The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Rudolf Steiner again chairs the meeting and opens the assembly.

Ms. Weisshaar, an architect, asks how the appeal is to be brought to the rural population.

Rudolf Steiner: The social ideas have spread mainly among the industrial workers. Marxism has never been able to gain a foothold in the rural population. Even if they are temporarily interested, the rural population would soon fall back again. But the appeal can certainly work. Here, too, a distinction must be made between the Catholic and Protestant populations. The former is suspicious of anthroposophy; otherwise, their church would have prepared them well for the threefold order by always striving for church freedom. There is less understanding in Protestant circles because the prince was often the 'patron' of the church. On the other hand, there may be some sympathy for the free school. In general, the farmer will be glad if the state cannot interfere in his economic life, especially after the experiences of the war.

Ludwig Polzer also worked among farmers in the sense of the call. He recommends speaking of “the dismantling of state authority”. In this regard, the farmers and the workers are united by a revolutionary mood. If the connection continues to be successful, struggles that are in preparation could be avoided. He also believes he can find understanding for the free school.

Wilhelm von Blume points out that small communities today are close to the threefold division because one already speaks of political communities in contrast to church communities. For the economic work, one often uses the term real or active civil community.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the remnants of an old way of thinking. In Austria we used to say, “No lawyer, no civil servant and no priest is allowed in the economy”.

Alfred Reebstein, Karlsruhe: People say that the food supply would be disrupted if the threefold social order had to be implemented first. Food should be provided first, and then everything would take care of itself.

Rudolf Steiner: This should not interfere with the work of the appeal.

Ludwig Polzer in Vienna has found that people are wary of the Entente.

Emil Leinhas often had similar experiences to Reebstein's, but always replied that food and coal would be provided as soon as the threefold order was realized. People should just not think and come up with such objections.

Schwedes: The Entente will not let us lose out if the threefold order brings calm to the country again.

Karl Stockmeyer, Mannheim, often hears that the state's basis of power will be lost.

Rudolf Steiner: That is what they want. To give in to such objections would be the most dangerous thing. Behind all this stands the rise of the old dictatorship (Ludendorff came to Germany via Kolberg and is now walking quietly in Berlin). The Center Party is working with all means to achieve reaction.

Karl Stockmeyer: In England, the revolutionary mood is also said to be very strong, although there is enough food there.

Rudolf Steiner: Above all, we have to work from factual documents. We must bear in mind that the English and German labor movements cannot be compared. The collapse of Germany brings a completely different basis. The German army was cut off from supplies from the homeland, so Ludendorff had to stop. The sailors in Kiel acted under the secure impression that their comrades over there would immediately join in loyally. Only in this way can the sailors' actions be understood. But the workers in the west did not join in. In England, therefore, the movement must be approached in a very specific way.

Carl Unger: A worker said that if the appeal is to be effective, the border posts must disappear. He thought that fraternization should be easy on the basis of the appeal.

Rudolf Steiner: The appeal should initially be geared towards foreign policy action. I already said to Kühlmann: Since the migration of nations, the disputes between nations have always been about economic issues. The movements of the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths went into the wasteland. But now people want to put the soil on top of each other, for example Germany and France in Alsace-Lorraine. If it had been announced that Alsace-Lorraine would only be administered by the state according to the legal issue, without regard to the economy and schools, so that children in France or Germany could have gone to school, the solution would have been easy. It was similar in Serbia. In Vienna one often heard the war called a 'pig war' because of the introduction of the Serbian pigs. It would have been tremendously effective to maintain economic relations across the borders. This is already justified in the call, but people do not want to introduce it through the peace agreement, but rather let it develop slowly and organically. In Austria, the development in the direction of threefold social order would have been most necessary.

Wilhelm von Blume: The nationality question has only become so pressing since the end of the 18th century. In the past, wars were waged for religious reasons or for reasons of conquest. It is only since the state has intervened in church and school that the state has become inconvenient for the people. If the state can take over culture and the economy, the nationality question will be resolved. Examples are Poland and Silesia, where German schooling had to be maintained. There was no ethnic hatred in the past either. This has only existed since the beginning of the 19th century. Here, too, threefolding will bring the solution.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to mention an example from my youth. I lived in Hungary and had to go to school in Austria. There, in times of peace, children were sent across the border. Some learned Hungarian in Hungary, others learned German in Austria. This ended with the dualism of Austria-Hungary, when everything became pedantic. In Vienna, under the Stephanskrone, sloppiness prevailed. This meant that everything could develop peacefully in the past. The dualism put an end to peace. Hungary was made sharp.

Harriet von Vacano: Dr. Steiner often said that schools should be founded first. But the teachers in Munich often reply that nothing can be done because the church and the state do not allow it. The teachers have a latent fear. Wouldn't it be better to turn to the proletarians?

Rudolf Steiner: Teachers are the last ones to approach because they depend on the state. If the “Farce of Weimar” had released the school system, the teachers would have tried very hard. Today, one must approach the power that has the authority of the state. If the state wants to socialize, then bourgeois sabotage will follow. This is actually already the case in Germany. One then turns to the free areas.

In Germany, Lenin and Trotsky could not act in the same way. In Russia, they simply killed the citizens in order to suppress bourgeois sabotage. (Rudolf Steiner mentioned the example of Solf, whose officials went on strike so that he would remain in office. This was very dangerous.

Hermann Heisler, Tübingen: He always says that we should found schools based on a worldview, because we want to have anthroposophical schools. Of course, the Catholics would then also want to have Jesuit schools. How does Rudolf Steiner understand the unified school?

Rudolf Steiner: In the unified school, only the classes should disappear. The aristocrats will not be able to found private schools for the simple reason that they will have no more money to do so. Otherwise, the spiritual organizations will take care of schools. Above all, however, I would never found anthroposophical schools. The Anthroposophists would have to reshape the methods and the organizations, but never teach Anthroposophy. First of all, we must understand what spiritual freedom is. We must avoid schools of world view the most. (Under Minister Gautsch, Rudolf Steiner advocated the blackest clerical Thun as Minister of Education because he allowed all denominations to teach. He said schools should be managed objectively.)

Hermann Heisler: Does this not cause insecurity and inner conflict in children?

Rudolf Steiner: This is where a pedagogical factor comes into play. If we educate children up to the age of 14 according to a template and then let them go into today's competitive world, we would turn all children into neurasthenics. But freedom at school will bring truth instead of dishonesty. That will be the compensation. For education, it matters much less which religion the child hears than that one meets him with a true soul life.

Karl Stockmeyer: His parents sent him to Catholic schools for a time. He has always striven for teachers to be appointed as ministers of education and for the Ministry of Education to develop from the bottom up.

Ludwig Polzer believes that the Ministry of Education must disappear altogether. After the school question was postponed at Molt's request, Carl Unger raised the question of organization.

Carl Unger: The seven-member working committee should be supplemented over time by local groups from outside Munich.

Emil Leinhas asks whether the work in northern and southern Germany should be managed differently for tactical reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: This must develop out of the factual circumstances. It is not possible to set up regulatory principles. Perhaps the matter needs to be presented in one way in one district today and in another way tomorrow. This is a question of personal tactics.

Schuler, Tübingen, asks about the general debate: In the countryside, the land reform has won over many supporters for the Social Democratic Party. Couldn't we win over the farmers even more if they heard that we use land as a means of production and do not want to expropriate it?

Rudolf Steiner: I have not placed particular emphasis on the means of production of the land in the writing.

Clormann, Mannheim: Should the appeal not be particularly promoted among students?

Rudolf Steiner: These things are to be treated quite differently in the future. Of course, students and professors should be in full harmony later on. It should be possible to win over students as a unified group. I was asked to speak to students in Zurich and was very well received. Students should work for themselves and for the whole world. I was supposed to give a lecture to proletarians in Basel. The Social Democratic Party executive was approached, but they declined. Then they asked about a lecture to railway workers, the railway officials' association, which also refused because the leaders were afraid. After the public lecture in Basel, however, I received the invitation from them all by myself. You can deal with students who refuse today in a similar way.

Hermann Heisler: Thinks students are receptive.

Schwedes, as representative of the U.S.P., speaks out against arming the students. He also believes that the workers will easily go along. But it would be necessary to speak with one voice. The speakers should meet more often to discuss plans, like a kind of traveling conference. He is in favor of all speakers speaking on their own behalf and representing the ideas of the call as their own views. He speaks confidentially of the coming general strike. You should eliminate the leaders and win the masses.

Rudolf Steiner does not want to intervene in the latter. Because of the silence about various activities, Rudolf Steiner believes that it cannot be carried out, if only because it could be used against them in discussions. He gives the example of Winterthur, where the students were attacked, in front of whom he gave a lecture. He tried to convince the people that the young students hardly had a judgment, and that one must not ignore them. This answer was enough for the workers. You should always answer in such a way that you never advocate a program. The workers may say, for example, that they need economic strikes as long as state life is not detached from the economy. It is difficult to object to that.

The conflicts in Rudolf Steiner's life were rarely objective, but mostly personal. Of course, silence has no value against such attacks.

Party knowledge should be used and hiking speeches should be given. In particular, such friends should also educate the anthroposophists about the parties.

Hermann Heisler: The province would have to be better oriented. Debate requires in-depth knowledge of the subject. It suggests a speakers' and debate school from which those familiar with the topic can be sent out. If the foreign representatives cannot come together for such courses, Stuttgart should send out the speakers.

Karl Stockmeyer believes that one must acquire knowledge oneself. He calls for brisk work and non-centralization. He wants the same federation everywhere, but otherwise local freedom.

Max Benzinger is a member of the U.S.P. and would like to be trained as a speaker to support the appeal. He means training in the art of expression, because many find it difficult to express their thoughts correctly. One must work one's way into the old foundations (for example, of the party) in order to create something new.

Emil Molt: The league was founded on Easter Tuesday with a fixed name. Local groups can be formed outside, possibly independently of the anthroposophical working groups. It is good when foreign elements get involved. Different people are needed to work in different fields. Our working material is Dr. Steiner's book and also the Dornach November lectures. These should be duplicated as soon as possible. One must learn how to speak, but also practice it. You can only learn to swim by actually doing it. Conferences with local groups from other areas would be important from time to time.

Hans Kühn asks Rudolf Steiner for permission to reproduce the lectures to be given in Stuttgart, which is approved by Dr. Steiner.

Roman Boos, Zurich, wants only the book to be distributed. It is too late for speakers' schools. It is better to let Mr. Rudolf Steiner speak through the book than to provide surrogates yourself.

Ludwig Polzer: How should the organization in Vienna be done?

Rudolf Steiner: It cannot hurt if local groups outside of Germany stay in contact with Stuttgart (N.B.: It was later decided that Vienna should found its own federation like Zurich and that the German-Austrian local groups should communicate with the Vienna office).

Karl Stockmeyer suggests that all press releases about the federation or Rudolf Steiner's book be sent to Stuttgart by the local groups so that a picture of the movement throughout Germany can be obtained.

After various other requests - at the request - are dealt with by the committee, a request to adjourn the debate and continue it later is rejected because the most important work of the committee is neglected due to such long meetings. Wilhelm von Blume proposes, in accordance with the rules of procedure, to end the debate.

The chairman closes the meeting at 1:30 pm.

Dear Mourners! This as a final farewell to Edith Maryon, our loyal colleague:

Those who look at your path of karma,
poor in joy,
Your noble spiritual striving,
the warmth of your soul:
The human being's sense of purpose appears to him
from your life on earth.

Whoever feels your quiet being,
loving,
sees your soul's tireless efforts
never tires:
To him appears the heart of a human being
from your daily life.

Whoever stood before your death door,
the all-too-close,
sees the hard path of suffering
the gently endured:
the meaning of human suffering

He who beholds in the spiritual spheres,
The beneficent,
Weaving your soul life in the future
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual power appears to him
From your eternal being.

He who beholds from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving, Your look down to us, The helping one: The power of blessing of a human being From Your spiritual activity.

Dear mourners! I would like to turn my thoughts first to the absent relatives who were unable to attend on the day when we had to commit the earthly remains of our dear Edith Maryon to the elements. The eldest brother of the deceased, Herbert Maryon, has instructed me to convey all the love that could still be shown here on the part of the family of the deceased. The others, a sister in London, another in the north of England, and a brother in Australia, are unable to be here and can only join us in spirit. But we, my dear mourners, on this day of mourning look back at the earthly life of Edith Maryon.

She came to us in our Anthroposophical Society more than ten years ago from another esoteric community, full of a noble, sacred striving for esoteric deepening of the soul. All this was present in her, alongside what she presented in her outer life. She was an artist and, in her way, a truly accomplished artist, an artist who had full access to the means of art and was fully familiar with the workings of art. She had practised sculpture in England and Italy. She had achieved great success in this art long before she joined the Anthroposophical Society. Edith Maryon has painted a whole series of portraits of respected and well-known personalities in the world. In Italy she immersed herself in everything that is great, beautiful, sublime and haunting in art. So she came among us as an artist and esoteric. At first she sought nothing from us but to deepen her soul through esoteric development. But karma brought it about that she found herself compelled to place what was hers in art in the sacrificial service of our Goetheanum, and from the very beginning she was active at the Goetheanum with all that she, out of her art and out of her human nature, was able to contribute to the completion of this Goetheanum and to everything connected with it.

Looking back on her working life, we see that it was interrupted only once, in 1914, when she suffered a very serious illness while on a trip to England. It was an illness of which it could well be said that if it were to recur in a serious way, Edith Maryon would no longer be able to remain on earth. But at that time she recovered through the efforts of her friend Dr. Felkin, a physician, and was restored to us in 1914 for further work at the Goetheanum. From the time she was able to lay down her work on the altar of sacrifice at the Goetheanum, this was the one thing that stood at the center of all her duties and all her spiritual life. And she has just found the opportunity to do real work that truly leads to a goal within the anthroposophical movement.

It is quite natural that within the anthroposophical movement, the new impulses that I am to introduce into the most diverse fields of art, science and life come into conflict in the most diverse ways with what can be brought in, with what can be acquired with external art, with external science and so on. But there is a way of working if, above all opposition, there is a noble devotion to the work itself, if never may an obstacle be seen in a different view of how to work together. If the work is to come about, it will come about, even if one of the traditions of the older art comes from the other, and the other is obliged to bring art to a further development out of new impulses. If there is true human cooperation, then the commonality of the work can transcend all opposition.

This attitude was present in the highest degree in Edith Maryon's quiet work. That, however, many factors came into play in her working with me, may today, when we have to part with the earthly remains of Edith Maryon and look into the future, to the soul that strives upwards into the spiritual kingdom of light, there continuing to work, may well be said today to a wider circle. It was almost at the beginning of my work as a sculptor at the Goetheanum in Dornach that I had to work on the scaffolding at the top of the statue of Christ in the outer studio, the large front studio, where the model was located. At that time, I almost fell through an opening in the scaffolding and would certainly have fallen onto a pillar with a sharp point if Edith Maryon had not stopped my fall. And so I can already say, my dear mourners, that the Anthroposophical Society, in a certain way, if it believes that my work since that time has also had value within its society, has the rescue back then to be grateful for.

These things were seldom spoken of, for it was not Edith Maryon's way to talk much about her work, especially her human work. But in a very special way she displayed what may be called energy in calmness, energy in quiet work. And the two qualities which stood out as humanly beautiful and valuable were, on the one hand, Edith Maryon's reliability, whenever it was needed, and, on the other, her practical sense.

In the spiritual striving that is necessary to work out into the world, it is essential, my dear mourners, that there are also people in it who have a truly practical mind, so that what is to be realized out of the intentions of the spirit can also come before the world, can be embodied before the world. And of Edith Maryon it can be said that her reliability was something absolutely true and faithful. If she undertook something that required her practical sense, it would be there in due course, even when the work to be done was quite remote from her actual professional activity.

In addition to her collaboration on the sculptural work at the Goetheanum, which really took up even more of her time than what has since become visible, even in the Central Point Statue, in the Central Point Group, she was the most eminently suitable force for the sculptural work at the Goetheanum in the most eminent sense. She mastered the art of sculpture and was inclined to take in everything that was to permeate this art.

But something else was needed for this. A continuous interaction between the old and the new in art was necessary, and much of what has been created at the Goetheanum, without having been made by ourselves, does indeed contain the spirit that was working with Edith Maryon in the development of the plastic arts at the Goetheanum. But she went out; her energy in the quiet worked in a broader sense for the flourishing of the development of the anthroposophical cause. If it has become possible in recent years to give lectures and work for anthroposophy and eurythmy in Stratford, Oxford, London, Penmaenmawr and Ilkley, the credit is due to Edith Maryon's quiet work in mediating between the Goetheanum and the English-speaking population. It was she who first suggested the Christmas Course held years ago around Christmas time, attended by English-speaking teachers. It was she who suggested the artistic representation of the eurythmic movements and figures. And I would still have much to say if I wanted to point out everything that Edith Maryon has achieved through quiet, energetic calm. |

But that is not so important. What matters is to bring this trait of her life, which reveals itself so beautifully in her work, before our minds today.

And she was torn from this life by the fact that her old ailment was again revealed to her through the upheavals of the night of the fire in which the Goetheanum was taken from us, and that despite all careful nursing, this life could not be preserved for its earthly existence after all. Last summer, when Edith Maryon was able to make at least a few very short trips, we believed that this life could be sustained. But already in the fall it became clear how much destructive forces had intervened in this life.

It is truly out of consciousness of that karmic connection, which I expressed by pointing to that accident in the studio, when I say: Edith Maryon was predestined to enter the anthroposophical movement, and with her death much is snatched from the Anthroposophical Society, from the whole anthroposophical movement.

Much of what was her own was revealed in the most beautiful way, especially in the last few weeks, when her suffering became so extraordinarily oppressive and painful, partly through the way she bore this suffering, partly through her full attitude towards the spiritual world, which was entirely borne out of the spirit of anthroposophy, for which Edith Maryon had been preparing herself for weeks.

Due to other commitments, I was unable to be present at the hour of her death. Edith Maryon then guided her soul out of her body, with the help of her dear friend Dr. Ita Wegman, in order to lead it up into the spiritual world. She was cared for until her last hours, not only by the doctor, but also by the nurses who had become dear to her and cared for her, and it was under the care of these nurses that she often spent agonizing hours in the last days, but these could always be brightened in an extraordinarily beautiful and spiritual way. Medicines were no longer effective in the end, but what was still effective were the lectures that could be offered to her, either from what had been given as sayings at the Christmas Conference, or from the New Testament.

At that time, at the Christmas Conference, when there was still hope that we would be able to hold Edith Maryon here in the physical world, she was given the leadership of the Section for the Arts. With tremendous intensity, she endeavored, even on her deathbed, to direct her thoughts continually to the way in which this section should now come into being, and how it should work.

From this life, my dear mourners, the soul of Edith Maryon now ascends into the spiritual worlds, imbued with all that can be gained from the knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual hope and anthroposophical spiritual life. She carried, as did few, the living consciousness in her soul that she had emerged from the eternal source of the Father-Spirit of the world with her best being: Ex deo nascimur. She lived in intimate love, looking up to the Being who gave meaning to the evolution of the earth. In her last days, she had Christ's saying “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden” nailed to the side of her bed. In death she knew herself united with the spirit of Christ: In Christo morimur. And so she is certain of resurrection in the most beautiful way in the spiritual world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus, in which we want to be united with her, to which we want to send our thoughts so that they may unite with hers. Then we can be sure, my dear 'mourners', that her thoughts, her soul's gaze, will rest. No, they will not just rest on the deeds that can still be done for the anthroposophical cause from the Goetheanum, they will work faithfully and powerfully, energetically, they will be among us when we need strength, they will be among us, and we will be able to feel their quiet comfort in our hearts when we need such comfort in the various trials to which the anthroposophical cause is exposed.

The will and testament that Edith Maryon drew up regarding her few possessions is touching. In it she remembered in an extraordinarily loving way all those who are close to her in any way.

And so we look up into those spheres where you continue to live, conquering death, wanting to be with you, united with you in that unity that never dies, that is imperishable through all the circles of the eternity that weaves and billows through the world.

He who beholds thy karmic path,
Poor in joy,
Beholds thy noble spiritual striving,
The warmth of soul:
To him appears the sense of human activity
From thy walk on earth.

He who feels thy so quiet being,
The loving one,
He beholds Thy soul's endeavor
The tireless one:
He beholds the heart of a human being
From Thy daily life.

He who stood before Thy gate of death,
The all-too-near,
He beholds the hard path of sorrow
the gently borne:
To him appears a human being's sense of endurance
from your sickbed.

Who can feel your beautiful spiritual work,
The one who is earnestly guided,
He who sees your life given up
To the spiritual goal:
He sees the strength of a human being's sacrifice
From your soul's struggle.

Whoever looks into the spiritual spheres,
The blissful,
Weave in future Your soul life
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual strength appears to him
From Your eternal being.

He who gazes from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving,
Your loving gaze, the giver of help, to him appears the power to bless, from Your spiritual activity.

And so go then, You, soul so faithfully devoted to our holy cause! We want to look up to You. We know that you look down on us, we know that we remain united with you through all the circles of eternity. We live on with you, you who live the life that conquers death, as long as we are here, and when we are no longer here, we live on with you, united, united, united.

I shall Speak to-day of certain matters in a way that could not be used in public lectures but is possible when I am speaking to those who have been studying spiritual science for some considerable time.

The importance of the subject of which we shall speak first, will be evident to all serious students of spiritual science. Reference has frequently been made to this subject but one cannot speak too often of spiritual-scientific concepts, for they must become actual forces, actual impulses in men of the present and immediate future. I shall lay emphasis to-day upon one aspect of what spiritual science must signify in the world, namely, the need to impart soul to our “world-body,” as we may call it.

A comparatively short time ago in the evolution of humanity it would not have been possible to speak, as we can speak to-day, of a “world-body.” Looking back only a little into the historical development of mankind, we shall find that in the comparatively recent past, the idea of a world-body peopled by a humanity forming one whole had not yet come into the consciousness of men. We find self-contained civilisations, enclosed within strict boundaries. Guided by the several Folk-Spirits, the Old Indian civilisation, the Old Persian civilisation, and so on, embraced peoples living a self-contained existence, separated from one another by mountains, seas or rivers.

Needless to say, such civilisations still exist. We speak, and rightly so, of Italian, Russian, French, Spanish, German culture, but as well as this, when we look over the earth to-day we perceive a certain unity extending over the globe—something by which peoples separated by vast distances are formed as it were into a single whole. We need think only of industry, of railways, of telegraphs, of recent inventions.¹ Railways are built, telegraph systems installed, cheques made out and cashed, all over the globe, and the same will hold good for discoveries and inventions yet to be made.

Now let us ask: What is the peculiarity of this element that extends over the globe and is the same in Tokyo, Rome, Berlin, London, and everywhere else? It is all a means of providing humanity with food and clothing, as well as with ever-increasing luxury goods. During the last few centuries a material civilisation has spread over the earth, without distinction between nation and nation, race and race. Greek culture flourished in a tiny region of the earth and little was known of it outside that region. But nowadays, news flashes around the whole globe in a few hours—and nobody would doubt the justification of calling this material culture an earthly culture! Moreover it will become increasingly material and our earth-body more and more deeply entangled in it.

But those who realise the need for spiritual science will understand with greater clarity that no body can subsist without a soul. Just as material culture encompasses the whole body of the earth, so must knowledge of the spirit be the soul that extends over the whole earth, without distinction of nation, colour, race or people. And just as identical methods are employed wherever railways and telegraph systems are constructed, so will mutual understanding over the whole earth be necessary in regard to questions concerning the human soul. The longings and questionings that will arise increasingly in the souls of men, demand answers. Hence the need for a movement dedicated to the cultivation of spiritual knowledge. Something comparable with cultural relations between individual peoples will then take effect on a wide scale, weaving threads between soul and soul over the whole earth. And what will weave from soul to soul may be called a deep and intimate understanding in regard to something that is sacred to individual souls everywhere, namely, how they are related to the spiritual world.

In a future not far distant, intimate understanding will take the place of what led in past times to bitterest conflict and disharmony as long as humanity was divided into regional civilisations which knew nothing of each other. But what will operate on a universal scale over the globe as a spiritual movement embracing all earthly humanity, must operate also between soul and soul. What a distance still separates the Buddhists and the Christians, how little do they understand and how insistently do they turn away from each other on the circumscribed ground of their particular creeds! But the time will come when their own religion will lead more and more Buddhists to Anthroposophy, and Christianity itself will lead more and more Christians to Anthroposophy. And then complete understanding will reign between them.

That humanity is coming a little nearer to this intimate understanding can be discerned to-day in the fact that the science of comparative religion is also finding its place in the domain of scholarship. The value of this science of comparative religion should not be underrated, for it has splendid achievements to its credit. But what is really brought to light when the different teachings of the religions are set forth? Although it is not acknowledged, the basis of this science of comparative religion amounts to no more than the most elementary beliefs, long since outgrown by those who have grasped the essence of the religions. The science of comparative religion confines itself to these elementary beliefs.

But what is the aim of spiritual science in regard to the various religions? It seeks for something that lies beyond the reach of the scientific investigators, namely for the essential truths contained in the religions.

From what does spiritual science take its start? From the fact that mankind has originated from a common Godhead and that a primeval wisdom belonging to mankind as one whole and springing from one Divine source has only for a time been partitioned, as it were, in a number of rays among the different peoples and groups of human beings on the earth. The aim and ideal of spiritual science is to rediscover this primeval truth, this primeval wisdom, uncoloured by this or that particular creed, and to give it again to humanity. Spiritual science is able to penetrate to the essence of the various religions because its attention is focussed, not upon external rites and ceremonies, but upon the kernel of primeval wisdom contained in each one of them. Spiritual science regards the religions as so many channels for the rays of what once streamed without differentiation over the whole of mankind.

When a professed Christian, knowing nothing beyond the external tenets of belief that have been instilled into the hearts of men through the centuries, says to a Buddhist: ‘If you would reach the truth you must believe what I believe’ ... and the Buddhist rejoins by declaring what he holds sacred, then no understanding is possible between them. But spiritual science approaches these questions in an entirely different way.

Those who can penetrate to the essence of Buddhism as well as to that of Christianity through the methods leading to the development of the new clairvoyance, come to know of sublime Beings who have risen from the realm of man and are called Bodhisattvas. Herein lies the central nerve of Buddhism. And the Christian, too, hears of a Bodhisattva who arises from mankind and works within humanity. He hears that one of these Bodhisattvas—born 600 years before our era as Siddartha, the son of King Suddhodana—attained the rank of Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life. A Christian who is an anthroposophist also knows that a Being who has risen from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha need not appear again on earth in a body of flesh.

True, such teachings are also communicated to us by the scientific investigators of religions, but they can make nothing of a Being such as a Bodhisattva or a Buddha; the nature of such a Being is beyond their comprehension; neither can they realise how such a Being continues to guide humanity from the spiritual worlds without living in a body of flesh.

But as anthroposophical Christians, our attitude to the Bodhisattva can be as full of reverence as that of a Buddhist, In spiritual science we say exactly the same about Buddha as a Buddhist says. The Christian who is an anthroposophist says to the Buddhist: I understand and believe what you understand and believe. No one who has come to spiritual science from the ground of Christianity would ever dream, as a Christian, of saying that the Buddha returns in the flesh. He knows that this would wound the deepest, most intimate feelings of the Buddhist and that such a statement would be utterly at variance with the true character of those Beings who have risen from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha. Christianity itself has brought him knowledge and understanding of these Beings.

And what will be the attitude of the Buddhist who has become an anthroposophist? He will understand the particular basis of Christianity. He will realise that as in the case of the other religions, Christianity has a Founder—Jesus of Nazareth—but that another Being united with him. A great deal could be said about all that has been associated with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth through the centuries. But the Christian's view of the personality of Jesus of Nazareth differs from the Buddhist's view of the Founder of his religion. In the East it would be said: “One who is a great Founder of religion has achieved the complete harmonisation of all passions and desires, of all human, personal attributes. Is such complete harmonisation manifest in Jesus of Nazareth? We read that he was seized with anger, that he overthrew the tables of the money-changers, drove them out of the temple, that he uttered words of impassioned wrath. This is evidence to us that he does not possess the qualities to be expected of a Founder of religion.” Such is the attitude of the East.

We ourselves, of course, could point to many other aspects of this question, but that is not what concerns us at the moment. The really significant fact is that Christianity differs from all other religions inasmuch as they all point to a Founder who was a great Teacher. But to believe that the same is true of Christianity would denote a fundamental misunderstanding. The essence of Christianity is not that it looks back to Jesus of Nazareth as a great Teacher. Christianity originates in a Deed, takes its start from a super-personal Deed—from the Mystery of Golgotha.

How could this be? It was because for three years there dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth a Being, Whom—if we are to give Him a name—we call Christ. But a name cannot encompass the Divine Spirit we recognise in Christ. No human name, no human word, can define a Divinity. In Christ we have to do with a Divine Impulse spreading through the world: the Christ Impulse which at the Baptism in the Jordan entered in Him, into Jesus of Nazareth. The very essence of Christianity lies in the Christ Impulse which came to the earth through a physical personality, the physical personality of Jesus of Nazareth into whose sheaths it entered. The Christ took these sheaths upon Himself because the course of world-evolution is, first, a descent, and then again an ascent. At the deepest point of descent the Mystery of Golgotha takes place, because from it alone could spring the power to lead humanity upwards.

After the Atlantean catastrophe came the ancient Indian epoch of civilisation. The spirituality of that epoch will not again be reached until the end of the seventh epoch. The ancient Indian epoch was followed by that of ancient Persia, that again by the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. When we survey evolution, even in its external aspect, the decline of spirituality is evident. Then we come to Greco-Latin civilisation with its firm footing in the earthly realm. The works of art created by the Greeks are the most wonderful expression of the marriage of spirit with form. And in Roman culture, in Roman civic life, man becomes master on the physical plane. But the spirituality in Greek culture is characterised by the saying: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.’ Dread of the world lying behind the physical plane, dread of the world into which man will pass after death is expressed in this saying. Spirituality has here descended to the deepest point.

From then onwards, mankind needed an impulse for the return to the spiritual worlds, and this impulse was given in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch through an Event at a level far transcending the physical plane.

The Mystery of Golgotha was enacted in a remote corner of the earth, for the sake of no particular race or denomination. It took place in seclusion, in concealment. Neither outer civilisation nor the Romans who governed the little territory of Palestine, knew anything of the Event. The Romans were no followers of Christ—the Jews still less!

Who were present when the Mystery of Golgotha took place? Whom had he gathered around him who in his thirtieth year had received the Christ into himself? Had pupils gathered around this Being as they had gathered around Confucius, Laotse or Buddha? If we look closely we see that this is not so. For were those who until the Event of Golgotha had been His disciples, already His apostles? No! They had scattered, they had gone away when the One Whom they had followed hitherto entered upon the path of His Passion. Only when having passed through death, He gave them the certain knowledge of the power that had conquered death—only then did they become true Apostles and carried His impulse to the peoples of the earth. Before then they had not even understood Him. Even Paul, the one who after the Mystery of Golgotha achieved most of all for the spread of Christianity, understood Him only when He had appeared to him in the spirit!

So we see that, unlike the other religions, Christianity was not, in essence, founded by a great Teacher whose pupils then promulgate his teachings. The essential, basic truth of Christianity is that a Divine Impulse came down to the earth, passed through death and became the source of the impulse which leads humanity upwards. When the individual personal element had passed through death, had departed from the earth—then and only then did the power which came upon the earth through Christ, begin to work. It is not a merely personal teaching that works on, but the actual Event that Christ was within Jesus and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and that from the Mystery of Golgotha a power streamed forth over the whole subsequent evolution of mankind.

That is the difference between what Christianity sees as the starting-point of its development and what the other religions see as theirs. When, therefore, we turn our attention to the beginning of Christianity, it is a matter of realising what actually came to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha. Paul says, in effect: The descending line of evolution was caused through Adam, even before the Fall, before he was man, before he was a personality in the real sense. The impulse for the ascent was given by Christ.

To feel this as a reality, we must go deeply into the occult truths available to mankind. To grasp this stupendous fact, man's understanding must be quickened by the deepest, most intimate occult truths. It will then be comprehensible to him that, to begin with, even in Christendom itself, the loftiest thoughts and deepest truths could not immediately be understood. To grasp the full meaning of this Divine Death and the Impulse proceeding from it, to realise that such an Event cannot be repeated, that it occurred at the deepest point of the evolutionary process and radiates the power which enables mankind henceforward to tread the path of ascent—to conceive this was possible only to a few. And so in the centuries that followed, men clung to Jesus of Nazareth—for understanding of the Christ was as yet beyond their reach. Moreover it was through Jesus that the Christ Impulse also made its way into works of art. Men yearned for Jesus, not for Christ.

We ourselves are still living at the dawn of true Christianity; Christianity is only beginning to come into its own. And when men plead to-day: ‘Do not take from us the individual, personal Jesus who comforts and uplifts our hearts, on whom we lean; do not give us, instead of him, a super-personal event’ ... they must realise that this is nothing but an expression of egoism. Not until they transcend this personal egoism and realise that they have no right to call themselves Christians until they recognise as the source of their Christianity the Event that was fulfilled in majestic isolation on Golgotha, will they be able to draw near to Christ. But this realisation belongs to future time.

There may be some who say: Surely the Crucifixion should have been avoided! But this is simply a human opinion—no more than that. These people do not know the difference between an utter impossibility and what is merely a mistaken idea. For what came into the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha could proceed only from the impulse of a god Who had endured all the sufferings and agonies of mankind, all the sorrows, the mockery and scorn, the contempt and the shame that were the lot of Christ. And these sufferings were infinitely harder for a god than for an ordinary human being.

That the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place cannot be authenticated in the same way as other historical events. There is no authentic, documentary evidence even of the Crucifixion. But there is good reason why no proof exists, for this is an Event which lies outside the sphere of the general evolution of mankind. The Mystery of Golgotha—and this is its very essence—is an Event transcending that which has merely to do with the evolution of humanity.

The Mystery of Golgotha was concerned with the descending path which men have taken and with what must lead them upwards again—with the Luciferic influence upon mankind! Lucifer, together with everything belonging to him, is verily not a human being. Lucifer and his hosts are superhuman beings. Nor did Lucifer desire that through his deeds men should be set upon a downward path; his purpose was to rebel against the upper gods. He wanted to vanquish his opponents, not to set men upon a downward path. The progressive gods, the upper gods, and Lucifer with his hosts of the lower gods of hindrance, waged war against each other, and from the very beginning of earthly evolution, man was dragged into this warfare among gods. It was an issue that the gods in the higher worlds had to settle among themselves, but as a result of the conflict, men were drawn more deeply into the material world than was originally intended. And now the gods had to create the balance; humanity had to be lifted upwards again, the deed of Lucifer made of no avail. And this could not be achieved through a man but only through a Divine Deed, the deed of a god. This deed of a god must be understood in all its truth and reality.

If we ponder deeply about earthly existence, we find as its greatest riddle: birth and death.The fact that beings can die is the fundamental problem confronting humanity. Death is something that occurs only on the earth. In the higher worlds there is transformation, metamorphosis—no death. Death is the consequence of what came into human beings through Lucifer, and if something had not taken place from the side of the gods, the whole of mankind would have been more and more entangled in the forces which lead to death. And so a sacrifice had to be made from the side of the gods: it was necessary that One from among them should descend and suffer the death that can be undergone only by the children of earth. This was a deed which created the balance for the deed of Lucifer. And from this death of a god streams the power which also radiates into the souls of men and can raise them again out of the darkness in which Lucifer's deed has ensnared them. A god had to die on the physical plane.

This is not a direct concern of men ... they were here spectators of an affair of the gods. No wonder that physical means are incapable of portraying an Event which is an affair of the higher worlds, for it falls outside the sphere of the physical world.

But the fruits of this deed of a god which had perforce to be wrought on the earth, became the heritage of humanity, and the Christian Initiation gives men the power to understand it. And just as mankind could come forth only once from the bosom of the Godhead, so could the overcoming of what was then instilled into the human soul be achieved only once.

If the Christian who has become an anthroposophist were to speak of the nature of Christ to a Buddhist who has become an anthroposophist, the Buddhist would say: ‘I should therefore misunderstand you were I to believe that the Being Whom you call Christ is subject to reincarnation. He is not subject to reincarnation—any more than you would say that the Buddha can return to earthly existence!’

Yet there is one fundamental difference. The Buddhist points to the great Teacher who was the originator of his religion; but the true Christian points to a deed of the spiritual worlds, enacted in seclusion on the earth, he points to something entirely non-personal, having nothing to do with any specific creed or denomination. No single human being, to begin with, recognised this deed; it had nothing to do with any particular locality on the earth. In majestic seclusion the Divine Power poured from this deed into the whole subsequent evolution of mankind.

The task of the spiritual-scientific conception of the world is to seek for the truths contained in the different religions, and to seek for the kernel of truth in them all is the augury of peace. When an adherent of some creed truly understands his religion in the light of spiritual science, he will never force its particular ray of truth upon adherents of another religion. As little as the anthroposophical Christian will speak of the return of the Buddha—for then he would not have understood him—as little will the anthroposophical Buddhist speak of the return of Christ—for that too would be a misunderstanding. Provided personal bias is laid aside, the truth concerning Buddha and the truth concerning Christ never makes for discord and sectarianism, but for harmony and peace. This is a natural consequence of truth, for truth is the augury of peace in the world. At the highest level of truth, all nations and all religions on the earth can belong to Buddha the great Teacher; and at the same highest level of truth, all nations and all religions can belong to Christ, the Divine Power. Mutual understanding augurs peace in the world. This peace is the soul of the new world. And to this soul, which must reign all over the globe as the science of the Spirit belonging to all men in all earthly civilisations, Anthroposophy should lead the way.

From the 13th and 14th centuries onwards, such knowledge was cultivated in the Rosicrucian Schools. It was known there that together with such knowledge, peace draws into the souls of men. And in these Rosicrucian Schools it was known, too, that many a one who on earth cannot experience this peace, will experience it after death as the fulfilment of his most treasured ideals—when he looks down to the earth and beholds peace reigning among the peoples and nations to the extent to which men open their hearts to receive such knowledge.

As I have spoken here to-day, so did the Rosicrucians speak in their small, enclosed circles. To-day these things can be communicated to larger gatherings of men. Those to whom it has been entrusted to carry into effect through spiritual science what streams into humanity from the Mystery of Golgotha, know that every year at Eastertide, Jesus, who bore the Christ within him, seeks out the places where the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled. Whether actually in incarnation or not, every year he visits these places, and there his pupils who have made themselves ready, can be united with him.

A poet—Anastasius Grün—felt the reality of this. He describes five such meetings of the Master with his pupils. The first, after the destruction of Jerusalem; the second, after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders; the third—Ahasver, the Wandering Jew, lingering on Golgotha; the fourth—a praying monk, yearning and pleading for deliverance from his conqueror. For while sects of different kinds scattered over the earth are at strife among themselves, he through whom the greatest of all tidings of peace was brought to the earth, looks again at the places that were the scene of his earthly deeds.

These four pictures are given of past visits of Jesus to the scene of his work on Golgotha. Then, in the poem printed under the title of “Five Easters,” Anastasius Grün pictures another return to Golgotha, in the far future. In this far future of which he gives us a glimpse, the power of peace will then have prevailed on the earth, a peace based, not on denominational Christianity, but on Christianity as it is understood in Rosicrucianism. He sees children who, while they are at play, dig up an object of iron and do not know what it is. They alone who still possess some remote information of the strife waged among men in what is for them the distant past—they alone know that this object is a sword. In that age of peace the purpose of a sword is no longer known—it has been replaced by the ploughshare. Then a farmer digging in the earth finds an object made of stone ... Again it is not recognised. “For a time this was banished from the earth,” say those who still have some knowledge, “for men no longer understood it! Once upon a time they used it as a symbol of strife.” It is a cross of stone,—but now, when the impulse given by Christ Jesus for all future time gathers men together, now it has become something different!

How does this poet, writing in the year 1835, describe this symbol of the mission of the Christ Impulse, when rightly understood? He describes it as follows:

Though known to none, yet with its ancient blessing,
Eternal in their breast it stands upright;
There blooms its seed abroad on every pathway,
A Cross it was—this stranger to their sight.

The Cross of Stone now stands within a garden,
A strange and sacred relic from of old;
Flowers of all patterns lift their growth above it,
While roses, climbing high, the Cross enfold.

So stood the Cross, weighty with solemn meaning,
On Golgotha, amidst resplendent sheen
Long since 'tis hidden by its sheath of roses;
No more, for roses, can the Cross be seen.²

• 1. Since this lecture was given wireless broadcasting has been perfected.
• 2. The whole poem consists of 108 verses, in five parts.

As I have several times pointed out, the great karmic laws can be here only briefly referred to, so that your interest in this almost infinite domain shall be stirred. If you reflect upon all that has been said within the last days, you will no longer be astonished at the idea that man is urged to seek in the external world for compensating effects of karmic causes which he himself has incorporated within his organism. He may, for instance, be driven to a place where he will encounter an infection which will offer him the compensation sought for, or he may even be driven by this need for compensation to what might be termed a ‘fatal accident.’

How does it affect the karmic course, if through some kind of measures we are able to prevent the person from seeking this adjustment?

Let us suppose that by certain hygienic measures we render impossible certain causes, certain maladies towards which the karma of a person draws him. We have already shown that the taking of such measures in no wise rests with him. We have seen, for instance, that in a certain period a need for cleanliness is felt simply because this inclination that had disappeared in earlier periods, reappears by its reversed repetition in evolution. From this we see that it is in accordance with the great laws of human karma that we at definite periods adopt this or that measure. But it is easy to understand why such measures were not invented before our epoch, for humanity in an earlier epoch was in need of such epidemics from which the world is now delivered by these measures. With regard to the great plans of life, human evolution is subject to definite laws, and we are not in a position to adopt such measures until they will be of significance and utility for the whole of human evolution. For these measures do not spring from the fully conscious life, from the rational life, between birth and death, but they spring rather from the general mind of humanity, so we need only remember that when mankind is ripe for it, and not before, these inventions or discoveries will make their appearance. A brief summary of the history of human evolution upon earth may prove useful.

Let us not forget that our ancestors—that is to say our own souls—dwelt upon the Atlantean continent in bodies quite different from the present human body. This continent was then submerged and it was only after a definite period that the inhabitants upon the one half of the earth which had emerged were brought into contact with these of the other half. It is only recently that the peoples of Europe have been able again to reach those territories that had emerged on the other side of the submerged Atlantean continent. Indeed, such matters are ordered by great laws. The discovery of one thing or another, the adoption of measures which make it possible to intervene in the realm of karma—these things are not dependent upon the caprice or the will of mankind, but they arrive when they are due to arrive. But notwithstanding, we can influence a person's karma by removing certain causes which would otherwise have existed, and which would have come to him as a karmic fulfilment. This ‘influencing’ does not mean that we have removed it, but merely that we have changed its direction. Let us suppose that a certain number of people are impelled by karma to seek for certain conditions which would represent to them a karmic compensation. Through hygienic measures these conditions have been removed and can no longer be met. These beings, however, will not be liberated from the karmic effect evoked by their inner being, but rather are they urged to seek other effects. Man cannot escape his karma. Through such measures he is not freed from that which he would otherwise have sought.

From this we may conclude that if the karmic reparation is escaped in one direction, it will have to be sought in another. When we abolish certain influences, we merely create the necessity of seeking other opportunities and influences. Let us assume that many epidemics and diseases can be traced to the fact that victims are seeking to remove what they have karmically fostered within themselves. This is the case, for instance, with smallpox which is the organ of uncharitableness. Although we may be in a position to remove the possibility of this disease, still the cause of uncharitableness would remain, and the souls in question would then be forced to seek another way for karmic compensation either in this or in another incarnation. The following will help us to understand what actually takes place. It is a fact that, at the present time, many influences and causes are removed which would otherwise have been sought for as adjustment for certain karmic matters with which mankind had burdened itself in earlier periods. But, in removing these influences we only remove the possibility of man's succumbing to their external effects. We make his external life more pleasant, and also more healthy, but what he would otherwise have sought as a karmic adjustment in the corresponding disease, will now have to be sought in another direction. People who to-day are saved in regard to health, are at the same time condemned to seek a karmic adjustment in another way. If life to-day is healthier and more agreeable, the soul receives an influence in the opposite sense. Little by little it discovers a certain emptiness—or frustration. If this state of things continued in such a way that the external life became ever more pleasant and healthy, in the materialistic sense of these words, then such souls would have but little inducement to inner progress and there would result an emptiness of the soul. This can be observed even today by anyone who examines life more closely. There has been hardly a single epoch in which so many people have had such pleasant external conditions as is the case today and yet go about with such stagnant and empty souls. That is why such people rush from sensation to sensation. When means permit, they travel from town to town in order to see something, or if they are forced to remain in the same town, they rush night after night from pleasure to pleasure. Yet for all this the soul remains empty, realises the void, and in the end does not know what to seek in the world to fill it. In a life spent in external and physically pleasant conditions the tendency towards materialism is specially marked. Thus souls become increasingly diseased as external life is rendered more healthy. Least of all should an anthroposophist complain at this because anthroposophy teaches us a true understanding of these matters, and thus gives us knowledge as to where the compensation may be sought. Souls can remain empty only to a certain stage; then through their own elasticity, they rush on to the opposite direction. They seek for something akin to their own souls, and they will then see how greatly they stand in need of an anthroposophical world conception.

We see from this how the results of a materialistic conception of life may well ease external life, but creates difficulties in our inner life, leading us finally from the depths of sufferings to seek spiritual truths. The spiritual world conception as it is today presented by Spiritual Science, thus addresses itself to those souls who cannot find satisfaction through impressions with which the external world can provide them. Souls will continue in their search, and seek ever again for new impressions until their elasticity will act so strongly in the other direction, that they will feel themselves again drawn to a spiritual life. Thus there exists a relationship between hygiene and the future hopes of the world conception of Spiritual Science.

Even today this can be observed in a small way. Today there exist people who add to other superficialities a new superficiality, namely, an interest in the anthroposophical world conception and who take up the anthroposophical world conception as a new sensation. It is inevitable that what is of profound inner significance also appears as fashion, as sensation, and this tendency can be traced in every current of human evolution. But those souls who are truly ripe for anthroposophy are those who fail to find satisfaction from external sensations, and who realise that external science in spite of all its explanations cannot explain certain facts. These are the souls who through their general karma are so prepared that they become united to anthroposophy with the innermost members of their soul life. Spiritual Science forms part of mankind's general karma, and as such will take its place there.

It is thus that we can give an orientation to human karma, but to the extent to which it is the effect of past actions we cannot prevent the reaction upon the individual souls. In some way it comes home.

We can show how logical is the working out of karma in the world, by considering karma where its activity is still independent of morality—where we see it manifest in the universe, without concerning itself with the moral impulses emanating from the soul of man and leading him to moral or immoral deeds. We shall set before ourselves an aspect of karma in which morality plays no part, but in which something neutral appears as karmic link.

Let us suppose that a woman lives in a certain incarnation. It cannot be denied that this woman, by reason of her sex, will undergo experiences which differ from those of a man, and that these are not merely dependent on her inner soul life, but for the most part they are connected with external happenings, with circumstances in which she will find herself simply because she is a woman, and which will again react upon the whole of the condition and disposition of her soul. We see, therefore, that certain deeds of woman are most intimately connected with the fact of her womanhood. Only in the realm of spiritual companionship is there any equality between man and woman. The further we penetrate into the purely spiritual and into the outer aspect of the human being, the more is accentuated the difference between man and woman in relation to their lives. We can say that woman differs from man also in certain qualities of the soul, and that she inclines more towards those impulses which must be termed emotional. For this reason we find that psychic experiences come to her more easily than to man. Intellectuality and materialism are, on the contrary, more natural to man's life, and these strongly influence the soul life. So the psychic and emotional predominate in woman and the intellectual and materialistic in man. Thus it is that there are certain shadings in woman's soul life by virtue of her womanhood. It has already been described how the qualities we experience in our souls force their way between death and a new birth into our next bodily organism. That which is psychically and emotionally the strongest and that which in the life between birth and death penetrates most deeply into the soul, will have a greater tendency to enter more profoundly into the organism, and to impregnate it far more intensively. And because woman absorbs psychical and emotional impressions, she also receives the experiences of life into the profounder depths of the soul. Man may have richer and also more scientific experiences, but they do not penetrate his soul life as deeply as do those of woman. The whole of the world of her experiences is deeply graven into a woman's soul. Therefore those experiences will have a stronger tendency to affect the organism, to modify the organism more closely in the future. Thus woman's life absorbs the tendency towards deeper intervention in the organism by means of the experiences of one incarnation, and thereby towards the formation of the organism itself in the next incarnation. A deep working into and working through the organism will bring forth a male organism. A male organism appears when the forces of the soul desire to be more deeply graven into matter. From this we see that the effect of woman's experiences in one incarnation results in a male organism in the next incarnation. Occult teaching here shows that there is a connection which lies outside the bounds of morality. For this reason occultism states ‘Man is woman's karma.’ The male organism of a later incarnation is the result of the experiences and events of a preceding female incarnation. At the risk of arousing in some of those present reflections which may possibly be uncongenial (it always happens that modern man is terrified of incarnating as woman), since these matters are facts, I must illuminate them objectively. What happens in the case of man's experiences?

We shall best understand them if we base them on what has been said before. In man's organism the inner man has penetrated thoroughly into matter, and has embraced it more closely than has woman. Woman retains more spirituality. She does not penetrate so deeply into matter, but keeps her materiality more flexible. It is characteristic of woman's nature that she retains a greater degree of free spirituality, and for that reason does not penetrate so profoundly into matter, and especially keeps her brain more flexible. Therefore it is not surprising that women have a special inclination for what is new, especially in the spiritual realm. And it is not by accident, but in accordance with a profound law, that in a movement whose very nature deals with spirituality, there should be found a greater number of women than of men. Any man knows that the male brain is frequently an intractable instrument. On account of its rigidity it offers terrible resistance when one would use it for more flexible lines of thought. It refuses to follow and must be educated by all sorts of means before it can lose its rigidity. With all men this can be a personal experience.

Man's nature is more condensed, more concentrated; it has been compressed more, rendered more rigid and hard by his inner being of a man; it has been made more material. A more rigid brain is first and foremost an instrument for the intellectual, rather than for the psychic. For intellectuality deals mainly with the physical plane. In this respect we might speak of a brain being frozen to a certain degree and if it is to deal with the finer channels of thought, it must first be thawed. Therefore a man will be inclined to absorb less of those experiences that are connected with the depths of his own soul life, and what he does absorb does not so deeply. We have an external proof of this in the shallowness of external science, and its comparative failure to comprehend the inner being. Although much thought is expended in a wide circumference, facts are concentrated with but little thoroughness. Let us quote an example of the superficiality of modern science:

Let us suppose a young man is in a college where a rabid Darwinian is lecturing. This is how the advocate of the theory of selection will characterise certain facts: Whence does a cock derive his beautiful iridescent feathers of bluish tints? This is to be traced back to sexual, natural selection; for the cock attracts the hens by his colours, and the hens will choose those from among the cocks who possess these bluish iridescent feathers. In this way the other cocks are ignored, and the consequence is that one particular species is developed. This is progress; this is ‘natural selection’! And the student is glad to know how progressive development is brought about.

Now he goes to the next hall, where physiology of the senses is dealt with. It may well happen that the student in this second hall will hear the following: Experiments have been made which show how the various colours of the spectrum affect various beings. It can be proved that of the whole colour spectrum, hens, for instance, can only see the colours ranging from green to orange, and red to ultra-red, but not those ranging from blue to violet.

Now a student, if he wants to combine these two statements which really are taught to-day, is forced to regard things superficially. The whole of the theory of natural selection is based on the fact that hens perceive the variegated colours of cocks and that these colours afford them special pleasure. This is not the case, for the colours to them appear raven black.

This is merely an example, but anyone willing to investigate really scientifically will encounter instances of this kind at every step. This will demonstrate that intellectuality does not penetrate very deeply into life but that it remains on the surface. I intentionally chose the more marked examples.

It is not so easy to believe that intellectuality remains external and affects the inner being of man but slightly. And a materialistic mind affects the soul life even less. The consequence of this is that the being on quitting an incarnation in which he has lived but little in the soul, carries with him the tendency between birth and death to penetrate less deeply into the organism in the next incarnation. He has but little power to do this, and that is why in the next incarnation the organism is less impregnated. So comes the inclination to build up a female body in the next incarnation, and it is therefore correct when occultism says that ‘Woman is man's karma.’

In this neutral moral domain we see that what we prepare in one incarnation will be an organising force for our body in the next. And these influences intervene profoundly not only in our inner life, but also in our external experiences and deeds. Thus we must say that the fact of having man's or woman's experiences in one incarnation, in one way or another determines our external deeds in the next incarnation. Through woman's experiences we shall be disposed to form a male organism, and, conversely, through man's experiences a female organism. Only in rare cases will an incarnation in the same sex be repeated, and at most it can be repeated seven times. The rule is, however, that every male organism will in the following incarnation strive to become female, and conversely. All repugnance is of no avail, for it is not a question of our wishes in the physical world, but rather of our inclinations during the period between death and a new birth, and these are determined by much wiser reasons than a possible horror conceived during a male incarnation of reincarnating as woman. From this it is clear that our later life is karmically determined by the earlier, and also that the deeds of a later life may be thus ordered.

It is important that we should learn to understand that yet another karmic connection will be essential if we are to throw light upon the important discussions of the next few days.

Let us, therefore, look back upon a remote epoch of human evolution when human incarnations began upon earth. This was in the ancient Lemurian period. It was then that the luciferic influence first acted effectively upon man, and that this then evoked the ahrimanic influence. Let us try to set before our souls how this luciferic influence acted externally in human life. The fact that man reached the stage in those ancient times in which he could absorb this luciferic influence, and also permeate his astral body with the luciferic influence, had the effect that his astral body was inclined to penetrate far more deeply into the organism, into the material part of the physical body, and to do so in quite a different way. Through the luciferic influence man became more material. Had this influence not been active, the human tendency to descend into the material world would have been far weaker, and man would have remained in higher spheres of existence. Thus there came about a far stronger penetration of external and internal man, than would have been possible without the luciferic influence. This penetration was the first cause of our failure to remember the events preceding our incarnation. The birth through which we entered existence was of such a nature that we became closely united with matter, thereby effacing all memory of earlier experiences. Otherwise we should have retained the memory of our spiritual experiences before birth. Through the luciferic influence we were robbed of our memory of the preceding experiences and for this reason, we are forced during our lifetime to depend upon the external world for knowledge and experiences.

It would be a grave error to believe that only the coarser substances which we absorb act upon us. Not only do victuals and nutritious forces act upon us, but also other experiences, which flow into us by way of our senses. But through coarser union with matter, victuals affect us in a different way. Suppose that there had been no luciferic influence; then everything, from victuals to the sense impressions, would have a far more refined influence upon us. Everything experienced by us as our relation to the outer world, would be permeated with what we experienced between death and a new birth. Because we have condensed matter, we are inclined to absorb what is denser.

Thus the luciferic influence is taking effect in such a way that through the condensation of matter, we also attract towards us out of the external world denser matter than we should otherwise have done and the effects are far different. The less dense substances would have retained a memory of our earlier life, and would also have given us the certitude that all our experiences between birth and death will bear results for time without end. We should know that although there may be death, yet everything happening continues in its effect. Because man had to absorb dense substances, he creates from birth onward a strong reciprocal activity between his own bodily nature and the external world.

What results from this reciprocity? The spiritual world is eclipsed at birth. Before man can again live in the spiritual world, his earlier condition must be restored to him. Everything of dense matter entering us from outside, will be taken from us. Because we have acquired a denser materiality, we are forced, in order to re-enter the spiritual world, to await that period where the external material body will be taken from us. Denser matter penetrating us, from our birth onward, gradually destroys our human body. That which flows in destroys the body more and more, until it has been completely destroyed, so that it can no longer exist. From the moment of our birth, due to the luciferic influence, we absorb a denser materiality and we slowly destroy our body until, at the moment of death, it has become altogether useless.

From this we conclude that the luciferic influence is the karmic cause of man's death. If birth had not this character then death too would not be for man what it is. We should, but for the luciferic influence approach death with an assured prospect of what lies before us. Death is the karmic effect of birth, and birth and death are karmically connected. Without birth, as experienced by us today, death as we experience it would not exist.

I have said before, that we cannot speak of karma for animals in the same sense as for human beings. Were someone to say that in the case of animals also, birth and death are karmically connected, such a person would be ignorant of the fact that the birth and death of a human being is entirely different from that of an animal. That which outwardly appears identical, differs inwardly. It is the inner experience and not the physical event which is significant in birth and death. In the case of an animal, only the generic or group soul has experiences. For the group soul the death of an animal resembles somewhat our experience at the approach of summer, when we have our hair cut shorter, which will then slowly grow again. The group soul of a species feels the death of an animal like the death of a limb which will gradually be replaced. Thus we may compare the generic soul to the human Ego. It knows neither birth nor death; it is continually aware of what takes place before birth, and it sees continually what follows death. To speak of an animal's birth and death in the same way as we speak of man's would be absurd, because they are preceded by quite different causes. And it would be a denial of the activity of the spirit, if we believed that what appears identical externally is due to identical inner causes. Identity of external events never points with certainty to identical causes.

If we would consider a little how outward appearances may be identical whilst inner experiences are not so in the least, we could arrive in a methodical and logical way at the conclusion that this is so. Suppose, for instance, we arrived at a certain place at 9 o'clock, and there saw two people standing together. Later, we arrived at the same spot, and these two people were again standing in the same place. Now we might conclude: ‘A’ is still standing in the same place: ‘B’ is still standing in the same place where he stood at 9 o'clock. If we enquire, however, into what these two people have done meanwhile, we may perhaps find that the one has been standing there all the time while the other has walked a long distance, and has become tired. We are here dealing with entirely different events. And just as it would be foolish to say, if two people at a later hour are again standing at the same spot, that they must have had identical experiences, it would be equally foolish when we find two cells of the same shape to conclude from their structure an identity of their inner function. It is necessary to know the whole connection of the facts that have brought the one cell to the place in question.

That is why the modern cellular physiology which sets out from an examination of the inner structure of the cells is taking the wrong course. Never can the external appearance prove the inner nature of a thing.

We must make reflections of this kind if we are to comprehend conclusions arrived at by occultists through occult observation—such as the difference between birth and death in the case of man and animals or birds. The study of these matters will be possible only when we occupy ourselves with what spiritual investigation has to tell us. As long as this is not generally done, external science, which adheres to external appearances and external facts, brings to light very beautiful facts, but all the opinions people can form upon suppositions concerning such facts will never be decisive for reality. That is why all our modern theoretical science is a creation of fantasy which has come about through combinations of external facts, having regard only to their outward appearance. In many departments external facts actually impel us towards a true interpretation, but modern opinion stands in the way.

Today we have allowed two neutral domains of karmic law to act upon us, and we shall see that they will be the foundation of our further discussions. We have realised that woman's organism is the karmic result of man's experiences, and man's organism the karmic result of woman's experiences; and we also have realised that death is the karmic result of birth in human life. If we try gradually to understand this, it may lead us to penetrate more profoundly into the karmic connections of human life.

After the opening of the Pforzheim branch we are together again and will best fill our time by immediately entering into a spiritual theme, a theme which, through Anthroposophy, shows that we don't only absorb teaching and thoughts but that our life of feeling and of experience is enriched, calmed and protected. We do not dare imagine that teaching, imagining and thoughts are unimportant in our life of feeling. It's like this: in our time we will gradually come to say: Of thoughts and science there is enough in the world and we only need to take some or other book of instructions regarding the starry worlds or whatever else, to fill our minds with enough science. Theosophy however should be involved with mood or experience.—That is definitely correct because science, as encountered through popular lectures and publications, can offer little for the heart and soul. We don't dare conclude however that teaching, observation and knowledge are worthless.

Spiritual scientific knowledge is quite different to teachings of outer science. When we allow spiritual knowledge to really work into us, it becomes transformed in us as feelings, as soul impulses, as a way of thinking and in no other way can we acquire courage, certainty and power than through the deepening of this knowledge. It is quite different to merely recognise and know sense perceptible things and pioneering events, how things come about, than it is to penetrate behind the sensual things into the preceding spiritual events. When we allow spiritual events to work through the soul, we become warm, healthy and strong. We recognise the connections between us and that which weaves throughout the entire world as spirit and soul, the originators of all appearances. Consequently we want to come to grips with the relationship between the outer sensual world, outside, and our soul. On looking at our own souls, we find so to speak those things closest to us—suffering, joy, pain and pleasure—and now the question arises: When spiritual sciences says that everything in the world is spirit-penetrated, then we can argue that suffering, joy, pain and pleasure can also be found in those things which surrounds us, as well as in those things which we also meet as being callous, painless and insensitive.—We need to acquire the right way of thinking about things around us, through Anthroposophy.

We see for instance the various plants, animals and minerals around us. Not only do animals equally give us joy and suffering, pleasure and pain; that no one doubts. With plants and the apparently lifeless world of stones we can come to doubt that feelings, pleasure, joy and pain can be inherent in them. It is exactly this, which we acquire as experiences related to the entire surrounding world, that all beings are not only physically linked to us but that these beings link to us in such a way as to have soul content, just as we have soul content. Now we need to deepen within us, in the right way, what spiritual research and spiritual knowledge has to say about it. It is even understood in our time, from more sensory thoughts, that the plants could posses something spiritual, yes, one may be tempted to admit that an apparently lifeless stone could contain something spiritual.

When you consider you can still easily make mistakes if you don't take into account spiritual scientific research, you can easily say: If I cut the physical body of a person then I cause hurt, the same with animals; but when I cut a plant, will it also feel hurt?—Hence I can infer that if I crush a stone, I'm hurting it also. As a result, when people think about these things they come to believe that everything happening to other beings is experienced in the same way as to human beings, and because of this belief, they find it so difficult to enter with their thoughts into knowledge of spiritual knowledge. Occult science offers us quite a different way of recognising the soul nature of plants and stones, for instance. It appears, when we contemplate the plant, that certainly, when the plant is partly damaged where it grows out of earth towards the heights, no feeling of pain penetrates the plant, that it doesn't hurt but that the opposite is the case. That which comprises the actual soul of the plant feels pleasure, almost joy, when over the surface of the earth sensitive parts of plants are destroyed. Pain only starts for the plant soul when the plant is pulled out of the earth, uprooted; a similar pain is experienced when we or animals for instance have hair pulled out. This is something which a soul can gradually experience when on the so-called way or path of knowledge.

These things only allow us to experience them in our own souls when we transform our souls in such a way as to wake the slumbering, true powers of knowledge. Then the ability begins for the soul not only to feel compassion towards other people but to have compassion for the whole of the rest of nature, and the rest of nature becomes understandable in a wonderful way.

Now we could say: what do we get from spiritual scientific research if we ourselves can't feel such things?—It is an incorrect objection if we believe Anthroposophy has no meaning. It already has an account of spiritual-soul facts of great value. When such knowledge for example speaks about the relationship of plant suffering to plant joy then we really need to think about this knowledge and should allow such thoughts to work on us. Through our mere reflection regarding this knowledge we lure out contained forces and we will soon feel that it is indeed so, what is said by spiritual science. We learn however through knowing that when we look into the wisdom of nature, the plant soul experiences pleasure when we pick it. From this we can get the notion that we can think what is going to happen should the plant have been able to experience pain. Just think about it, what a large part of the earth's beings are nourished through plants, and how, through the nourishment of people and animals the pain could increasingly be spread over the earth. That isn't the case, but pleasure and joy spreads over the earth when an animal grazes in a pasture. Whoever has knowledge about this, feels entire streams of joy weave over the earth when in autumn the sickle cuts through the blades of grain. When the young animal sucks milk from its mother it does not mean there is pain, but a definite feeling of pleasure. Thus we see into the wisdom of nature when we go through life this way.

Against these things one should never turn your back: yes, it can appear gentler under the circumstances when a plant is dug out with its roots and replanted, instead of picking flowers.—Certainly, but this doesn't change the facts that uprooting causes actual pain to the plant soul. Deliberate ripping off blossoms can naturally from a certain point of view be rebuked, but even that changes nothing about the plant soul undergoing pleasure. From various points of view it looks different. A person may consider for example, from a standpoint of beauty, that pulling out the first grey hairs seems quite justified, even though it causes pain. Something else comes to our notice when we take this comparison of the uprooting of plants and the uprooting of human hair. We start to understand what it means when spiritual science considers not a single plant, but so to speak looks at the plant growth over the entire earth. Just as hair belongs to all human beings, so plants and earth create a unity, and we understand and can also think that, what we call the “I” (Ich) in spiritual science regarding a person, we can't find in a single plant but in the central point of the earth. The plant is absolutely not a single being, but becomes part of the great living being, existing out of many single living beings, but which has their “I” in the centre of the earth.

No one dares ask the question: Is there a place for this “I” everywhere?—Certainly, because it is spirit and can penetrate all. So our earth becomes a living being. So every single plant becomes something which grows out of a large supersensible being and, on the surface, becomes what nails or hair is to the human being. When we take such a fact seriously then we no longer argue about dry cerebral concepts regarding a physical planet on which we are living but then we feel that not only are we living beings but that we are linked to a great living being which is our planet. We learn to take cognisance of this spiritual being and we learn that it concerns more than just a comparison, when, in the sap flowing through the plant something happens similar to when blood courses through the human body. We learn to transform these things in our feelings by understanding them spiritually.

When we touch a plant we experience the soul-spiritual, we feel safe within the soul-spiritual. Gradually it becomes possible to add the thought given in spiritual science: The earth has gone through divers metamorphosis. We discover, when we go back in the most distant past, that the earth appeared quite different, that for example such solid rock masses as we have today, were not present then. There had been a time when the earth existed of only air and water and a certain condition of warmth. Only gradually solidity developed from the fluid and soft conditions. On contemplating this whole development, the activity within the entire development appears to us as one of growing and thriving. At one time the earth was young and in time it will become old and aged.

If we apply all imaginings which we relate to ourselves, to the earth, then we will understand that during our earth development certain extraordinary important stages were reached. We will bring such important stages in our earth development before our souls when we contemplate the following: Already from our earth's plant growth we realize, by considering the earth as a whole, that it is a living being. Similarly various other heavenly bodies are living beings which stand in a certain relationship to us. Let us look at our sun and moon. Consider the sun. You all know what we owe to the sun. You all know that when you have rested for the night, when you had been in a state of consciousness which had brought about the astral body and the ego (Ich) leaving the physical and ether bodies—you know, when the astral body and ego return, that it so to speak expects everything which the earth owes to the sun. What would the earth be without the sun? The sun surrounds our entire earthly mass with warmth and light. But we have to consider the activity of such a heavenly body on another not only as merely substantial and materialistic but we need to be clear that this sun does not only have a physical body floating in space but the sun is inhabited by spiritual beings and that in each ray of sunshine not only physical light but also spiritual activity streams to us.

A spiritual exchange between sun and earth was always there, but it has essentially changed in the course of earthly development. While no great difference in the physical exchange between sun and earth has come about during many, many millions of years, a spiritual and meaningful stages were reached. High beings these are, who live in the light and warmth of the sun and who work into the earth from there, flooding us with light and warmth.

A Sun Being, who had up to a specific moment in time his stage in the sun, which man could through long, long earthly cycles only observe clairvoyantly, this Being descended at a specific moment from the sun down to the earth. This is something which allows us to see in depth into spiritual development: through the event which we call the Mystery of Golgotha, or in other words, through the passage of Christ on earth, the spiritual Being who had been up to that point on the sun, united himself with the earth. He connected himself with the earth. Humanity's division of earthly time into pre-Christian and post-Christian has its origin in this: that this living being, which we call the earth, underwent through this deed an important development through the appearance of Christ on earth. What was previously only found in the sun, since then can be found in the astral body of the earth. The astral body of the earth changed through the Mystery of Golgotha: at the very same moment the blood flowed out of the wounds of the Redeemer, at that moment the Christ-Soul felt itself uniting with the body of the earth.

This has to be understood in order for us to consider the reported story of Christianity in the correct light. We can ask ourselves: what then was one of the most important events with reference to the spreading of Christianity? When one looks at the propagation of Christianity one can say: firstly more had been accomplished by Paul than those who were the physical companions of Christ Jesus in Palestine; Paul who was no physical companion of Christ Jesus, who had even persecuted the Christ. Paul didn't become a believer through sharing the life and suffering of the Christ, but he became a warrior for Christ through the Event of Damascus.

In theology much dust is raised over the Event of Damascus. Yet no one comes to an understanding of the Events of Damascus but through spiritual science. Let's try to bring this into harmony in only a few words—which will be uttered now. The moment Paul's reasoning consciousness changed into the higher consciousness, what did he see? He saw in that moment this spirit in the astral world, who had become the earth spirit; he saw the living Christ, who since the Event of Golgotha had united with the earth. One can well ask: what was this light which he saw, which people could not see before?—Paul first learnt to know the Christ from the time Christ united with the earth. Thus we may point out this important moment of the earth by saying: the earth prepared itself for this, to become a worthy body for the Christ-Spirit and while the earth was preparing for the uniting of itself and the Christ-Spirit, during this time the Christ-Spirit worked into it. Christ said according to the St John's Gospel: “Whoever eats my bread, treads me with their feet.” People who walk on earth step on the earth with their feet. “Whoever eats my bread, treads me with their feet,” is an expression for the mystery which lies in this important stage of earthly development.

How endlessly profound this becomes with the inauguration of Communion with this in mind, that the earth became from then on the body of Christ! How meaningful this becomes with reference to the words: “This is my body” and that which flows through the plants: “This is my blood.” We learn to take literally what we only dared pronounce in words. So we come, when we consider the earth as alive, as a living being which gradually matures, to the right moment, ready for the acceptance of the Christ-soul.

So from all sides it appears that we encounter the physical planet as spiritual; it appears penetrated by spirit. We then learn to understand connections between that which we meet daily and the super-sensible. When we turn our attention from the plant kingdom to the stone realm then it will not appear through clairvoyant consciousness that we inflict pain when we crush a stone to dust; by contrast, when a stone is turned into dust, what we could call the stone-soul, experiences pleasure and joy. Those who have the sight know that with crushing the stone world, joy streams out of the rock. When, for example, salt is dissolved in a glass of water, pleasure spreads through the water as the salt particles move apart. The opposite is the case when through cooling the solution of salt crystallizes; through the crowding together of the stone particles pain takes place. We look again deeply into the way in which the Initiates speak to us, when they want to tell humankind something like this.

These things are not simply said. We must go through them in a spiritual way to reach an understanding of the great religious documents. It has already been said that originally no hard rock kingdom existed, that the earth was fluid. Its solidity came into existence through the gathering of parts and by hardening. What does man and animal owe to the earth's condensing? Surely so man and animal can live in the present state? Without solid ground and land the earth couldn't offer a base for man and animal. Now bring this imagination into our souls as actual spiritual history. This is hardly understood when only considered with the mind of a physicist. Only when we, with our hearts and minds, explore the earth's coming into being, then we can become conscious of what lies in the stone kingdom, that soul processes are at play, while the was earth solidifying. Pain and suffering was involved—through this, man and animal owe the possibility to live on the earth.

These are the facts that lie at the basis of Paul's words after his Initiation and perception into these things: “All creatures suffer and sigh under the gradual solidification, all creatures sigh and wait for the spiritualisation.” He points with these deep words to the innermost, to the soul of the earthy beings. Now we may en-soul everything, by looking through the eyes of spiritual science, and only through glimpsing the soul and spirit in everything, will we gradually find the world around us becoming more and more comprehensible. We come to an understanding that the world which surrounds us, as in physiognomy, is an outer expression of an inner life. Then we will learn to grasp that the world looks exactly as it appears to people. Further we will learn to understand that behind all physicality is the soul-spiritual which has to be the origin of everything physical, and when the spiritual researchers take us back they show us how in the far, distant past, everything gradually developed out of the spiritual. The human being gradually descended from the spiritual world into the physical, and we must not imagine this descent as something as materialistic as is usually done these days, but rather ask: where does this actual material world which surrounds us, originate from, which is spreading ever more around us?

Mankind were for some time through and through spiritual, embedded in the soul-spiritual. Mankind developed only gradually out of this soul-spiritual. If we glance back to a relatively short time ago—when the realms of time were long, but for the spiritual researcher they are short to name—we find that our earth didn't appear as it does today, that her countenance has thoroughly changed, above all things through the event of the Flood, which in spiritual science goes under the name of the Atlantean Flood. Under this Atlantean flooding we may consider that through air and water activity the face of the earth was completely transformed. Previously the people lived in an area of the earth where the Atlantic Ocean is today. Land existed and there our souls actually lived in previous embodiments in Atlantean bodies. If we look spiritual scientifically at these people at the beginning of this Atlantean time, they appear quite differently to our souls from today. They appear in the early Atlantean times as if they perceived everything in a different way to later. Today, when one of us, during our waking hours glances around, we perceive objects in colour and light. When in the night, the physical and ether bodies are released from the ego and astral bodies, this world disappears. We call this unconsciousness.

During early Atlantean times it was not the case that unconsciousness surrounded people when they entered into another condition during night time. Everything emerged at that time that was soul and spirit in the physical world. People for instance saw flowers before they fell asleep. During sleep they perceived the soul-spiritual of the flower in the soul-spirit world. Therefore these things were, what we call physical outer objects today, not sharply defined as today, because the people saw these as if in a mist surrounded by edges of colour. So we see how the soul too has gradually changed its look. When we go back even further, we will find that the souls only perceived the spiritual, because the physical had not solidified out of the soul yet.

Now the people on our earth were subject to an important point in their development and this moment lay in the middle of their Atlantean development. At this midpoint the people would, if a certain achievement hadn't already been reached, not have ceased perceiving the spiritual world with their nocturnal consciousness. If a certain event hadn't intervened, the people of the middle Atlantean time would for instance not have seen some or other object, like a flower, as yellow, but as it were the spirit of the plant would have appeared to them. That this happened differently was due to people allowing Lucifer and his supporters to exert their influence earlier. The Atlantean was so to speak unaware of the outer physical world; it would have appeared transparent. He had perceived the spiritual world behind everything.

What now happened for the physical world to be not spread under a transparent crystal blanket but to become opaque? Through the spiritual world becoming concealed, yet another possibility, the influence of Ahriman, or as Goethe called him, Mephistopheles, could be expressed. As a result this spirit, which we call the ahrimanic, could penetrate, and after a certain time error and illusion stepped in. That which we call Maya, illusion, could mix into the conception of the world. So behind everything which we take as the physical world, stand the principals of this world, as we call them in the Bible. Their influence penetrates everywhere. Without these influences, matter would appear transparent and reveal the underlying spiritual. As a result an enormous change came about through these events within the souls of people. When we consider how human beings developed on the earth, we see how at a certain time the luciferic and at another time the ahrimanic influences made themselves effective.

When we look back at that time when the human being was still spiritual, when solidity hadn't crystallized, we see how the forces of nature and humanity were not as separate as they are today. They were in that time much closer while the earth was still penetrated by the watery element. The softer the earth was, the more spiritual were the people—human thoughts and human feelings influenced forces of nature. When we go even further back behind the Atlantean times, we find: As human will impulses turned to anger it had quite a definite influence on fire, and thus a large portion of the earth was destroyed in order for the human being to go through the luciferic influence and stimulate evil instincts, through which in an alternate hindsight mankind acquired his freedom and independence. Thus, what we call forces of nature, were linked to human thinking during the Atlantean time.

Now it happened, through humanity's so called luciferic influence granting them independence, that it was given the possibility to influence the forces of nature through the will. Gradually human beings withdrew from the influence of nature forces. This went hand in hand with the influence of Ahriman who wanted to mask the spiritual world from the human being. People who could still see the spiritual world were able to influence nature's forces. Single people were able to withdraw from these influences, the majority of mankind not. Even today actually very few individuals have a direct influence on the forces of nature, in comparison to humanity as a whole, and when we consider humanity in its entirety then we will see accordingly that besides individual karma there exists earth karma for the whole of humanity.

This is a result of what once were a luciferic and then an ahrimanic influence. This being we call Ahriman stands in a mysterious connection to the powers of earth fire which goes back to the direct influence of a few single people. These fire powers of the earth is a life element of ahrimanic spirits and through the ahrimanic influence the collective karma of the whole human race is bound in a certain extent to Ahriman. When specific soul attitudes of mind and events enter into human development, then again the relationship between people and Ahriman is valid, and that, which enabled people to influence forces of nature, still takes place today through Ahriman and his spiritual horde.

Every time Ahriman stirs, it indicates nothing other than that something had happened in human history which attracted Ahriman and brought him into turmoil and rage. In the soul of man something happens, something which for instance lets the largest part of mankind fall into materialism. This enables Ahriman to work in his own element—he then has a living element—because human materialism attracts him more than people who become spiritual. Ahriman awakens storms, volcanic outbursts and earthquakes. Here we really have something which shows how nature and spirit are connected. Nothing happens on earth without a spiritual connection. Our soul is connected to its good and evil deeds as a result of what is going on, on earth. When the earth rages during an earthquake, we will never say it is as a result of a single person's karma, but mankind's karma. Everyone can thump his heart and say his individual karma is included here, the single must perish, because right here the valve of the earth had to open up. He will be recompensed in future.—A materialistic point of view will say this is superstitious but whoever says this doesn't realise how childishly the argument is. How can a flower grow without a spiritual basis, how can it be an expression of spirit and soul, just so no earthquake, no volcanic eruption can be without a spiritual origin, without a spiritual cause. When we, as we said, stare karma in the face, then we make it valid for the entire life of humankind.

Only when we don't bring spiritual scientific teaching into movement, it appears cold and calculated by the mind. When we however allow our feelings, our attitude of mind and our experiences to be penetrated, then we will see the earth as a living being, through and through soul and spirit, and then you will see that this earthly body is bound to spiritual beings of the most various kinds and that a very important event has come to the fore, whose effectiveness is only beginning: the appearance of Christ on earth. Through Christ alone are the consequences of Ahriman's power driven out.

As a result of spiritual science's infusion into the human heart with this Christ-Spirit, that which spreads out on earth as the entire spirit of humanity, now enables the earth right into its nature elements to come to peace and harmony.

When all human hearts in the true sense experience the Christ-Spirit then the power which will stream from this will be so strong, it will calm fire and water. Then the Christ-Spirit would bring peace and harmony into the elements of nature, and the earth itself become an expression of the spirit. The earthly body, which is a living being, would become soft and mild and rise with the human spirit and human soul towards its spiritualisation. To a higher spiritual existence the earth will rise. We can place this as a higher, further ideal and can allow this to penetrate us each moment. No moment is lost in the development of humanity which is applied in such a way that knowledge and will impulses are inter-penetrated by spirit.

We have often turned our gaze back to the views of older times, and we want to do so again today, with the aim of gaining some insights into history and the development of humanity. If we go back thousands of years in human development, for example to the times that we, in our terminology, refer to as the ancient Indian cultural period, we find that people's way of looking at things was quite different then than it is in our time, even if we take a period that is very far removed from that time. If we go back to those older times, we know that people simply did not see nature as we see it today. They perceived spiritual beings directly in everything, in the individual elements of the earth's surface, in mountains and rivers, but also in everything that immediately surrounds the earth, in clouds, in light, and so on. It would have been inconceivable for a person of those ancient times to speak of nature as we do. For he would have felt as we would feel if we were to sit opposite a collection of corpses and then say that we were among human beings. What presents itself to man as nature today, millennia before our era, man would have felt only as the corpse of nature. For in everything that surrounded him, he perceived the spiritual and soul-like.

We know that when today's humanity hears from poetry or from the messages of myths and legends how it was once believed that spiritual-soul qualities can be found in the source, in the flowing river, in the interior of the mountains, and so on, it believes that the ancients let their imagination run wild and that they were inventing. Well, that is a naive point of view. The ancients did not make things up at all, but they perceived the spiritual and soul just as one perceives colors, as one perceives the movements of tree leaves, and so on. They perceived the spiritual and soul directly, and they would have thought of what we call nature today as merely the corpse of nature. But in a certain sense, some individuals among these ancients strove to gain a different way of looking at things than that which was the general one.

You know, today, when people strive to gain a different view from the usual one, and when they are at all capable of doing so, they become 'studied people', they receive concepts that go beyond what they otherwise see only externally. Then they absorb science, as it is called, into themselves. This science did not exist in the times of which we are now speaking. But there were individuals who aspired to go beyond the general observation, beyond what one knew in everyday life. They just did not study as it is done today. They did certain exercises. These exercises were not like those we speak of today in anthroposophy, but they were exercises that were more closely tied to the human organism in those older times. For example, there were exercises through which the breathing process was trained to do something other than what it is by nature. So they did not sit in laboratories and do experiments, but they did, so to speak, experiments on themselves. They regulated their breathing. For example, they inhaled, held back their breath and tried to experience what happened inside the organism when the breath was altered in this way. These breathing exercises should not be copied today. But they were once a means by which people believed they could come to higher knowledge than they could come to if they simply observed nature with their ordinary perceptions, if they saw external natural things as we see them, but also saw the spiritual and soul-like in all natural things.

When people devoted themselves to such exercises, the nature of which, although in a weakened form, has been preserved in what is described today as yoga exercises from the Orient, when they thus changed their breathing in relation to ordinary breathing, then the spiritual-soul aspect disappeared from the view of the surroundings, and it was precisely through such breathing that nature became for these people as we ourselves see it today. So, in order to see nature as we see it today, such people first had to do exercises in those ancient times. Otherwise, spiritual-soul entities would have leapt out of all the beings around them for them to see. They drove away these spiritual-soul entities by changing their breathing process.

Thus they — if I use the term that is current today for those who aspire so high above the general contemplation — as “learned men” no longer aspired to have nature around them as ensouled and spiritualized, but to have it around them in such a way that they perceived it as a kind of corpse. One could also say that these people felt, as they looked out into nature, as if they were in a surging, billowing, soul-spiritual universe, but they felt within it as a person of the present day would feel when dreaming in vivid images and could hardly wake up from these dreams. That is how they felt. But what did these individuals — let us call them the scholars of that ancient time — achieve when, through such special exercises, they distinguished themselves from this living surging and killed it in contemplation, so that they really felt that they now had a dead, corpse-like thing around them? What did they strive for as a result?

They strove for a stronger sense of self. They strove for something through which they experienced themselves, through which they felt themselves. Today's man says every moment: “I am”. “I” is a word that he uses very frequently from morning till night, because it is natural to him, it is self-evident to him. For these ancient people, it was not a matter of course in their ordinary daily experience to pronounce the “I” or even the “I am”. They had to acquire this. To do so, they first had to do such exercises. And by doing these exercises, they came to such an inner experience that they could say with a certain truth: “I am”. Only by doing this did they come to the awareness of their own being.

So what we take for granted only became an experience for these people when they made an effort in an inner breathing process. They first had to, so to speak, kill the environment for contemplation, to awaken themselves. This is how they came to the conviction that they themselves are, that they could say “I am” to themselves. But with this “I am” they were given something that we take for granted again today. They were given the inner development of the intellectual. Through this they developed the possibility of having an inner, secluded thinking.

If we go back to times when the old oriental views set the tone for civilization, it was the case that people felt a souled nature in their everyday lives, but had a very weak sense of self, almost no sense of self at all, did not at all summarize this sense of self in the conviction “I am,” but that individual people who were trained by the mystery schools were led to experience this “I am.” But then they did not experience this “I am” in the way we take it for granted today, but in the moment when they were brought to it through their breathing process, to be able to say “I am” at all out of inner conviction, out of inner experience, they experienced something that even today's man does not really experience at first.

Think back to your childhood: you can only think back to a certain point, then it stops. You were once a baby, but you have no memory of what you experienced as a baby. Your ability to remember ends at some point. You were certainly already there, crawling around on the ground, being caressed by your mother or father. You may have wriggled and moved your hands, but you do not know in your ordinary consciousness what you experienced inwardly at that time. Nevertheless, it was a more active, more intense soul life than later on. For this more intense soul life, for example, has shaped your brain plastically, has permeated your rest of the body and shaped it plastically. There was an intense soul life present, and the old Indian felt transported into this soul life at the same moment that he said to himself, “I am”.

Imagine very vividly what that was like. He did not feel in the present moment when he said to himself “I am”; he felt transported back to his babyhood, he felt the way he felt in his babyhood, and from there he spoke to his whole later life. He did not have the feeling that he now But this was only drawn into this inner being after it had previously lived in the spiritual-soul world. That is, by first transporting himself back to his babyhood through his breathing process, this old Indian yogi became aware of the time before his existence on earth. It seemed to him like a memory. Just as if a person today remembers something that he experienced ten years ago, it was like the occurrence of a memory in the moment when the “I am” shot through the soul, when in this ancient Indian time a person strengthened himself inwardly by breathing exercises and killed the outside world around him, but made it alive, which was not his outside world now, but what the outside world was before man descended into the physical world.

In those days, if I may use a modern expression, which of course sounds infinitely philistine when I use it for those ancient times, one was really lifted out of one's present earthly existence and into the spiritual-soul existence through the study of yoga. One owed one's elevation into the spiritual-soul worlds to one's studies at that time. One had a somewhat different consciousness than we have today. But precisely when one was a yogi in the former sense, one could think – the other people could not think, the other people could only dream – but one thought into the supersensible world, from which one had descended into earthly existence.

This is also a characteristic of the time of the earth's development, which, if we characterize it somewhat roughly, preceded, for example, the Greco-Roman conceptions in the fourth post-Atlantean period. There, the “I am” had already penetrated more into people in their ordinary everyday consciousness. Admittedly, the verb in language at that time still contained the I; it was not yet as separate as it is in our language, but nevertheless there was already a distinct I-experience. This distinct I-experience was now a natural, self-evident fact of the inner life. But in contrast to this, outer nature was already more or less dead. The Greeks, after all, still had the ability to experience the two aspects side by side, and without any special training. They still clearly experienced the spiritual and soul-like in the source, in the river, in the mountain, in the tree, albeit weaker than people of older times. But at the same time, they could also perceive the dead in nature and have a sense of self. This gives the Greeks their special character. The Greek did not yet have the same view of the world as we do. He could develop concepts and ideas about the world like ours, but at the same time he could take those views seriously that were still given in images. He lived differently than we do today. For example, we go to the theater to be entertained. In ancient Greece, people only went to the theater for entertainment in the time of Euripides, if I may put it this way – hardly in the time of Sophocles, and certainly not in the time of Aeschylus or in even older times. In those times, people went to dramatic performances for different reasons. They had a clear sense that spiritual and soulful beings live in everything, in trees and bushes, in springs and rivers. When you experience these spiritual and soulful beings, you have moments in life when you have no strong sense of self. But if you develop this strong sense of self, which the ancients still had to seek through yoga training, and which the Greeks no longer needed to seek through yoga training, then everything around you becomes dead, then you only see, so to speak, the corpse of nature. But in doing so, you consume yourself. They said to themselves: Life consumes the human being. The Greeks felt that merely looking at dead nature was a kind of mental and physical illness. In ancient Greek times, people felt very strongly that the life of the day made them ill, that they needed something to restore their health: and that was tragedy. In order to become healthy, because one felt that one was consuming oneself, that one was making oneself ill in a certain sense, one needed, if one wanted to remain fully human at all, a healing, therefore one went to tragedy. And tragedy was still performed in Askhylos' time in such a way that one perceived the person who created the tragedy, who shaped it, as the physician who, in a certain sense, made the consumed person healthy again. The feelings that were aroused – fear and compassion for the heroes who appeared on stage – had the effect of a medicine. They penetrated the human being, and by overcoming these feelings of fear and compassion, they created a crisis in him, just as a crisis is created in a pneunomia, for example. And by overcoming the crisis, one becomes healthy. So the plays were performed to make people who felt used up as people well again. That was the feeling that was attached to tragedy, to the play, in the older Greek era. And this was because people said to themselves: When you feel your ego, the world is divested of its gods. The play presents the god again, because it was essentially a presentation of the divine world and of fate, which even the gods must endure, thus a presentation of what asserts itself behind the world as spiritual. That was what was presented in the tragedy.

Thus, for the Greeks, art was still a kind of healing process. And in that the first Christians lived according to what was given in the embodiment of Christ in Jesus and what can be contemplated and felt in the Gospels – the death of Christ Jesus, to suffering and crucifixion, to resurrection, to ascension – they felt, to a certain extent, an inner tragedy. That is why they also called Christ, and he was increasingly called the physician, the savior, the great physician of the world. In ancient times, the Greeks sensed this healing quality in his tragedy. Humanity should gradually come to experience and feel the historical, the historically healing in the sight, in the emotional experience of the mystery of Golgotha, the great tragedy of Golgotha.

In ancient Greece, especially in the time before Aeschylus, when what had previously been celebrated only in the darkness of the mysteries had already become more public, people turned to tragedy. What did people see in this older tragedy? The god Dionysus appeared, it was the god Dionysus who worked his way out of the forces of the earth, out of the spiritual earth. The god Dionysus, because he worked his way out of the spiritual forces and up to the surface of the earth, shared in the suffering of the earth. He felt, as a god, in his soul, not in the way it was in the Mystery of Golgotha, also in his body, what it meant to live among beings that go through death. He did not experience death in himself, but he learned to look at it. One sensed that there is the god Dionysus, suffering deeply among human beings because he had to witness all that human beings suffer. There was only one being on the stage, the god Dionysus, the suffering Dionysus, and around him a chorus that spoke and recited so that people could hear what was going on in the mind of the god Dionysus. For that was the very first form of the drama, of the tragedy, that the only really acting person who appeared was the god Dionysus, and around him the choir, which recited what was going on in Dionysus' soul. Only gradually did several persons develop out of the one person who represented the god Dionysus in the older times, and then the later drama out of the one play. Thus the god Dionysus was experienced in the image. And later, as an historical fact in the evolution of humanity, the suffering and dying God, the Christ, was experienced in reality. Once as an historical fact, this was to take place before humanity so that all people could feel what had otherwise been experienced in Greece in the drama. But as humanity lived towards this great historical drama, the drama, which was so sacred in the old grienzeit that one felt in it the saviour, the miracle-working human medicine, was, more and more, I would say, thrown down from its pedestal and became entertainment, as it is already the case with Euripides.

Humanity lived contrary to the times in which it needed something other than being shown in pictures the spiritual and soul world, after nature had been de-animated for viewing. Humanity needed the historical mystery of Golgotha. The ancient yoga student of the Indian times had taken in the breath, held back the breath, so to speak, in his own body, in order to feel in this breathing: In you lives the divine I-impulse. - The human being experienced God in himself through the breathing process as a yoga student. Later times came. Man no longer experienced the divine impulse in himself through the breathing process. But he had learned to think, and he said: Through the breath the soul came into man. - The old yoga student went through that. The later human being said: #SE211-056 he became a soul. The older yoga student experienced it, the later human being said it. And by saying this in ancient Hebrew, one already experienced in a certain sense abstractly what one had previously experienced concretely. But one did not look in ancient Hebrew either, but in ancient Greek. One always takes place in one part of the earth, the other in another part of the earth. One no longer experienced the God within oneself as the old YOGA student did, but one experienced in the image the existence of God in man. And this experience in the image of the existence of God in man was certainly present in the older Greek drama. But this drama now became a world-historical event. This drama became the Mystery of Golgotha. But now the image was also abandoned. The image became a mere image, just as the breathing process was merely described in thoughts. The whole human soul became different.

Man saw the external world dead, and that was the elementary, the natural thing for him, that he saw the external world dead. He saw it without a god. He saw himself as an external world, as a physical external world, deified. But he had the consolation that once in this deified world the real God had come down, the Christ, and had lived in a human being, and through the resurrection as the Christ impulse had passed into the whole of earthly evolution. And so man could now develop a certain view in the following way. He could say to himself: I see the world, but it is a corpse. He did not say it to himself, of course, because it remained in the unconscious; man does not know that he sees the world as a corpse. But gradually the corpse formed in his view on the cross, the dead Christ Jesus. And if you look at the crucifix, at the dead Christ Jesus, then you have nature. You have the image of nature, of that nature in which man is crucified. And if you look at the one who rose from the grave, who was then experienced by the disciples and by Paul as the Christ living in the world, then you have what was seen in all of nature in older times. Of course, in a multitude, in many spiritual beings, in gnomes and nymphs, in sylphs and salamanders, in all possible other entities of the earth hierarchies, one saw the divine-spiritual; one saw nature spiritualized and ensouled. But now, through the burgeoning of intellectualism, there arose the urge to summarize what is scattered in nature. It was summarized in the dead Christ Jesus on the cross. But in Christ Jesus one sees everything that was lost in external nature. One sees all spirituality by looking at the fact that the Christ, the Spirit of God, rose from this body, having conquered death, and that every human soul can now partake of His essence. Man has lost the ability to see the Divine-Spiritual in the sphere of nature. Man has gained the ability to recognize this Divine-Spiritual in Christ in view of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Such is evolution. What mankind has lost, it has been given back to it in Christ. In what it has lost, it has gained selfishness, the possibility of feeling itself. If nature had not become dead to human contemplation, man would never have come to the experience of “I am”. He has come to the experience “I am”; he could feel himself, inwardly experience himself, but he needed a spiritual outer world. That became the Christ. But the “I am”, the egoity, is built on the corpse of nature.

Paul sensed this. Let us imagine Paul's perception for a moment. All around, the corpse of what people had once seen in ancient times. They saw nature as the body of the divine, the soul-spiritual. Just as we see our fingers, so did these people see mountains. It did not occur to them to think of the mountains as inanimate nature, any more than it occurs to us to think of the finger as an inanimate limb; rather, they said: There is a spiritual-soul element that is the earth; it has limbs, and the mountain is such a limb. — But nature became dead. Man experienced the “I am” within. But he would only stand there as a hermit on the de-spiritualized, de-souled earth if he could not look to the Christ. But this Christ, he must not look at him merely from the outside, so that he remains external; he must now take him up into the I. He must be able to say, by rising above the everyday “I am”: Not I, but the Christ in me. If we were to schematically depict what was there, we could say: Man once sensed nature (green) around him, but this nature everywhere ensouled and spiritualized (red). This was in an older period of human history.

In later times, man also felt nature, but he felt the possibility of perceiving his own “I am” (yellow) in the face of nature, which had now become soulless. But for this he needed the image of the God present in man, and he felt this in the God Dionysus, who was presented to him in Greek drama.

In even later times, human beings again felt the soulless nature (green) within themselves, the “I am” (yellow). But the drama becomes fact. On Golgotha, the cross rises. But at the same time, what man had originally lost arises within him and radiates (red) from his own inner being: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”

What did the man of ancient times say? He could not say it, but he experienced it: Not I, but the Divine-Spiritual around me, in me, everywhere. Man has lost this “Divine-Spiritual everywhere, around me, in me”; he has found it again in himself and in a conscious sense he now says the same thing that he originally experienced unconsciously: Not I, but the Christ in me.

The primal fact, unconsciously experienced in the time before man experienced his ego, becomes a conscious fact, an experience of Christ in the human heart, in the human soul.

Do you not see, when you draw such a trivial diagram, the form that the reality must take in ideas? Do you not see the whole world filled with the spirit of Christ, which arises from within the human being, and draws from the cosmos into the human being? And when you realize what significance sunlight has for human beings, how human beings cannot live physically without sunlight, how light surrounds us everywhere, then you will also be able to understand when I tell you that in those older times of which I have spoken today, human beings certainly felt themselves to be light in the light. They felt they belonged to the light. He did not say 'I am', he perceived the sunbeams that fell on the earth, and he did not distinguish himself from the sunbeams. Where he perceived the light, he also perceived himself, because that is where he felt himself. When the light arrived, he felt himself on the waves of light, on the waves of the sun, the sun.

With Christ, this became effective in his own inner being. It is the sun that enters one's own inner being and becomes effective in one's own inner being. Of course, this comparison of Christ with light is mentioned many times in the Bible, but when anthroposophy wants to draw attention to the fact that one is dealing with a reality, today most people rebel who have “divinity” listed as their faculty in the university directories. They actually reject knowledge of these things. And it is a deeply significant fact that there was once such a theologian in Basel who was also a friend of Nietzsche: Overbeck, who wrote the book on the Christianity of today's theology. With this book, he actually wanted to state as a theologian that one still has Christianity, that at that time, in the 1870s, there was still this Christianity, but that much had already become unchristian, and that in any case, theology was no longer Christian. This is what Professor Overbeck, of the Faculty of Theology at Basel, wanted to prove with his book on the Christianity of today's theology. He was highly successful. And anyone who takes the book seriously will come to the conclusion that there may still be some Christianity today, but modern theology has certainly become unchristian. And there may still be some Christianity today, but when theologians begin to talk about Christ, their words are no longer Christian. These things are just not usually taken seriously enough. But they should be taken seriously, because if they were taken seriously, then one would not only see the necessity of today's anthroposophical work, but one would also see the full significance of anthroposophy. And above all, people would be aware of their responsibility towards contemporary humanity with regard to something like anthroposophical knowledge. For this anthroposophical knowledge should actually underlie all knowledge today. All knowledge, especially social knowledge, should be derived from this anthroposophical knowledge. For by learning that the light of Christ lives in them - Christ in me - by fully experiencing this, they learn to see themselves as something other than what one gets when one sees man only as a corpse of nature. But it is from this view that man belongs to nature that has become a corpse that our antisocial, unsocial present has emerged. And a real view, which in turn can make people brothers and sisters and bring real moral impulses into humanity, can only come about if man penetrates to an understanding of the word: Not I, but the Christ in me — when the Christ is found as an effective force precisely in the dealings from person to person. Without this realization we make no progress. We need this realization, and this realization must be found. If we advance as far as it, then we will also advance beyond it, and our social life will be thoroughly imbued with the Christ.

Let us visualize the forces that hold the human being together during life on earth, so that we can gain some insight into cosmology during these days. We know, of course, that the human being is structured when we look at the next thing that characterizes him in earthly life: the physical body, the body of formative forces (which can also be called the etheric body), the astral body, and the I.

Let us imagine how we might characterize these four aspects of the human being. The physical body is, after all, what comes to a person through the fact that the forces of the earth work for him, so to speak. In the time that a person goes through between death and a new birth, he does not deal with this physical body. From the remarks I made in the immediately preceding lectures, we have seen that the human being, when it descends from the spiritual and soul realms to a physical embodiment, is, so to speak, spiritually dead and must regain its strength in inwardness by immersing itself in the physical body. But this physical body itself is, as it were, born out of the forces of the earth and connects with that which descends from the spiritual-soul world. But a short time before the human being reaches physical embodiment on earth, he does not yet have the formative forces or etheric body either. This is also only connected to the human being for earthly existence in the same way as the physical body. Only this formative forces or etheric body has a different relationship to the cosmos than the physical body.

If we examine the physical body of man in relation to its forces, we find in it precisely the forces of the earth planet itself. But if we approach the etheric or formative body of man, we find in it more the forces of the cosmos, the forces of the entire universe. On the other hand, the human astral body and the human I contain such forces that are not actually found in the outer space of the universe, which, if we may use the expression, are not of the world to which the earth belongs.

It is actually the case that the earth is constantly striving to take possession of the physical body of the human being and incorporate it into its own being. In contrast, the universe constantly tends to disperse the human being's formative forces or etheric body throughout the world. When a person is in the state between falling asleep and waking up, the forces at work in what remains in bed, in the physical and formative forces, actually work in such a way that the physical body continually, if I may express it this way, wants to connect with the earth. It wants to become similar to the earth, it wants to become completely earthly. The formative forces or etheric body wants to disperse into the universe. And when we rediscover our physical body and our etheric body when we wake up in the morning, it is actually the case that, when we enter our physical body, it tells us: the earth has taken hold of me throughout the night, the earth wanted to shape me into dust. Only because you held me together through your ego and your astral body yesterday and the preceding days on earth have I remained a physical body; the forces of cohesion continued to work in me. Likewise, the formative forces or etheric body says: I have only kept the human form because I have adopted the habit of being like you. Actually, during the night, while you were sleeping, while you were away from me, the forces of the universe wanted to scatter me to the four winds.

Every time we wake up, we basically have to make an effort to properly take possession of our physical body again. It actually wants to lose us from falling asleep to waking up. We do this through the ego. The ego, when trained to do so, can really feel as if it wants to take possession of the physical body anew every morning. The astral body can feel when waking up that it must make the etheric body similar to itself. The etheric body already wanted to take on an inhuman form. The astral body must in turn push it back into the human form. One would like to say: During sleep, the physical body loses its tendency to be possessed by the ego, and the etheric body loses its tendency to have a human-like form. It flutters out. So that in fact the shape that our physical body has is only a result of the I-effect in our human being. In the present state of mind, people do not have much feeling for something that can be expressed in words: when I return to my physical body in the waking state, I first have to take possession of it again. It wanted to get lost, and the etheric body wanted to flutter apart.

But let us assume that there was once a time when people still had a clear sense of this struggle that takes place every time we wake up between the self and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical body and the etheric body on the other. Then, precisely because they would have had this clear perception, they would also have sensed that it would have to be something very special if a person were to suddenly have to leave his physical body and etheric body through some sudden event.

Under normal earthly conditions, when a person leaves his physical body and his etheric body, it is because the physical body, whether through illness or old age, has become very similar to the earth, so that it wants to unite with the earth. Or, through some kind of injury, the physical body has been brought to such a state that the ego can no longer possess it, and so on. But let us assume that the I and the astral body suddenly had to leave the fully healthy and uninjured physical and etheric bodies, so that they still have the tendency to be possessed by the I and to be similar to the astral body in the highest sense. What would have to happen then?

The thought might have dawned on the old person: Yes, then this physical body could not simply disintegrate. It can only disintegrate when it already has the tendencies to disintegrate within itself, as a result of illness or aging or the like. But when the astral body and the I suddenly have to emerge from the fully healthy human organism, in which the body of formative forces is present, then the human-like form would have to remain, because the tendency to be possessed by the I and the astral body is still fully present. The human form would have to remain fully intact. The human being would become like a statue. The physical body could not disintegrate, the etheric body could not become dissimilar because the separation would have been too rapid. The human being would become a statue.

There seems to have been a case of this kind of sensation in reality. You all know the Greek legend of Niobe, who had seven healthy sons and seven healthy daughters and who, out of a sense of abundance, once mocked the mother of Apollo and Artemis because, despite being a goddess, she only had two children: Apollo and Artemis. She refused to sacrifice, and the revenge of the god or the gods came upon her. She had to experience that her seven daughters and seven sons suddenly died, were killed, by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis. She saw the whole field of corpses of her fourteen offspring before her, and her ego and her astral body united in the pain of what she saw around her. You know the figures on the pediment of the statue of Niobe, who becomes a statue herself, surrounded by her seven sons and seven daughters as they meet their deaths. She herself becomes a statue. The physical body and the etheric body must separate from the ego and the astral body. But this physical body and the etheric body, because they were so full of life that Niobe herself could mock the goddess with her two offspring, could not lose their connection to the ego, and the etheric body could not become dissimilar to the astral body. Niobe became a statue.

Such a work of art is certainly the outcome of a deep feeling arising from a world view, of something that was felt to be a truth from the world view of the time. The feeling was simply this: if Niobe had not been so full of life that she could come to mock the goddess Latona, then she could have died with her physical body disintegrating. But she was so full of life that she rebelled against the gods, that she lived so fully in her physical body. And so we see that the Greek genius felt: because of the rapid departure of the ego and the astral body from the physical and etheric bodies, Niobe becomes a statue.

If we look back at the development of humanity, we see that art always follows the feelings associated with the world view of the time in question. But we can see this in many other ways as well. Let us turn our gaze once more to how the human being, upon waking, must take possession of his physical body again, because this physical body wants to become similar to the earth. If Niobe had been able to sleep even for one night after experiencing her pain, she could no longer have become a statue, for the physical body would then already have absorbed the forces to become similar to the earth, that is to disintegrate. Therefore, every morning the human being must again take possession of the physical body, and every morning the astral body must form the etheric body in a similar way, giving it a plastic form again, so that it takes on a human-like shape.

During the Greek development there was a time when it was felt quite vividly that every morning man must develop strength in order to take firm possession of his physical body. The Greeks derived a certain satisfaction from their physical body, and since they knew that they had to take possession of their physical body anew every morning, they felt the need to strengthen the forces that could take possession of the physical body, and also those that could make the astral body strong, in order to make the etheric body similar to it again every morning.

If man, while waking, would consciously follow the whole process that takes place when waking up, he would say to himself every morning: I must not lose my physical body, I must really get back into this physical body! Man would be afraid of not being able to get properly into the physical body. The ancient Greeks knew much about this fear, and they also knew that every night the etheric body has a tendency to split into four different forms: an angelic, a lion-like, an eagle-like, and an ox-like form. Every morning, starting from the astral body, one must endeavor to synthesize these four members of the etheric body, if I may use the expression, in such a way that a real human being is formed again. But the Greeks liked to have life in the physical and etheric bodies. I have often quoted the saying that comes to us from Greece: “Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows,” in the underworld. The Greeks loved this physical existence. He also wanted to be strengthened in the possession of his physical body, in the becoming similar of the etheric body to man. And you see, tragedy arose out of this tendency. And Aristotle still gives a definition of tragedy that clearly indicates that basically the Greeks did not think of tragedy as modern man thinks of it. I don't know if anyone else has had different experiences, but I have mostly found that people today believe that tragedies exist because, after spending the whole day dealing with what the day brings, they like to sit down for a few hours in the evening to experience something more or less exciting, which is not a real experience but only an image.

This was not how the Greeks thought at the time when Greek culture was actually gradually emerging. For the Greeks, life was one, and everything they put into it was something that should truly belong to the totality of that life. And tragedy was the means by which man could properly possess his physical body and form his etheric body. And tragedy was so developed that by looking at it man should feel fear and pity. Why should man experience fear in tragedy? He should experience fear because by experiencing this fear his power is strengthened to take possession of the physical body in the right way every morning. And he should feel compassion, because through it his astral body is strengthened each morning to form the etheric body in the right way. “Put me before tragedy, said the Greek, then I am able to properly take possession of my physical body, to properly build up my etheric body, then I am able in the fullest sense of the word to be a right person.” The Greeks wanted to be true human beings in their earthly existence. In addition to the other means of immersing themselves in their culture, tragedy was also intended to help them achieve this. Of course, this presupposes that in those older times people knew how the soul and spirit, the I and the astral body of the human being, are connected with the physical and etheric aspects of the human being.

Aristotle gives a definition of tragedy. He says: “Tragedy is the imitation of an action through which fear and compassion are aroused, so that by arousing fear and compassion, man experiences the catharsis, the crisis of fear and compassion. Crisis, catharsis, is an expression borrowed from the older Greek medicine, the art of healing, and even when Aristotle was already developing Greek culture into pedantry, he still felt that tragedy, in particular, should have something healing, something strengthening for man.

Let us try to understand this term “catharsis”, which also comes from the mysteries – and we have often explained what it means in the mysteries – in our ordinary lives.

When a person becomes ill inside, what actually happens? Suffering and pain arise in the person that are not otherwise present. He begins to feel his organism, to sense it in some way, to sense it in a way that he does not sense it in normal, so-called healthy life. In healthy life, one believes, nothing hurts at first. When one becomes ill, something starts to hurt. But this means nothing other than that the I and the astral body are not properly — forgive the somewhat crude expression — integrated into the physical body and the etheric body. If the person is then led to healing and recovery, the I and the astral body are given the strength to integrate properly again. In the healing process, the I and the astral body gain greater power over the physical body than they had before the healing.

Let us assume that a person falls prey to a lung disease. His I and his astral body are not properly connected to the etheric part of the lungs and to the physical part of the lungs. What happens during the healing process is, again, the correct connection. And the crisis consists precisely in the fact that outside of the correct engagement, the I and the astral body are given the strength to engage themselves correctly again afterwards. What happens in an external way in the illness is what the Greek saw continually happening in an internal way in the human being.

The Greek felt this way: If a person does nothing for himself, then his I and his astral body become more and more alien to the physical and etheric bodies. They can take possession of the physical body less and less and shape the etheric body after themselves less and less. They have to be brought out so that they can then be properly brought back in again. The astral body has to be permeated by visualized suffering, by compassion. And the ego has to be permeated by fear. When the ego experiences fear, it strengthens itself. And the ego survives this fear because it is only presented through the image. So the ego does not perish under fear, it endures the fear, it undergoes the crisis, the catharsis, and as a result has a strengthened power to take possession of the physical body again every morning. Likewise, through compassion, through looking at suffering, the astral body is strengthened, making the etheric body more and more similar.

This shows how in Greece, art was seen as being fully connected to the human being, as the figure of Niobe shows, or as something that should have an effect on the process of becoming and educating a human being. The Greeks always looked at the concrete human being, and one can say that since the time of the Greeks, the essence of the human being has actually been lost by the human being himself.

This is particularly evident when we turn our gaze to young Goethe. Even in his youth, Goethe really does get to know a great deal about the world around him, the way people think and feel. And he even became familiar with the way extraordinarily significant, ingenious people try to imagine the world. But for Goethe — as I have already discussed here — it is a struggle to grow into his cultural environment. Because we know, of course, that over the last four to five centuries, the cultural world has become intellectualistic, and Goethe felt this intellectualism, which has poured over everything. He expressed this in Faust: philosophy has become intellectualized, jurisprudence has become intellectualized, medicine has become intellectualized, and even theology has become intellectualized. Faust has studied all of these. But the mere thought that lives in all of this is something that is alien to reality. He wants to relate the spiritual foundations of existence to himself. That is basically Goethe's feeling. Of course, Goethe had to admit that modern man was becoming increasingly intellectual, because that was the way the times were developing. The development of humanity had just reached this point. But for him it was a struggle, because thought does not fully embrace the human being. He felt alienated from the world by seeing the world around him develop as a mental one.

One of those people who, at the time when Goethe was young, strove energetically and with a certain matter-of-factness towards intellectualism, was Lessing. Goethe could have met Lessing in Leipzig. He avoided it because Lessing was too intellectual for him. Herder, later in Strasbourg, was not. Despite his intellectualism, Herder had arrived at a comprehensive worldview full of feeling and emotion. Goethe could relate to that. Lessing, on the other hand, seemed to him to be a little eerily intelligent. He avoided him.

In this context, it is easy to understand how, at a certain age, Goethe could no longer help but break out of this world in which one wants to think about everything. At a certain point in Weimar, Goethe would have liked to get out of his entire skin, even though he was doing extremely well; even though he was idolized at the Weimar court, he could not stand it. He could not stand the whole situation. He also could not bear this: Herder was studying Spinoza. Spinoza, however, is basically a whole thought machinery, a wonderful one, but one does get away from the world when one spins oneself into this thought machinery.

And so he had to go to Italy, because he wanted to discover man. He wanted to discover man in the feeling of Greek art, of ancient art, which had become alien to modern man. Goethe longed to discover, to experience the human being. And basically, the whole of anthroposophy is nothing more than a world view that arises from the longing to find the human being in his or her entirety, to answer the question: what exactly is this human being? How does he or she relate to life?

But as a result, more and more things gradually become vividly clear that have been placed in the development of civilization out of a full feeling for the human being, such as tragedy or a work of art like the Niobe Group. Take this Niobe Group. Niobe, in her soul, that is, in her ego, in her astral body, lives completely outside herself; they radiate completely out into the sphere from which her pain comes. The soul is torn out by the pain. The body is still permeated by the forces of the ego and the astral. The form remains, the form holds firmly together. She becomes a statue, Niobe.

Take the opposite case: there is no reason at all for the ego and the astral body to leave the physical and etheric bodies, and yet they are driven out because the physical and etheric bodies are destroyed from the outside, because they are taken from the ego and the astral body. So the ego and the astral body have to leave. But in that the physical body and ether body are destroyed from the outside, they take on a form which, on the one hand, follows the destructive force and, on the other hand, makes it literally visible how the ego and the astral body are pushed out. With Niobe, this does not have to be the case; there it is suddenly there. But suppose that Niobe, instead of gazing at the field of corpses of her offspring, did not rush out of her physical and etheric bodies, but that something happened to her physical and etheric bodies that forced the soul out. Then one would not see in the physical and etheric bodies how they become statues, how they freeze, as it were, in matter, in formed matter, but one would see how the I still works in there, how the astral body still endeavors to form the etheric body. You also formed that in Greece: this is Laocoon. You can understand Laocoon when you are imbued with the realization that it is the opposite of Niobe, that the physical body and the etheric body are being destroyed from the outside and how the whole thing fights with the I and with the astral body, which are being pushed out. So that in every form, in the shaping of the mouth, in the shaping of the face, in the holding of the arms, in the forms that the fingers take, you can see from Laocoon that the situation I am talking about is being depicted.

We must come to such realizations again, because otherwise the intellectualism that has been so deeply justified for the more recent period will remove man from a true view, from a true knowledge of nature, from reality.

Just think how Lessing tried to explain the Laocoön Group. He basically explained it only in purely external terms. Of course, I say this with all due respect for the great Lessing. But if you take his explanation, it says: When a poet talks about Laocoon, Laocoon is allowed to scream, because you don't see how he opens his mouth when he screams. But when the sculptor forms him, you see how he opens his mouth. You're not allowed to open your mouth. That is purely external: the poet should do it one way, the sculptor another! Of course, Lessing's achievement is something extraordinarily significant. One can say: with all due respect, one must treat these things, but one must be clear about the fact that in Lessing's treatment of the Laocoön Group there is nothing of what now explains the whole figure of Laocoön from the situation. For this it is necessary, as I said in the introduction to these considerations, to survey in the appropriate way the forces that hold man together in his four limbs.

This overview has been completely lost in the age of intellectualism. This age of intellectualism basically no longer knew what to do with what it means to be human. And so, in the age of intellectualism, all sense of proportion was lost. This is what Goethe felt so strongly and what led him to actually loathe it when intellectualism itself extended into art. The young Goethe could not stand the whole style of Corneille-Racine art because there intellectualism forms the dramatic in an intellectualistic way.

In contrast to this, Goethe turns to Shakespeare, who creates out of all the contradictions of nature. Therefore, Goethe finds that Shakespeare is something like the interpreter of the world spirit itself. Goethe feels this very deeply because he feels this incursion of intellectualism. I have often pointed out that Hamlet can be seen as a student of Faust. That Hamlet – Shakespeare's Hamlet, of course, not Saxo Grammaticus' – could have sat at the feet of Faust in Wittenberg during the ten years when Faust led his students around by the nose, that was immediately clear to Goethe. Of course, he did not spell out the details; but anyone who would now say, “Thank God I studied philosophy, law, medicine, and, for my own good, theology,” would naturally not be able to feel an intimate pleasure when he finds, say, the Dane Prince artistically shaped in front of him, speaking the monologue “To Be or Not to Be” and speaking of that land from which no traveler has returned from, despite the fact that the ghost of old Hamlet himself spoke shortly before, who must therefore have an awfully short memory if he cannot remember at the moment he speaks the monologue that he just spoke to his father, who returned from that unknown land!

An intellectual would not do that, of course. And I have met intellectuals like that. They said: Yes, “Hamlet” was not written by a single poet either, the monologue was written by someone else and then it was all mixed up. That's how it was done with Homer too!

It can be easily proved that a whole series of people could have written “Hamlet” because of the contradictions that are everywhere, for such contradictions do in fact exist. And Goethe felt that the reality was richer than the impoverished intellectualism. And so he is perfectly understandable.

If you want to have a good laugh at everything that is terrible in “Hamlet” and what just testifies that Shakespeare can be caught on a contradiction every moment, then you just need to read Professor Rümelin, the famous Heidelberg Rümelin, who pointed out all these things in detail in his essay on Shakespeare. But there is a difference between what Goethe felt about art, to the extent that he called the speaking artist the interpreter of the world spirit, and what is handed down as science, even in Heidelberg.

And if you compare what Lessing said about Laocoön and the beautiful comments on it by Goethe, you will not find in Goethe's remarks what leads to a real understanding, because Goethe did not yet have anthroposophy, but you will find significant progress compared to Lessing's discussions.

You will discover indications everywhere in Goethe of what I have just explained. So that you can say, for example, “Everything I have said about the Laocoon Group is evident from Goethe's comments on it.” And that is why it can be said that, in the right continuation, Goetheanism necessarily leads to anthroposophy, right down to the last detail.

It is especially important in our time that the reality of spiritual life is not confused with the way people interpret this reality. We live in an age when human understanding and human conduct are strongly influenced by materialism. However, it would be wrong to think that because our age is materialistic, spiritual influences are not at hand, that the spirit is not present and active. Strange as it may seem it is possible, particularly in our time, to observe an abundance of effects in human life which are purely spiritual. They are everywhere in evidence and, the way they manifest, one could certainly not say that they are either invisible or inactive. The situation is rather that people, because of their materialistic outlook, are incapable of seeing what is manifestly there. All they see is what is so to speak "on the agenda." When one looks at people's attitude to the spirit, at the way they react when spiritual matters are spoken of, it reminds one of an incident which took place several decades ago in a Central European city. There was an important meeting of an important body of people and the degeneration of moral standards came under discussion. Immoral practices had begun to have adverse influence on certain financial transactions. Naturally a large part of this distinguished body of people wanted financial matters to be discussed purely from the point of view of finance. But a minority—it usually is a minority on such occasions—wanted to discuss the issue of moral corruption. However a minister got up and simply tossed aside such an irrelevant issue by saying: “But gentlemen, morality is not on the agenda.”—It could be said that the attitude of a great many people today in regard to spiritual matters is also one that says: But gentlemen, the spirit is not on the agenda. It is manifestly not on the agenda when things of importance are debated. But perhaps such debates do not always deal with the reality, perhaps the spirit is present, only it is not put on the agenda when human affairs are under discussion.

When one considers these things, and has opportunity to talk more intimately with people, a situation emerges which is very different from what is imagined by those who feel embarrassed by talking about things of a spiritual nature. When one comes to discuss how people got the impulse to do what they are doing one finds again and again that they decided on a project because of some prophetic vision or because of some inner impulse. As I said, if one looks at these things and is able to assess the situation, more often than not things are done because of some spiritual influence, perhaps in the form of a dream or some other kind of vision. Much more than is imagined takes place under the influence of spiritual powers and impulses which flow into the physical world from the spiritual world. People's theoretical rejection of spirituality, based on present-day outlook, does not alter the fact that significant spiritual impulses do penetrate everywhere into our world. However, they do not escape being influenced by the prevailing materialism. There has always been an influx of spiritual impulses throughout mankind's evolution and one ought not to think that this has ceased in our time. But people responded differently when there was more awareness of the existence of a spiritual world than they do in a materialistic age like ours. Let us look at a particular example.

It is extraordinarily difficult to convey to the world certain facts concerning spiritual matters, the reason being that people in general are not sufficiently prepared; they cannot formulate the appropriate concepts for receiving rightly such communications from the spiritual world. Such communications are all too easily distorted into the very opposite. Therefore it often happens, especially at present, that those who are initiated into spiritual matters must remain silent in regard to what is most essential. They must because it cannot be foreseen what might happen if certain things were imparted to someone unripe for the information. Nevertheless certain situations do often arise. On occasions, in accordance with higher laws, discussions take place about spiritual matters. When it is difficult, as it usually is at present, to discuss such things with the living it can often be all the more fruitful to discuss them with those who have died. Seldom perhaps was there a time when conscious interaction between the physical plane and the spiritual world, in which the dead are living, was so vigorous as it can be at present.

Let us assume that a discussion takes place of a kind possible only between someone with knowledge on the physical plane and someone who has died. In this situation something very curious can happen, something that could be termed a "transcendental indiscretion" can take place. The fact is that there are those who listen at keyholes, so to speak, not only on the physical plane, but also among certain beings in the spiritual world. There are spirits of an inferior kind who are forever attempting to obtain knowledge of all kinds of spiritual facts by such means. They listen to what is being said between beings on the physical plane and those in the spiritual world. Their opportunity to listen to such a conversation can arise through someone who, being especially passionate, in the grip of his passion is, as one might say, “beside himself.” This kind of situation often arises through passion, through being drunk—really physically drunk—or through faintness. It gives the lower spirit opportunity to enter into the person with the result that the person either then or later has visions of some kind and can hear things he is not supposed to hear.

It is well known to those able to observe such happenings that countless things, obtained through indiscretion in spiritual communication, appear in distorted form in all kinds of literature, particularly those of a more dubious kind. Nothing is more effective than when some lower elemental spirit (Kobold) takes possession of the writer of a detective novel, especially if drunk and, entering into his human frailties, instills in him a particular sentence or phrase which he then introduces into his story. Later the novel reaches people through all kinds of direct or indirect channels; the particular sentence has an especially strong effect because, given the way people take these things in, it speaks, not to the reader's consciousness, but to his subconscious.

Another method which is very effective is when, in a spiritualistic seance, such a spirit may have the opportunity to insinuate, into what is related through the medium, the spiritual indiscretion he wishes put to effect. This is not to say anything against mediumship as such, only the way it is used. Many things occur in the course of human karma which, in order to come to light, need mediumistic communications. We are not dealing with this aspect today, however. The point I want to make at the moment is to emphasize that there are at the present time spiritual channels between the spiritual world and the physical plane. These channels are very numerous and far more effective than is supposed.—Having said this you will understand better when I now say something which may seem paradoxical but is nevertheless a reality.

The years between 1914 and 1917 will no doubt be written about in the future in the usual way of historians. They will scrutinize documents, found in archives everywhere, in order to establish what caused the terrible World War. On this basis they will attempt to write a plausible account of say the year 1914 in relation to events in Europe. However, one thing is certain: no documentary research, no report drawn up in the way this is usually done will suffice to explain the causes of this monstrous event. The reason is simply that according to their very nature the most significant causes are not inscribed by pen or printer's ink into external documents. Furthermore their very existence is denied because they are not, so to speak, “on the agenda.”

Just in these last days you will have read reports of the legal inquiries going on in Russia. The Russian minister of war Suchomlinoff,²⁰ the Chief of the Russian General Staff and other personalities have made important statements which have caused a great deal of indignation. Many feel moral indignation on learning that Suchomlinoff lied to the Czar; or that the Chief of the Russian General Staff, with the mobilization order in his pocket, gave the German Military Attache his solemn promise that this order had not yet been issued. He said this because he intended to pass it on to the proper quarters a few minutes later. Such things are certainly cause for indignation and moralizing but so much lying goes on nowadays that no one should be surprised that really fat ones are told in important places. But these incidents and what people say about them are truly not the real issue. That is something quite different. When one reads the full report carefully one comes across remarkable words which are clear indicators of what really took place. Suchomlinoff himself says that while these events were taking place he, for a time, lost his reason. He says in so many words: “I lost my reason over it.” The continuous vacillation of events caused this state of affairs. He was not alone, quite a few others in key positions were in similar states.

Imagine a person occupying a position such as that of Suchomlinoff: The loss of his power of reasoning gives splendid opportunity for ahrimanic beings to take possession of him and instill into his soul all kinds of suggestions. Ahriman uses such methods to bring his influence to bear, especially when no importance is attached to remaining fully conscious—apart from sleep. When we are fully conscious such spiritual beings have no real access to our soul. But when our spirit; i.e., our consciousness is suppressed then ahrimanic beings have immediate access. Dimmed consciousness is for ahrimanic and luciferic beings the window or door through which they can enter the world and carry out their intention. They attack people when they are in a state of dimmed consciousness and take possession of them. Ahriman and Lucifer do not act in inexplicable terrifying ways but through human beings whose state of consciousness gives them access.

Those who in the future want to write a history of this war must discover where such dimmed states of consciousness occurred, where doors and windows were thrown open for the entry of ahrimanic and luciferic powers. In earlier times such things did not happen to the same extent in events of a similar kind. In order to describe the causes of events during earlier times what professors and historians find in archives will suffice, whereas in the case of present events something will remain unexplained over and above what is found in documents however well researched. This something is the penetration of certain spiritual powers into the human world through states of dimmed consciousness.

I spoke in an earlier lecture about how, in a certain region of the earth, conditions were prepared for decades so that at the right moment the appropriate ahrimanic forces could penetrate and influence mankind. Something of this nature took place in July and August of 1914 when an enormous flood, a veritable whirlpool, of spiritual impulses surged through Europe. That has to be rightly understood and taken into account. One simply does not understand reality if one is not prepared to approach it with concrete concepts derived from spiritual insight. To understand what is real, as opposed to what is unreal, at the present time spiritual science is an absolute necessity. Nothing can effectively be done in the political or any other sphere unless wide-awake consciousness is developed concerning events which must be approached with concepts and ideas gained from spiritual knowledge. Not that everything can be judged in stereotyped fashion according to spiritual science. But spiritual knowledge can stir us to alert participation in present issues, whereas a materialistic view of events allows us to sleep through things of greatest importance. A materialistic outlook prevents us from arriving at proper judgement of what the present asks of us.

A recognition of what here is at stake is what I so much want to be present as an undercurrent in our spiritual-scientific lectures and discussions, so that spiritual knowledge may become a vital force enabling souls to deal appropriately with outer life. It is essential to recognize not only the issues of spiritual science itself but also those of external life as they truly are. One must be able to arrive at judgements based on the symptoms to be seen everywhere.

I recently described the incredible superficiality with which a professor of Berlin University attacked Anthroposophy. I told you of the misrepresentations and slanders delivered by Max Dessoir.²¹ That such an individual should be a member of a learned body is part and parcel of the complexities of life today. Max Dessoir once wrote a history of psychology and mentions in the preface that he wrote it because the Berlin Academy of Science had offered a prize for a work on the subject. The history of psychology written by Max Dessoir is such a slovenly piece of work, containing fundamental errors that he withdrew it and prohibited further publication. Consequently not many copies are in circulation, though I have a reviewers copy and could say many things about it. For the moment I refer to it in my forth coming booklet concerned with attacks on Anthroposophy.

As I said Max Dessoir wrote a history of psychology and then withdrew it from circulation. But the fact remains that the Berlin Academy of Science did award it the prize. Such things should not be overlooked; they are symptomatic of what takes place nowadays. One must ask: who are the people who award such prizes? They are the very people who educate the younger generation; i.e., they educate those who will become leading figures in society. They also educated the generation which brought about the present situation in the world. It is necessary to see things in their true context and to recognize that all the symptoms reveal the need for that which alone can make our time comprehensible.

This again indicates what I wish so very much could flow as an undercurrent through our movement so that spiritual science would shake souls awake and make them alert observers of what really takes place in their surroundings. The occasion for sleep is in our time considerable and naturally ahrimanic and luciferic powers make use of every opportunity to divert the alert consciousness aroused by spiritual knowledge away from the real issues. The opportunities for dulling man's consciousness are plentiful. Someone who studies exclusively a special subject will certainly become ever more knowledgeable and clever in his particular field; yet the clarity of his consciousness may suffer as a result.—In speaking about these things one is skating on very thin ice.

While it is true that there are many things of which an initiate cannot speak at present because it could have terrible results, it is also true that there are things of which one can and indeed must speak. To give an example, there is a professor at a German university of whom much good could be said and I have no intention to say anything against the man. I want to give an objective characterization. He is a distinguished scholar of theology, has studied widely and his research in the domain of theology has made him very learned. Yet it has not made him awake and alert to what constitutes true reality. As professor of theology his task is to speak about religion, scripture and also about veneration and supersensible powers. This, for a modern professor of theology, is a rather uncomfortable task. Such learned men much prefer to speak about experiencing religion as such, about how it feels merely to approach the spiritual. This professor, as others like him, has a certain fear of the spiritual world, fear of defining or describing it in actual words and concepts. I have often spoken about this fear which is purely ahrimanic in origin. This professor has an inkling that he will meet Ahriman once he penetrates the material world and enters the spiritual world. He would then have to overcome Ahriman.

Here we see someone who as a theologian looks upon the beauty and the greatness of nature as a manifestation of the divine. But this aspect of nature he will not investigate for it is the beings of the Higher Hierarchies who reveal themselves through nature and to speak of them is not “scientific.” Nevertheless he does want to investigate the soul's religious experiences. However, in attempting investigation of this kind, without any wish to enter the spiritual world itself, one very easily succumbs instead to the very soul condition one is apt to experience when confronting Ahriman: the condition of fear. The religious experience of this theologian consists therefore partly of fear, of timidity in face of the unknown. The last thing he wants is to make the unknown into the known. He presumes that timidity and fear of the unknown—which stems from ahrimanic beings—is part and parcel of religious experience.

It is because he wants to describe the soul's religious experience but refuses to enter the realm of the Hierarchies who live behind the sense world that Ahriman darkens his comprehension of the spiritual world. Through the ahrimanic temptation the spiritual world appears as “the great unknown,” as “the irrational” and religious experience is confused with the “mystery of fear.”—Nor is that all, for just as Ahriman is waiting without when one seeks the spiritual world through external nature so does Lucifer wait within. The modern theologian of whom we are speaking also refuses to seek the Hierarchies within. Here again Lucifer makes the realm of the Hierarchies appear as "the great unknown" which the theologian refuses to make into the known. Yet he wants to know the soul's experience, so here he meets the opposite of the mystery of fear, namely the “mystery of fascination.” This is a realm in which we experience attraction, we become fascinated. The theologian now has on the one hand the mystery of fear and on the other the mystery of fascination; for him these two components constitute religious life.

Naturally there are critics today who feel that it is a great step forward when theology has, at last, got away from speaking about spiritual beings; no longer speaks of what is rational but about what is irrational; i.e., the mystery of fear and the mystery of fascination, the two ways to avoid entering the unknown. The book: Über das Heilige (About the Sacred) by professor Otto²² of Breslau University is certain to attain fame. This book sets out to derationalize everything to do with religious experience. It sets out to make everything vague, to make all feelings indefinite partly through fear of the unknown and also through fascination for the unknown. This view of religious life is certain to attract attention. People are bound to say that here, at last, the old fashioned idea of speaking about the spiritual world is done away with.

Anyone knowing something of Anthroposophy will recognize that in the case of this scholar there is a condition of dimmed consciousness. Such conditions frequently occur; philologists and researchers often fall into states of dimmed consciousness, especially when their investigations are within a limited field. In such conditions Ahriman and Lucifer have access to them. And why should Ahriman not prevent such a researcher from beholding the spiritual world by deluding him through the mystery of fear? And why should Lucifer not delude him through the mystery of fascination? There is no other remedy than clear awareness of the roles played by Ahriman and Lucifer, otherwise one is merely wallowing in nebulous feelings. Certainly feeling is a powerful element of the soul's life which should not be artificially suppressed by the intellect, but that is something different altogether from allowing a surge of indefinite feeling to obscure every concrete insight into the spiritual world.

One is reminded in this connection of something said by Hegel,²⁴ though it was cynical and purely speculative. Hegel was referring to Schleiermacher's²³ famous definition of religious feeling which, according to him, consisted of utter and complete dependence. This definition is not false but that is not the point. Hegel, who above all wanted to lead man to clear concepts and concrete views and certainly not to feelings of dependence, declared that if utter dependence was a criterion for being religious then a dog would be the best Christian. Similarly if fear is the criterion for religious feelings then one need only suffer an attack of hydrophobia in order to experience intensely the mystery of fear.

What I am bringing up in these lectures must be considered, not so much according to its theoretical content but rather as an indication of the kind of inner attitude which is indispensable if one wants to observe the conditions in the world as they truly are. And it is so very important to do so. No matter where or how one is placed in life one can either observe appropriately or be inappropriately asleep. What surges and pulsates through life comes to expression in small issues as well as in big ones and can be observed everywhere.

We are at the beginning of a time when it will be of particular importance that things I have indicated in these last lectures are kept very much in mind. Many people do arrive at awareness of a universal Godhead or a universal spirituality. Yet, as I demonstrated when I spoke about his article “Reason and Knowledge,” even someone of the stature of Hermann Bahr does not arrive at any real awareness of Christ. He allies himself with the most prominent Christian institution of the day, that of Rome. But despite all he says there is no sign in his “Reason and Knowledge” of any conscious search for the Christ Impulse. Yet the most pressing need in our time is to gain an ever clearer understanding of the Christ impulse.

In the course of the 19th Century there was a great upsurge of natural-scientific thinking and all its attendant results. One of the first results was theoretical materialism accompanied by atheism. It can be said that the materialists of the 19th Century positively revelled in atheism. But such tendencies are apt to reverse and the same kind of thinking which made human beings atheists—due to certain luciferic-ahrimanic impulses at work during the first upsurge of natural science—will make them pious once the first glow has faded. The teachings of Darwin can make people God-fearing as easily as it can make them atheists, it all depends which side of the coin turns up. What no one can become through Darwinism is a Christian; nor is that possible through natural science if one remains within its limits. To become a Christian something quite different is required; namely, an understanding of a certain fundamental attitude of soul. What exactly is meant?

Kant said that the world is our mental picture, for the mental pictures we make of the world are formed according to the way we are organized. I may mention, not for personal but for factual reasons, that this Kantianism is completely refuted in my books Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom. These works set out to show that when we form concepts about the world, and elaborate them mentally, we are not alienating ourselves from reality. We are born into a physical body to enable us to see objects through our eyes and hear them through our ears and so on. What is disclosed to us through our senses is not full reality, it is only half reality. This I also stressed in my book Riddles of Philosophy. It is just because we are organized the way we are that the world, seen through our senses, is in a certain sense what Orientals call Maya. In the activity of forming mental pictures of the world we add, by means of thoughts, that which we suppressed through the body. This is the relation between true reality and knowledge. The task of real knowledge and therefore real science is to turn half reality; i.e., semblance, into the complete reality. The world, as it first appears through our senses, is for us incomplete. This incompleteness is not due to the world but to us, and we, through our mental activity, restore it to full reality. These thoughts I venture to call Pauline thoughts in the realm of epistemology. For it is truly nothing else than carrying into the realm of philosophic epistemology, the Pauline epistemology that man, when he came into the world through the first Adam, beheld an inferior aspect of the world; its true form he would experience only in what he will become through Christ.

The introduction of theological formulae into epistemology is not the point; what matters is the kind of thinking employed. I venture to say that, though my Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom are philosophic works, the Pauline spirit lives in them. A bridge can be built from this philosophy to the Christ Spirit; just as a bridge can be built from natural science to the Father Spirit. By means of natural-scientific thinking the Christ Spirit cannot be attained. Consequently as long as Kantianism prevails in philosophy, representing as it does a viewpoint that belongs to pre-Christian times, philosophy will continue to cloud the issue of Christianity.

So you see that everything that happens, everything that is done in the world must be observed and understood on a deeper level. It is necessary, when assessing literary works today, to keep in view not only their verbal content but also the whole direction of the ideas employed. One must be able to evaluate what is fruitful in such works and what must be superceded. Then one will also find entry into those spheres which alone enables one to stay awake in the true sense. The terrible events taking place in our time must be seen as external symptoms, the real change of direction must start from within.

Let me mention in conclusion that before 1914 I pointed out how confused were the statements made by Woodrow Wilson.²⁵ At that time I was completely alone in that view. What I said can be found in a course of lectures I gave at Helsingfors in May and June 1913. At that time Woodrow Wilson had the literary world at his feet. Only certain writings of his had been translated into other languages and much was said about his “great, noble and unbiased” mind. Those who were of that opinion speak differently now; but whether insight or something different brought about the change of view is open to question. What is important now is to recognize that because spiritual science is directly related to true reality it enables one to form appropriate judgements. This is an urgent need in view of the empty abstraction on which most judgements are based at present. An example of the latter is Der Geistgehalt dieses Krieges (The Spiritual Import of this War) by George Simmel. It is an ingenious presentation and a prime example of ideas from which all content has been extracted. To read it is comparable to eating an orange from which all juice has been squeezed out. Yet the book was written by a distinguished philosopher and innovator of modern views. At the Berlin university he had a large following; the fact that he never had a thought worthy of the name did nothing to diminish his fame.

• 20. Wladimir Alexandrowitsch Suchomlinoff 1848–1926 Russian General
• 21. Max Dessoir 1867–1947 Philosopher and Psychologist
• 22. Rudolf Otto 1869–1937
• 24. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831 German Philosopher
• 23. Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768–1834 Theologian and Philosopher
• 25. Woodrow Wilson 1856–1924 Professor of Philosophy, President of the U.S.A. 1913–1921

My dear Friends! The Anthroposophical Society having been founded in a new form during the recent Christmas Conference in Dornach, the teachings given in various groups of the former Anthroposophical Society are now intended to flow into what has since become the actual School of Spiritual Science. The school is intended to become a kind of center for the whole of the anthroposophical movement which is at work within the Anthroposophical Society. This School of Spiritual Science, due to the interrelationships of its most essential working groups, will certainly have its central point at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and efforts will be made naturally to seek and find ever-better formats not only within the Goetheanum, but also in extension for the friends of the anthroposophical movement all over the world who only occasionally can show up in person in Dornach. What I have to say to you during this lesson, as well as in the next esoteric lesson, must be considered to have been spoken to you, my dear friends, within the School of Spiritual Science. I want to begin, however, by mentioning a few matters concerning the constitution of the school.

Those who decide to become members of this School, after having been members of the Anthroposophical Society for two years, enter into an obliga¬tion, in the spiritual sense. When issuing a membership card for the School of Spiritual Science, the leadership of the school will always endeavor to ascertain whether the person in question is capable of taking on a spiritual obligation of this kind.

When a person becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society, that person rightly expects to become acquainted with and to experience Anthroposophy. In a certain way they will get to know Anthroposophy. This is the very thing that has been made possible by the Christmas Foundation Conference at Dornach, for there is to be complete openness in this matter, and no particular obligations whatever will devolve upon members of the Anthroposophical Society.

Whoever enters the School of Spiritual Science as a member, however, must from then on keep in mind that the central aspect of this School of Spiritual Science is to be the source of anthroposophical life now and for some time in the future. Anthroposophical life is founded certainly on what for all times has been known as secret inner knowing or secret science. But the word secret was never intended to describe all kinds of goings on in secret circles that must not be made known to the world. Specifically, it was meant to describe what belongs not to the external surrounding world, not to what is outside the human body, but rather this use of the word secret has really always been used to explain that the content expressed in esoteric schools has its source and origin in the deeply hidden inner being of man himself. Therefore, in contradistinction, it has been called secret instead of public. Secret certainly has the meaning of the actuality of inner knowing, and it is counted as secret since it is the actuality of inner knowing in one’s profound depths, in a person’s secret inner being, which comes to the fore as revelation. What basically comes from one’s deepest inner nature loses its proper significance, its proper appreciation, indeed its proper proprietary nature, when it is profaned, when it is in some fashion bandied about in public. What always happens on the broad stage of public disclosure, you can be sure, is that these things will not be taken up with the necessary sincerity, with the necessary dignity.

It is, indeed, the first requirement laid upon those who approach esoteric schooling that they bring to it the deepest, the very deepest seriousness. This is how the School of Spiritual Science must be taken up, and this is why it requires its members to be truly genuine representatives of the anthroposophical world movement in every situation of their lives. This is the case to such an extent that the leadership of the school is obliged to exclude a member if in its opinion that member is not a representative in the right way.

This is not intended to be a tyrannical regulation, my dear friends. It is merely a regulation that arises out of the principle that freedom must be met with freedom. If the leadership of the school is to administer it in the proper manner it must be allowed to stipulate with whom it wishes to conduct the affairs and carry the content of the school. That is why it is necessary to emphasize the seriousness with which those approaching the school must truly grasp Anthroposophy as a world movement.

The school has been divided into Sections in order to meet the needs of those coming towards it, under the present circumstances of civilization, with the intention of carrying on their spiritual life within it. The teaching that I shall give during this session and the next should be seen as coming within the scope of the General Anthroposophical Section which, as well as the Education Section, I myself shall lead.

The School of Spiritual Science will then also have a section for the spoken arts with music and eurythmy which will be led by Frau Dr. Steiner, a section for medicine under the leadership of Frau Dr. Ita Wegman, and a section for the sculptural arts under the leadership of Miss Maryon. Further there will be a section for something to which scarcely any attention is paid these days, to the detriment of our whole civilization, and that is the section for the fine arts under the leadership of Herr Albert Steffen. There will also be a section for astronomy and everything connected with it under the leadership of Fraulein Dr. Vreede, and also a section for the natural sciences under the leadership of Dr. Wachsmuth.

Something else has also been established recently in response to a need, something about which little can be said as yet because it has been plunged into ferment, a fermenting element which the school intends to ensure will link itself in all honesty with the intentions of the Goetheanum. This is the section for promoting the spiritual life of young people, the section for the universal striving of today's youth, which is a part of the historical process. When observed objectively, it is perfectly clear that something new is coming into being here, although at present young people can only talk very unclearly about what it is they actually mean. To bring into clear consciousness what is for the moment still only expressed in all kinds of indeterminate feelings and the sense of something lacking, to gain a clear view of all this will be the aim of the section that I may call the section for the wisdom of youth.

In this way the School of Spiritual Science seeks to bring esoteric life to each individual as something that is an extension of today's external culture. It is something for which the world has the profoundest longing, without actually realizing that what it is seeking is the very thing that is to live in the esoteric life of our School of Spiritual Science.

We have absolutely no intention of imitating ordinary universities in any way by doing what they do in a somewhat different form. This was attempted during the period when various opinions, over which I exercised no influence, were given a free rein. It has been tried in Dornach, but from the beginning I regarded it as not being quite the correct way to go about things. Nevertheless, there is an obligation in this realm not to hinder whatever might want to break through into the light of day. But now that there has been a trial run, and people have realized that the goal cannot be reached along this route, there is no longer any need for our school in Dornach to give the impression that it wants to compete with what goes on at ordinary universities. Now our school can aim to give to humanity the very thing that ordinary education is unable to achieve; it can now become some¬thing for which human beings cannot help having the most profound longing.

This is how the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach intends to be the real esoteric center for what ought to live in the anthroposophical movement.

When I say that this school must be regarded with utmost seriousness, I immediately have to add that this very statement itself can never be taken seriously enough. So I want it to lead the way as we set out with our considerations. Those who regard the esoteric life flowing through this school merely as something that flows alongside their own life cannot be its members in the right and proper sense. Only those can be proper members of this school who are filled with truth in such a way that their life becomes intimately bound up with this spiritual life so that their whole life cannot but become intimately bound up with the esoteric teaching that flows to them from this school.

My dear friends, your assessment of this school will not be correct if you regard it as a product of arbitrary human intention. This school has been instituted by the spiritual world. It came into being through listening to what the spiritual powers who guide the world consider to be the right thing for human beings in our time.

So rather than regarding our school as a human institution, let us see in it an institution that has arisen totally out of the will of those spiritual beings who are close to the earth and who work for the welfare of mankind.

If you accept it as the earthly image of a spiritual institution you will be looking at it in the right way. Your feeling for it will be right if you take every word that is spoken within this school as being spoken by someone who is responsible to none but the spiritual powers who guide the anthroposophical movement. This school is an understanding between those spiritual powers whose authority is appropriate for the phase of evolution mankind has reached today and those human beings who seek to become members of the school.

It could be said, my dear friends, that you come face to face with the spiritual world when you become a member of this school. The more profoundly and intensely you grasp this, the more you will carry in you what the school must be, which is alone what gives it its true meaning. Those who know that the spirit itself speaks through this school will surely achieve the seriousness necessary for following with deep earnestness all that is carried on within the school.

What today we can only do in Dornach within this school will gradually be sent by suitable means to all those who have become members of the school, but meanwhile, we cannot take the fifth step after the third, but only after the fourth. As time goes on, step-by-step, intimate contact will be established between all the members, wherever they may be, and what flows through the school in Dornach.

As a beginning, my dear friends, let us turn to the very first thing that comes to meet someone who seriously sets out on the path to real inner awareness. Real inner awareness, my dear friends! We must be quite clear about the fact that the external world with which we are faced contains within it the task we have to fulfill during our physical life on earth between birth and death. We would be misunderstanding ourselves and also the gods entirely if we were to believe that we ought to bear contempt towards what comes to meet us as a task during our journey on earth between birth and death. Human beings must enter fully into the activity and work of the physical world. But what do they find there? They find beauty, magnitude, and majesty in all the wonderful formations of the mineral kingdom that also form the grounds we need in order to be capable of fulfilling our tasks on earth. They find majesty in the plant kingdom; they find what they need in the animal kingdom; and they find what is closest to them in the kingdom of physical human beings. They find all the things in the kingdoms of nature raised to a higher plane when they lift up their eyes to the clouds, to the blue sky or out to the stars, to the sun and the moon. Not to recognize beauty, magnitude, and majesty in all these things would cause human beings to stray from their true path in life.

To enter into the esoteric does not mean a repudiation of the beauty, greatness, and majesty of all that presents itself to us in life. But however far we enter into the mineral kingdom with all its wonderfully formed crystal shapes, however far we enter into the plant kingdom with all its sparkling colors from which the sunlight shines towards us out of nature, however far we go in contemplating the enchantment conjured up out of the depths of nature in the lively kingdom of the animals, and however much we marvel at the way the secrets of the world all meet in the physical human shape and form, nevertheless, all that we experience in the depths of our inner being we do not find in these realms of form and color, nor do we find it in these kingdoms of the world in all their sparkling, bubbling life. In the end the human being stands in this world and says, “I sense the magnitude, the beauty, and the majesty of all the forms taking shape and the colors unfolding out there, but whatever it is that I myself am must have its origin in another world.”

When the human being feels the beauty, magnitude, and majesty of the physical-sensory world and feels that he cannot find there the best of what he himself is, then he will be drawn more and more toward that place, where specifically all esoteric insight must come from. He will be drawn toward that abyss, only on the other side of which lies what a person can have of his ancient stand, his ancient source, his ancient wellspring.¹ He will be drawn to that abyss, where he certainly must gaze on the boundary between the sensory world and the spiritual world; he will be drawn to that abyss, to what is meant for him as a bridge for crossing over into a wholly other world, to the exit point, to the threshold of inner awareness, and only to where the spiritual world lies.

Moreover, specifically what I have to impart to you my dear friends, are the communications of the gestalt that in the esoteric has always been identified as the Guardian of the Threshold. There stands this exalted gestalt, a being, you will learn, from whom entry is obtained, a being that certainly is not less real than a physical person upon the earth, but who far surpasses the reality of the physical human being on earth.

But whoever initially merely in grappling with and feeling into the esoteric, with human nature unencumbered by prejudice, allows the communications to come forth, such a person must then feel how this Guardian of the Threshold stands there, exhorting, admonishing concerning what the seeker after actual inner awareness should experience, when he really does step into the actuality of inner awareness.

Why does the Guardian of the Threshold stand there? He stands there because true awareness can only be achieved when we approach rightfully and well-prepared, with a fully internalized open-minded demeanor and a true striving for the actuality of inner awareness. There is nothing theoretical about truly striving for actually awareness. A true striving for actually knowing is only achieved if the soul raises itself above everything offered by the sense-perceptible world.

Those who approach this actuality of knowing too soon, unprepared and without the proper demeanor, will not achieve it in the right manner. They will harm both themselves and the world. A true striving for actual knowing is present to a high degree in those who seek a real path into the spiritual world, such as that which will gradually be opened up by the three classes of the School of Spiritual Science. This is also the case, though more on the level of the soul, for those who merely want to receive information about the spiritual world. There must be at least a glimmer of what the initiate experiences on meeting the Guardian of the Threshold.

It is about this experience that we will now speak. Those who receive these impartations and allow them to work on their souls with fitting earnestness will find, by again and again going over and practicing what they hear, by inwardly experiencing what they hear, the path that in reality leads them across this threshold and into the spiritual world. So now, my dear friends, let us bring before our souls what it is that the voice of the earnest Guardian of the Threshold makes us aware of, if we would jump over from the semblance of knowledge on this side of the world to the true inner knowing on the other side.

There he stands with his admonishing gaze. There he speaks about the world of the senses’ beauty and grandeur and sublimity. There he also speaks about the person not being able to find in this beautiful, this grand, this majestic world what he recognizes as his fullest worth, his unique individuality. There this Guardian of the Threshold draws our attention across over the abyss looming to the left and to the right of the Threshold, there he draws our attention across into another realm, into the realm of spirit. There however deepest darkness rules initially. The person must acquire the notion that what there bestirs itself in him only as deepest darkness through the impressions of the sensory world, that there lies the ancient wellspring, the ancient source, and the ancient stance of his own intrinsic essence.

The Guardian of the Threshold says something like this, translated from the spirit language he speaks, when a person approaches his earnest countenance:

Where on grounds of earth, color upon color,
Life stirring reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures, strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man, derive
Bodily existence from earth and air and light:

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness;
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are, and were, and will become.
For your true existence, the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit;
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,

And from darknesses clarifies itself
(Revealing you in counterpart,
Yet also portraying you as parable,
Earnest spirit-word in ethereal realm,
Audible to your heart, forcefully effective),

The bringer of spirit-premonitions to you,
He who alone can illuminate your way;
Before him spread the sensory fields,
Behind him yawns the deep abyss.
And from his fields spirit dark,
Hard by the yawning chasm of existence,
Rings forth the ancient might of his creator-word:
See, I am the only door to inner knowing.

My dear friends, after the Guardian of the Threshold has drawn the seeker's attention to the tremendous contrast that exists between what our eyes can see in the realm of the senses before we encounter the Guardian, and what we can surmise from the dark recesses that lie on the other side of the threshold, in which the source and origin of our own being can be sought, he then allows the seeker to glimpse what awaits him when he makes himself capable of living within the light that must first brighten up and clarify itself out of the darknesses from that side of the abyss.

Then a second word resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold, which I will write down and bring with me next time. This second word now indicates what the seeker must expect when he has crossed the threshold and formed within his own inner being, now lit up, an organ with which he can leave the darkness and approach what the Guardian of the Threshold says at this moment:

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:

There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

The Guardian draws attention to the wide expanse of existence-awareness where being is experienced in light, and to another expanse of existence-awareness, where in time's onward march, the powers of creation hold sway from epoch to epoch. Then attention is drawn to the depths of the intrinsically human heart-sensitivity, where the whole world is revealed as though in a mirror. By drawing attention to these three worlds, the world of space, the world of time, and the world of the heart's depths, there can resound from the world shaping powers the eternal admonishing word of existence-awareness, “O man, know yourself!”²

After this the person must be shown his inner nature. But the inner nature of a person is not only within the person’s inner nature; the human inner nature in all the world. What we carry in our inner nature directly comes forth and takes shape in the external world ether. Oh, the most secret thoughts, most secrete feelings and desires and stirrings of will, they come forth at the same time in the world ether and take on fully-formed shapes, so that in the external world we see in the shapes, in fully-formed creatures, just what we most certainly are.

Also added to the observation of what we really are, there resounds then the voice of the Guardian of the Threshold, making clear to us in this manner who we are. Why is the abyss really there, this abyss that stretches between the sensory world and the spirit world? The abyss is there that out of it rise those forces of our inner nature that will not allow us to cross over the threshold. Such forces are there in our inner nature. They would stop us, hold us back, not allow us to come to true inner awareness across the Threshold. Such forces are there in our thinking; such forces are there in our feeling; such forces are there in our willing.

When we merely have an inkling of them, they are formless.³ When we observe them, behold them, these hindering and hemming-in powers in our thinking, feeling, and willing that register themselves in the world-ether, then they appear as malformed animals. And certainly, nobody knows himself who cannot observe them in this significant form as malformed animals, which the person out of his own inner nature draws out and sees as hinderances, impediments for transitioning across the Threshold. The moment eventually must come in life, in which the person places before his eyes the images that live as hindering powers in his thinking, feeling, and willing. We must not allow ourselves to give in to any illusions about this. In ordinary consciousness one is not normally aware of what a person is, and one does not take seriously what a person is. In picture-form, in truthful-form the Guardian of the Threshold brings this to the person’s awareness.

These are the words with which he clarifies how the forms are, how they come to be engraved in the etheric through the counter-striving forms in our willing, feeling, and thinking. A person must someday shudder before these forms that he inscribes in the world ether, and then he will begin to feel just what he has to overcome in order to penetrate to true inner awareness.

The Guardian of the Threshold speaks, clarifying the nature of the beasts that rise up as forms in human thinking, feeling, and willing:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin;
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
In your fire of knowing it must be tamed.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

Only when a person in a shudder has beheld the images of the counter-striving powers in thinking, only then by beholding these negatives within, only then will a person acquire the strength to enter the true field of inner awareness. If a person does not have the will to observe in himself in the images of the three beasts, living there as the fear of knowing, as hatred of knowing, and as doubts about knowing, such a person will not come to inwardly knowing himself. He will not come to inwardly knowing the world, whoever hesitates there, shuddering in this manner to gaze upon himself.

So come into being by impressing once again the threefold beasts placed before you, before your souls, my brothers and sisters, as the Guardian speaks in clarification:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin;
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
In your fire of knowing it must be tamed.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

How the person gets these wings, how the person finds the strength to subdue these three, will be the content of the next lesson, on Saturday at five o'clock.

When these words in such a descriptive-solemn way have been presented to the person concerning his awareness of himself, when they have rung forth, then once again will attention be drawn, as in a perspective, to what stands there expectantly, in order to fulfill the word, “O Man, know yourself!” The first part, however, can only be completed by observing the beast’s three forms, which is the additional content of the next lesson.

Then, once again, the Guardian of the Threshold calls out:

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:

There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

• 1. seinen Urstand, Ursprung, Urquell
• 2. O, du Mensch, erkenne dich selbst. This is in the second person singular familiar, spoken as to a close and dearly-loved family member. Mensch here translates as adult individual responsible human being. The word Mann is a perfectly good German word, but is not used here.
• 3. hindernden und hemmenden

My dear friends,

We will again start by letting the words resound from the cosmos near and far, which can be heard by everyone who correctly understands the world. But before doing so, because again many new members of the esoteric school are present, I must say at least a few words about the meaning of this school.

I will put it briefly. This School must be recognized as one which brings down its information from the spiritual world to human souls. Therefore, what lives here in the School and what is brought to human souls are to be perceived as communications from the spiritual world itself. From this you will understand that membership in the School must be regarded as serious in the highest degree.

This seriousness has only become possible because of the Constitution which the Anthroposophical Society received during the Christmas Conference. Since then the Anthroposophical Society as such is an openly public institution, but at the same time one through which an esoteric breath flows, which has been better received than the former exoteric one.

So nothing more is expected from the members of the Anthroposophical Society than that they feel themselves to be receivers of anthroposophical wisdom. And, of course, what is generally expected of decent people in life.

But membership in the School implies even more, that the member recognize the serious conditions for membership—namely the basic condition that anyone who wishes to belong to the School should present himself in life in such a way that he is in every respect a representative of anthroposophy before the world.

To be a representative of anthroposophy before the world necessarily means that whatever he or she does in connection to anthroposophy, be it ever so remotely connected, also be with the approval of the leadership of the School, that is, with the esoteric Executive Committee at the Goetheanum. Thus through the School a real stream can enter the anthroposophical movement, which today is represented by the Anthroposophical Society.

Therefore, it is necessary that membership in the School be understood in such a way that the member feels in his whole being that he is a part of what is being done and revealed from here in the Goetheanum. Such a condition should not be taken as a restriction on human freedom, my dear friends, for membership in the school rests on reciprocity. The leadership of the School must be free to give what it has to give to whom it considers right to do so. And the fact that no one is obliged to be a member of the School, but that it depends on his free will to be a member, means that the leadership may also place conditions on membership without anyone claiming that his free will is in any way infringed upon. It is a free agreement between the leadership of the School and those who wish to be members.

Furthermore, in order that the School really be taken seriously, it cannot be otherwise than that the leadership exercise its right to revoke a membership whenever it considers necessary because of certain events. And, my dear friends, that the leadership of the School takes this seriously is shown by the fact that since the relatively short time the School has existed, sixteen members already had to be suspended for shorter or longer lengths of time. And I must again emphasize that this measure will have to be strictly adhered to in the future, regardless of the personalities involved, because we will be entering ever more deeply into esoteric matters.

* * *

And now the words will be spoken which are always spoken at the beginning of our deliberations, reminding us of the admonitions which resound from all the events and beings of the world to all those who have the heart to understand them: the admonition to self-knowledge, which is the true foundation of world knowledge.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with cosmic might?
Who speaks in depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

My dear friends, we have advanced, in respect to what has been sent to us from the spiritual world in the form of mantras, to the mantric verses which correspond to the esoteric situation in which we feel ourselves: first of all, in meditation we imagine the being standing at the abyss of existence speaking to us.

Let us imagine it once more, for we cannot recall it to our souls too often. We see before us everything belonging to the kingdoms of nature. We observe the glorious heavenly bodies; we see the floating clouds; we see the wind and the waves, the thunder and lightning. We see everything from the humblest worm to the sublimest revelations in the glittering stars. Only a false asceticism, unrelated to true esotericism, could in any way despise this world that speaks to the senses. The person who wishes to be truly human can do nothing other than intimately relate to the sense-perceptible life, from the humblest creature to the majestic, divinely glittering stars.

We must never despise the grandeur and awesome beauty of all that surrounds us, which we must acknowledge; we must go forward step by step in the world and be able to appreciate what our eyes see, what our ears hear, what the other senses perceive, what we can grasp with our reason. However, a moment comes as you look around at the expanse of space, at the interweaving of time, that despite all the grandeur and awesome beauty in your surroundings, you cannot find there what the inner nature of your being is. So you must say to yourself: the inner source of my being is to be sought elsewhere. The very power of such a thought affects us.

What follows for the soul can only be expressed in imaginative thoughts. At first these imaginative thoughts lead us to a wide field in which everything earthly and sense-perceptible is spread out before us. We find it to be radiant with the sun, we find it to be shining light. But as we look all around us we find our own self nowhere. Then we gaze before us and see that this sunny field, which is grandiose and beautiful and sublime to the senses, is blocked by a dark, night-bedecked wall. We see ourselves entering deeply into the darkness. We intuit that perhaps there in the darkness is our self's true origin; but we cannot see into it.

And as we follow the path forward, the abyss of existence, the threshold to the spiritual world, appears before us. We must cross over this abyss. The Guardian stands there warning us that we must be mature in order to cross over the abyss, for with our thinking, feeling and willing habits which correspond to the physical sense-perceptible world, we cannot cross over the abyss of existence into the spiritual world in which our real self originated.

The Guardian of the Threshold is the first spiritual being we encounter. Every night we are in this spiritual world when we sleep. But it is like darkness around our I and our astral body, because we can only enter this spiritual world when sufficiently mature. The Guardian of the Threshold protects us from entering immaturely. But now as we encounter him he sends us his grand admonishments. And the admonishments are contained in the mantric verses which until now have formed the content of these esoteric lessons.

Those of you who do not yet have these mantric verses can obtain them from other members of the School. But the following procedure must be observed: not the person who is to receive the verses asks for permission, but the one who gives them.

These verses have not only shown us how our hearts are to react if we wish to cross over the abyss of existence, they have also shown us what our souls will feel once we have overflown the abyss and gradually sense—not yet see, but sense—how the darkness, which was at first night-bedecked, gradually becomes lighter. At first we feel becoming lighter, and we feel that the elements—earth, water, air, fire—are different on the other side, that we are living in another world. And the world in which we recognize our own being, and therewith the true form of the elements, is indeed another world.

During the last lesson we considered the meditation with which we were to imagine how the Guardian stands before the abyss of existence; now we are already beyond it, first we feel—not yet see—how the darkness becomes lighter. The Guardian speaks to us, after he had previously made clear to us how we should comport ourselves in relation to the four elements. He tells us how these four elements change for us. He then asks questions.

Who answers? The hierarchies themselves answer these questions. From one side the third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—from the other side the second hierarchy, from a third side the third hierarchy.

The third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—answers when the Guardian of the Threshold asks what becomes of the earth's solidity. The second hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—answers when the Guardian of the Threshold asks us what becomes of the water's formative force, which acts in us and gives us our inner configuration. And the first hierarchy—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim—answer when the Guardian asks us what becomes of our breathing, of the air's stimulating power, which awakens us from dull plant-like existence to sentient-feeling existence.

Such mantras are to penetrate our souls, our hearts, to the extent that we feel ourselves to be within the situation. The Guardian of the Threshold poses the testing, admonishing questions. The hierarchies answer.

The Guardian:
What becomes of the earth's solidity, which supports you?

Angeloi:
Feel as we feel in your thinking.

Archangeloi:
Experience, as we experience in your feeling.

Archai:
Perceive, as we perceive in your will.

The Guardian:
What becomes of water's formative force, which penetrated you?

Exusiai:
Learn the spirit cosmic creating in the human body creating.

Dynamis:
Feel the cosmic life of spirit in the human body's life.

Kyriotetes:
Will the spirit's cosmic working in the human body's being.

The Guardian:
What becomes of the air's stimulating power, which awakened you?

Thrones:
Knowingly grasp inner being in your divine cosmic being.

Cherubim:
Warm your inner life in divine cosmic life.

Seraphim:
Awaken inner light in your divine cosmic light.

These, my dear sisters and brothers, are the admonishing words coming from the communion of the Guardian of the Threshold together with the hierarchies, which bring our souls ever forward if we experience them more and more in the right way.

In this way, we are doing what is appropriate for human beings of today and the future, what in the ancient holy mysteries meant that the student was being guided to the essence of the elements: earth, water, air.

But warmth, which is also an element, pervades everything: in the solid earth element, which supports us, is warmth; in the element of water, which forms us as humans, which gives form to our organs, causing them to develop and grow, warmth is also present; and in the element of air, by which the Jehovah-spirits once breathed into humanity its soul, through which man is even today awakened from his dull, plant-like existence, warmth is present. Warmth is everywhere. We must recognize it as the all-pervading element. We must immerse ourselves in it as the all-pervading element: Yes, we feel so close to it.

We feel far from the solid earth element, though we still feel the earth's support. We even feel far from the water element. The air element maintains a more intimate relation to us. When the air element does not fill us with regularity, when we have too much breath in us, or too little, our inner life indicates how the air-element is connected to us. Too much breath awakens fear in the soul. Too little causes fainting. Our soul is embraced by the air element.

We feel ourselves most intimately united with the warmth element. We ourselves are what is warm or cold in us. In order to live we must generate a certain amount of warmth. We are intimately close to the warmth element. If we want to be closer to it, then not only one hierarchy can speak, then the reminding words must resound together from various hierarchies.

Therefore, when the Guardian of the Threshold asks questions of us concerning the warmth element, the answers from the cosmos are different. The Guardian asks the question:

What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

We already know this question; it is the question about our entrance into the element of warmth, or fire. But now the answer does not come from one hierarchy or from a rank of one of the hierarchies, but the answer comes in choir from the Angeloi, the Exusiai, the Thrones; secondly the Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim answer the Guardian's question; and thirdly Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim answer. Thus the three answers about the general nature of warmth resound from the choir-like words of the three hierarchies.

Therefore, we are to imagine that when we hear the Guardian of the Threshold's warning reminders, the answers, which resound from our I, but which are stimulated by the hierarchies—come from all sides: first Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones; secondly speak the Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim; and thirdly speak Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim. All three hierarchies always speak: a rank from each of the three hierarchies always speaks. Thus the answers comes to us from the cosmos.

The Guardian speaks:
What becomes of the fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones:
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.

From all three hierarchies we are reminded that everything which happened to us during earthly life is recorded in the cosmic ether and we see it recorded there when we have passed through the gate of death. Once we have passed through the gate of death, looking back at our earthly life, but also gazing out at the etheric vastness, what we have done and accomplished in thoughts, feelings and deeds during earthly life is recorded. It is your life's flaming script.

Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim—answer in us:
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.

We are admonished during the second stage we go through after passing through the gate of death, where we experience in reverse, in mirror images—that is, in its just atonement—what we have done here on earth. If we have harmed another human being in any way, we experience in the reverse stream of time what the other felt because of us. As I have said, the Archangeloi, Dynamis and Cherubim admonish us in this second stage, which we pass through between death and a new birth.

What our karma works through during the third stage—what happens when as souls we cooperate with other human souls and with the beings of the higher hierarchies

—the Archai (primal powers), Kyriotetes and Seraphim admonish us:
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

We must feel ourselves completely within this situation: the speaking Guardian of the Threshold—his earnest gesture toward us, his admonishment. And from the cosmic vastness, resounding, grasping our heart—what connects us with the riddle of life.

[The fourth part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian speaks:
What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?

Angeloi, Exusiai, Thrones:
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.

Archangeloi, Dynamis, Cherubim—they answer in us:
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.

Archai, Kyriotetes, Seraphim:
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

What previously stood before us like a black, night enclosed darkness, is not yet illuminated by light for the soul's eye. But we have the feeling that while we are standing within this black, night enclosed darkness, wherever we reach out we begin to feel a glimmering light. And we find ourselves in the situation where we know that we ourselves are within this glimmering light. We feel ourselves moving toward the Guardian of the Threshold. We had only seen him as long as we were in the field of the senses. Then we stepped into the darkness and heard his questioning, admonishing words.

But these admonishing, questioning words had led us to where we now feel something like a mild weaving, moving light. In this weaving, moving light we make our way to the Guardian of the Threshold seeking help. It is a unique experience: not yet light, but the light is making itself felt; in this felt light the Guardian of the Threshold, manifesting himself, as though he were becoming more intimate with us, as though he were leaning more to us now, as though we were also stepping closer to him.

And what he now says seems as though in [earthly] life a person is whispering something confidential in our ear. And what were at first admonishing, earnest words, trumpet-like, powerful, majestic, from all sides of the cosmos coming to our hearts, continues now as an intimate conversation with the Guardian of the Threshold in weaving, moving light. For now it is as though he no longer just speaks to us, it is as though he whispers to us:

Has your spirit understood?

Our inner self becomes warm when the Guardian of the Threshold says in confidence: “Has your spirit understood?” Our inner self becomes warm. It experiences itself in the warmth. And this inner self feels obliged to answer with devotion, quietly and humbly. Thus we imagine it in meditation:

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

[Der Weltengeist in mir
Er hielt den Atem an
Und seine Gegenwart
Mög' erleuchten mein Ich.]

Our I does not answer the question “Has your spirit understood?” with pride and arrogance: “I have understood”, but the I feels: divine being streams through the innermost essence of the human being; it is divine breath in man which quietly lingers and prepares us for understanding.

[The first part of the new mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your spirit understood?

The I:

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

Secondly, the Guardian in confidence asks:
Has your soul apprehended?

The I answers:
The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

Again it is not proudly that the I is tempted to answer when the Guardian asks: Has your soul apprehended? Rather is the soul becoming aware that in it speaks the cosmic souls of the beings of the higher hierarchies, and that in what they say not an individual entity is present, but an entire council, a consultative meeting, as if the planets of a planetary system were circling and contributing their respective illuminating forces. Thus do the cosmic souls send their concise suggestions. Our soul hears and hopes that from the harmonies the I will be so formed that the I in the human being is an echo of the cosmic harmonies which arise when cosmic souls take council among each other—like the planets in the solar system—and their advice and harmonies resound in the human soul.

[The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your soul apprehended?

The I:
The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

And the third confidential question which the Guardian directs to the person in this situation is this:

Has your body experienced?

The soul feels that in this body the cosmic forces—which are everywhere—are concentrated in one point in space. But these cosmic forces do not appear now as physical forces. The soul has long since become aware of how these forces, which from outside appear as active physical forces, as gravitational, electrical, magnetic forces, as warmth forces, as light forces, when they are active in the human body are moral forces, are transformed into will-forces. The soul feels the cosmic forces as those which constitute eternal universal justice throughout the succession of earth lives. The soul feels them to be like forces of judgment which weave in the verdicts of karma and therewith the I itself.

When the Guardian asks in confidence:
Has your body experienced?

The human being feels obliged to answer with devotion to universal justice:

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

[The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian:
Has your body experienced?

I:

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.

Thus after having experienced the metamorphoses of the cosmic elements together with the Guardian of the Threshold and the hierarchies, the soul answers the Guardian's three questions with inner devotion; interwoven with what has been poured into it, the soul has advanced somewhat in answering the riddle of the words: “O man, know thyself!”

And today we will compare the opening words after having been filled with the element of warmth in devotion to the spiritual content of the cosmos, feeling how we have advanced further in following the great admonishment: “O man, know thyself!” We will see how we, as human beings, stand between the resounding of the demand for self-knowledge from all the cosmic events and beings, and the mantric verse, which has been contemplated in today's lesson:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with cosmic might?
Who speaks in depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

What becomes of fire's purification, which enkindled your I?
Awaken in the cosmic etheric vastness the flaming script of life.
Create the soul's atoning forces in circling waves of time.
Ask help from the redemptive eternal force of spirit.

Has your spirit understood?

The cosmic spirit in me
It held its breath within
And may its presence still
Illuminate my I.

Has your soul apprehended?

The cosmic souls in me
Lived in the council of stars
And may their harmonies
Resounding create my I.

Has your body experienced?

The cosmic forces in me
They judge the acts of men
And may their words of verdict
Guide the I in me.