The science of the spirit must not only provide us with insight into the world but make us feel reverence for the spirit which is at work in the world. This has been particularly evident to us today.

This science of the spirit will be able to quicken religious feeling in human hearts. Humanity has however also gone through a time when people lived only for intellectualism, rationalism and the materialism connected with this—we know this had to be, for the sake of achieving independence. Today the greater part of humanity is still caught up in these things. There has to be a return, however, to perception of the spiritual in the world, to living beyond mere intellectual understanding of the world, beyond experience limited to the purely head aspect of the human being.

If we go back beyond the age of the intellect to the days when the religious images of old were still alive—also serving as images to convey insight well into the Medieval period of modern humanity—if we consider the images created in the performance of religious rites, we find something in all of these which is enormously similar, except that it was gained through instinct, to the insights we are now able to gain in the worlds of the spirit, though now in the light of clear conscious awareness.

I really have to say that if the idea expressed in the words: “In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul” comes from Inspiration, we find this well represented in Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement on the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Here we have something that comes from time immemorial. It has merely assumed Christian form and with this become more traditional. Pictures like these were painted out of tradition. There were times in human evolution, however, when they were seen in a living way, when instinct made people see the inspired Imagination of human souls pass judgement on themselves in sleep.

Again, if we consider the image of the Lamb of God, which touches us so deeply, the image of the Christ uniting himself with the human I, entering into it, the thought of the I becoming the sacrifice as it enters into sleep arises in heart and mind—particularly when we contemplate the Lamb sacrificing itself—we discover how fittingly the image of the Lamb expresses the sacrificial nature of the human being in sleep. We discover that an instinctive, wisdom-filled consciousness gave rise to this image, which the I needs in its life on earth, because during sleep it becomes the sacrifice of its own selfhood.

We can do no other but again and again point out that the anthroposophical science of the spirit, as it evolves, seeks to develop completely clear concepts, the kind of clear concepts which otherwise exist only in mathematics, or geometry. But because the concepts gained in the science of the spirit have their roots in the living life of the cosmic spirits they are always such that they do not leave us cold, the way mathematical concepts do, but also fill us with the warmth of inner feeling and with will impulses to fire us. Here we see the close relationship between clear thinking, warmth of feeling and energy-laden will impulses. This, then, is a point of view which allows us to perceive human nature in its fullness.

Many aspects of history, too, only find their explanation if we are able to base ourselves on such a perception of the human being. Well into the Middle Ages, as I said, many people still understood the ancient images, in which the world is seen sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of eternity, a kind of understanding that still existed in the old instinctive life of wisdom and which has to be regained in clarity of mind, seeking to achieve it through the anthroposophical science of the spirit.

We sometimes see strange individuals come up in history, people who seem rather out of place in the present-day situation. Travelling in Italy, I once talked to a priest belonging to the Benedictine order in Monte Cassino. He told me that the list of saints in his breviary included the Saxon German emperor Henry II,⁴¹ also called “the Saint”—I do not know how far this is still mentioned in the history books. What Henry II was after was an Ecclesia catholica non Romana, that was his true aim, though he is called a saint. In his day, that is, in the 10th, 11th century, it was certainly still possible to speak out of real experience of old traditional wisdom and say that what had come into the world through Christianity should be an Ecclesia catholica, meaning a church for the whole of humanity in which the spirit reigns which was intended to come into the world through Christianity. But he wanted an Ecclesia catholica non Romana, for the Roman Catholic Church had become a worldly kingdom. Truth is that everywhere where kingdoms of the spirit become worldly kingdoms the ahrimanic principle takes hold of what lives as a holy of holies and has lived as such in the ancient wisdom possessed by humanity. In the days of Henry II, people were still strongly aware that it was possible to separate Ecclesia catholica and Ecclesia catholica Romana and that the desirable aim was an Ecclesia catholica non Romana.

As I said, Henry II is out of place as a saint in the breviary. The Ecclesia catholica Romana has not the least cause to include him among the saints, for he was one of the people who in a fiery, holy enthusiasm for a catholic church actually wanted to vanquish the Roman Catholic Church.

Historical facts like these ought to be brought to mind especially when reference is made to the tremendously important truths which can be brought back again to the surface of human awareness through anthroposophical science of the spirit. It is very necessary to point this out today, for individual instances which may disgust us as they come up from the Ecclesia catholica Romana right here on our doorstep⁴² allow us to see how the ahrimanic spirit was able to enter into it. On the one hand we must not let this ahrimanic spirit deceive us into thinking that the Ecclesia catholica Romana does not hold the light-filled wisdom of eternity. When I was able to give a course here for theologians, it was evident that with the longing felt by Protestants to deepen Protestantism in its spiritual aspects, to get out of rationalism, out of intellectualism, it came as a real liberation for some of those present to hear the words: Ecclesia catholica non Romana. For today we have definitely reached a point where rationalism must be overcome just as much as the worldly nature of the Catholic Church has to be overcome; humanity must come together again in a life of the spirit that is for all, a life of the spirit to which none may lay claim who have any kind of desire to rule the world.

The ahrimanic spirit is a lying spirit. It may happen that lying minds fall so low in this lying spirit as to declare falsehood to be truth. It is necessary, therefore, that out of the depths of what is happening in the world we come to abhor lies utterly. We truly come to abhor lies if we are able to say, in full awareness: In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul. The I in sleep becomes the sacrifice of its selfhood.

Darkness is thrown on these profound truths by the ahrimanic spirit, which has also entered into the religious creeds of recent times. It will be up to people who in all honesty, and with some energy, profess themselves to be followers of anthroposophy not just to develop a superficial, intellectual liking for the wisdom anthroposophy is able to offer, but to develop real inner energy of feelings and will, and to let this energy unite with what mind and spirit are able to perceive of the world of the spirit through the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy.

This, my friends, is also intended to teach you how important it is to distinguish between the element to be found even in the traditional continuation of religious images and images created in religious rites and the way in which these are sometimes used today.

Surely all of us must feel the deepest reverence for something which is contained in the ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church, something which as it were shines out to us from the spiritually grey-haired ancient Orient. Our approach to these ritual acts can always be such that we penetrate through what is happening there to the tremendous depth which comes to revelation. Millennia and millennia of wisdom evolved from instinct come to expression in these ritual acts.

Years ago I attended such a ritual in Helsingfors.⁴³ It was at Easter and it is fair to say this was one of the saddest events in my life to remember, to see how the popes, the most terrible inner liars, acted out their comedy based on eternal truth. That is how it is in the world today. Under the influence of ahrimanic materialism, lies are presented on the outside, and the deepest truth lies within, and the two are brought together in a truly dreadful way. You have to have a real feeling for this, or you will not develop the right energy in your understanding of the nature of the human being.

That was an extreme case, but the same happens everywhere today, with differing degrees of intensity. Anthroposophical awareness should be such that we see these things, and are able to distinguish clearly between truth and falsehood, a falsehood which under the pressures of external circumstances is very much hidden. We must always gain something from entering deeply into anthroposophy—for the human being as a whole and above all for the conscious awareness belonging to our age. This is what I wanted to say to you in connection with what we have been considering here.

• 41. Henry the Saint (973–1024).
• 42. Diatribe entitled “The Secrets of the Dornach Temple” published by M. Kully in Basle, 1920-21.
• 43. Helsingfors, Easter 1912. See letter Marie Steiner wrote on 13 April 1912 to Mieta Waller: “There was an Easter celebration in the church ...”. Nachrichten der Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung Easter 1967, No. 7, p. 12.

Well, gentlemen, we still have the last questions left over from the Jewish Sephiroth tree. In this Sephiroth tree, the Jews of antiquity actually enclosed their highest wisdom. And one could say: they enclosed in it the wisdom of the relationship between man and the world. We have often emphasized that the human being does not only consist of the visible parts that can be seen with the eye, but that the human being also consists of invisible, supersensible members. We have called these supersensible members the etheric body, the astral body, the ego or the ego organization. Now, all these things were known in ancient times, not in the way we have today, but people knew about them instinctively. This ancient knowledge has been completely lost. And today we believe that something like this Jewish Tree of Life, the Sephiroth Tree, is actually a fantasy. But it is not.

Now let us try to understand what the ancient Jews actually meant by this Sephiroth tree. They thought of it like this: Man stands there in the world, but the forces of the world act on him from all sides. If you look at man as he stands in the world (it is drawn), we can imagine him schematically drawn. This is how we imagine a material human being standing in the world. The ancient Jews imagined that the forces of the world were acting on him from all sides. Here I draw an arrow that goes into the heart: Thus the forces of the world act on man; here below the power of the earth,

Now the Jews have said: First of all, three forces act on the human head – I have indicated these in the drawing with these arrows: 1, 2, 3 – three forces on the human center, on the chest, on breathing and blood circulation mainly (arrows 4, 5, 6 of the drawing). Then three more forces act on the limbs of the human being (arrows 7, 8, 9), and a tenth force, which acts on the human being from the earth (arrow 10, from below). So ten forces, the ancient Jews imagined, act on the human being from the outside.

Let us first consider the three forces that come, so to speak, from the farthest parts of the universe and act on the human head, actually making the human head round, like an image of the whole round universe. These three forces, 1, 2, 3, are the noblest; they come, so to speak, if you want to use a later expression, with a Greek expression, for example, from the highest heavens. They shape the human head by making it a round image of the whole round universe.

Now, however, we must develop a concept at the same time, which could disturb you if I simply tell you. You see, in these ten concepts that the Jews have placed at the pinnacle of their wisdom, the first one at the top (1) has been terribly misused; for later, those people who succeeded in seizing power dragged the symbols of that power and the words for that power down into the outer realm of power. And so certain people who have appropriated the power of the nations and transferred it to their descendants have appropriated what is called a crown. In ancient times, a crown was a word for the highest spiritual gift that could be bestowed on a person. And the crown could only be worn by someone who, as I have explained to you, had gone through initiation, that is, someone who had attained the highest wisdom. It was a sign of the highest wisdom. I have already explained to you how the orders originally all meant something, but how they were later created out of vanity and no longer meant anything. In particular, however, we must consider this in relation to the term 'crown'. For the ancients, the crown was the epitome of all that superhumanity from the spiritual world has to bestow upon humanity. No wonder that the kings placed the crown on their heads. They were, as you know, not always wise and did not always have the highest gifts of heaven united in them, but they placed the sign on their heads. And when something like this is spoken according to ancient customs, it must not be confused with what has become of it through misuse. So the highest, the highest gifts of the world, the highest gifts of the spirit, which can descend upon man, which he can unite with his head when he knows much, that was called Kether, the crown, in ancient Judaism. Now, you see, that was the highest. That was what spiritually formed the head from the universe.

And then this human head still needed two other forces. These two other forces came to it from the right and from the left. It was thought: the highest comes down from above; from the right and left come the two other forces, the two world forces, which are spread throughout the universe. Now, the one that goes in through the right ear was called Chokmah = wisdom. Today, if we wanted to translate the word, we would say: wisdom. And on the other side, from the world, came in: Binah. Today we would say: intelligence (2 and 3 of the drawing). The ancient Jews distinguished between wisdom and intelligence. Today, every person who is intelligent is also considered to be wise. But that is not the case. One can be intelligent and think the greatest stupidity. The greatest stupidities are thought up very intelligently. In particular, when one looks at much of today's science, one has to say that this science is actually intelligent in all fields, but it is certainly not wise. The ancient Jews distinguished Chokmah and Binah, the ancient wisdom, from the ancient intelligence at an early stage. So the human head, everything that actually belongs to the sensory system in the human being, and also the nerves that are spread out in the sensory system, all this was designated by the three terms Kether, Chokmah, Binah - crown, wisdom, intelligence.

Thus, according to the view of the ancient Jews, the human head is constructed from the universe. There was therefore a strong awareness - otherwise such a doctrine would not have been developed - that man is a member of the whole universe. We can ask, for example, about the human body: What about the liver? Well, the liver gets its veins from the blood circulation; it gets its strength from the human environment. The ancient Jews said: Man receives the forces from the environment, which then, first in the mother's womb and later, cause his head to develop.

Now, there are three other forces (4, 5, 6 in the drawing); these have more of an effect on the middle person, on the person in whom the heart is, in whom the lungs are. So they have an effect on the middle person; they come down less from above, they live more in the environment. They live in the sunshine that moves around on the earth, they live in wind and weather. The three forces that the ancient Jews mentioned come into consideration here: chesed, geburah, tiphereth. If we want to express this in today's terms, we could say: chesed = freedom; geburah = strength; tiphereth = beauty.

Let us start here with the middle power, with Geburah. I have told you that I want to draw the arrow in such a way that it goes into the heart! The power that man has, this heartiness, soul power and physical power at the same time, is indicated by the human heart. This is how the Jews imagined it: When the breath enters a person, when the breath enters the heart, not only the physical breathing forces enter from the outside, but also the spiritual power, Geburah, which is connected with the breath. We would therefore say, if we wanted to express it more precisely: the life force, the force through which he can also do something = Geburah. But on the one side of Geburah is what was called Chesed, human freedom. And on the other side is Tiphereth, beauty. Man is indeed the most beautiful thing on earth in his form! The old Jew imagined: “When I hear the heartbeat, I hear the life force that comes into man. When I stretch out my right hand, I feel that I am a free man; when the muscles stretch, the power of freedom comes. The left hand, which moves more gently and can grasp more gently, brings what a person does in beauty.

So these three forces: Chesed = freedom, Geburah = vitality, Tiphereth = beauty, correspond to that in man which is connected with breathing and blood circulation, with everything that is in motion and always repeats itself. The movement of sleeping, the change between day and night, also belongs to this. This also belongs to the movement; man also belongs to this.

But then, humans are also beings that can change their position in space, that can walk around, that do not have to stay in one place like plants. The animal can also walk around. Man has this in common with the animal. The animal has no Chokmah, no Tiphereth, nor Chesed, but it does have Geburah = life force. And the three that I have described, man has in common with the animal only in that he has the others.

This, that one can go around, that one is not bound to one place, the Jews called: Netsah, and that means that one overcomes the firmness of the earth, that one moves (arrow 7 of the drawing). Netsah is overcoming. Now, the one that has more effect on the center of the human being, where his center of gravity is - it is interesting, you know: that is the point, which is located here; it is slightly higher in the waking state and lowers in the sleeping state, which also testifies that there is something outside when we are sleeping - that which works in the center of the body, which also brings about reproduction in humans, which is therefore connected with sexuality, the ancient Jews called Hod. Today we would describe it with a word that would express something like compassion. You see, the expressions are already becoming more human. So Netsah refers to the outer movement - we go out into space - and Hod refers to the inner feeling, the inner movement, the inner compassion with the outer world, that is all Hod (arrow 8). Then under 9: Jesod; this is now the one on which the human being actually stands, the foundation. The human being thus feels bound to the earth; the fact that he can stand on the earth is the foundation, is Jesod. That he has such a foundation also comes from the forces that approach him from outside.

And then the forces of the earth itself work on him (Arrow 10), not only the surrounding forces, but the forces of the earth itself work on him. This was then called Malkuth. We would translate it today as: the field in which the human being works, the earthly outside world; Malkuth - the field. It is difficult to find the right expression for this Malkuth. One could say: realm, field; but all things have actually been misused, and today's names no longer describe what the old Jew felt: that the earth actually has an effect on him.

We need only imagine that we have the center of the human being here; a thigh bone begins on each side of the human being – this goes up to the knee, where the kneecaps would be. All these forces also act on these bones; but the fact that it is actually pierced like this, that it is actually a tube, is due to the penetration of the earthly forces. So everything where the earthly forces penetrate, that is what the old Jew called Malkuth, the field.

So you see, you have to get close to people if you want to talk about this Sephiroth tree! The Jews called the ten Sephiroth together: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth, Netsah, Hod, Jesod, Malkuth. These ten forces are what actually connects man with the higher, with the spiritual world. Only the tenth power, Malkuth, is sunk into the earth. So basically, this is the physical human being (pointing to the drawing), and the spiritual human being surrounds this physical human being, first as the earth forces below, but then as the forces that are already closer to the earth, but still work in from the surroundings: Netsah, Hod, Jesod. So all of this belongs spiritually to man, as these forces take effect. Then there are the forces that affect his blood circulation and breathing: Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth. And then the noblest forces that affect man, that affect his brain system: Kether, Chokmah, Binah. So that the Jews actually thought of man as connected with the world on all sides, as I have colorfully depicted for you here. Man is indeed such that he also contains a supersensible element within him. And they imagined this supersensible element in this way.

But now we can raise the question: What else did the Jews actually want to achieve with the ten sephirot, that they used to explain man's relationship to the world? Every Jewish pupil had to learn the ten sephirot, but not just so that he could list them; you would have a completely false idea if you thought that the teaching in the old Jewish schools was such that the main thing I have drawn on the board was the most striking thing. If one only wants to answer the question, “What is the Sephiroth tree?” one could quickly have finished it; you would have known it in a flash. People today are satisfied with asking, “What is the Sephiroth tree?” This and that is in it, what I have told you now. But that is not in relation to man! Instead, they just give you ten words and all kinds of fanciful explanations for them! But in relation to the human being, what I have told you is the right thing. But that was not the end of it in schools; rather, the Jewish pupil who was to learn science in the sense of the time had to learn much more about it.

Just imagine, gentlemen, you had only learned what the alphabet is and you would know if someone asked you: What is A, B, C, D and so on? - so the letters A, B, C, D and so on. You would have been able to list the twenty-two or twenty-three letters in a row. You wouldn't be able to do much with that! If any man could only enumerate the twenty-three letters, he could not do much with them, could he? But an ancient Jew who could only say: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth, Netsah, Hod, Jesod, Malkuth, so these ten Sephiroth could have enumerated, would have been regarded just the same. Anyone who had only answered in this way would have seemed to the Jews like someone who could say: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and so on. You have to learn more than just the alphabet, don't you; you have to learn to use the alphabet to read, you have to learn how to use the letters to read. Now, gentlemen, just think about how few letters there are and how much you have already read in your life! You just have to consider that. Take any book, take, I mean, for example, Karl Marx's “Capital” and look at it when you have the book in front of you: there is nothing on the pages but the twenty-two letters, nothing else! There are only the letters in it in the book. But what is inside is a lot, and it is all produced by the fact that the twenty-two letters are jumbled up: sometimes the A is before the B, sometimes before the M, sometimes the M before the A, the L before the I and so on, and that's how the whole complicated thing in the book comes about. If someone only knows the alphabet, he picks up the book and perhaps says: I understand everything in the book: there is A, B, C, only arranged differently; I know everything in the book. But he cannot read everything that is really written there inwardly, according to the meaning. You see, one must learn to read with what the letters are; one must really be able to jumble the letters in one's head and mind in such a way that meaning arises from them. And so the ancient Jews had to learn the ten sephiroth; for them, they were letters. You will say: Yes, they are words. But in the beginning, letters were also designated by words! This was only lost by the people when the letters came to Europe, in Greece.

It was not until the transition from Greek to Roman culture that something very significant happened. The Greeks called their A not A, but Alpha, and Alpha actually means: the spiritual man; and they called their B not B, but Beta, that is something like a house. And so every letter had a name. And the Greek could not have imagined that the letter is something else than what is called by a name. It was only when the transition from Greek culture to Roman culture took place that people no longer said Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on. They no longer referred to the letters by their names, where each name indicated what such a letter meant. Instead, they said: A, B, C, D and so on, and the whole thing became abstract. Just as Greek culture was dying out and merging with Roman culture, the great cultural diarrhea began in Europe. In the midst of this huge diarrhea, the spiritual aspect of the path from Greek to Roman culture was lost.

And you see, Judaism was particularly great then. When they wrote down their Aleph, their first letter, they meant the human being. Aleph is that. They knew: wherever they placed this letter for the sensual world, what they expressed with this letter must apply to the human being. And so each letter that represented the expressions of the material world also had a name. And the names: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth, Netsah, Hod, Jesod, Malkuth, were the names for the spiritual letters, for that which one had to learn in order to read in the spiritual world. And so the Jews had one alphabet: Aleph, Beth, Gimel and so on - an alphabet with which they grasped the outer world, the physical world. But they also had the other alphabet, where they had only ten letters, ten Sephiroth, and with that they grasped the spiritual world.

You see, gentlemen, when I list the names for you, Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed and so on, well, that's like A, B, C, D and so on. But then such an old Jew would have known how to say, as we jumble the letters, Kether, Chesed, Binah. And if he had said: Kether, Chesed, Binah, if he had rolled the dice like that, he would have said: In the spiritual world, the highest spiritual power brings about intelligence through freedom. - And with that he would have designated the higher beings who do not have a physical body, in whom the highest power of heaven brings about intelligence through freedom.

Or he would have said: Chokmah, Geburah, Malkuth - that would have meant: Through wisdom, the spirits bring forth the life force through which they work on earth. - He knew how to jumble all these things together like we jumble letters. So these disciples of the ancient Jews understood spiritual science in their own way through these ten spiritual letters. This tree, the Sephiroth tree, was therefore the same for them as the tree of the alphabet with its twenty-three letters is for us. These things have developed in a very strange way, you see: in the first two centuries after the emergence of Christianity, people knew about all these things. But when the Jews were scattered throughout the world, this way of knowing through the ten Sephiroth was also scattered. Individual Jewish students, who, as you may know, were then called Chachamim when they became students of the rabbi, these Chachamim still learned these things; but even there it was no longer really known how to read through these ten Sephiroth. For example, in the 12th century, a great dispute arose over two sentences; the first sentence was called: Hod, Chesed, Binah. Maimonides held on to this sentence. His opponent, on the other hand, claimed: Chesed, Kether, Binah. So people were already arguing about these sentences. You have to know: These sentences are derived from the Sephiroth tree; one person read it this way, another that, and put the elements together in different ways. But this art of reading had actually been forgotten since the Middle Ages. And the interesting thing is that later, in the middle of the Middle Ages, a man appeared, Raimundus Lullus – a very interesting person, this Raimundus Lullus!

You see, gentlemen, getting to know a person like that is actually extremely interesting. Imagine there was someone among you who was quite curious. He would say to himself: Now that I've heard about Raimund Lullus, I want to read up on him! First, take the encyclopedia, but then take any books that mention Raimund Lullus: Yes, if you read what is written about Raimund Lullus in today's books, you will split your sides laughing, because he would have been the most ridiculous person you could ever imagine! People say: This Raimundus Lullus, he wrote ten words on pieces of paper, and then he took something like you have in a game of hazard, a kind of roulette, where you spin, where you jumble up the story, and he would have always jumbled up these ten pieces of paper, and what would have come out, he would have written down, and that would have been his world wisdom. Well, when you read something like that, that words were simply written on ten pieces of paper and mixed up, and the man wanted to find something special by doing that, you have to hold your sides laughing, because it's a ridiculous person who would do something like that.

But that was not the case with Raimundus Lullus. He actually said the following: You can still go as far as you like with all that your earthly alphabet gives you, but you still cannot find the truth. And now he said: Your ordinary head is not good enough to find the truth. This ordinary head is like a roulette wheel that you spin, but there is nothing in it, so nothing can be found to win. Lullus told his fellow human beings: You have actually all become empty-headed, your head is nothing more, there is nothing more in it. And you must put such concepts as these ten sephiroth into your heads one day; you must learn to turn your heads from one of the sephiroth to the other until you learn to use the letters. That is what Raimundus Lullus told them. It is also written in his writings. He only used a picture for it, and the philosophers took the picture seriously and believed that he really meant a kind of roulette where you turn around to mix the tickets, while this roulette that he meant is supposed to be the supersensible recognition in the mind!

This Tree of Life, this Sephiroth Tree, is therefore the spiritual alphabet. People who lived in the West, in Greece, had a spiritual alphabet even in ancient times. And in the time of Alexander the Great and Aristotle, ten concepts were also given there in the Greek way. You can still find them today in all school logics: Being, property, relationship, and so on, and also ten such names, only that they are different because they are suitable for the West. But in the West these ten Greek letters of the spiritual alphabet have been understood just as little as the ones mentioned before.

But you see, it is actually quite an interesting story that is taking place in humanity. Over in Asia, those who still knew something learned to read in the spiritual world through this Sephiroth tree. And in the first centuries of Christianity, people who still knew something about the spiritual world learned to read according to the Aristotelian Tree of Life - over in Greece, in Rome and so on. But gradually everyone – those of the Sephiroth Tree and those of the Aristotle Tree – forgot what these things actually are, and could only list the ten terms. And now we simply have to use these things in such a way that we learn to read in the spiritual world, otherwise little by little people will be forgotten. You see, the following is a very interesting sentence. When a Jewish sage wrote or said: Geburah, Netsah, Hod, one would have to translate today as follows in German: the life-force hatches the dreams in the kidneys. But when one says today: the life-force hatches the dreams in the kidneys, one means physical forces, physical effects. But when the ancient Jew said Geburah, Netsah, Hod, he meant that what is in man as a spiritual being brings about what appears in dreams. Everywhere it was a spiritual assertion that was expressed by what arose from the random throwing together of the letters.

It is indeed only through spiritual science that it is possible today to get any information about these things. Because no one will tell you today that these ten sephiroth were such letters for the spiritual world. You won't hear it anywhere else, no one really knows it today! So you can say that the situation is such that today's science no longer knows most of the things that were once known in humanity, and they must first be regained.

Take this letter that I have drawn for you here: Aleph 8. What does this Aleph mean for the sensory world? Well, it represents a person. This is how he stands, sending out his power. That is this line (drawing). He raises his right hand: that is this line; he stretches out the other hand: that is this line. So this first letter Aleph expresses man. And every letter expressed something – even in Greek – just as the first letter expresses “man”.

You see, gentlemen, today people no longer have any sense of how things are connected. The first letter for man was called Aleph by the Hebrews, Alpha by the Greeks, and by this they meant what moves spiritually in man, what is spiritual behind the physical man. But now you also have an old German word. First of all, it is used when a person has special dreams. When a spiritual person presses him, then this is called the nightmare, the nightmare. One says that something comes over the person that possesses him. But then, from nightmare, emerged elf, and then elf, the elf - these spiritual beings, the elves; the human being is only a condensed elf. The word Elf, which goes back to Alp, may still remind you of Alpha in Greek. You only have to omit the A to get Alph – ph is the same as our F – a spiritual being. Because the F has been added, we say: the Aleph in man, the Alp in man. If you omit the vowels everywhere, as is customary in Jewish, you get directly Alph = EIf for the first letter. People pronounce: Elf for this spiritual being. One speaks of elves. Of course, today one says: These are beings that the ancients invented out of their imagination. We no longer believe in it. But the ancients said: You only need to look at the human being itself to see the alph. The alph is just inside the body, and it is not a fine, ethereal being, but a dense physical being inside the human being. But people have long since forgotten how to understand the human being.

And so you experience the most droll thing, gentlemen. Just imagine that in the second half of the 19th century the following came about - I don't want to say anything against it, such things can happen -: a table was taken, people sat around it, let's say eight people; they place their hands, which then touch at the outermost ends, on the table top, and then the table starts to dance! Then they count the dance steps of the table, and form words out of them, also out of letters. These are spiritualistic sessions. What do people believe? They believe: Well, when we think, then nothing comes out of real knowledge; real knowledge must fall to us from somewhere. Now, in truth, it is so that the people who say that could certainly say it about themselves, because they are mostly those who are thoughtless and do not want to reflect, who would like the truth to come to them from somewhere without their own work. So eight of them sit around a table, then they have the table turned over, the first time A, the second time B, then C and so on, and from that they then form words – and those are then spiritualist revelations. Isn't that so, the wisdom came to them; they did not achieve it themselves!

But look, what should one actually say to such people? Such people want to recognize the spiritual world; that is their honest intention, to recognize the spiritual world. You cannot see the spirits; you cannot see or hear them because they have no body. So people think: they can use the table as a body, and in this way they can make themselves a little understood. Incidentally, it usually comes out as very general things that can be interpreted in different ways! But in any case, you have to say to these people: There you are, eight people sitting around the table; you want a spirit to come that makes itself heard. But aren't you spirits yourselves? You are spirits yourselves, sitting around there! Look at yourselves and seek the spirit within yourselves. There you will be able to find a much greater spirit. You will not assume that you will only be seen when you strike through a table, but when you use your limbs, your voices, and above all your powers of thought in a human way! Therefore it is indeed the case, and there is no need to doubt it, that when eight people sit around a table the table will begin to dance because the subconscious forces are acting on it. That is how it is, but it does not come out as something that would not come out in a much higher sense if a person were to exert his own Alpha or Aleph within himself.

But in the transition from Greek to Roman culture, people have forgotten Aleph. The first letter means A yes, only believe, the first letter means only A, that is, keep your mouth shut! But nothing comes of it. Once a wife got so fed up with her husband constantly lecturing from science. He had learned a lot and always lectured. She found it terribly annoying. And so one day she said to him: “You always want to lecture!” - “If you want to lecture, then shut up!” - Yes, actually the content has been completely lost. The Greeks did not think of one A, one Alpha, without thinking of the human being. They were immediately reminded of the human being. And they did not have a beta without remembering a house in which man lives. The alpha is always man. They imagined something similar to man. And at beta, they imagined something that is around man. Then the Jewish Beth and the Greek beta became the envelope around the alpha, which is still inside as a spiritual being. In the same way, the body would be the Beth, the Beta, and the Alpha would be the spirit within. And now we speak of the “alphabet” - but for the Greeks this means: “man in his house”, or also: “man in his body”, in his covering.

Well, gentlemen, it is actually terribly funny. Take a dictionary in your hand today, then look up all the wisdom that mankind has in the alphabet. If someone - you won't do it - starts at A and stops at Z, then he would have all the wisdom in himself. Yes, but according to what can this wisdom be arranged in man? According to the alphabet, according to what can be known about the human being. It is very interesting: people have spread all wisdom because they no longer knew that it actually points to what comes from the alphabet. If you translate alphabet, it comes out, if you put it a little differently: human wisdom, human knowledge - again expressed with a Greek word: anthroposophy, human wisdom. And that is what every encyclopedia says. Actually, every encyclopedia should include anthroposophy, because it is only arranged according to the alphabet, according to human wisdom, “the human being in his body.” It is terribly funny: actually every encyclopedia represents a skeleton, where in the alphabetically arranged science the old wisdom has disappeared. All flesh and blood has gone, all the muscles and nerves have fallen away. Now go to the encyclopedia; it contains only the dead skeleton of the old science. Now a new science must arise that does not just have the dead skeleton, like the encyclopedia, but really has everything about the human being again, flesh and blood and so on: that is anthroposophy! Therefore, one would like to throw all these encyclopedias to the devil, although they are needed today, because they are the dead skeleton of an old science. A new science must be founded!

You see, gentlemen, that is what you can learn from the Sephiroth tree if you understand it in the right way. It was very useful of Mr. Dollinger to ask this question, because it has taken us a little deeper into anthroposophy.

Next time on Wednesday at nine o'clock.