The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In recent weeks we have been considering the human being from all kinds of different points of view, with the aim of getting a better idea of complex human nature and the relationship of the human being to the world.

Let us begin by recalling something very simple, something we know about the elemental aspects: the fact that in the present world cycle, the human being has four effective aspects—physical body, ether body, astral body and I. Let us also consider how these four essentially manifest. We have to say that the I mainly comes to revelation in all expressions of the human will. When we sleep, the will is essentially at rest. In other words: the will principle does not then come to expression through the physical organization. The I is outside the physical body when we sleep. The fact that the will principle does not come to expression reveals to us that the I is then not present in the physical body.

The activity of the astral body essentially can be observed in the whole sphere of feelings. The astral body is also outside the human being in sleep, when the sphere of feelings moves to the dim, dark part of the conscious mind. Consciousness is altogether silent in sleep, and we may thus be in some doubt as to what really comes to revelation through the physical body and the ether body. Let us leave this aside for the moment. The physical body is the most obvious part of the human being. Even someone not able to have imaginative vision can perceive the reality of the ether body in a number of ways. For the moment, however, let us leave aside the physical and the etheric from the point of view we have just taken of the I as the will aspect and the astral as the feeling aspect.

If we follow a person’s life from morning to evening, in the waking state, the I and astral body are at work in the physical and ether bodies with regard to will and feelings. Taking all the inner experiences arising in the waking state, we have first of all the world of sensory perceptions, which are bound to the physical body. We also have the world of thoughts and ideas as the consequence of sensory perception. We know very well that our world of ideas in the waking state has elements of will and feeling in it.

We have often stressed that in the sphere of the soul it is easy to make the abstract distinction between ideas, feelings and will elements. But in reality these three inner activities blend into each other. We can sense the will element in the linking or separating of ideas. We can also perceive that the idea is imbued with feeling. We can feel ourselves in sympathy with one idea and perhaps in antipathy with another. Let us now turn to the I and the astral body as they leave the living body on going to sleep. They leave something behind in the physical world which, while it does not appear at first sight to be the same as plant life, essentially is nevertheless like it, for it has a physical and an ether body just like a plant. In our astral principle we have something which comes to outward revelation in the animal world, and in our I we have something which emerges in the specifically human form, thus also coming to outward revelation. Since, however, I and astral body are outside the physical and ether bodies from when we go to sleep until we wake up again, we cannot say that this human form or animal nature is part of the inner nature of I and astral body. We have to realize that I and astral body do not come to revelation in that case; when I and astral body are on their own, during sleep, they cannot reveal themselves to the physical world in a way perceptible to the senses or to the rational mind.

I and astral body are therefore entirely beyond sensory perception. Now we also know that when we look at something in the plant world, we are not at all inclined to see it the way we see a human being. Looking at a human being we are interested in the moral element, for instance, whether the individual is good or bad. This means that there is no point in thinking in terms of good or evil with reference to the physical and ether body, the principles which remain in the physical world when we have gone to sleep. The whole human moral element is brought back when we wake up and I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies.

Even people who do not have higher vision may take this as a sign that I and astral body have to do with what we call “the moral world order”. Our physical and ether bodies soak this up, as it were, as we wake up. And it is in no way absurd for those who do not have higher vision to say: Essentially, I and astral body belong to a completely different world, for the physical and ether bodies are neutral when it comes to being good or evil, just as plants are. I and astral body take moral responsibility into them.

Even those who do not achieve higher vision through the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy, but whose thinking relates to everyday life, will be able to realize that we are dealing with polar opposites here: physical body and ether body inclined to nature-given form, and I and astral body inclined to moral form. To take this further, however, we will need to draw on observations made through higher vision. When we use this to study the I and the astral body in the world to which they belong between going to sleep and waking up, they are seen to have the world of the spirit as their environment just as the natural world is the environment of the physical body. I and astral body bring the inner mortality to human beings from the world of the spirit. As the physical and ether bodies are morally neutral, they cannot possibly draw on them for moral impulses. They do in truth gain the moral impulses from the world in which they are between going to sleep and waking up.

In the science of the spirit, the following is said with regard to this: When human beings leave their physical and ether bodies on going to sleep, they meet, without being aware of it, the spiritual entities of the world, presenting to them all the inner morality they developed when conscious in their physical and ether bodies. They are compelled to let the world of soul and spirit work on the moral elements they have brought. This brings us to a different aspect of something we have often considered in our efforts to build a bridge between etheric and physical worlds on one hand and moral and spiritual worlds on the other.

The I has will quality. It develops its whole structure and constitution between waking up and falling asleep in the physical and ether bodies. When we go to sleep, the I meets the entities of the spiritual world. Here, as people walking around in the physical world, we perceive solid bodies with our organs of touch; we see colours, we use sensory perception. We relate to the physical forces of the world in a specific way The I also enters into a specific relationship to the powers of the world where it lives between going to sleep and waking up. Let me present this in graphic form It can only be schematic, of course. Let us say this is the physical man being in the process of going to sleep (Fig. 40, yellow).

This, which I am drawing here, is the ether body which fills the human being. If I were to draw the human being in the waking state, I’d have to draw in the astral body and the I. I am not going to do so, because I want to characterize the condition of going to sleep. The will element, that is, the I, meets the entities of the spiritual world.

It relates to them in the way we relate to physical entities with our physical body when awake. The relationship between the will-related I and the entities of the spiritual world is, however, much more real than the maya-like relationship which the physical body has with its environment. The relationship in sleep comes to expression above all in the following way, more or less, I can only put these things into images for you): When the I is in touch with the powers of the spiritual entities between going to sleep and waking up, everything evil in our state of soul makes the I waste away; everything good allows the will-related I to develop in freedom.

Showing this in graphic form we arrive at a specific form of the spiritual, will-related I form as it leaves the body (remember, these are only images). With regard to the human being of limbs, the I is quite intensely inside the human being even during sleep. Let me show it like this: These furrowed lines (light-coloured) have evolved from counter activities of the spiritual entities, their form depending entirely on the moral constitution. We may indeed say that the 1 assumes a spiritual form based on its moral constitution as it enters the world of the spirit.

When we go to sleep, the astral body also goes into the world outside us which is a world of soul quality. The will-related I meets the entities of the spiritual world, the feeling-related astral body enters into the soul sphere outside us.

The constitution of our will, with reference to good and evil, also has elements, or powers, of feeling in it. We merely have to recall the different feeling mood we have after doing a good deed compared to after doing something bad. 1 need only mention the whole sphere of self-reproach and inner satisfaction and you can see how our moral constitution is imbued with feeling. The feeling element as a whole enters the soul sphere when we fall asleep, and this enters into a relationship with the soul world outside. When we are awake we relate to the physical world around us through our ideas and in doing so develop the inner life of feelings—though the life of feeling merely connects with the life of ideas inside us. When we are asleep, our feeling-related astral principle makes direct contact with the astral world.

It is not given form, however. The will-related I is given form (I have shown this by drawing furrowed lines). Interaction between the astral body and the soul environment results in something I cannot draw as furrowing. I have to call it colouring, imbuing the astral body. To draw it I would, according to whether we are full of self-reproach or inner satisfaction, feelings of sympathy and antipathy, show the astral coloured by something with schematically may be shown as a particular colour (Fig. 41, reddish, blue).

Through the I, therefore, our higher nature is given form, and the astral is coloured through and through. This is of course a schematic way of putting it. It is perfectly justifiable to express these processes in colour images, but it has to be said that only part of the process can be expressed in this way. Instead of colouring the image I might just as well have all kinds of musical instruments at hand, for instance, and give expression to the above in combinations of sounds. One might even bring in qualities of taste. All this whirls and swirls together in the astral body when it is outside the physical body between going to sleep and waking up.

The situation is such, however, that the direction of the effective powers which bring about everything I have drawn, really derive, seen in schematic form, from the human being of limbs and metabolism. The spiritual entities and the soul world giving form and colour are working from below upwards, as it were.

If we try to discover the true nature of that which is given form and colour outside the human being between going to sleep and waking up, we finally arrive at the following. Between waking up and going to sleep the human form is complete, with I, astral body, ether body and physical body forming an interrelated whole. This goes hand in hand with a specific intensity of conscious awareness which is intellectual and has qualities of feeling and will. Compared to it, the element which is outside during sleep has an infantile quality. We think of a child’s dimmed-down state of consciousness, something we can only come close to when our consciousness is filled with dreams. Now imagine the child’s dimmed-down consciousness becoming even less developed—this would be closer to the nature of what is outside us during sleep. We might say: The element which is outside the human being during sleep is more infantile than the mind and spirit of a child.

What is the real nature of the element of human soul and spirit which lives outside during sleep? In the light of spiritual science, the determining factor is characteristically seen to come from the human being of limbs and metabolism. Studying what can be observed through higher vision one has the feeling—which gradually grows into the definite realization—that by taking this whole aspect here to be a photographic negative and visualizing the positive, we actually get the structure of the human brain. The scale is not the same, but if you see it as a negative and visualize the positive you get the human brain.

Think back to the various aspects I have presented. I have said that the structure of the human head in one particular life inwardly, in the structure of its powers, represents the individual from the previous life on earth, minus the head. What you are today contains the powers your head will have in your next life on earth. We see the same thing in what a human being puts into the outside world between going to sleep and waking up, except that it is infantile, childlike in form and, of course, converted into a negative.

Between going to sleep and waking up human beings in fact put an image into the world of what will incarnate into a physical form in their next life on earth. This is extraordinarily significant. If we now recall that it is the moral constitution of the soul which determines this form and coloration (Fig. 41), we must consider the powers inherent in the human head in the next life on earth to be the embodiment of the moral constitution of the soul in the present life. Since the powers of the human being come to expression in our ability to think and form ideas, this ability will therefore be the outcome of our moral constitution of soul in the present life. All of this exists as an image in what human beings put into the outside world on going to sleep.

In the light of the science of the spirit it would thus be fair to say: During the night, when we are asleep, we put a quite specific question to another world, the world of the spirit. We do not do this consciously but with a part of us that moves out of the physical and ether bodies at that time. The question we put is: How does my moral constitution of soul appear to the entities in the world of the spirit?

And we are given an answer which consists in the shaping of the furrows and the colouring we are given, both in accord with our moral constitution of soul. Every morning we enter into our physical and etheric bodies on waking up with an answer gained in the world of soul and spirit. Going to sleep, we always unconsciously ask a question; waking up, the answer is given at the unconscious level from the world of the spirit. At that level, we are all the time in dialogue with the world of the spirit, gathering there the answers which tell us the true state of our inner nature.

This allows you to see something which otherwise is always extraordinarily abstract. You see, when we speak of our conscience, this is something very real to us; yet when we are asked to speak of the specific nature of our conscience we immediately become rather vague. With reference to our moral impulses, conscience is something of which we have a real inner experience. Yet if we use the methods of ordinary science to reflect on conscience, we fall into chaos and are unable to arrive at anything definite. Here you are given something definite, which is, that your moral constitution of soul wins a continuous response from the world of the spirit. You bring the forms developed by the world of the spirit into your physical and etheric reality, and with this you bring the voice of conscience to it. In waking life, the answer given in form and colour is transformed into the voice of conscience. In fact we depend on the sleep state for everything we have by way of inner moral attitude.

Many examples have been given of the greater wisdom inherent in the instinctive perception of earlier times and the instinctive perception, which are not intellectual; it is greater than our modern science, though it takes the form of images. The moral principles of instinctive perception contain much of what comes back to us again through the true science of the spirit, though it is now clearer, more transparent and defined. One of the principles which is part of popular belief is that if someone has offended you, do not take your inner reaction to this through sleep but if at all possible settle the matter before you go to sleep. Do not take your anger through sleep, therefore, but try to calm it before you go to sleep.

When you know that going to sleep means you are putting a question to the world of the spirit and that waking up is the answer to your question, you will be able to say to yourself: The answer you receive from the world of the spirit and take into your physical body as you wake up will be different if you moderated your anger the night before, or reduced the offence you felt, than if you take the feelings of offence into sleep and put your question out of injured feelings or in such anger that the fire of your anger fills the whole question. If you take an angry mood into the world of the spirit it is as if a stream of volcanic fire were to pour into that world. The soul world outside then has to colour this stream of volcanic fire (Fig. 41, reddish). This is very different from the situation where you have let your anger go down before going to sleep.

The effects of much of what I have said here can be seen not only in the human heart and mind but also in the way physical life and the life of the internal organs, is tuned. The causes of many diseases lie in the questions we receive to the answers we unconsciously put to the spiritual world as we go to sleep. In the waking state, our physical and etheric organs have to deal fully with everything the will-related I and the feeling-related astral body bring with them from the world of the spirit as we wake up.

It is quite wrong to think we have lots of experiences when awake but none in our sleep. When awake we experience processes that mostly take place between ourselves and the physical outside world. Satisfaction feit about these processes accompanies our clear perception of our relationship to the world rather like an inner dream in heart and mind—you will remember that the feeling element only has dream-level intensity of consciousness. When we are between going to sleep and waking up, however, considerable inner activity goes an in the I and astral body: The will-related I is given form, the feeling-imbued astral body is imbued with the powers of the outside world of soul and spirit. These real, factual processes penetrate and stream through the physical and ether bodies, and the way we behave in the physical world is determined by this. We do more for our inner life during sleep than we do in our waking hours. 011 the other hand, what we do when asleep depends an those waking hours. I'd say that the whole significance of sleep essentially lies not only in physical experience but in the moral structure of our inner nature.

I have shown on a number of occasions that superficial ideas about the way in which the human physical and ether bodies relate to the process of going to sleep are wrong. It is usually said that human beings grow tired because they use their limbs, because they work, and they need to sleep to make up for this. Merely to remember that we do not always go to sleep because we are tired will put us on the right track. Think of the well-rested retired gentleman who may go to a lecture, for instance, because it is the done thing; he’ll usually be fast asleep after the first five minutes, which is hardly due to his being tired.

Considering the superficial experiences to be gained in this field, we come to realize that people generally confuse cause and effect in this instance. We are in fact tired because we want to go to sleep. The impulse to go to sleep is a much more inward one than the physical tiredness which is its counterpart. When the outside world offers nothing of interest, the longing arises to withdraw from it. Soul and spirit then leave the living physical body, which grows tired. We grow tired because we want to go to sleep, not the other way round. Anyone can see this, if they have the will to do so. It is of course extraordinarily difficult to accept the truth of things that are so closely bound up with people’s self-satisfied life interest. But if we are prepared to accept truth, we will reach the point where we do not merely see going to sleep as a physical and physiological process, but consider it in relation to the whole cosmos which, as I have shown from many different points of view, also contains the moral impulses as real impulses, not just mere words. The alternation between sleeping and waking thus shows us how a bridge can be built between the physical and the moral elements in our world order.

Du Bois-Reymond,⁴⁰ the physiologist who gave that famous lecture on the limits of natural science, once said: “It is utterly beyond us to grasp the human being as he is in waking life.” Well, we know what to think of such a statement. Du Bois-Reymond believes, however, that it is possible for us to grasp the sleeping human being. According to him, the laws and relationship of the physical world outside, which we are able to grasp, also pertain to the sleeping human being, only in a more complex fashion. We know this to be incorrect, but let us merely consider the statement, which is, that we can have scientific understanding of the sleeping human being, but not of the waking human being.

So here a scientist is admitting that we cannot use the tools of science to discover what pervades the whole human being in the waking sate, and that the sleeping individual as a physical entity looks very different from an individual who is awake even in the eyes of scientists.

Scientists know nothing, of course, of the will-related I and feeling-related astral body which leave the human being for the non-physical world. But this “nothing”, what is it in the light of our present study? It is something which belongs to the moral world order. The activity of the moral principle is a real world which begins at the very point where people taking the scientific approach cease their observations. After waking up, the real effects of the moral principle show themselves only in the inner constitution of the human being. To enter into the sphere where moral reality is to be found we must therefore consider the world in which human beings live between waking up and going to sleep. It is not surprising, therefore, that people who take the scientific view and do not enter into this world only know a real world which does not contain the moral impulses and therefore relegate moral impulses to the realm of pure belief.

Such belief, however, becomes insight as real as that achieved by the followers of the scientific approach once we turn our attention to the other sphere. Our discussion will, of course, have to be based on completely different premises if we want to consider this sphere of spirit and soul imbued with moral principles.

If my drawing represented something from the physical world, I would have to base myself on the physical. My drawing would be an image of this, and we would progress from external reality to something which is merely image. We have to take the opposite route if we want to represent the non-physical. We have to experience it inwardly and then go outside and represent inward experience in an image. This kind of inward experience is extremely mobile and I should really show this colouring as glittering and gleaming, shifting and changing, growing luminous and fading away again, which is exactly what the spiritual scientist observes when considering the human being as a whole.

If one gains a vision of the astral body and I during sleep—I am trying to be extremely accurate here—the form given to the I and the colouring given to the astral body is bright and distinct. When I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies, this bright, glittering and gleaming principle grows dark and dull. Outside the body the I aspect has definite contours; inside the body it grows indefinite. You get quite a specific feeling when you watch the I and astral body becoming submerged in the physical and ether bodies on waking. To use abstract words to describe this, means expressing oneself rather clumsily as a rule. It is however possible to define it relatively clearly. Observing the process you have a feeling which is rather like being aware of the coming of autumn and winter and letting this influence your soul. To consider the waking-up process in terms of the whole human being is to enter into a mood like that experienced with the coming of winter. Going to sleep, with the spirit and soul principles going outside the human being, you experience an inner mood similar to the one experienced with the coming of spring and summer. It is indeed the case that you enter into something very special here.

Dear friends, for several weeks I have tried to show how by taking the approach of spiritual science we come to see the human in relationship to the whole cosmos. I have shown you the human form in its relationship to the world of the fixed stars, and the levels of human life in relation to the world of the planets. Considering the human being in the light of spiritual science, we are always taken outside the human being. Today we have considered the alternating states of waking and sleeping; entering into them with inner feeling, we are again taken outside the human being, this time not into the world of the stars but into the world of time. So we said to ourselves: We understand the waking-up process if we understand the coming of autumn and winter; we understand the process of going to sleep if we understand the coming of spring and summer. From the progress of time in the human being we are taken into the progress of time in the cosmos, into the changing seasons. The human being is seen to be an image also of what happens in time. In the preceding weeks we endeavoured to see the human being as an image of the macrocosm more in terms of space.

We thus relate the human being to the world, and understand him in terms of the world. And then the moral world order also becomes reality for us and not a world of empty words. If we enter into everything we are able to feel in considering our relationship to the world, religious impulses enter into our ethical and moral world. The ethical will then comes to express the divine will which reigns in the human being, and the ethical and moral sphere is lifted up into the ethical and religious sphere. This is how anthroposophy as science of the spirit seeks to find the way to the ethical and religious. We shall continue with this tomorrow.

• 40. Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), German physiologist born in Berlin of French parentage, professor of physics at Berlin. The lecture referred to was published in Leipzig in 1916.

Easter is felt by large numbers of human beings as a festival connected on the one hand with the deepest and most intimate feelings of the human soul, and on the other hand with cosmic mysteries and cosmic riddles of existence. Indeed we cannot but observe the connection of Easter with the secrets and riddles of the Universe when we bear in mind the fact that Easter is a movable festival, the date of which has to be reckoned year by year from that constellation of the stars which we shall shortly consider more in detail. At the same time we must observe how many customs and sacred ceremonies have been associated with the Easter Festival for centuries—customs and ceremonies which lie very near to the heart of large numbers of humanity. These things will show us the immense values which mankind has gradually laid into the Easter Festival in the course of historic evolution.

In the first centuries of Christianity—not at its immediate foundation but in the course of the first centuries—Easter became a most important festival connected with the fundamental thought and impulse of Christianity, I mean, with that impulse which arises for the true Christian from the fact of the Resurrection of Christ.

Easter is the festival of the Resurrection. Yet at the same time it leads us back into pre-Christian times. It leads us to the festivals which were held about the time of the Spring Equinox (which still plays a part in our calculation, at least, of the date of Easter). It points to those old festivals which were connected with the reawakening of Nature—with the springing of life that grows forth once more from the Earth.

Here we already find ourselves within the very subject of these lectures; for here already we must touch upon the connection of Easter with the evolution of the Mysteries in the history of mankind.

Easter as a Christian festival is a festival of Resurrection. The corresponding Heathen festival, taking place about the same time of the year as our Easter, was a kind of Resurrection festival of Nature—the coming forth again of what was asleep in Nature throughout the winter time. But we must emphasise most strongly at this point that the Christian Easter is by no means coincident as to its inner essence and meaning with the Heathen festivals of the Spring Equinox. On the contrary, if we do want to relate it to the old Pagan times, we must connect the Christian Easter with certain festivals which, proceeding from the ancient Mysteries, were enacted at the Autumn season. This is a remarkable fact in the determination of the Easter Festival, which by its very content is obviously connected with certain of the ancient Mysteries. Easter above all can remind us of the deep and radical misunderstandings that have arisen, in the course of evolution, in the world-conceptions of mankind with regard to matters of the greatest significance. Nothing less has happened than that the Easter Festival has been confused with an altogether different one, and has thus been removed from Autumn and turned into a festival of Springtime.

We have here touched something of infinite significance in human evolution. Consider the content of this Easter Festival. What is it in its essence? It is this: Christ Jesus, the Being who stands at the centre of the Christian consciousness, passes through death. Good Friday is held in memory of this fact. Christ Jesus lies in the grave. It is a time that takes its course in three days, representing the union of Christ with Earth-existence. This time is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning—the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the day when the central Being of Christianity rises out of the grave; it is the day of remembrance of this. Such is the essential content of the Easter Festival: the Death, the lying in the Grave and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Now let us look at the corresponding ancient Heathen festival in any one of its forms. Only then shall we be able to penetrate into the connection between the Easter Festival and the Mysteries. In many places and among many people, we come across ancient Heathen festivals whose external structure—and the structure of the ceremonies which were enacted in them—is decidedly similar to the Easter-content of Christianity.

From the manifold festivals of ancient time, we may select for an example the Adonis festival. Through long, long periods of pre-Christian antiquity this festival was celebrated among certain peoples of Asia Minor. A sacred image was the central point of the festival. It was an image of Adonis—Adonis as the spiritual representative of all that is the springing and thriving force of youth in man, of all that appears as beauty in the human being.

True it is that in many respects the ancient peoples confused the substance of the image with what the image represented. The ancient religions often thus present the character of fetish worship. Many human beings saw in the image the actual and present God—the God of beauty, of the youthful strength of man, of the unfolding germinating forces which reveal in outward glory all the inner worth and inner greatness that man contains, or can contain, within him.

With songs and acts of ritual representing the deepest human grief and mourning, this image of the God was lowered into the waves of the sea, where it had to remain for three days. Or if the sea were not near it was lowered into a lake. Or again, an artificial pond was constructed near the sacred place of the Mysteries, so that the image of the God could be submerged and left for three days. During the three days the whole community associated with this cult remained in an atmosphere of deepest earnestness and stillness. After three days the image was withdrawn from the water. The songs of grief and mourning were transformed into songs of joy, hymns to the resurrected God, to the God who had come to life once more.

This was an outward ceremony which deeply stirred the hearts of large circles of mankind. And this ceremony indicated, in an outward act of ritual, what took place in the Holy of Holies of the Mysteries with every human being who was about to reach initiation. For within the Mysteries in those ancient times every human being who was to receive initiation was led into a special chamber. The walls were black, the whole space was dark and gloomy, empty save for a coffin, or something not unlike a coffin. Beside the coffin those who accompanied the candidate for Initiation broke forth into songs of mourning, songs of death. The candidate was treated like one who is about to die. He was given to understand that when he was now laid in the coffin, he would have to undergo what the human being undergoes in the first three days after death.

On the third day there appeared at a certain place, within sight of the one who lay in the coffin, a twig or a branch to represent springing, thriving life. And now the songs of mourning were transferred into hymns of joy and praise. With consciousness transformed, the man arose out of his grave. A new language, a new writing, was communicated to him; it was the language and writing of spiritual Beings. Henceforth he was allowed to see the world—for now indeed he could see it—from the standpoint of the Spirit.

What was thus enacted in the hidden depths of the Mysteries with the candidates for Initiation was comparable to the sacred cults or rituals enacted in the outer world. The content of the sacred ritual, pictorial as it was, was none the less similar in structure to what took place with chosen human beings in the Mysteries. Indeed the cult—and we may take the special cult of Adonis as representative—the cult was explained at the proper season to all those who partook in it. It was enacted in the Autumn, and those who took part in it were instructed somewhat as follows: “Behold, it is the Autumn season! The Earth is losing her adornment of plants and green foliage. All things are fading and falling. In place of the green and springing life that began to cover the Earth in Springtime, snow will soon come to envelop, or drought to lay waste, the Earth. Nature is dying, but while all things are dying around you, you are to experience that in the human being which is only half like the death you see around you in all Nature. Man also has to die. For him, too, there comes the Autumn season. And when man's life draws to a close, it is right for the hearts and minds of those who remain behind to be filled with sorrow and deep mourning. And that the full earnestness of the passage through death may come before your souls, that you may not experience it only when death approaches you yourselves, but may be mindful of it ever and again—it is enacted before you Autumn by Autumn how the divine Being who is the representative of the beauty, youth and greatness of man, dies and undertakes the same journey as all the things of Nature. Nevertheless, just when Nature is laid waste and bare, when all things in Nature are on the way to death, you also are to remember another thing. Remember how man passes through the gate of death! All that he experienced here in this earthly life was like the things that die in Autumn-time. For in this earthly realm he experiences only what is transient. But when he has passed from the Earth and lives on out into the far spaces of the Cosmic Ether, then will he behold himself growing ever greater and greater, till the whole Universe becomes his own. For three days he will live outward and outward into the wide spaces of the Universe. And then, while here on Earth the earthly eye is turned to the image of death—for the earthly eye is turned to all that dies, to all things transient—yonder in the Spirit after three days the immortal soul of man awakens. Yonder the soul arises, arises to be born again for Spirit-land, three days after passing through the gate of death.”

Deep and penetrating was the inner transformation when these things were enacted in the candidate's own person during the Initiation ceremony, in the hidden depths of the Mysteries. The profound impression, the immense and sudden jerk which the life of a man underwent in this ancient form of initiation, awakened inner forces of the soul within him. (As we shall presently see, in modern times it cannot be done in this way but must be done in quite another way.) The inner forces of the soul, the powers of seership were awakened in him. He knew that he stood henceforward no longer in the world of the senses but in the spiritual world.

I may perhaps sum up in the following words the instruction that was given, once more at the right and proper time, to the pupils in the ancient Mysteries. They were told: That which is enacted in the Mysteries is an image of what takes place in spiritual worlds, in the Cosmos. Sacred cult is itself an image of what is enacted in the sacred Mysteries. For everyone who was admitted to the Mysteries was fully clear that events which the Mysteries concealed within the earthly realm—events enacted there upon the human being—were true images of what man experiences in the wide spaces of the astral-spiritual Cosmos in other forms of existence than in this earthly life. And those who in ancient times were not admitted to the Mysteries—since according to their stage in life they could not yet be chosen to receive the vision of the spiritual world directly—were instructed in the corresponding truths through the sacred cult or ritual, that is to say, through a picture of what was enacted in the Mysteries.

Such, then, was the purport of the Mystery which we have learned to know in this example of the Adonis festival. Autumn, when earthly things were fading away, becoming waste and bare, Autumn, expressing so radically the transitory nature of all earthly things, the dying process and the fact of death—this Autumn time was to call forth in man the certainty, or at least the pictured vision, of how the death that overcomes all Nature in the Autumn, overcomes man too, nay even overcomes the representative of all beauty, youthfulness and greatness in the human soul, portrayed in the God Adonis. Even the God Adonis dies, and is dissolved in the earthly prototype of the cosmic Ether—in the Water. But even as he rises again out of the Water, even as he can be drawn forth from the Water, so is the soul of man drawn forth from the Waters of the world, that is to say, from the cosmic Ether, approximately three days after the human being here upon Earth passes through the gate of death.

It was the secret of death itself which those ancient Mysteries sought to represent in the corresponding Autumn festival. They made it visible in picture form, in that the first half of the sacred ritual coincided with the dying and the death in Nature, while on the other hand the very opposite was shown to be the essential truth for man himself. Such was the meaning and intention of the Mysteries: the human being shall turn his gaze to the death of Nature, in order to become aware how he himself dies in the outward semblance, while in his inner being he is resurrected—resurrected, to begin with, for the spiritual world. To unveil the truth about death was the meaning and purpose of this ancient Pagan festival which was connected so closely with the Mysteries.

Then in the further course of human evolution the great Event took place. What had been undergone at a certain level by the candidate for initiation in the Mysteries—the Death and Resurrection of the soul—took place even as to the body with Christ Jesus. For how does the Mystery of Golgotha appear to one who is acquainted with the Mysteries! He gazes back into the ancient Mysteries. He sees how the candidate for Initiation was led, in his soul, through death to the Resurrection of the soul; that is to say, to the awakening of a higher consciousness in the soul. The soul died, to rise again in a higher consciousness. We must above all hold fast to this, that the body did not die, but the soul died, in order to be awakened to a higher consciousness.

What the soul of every candidate for Initiation underwent, Christ Jesus underwent even in the body. That is to say, He underwent it on a different level. For Christ was no earthly man. He was a Sun-Being dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence what the candidate for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries had undergone in his soul, could be undergone in the entire human nature by Christ Jesus upon Golgotha.

Those who still had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries and of the above Initiation-rite—it was they who understood most deeply what had happened upon Golgotha. Indeed to this day, it is they who understood it most deeply. For they could say to themselves: For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been led through the death and resurrection of their souls into the secrets of the spiritual world. The soul was kept separate from the body during the act of Initiation. The soul was led through death, to life eternal. What was thus experienced in the soul by a number of chosen human beings, was undergone even in the body by a Being who descended from the Sun at the Baptism by John in Jordan, and took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The act of Initiation that had been repeated again and again through long, long years, now became a historic fact.

The essential thing was that man should know: because it was a Sun-Being who took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore what was accomplished for the Initiates only with respect to the soul and the soul's experience, could be accomplished now even into the bodily existence by this Being. In spite of the death of the body, in spite of the dissolving of the body of Jesus of Nazareth in the mortal Earth, there could be a Resurrection of the Christ. For the Christ rises higher than the soul of the initiate could rise. The candidate for Initiation could not carry the body into those deep regions of the sub-sensible into which Christ Jesus carried it. Hence, too, the candidate for Initiation could not rise so high in resurrection as the Christ. Yet it remains true that but for this difference in respect of cosmic greatness, the ancient rite of Initiation appeared as a historic fact at the sacred place of Golgotha.

Yet even in the first centuries of Christianity there were only few who knew that a Being of the Sun, a cosmic Being, had lived in Jesus of Nazareth, that the Earth had really been fertilised by the descent from the Sun of a Being whom until then man upon Earth had only been able to behold within the Sun, by the methods cultivated at the places of Initiation. This was the essential point in Christianity, inasmuch as it was also accepted by those who had real knowledge of the ancient Mysteries. They could say: The Christ to whom we lifted ourselves up through our initiation, the Christ whom we could reach by our ascent to the Sun in the ancient Mysteries, has descended into a mortal body, into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He has come down to Earth.

It was indeed a festival mood, nay, a mood of sublime holiness which filled the hearts and souls of those who, living in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, had some understanding of this Mystery. Gradually, and by processes which we shall yet have to trace, what had thus been an immediate and living content of their consciousness became a memory, a festival in memory of the historic event on Golgotha. But while this “memory” was taking shape, the consciousness of who the Christ was as a Being of the Sun, became lost ever more and more. Those who had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries could not fail to know about the Being of the Christ. For they knew that the real Initiates, being made independent of the physical body and passing in their souls through death, rising into the Sun-sphere and there visiting the Christ, had received from Him—from Christ within the Sun—the impulse for the resurrection of their souls. They knew the nature of the Christ because they had raised themselves to Him. With their knowledge of this Initiation rite, the ancient Initiates knew from what took place on Golgotha that the same Being who formerly had to be sought for in the Sun, had now visited mankind on Earth. Why was it so? The sacred rite that had been enacted with the candidates for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries in order that they might reach up to the Christ within the Sun, could no longer be enacted in this way. For in the course of time, human nature had undergone a change. By the very evolution of the human being, the ancient ceremony of Initiation had become impossible. It would no longer have been possible through that ancient Initiation ceremony to visit the Christ in the Sun. It was then that He descended to enact on Earth a sacred deed to which human beings might henceforth turn their gaze.

What is contained within this secret is one of the very holiest things that can possibly be uttered on this Earth.

For how did it really appear to the human beings in the centuries following the Mystery of Golgotha?

From an ancient Initiation sanctuary man upon Earth looked upward to the Sun-existence and became aware, through his Initiation, of Christ within the Sun. Man looked out into Space in order to approach the Christ. And how did the evolution of mankind go forward in the succeeding periods? I must now represent Time itself: the Earth in one year, the Earth in a second year, in a third year, and so on in the course of Time. Spatially, the Earth is of course always present but here I have represented the course of Time. The Mystery of Golgotha has taken place. A human being living, let us say, in the eighth century A.D., instead of looking upward to the Sun from a sacred place of the Mysteries so as to reach the Christ, looks backward through the course of Time—back to the Mystery of Golgotha. At the turning-point of Time—at the beginning of the Christian era—he beholds the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus he can find the Christ within an earthly action, within an event on Earth. He finds the Christ within the Mystery of Golgotha.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha, what had formerly been a vision in Space, became henceforward a vision in Time. That was the significance of what had taken place.

We must however especially contemplate what took place during Initiation in the ancient Mysteries. It was a picture of the death of man and of his resurrection in the life beyond. Then we must consider the structure of the sacred cults, the festival of Adonis, for instance. For this in turn was a picture of what took place within the Mysteries. When we contemplate all this, these things—the three united into one—come before us in a sublime and transcendent aspect concentrated in the one historic action upon Golgotha.

Outwardly upon the scene of history there appears what was hitherto accomplished in the deep and inner Holy of Holies of the Mysteries. For all human beings there now exists what existed hitherto only for the Initiates. Men no longer need an image that is immersed and symbolically resurrected from the sea. Henceforth they shall have the thought—the memory—of what took place in all reality on Golgotha. The outward symbol, relating to a process that was experienced in Space, is now to be replaced by the inward thought and memory, without any picture to the senses—the memory of the historic event of Golgotha, experienced purely in the soul.

Strange is the course of human evolution as we perceive it in the succeeding centuries. Man's penetration into spiritual things becomes ever less and less. The spiritual content of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot find its way into the minds of men. Evolution tends now to develop the sense for material things. Men lose the inner understanding of the heart, which once told them that just where outer Nature reveals her transitoriness and appears as a dying existence, the life of the Spirit can be seen, and with it they lose their understanding for that outer festival which can most truly be felt when Autumn comes with its fading, dying process, inasmuch as the death of the Earthly and Natural corresponds to the Resurrection of the Spiritual.

Thus it becomes possible no longer for Autumn to be the time of the Resurrection Festival. Autumn loses its power to turn man's thought from the transitoriness of Nature to the eternity of the Spirit. Man now needs the support of material things, needs the support of what does not die in Nature, but springs forth again in Nature. He needs to connect his Resurrection Festival with that which is resurrected in outer Nature—the force of the seed which was laid into the Earth in Autumn-time. He takes the material as a symbol for the Spiritual because he is no longer able to receive inspiration for a true perception of the Spiritual itself. Autumn no longer has the power to make manifest through the inner power of the human soul the Eternity of the Spirit, over against what is transient in the world of Nature. Man needs the support of external Nature, of the external Resurrection in Nature. He needs to see how the plants spring out of the Earth, how the Sun increases in strength, how light and warmth increase in strength once more. He needs the Resurrection in Nature in order to celebrate the thought of the Resurrection.

At the same time he loses that immediate inner relationship which he had with the Adonis Festival, and which he can also have with the Mystery of Golgotha. The inner experience which could arise at the earthly death of man, loses its power. In that inner experience the human soul was aware how the man who in the earthly sense passes through the gate of death, undergoes in three days what can indeed fill the soul with solemnity and earnestness. Then, however, the soul must become inwardly joyful, inasmuch as out of this very death the human soul arises after three days to spiritual immortality.

The power that lay in the Adonis Festival was lost. To begin with, it was intended for humanity that this power should arise with still greater intensity. Man had gazed upon the death of the God, the death of all that is beautiful in mankind—of all that is great and filled with the strength of youth. This God was immersed in the ocean on the day of Mourning, on the day of Chara (Charfreitag is Good Friday; Chara means mourning). They fell into a solemn, earnest mood. This was the feeling they first wanted to unfold in view of the transitoriness of Nature. But then this very feeling of the transitoriness of Nature had to be transformed by the soul into a feeling of the super-sensible resurrection of the human soul after three days. When the God—or image of the God—was lifted out again, the true believer beheld the image of the human soul a few days after death. “What happens to the dead man in the Spirit, behold! it stands before thy soul in the image of the resurrected God of youthful strength and beauty!”

This truth, deeply united with the whole destiny of man, was really awakened in the human spirit year by year in the Autumn season. In that ancient time men could not have thought it possible to take their start from external Nature. That which was perceptible in the Spirit was represented in the symbolic action of the sacred cult. But the time came when this picture of ancient times had to be blotted out in order that the memory, unassisted by any image—the inward memory, experienced purely within the soul, the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha in which the same truth is contained—should take the place of the picture. To begin with, humanity had not the power for it to be so. For the Spirit descended into the very depths of the soul of man. To this day it has remained so; man needs the support of external Nature. But external Nature provides no symbol—no perfect symbol—of the destinies of man in death. Thus the thought of death itself was able to live on, but the thought of the Resurrection disappeared more and more. Though the Resurrection is still referred to as an article of faith, the fact of the Resurrection is not a really living experience in the humanity of modern times. It must become alive again through the anthroposophical conception reawakening the sense of man to the true Resurrection thought.

The Michael thought, as was said at the proper season, must lie near to the anthroposophical heart and mind as the thought of the Herald of Christ. The Christmas thought too, must be made ever deeper in the heart of the anthroposophist. And the Easter thought must become especially sacred and joyful. For Anthroposophy has to add to the thought of Death, the thought of the Resurrection. Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into man's world-conception. This will indeed be possible if it is understood how the thought of the ancient Mysteries can live on in the true Easter thought. And this will still be possible if there arises a true conception of the body, soul and spirit of man, and of the destinies of body, soul and spirit, in the physical world, the soul-world and the spiritual world of Heaven.

Dornach, 22nd June, 1924

The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and discussion of anything that has to do with this 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 relationships 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. Without insight into the course which karma takes in the world and in the evolution of humanity it is quite impossible to understand why external nature is displayed before us in the form in which we behold it.

We have been studying examples of how karma may take its course. These examples were carefully chosen by me in order that now, when we shall try to make the transition to the study of individual karma, we can link on to them. To begin with I will give a general introduction, because friends are present to-day who have not attended the lectures on karma given during the last few weeks and months.

It is very essential to realise the importance and seriousness of everything connected with our Christmas Foundation Meeting. We must be deeply conscious of the fact that this Christmas Meeting constituted an entirely new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. And there must be no returning to old customs, to old habits of thought in relation to the fundamental changes that have come about in the method of handling the truths of Anthroposophy. The contents of the lectures given here since Christmas should not really be passed on to any audience otherwise than by reading an exact transcript of what has been said here. A free exposition of this particular subject matter is not possible at the present stage. If such a course were proposed I should have to take exception to it. These difficult 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. If anyone proposes to communicate the subject-matter to an audience in some different way, he must first get in touch with me and enquire whether this would be possible. For in future a united spirit must prevail through the whole Anthroposophical Movement. Otherwise we shall fall into the same mistakes that were made by a number of members who thought it their duty to elaborate anthroposophical truths in terms of modern science, and we have experienced to the full how much harm was done to the Movement by what was then “achieved”—I say the word with inverted commas!

These conditions do not, of course, apply to entirely private communications; but even in such cases the person who makes them must be fully alive to his responsibility. For the moment things are spoken of in the way we are speaking of them here, there begins, in the fullest meaning of the words, a sense of responsibility in regard to communications from the spiritual world. It is difficult to speak of such matters here in view of the limitations of our present organisation which do not, however, admit of any other arrangement. It is difficult to speak about these matters because such lectures ought really to be given only to listeners who attend the series from beginning to end. Understanding will inevitably be difficult for anyone who comes in later. If, however, friends are fully conscious that such difficulties exist, a certain balance can be established. Provided this consciousness is present, then all will be well. But it is not always there ... Nor will it ever be possible to think in the right way about these matters—which are among the most delicate in our Movement—if, as is still the case even since the Christmas Foundation, the same habits persist—jealousies, mutual rancour and the like. A certain attitude of mind, a certain earnestness are absolutely essential for anthroposophical development.

Before I assumed the office of President I spoke of such matters as a teacher. But now I must speak of them in such a way that they actually represent what proceeds from the Executive at the Goetheanum and must come to life within the Anthroposophical Society. I think that the meaning of what I have said will be understood. I have spoken as I have in order that the necessary earnestness may prevail in regard to lectures of the kind now being given.

Karma is something that is in direct operation through the whole course of man's life but lies concealed in the unconscious and subconscious regions of the human soul, behind the outer experiences.

Now a biography should evoke experiences of a very definite kind in the reader if he follows the narrative with genuine, warm-hearted interest. If I were to describe what the reading of a biography can awaken in us, it is this.—Whoever reads a biography with alert attention will find description after description of events and phenomena which are not really in keeping with an uninterrupted flow of narrative. When reading a biography we have before us a picture of the life of a man. But truth to tell it is not only the facts experienced in his waking consciousness that play into his life. Time takes its course thus.—First day, then night; second day, then night; third day, then again night, and so on. But in ordinary consciousness we are aware only of what has happened during the days—unless we write an anthroposophical biography which, in the circumstances of present-day civilisation, is an utter impossibility. Biographies give an account of what has happened during the days, during the hours of waking consciousness of the one whose biography is being written.

But that which actually shapes life, gives it form and implants into it the impulses that are connected with destiny—this is not visible in the events of the days but comes into operation between the days, in the spiritual world, when man himself is in the spiritual world from the time of falling asleep to that of waking. These impulses are at work in life but are not indicated in biographical narratives. To what, then, does a biography amount? In regard to the life of a man it is as if we were to hang Raphael's Sistine Madonna on a wall and paste strips of white paper over certain places so that only portions of the surface remain visible. Anyone looking at the picture would be bound to feel that there must be something more to be seen if it is to be a complete whole.

Everybody who reads a biography dispassionately ought in truth to feel this. In view of the conditions of culture to-day it can be indicated only by means of style, but that should be done. The whole style and manner of writing should indicate that impulses are flowing all the time into the life of a man from impersonal levels of the life of soul and spirit. If that is achieved we shall gradually come to feel that in a biography, karma itself is speaking. It would of course be pure abstraction to narrate some scene in a man's life and then add: This comes from a previous earthly life; at that time it took such and such a form and now it takes this. Such a way of speaking would be sheer abstraction, although a great many people would probably find it highly sensational! Actually, however, it would contain no higher spirituality than is to be found in the conventional biographies written in our time, for everything that is produced in this domain to-day is so much philistinism.

Now it is possible to cultivate the attitude of soul that is needed here by learning, shall I say, to love the diaries or daily notes written by individuals. If such diaries are not read (or written), thoughtlessly ... some diaries, of course, are very humdrum and prosaic, but even so, as he follows the transitions from one day to another, a man who is not a philistine will be aware of feelings and perceptions which lead on to an apprehension of karma, of the connections of destiny.

I have known people—and their number is by no means small—who out of blissful ignorance thought themselves capable of writing a biography of Goethe. But the fact is that the more deeply one looks into the connections of existence, into the karmic connections of existence, the more do the difficulties increase.

Try to recall what I have been telling you here recently, and especially the lecture in which I urged you expressly to understand me with your hearts rather than with your intellects, and when I should speak again, to receive that too with your hearts. Remember the emphasis I laid upon this. For the fact of the matter is that an intellectual approach cannot lead to a real apprehension of karma. Anyone who is not inwardly shaken by many of the karmic connections disclosed here shows that any real perception of karma is beyond him and that he is incapable of pressing on to the perception of individual karmic connections.

But let us try now to find the transition from the studies hitherto pursued, to what can lead us to say of some happening in the life of a man that this is karma, in a definite form of manifestation.

When I recall all that I experienced in relation to Goethe during the seven years I was working in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar—in narrating the story of my life I am having to review it all in thought—I say to myself in reference to karma that one of the most difficult problems in any presentation of the subject is to describe the experiences through which Goethe passed between the years 1782 and 1800. To write this chapter in a biography of Goethe is one of the most difficult of all tasks.

Now we must learn to perceive, even if it has to be with higher, occult vision, how and where karma is working in the life of a man.

Between the moment of falling asleep and that of waking, man lives in his astral body and his ego, outside his physical and etheric bodies. With his ego and astral body he lives within the spiritual world. Again, it is one of the most difficult of all investigations that can be undertaken in spiritual science to make an accurate survey of what happens between falling asleep and waking. I shall describe it in outline to-day.

If you review all that has been brought before you in Anthroposophy, you will feel that it gives the impression of being comprehensible; but the discovery of it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty in anthroposophical investigation.

If I were to draw a kind of sketch of the human being, this outline or boundary-line indicates his physical body. In this physical body is the etheric body, within that the astral body, and within that again, the ego, the ‘I’.

Now think of man as he falls asleep. The physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed. What happens to the astral body and the ego? The astral body and the ego go out through the head and, in reality, through the whole senses-system, that is to say, they pass out through the whole body but mainly through the head, and are then outside. Thus, leaving aside the ego, we can say: At the moment of falling asleep the astral body leaves the human being through the head. Actually, the astral body leaves him through everything that is a sense organ, but because the sense organs are concentrated chiefly in the head, the main part of the astral body goes out through the head. But as the sense of warmth, for example, is distributed over the whole body, and the sense of pressure too, weaker radiations also take place, in every direction. The whole process, however, gives the impression that at the moment of falling asleep the astral body passes out through the head.

The ego, which—speaking in terms of space—is rather more extensive than the astral body and not entirely enclosed within it, also passes out.—Such is man as he falls asleep.

Now let us turn to man as he wakes. When we observe him at the time of waking we find that the astral body approaches through the limbs, actually through the tips of the fingers and toes first, and then gradually spreads through the limbs. Thus at the moment of waking the astral body comes in from the opposite side. So too, the ego, only now the ego does not envelop the astral body but on returning is enclosed by the astral body.

We wake from sleep and as we do so the astral body and the ego stream into us through the tips of the fingers and toes. In order to fill the human being entirely, as far as his head, they really need the whole day; and when they have reached the head the moment has come for them to go out again. You will realise from this that the ego and astral body are in constant, perpetual flow.

At this point you may raise the question: Yes, but if that is so, half an hour after waking from sleep we have in us only a small part of our astral body (and here I include the ego as well) as far as the wrists above and as far as the ankles below. And that is actually so.—If somebody wakes at 7 o'clock—I will assume him to be a person of decorum and stays awake, then at 7.30 his astral body will have reached about as far as his ankles and possibly his wrists. And so it goes on, slowly, until the evening.

You may say: But how is it, then, that we wake up as a whole man? We certainly feel that we wake as a whole man, all at once ... yet properly speaking, only our fingers and toes were awake at 7.15, and at mid-day most people are within the astral body only as if they are sitting in a hip bath. This is really so.

The question that arises here must be answered by pointing to the fact that in the spiritual realm other laws prevail than in the physical world. In the physical world a body is exactly where it is—nowhere else. In the spiritual world it is not so. In the spiritual world our astral body works through the whole space taken up by the body, even when it has actually occupied only the fingers and toes. That is the strange fact. Even when the astral body is only approaching it can already be felt throughout the body. But its reality, its substantiality spreads out only slowly.

Understanding of this phenomenon is of the greatest importance, above all in enabling a true judgment to be formed of the human organisation in health and disease. For think of it: throughout the hours of sleep, in what lies in the bed and is not man in the full sense but only the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of plant-mineral activity is going on, albeit within a human organisation. And this activity can be either normal or abnormal, healthy or unhealthy.

It is precisely in the morning hours, when the astral body begins to rise upwards from the limbs, that the unhealthy phenomena become manifest to a special faculty of perception. Therefore in forming a judgment of illnesses it is of the utmost importance to know what feelings the patient has when he wakes from sleep, when his astral body is forcing upwards what is unhealthy within him.

And now let us proceed.—On falling asleep, our ego and astral body pass out of our physical and etheric bodies into the spiritual world. The after-effects of what we have experienced during the day still remain. But thoughts do not remain in the form in which we harboured them, neither do they remain in the form of words. Nothing of this remains. Remnants, vestiges, still adhere to the astral body when it passes out, but no more than that.

Immediately the astral body has passed out of the human being, karma begins to take shape, although at first in the form of pictures only. Karma begins to take shape. What we have done through the day, whether good or bad, viewing it to begin with in accordance with customary ideas—directly we fall asleep, all this begins immediately to be translated, integrated, into the stream of karmic development.

This process continues for a time after we fall asleep and overshadows everything else that happens to us during sleep. As sleep continues, however, a man begins to dive down into the experiences undergone in his preceding earthly life (see arrows in diagram), then into those of the life before that, and so on, backwards. And when the time of awakening comes he has reached and passed his first, most distant earthly life as an individual. Then he reaches the state of being when he was not yet separate from the cosmos, a state of existence in reference to which one cannot speak of an earthly life as an individual. Only when he has reached thus far can he return again into his physical and etheric organisation.

Still another question arises here, moreover a very important one.—What happens when we have a very short sleep—for example an afternoon nap? Or indeed when we have a brief forty winks during a lecture, but really do go to sleep; the whole thing may last only two or three minutes, perhaps only a minute or half a minute. What happens then? If the sleep were real, we were in the spiritual world during that half minute.

The truth is, my dear friends, that for this short nap even during a lecture, the same holds good as for the all-night sleep of a lie-a-bed—I mean, of course, a human lie-a-bed! As a matter of fact, whenever a man falls asleep, even for a brief moment, the whole sleep is a unity and the astral body is an unconscious prophet; it surveys the whole sleep up to the point of waking ... in perspective, of course. What is remote may lack clarity, as when a short-sighted person looks down an avenue and does not see the trees at the farther end of it. In the same way the astral body may be short-sighted, figuratively speaking, in the subconscious. Its perception does not reach the point where the individual earth-lives begin. But broadly speaking, the fact is that even during the briefest sleep we rush with tremendous, lightning-like rapidity through all our earthly lives. This is a matter of extraordinary significance. Naturally it is all very hazy; but if somebody falls asleep during a lecture, then the lecturer or those who share his power of observation have it in front of them. Think of it: the whole of earth-evolution, together with what the sleeper has experienced in previous earthly lives! When somebody falls asleep during a lecture everything lacks clarity because it happens with such terrific rapidity; one thing merges quickly into another, but it is there, nevertheless. From this you will understand that karma is perpetually present, inscribed as it were in the World-Chronicle. And every time a man falls asleep he has opportunity to approach his karma. This is one of the great secrets of existence.

One who can survey these things from the vantage-point of Initiation Science, with unimpeded vision, looks with deep reverence, a reverence of knowledge, upon what can live in a human memory, upon the memory-thoughts that can arise in the human soul. These memories tell only of the earth-life now being undergone, yet within them lives a human ego. And did these memories not exist—I have spoken of this previously—then the human ego would not be fully present. Deep down within us there is something that can ever and again evoke these memories.

But inasmuch as we are in communication with the external world through our senses and our mind, we form ideas of this external world, ideas that give us pictures of what is outside.

Drawing this diagrammatically, we say: here (a) man looks out into the world. Pictures arise in his thoughts, representing to him what he perceives in the external world. Here (b) man lives within his body. Thoughts well up, containing their own store of memories. Of our store of memories we say that it presents, as faithfully as our organisation of spirit-soul-body allows, what we have experienced in this present life on earth.

But now let us think about what lies on the other side, outside man. We do not as a rule reflect upon the fact that what we see there is but a section of earth-existence, in the first place, the surrounding earth and sky. If a man is born in Danzig, his eyes and other senses perceive different processes and phenomena from those of one born in Hamburg or in Constantinople. We can say: The world presents ‘sections’ of itself in infinite variety; for no two human beings are these sections identical, even though the two may have been born at the same place and die at the same place, living their lives in close proximity. The section of the world presented to the one is completely different from that presented to the other.

Let us be quite clear what this means. The world presents to us a certain part of itself and this we see. The rest we never see. It is extremely important to reflect upon how the world presents to a human being a sum-total of impressions upon which the experiences of his life depend. This will mean very little to a shadowy thinker, but one who thinks deeply will not put it lightly aside. As he ponders it all he will say: ‘This fact is so puzzling that I am at a loss how to put it into words.—The cosmos, the world, presents to each human being only a portion of itself, a more or less coherent portion; therefore in this sense the cosmos particularises human beings. How am I to put this into words? In speaking of it as abstractly as this I am merely stating a bare fact which does not really amount to anything. I must be able to express the facts clearly, to formulate them. How am I to do so?’

Now we shall arrive at a way of formulating these facts if we again consider memory. What is it that wells up from the depths when we recall something in memory? What is it that rises up? It is what our own human being has experienced. Our real human being is somewhere deep down where we cannot take hold of it. It streams up in our memory-thoughts, streams up into our consciousness from our inmost being. What is it that streams into us from outside? Man himself is still so minute when all this is welling up from within him and everything in the cosmos out yonder is so vast, of such immensity! But these ‘sections’ of the cosmos are always entering into man. And the fact of the matter is that here too, thoughts arise.

We know that our memory-thoughts derive from what we have actually experienced. But thoughts also come into us from outside, just as memory-thoughts come from below. Here below (see diagram) is our own human being; and here, outside, is the whole world of the Hierarchies.

An impression of greatness and majesty comes to us when with Initiation-Science we begin to realise that these ‘sections’ of cosmic intelligence are outspread around us and that behind all this that makes an impression upon us from outside live the Hierarchies, as truly as our own individual being lives behind the memories that well up from within.

It all depends upon the vividness of some experience whether or no we can call it forth again in memory, whether or no there is any reason why one thought rises up from our store of memories, and another, or all the others, lie dormant. And it is the same here. Those who learn to know the true facts realise that at one time a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi is appearing, at another, a Being from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai, and so forth.

Thus we arrive at the following formula.—During our earthly existence we behold that which it pleases the Spirit-Beings to reveal to us.

Inasmuch as a particular portion of the world is revealed to us during our life on earth, we learn to recognise that it is just this portion of the infinite range of possibilities contained in the cosmos that certain Beings of the Hierarchies have selected in order to disclose it to us from our birth until our death. One human being has this portion revealed to him, another that. Exactly what is revealed to individual men lies in the sphere of the deliberations of the Hierarchies.

The Hierarchies remember, just as man remembers. What is it that provides the basis for the memory of the Hierarchies? They look back upon our past earthly lives—that is what gives them the basis for their memory. And according to what they behold in these past lives they bring the appropriate section of the cosmos before our soul. In what we see of the world—even in that lies karma, karma as apportioned by the world of the Hierarchies.

Within: remembrance of the present brief life in our human memory. Out yonder: memory of the Hierarchies of all that men have ever done. Memory-thoughts rise up from within; memory-thoughts from the world of the Hierarchies enter in the form of what a man beholds of the cosmos ... and human karma takes shape. This thought is startling in its clarity, for it teaches us that the whole cosmos, working in the service of the Hierarchies, is related to man. Viewed in this aspect, to what end is the cosmos there? In order that the gods may have the means whereby to bring to man the primary form of his karma. Why are there stars, why clouds, why sun and moon? Why are there animals on the earth, why plants, stones, rivers, streams, why rocks and mountains, and all that is in the cosmos around us? It is there as a reservoir upon which the gods may draw in order to bring to our vision the primary form of our karma, according to the deeds we have wrought.

Thus are we placed into the world and thus can we relate ourselves to the secrets of our existence.

And so we shall be able to consider the various forms of karma. In the first place it is karma in its cosmic aspect that is being brought before us, but it will come to be more and more individual. We shall discover how karma works in its inmost depths.

Today I shall have to say some more of how the karmic forces of preparation undergo their further course of evolution when man has passed through the gate of death. So far as the ordinary consciousness is concerned, the forming of karma, and indeed that whole intercourse with the world which we call ‘karmic,’ takes place in the human being in a more instinctive way. We see the animals act ‘instinctively.’ Words like ‘instinct,’ which are used so frequently in science and every-day life, are generally applied in a vague and undefined way. People make no real effort to associate them with clear conceptions. What is it that we call instinct in the animals? We know that the animals have a Group-soul. The animal, such as it is, is not a self-contained being. The Group-soul is standing there behind it. Now to what world does the Group-soul belong? We must first answer this question: Where do we find the Group-souls of the animals? They are certainly not to be found here in the physical world of sense. Here we have only the single individual animals. We do not find the Group-souls of the animals until, by Initiation or in the ordinary course of human evolution between death and a new birth, we come into that altogether different world which man passes through between his successive earthly lives. There indeed we find, among the beings with whom we are then together, including above all those of whom I have been speaking to you, those with whom we elaborate our karma,—there we find the Group-souls of the animals. And the animals that are here on the earth, when they act instinctively, they act out of the full consciousness of the Group-souls.

You may conceive it thus, my dear friends. (Dr. Steiner here made a drawing on the blackboard). Here we have the realm in which we live between death and a new birth; and out of it there work the forces which proceed from the Group-souls of the animals. And here upon this earth we have the single animals which act and move about, guided as it were by threads which pass to the Group-souls—the beings whom we ourselves discover in the realm between death and a new birth. Such in truth is instinct.

It is obvious that a materialistic world-conception cannot explain instinct, for instinct is:—to act out of that sphere of being which you will find described as Spirit-land in my Theosophy for example, and in my Occult Science.

For man however it is different. Man too has instinct, but when he acts through his instinct, he is not acting out of yonder Spirit-realm, but out of his own former lives on earth. He is acting across time, out of his former earthly lives, out of a whole number of former lives on earth.

As the spiritual realm works upon the animals, causing them to act instinctively, so do the former incarnations of man work on his later incarnations in such a way that he instinctively lives out his karma. But this is a spiritual instinct—an instinct that works within the Ego.

It is just by understanding this, that we shall come to understand the absolute consistency of this instinctive working with human freedom. For the freedom of man proceeds from the very realm out of which the animals act instinctively, namely the realm of the spirit.

Today we will concern ourselves especially with the way in which this instinct is gradually prepared when man passes through the gate of death. Here in earthly life, as we have seen, the inner experience of karma is instinctive. It takes its course beneath the surface of consciousness; but the moment we pass through the gate of death we become objectively conscious, during the first few days, of all the experiences which we first underwent on earth. We have them before us in ever expanding pictures; and what we thus behold as a great tableau of our life contains, in addition, all that took place instinctively in the working of our karma.

When man passes through the gate of death, and his life, expanding ever more and more, is unfolded before his eyes, there goes with it all that was instinctive, of which he was not conscious in his life—the web of karma. He does not actually see it in the first days after death. But what he would otherwise perceive only in pale images of memory, this he now beholds vividly as a living configuration, nor does he fail to perceive that something more is contained in it than ordinary memory. And if we look with the vision of Initiation on all that the human being has before him at this stage, we can describe it as follows:

The man himself, who has passed through the gate of death having possessed the ordinary consciousness during his earthly life, sees his life spread out before him as a mighty panorama. But he sees it only ‘from in front.’ The vision of Initiation sees it also from the other side—‘from behind,’ as it were. The human being himself sees it only from the one side. With the vision of the Initiate we can see it ‘from behind,’ and then the whole web of karmic relationships springs forth from it. We behold this web of karmic relationships arising to begin with from the Thoughts, that lived within the Will during the man's earthly life. But immediately something else enters into it, my dear friends.

I have often emphasised the fact:—The thoughts we experience consciously during our earthly life are dead thoughts. But the thoughts that are woven into our karma, the thoughts that now emerge, are living. Thus—on the ‘other side,’ as it were, of the panorama of our life—the living thoughts spring forth. And now, (this is a fact of untold significance)—now the Beings of the Third Hierarchy draw near, and receive what is springing forth from the ‘other side’ of the panorama. Angels, Archangels and Archai draw it into themselves, they breathe it in!

This takes place during the time when man ascends on his way upward, after death, to the end of the Moon Sphere. Thereafter he enters the Moon Sphere, and his backward journey through his life begins, lasting—as we know—a third of the time he spent on earth, or—to speak more accurately—lasting for the same length of time as the periods of sleep which he spent while he was on the earth.

I have often described how this backward journey through life takes place. We may now ask ourselves: What is man's condition in ordinary sleep, in relation to the condition in which he finds himself directly after death? Normally when he goes to sleep, man as a being of soul and spirit is only in his astral body and his Ego. He has not his etheric body with him, for this has remained behind in the bed. Hence his thoughts remain unliving; they have no active power, they are mere pictures. But when he passes through the gate of death, to begin with he takes his etheric body with him, and the etheric body begins to expand. Now the etheric body has a life-giving quality, not only for the physical existence, but for the thoughts themselves. By this means the thoughts can become alive, inasmuch as man has taken his etheric body with him. The etheric body, as it frees itself, carries forth the living thoughts from man to the Angels, Archangels and Archai, who in their Divine Grace receive the thoughts.

This, if I may so describe it, is the first Act that is unfolded in the life between death and a new birth. Beyond the threshold of death, the Beings of the Third Hierarchy approach that which loosens itself from the human being—which is entrusted to his etheric body as it dissolves away. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy receive it into Their care. And we as human beings on the earth utter a simple and good, a wonderful and beautiful prayer, when we think of the connection of life and death, or of one who has passed through the gate of death, in this way, saying:—

Angels, Archangels and Archai in the Ether-weaving
receive the human being's Web of Destiny.

For as we say these words we turn our eyes to a real spiritual fact. Much depends upon it, whether human beings on the earth think the spiritual facts or not: whether they merely accompany the Dead with thoughts that remain behind on the earth, or accompany them on their further path with thoughts which are a true image of what takes place in yonder realm which they have entered.

This, my dear friends, appears so infinitely desirable to Initiate Science:—That thoughts shall be within the earthly life, which are a true image of real spiritual happenings. By merely thinking in theories—enumerating so many higher members of the human being, and the like,—we achieve no union with the spiritual world. We can only do so by thinking the realities that are enacted there.

Therefore, human hearts should be ready to hear once more, what human hearts did hear in the old ages of Initiation, in the ancient Mysteries, when they called out impressively, again and again, to those who were about to be initiated:—‘Accompany the Dead in their further Destinies!’ ‘Memento mori’ is all that is left of it now, a more or less abstract exhortation which no longer affects the human being deeply. For it no longer expands his consciousness into a life more living than this life in the world of the senses.

Now the reception of the human web of destiny by Angels, Archangels and Archai, unfolds before us in this wise:—we have the impression: it lives and moves and has its being in the bluish-violet ethereal atmosphere. It is a living and weaving in the bluish-violet atmosphere of the ether.

When the etheric body is dissolved, that is, when the thoughts have been breathed-in by the Angels, Archangels and Archai, then, after a few days, man enters into that backward course of life which I have described to you. There he experiences his deeds, his impulses of will, his tendencies of thought, in the way in which they worked on other men, to whom he did either good or evil. He enters right into the minds and feelings of other men. He does not live in his own mind. With the clear consciousness that it is his concern, he undergoes all that took place in the depths of other human beings' souls, with whom he entered into any kind of karmic relationship,—to whom he did anything whatever good or ill. And once again it shows itself, how that which the human being thus experiences is received. He experiences it in fullness of reality—a reality, which I had to describe not long ago as a reality more real than that of the senses between birth and death. He experiences a reality in the midst of which he stands more fully, more glowingly than in any reality of this earthly life down here.

But if we look at it once more with the vision and insight of Initiation from the ‘other side,’ we see all this, which the human being experiences, received into the essence, into the reality and being of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. They draw into themselves, as it were, the ‘Negative’ of the human deeds. This wondrous process unfolds before the vision of the Initiate. The consequences of man's actions, transformed in righteousness and justice, are taken up into the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

Now the vision of all this transplants him who has it into such a consciousness that he knows himself to be in the centre of the Sun and with it of the whole Planetary system. From the aspect of the Sun he beholds what is now taking place. He sees a lilac-coloured living and weaving; he sees the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes absorbing the human deeds, transformed into righteousness, in the living and weaving of a pale violet, lilac-coloured astral atmosphere.

Here, you see, we have the truth:—the aspect of the Sun as it appears to earthly man is only the one side, it is seen here from the periphery. From the centre the Sun is seen as the field of action for the living spiritual deeds of Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. There it is all spiritual action, spiritual happening. There we find as it were the ‘other side’ of the pictures of that earthly life which we experienced consciously here between birth and death.

Once again we can think truly of what is happening there. We must think of the word ‘verwesen’ which is ordinarily used for the fading, dying, destroying process, the passing out of existence,—in its true and original meaning, which is: ‘to carry the real Being away.’ (As when we say ‘to forgive’ or ‘to forego,’ which means in reality a ‘giving away’ in devotion).

Thinking thus we may say:

In Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, in the astral
feeling of the Cosmos the righteous consequences of
the earthly life of man die into the realm of Being.

At length, this too has been accomplished. Man after death has lived through a third of the time of his earthly life. Journeying backward, he feels himself once more at the starting point of his earthly life—in the spaces of the Spirit—at the moment before his entry into his past earthly life. And now, we may say, he enters through the centre of the Sun into the essential Spirit-land, and in the Spirit-land his earthly deeds—transformed into the Divine Righteousness—are received into the activity of the first Hierarchy. They come into the domain of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Man feels, as he steps out into this new kingdom:—‘All that took place through me on earth is now being received by Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, into their own active Being.’

Consider well what this means, my dear friends. We are thinking truly of what happens to the Dead in his further life after death, if we cherish the thought: The web of destiny which he wove here on earth, is caught up, to begin with, by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. In the next part of the life between death and new birth, They bear it into the kingdom of Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. These in turn are gathered in and woven around by the Beings of the first Hierarchy. And in the process, ever and again, man's action upon earth is received into the Being—into the Deeds of Being, into the living Action—of Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim.

Once again we are thinking rightly if to the first and the second saying we now add the third, which is as follows:—

In Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim, as their
Deeds of Being, the justly transmuted ‘fruits of the
earthly life’ of man are resurrected.

Thus we can turn the gaze of Initiation upon what is going on perpetually in the spiritual world. Here on earth we have the unfolding life and action of men with their instinct of karma, their ceaseless weaving of destiny—a weaving more or less similar to the weaving of thought. Looking up into the spiritual worlds, we see there what were once the earthly deeds of man—having passed through Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes—received by the Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim, expanding as their heavenly Deeds above.

1. Es empfangen Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai im Aetherweben das Schicksalsnetz des betreffenden Menschen.

   Angels, Archangels and Archai in the Ether-weaving receive his Web of Destiny.

2. Es verwesen in Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—im Astralempfinden des Kosmos—die gerechten Folgen des Erdenlebens des Menschen.

   In Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in the astral feeling of the Cosmos, the righteous consequences of his earthly life die into the realm of Being.

3. Es auferstehen in Thronen, Cherubim, Seraphim—als deren Tatenwesen—die gerechten Ausgestaltungen des Erdenlebens des Menschen.

   In Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, as their Deeds of Being, the justly transmuted fruits of his earthly life are resurrected.

This is a succession of spiritual facts infinitely sublime and significant especially for our present age. For the dominion of Michael has now begun, and in this world-historic moment it is as though we could behold the deeds of those who lived upon earth before the end of Kali-Yuga, in the 1880's and 90's. That which was then enacted among men on earth, has now been received by Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. Yet never was the spiritual contrast-of-light so great as it is to-day, in the realm of these spiritual facts.

In the 1880's one could look upward and see how the people of the Revolution period of the middle of the 19th century, were received as to their deeds by Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim. But as one looked, a kind of darkling cloud settled over the middle of the 19th century. What one then saw passing into the realm of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, lighted up only a very little.

But today, when we look back to all that took place at the end of the 19th century—the deeds of men, their relations to one another,—having seen it clearly still, only a short time ago, it vanishes away ... We saw it clearly still, a moment since,—all that took place in that declining age of Kali-Yuga,—like thought-masses wafted away before our eyes ... We saw what was worked out in destiny among the human beings of the end of Kali-Yuga. And then it vanishes, and we behold in clear, radiant light what became of it as it passed heavenward.

This fact bears witness to the immense importance of what is taking place at the present time in the transmutation of the earthly deeds of men into the heavenly deeds of souls.

What man experiences as his destiny or karma takes place for him, within him and about him, from earthly life to earthly life. But in the heavenly worlds the consequences of what he did and experienced on earth go working on—and they work on even into the historic shaping of this earthly life. For there are many things which are not grasped or controlled by the individual human being here upon earth.

My dear friends, you must take this statement in its full weight and importance. The individual man experiences his destiny. But as soon as two human beings are working together, something more arises,—more than the working out of the individual destinies of the one and of the other. Something takes place as between the two, transcending the individual experiences of either. Ordinary consciousness perceives no connection of what happens between man and man, with what goes on in the spiritual worlds above. For ordinary consciousness the connection is at most established when sacred spiritual actions are brought into this physical world of sense,—as when in sacred cult or ritual men consciously transform their physical actions so as to make them actions of the spiritual world at the same time.

But in a far wider sphere, all that happens between man and man is more than what the individual man experiences as his destiny. All that is not merely the destiny of individual men, but that is brought about by the feeling-together and working-together of men on earth, is for ever in connection with the deeds of Seraphim and Cherubim and Thrones above. Into the latter there flow the deeds of men in their mutual connection with one another, as well as the individual earthly lives of men.

Most important at this point is the wider range of vision that opens out for the Initiate. For today as we look upward we behold the heavenly deeds and consequences of what took place on earth in the late 70's, the 80's and 90's of last century. And it is as though a fine spiritual rain were falling, falling to the earth, moistening the souls of men, impelling them to many things that arise historically in our time, in the relations between man and man.

Once more we can see, how there lives again today in living mirror-images of thought—through Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—what was enacted here on earth by men of the 1870's, 80's and 90's.

When one sees through these things, again and again one must say to oneself:—Here you are speaking to a human being of today. What he says to you out of the commonly accepted opinion—not from his own emotions or inner impulses but simply as a person of this age—seems often as though it stood in connection with human beings who lived in the 70's, 80's and 90's of last century. It is so really. We see many a human being of today as though he were in a meeting of departed spirits, surrounded by human beings who are busily at work upon him. But in reality they are only the after-images, rained down from heaven, of what lived through human beings upon earth in the last third of the 19th century.

Thus in a spiritual sense the shades—the real ghosts, I would say,—of a former age are roaming about in a later age. This is one of the more intimate workings of karma which are indeed widely present in the world, though they frequently remain unnoticed even by the most occult of occultists. To many a man of today, when he utters some opinion not individual but stereotyped, one would fain whisper in his ear: ‘That was said to you by this man or that, of the last third of the 19th century.’

Only so does life become a real totality. And in this respect once more we must say of the present age—the age that began with the end of the Kali-Yuga—that it is different from all historic ages preceding it. It is different in this sense, that in very truth the human deeds on earth in the last third of the 19th century have the greatest imaginable influence on the first third of the 20th.

My dear friends, I am saying something far removed from any superstitious use of words. I say it with the full consciousness of voicing an exact and scientific fact:—Never before did the ghosts of the preceding age move about among men so palpably as they do in this present time. And if men fail to perceive them, it is not because we are living in an age of darkness. Rather is it that they are still dazzled by the light of the new Age of Light. But as a consequence, what is done among us by the shades of the past century is an all the more fruitful field for the people of Ahriman. Though man is unaware of it, the people of Ahriman are working today in a more than usually evil way. They are at pains—if I may so describe it—to galvanize into Ahrimanic life as many as possible of these ghosts of the past century and bring them to bear upon the human beings of today. This Ahrimanic quality of our age is fostered most of all when societies are formed to popularise erroneous ideas of the 19th century—Ideas which, for all men of insight, are out of date and discarded. There never was a time when amateurish persons popularised the outlived errors of the past to the extent they do today. Indeed we have opportunities on all hands today, to acquaint ourselves with the essential nature of the deeds of Ahriman. We need only visit many a meeting where people are working out of the ordinary consciousness. We have many an opportunity to learn to know the Ahrimanism in the world today, for it is at work most strongly. By the very path which I have now described, it hinders people from receiving into their hearts and souls what must come forth anew, what was not there before,—what is coming to the light of day in Anthroposophy.

How happy men are when they can somehow contrive to cover up the New, that is coming forth in Anthroposophy today, with some old saying. How contented they are, if in some lecture that I give something occurs of which they can subsequently prove: ‘Look, here it is in an old book!’ In reality, of course, it is there in quite a different form, coming out of altogether different foundations of consciousness. The people of today have so little courage to receive what grows on the soil of the living present. Their minds are set at rest as soon as they can bring something forward out of the past.

It shows, my dear friends, how powerfully the impulses of the past work upon the men of the present time,—how contented they feel under these influences. It is due to the fact that the 19th century is working still so strongly into the 20th. Future historians—who will write their descriptions spiritually, as we write ours today by reference to outer documents,—future historians will have to describe this feature above all, and they may well express it in some such words as these:—‘Look at the first three decades of the 20th century. Nearly everything appears as though it were being done by the shades, the images of deeds of men of the end of the 19th century.’

At this point I may perhaps say a word that is truly not intended in any political sense. Politics must be eliminated altogether from our Society. May I say this word, my dear friends, simply as a characterisation of the facts:—We can look back on the stupendous, revolutionising actions—or rather, happenings, I should have said, for they were not really active deeds,—which took place notably in the second decade of the 20th century. It has been said so often that it has become a truism. Since time has been, since men have written history, such world-shaking events have not happened. But are not men standing in the midst of them as though they were not there at all? We see it everywhere,—it is as though the revolutionising events were taking place outside the human beings, and the latter had no part in them at all. Almost every man we meet today, we would fain ask of him: ‘Did you really live through the second decade of this century?’ And how much more do we feel it when we look at it from a somewhat different point of view! How helpless, how infinitely helpless do the human beings seem today—helpless in judgment, helpless in action. Never were there such difficulties as there are today in filling the ministerial benches—the Cabinets! Consider only how curious this is,—how helpless men are in the midst of the events. At long last we are impelled to raise the question, who then is doing anything? Who is playing an active part? My dear friends, more than any of the men of the present time, it is the men of the last third of the 19th century! Their shadow-forces are to be seen at work in everything.

This is the very secret of our time. Never were the Dead so powerful as are the Dead of the last third of the 19th century. This too is a world-aspect of realities.

When we enter into the spiritual content of these things in a single instance, we often come to strange conclusions. I recently had to consider whether I would alter this or that in the new edition of my books, written in the 70's, 80's and 90's of last century. The pedants of today declare: Everything has altered, the scientific theories and hypotheses of that time are out-of-date and long ago discarded. But when we look at it from a standpoint of reality, we can alter nothing at all! For in reality, behind everyone who writes a book today, or lectures from a professional chair, there stands the shade, the shadow-picture of another. There they still are,—the Du Bois Reymonds, the Helmholtzes, the Haeckels,—all those who were the spokesmen of that time, (in medicine the Obholzers, the Billroths and the rest)—they are still speaking.

Here we are lifting a corner of the veil, a secret of the present time. Initiate Science says in all truth: ‘Never were the Dead so mighty as in our age!’

This is what I wish to insert today in the course of our studies on karma.

I have received a question regarding the colors, and I have been asked to say something about it.

First, I will address the question that was asked first here. That is the question about the world view that Dante had. So the gentleman has read Dante. And when you read Dante, this poet from the Middle Ages, you see that he had a very different world view than we do.

Now I ask you to consider the following. People, as I have often told you, think that what people know today is actually the only thing that is true. And when earlier people thought differently, people imagine: well, that was just the way it was. And they waited until they could learn something sensible about the world.

You see, what people learn in school today, what becomes second nature to them in terms of the world view, has actually only been around since Copernicus first conceived of this world view. According to this 16th-century world view, it was imagined that the sun is at the center of our entire planetary system. Mercury (see drawing on page 70), then Venus, then the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Moon revolves around the Earth. Mars comes next, revolving around the Sun. Then there are many other planets, tiny in relation to the universe, which are called planetoids – oids, meaning similar to planets. Then comes Jupiter, then Saturn. And then Uranus and Neptune; I don't need to draw them, because they're not visible from here. That's how we imagine it today, we learn it at school, that the sun stands still in the middle. Actually, these lines, in which the planets revolve, are somewhat elongated. That's not what matters to us today. So we imagine that first Mercury, then Venus, then the Earth revolves around the Sun. Now you know that the Earth orbits the Sun in a year, or 365 days, six hours, and so on. Saturn orbits once in about thirty years, so much slower than the Earth. Jupiter, for example, orbits in twelve years, so also slower than the Earth. Mercury orbits quite quickly. So the closer the planets are to the Sun, the faster they orbit.

Well, that's not the right idea today, it's what they teach in school. But we only need to go back to the 14th century, around 1300, and such an extraordinarily great mind as Dante, who wrote the Divine Comedy, had a completely different idea. This goes back a few centuries to before Copernicus. And the greatest man of all, the greatest man in terms of intellect, Dante, had a completely different idea.

Now, today, let's not decide whether one is right or the other is right. Let us just imagine how Dante, the greatest mind of his time, conceived the matter in a time - now it is 1900, then it was 1300 - that is only six hundred years ago. Let us not think that one is wrong and the other is right, but let us just put ourselves in Dante's shoes and see how he imagined it. He imagined (see drawing): The Earth is at the center of the world system. And this Earth is not just there so that the Moon, for example, reflects the light that it receives from the Sun back to the Earth, but this Earth is not only surrounded, but completely enveloped by the sphere of the Moon. The Earth is completely inside the sphere of the Moon. Dante imagined the Moon to be much larger than the Earth. He imagined: That is a very fine body, which is much larger than the earth. It is therefore fine, but much larger. And what you see is only a small piece, namely the solid piece of the moon. And this solid piece, it only goes around the earth. Can you imagine that? With Dante, it is so that the earth is inside the moon, and what you see of the moon, that is only a small, fixed piece of the moon. That goes around. But actually we are all inside the forces of the moon. I have drawn that in red.

And now Dante imagined: Yes, if the Earth were not inside these forces of the Moon, then, by some miracle, people would come to Earth, but they would not be able to reproduce. It is the reproductive forces that are contained in the red-drawn area. They also flow through people and make them capable of reproduction. So Dante imagined: The Earth is a solid, small body; the moon is a fine - much finer than the air -, a fine large body in which the Earth is inside like a core. You can imagine it as if the Earth were a plum kernel in the soft flesh of a plum. And out there is the solid piece; that moves around. But that there (see drawing, moon) is also always there, and that causes that man is capable of reproduction, and the animals are also capable of reproduction.

Now he imagined further: The Earth is not only in the moon's forces, but the Earth is also in other forces, which I will show here in yellow, and they permeate everything. So the moon's forces are in there, stuck in there, so that the Earth and the moon are in turn in there in this yellow. And there is another solid piece. This solid piece is Mercury, and it goes around there. And if man were not constantly permeated by these Mercury forces, he could not digest. So Dante imagined: the Moon forces cause reproduction; the Mercury forces, in which we are also always immersed, only finer than the Moon forces, cause us to digest and cause animals to digest. Otherwise, our body would be nothing more than a chemical laboratory, he imagined. The fact that our body functions differently than a chemical laboratory, where you only mix the substances and then separate them again, is caused by the Mercury forces. Mercury is larger than the Earth and larger than the Moon.

And now all this is in turn contained in an even larger sphere, as Dante called it. So we are also immersed in the forces that come from this planet, from Venus. So we are immersed in all these forces, which permeate us. We are also permeated by the forces of Venus. And the fact that we are permeated by the forces of Venus means that we can not only digest, but also absorb the digested into the blood. Venus forces live in our blood. Everything that is connected with our blood comes from the forces of Venus. This is how Dante imagined it. And these Venus forces also cause, for example, what a person has in his blood as feelings of love; hence “Venus”.

The next sphere is the one we are in, and there the sun revolves as a fixed body. So we are in the sun everywhere. For Dante in 1300, the sun is not just the body that rises and sets, but the sun is everywhere. When I stand here, I am inside the sun. Because what rises and sets, what moves around, is only a piece of the sun. That's how he imagined it. And it is mainly the powers of the sun that are active in the human heart.

So you see: the moon, human and also animal reproduction; Mercury: human digestion; Venus: human blood formation; the sun: the human heart.

Now Dante imagined that all of this is in turn contained in the huge sphere of Mars. There is Mars. And this Mars, in which we are also embedded, is just as connected to the human heart as the sun is, and is also connected to everything that concerns our breathing and especially our speech, to everything that is the respiratory organs. That is in Mars. So Mars: respiratory organs. And then it continues. The next sphere is the Jupiter sphere. We are again immersed in the forces of Jupiter. Now, Jupiter is very important; it is connected with everything that is our brain, actually our sense organs, our brain with the sense organs. Jupiter is therefore connected with the sense organs. And now comes the outermost planet, Saturn. In this, everything is included again. And Saturn is connected with our thinking organ.

Moon: Human Reproduction
Mercury: Human Digestion
Venus: Human Hematopoiesis
Sun: Human Heart
Mars: Respiratory Organs
Jupiter: Sensory Organs
Saturn: Organs of Thought

So you see, that Dante, who was only six hundred years behind us, imagined the whole world differently. He imagined, for example, Saturn as the largest planet, albeit made of fine material, but as the largest planet, in which we are embedded. And these Saturn forces, our thinking organs bring about that we can think.

Outside of all this, but in such a way that we are also inside it, is the fixed starry sky. So there are the fixed stars, namely the zodiacal fixed stars (see drawing). And even greater is that which moves everything, the first mover. But it is not only up there, but it is also the first mover here everywhere. And behind it is eternal rest, which is also everywhere. That's how Dante imagined it.

Now, today's man can say: It's just that people saw all this imperfectly; but today we have finally come to know how things are. – Of course, that can be said on the one hand. But Dante was not exactly stupid either, and what the others see today, he also saw. So he was not exactly stupid. And the others from whom he took it, they all believed it back then, they were not all foolish people either, but they imagined it differently. And now the question is: how is it that in world history, people used to think differently about the whole world, and then suddenly in the 16th century everything is turned upside down and a completely different idea of the world is presented?

That is, of course, a very important question, gentlemen. And you can't get around saying that these earlier ideas were just childish, but that these people saw something completely different from what people see today. You have to be clear about that: they saw something completely different. Today's people are terribly good at thinking. Yes, today's people are so good at thinking that the ancients could not match them. Thinking had only just emerged. The ancients always had a terrible respect for Saturn, which is connected with the organ of thinking. They thought that Saturn corrupts the human being. Too much thinking is not good. Saturn has always been considered a dark planet. And the forces that came from Saturn, they thought, if they were too strong in a person, he would become very melancholy. He would think all the time and become melancholy. So these people did not particularly like the forces of Saturn, and they imagined them much more in images. They did less calculating. Today we calculate everything. This whole world view here from Copernicus is calculated. But these ancient people did not calculate. But these ancient people knew something else that today's people do not know. They knew that everywhere in the world, wherever we look, there are many forces. But the forces that are within man are not in that which is seen with the eye, but are within the invisible.

And so Dante said to himself: There is a visible world, and there is an invisible world. The visible world, well, that is the one we see. When we look out at night, we see the stars, the moon, Venus and so on. That is the visible world. But the invisible world is also there. And the invisible world is these - they were called spheres back then. The invisible world consists of these spheres. And a distinction was made between the world that is seen with the eyes, which was called the physical world. That was the physical world. And then there was the world that is not seen with the eyes. That is the world that Dante meant, and it was called the ethereal world. So the ethereal world, the world that consists of such a fine substance that you can see through it all the time.

Yes, gentlemen, I don't know if it has happened to you, but I have met people who have claimed that there is no air because you can't see it. They said: Yes, when I go from there to there, there is nothing there; I'm not walking through something. — You know that there is air where I am walking through. But, as I said, I have met people who were not as schooled as today's people are schooled, and they didn't believe that there was air; they said: There is nothing there. - Dante, who knew that there is not only air, but also the moon, Venus and so on. It is exactly the same. They say: I walk through the air. Dante said: I walk through the moon, I walk through Venus, I walk through Mars. — That's the whole difference. And all that you do not see in the usual way, and what you can not perceive by the usual physical and chemical instruments, that was called the ethereal world. So Dante described a completely different world, an ethereal world. And what is the reason for the fact that six centuries ago Dante saw the world differently? The reason is that he described something different, that he described the invisible, the ethereal world. And Copernicus said nothing other than: Oh, let's not worry about the ethereal world and let's describe the physical world. That is where progress lies. One should not imagine that Dante was a “fool”, but he simply described the etheric world and not the physical. The physical world was not particularly important to him. He described the etheric world.

Now, you see, this situation basically only changed significantly at the end of the 18th century. Until the end of the 18th century, people still knew something about this etheric world. In the 19th century, they no longer knew anything about it. We come to this again through anthroposophy. In the 19th century, people knew nothing about this etheric world.

Regarding the other question:

If we go back to the 18th century, people did the following, for example. They said: Here we have a candle; there is the wick; there the candle is burning. Now you know that when a candle is burning, it is bluish in the middle and yellowish at the edge. You can work this out in detail using what we have said about colors. Namely, in the middle it is dark, and here it is light (on the outside at the edge). And the consequence of this is that one sees the darkness through the light. And you know, as I told you the other day, when one sees the darkness through the light, it appears blue.

That is why the inside of the burning candle appears blue, because you see the darkness through the light there. I just wanted to draw your attention to this so that you see: the color thoughts, the color views that I told you last time can be applied to everything.

But now you know that when the candle burns, it becomes less and less. The flame is at the top, and what melts here (on the candle) merges into the flame. Finally, the candle is no longer there. What is in the candle has spread into the air.

Now imagine someone, let's say in 1750, so not even two hundred years ago; who said: Yes, when the candle burns and everything disappears into thin air, then something of the candle goes out into the free space. Ultimately, there is nothing left. So the whole candle must go out into free space. He went on to say that it consists of very fine matter, fire matter. This fine fire matter connects with the flame and goes out in all directions. So that the man in 1750 still said: There in this wax, there is a substance that is only piled up, sealed. When the flame makes it fine, it goes out into the free space. This substance was called phlogiston in those days. So something goes out of the candle. The fuel, the phlogiston goes away from the candle.

Now, at the end of the 18th century, another one came along. He said: No, I don't really believe the story that there is a phlogiston that goes out into the world. I don't believe that! - What did he do? He did the following. He also burned the whole thing, but he burned it in such a way that he collected everything that had formed there. He burned it in a closed room so that he could collect everything that could form there. And then he weighed it. And then he found that it does not become lighter. So he weighed the whole candle first, and then he weighed the piece that was left when the candle had burned so far (it is drawn); and what was formed during the burning, he caught it, weighed it and found that it was then a little heavier than before. So, when something burns, he said, what is formed is not lighter, but becomes heavier.

And this person who did that was Lavoisier. So what was it that gave him a completely different view? Yes, it was because he used the scales first, he weighed everything. And then he said: if this is heavier, then something must not have gone away, phlogiston must not have gone away, but something must have been added. That is oxygen, he said. So, first, it was imagined that the phlogiston flew away, and then it was imagined that when something burns, oxygen actually enters, and combustion is not the dispersion of phlogiston, but precisely the attraction of oxygen. This has come about because Lavoisier weighed first. In the past, people did not weigh.

You see, gentlemen, here you can grasp with your hands what actually happened. At the end of the 18th century, people no longer believed in anything that could not be weighed. Of course, phlogiston cannot be weighed. Phlogiston is already leaving. Oxygen is also approaching. But oxygen, when it combines, can also be weighed. But the phlogiston cannot be captured. Why not? Yes, everything that Copernicus observed in Mars and Jupiter is that which is heavy when weighed. What Copernicus calls Mars is that which, if placed on a large scale, would weigh something. Likewise, what he calls Jupiter. He merely observed the heavy bodies.

Dante did not just observe heavy bodies, but precisely that which has the opposite of heaviness, that which always wants to escape into space. And phlogiston is simply one of the things that Dante observed, and oxygen is one of the things that Copernicus observed. Phlogiston is the invisible that dissipates, the ether. Oxygen is a substance that can be weighed.

So you see how materialism came about. This is something that can become extremely important to you. Materialism came about because people began to believe only in what they could weigh. But what Dante still saw cannot be weighed. If you walk around here on earth, you can also be weighed. You are heavy, and if you call only what is heavy a human being, then you have only the earthly human being. But just imagine that this earthly human being becomes a corpse. Everything heavy, everything that can be weighed, becomes a corpse. Then the corpse lies there. You can still live in what is not heavy, in what surrounds the earth, and what materialism denies, what Dante still speaks of, what we must speak of again, that it is there. So that we can say: When man lays aside his outer, heavy body, which can be weighed, he remains in the etheric body for the time being.

But now I want to tell you what is actually contained in this etheric body. You see, when there is a chair here, I can see this chair. I have an image of this chair within me. But if I turn around, I don't see it. But I still have an image of it inside me, really still an image. This image is the memory image.

Now think of the memory images. Think that a long time ago you experienced something. For example, let's say you were somewhere and saw people dancing merrily in a marketplace and so on. I could also mention something else. You have kept the image. That is no longer there, gentlemen, what you have as an image, especially no longer there among the things that can be weighed, that are heavy, it is no longer there anywhere. It can only be imagined in you. You can go around today and, if you have a vivid imagination, you can easily imagine what it was all like, right down to the colors of those who jumped around. You have the whole picture in front of you. But you won't think for a moment that what you saw back then can be weighed. You can put this on a scale. The individual people have their own weight. But what you carry within you today as memory pictures cannot be put on the scales. It does not exist in that form. It has remained, although the thing itself is no longer there in the physical sense. How is it, then, that what is in you is a memory picture? It is in you in an ethereal form. It is no longer in you in the physical sense, but in an ethereal one.

Now imagine you are swimming and, by some misfortune, you are close to drowning; but you are saved. Such people, who were close to drowning and have been saved, have mostly told of a very interesting memory picture. This memory picture can also be had when you are not drowning, but when you are training in spiritual science, anthroposophy. Those who were close to drowning have an overview of their entire earthly life, right back to childhood. Everything rises up. Suddenly a memory picture is there. Why? Yes, gentlemen, because the physical body, which is now in the water, is going through something very special. And then you have to remember something that I told you at the time. I told you: if you have water here and a body in it, the body in the water becomes lighter. It loses as much of its weight as the water weighs, which, as a watery body, is just as large as itself.

It's a nice story about how this was discovered. It was discovered in ancient Greece that every body in the water becomes lighter. Archimedes thought a lot about such things. And once Archimedes was bathing. The people were highly astonished – yes, in Greece they bathed in such a way that the others saw it too; it was in Sicily, which belonged to Greece at the time – the people were highly astonished when Archimedes suddenly jumped out of the bath and shouted: Eureka! Eureka! Eureka! That means: I've found it! – The people thought: What on earth could he have found in the bath? He was submerged up to his head in the bath, with one leg sticking out of the water, and he realized that when he took one leg out of the water, it became heavier; when he put it back in, it became lighter again. That was the first time he had realized in the bath that every body becomes lighter when it is in the water. This is the so-called Archimedes' principle. So every body is lighter when it is in the water. So also, when a person is drowning, his physical body becomes lighter, very light. Now, what he has in the etheric body can still hold on, and that is where all his memories arise. And you see, the memories arise from the bottom because he is no longer so heavy. When a person dies, when he has completely left his physical body, his physical body, he is very light. He lives entirely in the etheric sphere. And after his death, a person always has a complete memory of what he has experienced on earth, up to childhood. That is the first experience one has after death: a complete memory.

This memory can be examined. Namely, it can be examined by training oneself in the way I have described in my book: “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Then one can always have this memory. Then one knows that the soul becomes independent of the body. Then it first receives this memory, because at first it does not live in the material that can be discarded, but on the contrary, it wants to go out into the world. That is the first state after death. Then one remembers. I would like to describe the second state to you next time. But now I want to describe something that prepares us. Because the question that has been asked is an awfully difficult one.

If we consider that Dante had a conception of the world that modern man regards as childish, then what he further imagines is even more childish for modern man. For if there is a man standing for Dante on the earth (it is being drawn), then Dante imagines: Here on Earth, turned away – so if you go through there – you would have what he imagines as hell inside the Earth. So he thinks: out there, there is celestial ether everywhere. But if I were to drill into the Earth, there is hell on the other side. Before I come out of the Earth, there is hell.

Now, to see this as childish is terribly easy for today's man. One need only say: Yes, but Dante would not have needed to stand there, but here, then he could have drilled in there, and then there would have been (on the other side) hell! - Of course, today's man can say that because today's man knows that there are people living on the other side as well. So he can easily say: Yes, Dante was just stupid; he was not able to understand that the earth has people on all sides, and that therefore hell could be just as easily here as there. Because the one who is standing there now receives heaven from that side, and for him hell would then be on the other side.

You see, gentlemen, that is how it is. For the physical world, it can only be like this: if there were heaven, hell could only be here; for the physical world, it could only be like this. If a chair is standing somewhere, it can only stand there. There is no other place where it could be.

But that is not how Dante imagined it. He did not imagine the physical world at all, but he did imagine forces. And he said: Yes, when a person stands there, and he moves with his own etheric body in the upward direction, then he becomes lighter and lighter. Then he overcomes more and more the force of gravity. But when he goes into the earth, he has to make more and more effort, and this effort is greatest when he has reached the other end. There everything presses on him. There the heaviness is greatest. It does not depend on there being some particular hell there, but on having gone through it to get there. (see Drawing)

And if Dante imagined it that way, then he could also stand there (at the other end). When he moves out from there, he becomes lighter and lighter, as he enters more and more into the ether. But when he moves into the earth, he has to go through that (heaviness). Then he experiences the state where I have drawn green; but earlier, where I have drawn yellow. So it depends on that. Dante does not say that this is precisely where hell is, but rather that when someone has to work their way through the earth with their etheric body, it is so difficult that wherever they go, whether up or down, they experience hell. It is only in recent times that people have begun to imagine hell as a specific place. Dante had in mind the experience that one has when one, as an etheric human, has to work one's way through the earth.

If someone says: Dante was stupid – then that reflects badly on him, because he is stupid enough to say that Dante imagined that hell was at the other end of the earth. No, Dante imagined: wherever I fly above the earth into heaven, I become lighter in soul; wherever I go into the earth, wherever I go to the other end: hellish.

So the whole idea was different. And only when you can take into consideration the very different way in which people have imagined it, can you also understand what I will answer you next time: What remains of the earthly man when he has passed through the gate of death?

If today was a little more difficult than usual, you must bear in mind that it was because of the question. I hope it has become a little clearer. We will then move on on Saturday and look at the human being when he passes through death and what then becomes of him.

[ 1 ] Through his different presentations Brentano shows how strongly he strove for a clear separating of the soul element from what is external to the soul. His concept of the soul, which we have described in this book, compels him to do this. In order to see this, let us look at the way he tries to define the soul experience we have in forming a conviction about a truth. He asks himself: What is the source of what the soul experiences as a conviction when it relates this conviction to a content of mental pictures? Some thinkers believe that, with respect to a given truth, the degree of conviction is determined by the intensity of feeling with which one experiences the corresponding content of mental pictures. Brentano says about this:

It is wrong—but it is an error embraced by almost everyone, and one from which I also had not yet freed myself when I wrote the first volume of my Psychology—to believe that the degree of conviction is a level of intensity in judging that could be analogous to the intensity of pleasure and pain. If Windelband had reproached me with this error, I would consider him to be completely right. But now he criticizes me for wanting to accept intensity only in an analogous sense (not in the same sense) in the case of a conviction, and for declaring that in terms of magnitude one cannot compare the supposed intensity of conviction with the actual intensity of feeling. There we have the results of his improved grasp of what a judgment is.

If the degree of conviction in my belief that 2+1=3 were an intensity, how powerful this intensity would have to be! And if now, as Windelband would have it, this belief were made into a feeling—not just something that could be thought of as analogous to a feeling—how destructive for our nervous system the vehemence of a stirred feeling would be! Every doctor would have to warn against the study of mathematics as something shattering to one's health.

If Brentano could have lived more deeply into what worked in him in his striving to discover the nature of conviction, he would have seen the separation that exists between the mentally picturing soul element—which does not experience any intensity within itself when a conviction is being formed—and what is external to the soul—which enters the content of the soul element and which in the intensity of the degree of conviction, also remains something external to the soul while in the soul, in such a way that our inner life does indeed observe the degree of conviction, but does not live in it.

[ 2 ] What Brentano presents in his essay “The Individuation, Multiple Quality, and Intensity of Sense-perceptible Phenomena” (in his book Investigations into a Psychology of the Senses) belongs in a similar sphere of strict separation between the soul element and what is external to the soul. He endeavors to show there that intensity is not inherent to the actual soul element, and that the degree of intensity of soul sensation represents a life of what is felt outside the soul and is now present upon the stage of the soul element. Brentano senses that one absolutely does not need to enter into the "mystical darkness" of nonscience when one is endeavoring to develop further in cognition the seeds planted in such elementary insights. Therefore, he writes at the end of the essay just mentioned:

It is easy to see what the wider significance of this is.

Look how much Herbart's psychology and also psychophysics were founded upon this dogma (he is referring to the dogma of the intensity of the soul element)! All that will be tom down also in its fall. And so we'll see how the correction of a small point in the science of soul sensation will exert a far-reaching reformatory influence.

Even the hypotheses that one has set up relative to the world-all will not remain untouched by it.

To a large extent one has declared that a common analogy prevails between the psychic and the physical realms, without any proof being offered, to be sure, or even seriously attempted. One kept entirely to generalities and so an assigned role sufficed for the thought of intensity as a kind of magnitude belonging to every soul entity just as a spatial magnitude belongs to every physical entity.

But if one declares a common analogy to prevail between the soul element and the physical element, why not go all the way and declare them to be identical or simply substitute one for the other?

In everything analogous to the physical and vouched for in itself only through the evidence of perception, the soul element must render superfluous any hypothetical assumption that anything physical exists.

So, among others, Wundt's psychology also ends up with the thought that, after heuristically attributing an existence to the physical world for a time, one could finally let this assumption of physical existence fall away like scaffolding, in which case the whole genuine truth would reveal itself as a purely psychic world edifice.

This thought, to be sure, until now has had little prospect of ever gaining tangible form or being elaborated in detail. Any hopes in this direction, however, have been completely dashed by the new concept of intensity with its clear proof that nothing could be farther from the truth than calling the magnitude of intensity a universal property of soul activities.

So we will never allow our belief in the true existence of a physical world to be taken away from us, and this belief will always remain for natural science the hypothesis of hypotheses.

The common analogy between the soul element and the physical element, which Brentano rejects, is only sought by someone who does not strive to picture clearly the soul element on the one hand and the physical element on the other, but rather, instead of this—while continuing with his concepts to feel his way along against the physical—attributes to the soul element experiences like that of intensity, whereas, in the purely soul element, nothing of it is to be found. It seems to me that the above thought of Brentano's would have come more clearly into view, if its bearer—in the sense of what was described in this book on page 69f.—had focused his attention upon that characteristic of the physical element which is equal in significance to the intentional element within the soul element.

Nevertheless, it is significant that Brentano dared to extend his view beyond elementary insights out into more far-reaching, cosmic riddles. For, today's way of thinking is disinclined to broaden its views. Here is one example from many. At one place in his Eight Psychological Lectures (Jena, 1869), the eminent psychologist Fortlage shows how close he was with his cognitive inklings to a certain region of seeing consciousness, to the region, namely, of knowledge of the laming power of the soul existence living in our ordinary consciousness. On page 35 he writes:

When we call ourselves “living beings,” and thus ascribe to ourselves a characteristic that we share with animals and plants, we necessarily understand the “living state” to mean something that never leaves us, and continues on in us in sleep and in the waking state. This is the vegetative life of the nutrition of our organism, an unconscious life, a life of sleep. The brain is an exception to this through the fact that this nutritive life, this sleeping life, is outweighed in the brain during the pauses of wakefulness by a consuming life (what I have called “laming down” in this book). During these pauses the brain is given over predominantly to being consumed, and consequently falls into a state that, if extended to the other organs, would bring about the absolute debilitation of the body or death.

And taking this thought to its conclusion, Fortlage says (page 39): “Consciousness is a little, a partial death; death is a large and total consciousness, an awakening of the whole being in its innermost depths.” One can only say that Fortlage stands with his thoughts at the starting point of anthroposophy, even though, like Brentano, he does not enter. Nevertheless, even because of his standing at the starting point, Eduard von Hartmann, who is completely under the spell of today's way of picturing things, finds that a perspective extending out beyond elementary knowledge into the great cosmic riddle of human immortality is scientifically untenable. Eduard von Hartmann writes of Fortlage: “He steps outside the boundaries of psychology when he describes consciousness as a little and partial death, and death as a large and total consciousness, as a clearer, total awakening of the soul in all its depths...” (Please see Eduard von Hartmann, Modern Psychology, Leipzig, 1901)

Although the struggle between good and evil is described throughout the Bible, perhaps the most dramatic and esoteric images of this battle are contained in the Apocalypse. John the Evangelist, to whom these visions were entrusted at age ninety-seven, had been preparing for them all his life. Known to the high priests as Lazarus, a brilliant young nobleman in Jerusalem, he was educated in the wisdom of the Jewish traditions. He was then the first to be initiated by Christ when, at age thirty-three, he was raised from the dead at Bethany. Later known as the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” he was the only one of the twelve disciples strong enough to be present at Christ's crucifixion. His work and suffering on behalf of the nascent Christian church through the next sixty years eventually led him to imprisonment on the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (A.D. 81–96).

The visions recorded in the Apocalypse were given to him during this imprisonment with instructions that he write them down for others. They are intended to encourage, admonish, instruct, strengthen, and inspire us in the great battle against evil that will continue into the distant future. As in any protracted battle, knowledge of the adversary's plans, indeed, knowledge of one's own leaders' strategic intentions, is essential. In the past the Apocalypse has sometimes been used to inspire fear and to motivate human souls to strive to be better Christians. But such use constitutes misuse. Fear is a tool of the adversary powers, not of Christ and his followers. The Apocalypse received by John is nothing if not a Christian book, and when properly understood, expands our conception of Christianity to cosmic proportions again.

It reveals in images, that is, a kind of picture language, the deepest secrets of earthly and human evolution. John was instructed to pass these images on to humanity so that, through knowledge, we can be better equipped to evolve spiritually and meet the unfolding power of the adversaries. The images themselves contain the power of the Word, the Logos himself, the power of all becoming and evolving. Taken into the soul they transform; over time they can initiate. This is the connection between the Apocalypse and the work of Rudolf Steiner, who said that simply hearing and reading the results of anthroposophical research can gradually transform the human soul and awaken in us the ability to perceive the spirit.

Rudolf Steiner's writings and lectures on the Bible in general and the Apocalypse in particular involve a dimension of our humanity that is underappreciated in traditional religious streams: the dimension of human knowledge. In the ancient past it was known that knowledge of spiritual realities was attainable, although only by initiates. Today, only knowledge of the physical world is considered valid, while people interested in spiritual things must be satisfied with faith. However, faith alone cannot make sense of the Apocalypse, and traditional Christian theologians are not sure what to do with the book. Its source is non-earthly. It is prophecy, but unlike Old Testament prophecy, we cannot look for its fulfillment in the New Testament. The thinking behind it derives from a source either beyond or preceding the modern, scientific mind.

But when modern methods of science, exact thinking and observation, are applied to spiritual questions, then knowledge of the spirit is possible. In his basic books Rudolf Steiner describes the spiritual scientific method with its three steps of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. The results of this method are found throughout Steiner's work. They include, among other things, descriptions of the evolution of the earth including its future. This description of future events provides the basis for Steiner's lectures on the Apocalypse. For this reason, a general knowledge of anthroposophy and Steiner's terminology is required to understand these lectures.

This requirement is especially pressing since these lectures are not transcriptions of complete stenographic reports. They have been reconstructed from notes hand written by individuals who attended the lectures. Hilde Stockmeyer took notes during the first Munich lecture while Mathilde Scholl was responsible for the other three. The notes by an unknown auditor that form the basis for the German edition of the lectures held in Kristiania (Oslo) are the most fragmentary. They are stylistically uneven, with frequent omissions and gaps in the manuscript. The lecture of June 14, 1907, held in Paris comes to us through notes taken by Edouard Schuré. Because of their brevity these lectures are, in a sense, incomplete. The reader would do well first to read Steiner's most comprehensive lectures on the Apocalypse, held in Nürnberg¹ and refer to them again while reading the present lectures. Although there is little contained in these present lectures not already mentioned in Nürnberg, this new volume is quite useful just because of its brevity.

The lecture of May 21, 1909, contains what is probably the earliest mention of Christ's reappearance in Steiner's work. While describing the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch from the point of view of the development of manas, the transformed astral body, Steiner says that those who have made themselves capable of recognizing Christ will see him in his etheric body, “for he will come again.” A few months later, on January 25, 1910, the second coming of Christ was predicted for the twentieth century. Eight days hence, on February 2, 1910, it was narrowed down to the decade between 1930 and 1940. We can see from this sequence an example of the way in which Steiner apprehended facts from the spiritual world. After first perceiving some spiritual reality he could narrow his focus and inquire even more closely with his clairvoyant consciousness.

Eventually Steiner pointed to the year 1933 for the appearance of Christ in the etheric, an event made possible only through the expiration of Kali Yuga and through the evolution of certain faculties of the human soul. Human beings will become increasingly able to perceive the surrounding world of formative forces. At first this perception is a “delicate seed that can be trampled to death by brutal materialism.”

But the year 1933 appears to have brought something quite other to humanity. Emil Bock in his book the Apocalypse² describes how Rudolf Steiner speaks in 1924 of the work of Christ's opponent, the demon of the sun, called “the beast” in the Apocalypse. In order to grasp the etheric event of Christ's reappearance, it is necessary to encounter the beast, the adversary of humankind who “rises up” in 1933. Steiner considered the simultaneous appearance of Christ and the Antichrist to be a first in world history. The double aspect of the year became apparent: the renewal on a wide scale of Paul's experience of Christ on the way to Damascus, and the opening of the abyss of evil. Human beings have been driven by the struggle against evil in all its forms to the very brink of existence, where they have perceived Christ. Although Steiner almost always stressed the positive, he could certainly also describe the negative, dark aspects of any subject under investigation. The “war of all against all,” for example, is given a full description in the Nürnberg cycle, and is also mentioned here. This great culmination of egotism known as the war of all against all, is to take place at the end of the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, which would place it three to four thousand years from the present. Because of misunderstandings concerning Steiner's statements on the dates for this war, it is important to point out that he did not say this war would occur at the end of the twentieth century. He spoke only of conditions at the end of our century that would be similar to a war of all against all.

He did say, however, that the working of Sorat, the two-horned beast described in chapter 13 of the Apocalypse, was connected to the number 666 and therefore, we could expect an intensification of his influence around the year 1998. Sorat's influence is not to be confused with the war of all against all, or with the incarnation of Ahriman, an event projected to take place in the early part of the third millennium. For a complete discussion of the nature and timing of these events, as well as a clear distinction between the three adversaries of human evolution—Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras—the reader should refer to three outstanding articles by Hans-Werner Schroeder which appeared in the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America, Summer 1979, Spring 1980, and Summer 1980. Many questions that might arise in reading these lectures will find their answer there.

A note concerning the translation: The terms for intervals of time—period, epoch, age, culture, time, times, and so on—are not used in a consistent, technical manner. Steiner himself did not employ the German terms in this way. The seven post-Atlantean cultural epochs, for example, are designated by a variety of German words: Kulturperiode, Kultur, Zeitraum, Kulturepoche, Zeitepoche, Zeit, and so on. In any given context, readers must discern for themselves which particular time-cycle is meant. It did not seem right to impose a rigid terminology upon Steiner when he himself avoided one.

In the New Testament it says that the second coming of Christ will occur in the realm of the clouds. What Steiner's lectures make clear is that some of these clouds will be very dark, bringing thunder and lightning.

James H. Hindes

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, 4th rev. ed (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1977).
• 2. Emil Bock, The Apocalypse of St. John (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1951).

From the foundations of psychology to the vital questions concerning the boundaries of human existence

It is understandable that in this scientific age people want to turn to a scientific psychology, especially with regard to the major riddles of life and the world, the riddles of the soul. However, if one is able to sum up the present situation in scientific psychology it has to be said that it is going through a kind of death, for its traditions come from ancient times and whilst it is meant to be in many ways a science, without bias, people are in fact working with those traditions.

Speaking about the scientific basis of higher insight here the day before yesterday I mentioned the name of a present-day philosopher, Richard Wahle. ¹⁰⁰ He is not very widely known. Yet his views are extraordinarily significant, especially what he says about modern scientific psychology in his books. I would say that the approach used by this philosopher is of symptomatic importance especially for those who are able to think scientifically today. I won’t say that he is someone likely to have much of an influence, nor that he has actually had much influence, but his approach is important from the symptomatic point of view. In many respects it could tell us the way in which we have to think today to be in accord with the demands generally made in science. I am therefore able to say that on the one hand the spiritual science of which we are speaking here can agree with what such a philosopher says with regard to psychology, although on the other hand, as we shall see today, it has to be the absolute opposite of such ideas. This philosopher is well versed in the way of thinking and the attitude to research which people can have now if they are highly educated in today’s scientific way. That is why anyone who tries to approach the life of the psyche with the ideas that are current in science today will of necessity come to realize that the psychology which is generally on offer is dying.

In external terms this is evident from the fact that this philosophical psychology is gradually disappearing again from professorial chairs at universities, whilst at the same time there is a growing desire to put people who think in natural scientific ways, from physiology or another natural science, on the chairs previously held by philosophers. It is hoped by many that the enigmas of the psyche, which earlier on were to be investigated by a specific psychology, may be solved by considering the physiology of the brain, the physiology of nerve structures and the like.

If we really go into all justifiable natural science to be found in psychology, we realize that in the usual psychology people speak of many things that really can no longer be said to be valid ideas today. They speak of forming ideas, of thinking as such, of feeling, of will impulses, memory, attention, and so on. And if we try in all honesty to go into the things this psychology offers in this respect, to meet the needs of the human soul, the vitality the human soul needs, all we have in the end are really just words. And we have to say that if we consider the historical evolution of human cultural life we can say to ourselves—I can only mention it here, for today’s lecture would be too long if I were to give the proof—that in earlier times, when those concepts of thinking, of memory, attention and so on were first created, people had very different ideas about natural phenomena, ideas that would indeed serve to understand the inner life in a way adequate to those earlier times. But things that were established then and have become like spectres that still haunt psychology, turn into mere word shell, mere word, in the light of the scientific thinking which all human beings have today, albeit subconsciously, if they have made any effort at all in culture and academic learning.

Something else also comes into this. For centuries, we may reasonably say, psychology has developed in the academic caste, and within this academic caste has assumed the form we get today in the usual lectures or publications on psychology.

Someone wanting to learn something out of the fullness of life about these most important existential questions which after all culminate in questions as to the divine nature of the cosmic order and as to immortality—someone seeking information concerning these questions in modern psychology will be disappointed. Franz Brentano,¹⁰¹ a serious and profound investigator of the psyche who died here in Zurich last year, made great efforts to gain insight in psychology, but remained caught up in the old ideas about the psyche that have become mere words. He said a very important thing: If we look at modern psychology it will be found that psychologists think they can try and establish insights concerning the development of ideas, concerning feelings and will impulses, and also concerning attention, love and hate; yet if they seek to stick to natural science they will not go beyond this circle. Franz Brentano went on to say that however much one might say about these elementary aspects of the inner life, none of it could replace the great question which Plato and Aristotle put long ago: whether it is possible to discover something about the part of our inner life that remains when the mortal bodies which hold that inner life pass away in death. This is what an acknowledged expert in modern psychology said.

In the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy, the aim is to achieve a renewal of psychology on the basis of what I said here the day before yesterday. The aim is to go beyond mere word shells and investigate the reality of the inner life. The way this is done does, of course, still have to take fully into account today the objections and opposition that may come from conventional psychologists. One must be able to wrestle with everything that exists in the recognized approach to psychology. On the other hand the conditions I have outlined for the renewal of psychology should lead to knowledge of the psyche, a view of the psyche that can now truly feed the souls of striving humanity in a much wider sense and can—to use a commonplace term—be popular in the best and highest sense of the word.

Psychology must be taken out of the academic caste where, to put it metaphorically, it has become guilty of falling into abstractions. These may be brilliant, but they cannot in any way provide psychologists with insights into the boundary issues of human existence which justifiably are of burning interest in the inner life of man.

Human thinking has changed completely compared to earlier times, when the ideas used in psychology which have now become words originated. Because of this, the new psychology must also let go of the starting points people wanted to use in their desire to continue further and further into the realm of the psyche. There must be new starting points. These are such that having come to them we can only base ourselves on premises like those of which I spoke the day before yesterday, and that means remaining true to the way of thinking that has been trained in the natural sciences. We cannot simply ask: What is an idea? We cannot simply want to observe what ideas are, what thinking or will are, or what memory is, and so on. Just as modern natural science in laboratory and clinical practice starts from entirely different premises than the natural science of earlier times, so psychology must relate to the realities of life which, however, must first be distilled out, I would say, from the wholeness of human life.

Initially there are two moments in human life where the newer psychology should come in. From there it can then go back again to concepts of idea, will and so on, so that they in turn will gain full soul value. These two starting points or moments are, however, most difficult to observe, truly no easier to observe than many a process in nature that will only reveal itself when one uses carefully prepared methods and experiments. These moments flit past in human life, and their nature is such, in a way, that it is impossible to take hold of them in conscious awareness. We must first train our minds, as it were, so that we can catch hold of them. They are the moments of going to sleep and waking up.

Going to sleep and waking up are the moments in human life when the whole state of consciousness changes and the human being moves from one state of soul into another that is radically opposite. I need not say much to show that these brief moments are difficult to observe. For when we go to sleep our conscious awareness goes, and we therefore do not observe the moment of going to sleep. When we wake up, we can sense that we are tearing ourselves away from some kind of life in progress; but anyone who tries to pick up experiences he had in sleep with the conscious mind will very soon and very easily discover that he fails in this.

Here we can only train soul observation, using the means I briefly referred to the day before yesterday and about which I am now going to say more, to observe the moments of going to sleep and waking up. This training must involve a degree of strengthening, greater power given first of all to the life of ideas itself, and then also to the life of will. But the inner processes, subtle processes in the psyche, that will give such strength and power to the life of will, do differ quite considerably from anything we are used to in our everyday inner life.

The other day I called the process which strengthens the life of ideas meditation. If you use methods given in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and also in my Occult Science and other books to let ideas and conscious awareness be present in the mind, thinking not just in the usual sense but resting on your thinking, doing so more and more, you let your thinking enter into the soul and your soul into your thinking in a completely different way than you usually do. You then strengthen the life of ideas to such effect—as I said, details of the methods are given in my books—that you can form ideas in a way that is as lively and active as you normally know only when your mind is involved with sensory perceptions of the outside world.

Goethe had an inkling, even if initially it was only an inkling, of this way of forming ideas—having taken up something Johann Christian Heinroth¹⁰² had said, for Goethe considered his own thinking too be too object-bound. He was able to say that he believed he was gradually able to think in such a living way that the inner strength and inner intensity of this thinking was equivalent to the mental activity which otherwise only exists when we consider the natural world outside us with our eyes, use our ears to follow events in the natural world, and so on.

It is possible to strengthen the life of ideas so much and be so intensive in this that we may say: This life of ideas itself becomes a form of direct vision; the activity is like that of direct vision; and the life of the senses is taken into the sphere of ideas in such a way that the senses are not involved although the vitality of their life is retained.

This is one aspect—strengthening the life of ideas. As you progress further and further in this a power of observation will indeed develop which is unknown in our ordinary state of mind. We need this if we are to investigate the moment of going to sleep and that of waking up in the way in which we investigate objects and events in everyday life using the methods of natural science.

It will also be necessary to train the will in a certain way. This can only be done by self control as we pay attention to something in life that is usually little regarded. In ordinary life we go along, accompanying anything we perceive in the world outside with our inner life experience. Now it is necessary to go beyond this to something else. We must turn our attention to the fact that our inner life is changing, being transformed, developing year by year, month by month and indeed day by day and hour by hour. We do not normally bring this development process in the life of the psyche into the sphere of the will. We let it flow on. With a little bit of self education we do take care to get rid of habitual faults and acquire certain virtues, abilities and so on. Something very different will have to come into our life, however, if we are to gain the self control of the will of which I am speaking. People must be able to gain the inner insight that there is something in them which they can bring into the will, I might say, bringing it into the will in such a way that self cultivation, self control will look very difficult to them, yet at the same time also appear as desirable as only the acts of will relating to wholly inevitable drives in human life normally are.

Let us look at this from another point of view. There are today particularly many people who consider themselves capable—well, maybe I am putting this in somewhat radical terms, but you’ll find such a radical view justifiable if you think more deeply about our present time—of reforming the whole world. They have ideas, as it were, as to what should happen so that people could live together happily, the social order in life was right, and so on. An enormous number of programmes exist in this area. In reality more or less everyone is a kind of reformer in his mind as soon as he begins to think about the outside world; it is just that the world does not give them the opportunity to bring their reforms or perhaps also their revolutionary ideas to realization.

Here indeed the will impulse, the desire extends to the world outside. We must know, however, that there is something in the human being to which intentions and impulses may be directed just as well that will take the individual from one period of life to another, and indeed just from one week to the other. We must know that in no way do things get going on their own in the human being, the way he mostly wills it, but that human beings are able to use their will to follow their development in time. And when the will comes in with such method in that area, the way I have described it in the books I have mentioned, you get that inner strength, the inner vision, a direct vision of the will element which we will never gain in our relationship to the outside world. You get the direct vision of the will which has to be added to the strengthening in the life of ideas I have just mentioned if you are to be able to observe the moments of going to sleep and waking up.

However, before you come to investigate those moments of going to sleep and waking up, having strengthened your inner life, you come to realize that the concepts humanity has today, and these cannot be the concepts of the old way of looking at nature, will only give you a view of the life of ideas that leads human beings to non-reality, their feeling life into confusion and their life of will to incomprehensibility.

Essentially what we have to say has also been said by the philosopher I mentioned when he spoke of philosophy having come to an end, of philosophy dissolving, handing over to physiology, and the like. He already had a feeling, though it was not entirely clear, about the concepts we are able to have today, concepts that are infinitely useful in the study of the natural world around us and for introducing to human life what is really the most essential content of a new civilization. He felt that these concepts, useful as they are when applied to outside things, do not answer the question, when we want to study the soul: What are the ideas we have of things? But it is because of them that in the life of ideas we can directly come to the ‘I think, therefore I am not,’¹⁰³ and discover the non-reality of the inner life.

We come to realize that the more we enter into the life of ideas, the less are we able to say what the soul is if we consider the life of ideas merely the way it is in ordinary life and not in the way of which I have been speaking. We come to realize that the life of feelings we know in the ordinary life of the psyche is confused, and that the life of the will is wholly incomprehensible. Hence the interesting phenomenon that it is exactly people who think in the natural scientific way as they write works on psychology that are highly significant today believe they are able to say something about the life of ideas when they are in fact considering the physiology of the brain. They then reach a point, however, where they say to themselves that the physiology of the brain does not determine anything. Read the relevant chapters in Theodor Ziehen’s book on physiological psychology¹⁰⁴ and you’ll find that what I have been saying is true for a renowned natural philosopher of our time.

We have to say, therefore, that this natural scientific way of thinking more or less shows what Schopenhauer also did not perceive, or only half perceived, though he had an inkling of it. This is that the will is something we cannot reach with the ideas of recent times, and that it is something incomprehensible.

It is a good preparation for the newer kind of psychology if we understand this non-reality of the soul in the life of ideas, this confusion in our life of feeling, this incomprehensibility of acts of will. Having gained clarity in this way—paradoxical though this may sound, but we have after all gained clarity about one thing—we can penetrate further. We can then use the thinking which has been made more acute, stronger, through meditation, and the life of the will that has subjected itself to self control to pay real attention to the moment, let us say, first of all of waking up. The moment of waking up can then enter into the field of observation in the soul in a quite specific way. We will experience something when considering the waking-up process that cannot be experienced in an untrained inner life. If we have gained the necessary calm by training in the way I have mentioned, we will be able to establish immediately after waking up that the whole of the inner life which was there in the unconscious on waking up has gone away. Only it does not have one quality, this life which the soul has in the time from going to sleep to waking up—it does not evoke memory of itself. You realize this when a significant moment arises: All the time you were asleep you let the soul flow in the same life in which is also flows when you are awake; but this flow of the soul in sleep does not become imprinted into your power of memory. It is therefore forgotten as you wake up. This is the essential point.

Memory is important in everyday life—as I said the day before yesterday. Forgetting is equally important, with the soul’s experience such that it can also forget what it has lived through. It is important for the development of the soul principle, for its continued flow between birth and death, and so on. Indeed, it is only if we are able to observe the moment of waking-up in this way that we get an idea of the significance which sleep really has in the life of the human soul. We come to realize that our life could not continue if it were wholly filled with things that become memories and that the memory principle loses its power to let our life flow on. We need to fall asleep in order that we may forget what we live through in the time when we are asleep. Our ordinary, everyday inner life will feed the soul and give it life if it is forgotten, not if it is remembered. Remembering things depletes the soul. Forgetting restores the vital energies of the soul.

This is how you get a definite insight into the vital process which is reflected in our waking up. And with this you perceive the inner life, though it really takes the form of a review in reverse. But now the ordinary conscious awareness was there between going to sleep and waking up is not poured out over it. You gain tremendously much in thus being able to perceive the inner life of the soul, for it will give you the basis for a level of understanding.

No one can truly grasp what it means to say: I form an idea, and what it means to say: I develop a thought in my soul, unless he is actually able to observe the moment of waking. For when we progress from merely being awake, merely living our life in the waking state, to active thinking, to developing an idea of a thought, this is qualitatively, though to a lesser degree, exactly the same inner process as waking up. You need to strengthen the transition from the sleeping to the waking state in order to know the waking up, and you have then created a basis for yourself for the principle that will answer the question: What actually happens in my psyche when I form an idea? The power we develop in the soul when we form an idea is the same as the power we must develop, though much more powerfully so, when we wake up. When we wake up, it is the unconscious mind which does it. And what the unconscious does as we wake up comes to conscious awareness if we make the inner effort that lets us think and form ideas in conscious awareness and with a will.

Here we get a quite specific view concerning the way in which ideas are formed. The mere shells of words that have come from an earlier psychology are given real content again. We realize that forming ideas is a weaker form of waking up that comes whilst we are in the waking state. This is an important insight. If we connect this insight into the nature of ideation with the nature of the waking-up process, it becomes possible to make the ideation in our everyday life, which otherwise really takes us into the non-reality of inner life, into something that is real. By connecting ideation with waking up, it becomes possible to relate to a factual element that does not depend on us.

Having made the connection with this waking-up process and thus got to know the nature of ideation, let us turn to the moment of going to sleep. Just as meditation is a special help in exploring the moment of waking up, so self control over the will is a special help in exploring the moment of going to sleep. Control of the will makes it possible to enter into the process, observing our going to sleep, truly observing how something happens as we enter into sleep that is similar to the forgetting that comes on waking up, becoming aware that memory of the inner life is extinguished during sleep. Otherwise we may always be in dispute, saying that somehow the body is always involved in what the soul experiences in sleep. If we are able to grasp the moment of going to sleep consciously, by controlling the will, we find that we enter into the same inner life which we leave when we wake up, but that we enter into it in such a way that all possibility of perceiving things through the senses comes to an end. We then come to realize what it means to say that on going to sleep we enter into a realm that lies beyond the senses. We come to know this because we find that on thus entering into the other realm we experience something that cannot come to conscious awareness in the kind of conscious awareness we usually have in our inner life. This is bound to the organization, dependent on the organization, between birth and death. We find that we become independent on the organization, something about which illustrious people may be in dispute for ever. The matter needs to be observed; we then find that on going to sleep we enter into the realm that lies beyond the senses.

And we then see the difference which exists between the inner life when we leave it on waking up and the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep. They are the same in so far as they are supersensible by nature; but by means of the observation I have characterized we note an essential difference. An analogy will help you to see this.

The difference is like the way a child differs from an old person. Both are human beings, but they are at different stages of life, different age levels. In the same way both forms of inner life are supersensible by nature—the inner life from which we rise on waking up and the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep. However, the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep is the ‘child’, and the inner life from which we waken is the one which has grown ‘older’. We follow a road from going to sleep to waking up. The inner life changes so that—no analogy is ever perfect—the element into which we enter is similar to the one from which we wake the way a child is similar to a very old person, both being human. This is a subtle difference that has to be noted. It provides something of a basis on which we can come closer to an important element in our investigation of the inner life, and that is the life of feelings.

The life of feelings, a mere collection of words in our customary psychology today, can only be truly understood if we study it on the basis of which I have been speaking, that is after we have come to perceive the supersensible inner life by observing the moments of waking up and going to sleep. There is one other important aspect of going to sleep which we must consider before we come to the life of feelings. We have to ask: What is it, really, that changes in a specific way in the inner life as we go to sleep? What is the effect of leaving the reality perceptible to the senses on going to sleep and entering into supersensible reality? It is the transformation of the will. And the process which is a more powerful one when I go to sleep also happens to a lesser degree when I resolve something in my will. We cannot grasp the will unless we do so on the basis of the going-to-sleep process.

The reality of the will in the depth of our inner life is wholly beyond comprehension in our life of ideas, just like anything that happens during sleep. This is why you do not find anything about the will in natural scientific works on psychology. It cannot be grasped because the life of ideas does not go that far. But if we know the process of going to sleep, we know that our ordinary inner life becomes submerged in an act of will, though to a lesser degree than it does when we go to sleep. Every resolution is a lesser form of going to sleep that happens when we are fully awake.

If we keep apart these two realities—waking up and going to sleep—one of which becomes explicable in relation to the life of ideas, the other with reference to the life of the will, which becomes explicable if we consider the process of going to sleep, we can begin to take a real look at the enigma presented by our life of feeling. A possibility arises of bringing clarity into the confusion which we usually see in the life of feelings. How do we bring clarity into something? By means of perceptive insight. There is nothing else. I could bring detailed epistemological proof, but that would take us too far today. With perceptive insight, clarity is brought into something if there is a clear and real distinction between the one who perceives, the one who is gaining insight, and the object perceived.

This is what makes the life of feelings always confusing for our ordinary life in the psyche. In everyday life we do not need to distinguish between two things unless we wish to gain perceptive insight into the ordinary life of feelings. These are two things of intrinsic value and they are opposite to one another, just as we are opposite to the world we perceive outside through the senses—world perceived through the senses there, human being there. In the same sense two things are opposites in the life of feelings. Which are they?

We can only perceive them, subject and object, if we are able to investigate them on the basis of ideas gained in the way I have been describing. We then come to perceive who it is who actually feels, and we discover what can actually be perceived in the life of feelings. The remarkable fact emerges that the one who feels is always the one—and this does seem a paradox—whom we have not yet lived through. If we feel something now, at this moment, it is the human being in us whom we are only now beginning to live and will continue to live tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next year, and until we die. When we feel, the subject, which is otherwise unknown, is our life, which is in us from the moment when we have the feeling to our death. And we perceive the life we have lived through from birth to the moment when we feel—a vast prospect in investigation, that the life of feeling lies in this starting point.

You can do a number of things—I would not talk about these things in this way if I had not done these investigations in many different fields; a large number of investigations and challenges lie in this field—you can do a number of things to prove what I have just been saying in a wholly natural-scientific way. You only need to take sensibly written biographies and relate them to the requirement I have just mentioned. Take a sensible biography of Goethe. Consider Goethe in 1790; study him the way he was from 1790 until his death in 1832. Try and get a clear picture of the specific things Goethe went through from 1790 until his death, and consider the way in which it would have been perceptible in Goethe’s life of feelings in 1790. Then consider his life, his inner life, the way the outside world touched him, from his birth in 1749 to 1790. And in getting a clear idea of how the Goethe from 1790 to 1832, who was already there, inwardly perceived during one moment in 1790 what he had lived through earlier—every feeling. Every feeling we have is such that our future essential nature perceives our past essential nature.

You can also do other things. You might try and develop an eye for people whom you saw die, where you had the opportunity to share their life, perhaps for a short time, from a certain point in time until their death. Try and bring this clearly to mind—how they lived then and what their human nature was. And then try and get a clear picture—you’ll always be surprised by the result—for instance of the situation being one where death was approaching, the actual character, of how the essential nature was poured out over the life of feelings.

These are two possible ways. Other things become apparent in a genuinely natural-scientific way, though this comes close to the most profound and inward interests of human nature when you investigate what I have so briefly referred to as the life of feelings. The life of feelings, the essential nature of feeling, will then not be the empty shell of words which we have in ordinary scientific psychology today. If you want to simply inwardly observe feeling in all its confusion, you cannot in fact observe anything. Just as you cannot scientifically observe water unless you separate it into hydrogen and oxygen, so you cannot observe the life of feelings in a scientific way unless you are able to separate it into what the human being was before he had the feeling and in what comes afterwards, unless you know the active principle which lies deep down in there like a seed, just as the seed is active in this year’s plant for the plant that will grow next year.

Studying the life of feelings in this way you will find that your ideas come to be filled with real strength. And you will gain a psychology for the life of feelings which is alive from the very beginning, which we live everywhere, and which we fill with life ourselves. And if we know that anything we feel in a moment does not exist in isolation, then the moments in our inner life will also be connected with the whole process of our development from birth to death. Future and past in our development on earth will then come together in every single feeling, even the least of them. In the same way, though it is best to do so only after investigating the life of feelings, you can, under the conditions I have given, turn to the life of ideas. The results will be even more surprising, the reason being that people will consider them paradoxical because it is something they do not know, neither according to the ideas which arise in the ordinary way in our inner life nor according to the ideas held in modern science.

If you discover that every forming of an idea, of a thought, is a attenuated form of waking up, and if in your inner observation you bring together the active element in the forming of ideas and the waking-up process, then connecting a mental image with waking up, which is a true activity, you enter into a current in your vision that carries you along, showing you that waking up, too, is an attenuated form of something more powerful. This other, more powerful element which you then perceive just as if, having seen the image of a person, you then meet the real person, is the insight that the forming of an idea and every waking up is a recapitulation, attenuated to become an image, of something we may call entering into life on earth through conception and birth.

The thread you have thus spun simply widens out as an inner connection has been made in your perception between waking up and forming an idea. The power gained in this way widens out, so that you do not observe the two in isolation but in their whole context. It widens out because you realize that in forming ideas as such we do not live in reality but have an image. Yet the very insight that we have an image, something that is not real, gives us the strength to come to something that is real, and we find that every time the forming of an idea or waking up is a process of entering into the physical world, a process attenuating reality to image, going through the process of putting on a physical body, of going through conception and birth.

You then realize where something comes from that has occupied the minds of serious investigators for a very long time. If you make the effort to consider what has occupied human minds from the time of Locke, Hume and Bacon, you will find that these investigators were never in a position to form adequate ideas about the way the life of ideas relates to the real world outside which we perceive through the senses. They were unable to find an answer to the question as to how, when we observe the reality outside, using the senses, the idea which is supposed to correspond to that reality enters into the human mind.

If one has the preconditions of which I have spoken, you’ll realize that there is a problem about this question as a question. I might characterize this as follows. Let us assume someone makes the observation that carbon dioxide is exhaled by human beings. If he then assumes that the carbon dioxide comes from the lung and has therefore been produced there, he has the wrong idea. It is equally wrong if a superficial view, which is of course quite natural for our ordinary inner life, leads to the thought that the power to form ideas comes from the body. It certainly does not come from the body!

Whatever may be active there in the body, in the inner life, it is only image attenuated to image on entering into the life of the senses. And the power we have in us when we form ideas is the same power—this is what you will discover—that was active before you ever came in contact with the world perceived through the senses at your conception. It is the power which shines across through time, from the period before birth and indeed conception. This is thinking in us, and not we ourselves in the here and now. This is why scientists were unable to discover how the forming of ideas comes to human beings. Because of this we also find that the forming of ideas is something unreal. From birth, or conception, the forming of ideas has transformed its reality into bodily life. The spiritual, supersensible principle active in us which can only show itself as we wake up and as we go to sleep, when we are not in our bodies, now lives powerfully in the forming of ideas. Gaining insight into the way ideas are formed we are taken to life before birth, to life outside the body. This is done in a wholly scientific way which we have learned to use in modern natural science.

There is no need to malign the more recent science of the spirit with its anthroposophical orientation by saying that it rehashes old ideas taken from Buddhism and the like. It does not do so. Instead, inner strength is gained in the life of the psyche by consistently adhering to the natural scientific way of thinking. However, being thus consistent it takes us beyond what natural science itself can give. When we truly grasp the process of forming ideas, we see it to be image, an attenuated image of what we lived through before we were in a physical body, when we were in the world that lies beyond the physical before we were born or conceived.

From the world of ideas a tangible bridge is created to the ability to grasp the supersensible and immortal human being. The boundary questions in our existence are found if we grasp the elementary phenomena of the inner life in the right way. It is this which truly matters.

We can then also observe the following in more detail. How is it, really, with this pre-birth life that has faded to become ideation? We may ask ourselves: What would happen if what is not real but mere image in ideation were truly to enter into the life of the body, not as image but as reality?

Now we come to something that is highly significant. Taken out of its spiritual scientific context it will of course seem rather odd at first, and I’ll therefore first look at something that is closer to hand. If we make the life of ideas into immediate reality we get something that is particularly common in natural scientific research, except that people doing such work do not see it in its whole cognitive context. For when we do experiments we are not looking at the natural world, we are looking at something the human mind has put together. However, whenever we force nature into our experiment we actually have to kill its living reality. We really have a nature before us that we have killed when we do an experiment; for the experiment is entirely made up according to the non-real methods the human mind uses in forming ideas. If we take this further, of course, it will help us to realize what would actually happen to us if the forming of ideas did not enter into our lives in an attenuated form, remaining merely an image of the pre-birth existence we had before conception, but if it were to be reality, the kind of reality we have in the field we perceive through the senses in life, it would immediately kill us.

That is the situation in life. Something we live through in an image or an idea and which is an echo with image character, if I may put it like this, of our non-physical life before conception, would kill us if it were to become as real as the living human body. It would be a poison in us, penetrating us as we would be penetrated if we were to produce an artificial human being and force him through our blood and through our muscles. We see that in the natural context the non-physical enters into us as a reflection of itself in image form.

We may then move on to consider the will, complementing the thought which is thus stimulated from the one side.

We investigate the will by considering it in connection with going to sleep. We find that when we are awake during the day an attenuated going-to-sleep process is present in every act of will, so that we go down into the non-physical world. When we have established this link between the act of will and the process of going to sleep, we have again gained the power in our investigation to continue the steps we took in observing the psyche with regard to going to sleep. What we had so far gained in taking those steps then widens out, for our observation will extend not only to going to sleep but to death. And we come to perceive what dying means for the human being.

In science, things like these are often taken the easy way today. Concepts like death or dying are more or less treated in a way that would be like saying: A knife is a knife. And they give you a razor to cut up your meat. A knife may be a cutting tool, but a razor has to be used and handled differently from a table knife.

Death is today seen as something people want to investigate as such. The approach used in the science of the spirit is less easygoing, for here one aims for reality and does not seek to shape reality according to preconceived concepts and ideas. Here one must ask specifically: What is death in the plant world? What is death in the animal world? What is death in the human world? For death does not equal death, just as knife does not equal knife. People like to denigrate the science of the spirit by saying that its concepts are confused, dark and nebulous. Its distinguishing characteristic is, however, that one always seeks to enter into the most open fairway, and this science demands clarity, succinctness and unbiased observation as preconditions for human ideas. People who say that in the science of the spirit one works with confused ideas are merely bringing their own confused ideas into the science of the spirit.

Once the bridge has been built between the act of will and the process of going to sleep, looking at sensory perception takes you forward across this bridge to see what death is in the human being. You then find that the powers that take the human being out of the world perceived through the senses at the moment of death also take effect in the human act of will, though not in the fully developed but rather in a more embryonic form. Every time we will something, making our intentions come true in actions, we configure something that relates to dying the way the child relates to the old man in terms of being human.

This also builds a bridge between the principle which in form of elementary soul phenomena dies in the will in our everyday conscious awareness, with this will an attenuated dying process just as forming ideas is an attenuated process of getting born and being conceived through the soul. It is merely that forming ideas has image quality, whilst will intent is embryonic. Will intent is a reality; it is not image but reality. But it is an act that is not as yet completed. If it were to be complete, if the act of will were to be fully grown, it would always be a process of dying. What makes the will into will is that whatever evolves in will intent remains embryonic and does not enter into existence in reality. For if it were to develop further from the embryonic state of will intent and gain full strength, it would always be a dying process. In our will intent we are potentially dying all the time. We bear the powers of death in us. And for someone able to penetrate the soul as an investigator, every act of will is an attenuated dying process that has remained embryonic.

In the genuine observation of the psyche which has developed more recently, an elementary act of soul thus also makes the connection with the great boundary riddles of human existence. We then come to perceive not only the triad of being born, waking up and developing a thought but also the triad of will intent, going to sleep and dying. We can actually gain our orientation from the going-to-sleep process by investigating this process, where we enter into the sphere beyond the senses, withdrawing from the senses; here we have the process of dying in embryo. And we perceive dying to be a transition from the world perceived through the senses to the world that is beyond the senses. Will intent can only be perceived in its embryonic state because we have previously realized that on going to sleep it is the young life of the soul which the soul perceives. Otherwise we would never be able to bring the embryonic nature of will intent before the inner eye in any way whatsoever.

You see that thinking, feeling and will intent are understood on the basis of facts. By becoming facts in the anthroposophically orientated psychology that must evolve, they take us at the same time to the great boundary issues of human soul life. No one is fantasizing about some kind of immortality but an investigation is made into the nature of ideation. This will in one respect take us to immortality, to life before birth. The will is investigated. It takes us to immortality after birth. And when these are taken together we come to immortality as a whole, the eternal quality of human nature which has its roots in the world beyond that perceived by the senses.

Through meditative life—I can refer to it only briefly—we thus come to perceive more and more how unreal the ordinary I is, for it has wholly and entirely given over its existence to the body. And in pursuing this non-reality in a way similar to the way in which we have pursued the other elements that come into the inner life, we also gain insight into repeated lives on earth, an aspect which seems so incomprehensible to people today—the repeated lives on earth through which the human being goes, with lives in the world of the spirit coming in between.

This general outline which, as I said, does still sound strange today, need not necessarily be taken to be the logical conclusion. For someone who takes the route of genuine study of the psyche which has been characterized today, the insights that take him through the forming of ideas and through the will and bring the non-physical to such immediate, factual reality out of the moments of going to sleep and waking up, lead to the realization that we go through repeated lives on earth.

Having shown you how the connection can be made from a psychology that once again is concerned with realities to the great boundary issues of human existence, I still have to point out to you that the state of soul on which this is based and which must enter into scientific research again if we are to have a true psychology, must indeed evoke a quite specific constitution of the inner life for specific elements or moments in doing research, but not for the whole of everyday life. For to gain true insight in the way I have been describing today we must be able to attach special significance in life to our waking up and going to sleep. It means we should not merely live the inner life as something that happens by the way, which is how we live through it in the ordinary way. We must strengthen our thinking in the way I have described and gain self control in the will so that we live the inner life to a higher degree than we live our ordinary lives. The precondition for this investigation of the soul is a state of soul which is little known in everyday life. It will be easiest for me to characterize it in the following way.

If you are really active in ordinary life and not a lazy person, you will after a certain number of hours during which you have been awake feel the need to sleep, to be at rest and sleep. Just as you live through this physical existence in your ordinary waking life, so you need to be able to live in such a natural, matter-of-course way through the inner life as an investigator of the psyche, an inner life that comes with strengthened thinking and self control in the will.

Then it must also be possible for certain phenomena to occur. For example the kind of thinking which we are accustomed to in ordinary life can really go on and on without hindrance. Sometimes it might really give one the horrors, especially when one hears people gossiping over their tea cups or other things, to think of the ways in which people can go on thinking all the time, accompanying external life with their thoughts. This is something you cannot do with the inner life that takes you into the soul’s reality in the way I have described. When an investigator of the psyche works the way he is meant to do in anthroposophy, so that he will truly obtain the kind of results I have spoken of today, he will very soon feel—in the way he is working, for example, with regard to anything he seeks to elicit from the element or moment of going to sleep and waking up, so that he may then develop it further with greater acuity of thinking and to support the will—he will very soon feel, with as much necessity as we otherwise feel when we have done hard physical work with our muscles, hands and arms, that he cannot go on working. That is the inner feeling one gets after doing investigations in the way I meant today for just a short time. You can’t go on, you need to relax. And you find this relaxation in everyday life. Care is thus taken to see that the true psychologist does not turn into a dreamer or solitary visionary, an eccentric. If he investigates the soul in the right way, which I have described, he will speak of getting tired in the soul just as the physical body grows tired if we labour long and hard in the ordinary sense. And just as you need rest and sleep for this, so you need here to change to everyday life, the absolutely cheerful, hard-working and quite ordinary everyday life. We need this in a healthy way, not in the way of an eccentric. The investigator of soul and spirit needs this as much as we need sleep in ordinary life.

Someone who does not dream up all kinds of fantastic and unreal things about the life of the psyche but enters into the true nature of it in the kind of serious way I have described, with simple phenomena taking us to the most sublime questions of immortality and indeed to accepting the truth of immortality, will never be someone who is useless in ordinary life. Entering into the world beyond that perceived through the senses demands that he stands firmly, robustly in waking life, taking it fully and soundly, just as sound waking life calls for a change in the form of sleep. This is the one thing, There are other things as well, which I must leave aside today. But I wanted to speak of these difficulties to show the kind of inner condition one has to develop if one wants to be a true psychologist in the newer, anthroposophical sense.

I would have liked to have seen a possibility to speak directly about natural science, social science, about religion and history, which would complement this quite appropriately. But it is not to be, though there is a suggestion that further lectures may follow.

You will have seen—this is what I'd like to say in conclusion—that with psychology, too, even if it is based on anthroposophy, it truly is not a matter of somehow just talking and talking, using confused ideas, but that even where we consider the question of immortality, it must be a matter of proceeding in a serious and properly trained way in the psychology that takes its orientation from anthroposophy. However, it will be possible for this serious, specially trained approach—where we still have to struggle today to come to terms with ordinary psychology and therefore use the kind of expressions I have been using today—gradually to take us closer and closer to the popular way of thinking. For this psychology will take matters of the soul out of the scholar’s study. It will be possible to offer the results of its investigations to every human heart and every human soul. We’ll not face the danger of really only counting on abstract, prepared questions such as What is the forming of ideas? What is will, memory, attentiveness? What is love and hate? Instead it will build a bridge from the ordinary everyday phenomena of forming ideas, feeling and doing things out of the will to life before birth and after death, to the life that exists beyond sensory perception, if I may put it like this, and human immortality.

Such a psychology will be able to meet the hopes—as the psychiatrist Brentano¹⁰⁵ called them, though he himself did not find them fulfilled—the hopes of Plato and Aristotle that psychology will help us to know something about the best part of our essential nature, something which remains when the mortal earthly body decays. Brentano, a great mind, attempted to develop such a psychology on the basis of scientific thinking. He did not want to move on to genuine investigation in the fields that go beyond sensory perception. Since he was however honest enough to go only as far as he was able to go, this led to the remarkable result that this scientist wrote the first volume of his psychology in 1873, promising his publisher—the first volume appeared in the spring—that the second would follow in the autumn, and then the third and the fourth. Those further volumes never appeared. To anyone who knows Brentano’s story—I described it in my obituary, which is the third chapter in my book Von Seelenrätseln—this was not only for external reasons but the fact that Brentano felt a need to approach phenomena of the psyche with concepts that were not the traditional ones. Yet for the reasons I discussed the day before yesterday, which still live in the subconscious of people today, he shrank back from making the transition to investigative work in the sphere beyond anything perceived by the senses. When this transition can be made, we shall have a psychology that will interest not only academics but can be grasped by the whole of humanity. It can be the basis for a truly healthy human life, for it will not stop at things that can only be made interesting in artificial ways in a scholar’s study but will pour forth on everything that wells up in every healthy human heart, the soul of every healthy human being as a need to gain insight in the spirit. The psychology of which I am speaking, a psychology that goes into spheres beyond those perceived by the senses will be a popular psychology for everyone as the basis for a healthy religious life.

Anyone who knows psychology and its present situation will be able to say to himself—and I would like to conclude with this as something that throws a light, as it were, on our time and into the future—anyone who knows what can be gained with supersensible investigation in psychology will say that a psychology—and perhaps today’s attempt to characterize it has been very inadequate as yet—a psychology that truly takes us to the question of the soul’s immortality, to the most sublime phenomena of the soul, must be the psychology for the future. For as we have seen exactly from our look at psychology as it is current today, either it will have no future at all, as philosophers like Richard Wahle say, who are perfectly right about this, or this future will be the way it will have to be if it arises from the anthroposophical view of the world.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 10 October 1918

Question. How do feelings relate to bodily life, seen from the spiritual scientific point of view?

This is the very question, and it is a most interesting one, which I have tried to consider in the appendix to my book Von Seelenrätseln. There I also said that in the science of the spirit, such questions must have highly significant preconditions. You can only talk in the right way about such issues—spiritual science is strongly connected with our personal life—by speaking of your own investigations. I may say that I have indeed been working with questions that go in this direction for more than 30 years, and that 1 considered these things from many different points of view before I dared to talk about them in public the way I did after 30 years in that book, just touching on the subject. For questions like this only find an answer if you go back to them again and again in your investigations—questions as to the essence of the whole life of the psyche, as to the way the whole life of the psyche relates to the bodily sphere.

And I found—time is short; permit me therefore to give just a brief indication—that conventional science is altogether not investigating these relationships in an adequate way. The way people usually talk when they want to investigate these relationships is to put the soul on one side and bodily life on the other. But this causes total confusion. You don’t get anywhere at all. You will only get results—you’ll discover this if you carry out a serious investigation—if you place the life of the psyche on one side, that you truly differentiate it into living in one’s thinking, living in one’s feelings, living in one’s will intent. Once you have differentiated the life of the psyche so that you have a proper overview, you can relate it to bodily life. And you will find that every element in this life of the psyche has quite specific relationships to life in the body.

First of all you have to consider the life of forming ideas, of thinking. This relates to life in the nerves if we understand it rightly in a scientific way. The mistake people usually make is to relate the whole life of the psyche to life in the nerves. Of course it is still quite unacceptable today to hear the truth on this subject. It will, however, soon be known. Today, people relate the whole life of the psyche, including feeling and will intent, to life in the nerves. But we should only relate thinking life to life in the nerves.

This will also make it clear that there truly is a real connection—like the real connection between someone standing in front of a mirror and the mirror itself—between thinking and the life of ideas on the one hand and life in the nerves on the other. For someone who seeks the truth and not preconceived notions, it will be apparent that the life of feelings relates to something quite different, compared to the way in which thinking life relates to life in the nerves. The life of feeling demonstrably relates to life in the body in such a way that everything rhythmical in the life of the body corresponds to it—the whole life of rhythms, blood rhythm, respiration, and altogether everything that moves in rhythms. This is a direct connection, not one first mediated by the nerves. It is immediate.

One should not presuppose that confused notions are used in spiritual science. Instead one is working towards much more sustainable ideas than those used in conventional science, where confusion often reigns. We need only to be factual, investigating such real things as an impression gained in music, for instance. The spiritual investigator knows all the objections that may be raised; he raises them himself and does not even need to hear them from people who want to raise them, for he has sufficient practice in raising them himself. People will say that we hear musical notes with our ears, and the experience therefore arises with an impression made on the senses. No. The matter is not as simple as that but rather completely different. The situation is that there is indeed a relationship between the actual musical experience, which we have in our feelings, and everything that is rhythmical in our bodies.

You need only think of a hidden rhythm. Specific movements arise in the diaphragm, for instance, when we breathe in. As a result, the cerebrospinal fluid continually surges up and down in the head. This is a rhythmical inner process that corresponds to an experience of music in the soul. Because this rhythmical element, this rhythmical experience impacts on sensory impression, the experience of music arises in the harmony between the human bodily rhythm and the impression gained through the sense of hearing.

The important point is, however, that an impression on the sense of hearing only becomes the experience of music if it comes up against the inner rhythm in the human soul. A psychological study of the experience of music is enormously interesting. It merely substantiates what I am saying, which is that the life of feeling relates to the life in rhythmic movement inside the human being.

And the life of will—strange though it may also seem—relates to metabolism, metabolism in the widest sense. It appears to be most materialistic of all, although the life of will is actually the most supersensible of all. Energies enter into the life of matter. One day, when natural science sees itself in the right light, scientists will be able to take further—not actually generate, but take further—what I have said with regard to the life of will. They will find—the beginnings are already there—that with every act of will specific poisons arise out of the human organization itself, and that ‘in terms of the physical body’ what happens in the will process is really a toxic process. This will build a bridge between the act of will, which really is death in embryo being a toxic process, a kind of poisoning, and death itself, which is merely an act of will on a larger scale. I have thus shown how these three—will, feeling and thinking—relate to bodily experience. I could only do it briefly, so that I may now move on to the other question which exactly because of this last question is to some degree connected with what I have just been saying.

Question. How does the science of the spirit relate to psychopathology’, that is, to diagnosing mental diseases and so on?

There cannot be real diseases of the mind or soul—I can only say this briefly—and diseases of the psyche are really always in some way diseases of the organism. The organism cannot be used as an instrument in the right way. And just as we cannot perform the necessary function if the instrument is useless, so the organism, in living out the life of the psyche, cannot do so in the right way. This does not lead to materialism but actually to proper insight into the supersensible. One thing is particularly interesting here. It is interesting that insight gained in the science of nature, where we are more and more compelled to do experiments abstracted from nature, does indeed help us to gain the scientific insights that provide the basis for technology. But the more we experiment, I would say, the more do we come to the scientifically established conviction of which Goethe had an inkling when he said that all experimenting done with tools, external tools, really takes us away from the world of nature.¹⁰⁶

Goethe also had the right feeling for the other thing, the opposite. This is most interesting. Whilst experimentation does not tell us anything worthwhile about the natural world at a deeper level but only about the most superficial connections in it, abnormal developments given in nature itself take us into those deeper backgrounds. An experiment pushes us out of those backgrounds, as it were; abnormal developments take us deeper into nature.

Oddly enough, experimentation is singularly unfruitful in the psychology which seeks to base itself on physiology—not in all areas, but certainly in the areas that matter most. Something which is extraordinarily fruitful is observation of brain traumas and of other disorders in the organism which also make the life of the psyche appear abnormal. We are able to say that whilst experimentation separates us from the world of nature, observing the sick organism bring us together with it. Again a paradox, but we should not be afraid of reality, should not be afraid, even unconsciously so, when wanting to enter into the real world. The condition of the brain, also in the case of criminals, for example, takes us deeply into the secrets of nature. This branch of natural science is not fruitless, but it is connected with what the science of the spirit is able to establish—that everything connected with the will—and the will, though an independent entity, influences all else, including our thinking—is in a sense, in a certain respect, connected with the development of toxic states, abnormalities in the human organism.

And if the misfortune should happen and the human organism grow abnormal, then because of the very fact that the supersensible is driven out of the abnormal organism—for it only fits rightly in a normal organism; if the brain is injured, therefore, the supersensible is driven out—then it is because of this that the person, who may otherwise continue to be connected with the supersensible, is unable to gain his orientation, he loses it. Things that are often considered to be pathological in the psyche are therefore due to a physical abnormality.

We are thus able to say that we must really study the will in order to perceive why the study of abnormalities in the brain and so on gives such deep insight into certain conditions of the psyche. Just as we take everything supersensible out of the body on going to sleep and enter into the life of the psyche, but in a healthy way, so does an organism which has become abnormal push the supersensible out when there is pathology. We then enter into that life in a disoriented way, whilst we enter in a healthy way, which helps us to cope with the situation, when we enter into healthy sleep.

• 100. Wahle, Richard (1857–1935) Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermächtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie, Aesthetik und Staatspädagogik, Vienna and Leipzig 1894. Ueber den Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens, Vienna and Leipzig 1906.
• 101. See note 18.
• 102. Goethe’s essay ‘Bedeutende Foerdemis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort’ (1823). See note 10. Goethe received Johann Christian Heinroth’s Lehrbuch der Anthropologie (Leipzig 1822) on 29 October 1822. In his Annals for the year he wrote: ‘Heinroth’s anthropology gave me insights into my approach to the study of nature just when I was endeavouring to produce my natural scientific journal.’
• 103. See Rudolf Steiner on the subject in the lecture given on 8 October 1918 (in this volume).
• 104. See note 72.
• 105. Brentano, Franz. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt 1. Band. Leipzig 1874.
• 106. Goethe’s actual words were: ‘The human being as such, in so far as he uses his sound senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus there can be, and it is indeed the greatest evil in modern physics that experiments have been separated off from the human being, as it were, and the aim is to gain insight into nature only from what artificial instruments show, thus limiting it and providing proof.’ Sprüche in Prosa, see note 10.

My dear friends! You have requested that we meet here to discuss matters that are closely related to your profession, and I may assume that this request of yours has arisen from the realization of the seriousness of our situation, a seriousness that becomes particularly apparent when one tries to work from a religious point of view in the civilizing life of our time. And I may further assume that you are primarily not concerned with what could be called a theological matter, but with a religious matter. It is indeed true that the burning question of our time is not only a theological one. One might think that even with a good deal of goodwill, some people could come to terms with the theological question in a relatively short time. But what must be clear to anyone looking impartially at our time is precisely not the question of dogma, not the question of theology, but the question of preaching and everything connected with it, the question of religion and especially of religious work as such. But with this we are pointing to a much broader and more comprehensive question than the theological one could ever be.

If one takes the religious standpoint from the outset, then the aim is to find a way of making the spiritual worlds with their various forces of activity accessible to people, initially – if we limit ourselves to the religious – through the word. And here we must be clear about the fact that the whole of our more recent development in this respect presents us with a question of the very deepest seriousness. He does not overlook the question who thinks that from the starting point on which the older people among us still place themselves today, something else could arise than actually the complete disintegration of religious life within our modern civilization. Anyone who believes that religious life can still be saved from the old assumptions is actually taking an impossible point of view. I say this in the introduction not because I want to start from some kind of spiritual-scientific dogma from the outset – that should not be the case – but because what I say simply shows up the unbiased observation of life in our time.

We must be clear about whether we can find an echo in the hearts of our contemporaries today when we preach, when we speak of those things that must one day be spoken of within true Christianity. And I assume that these days here will be such that we will discuss the matters that are actually on your minds in question and answer and disputation, but today I would like to touch on some of the issues that are actually at hand.

We must be clear about the fact that what has emerged in the last three to four hundred years as scientific education in humanity has already drawn a wide circle around itself. Those who are older can still notice the difference that exists in this respect between what was available in the 70s or 80s of the last century and what surrounds us today. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, you could still talk to a large part of the population about questions of spiritual life that arose from the traditions of various denominations and sects, and you could still find hearts and souls in which such talk resonated. Today, we are basically facing a different time. Of course, there are still many people who have not taken in much of the newer education that has found its way into our civilization; and we could still speak to these people about such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, without something like resistance immediately asserting itself in these hearts. But even this will not last much longer. For a certain popular view of education is spreading with lightning speed, penetrating into the broadest masses of people through the literature of newspapers and popular magazines, and basically also through our school education. And even if this educational outlook does not directly develop ideas, feelings that rebel against such concepts as Christ, redemption, grace, and so on, do flourish, we must not forget that these ideas, which are absorbed, are cast in forms that simply give rise to an inner resistance to actual religious life in the broadest circles, unless a new starting point is sought for it. We should not deceive ourselves on this point.

You see, if the view of education continues to spread, which, based on seemingly established scientific premises, describes the universe in such a way that it began in a certain mechanical way, that organic life developed from mechanical tangles, and then, for my sake, the external-physical , then, if the facts are traced that have led to such hypotheses, so that one forms ideas about a corresponding end of the earth or our planetary system from them, then, for all those who seriously and honestly accept these ideas, the religious ideas, especially of Christianity, no longer have the possibility to flourish.

That this is not already very much in evidence today is only because there is so little inner honesty in people. They simply allow the mechanical-physical order of nature and Christianity to coexist and even try to prove theoretically that the two things can go side by side. But this only serves to obscure what is felt in every unbiased soul. And even if the intellect seeks all possible harmonies between Christianity and modern science, the heart will extinguish all these attempts at mediation, and the consequence can only be that there will be less and less room for religion in the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings.

If we do not consider the question from these deeper perspectives, we fail to appreciate the seriousness of the situation in which we currently find ourselves. For the difficulties indicated are encountered not only in theology, but most of all where they are not clearly expressed, where they remain hidden in the subconscious of our fellow human beings; one encounters them precisely when one does not want to practice theology but religion. And that is the important thing that must be understood above all else.

You see, the Ritschl school with all its offshoots is particularly characteristic of what has happened in this field in more recent times. This Ritschl school is still regarded today by many people working in the field of religion as something extraordinary. But what exactly is the Ritschl school? The Ritschl school takes the view that the last few centuries, especially the 19th century, have brought us a large amount of scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is dangerous for religious life. The Ritschl school is clear on this: if we let scientific knowledge into religious life, whether it be for criticism or for the formation of dogmas, then religious life will be undermined by it. So we have to look for a different starting point for religious life, the starting point of faith.

Yes, now, in a sense, we would have split the soul in two. On the one hand, we would have the soul's theoretical powers of knowledge, which deal with science, and on the other hand, we would have the establishment of a soul realm that develops very different abilities from the realm of knowledge: the realm of faith. And now there is a struggle, a struggle by no means for harmony between science and religion, but a struggle to exclude science from religion, a struggle for an area in which the soul can move without letting scientific thinking in at all. To allow as little as possible – if possible, nothing at all – of any scientific knowledge to enter religious life: that is the ideal of the Ritschlians.

But now, regardless of whether something like this can be established theoretically, regardless of whether one can persuade oneself that something like this dichotomy of the soul could exist, it is nevertheless true that for the actual life of the soul, so much rebellious power comes from the subconscious against this dichotomy of the soul that precisely religious life is undermined by it. But one could disregard it oneself. One need only go to the positive side of Ritschlianism itself, then one will see how this view must ultimately lose all content for religious feeling itself.

Let us take the most important forces that play a role in religious life. First, there is the realm of faith – whether or not this leads into knowledge is a question we will discuss later – secondly, there is the realm of actual religious experience – we will also take a closer look at this realm of religious experience later – and thirdly, there is the realm of religious authority. Now, one might say that since Luther, Protestantism has done an enormous amount to clarify, explain and so on the concept of authority. And in the struggle against the Catholic Church, one might say that Protestant life has extracted a pure perception with regard to the concept of authority. Within Protestant life, it is clear that one should not speak of an external authority in religion, that only Christ Jesus Himself should be regarded as the authority for individual souls. But as soon as one comes to the content of religious life, that is, to the second point, from the point of view of the Ritschlian school, an enormous difficulty immediately arises, which, as you know, has very, very significantly confronted all the newer Ritschlians. Ritschl himself does not want to have a nebulous, dark, mystical religious experience, but rather he wants to make the content of the Gospels the soul content of religious life. It should be possible for the religious person to experience the content of the Gospel, which means, in other words, that one should also be able to use the content of the Gospel for the sermon. But now the newer Ritschlians found themselves in a difficult position. Take, for example, the Pauline Epistles: in them, of course, there is contained a whole sum of Paul's religious experience, of a religious experience that is, from a certain point of view, entirely subjective, that is not simply a universally human religious experience to which one can relate only by saying to oneself: Paul had this experience, he put it into his letters, and one can only relate to it by saying: I look to Paul, I try to find my way into what his religious experience is, and I enter into a relationship with it. But that is precisely what the newer Ritschlians want to exclude. They say: what is subjective religious experience in this way cannot actually be the content of general Protestant belief, because it leads to simply recognizing an external authority, albeit a historical authority, but one should appeal to that which can be experienced in every single human soul. Thus the Pauline letters would already be excluded from the content of the gospel. For example, the Pauline letters would not be readily accepted into the content of general preaching.

Now, if you look at the matter impartially, you will hardly doubt that what the Ritschl School now presents as the rest that is to remain as objective experiences can, for an impartial consideration, only be considered a subjective experience. For example, it is said that the account of the life of Christ Jesus, as related in the Gospels, can basically be relived by everyone, but not, for example, the doctrine of vicarious atonement. So one must include in general preaching that which relates to the experiences of Christ Jesus, but not something like the doctrine of vicarious atonement and other related things. But on unbiased examination, you will hardly be able to admit that there is such a core of general experience in relation to Christ Jesus that could be appealed to in a very general sermon. The Ritschlianers will just end up, if they are unbiased enough, feeling compelled to drop piece after piece, so that in the end there is hardly much left of the content of the gospel.

But if the content of the gospel is no longer part of the sermon, if it is no longer part of religious instruction at all, then we are left with nothing of a concrete content that can be developed; then we are left only with what could be described as the general – and as such it always becomes nebulous – as the general nebulous mystical experience of God. And this is what we are encountering more and more in the case of individual people in modern times, who nevertheless believe that they can be good Christians with this kind of experience. We are encountering more and more that any content that leads to a form — although it is taken from the depths of the whole person, it must still lead to a certain formulation — any such content is rejected and actually only looked at from a certain emotional direction, an emotional direction towards a general divine, so that in fact in many cases it is precisely the honest religious-Christian endeavor that is on the way to such a vague emotional content.

Now, you see, this is precisely where the Protestant church has arrived at an extraordinarily significant turning point, and even at the turning point where the greatest danger threatens that the Protestant church could end up in an extraordinarily bad position compared to the Catholic church. You see, the Catholic principle has never placed much emphasis on the content of the Gospels; the Catholic principle has always worked with symbolism, even in preaching. And with those Catholic preachers who have really risen to the occasion, you will notice to this day – yes, one might say, today, when Catholicism is really striving for regeneration, even more so – how strongly symbolism is coming to life again, how, so to speak, dogmatic content, certain content about facts and entities of the supersensible life, is clothed in symbols. And there is a full awareness, even among the relatively lower clergy, that the symbolum, when pronounced, penetrates extraordinarily deeply into the soul, much deeper than the dogmatic content, than the doctrinal content and that one can contribute much more to the spread of religious life by expressing the truths of salvation in symbolic form, by giving the symbols a thoroughly pictorial character and not getting involved with the actual teaching content. You know, of course, that the content of the Gospel itself is only the subject of a lecture within the context of the Mass in the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church avoids presenting the content of the Gospel as a teaching to the faithful, especially in its preaching.

Anyone who can appreciate the power that lies in a renewal of the symbolic content of the sermon will understand that we are indeed at this important turning point today, that the main results of Protestant life in recent centuries have been very, very much put in a difficult and extremely difficult position in relation to the spreading forces of Catholicism.

Now, when you see how the Protestant life itself loses its connection with the content of the Gospels, and on the other hand you see how a nebulous mysticism remains as content, then you can indeed say: the power of faith itself is actually on very shaky ground. And we must also be clear about the fact that the power of faith today stands on very shaky ground. Besides, one really cannot avoid saying to oneself: No matter how many barriers are erected around the field of faith, no matter how much effort is put into them, no matter how much barriers are erected against the penetration of scientific knowledge, these scientific findings will eventually break down the barriers, but they can only lead to irreligious life, not religious life. What the newer way of thinking in science can achieve, insofar as it is officially represented today, is this – you may not accept it at first, but if you study the matter historically, you will have to recognize it – that ultimately there would be such arguments as in David Friedrich Strauß's 'Alter und neuer Glaube' (Old and New Belief). Of course the book is banal and superficial; but only such banalities and superficialities come of taking the scientific life as it is lived today and trying to mold some content of belief out of it.

Now, as I already indicated earlier, we absolutely need such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, in the realm of religious life. But how should the unique effect of the mystery of Golgotha be possible in a world that has developed as it must be viewed by today's natural science in its development? How can you put a unique Christ in such a world?

You can put forward an outstanding man; but then you will always see, when you try to describe the life of this outstanding man, that you can no longer be honest if you do not want to avoid the question: How does the life of this most outstanding man differ from that of Plato, Socrates or any other outstanding man? One can no longer get around this question. If one is incapable of seeing any other impulses in the evolution of mankind on earth than those which science, if it is honest, can accept today, then one is also incapable of somehow integrating the Mystery of Golgotha into history. We have, of course, experienced the significant Ignorabimus of Ranke in relation to the Christ question, and it seems to me that here the Ignorabimus of Ranke should play a much more significant role for us than all attempts, emanating from Ritschlians or others, to conquer a particular field as a religious field, in which Christ can then be valid because barriers are erected against 'scientific life'.

You see, I would like to get straight to the heart of the matter in these introductory words; I would like to get you to think about it: how can one speak of ethical impulses being realized in some way in a world that operates according to the laws that the scientist must assume today? Where should ethical impulses intervene if we have universal natural causality? — At most, we can assume that in a world of mechanical natural causality, something ethical may have intervened at the starting point and, as it were, given the basic mechanical direction, which now continues automatically. But if we are honest, we cannot think of this natural mechanism as being permeated by any ethical impulses.

And so, if we accept the universal mechanism of nature and the universal natural causality, we cannot think that our own ethical impulses trigger anything in the world of natural causality. People today are just not honest enough, otherwise they would say: If we accept the general natural causality, then our ethical impulses are just beautiful human impulses, but beautiful human impulses remain illusions. We can say that ethical ideals live in us, we can even say that the radiance of a divinity that we worship and adore shines on these ethical ideals, but to ascribe a positive reality to this divine and even to state any kind of connection between our prayer and the divine and its volitional impulses remains an illusion.

Certainly, the diligence and good will that have been applied from various sides in order to be able to exist on the one hand, on the side of natural causality, and on the other hand to conquer a special area in religious life, is to be recognized. That is to be recognized. But there is still an inner dishonesty in it; it is not possible with inner honesty to accept this dichotomy.

Now, in the further course of our negotiations, we will probably not have to concern ourselves too much with the very results of spiritual scientific research; we will find content for the religious questions, so to speak, from the purely human. But I would like to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, which does indeed produce positive, real results that are just as much results as those of natural science, is not in a position to stand on the ground of general natural causality. Let us be clear about this point, my dear friends.

You see, the most that our study of nature has brought us is the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy in the universe. You know that in the newer science of the soul, in psychology, this law of the conservation of energy has had a devastating effect. One cannot come to terms with the soul life and its freedom if one takes this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seriously. And the foundations that today's science gives us to understand the human being are such that we cannot help but think that this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seems to apply to the whole human being.

Now you know that spiritual science – not as a dogma of prejudice, but as a result of [spiritual research] – has the knowledge of repeated earthly lives. In the sense of this knowledge, we live in this life, for example, between birth and death, in such a way that, on the one hand, we have within us the impulses of physical inheritance (we will come back to these impulses of physical inheritance in more detail). The world in which we live between death and a new birth includes facts that are not subject to the laws of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. If we seek the spiritual connection between our present life and our next life on earth and further into the lives that no longer proceed physically, but that, after the end of our earthly existence, proceed spiritually, if we draw this connecting line, we encounter world contents that do not fall under our natural laws and therefore cannot be conceived under the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. What, then, is the connection between that which plays out from an earlier life into a later one, and that which a person then lives out in his deeds under the influence of earlier lives on earth? This connection is such that it cannot be grasped by natural laws, even if they extend into the innermost structure of the human body.

Every effect of that which was already present in me in earlier lives, in the present life, is such that its lawfulness has nothing to do with the universal laws of nature. This means that if we have ethical impulses in our present life on earth, we can say with certainty that these ethical impulses cannot be fully realized in the physical world, but they have the possibility of being realized from one life on earth to the next, because we pass through a sphere that is released from the laws of nature.

We thus arrive at a concept of miracle that is indeed transformed, but can certainly be retained in terms of knowledge. The concept of miracle in turn takes on meaning. The concept of miracle can only make sense if ethical impulses, and not just natural laws, are at work. But when we are completely immersed in the natural world, our ethical impulses do not flow into the natural order. But if we are lifted out of this natural context, if we place time between cause and effect, then the concept of miracle takes on a completely new meaning; indeed, it takes on a meaning in an even deeper sense.

If we look at the origin of the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we do not see the same forces at work as in the universal context of nature today. Rather, we see the laws of nature being suspended during the transition from the pre-earthly metamorphosis to the present-day earthly metamorphosis of the earth. And when we go to the end of the earth, when, so to speak, the Clausiussche formula is fulfilled and the entropy has increased so much that it has arrived at its maximum, when, therefore, the heat death has occurred for the earth, then the same thing happens: we see how, at the beginning of the earth as well as at the end of the earth, natural causality is eliminated and a different mode of action is present. We therefore have the possibility of intervening precisely in such times of suspension, as they lie for us humans between death and a new birth, as they lie for the earth itself before and after its present metamorphosis, the possibility of intervention by that which is today simply rejected by natural causality, the possibility of intervention by ethical impulses.

You see, I would say that humanity has already taken one of the two necessary steps. The first step is that all reasonable people, including religious people, have abandoned the old superstitious concept of magic, the concept of magic that presupposes the possibility of intervening in the workings of nature through this or that machination. In place of such a concept of magic, we now have the view that we must simply let natural processes run their course, that we cannot master natural causality with spiritual forces. Natural causality takes its course, we have no influence on it, so it is said, therefore magic in the old superstitious sense is to be excluded from our fields of knowledge.

But, as correct as this may be for certain periods of time, it is incorrect when we look at larger periods of time. If we look at the period of time that lies between death and a new birth for us humans, we simply pass through an area that, before spiritual scientific knowledge, appears in the following way: Imagine we die at the end of our present life; we first step out of the world in which we perceive the universal natural causality through our senses and our intellect. This universal natural causality continues to rule on earth, which we have then left through death, and we can initially, after death, when we look down from the life in the beyond to this one, see nothing but that effects grow out of the causes that were active during our life; these effects, which then become causes again, become effects again. After our death, we see that this natural causality continues.

If we have led a reasonably normal life, then this life continues after death until all the impulses that were active during our earthly life have experienced their end in earthly activity itself and a new spiritual impact takes place, until, that is, the last causalities cease and a new impact is there. Only then do we embody ourselves again when the spiritual gives a new impact, so that the stream of earlier causalities ceases. We descend to a new life, not by finding the effects of the old causes of our former life again – we do not find them then – but we find a new phase of rhythm, a new impact. Here we have, so to speak, lived spiritually across a junction of rhythmic development. In the next life we cannot say that the causes that were already present in the previous life are taking effect, but that in our human life they have all been exhausted at a crossroads – not yet the effects of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, which will only be exhausted at the end of the earth's time. But all that concerns us humans in terms of ethical life has been exhausted, and a new approach is needed. And we take the impulses for this new approach from the spiritual life that we go through between death and a new birth, so that we can connect with those impulses that shape the earth out of the ethical-divine. We can connect with them when we are in the world ourselves, from which the new impulse then flows. So that we have to say: If we now look at our life between birth and death, there is certainly no room for the superstitious-magical, but in the next life the connection is such that one can really speak of magic, but not of an immediate influence of the spiritual into the physical. That is the important thing that one gets to know through spiritual science, that there is not simply a continuous stream of causalities from beginning to end, but that there are rhythms of causality that pass through certain periods of time, which are not even terribly long in relation to the entire development of the earth; they arrive at the zero point, then a new causality rhythm comes. When we enter into the next rhythm of causality, we do not find the effects of the earlier rhythm of causality. On the contrary, we must first carry them over into our own soul in the form of after-effects, which we have to carry over through karma.

You see, I just wanted to suggest to you that spiritual science really has no need to accept anything from those who want to regenerate religion today – for many, this would mean the acceptance of a new dogmatism –; I just wanted to suggest that it is possible for spiritual science, for the science of the outer world, without prejudice to the seemingly necessary validity of the laws of nature, to give such a configuration that man in turn fits into it, and fits into it in such a way that he can truly call his ethical impulses world impulses again, that he is not repelled with his ethical impulses towards a merely powerless faith. At least this possibility must be borne in consciousness, for without it one is not understood by those to whom one is to preach.

I would also like to make a point for you here that I have often made for the teachers at the Waldorf School, which forms an important pedagogical principle. You see, if you want to teach children something, you must not believe that this something will be accepted by the child if you yourself do not believe in it, if you yourself are not convinced of it. I usually take the example that one can teach small children about the immortality of the soul by resorting to a symbol. One speaks to the child of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis and draws the comparison by saying: Just as the butterfly lives in the chrysalis, our soul lives in us, only we do not see it; it flies away when death occurs. Now, there are two possible approaches to such teaching. One is to imagine: I am a terribly clever guy who doesn't think that using this comparison says anything about immortality, but I need it for the child, who is stupid, you teach them that. If you are unbiased, you will soon recognize that this sublimity of the child's perception cannot lead to fruitful teaching. What you do not have as a conviction within yourself will not convince the child in the end. Such are the effects of imponderables. Only when I myself can believe that my symbol corresponds to reality in every single word, then my teaching will be fruitful for the child. And spiritual science, of course, provides sufficient occasion for this, because in spiritual science the butterfly that crawls out of the chrysalis is not just a fictitious symbol, but it is actually the case that what appears at a higher level as immortality appears at a lower level. It is ordained by the Powers That Be that what is the transition of the soul into the immortal appears in the image of the butterfly crawling out.

So, if you look at the picture as if it were a reality, then the teaching is fruitful, but not if you imagine that you are a clever fellow who forms the image, but if you know that the world itself gives you the image. Thus the imponderable forces work between the soul of the teacher and the soul of the child; and so it is also in religious instruction, in preaching. One must have in one's soul the full content of the foundations for that which one presumes will be understood by those to whom one speaks. Indeed, one must not even have concepts that contradict this matter. I would like to express myself as follows: Suppose you are a person in the sense of today's Ritschlianer or something like that, who is thoroughly religious in terms of soul immortality, the existence of God and so on, but at the same time you are weak enough to accept the Kant-Laplace theory, and in fact as it is taught by today's natural science. The mere fact that this Kant-Laplacean theory is in your mind and is an objective contradiction of what you have to represent as the content of your Christian confession, already that impairs the convincing power that you must have as a preacher. Even if you are not aware of the contradictions, they are there; that is to say, anyone who wants to preach must have within himself all the elements that make up a consistent worldview. Of course, theology will not be of much use to us in preaching; but we must have it within ourselves as a consistent whole, not as one that exists alongside external science, but one that can embrace external science, that is, relate to it sympathetically.

We can look at the matter from another side. You see, in philosophy, in science, they talk today about all possible relationships between man and the world around him; but the things they talk about are hardly found in the people who, as simple, primitive people, even among the urban population, are listening to us today, uneducated. The relationships that our psychologists, for example, posit between the person who observes nature and the person himself are not real at all; they are actually only artificially contrived. But what lives in the simplest farmer, in the most primitive person in our world, is that deep within himself he seeks — I say seeks — something deep within himself that is not out there in nature. He searches for a different world view from the one that comes from nature, and one must speak to him of this world view if the feeling that he has as a religious feeling is to arise at all. Primitive man simply says, as it lives in his subconscious: “I am not made of this material that the world is made of, which I can see with my senses; tell me something about what I cannot see with my senses!” This is the direct appeal that is made to us if man is to make us his religious guides: we should tell him something about the positive content of the supersensible world.

All our epistemology, which says that sensory perceptions and sensations are subjective or more or less objective and so on, is of little concern to the vast majority of people. But the fact that something must live in the world that does not belong to the sensory world by its very nature is something that people want to learn about from us. And here the question is: How can we meet this need of the human being? We can only do so by finding the right path from the subject-matter of teaching to the cultus; and I will say a few introductory words about this question tomorrow. Today, I would be very grateful if you would express yourselves so that I can get to know your needs.

Perhaps we will arrive more at formulating questions than at answers, but it would be quite good if we could formulate the main questions. During my time here, I would like to give you what can lead to such a handling of the religious, which, I would say, lies in the profession of the religious leader, not in theology. So it should be aimed at religious practice, at the establishment of religious institutions, not so much at theological questions. But if such questions are on your mind, we can also talk about them. I would ask you, if we are talking about what is particularly on your mind today, to at least formulate the questions first.

A participant suggests that Mr. Bock from Berlin formulate the questions.

Emil Bock: Last night I reported on what we in Berlin have tried to make clear to ourselves in our inner preparation, and we have tried to distinguish between different sets of questions. And in connection with what we have heard, we can now formulate the one question that combines three of the areas we had distinguished: the questions of worship and preaching and the question of the justification of the community element in the community. Yesterday evening I tried to make this clear by referring to the church-historical trend of the community movement. And there we actually found that for us it is about a clarity of the relationship between anthroposophical educational work on religious questions and purely religious practice, so either in worship, the relationship between ritual and sermon, or, with a transformation of what must take place outside of the cult, the relationship of the service as a whole to the religious lecture work or the religious ritual to teaching children, because what is ultimately gained through symbolism has not yet been realized by the human being. Now the question for us is: to what extent does it have to become conscious at all, and if it has to become conscious, how does it have to be done and balanced between the symbolic work on the part of the person and the part of the person that simultaneously tries to develop an awareness of it, which in turn will be divided into several problems when we consider the diversity of those we will face later? For many people may not have the need to raise the impulses into consciousness, while many people may first have the problem of consciousness at all.

And so the question arose for us: How do we actually harmonize the striving for a communal religious life with the striving for a vitalization of the I-impulse? For we have to reckon with the fact that, as far as we can see, in the case of many people who belong to bourgeois life, what would first come into question would be a proper independence for the individual through religious practice, a connection to the forces of the I, while in the case of many other people we would have to bring about a regulation of a lost sense of self. This is what we sensed in the question of communal forces, in a way that we could understand in relation to the Moravian Church in church history.

This is how I have now described the one complex of questions that was important to us last night. But we also had three other areas that raised a number of questions for us, and the first of these was the purely organizational. If we prepare ourselves, make ourselves capable and draw the consequences for our personal field of work, which then arise when we realize that, after all, it is a matter of founding communities according to a new principle, then the question is before us, and this is in every case, of course, differentiated in practice, depending on the situation in which the individual stands: What preparatory work do we have to do? Can we do preparatory work through lecturing? How can we practically distribute ourselves to the points where something needs to be worked on, and how can we work out something together about these things? It was clear to us that, of course, we do not expect things to be made easy for us now and that we will get a place. We are prepared to create such fields of work. But perhaps there is something to be learned about how this can be made easier for us in a certain sense. Then there is a great deal that is perhaps purely organizational that we would like to ask about during our discussion.

The second point, in addition to purely organizational matters, was our relationship to theological science. Above all, there were two questions: firstly, the theological training of those who later have to work in such communities, insofar as such training can come into contact with university activities and we can learn from it. Then there is the question of the new understanding of the Bible, which, after all, presupposes a theological education that goes beyond a knowledge of the anthroposophical worldview to a certain extent, as a technical education. Perhaps there are some practical questions in one heart or another; perhaps one or the other has more of an inclination for scientific work, and it would be interesting for all of us to see how this theological-scientific work can perhaps be made fruitful for the religious life of the present.

And then, last of the six areas we see – and this is probably the one that can least be formulated directly in questions – is the question of the quality of the priesthood that we must expect of ourselves if we set out to work on something like this. But then something practical comes together again very closely, about which one should already ask, that would be the question of the selection of the personalities who should then finally enter into this work, because somehow we must also orient ourselves as to how we should select ourselves, quite apart from where the decision about this will initially lie for the direction of self-evaluation. I think I have roughly said what it was about last night.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the questions that must be asked at this turning point, to which I have alluded, and this will actually be the content of our being together. We must, in particular, be clear about these questions and also about some things that, I would say, form the prerequisite for them. I would just like to point out a few things after the questions have been formulated, before we discuss them: It is the case that we are living in a time in which such questions must be judged from a highest point of view, also from a highest historical point of view. It is not at all in the direction of the spiritual scientist to always use the phrase; “We live in a transitional period.” Of course, every period is a transition from the earlier to the later, but the point is to look beyond what is considered a transition to what is actually passing away. And in our time, there is something that is very much understood in the process of transition: human consciousness itself. We are very easily mistaken if we believe that consciousness, as it still manifests itself in many ways today, is, so to speak, unchangeable.

We say to ourselves today very easily: Yes, there are people who, through their higher education, will want to become aware of the content of the cult; other people will have no need for it, they will not strive to bring it into conscious life at all. You see, we are living at a point in the historical development of humanity when it is characteristic that the number of people who want to be enlightened in a suitable way about that which is also a cult for them is increasing very rapidly. And we have to take that into account. We must not form the dogmatic prejudice today that you can enlighten him, but not her. For if we assume today that people who have attained a certain level of education do not want to be enlightened, then we will usually be mistaken in the long run. The number of people who want to achieve a certain degree of awareness of the symbolic and of what is alive in the cultus is actually growing every day, and the main question is quite different, namely this: How can we arrive at a cult and symbolic content when we at the same time demand that, as soon as one consciously enlightens oneself about this symbolic content, it does not become abstract and alien to the mind, but rather acquires its full value, its full validity? — This is the question that is of particular interest to us today.

If it is not too religious, you can refer to Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which emerged from a person who, if you want, if you want to squeeze the concepts, can be spoken of as a person who always dreamed about such things. One also speaks of the fact that Schiller interpreted Goethe's dreams. In a certain respect, however, Goethe was much more aware of what lived in his fairy tale than what Schiller became. But his consciousness is one that can live in the image itself; it is not that abstract consciousness that one experiences today solely as consciousness. Today one confuses understanding with consciousness in general. The one who visualizes is believed to be not as conscious as the one who conceptualizes. Conceptualization is confused today with consciousness.

We will have to talk about the question of the consciousness and unconsciousness and superconsciousness of a cult and a symbolism, which must indeed occupy our present time in the very deepest sense. For on the one hand we have the Catholic Church with its very powerful cult and its tremendously powerful and purposeful symbolism. What tremendous power lies in the sacrifice of the Mass alone, when it is performed as it is performed in the Catholic Church, that is, when it is performed with the consciousness of the faithful, which is present. And the sermon by the Catholic priest also has a content that relates to symbolism, and in particular it is very much imbued with will. [On the other hand,] the Protestant development of the last few centuries has led to the development of the cultus being transferred to the actual teaching content, to the teaching content. The teaching content is now that which tends to have an effect only when it is attuned to the understanding of the listener or reader. That is why Protestant churches face the danger of atomization, the danger that everyone forms their own church in their hearts, and precisely because of this no community can be formed. And this danger is one that must be countered.

We must have the possibility of forming a community, and one that is built not only on external institutions but on the soul and inner life. This means that we must be able to build a bridge between such a cult, such a ritual, that can exist in the face of modern consciousness and yet, like the Protestant confession, leads to a deeper understanding of the teaching.

The teaching content individualizes and analyzes the community until one finally arrives at the individual human being, and even analyzes the individual human being through his or her tendencies. A psychologist can see the conflicted natures of the present day; they are individualized right down to the individual. We can actually see today people who not only strive to have their individual beliefs, but who have two or more beliefs that fight each other in their own souls. The numerous conflicted natures of the present day are only a continuation of the tendency that individualizes and analyzes the community. Cult, symbol, and ritual are synthetic and reuniting; this can be perceived everywhere where these things are practically addressed. Therefore, this question is at the same time the one that must be really underlying the question of the community movement.

The question of anthroposophical enlightenment and purely religious practice must in turn be detached from our present-day point in time. Today, however, we are experiencing something tragic; and it would be particularly significant if a force could emanate from your community here, so to speak, that could initially lead us beyond this tragedy. If one has such an explanation, as it arises, I would like to say, as a religious explanation in consequence of the entire anthroposophical explanation, which, after all, has not only religious but also historical explanations, scientific explanations, and so on, if one considers these religious explanations of Anthroposophy , the ideas one encounters and, as a consequence, the feelings that arise from them, cannot but lead to a longing for external symbols, for images, in order to take shape. This is so often misunderstood that Anthroposophical ideas are already different from those ideas that one encounters today. When one is exposed to other ideas today, whether from science or from social life, they work in the sense that they are called enlightened in the absolute sense, and in the sense that they criticize everything and undermine everything. When one is exposed to anthroposophical ideas, they lead to a certain devotion in people, they are transformed into a certain love. Just as red blood cannot help but build up the human being, so the anthroposophical ideas cannot help but stimulate the human being emotionally, sensually, even volitionally, so that he receives the deepest longing for an expression of what he has to say, in the symbolic, in the pictorial at all. It is not something artificially introduced when you find so much pictorial language in my “Geheimwissenschaft”, for example; it just comes about through expressing oneself pictorially.

In Dornach — those who have been there have seen it, later on it will be seen in its perfection — we have at the center of the building a group of Christ figures: Christ with Lucifer and Ahriman, both of whom are defeated by him. There, in the Christ, a synthesis of all that is sensual and supersensual is presented to the human eye. Yes, you see, to develop such a figure plastically, that does not come from the fact that one has once decided to place a figure there, so that the place should be adorned. It is not at all like that, but when one develops the anthroposophical concepts, one finally comes to an end with the concepts. It is like coming to a pond; now you cannot go any further, but if you want to get ahead, you have to swim. So, if you want to go further with anthroposophy, at a certain point you cannot go on forming abstract concepts, you cannot go on forming ideas, but you have to enter into images. The ideas themselves demand that you begin to express yourself in images.

I have often said to my listeners: There are certain theories of knowledge. Particularly among Protestant theologians there are those who say: Yes, what one recognizes must be clothed in purely logical forms, one must look at things with pure logic, otherwise one has a myth. Isn't that how people like Bruhn speak? He works very much against anthroposophy by saying that it forms myths, a new mythology. Yes, but what if someone were to ask the counter-question: just try to fathom the universe with your logic, without passing over into the pictorial. If the universe itself works not only logically but also artistically, then you must also look at it artistically; but if the universe eludes your logical observation, then what? In the same way, the outer human form eludes mere logical speculation. If you take the true anthroposophical concepts, you get into the picture, because nature does not create according to mere natural laws, but according to forms.

And so it can be said that as anthroposophy comes to fruition today, it takes into account what is at play in the hearts of our contemporaries, [the need] to get beyond intellectualism. This is actually admitted by every discerning contemporary who is following developments. They realize that we have to move beyond intellectualism, in theology too, of course. But most do not yet realize that this flowing into the pictorial, which then becomes ritual cultus in the sphere of religious practice, has just as much justification and just as much originality as the logical.

Most people imagine that pictures are made by having concepts and then clothing them in symbolism. This is always a straw-like symbolism. This is not the case [in Dornach]. In Dornach, there is no symbol based on a concept, but rather, at a certain stage, the idea is abandoned and the picture comes to life as something original. It is there as an image. And one cannot say that one has transferred a concept into the image. That would be a symbolism of straw.

This striving to overcome intellectualism is there today, this striving for a spiritual life that, because of objectivity, passes into the pictorial. On the other hand, there is no belief in the image at all today. This makes it tragic. One believes that one must overcome the image if one is really clever; one believes that one only becomes conscious when one has overcome the image. — Such images as in Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily are always divested of their reality when one tries to explain or interpret them by mental maziness. One can only lead to the fact that the person concerned can take up these images, that they can become concrete for him, but not mentally comment on them. This is what distinguishes what I have contributed to the interpretation of Goethe's fairy tale from what the other commentators do. They make comments and explain the images mentally.

For what the real imagination is based on, the mental explanation is just as foreign as what I say about the Chinese language in German, for example. If I want to teach someone Chinese, I have to lead him to the point where he can grasp the Chinese language in its entirety to such an extent that he can enter into it. And so one must also prepare for real pictorial thinking; one must proceed in such a way that the person concerned can then make the images present within himself and not have to attach an explanation to them.

That is the tragedy, that on the one hand there is the deepest need for the image, and on the other hand all belief in the image has actually been extinguished. We do not believe that we have something in images that cannot be given in the mind, in intellectual concepts. We must first understand this when we talk about the question of symbolum and consciousness in the near future. In particular, we will only be able to fruitfully answer the question of how to balance the subconscious and the conscious, which plagues so many people today, when we are clear about this matter.

So I would like to ask you to consider what I have now suggested about the relationship between the concepts of the intellect and the real images until tomorrow. From this point of view, we will also find that we can enter into community building, because community building depends very much on the possibility of a cult. The practical successes of community building also depend on the possibility of a cult.

You see, when people get to know India and the Indian religions, one thing is always emphasized with great justification: Of course there are many sects in India; these have a very strong sense of community that extends to the soul and can manifest itself in practical community life. In some respects, of course, the version that has to take place in the East can compete with many of the principles on which the brotherhood is based. This is often based on the fact that the Oriental in his individual life does not really know what we call subjective, personal conviction in relation to the community around him. The Oriental, if he participates at all in spiritual life, does not understand at all that one cannot have one's own opinion about everything, for example about a community and a body of teaching; that is something he does not understand at all. Conceptually, everyone can have their own opinion; the only thing that is common there is only the image, and one is only aware that the image is common. It is peculiar that in the West there is a tendency to place the emphasis on conviction, and that this leads to atomization. If one seeks conviction and places the main emphasis on it, then one comes to atomization. This does not occur if one seeks commonality in something other than conviction. Conviction must be able to be completely individual.

We must ask ourselves the question: On the one hand, the self stands as the pinnacle of the individual life, while on the other hand, Christ stands as the power and essence that is not only common to all Christians, but of which the claim must be made that it can become common to all human beings. And we must find the way to bridge the gap between the very individual self, which to a certain extent wants to believe what it is capable of, and the commonality of Christ.

We shall then have to devote special attention to the question of forming communities, and, as the Lord very rightly said, to the preliminary work for this. For these are, of course, matters that will meet with quite different difficulties. On the one hand, we are today almost dependent on conducting preliminary work through instruction in such a way that we find a sufficiently large number of people in whose souls there is initially an understanding of what can actually be wanted. On the other hand, we are faced with humanity that is completely fragmented. The simple fact that we appear with the pretension of knowing something that another person might have to think about for a day to judge is almost enough to get us dismissed right now. The effect from person to person is extremely difficult today. And of course this also makes the formation of communities more difficult.

Nevertheless, if you want to achieve something in what you have only been able to strive for by appearing here, then we will have to talk at length about the question of forming a community and, above all, about the preparatory work for it, which should essentially consist of us feeling, already spiritually, as community builders. And we can hardly do this other than by – perhaps it will not be immediately understandable at first hearing what I want to say, because it touches on one of the deepest questions of the present – first of all trying to refrain from lecturing other people as much as possible. People just don't take lectures today; this should not be our main task.

You see, however small the success of anthroposophical work may be, which I have had to set myself as my task, in a sense this success is there, albeit in a small circle; it is there. And what is there is based on the fact that I actually — in the sense in which it is understood at our educational institutions — never wanted to teach anyone in a primarily forceful way. I have actually always proceeded according to a law of nature, I always said to myself: the herrings lay an infinite number of eggs in the sea, very few of them become herrings, but a certain selection must take place. And anyone who knows that that which goes beyond the materialistic continues to have an effect, knows that even the unfertilized herring eggs already have their task in the world as a whole – they have their great effect in the etheric world, the selections only take place for the physical world – then comes to terms with this question: Why do such herring eggs remain unfertilized? That which remains unfertilized has its great task in another world. These unfertilized herring eggs are not entirely without significance. And that is basically how it is with teaching people. I have never believed, whether I have spoken to an audience of fifty or to one of five hundred (I have also spoken to larger audiences), that one-half or one-quarter of them can be taught. Rather, I have assumed that among five hundred there will perhaps be five who, at the first stroke, will have their hearts touched by what I have to say, who are, so to speak, predestined for it. Among fifty people, one, and among five people, one in ten. It is no different, and one must adjust to that. Then what happens through instruction in the present time cannot happen through selection. People come together with whom one has found an echo. Selection is what we must seek first today; then we will make progress.

It takes a certain resignation not to live in this sense of power: you want to teach, you want to convince others. But you absolutely must have this resignation. And why people so often lack it depends precisely – I am only talking here about people who practise religion – depends precisely on their theological training. This theological training is basically based entirely on the fact that one can teach everyone, that one should not actually make selections. Therefore, ways and means must be found to include in the theological training, above all, the emotional relationship to the content of the spiritual.

You see, unfortunately even theology has arrived at the point of view that knowledge of God is always more important than life in God, the experience of the divine in the soul. The experience of the divine in the soul is what gives one the strength to work with the simplest, most unspoiled people, and that is what should actually be developed. Recent times have worked against this completely. The more we strive to seek abstract concepts of some kind of supersensible being, and the less we absorb this supersensible being into our souls, the more we will work against it. We really need a life-filled preparation and education for theological science. And of course something esoteric comes into play here, you see, where we have to point to a law that already exists. First of all, you have to have within you what I mentioned earlier: not only as a clever person, how are you supposed to teach a picture or something to someone else – you have to have that to the full – but you must also have the other, that you must always know more than what you say. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. But if you take the standpoint that is actually held today in the professorial world, that one should only appropriate that which one then wants to communicate to others, then you will certainly not be able to achieve much with religious communication. For example, when you speak about the Bible, you must have your own content, in which you live, in addition to the exoteric content, which is nothing other than an esoteric content expressed. There is no absolute boundary between the esoteric and the exoteric; one flows into the other and the esoteric becomes exoteric when it is spoken out.

This is basically what makes Catholic priests effective. That is what praying the breviary consists of. He seeks to approach the divine in a way that goes beyond the layman by praying the breviary. And the special content of the breviary, which goes beyond what is taught, also gives him strength to work in preaching and otherwise. It has always been interesting to me – and this has happened not just once, but very frequently – that Protestant pastors who had been in office for a long time came to me and said that there should be something similar for them [to the Catholic breviary]. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not speaking in favor of Catholicism, least of all the Roman one. There are pastors who have been in office for a long time who have said to me: Why is it that we cannot come into contact with souls in the same way as a Catholic priest, who of course abuses it? — That is essentially because the [Catholic priest] seeks an esoteric relationship with the spiritual world.

This is really what we are striving for in the threefold social organism. The spiritual life we have today as a general rule — we are not talking about the other one — the spiritual life we have is not really a spiritual life, it is a mere intellectual life. We talk about the spirit, we have concepts, but concepts are not a living spirit. We must not only have the spirit in some form or other in the form of concepts that sit in our heads, but we must bring the spirit down to earth, it must be in the institutions, it must prevail between people. But we can only do that if we have an independent spiritual life, where we not only work out of concepts about the spirit, but work out of the spirit itself.

Now, of course, the Church has long endeavored to preserve this living spirit. It has long since disappeared from the schools; but we must bring it back there and also into the other institutions. The state cannot bring it in. That can only be brought in by what is at the same time individual priestly work and community work. But it must be priestly work in such a way that the priest, above all, has within himself the consciousness of an esoteric connection with the spiritual world itself, not merely with concepts about the spiritual world. And here, of course, we come to the great question of selection, to the judgment of the quality of the priests. Now, this judgment of the quality of the priests is such that it can very easily be misunderstood, because, firstly, many more people have this quality than one might think, it is just not developed in the right way, not cultivated in the right way; and secondly, this question is often a question of fate. When we come to have a living spiritual life at all and the questions of fate come to life for us again, then the priests will be pushed out of the community of people more into their place than out of self-examination, which always has a strongly selfish character. It is true that one must acquire a certain eye for what objectively calls upon one to do this or that.

Perhaps I may also tell you what I have said in various places as an example. I could also tell other examples. I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and wisdom. Two Catholic priests came to me after the lecture. You can imagine that Catholic priests have not read anything by me, because it is actually forbidden for them, and it is basically the case that it is considered an abnormality for a Catholic priest to go to an anthroposophical lecture. But they were probably harmless at the time; they approached me quite innocently, since I did not say anything in this lecture that would have opposed them. They even came to me after the lecture and said: Yes, actually we cannot say anything [against what you have presented, because] we also have purgatory, we also have the reference to supersensible life after purgatory. Now in this case I thought it best to give two lectures. 'Bible and Wisdom' I and II, and in the first lecture nothing was said about repeated lives on earth, so they did not notice that there was a contradiction to the Roman Catholic view. Now they came and said that they had nothing against the content, but the “how” I said it was very different, and so they believed that they could not agree with this “how”. Because the “how” would be right for them, because they spoke for all people and I only spoke for certain prepared people, for people who therefore have a certain preparation for it. After some back and forth, I said the following: You see, it doesn't matter whether I or you—you or I, I said—are convinced that we speak for all people. This conviction is very understandable. We might not speak at all if we didn't have the conviction that we formulate our things in such a way and imbue them with such content that we speak for all people. But what matters is not whether we are convinced that we speak for all people, but whether all people come to you in church. And I ask you: do all people still come to church when you speak? Of course they could not say that everyone still comes, but they had to admit that some do not come. That is objectivity. For those who do not go to you and who also have the right to seek a path to Christ, I have spoken for them. — That is how one's task is derived from the facts.

I just wanted to show a way to get used to having one's personal task set by the question of destiny and also by the great question of objectivity. I wanted to show how one should not brood so much, as is the case today, over one's own personality – which, after all, is basically only there so that we can fill the place that the divine world government assigns us – but rather we should try to observe signs from which we can recognize the place we are to be placed. And we can do that.

Today, when people speak from their souls, they repeatedly ask: What corresponds to my particular abilities, how can I bring my abilities to bear? This question is much, much less important than the objective question, which is answered by looking around to see what needs to be done. And if we then really get seriously involved in what we notice, we will see that we have much more ability than we realize. These abilities are not so much specific; we as human beings can do an enormous amount, we have very universal soul qualities, not so much specific ones. This brooding over one's own self, and the over-strong belief that we each have our own specific abilities that are to be particularly cultivated, is basically an inward, very sophisticated egoism, which must be overcome by precisely the person who wants to achieve such qualities as are meant here.

Now I think I have told you how I understand the questions. We can think about the matter until tomorrow; and if it is all right with you, I would like to suggest that we meet again tomorrow at around 11 o'clock. And I would ask you not to hold back on any matter, but we want to deal with the things that are on your mind as exhaustively as possible.

[ 1 ] It was said by critics of this book immediately after its publication that it does not give a picture of Goethe's “world-conception” but only of his “conception of Nature.” I do not think that this judgment has proceeded from a justifiable point of view, although, externally considered, the book is almost exclusively concerned with Goethe's ideas of Nature. In the course of what has been said, I think I have shown that these ideas of Nature are based upon a specific mode of observation of world phenomena. I think I have indicated in the book itself that the adoption of a point of view such as Goethe possessed in regard to natural phenomena can lead to definite views on psychological, historical and still wider phenomena. That which is expressed in Goethe's conception of Nature in a particular sphere, is indeed a world-conception and not a mere conception of Nature such as might well be possessed by a personality whose thoughts had no significance for a wider world-picture. On the other hand, moreover, I thought that in this book I ought only to present what may be said in immediate connection with the region that Goethe himself developed from out of the whole compass of his world-conception. To draw a picture of the world revealed in Goethe's poems, in his ideas on the history of Art, and so on, would of course be quite possible, and indubitably of the greatest interest. But those who take the character of the book into consideration will not look for such a world-picture therein. They will realise that I have set myself the task of sketching that portion of Goethe's world-picture for which the data exist in his own writings, the one proceeding consecutively from the others. I have indicated in many places the points at which Goethe came to a standstill in this consecutive development of the world-picture which he was able to present in regard to certain realms of Nature. Goethe's views of the world and of life reveal themselves in a very wide compass. The emergence of these views from out of his own original world-conception is not, however, so evident from his works in the sphere of natural phenomena as it is here. In other spheres, all that Goethe's soul had to reveal to the world becomes clear; in the domain of his ideas of Nature it becomes evident how the fundamental trend of his spirit won for itself, step by step, a view of the world up to a certain boundary. Precisely by going no further in the portrayal of Goethe's thought-activity than the elaboration of a self-contained fragment of world-conception, one will gain enlightenment as to the special colouring of what is revealed in the rest of his life's work. Therefore it was not my aim to portray the world-picture that emerges from Goethe's life-work as a whole, but rather that part of it which in his case comes to light in the form in which one brings a world-conception to expression in thought. It does not necessarily follow that views originating from a personality, however great, are parts of a world-view complete in itself and connected directly with the personality. Goethe's ideas of Nature are, however, such a self-contained fragment of a world-picture. And as an elucidation of natural phenomena they do not represent merely a view of Nature; they are an integral part of a world-conception.

[ 2 ] It does not surprise me that I should have been accused of a change of views since the publication of this book, for I am not unfamiliar with the presuppositions which lead one to such a judgment. I have spoken about this endeavour to find contradictions in my writings in the Preface to the first volume of my Riddles of Philosophy and in an essay in the journal Das Reich, Vol. II. (Spiritual Science as Anthroposophy and the contemporary Theory of Knowledge). Such an endeavour is only possible among critics who wholly fail to understand the course which my world-conception is bound to take when it wishes to consider different regions of life. I do not propose to enter into this question here again but to confine myself to certain brief remarks in reference to this book on Goethe. In the Anthroposophical Spiritual Science that I have presented in my writings for the past sixteen years, I myself see that mode of cognition for the spiritual world-content accessible to man, to which one must come who has brought to life within his soul Goethe's ideas of Nature as something with which he is in accord, and with this as his starting-point, strives to experience in cognition the spiritual region of the world. I am of opinion that this Spiritual Science presupposes a Natural Science corresponding to that of Goethe. I do not only mean that the Spiritual Science which I have presented does not contradict this Natural Science. For I know that the mere fact of there being no logical contradiction between two different statements means very little. They may none the less be wholly irreconcilable in reality. But I believe that Goethe's ideas in reference to the realm of Nature, when they are actually experienced, must necessarily lead to the Anthroposophical truths that I have set forth when man leads over his experiences in the realm of Nature to experiences in the realm of spirit. Goethe has not done this. The mode and nature of these latter experiences are described in my spiritual-scientific works. For this reason, the essential content of this book, which was published for the first time in 1897, has been reprinted again to-day, as my exposition of the Goethean world-conception, after the publication of my writings on Spiritual Science. All the thoughts presented here hold good for me to-day in unchanged form. In isolated places only have I introduced slight alterations and they have nothing to do with the form of the thoughts but merely with the wording of certain passages. And it is perhaps understandable that after twenty years one would like here and there to make certain changes in the style of a book. The new edition differs from the first only in certain extensions that have been made, not in alterations of content. I believe that a man who is looking for a scientific basis for Spiritual Science can discover it through Goethe's world-conception. Therefore it seems to me that a work on Goethe's world-conception may also be of service to those who wish to concern themselves with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. My book, however, is written as a study of Goethe's world-conception per se, without reference to Spiritual Science proper. In my book Goethe's Standard of the Soul: as illustrated in Faust and in the Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily ¹ will be found something of what may be said about Goethe from the specially spiritual-scientific point of view.

[ 3 ] Supplementary Note: A critic of this book (Kantstudium III, 1898), thought he was making a special discovery with regard to my “contradictions” by comparing what I say about Platonism (in the first edition, 1897) with what I said practically at the same time in my Introduction to Vol. IV of Goethe's Natural Scientific Works (Kürschner): “Plato's philosophy is one of the most sublime thought-edifices that have ever emanated from the mind of man. It is one of the saddest signs of our age that the Platonic mode of perception is regarded in philosophy as the opposite of sound reason.” Certain minds will find it difficult to understand that when looked at from different angles, every single thing reveals itself differently. The fact that my different utterances about Platonism do not represent real contradictions will be evident to those who do not stop at the mere sound of the words, but who penetrate into the different connections in which Platonism in its essential nature impelled me to bring it at one time or another. It is on the one hand a sad sign when Platonism is held to be contradictory to healthy reason, because it is thought that to remain stationary at pure sense-perception as the only reality alone conforms to this healthy reason. And it is also contradictory to a healthy perception of idea and sense-world when Platonism is applied in such a way that it brings about an unsound separation of idea and sense-perception. Those who cannot bring themselves to penetrate the phenomena of life with thought in this sense will always remain, together with what they apprehend, outside of reality. Those who—speaking in the Goethean sense—set up a concept in order to circumscribe a rich life-content do not understand that life unfolds in relationships that operate differently in different directions. It is naturally more convenient to substitute a schematic concept for a view of life in its entirety; with such concepts one can easily judge schematically. Through such a procedure, however, one lives in lifeless abstractions. Human concepts become abstractions for the very reason that man imagines he can manipulate these concepts in his intellect in the same way as objects manipulate each other. These concepts are, however, more comparable to pictures that man receives from different sides of the same object. The object is one, the pictures many. What leads to a real perception of the object is not concentration upon a single picture but the bringing together of many. Unfortunately I have had to recognise how great the tendency is among many critics to construe “contradictions” from what is really observation of a phenomenon from different points of view—a mode of observation that strives to be permeated with reality. For this reason I felt obliged by a slight alteration of style in this new edition first to make still clearer in my remarks concerning Platonism what I thought was clear enough twenty years ago in the first edition; secondly, to show by direct quotation from my other work in juxtaposition to what is said in this book, the complete harmony that exists between the two utterances. However, if there is anyone who still thinks he can discover contradictions in these matters I have thereby spared him the trouble of having to collect them from two books.

• 1. Anthroposophical Publishing Company, 46 Gloucester Place, London, W.1. Price 2/6.