The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When I last had the honor of speaking to you here, I had to conclude with a great concern that weighed on my soul at the time. It was the concern for the further construction of the Goetheanum, which was to be a sign here on earth for that which is to come into the world through anthroposophical spiritual science. At the time, the concern I expressed was met with understanding. [On November 19, 1922, see references below.]

Since that time, what is written as an unspeakable pain in the history of the anthroposophical movement has come to pass. This pain could not be averted. It was deeply inscribed in the destiny of the anthroposophical movement by the hostile forces that oppose it. But since that time, everything I have to say is truly suffused with what lies in this pain. And so today I must speak not only out of the same concern as when I last had the honor of speaking here, but I must speak as I now only know how to speak, out of the deepest pain that New Year's Eve 1922 brought us. During the assembly of delegates in July 1923 in Dornach, your representatives, along with those of the other countries, resolved to do everything necessary to rebuild the Goetheanum. We must, of course, strive to ensure that the Goetheanum can be rebuilt in a way that is worthy of it, even if it has to be rebuilt a second time in a different material that is less susceptible to the forces of fire.

I would like to entrust this reconstruction of the Goetheanum, which must now be the concern of those who have loved the Goetheanum and who love what it can be to the world, to your hearts at the end of these reflections today.

Let us act, my dear friends, as we must act out of our pain and out of the awareness that spiritual life must come into our culture again, and let us remain together in this awareness, even if we are not together for a while. For that which can flow out of anthroposophy, out of such a spiritual movement, is already the universal human element, so that souls can be together in spirit, even if they are physically separated: they will always find each other. But they will not only find each other, they will always be able to be together in spirit, which we seek in its true reality through such a movement.

[Rudolf Steiner, who came to the September conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart, is taking part in the following session.

The ability to perceive karmic connections in human life demands a clear understanding of laws and conditions of existence with which, generally speaking, the man of modern times is entirely unfamiliar. For into the karmic connections extending from one earthly life into another, spiritual laws are working, spiritual laws which will be totally misconstrued if they are associated in the very slightest degree with causation similar to what is meant when we speak in the ordinary way of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ in the world.

In order to understand the real nature of karmic connections we must, in the first place, have a clear and exact perception of what is happening within man behind the sphere of his ordinary consciousness. And it is only by observing the being of man as revealed to super-sensible cognition, to Initiation-knowledge, that such understanding can be attained.

Let us therefore consider to-day how the attainment of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition makes it increasingly possible for man to recognise how he lives, as man, within the whole cosmos. This will enable us to continue the study of certain matters that were touched upon in recent lectures and will eventually lead to an understanding of karma.

It has often been said, even in public lectures, that at the stage of Imaginative Cognition a tableau of the present earthly life spreads out before man. A vista of his life lies before him in mighty pictures and he is able to behold things that cannot be yielded by memory in the ordinary sense.

In this vista which opens out as a result of the striving for Imaginative Knowledge, man is, to begin with, entirely within his physical and etheric bodies, but through the appropriate exercises he makes himself completely independent of everything by which impressions are transmitted to him from his physical body. In the activity of Imaginative Cognition man is therefore independent of his sense-impressions, and also of his intellectual knowledge. He lives entirely in the etheric body and the memory-tableau lies outspread before him.

We can therefore say: man is now living in the super-sensible, inwardly detached from his physical body. And in point of fact it would not be so difficult as it actually is for the majority of people to acquire this faculty of Imaginative Knowledge, if only there were a stronger inclination to break through the inner link between the life of soul and the physical body.

It is, of course, comparatively easy to break through the link with direct sense-perception. But remember that a man is also connected with his physical body through the attitude and tenor of soul he acquires in his earthly life. After all, our moods of soul are also dependent upon the physical body, are essentially influenced by the physical body. When a man ascribes one thing or another to his capacities, his talents or other qualities of soul, this is all connected with his experiences in the physical body. If he is to acquire the faculty of genuine Imaginative Knowledge he must free himself from all this; and if he succeeds, even if only for a moment, he knows what Imaginative Knowledge is and the life-tableau begins gradually to unfold.

It is necessary to bear in mind the difference between the condition of being bound up with the physical body and thus living within it, and the condition of being independent of the physical body but for all that remaining within it. There is a real difference, and it is the latter condition that obtains in the activity of Imaginative Knowledge. We remain within the physical body, we do not leave it, but we are nevertheless independent of it.

When you remain with your soul and spirit within the physical body, then you fill the physical body, even if you are not bound up with it. I will illustrate this diagrammatically.—

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Let us think, first, of man's ordinary, everyday condition. Take this (a) to represent the physical body (inner curves), this the etheric body (outer curves) and this the soul and spirit (short branching lines).

The etheric body is connected everywhere with the physical body through the muscles, bones and nerves. These connections are everywhere, proceeding from the etheric body to the physical body. Now picture to yourselves that you have a porous clay vessel and you pour liquid into it. The liquid fills the pores and runs out into the porous clay. But it may also happen that your vessel is not porous and in that case none of the liquid is absorbed; the liquid will then be in the vessel but there will be no channels into the clay walls. In the activity of Imaginative Knowledge man is in this sense within his body but the etheric body does not enter into the muscles, the bones and so forth. This condition can be indicated by (b) in the diagram. Physical body; then etheric body which is now on its own; and within, the soul and spirit. All that has happened is that the etheric body is now inwardly detached. The result of this detachment will of course be perceptible when returning to the previous condition. It is therefore only natural that when a man really tries to make himself free of his physical body but remains within it, as is the case in the activity of Imaginative Cognition, he is aware not only of exhaustion but of actual heaviness. He becomes intensely aware of his physical body because he has now to make his way into it again.

This is the condition obtaining in the activity of Imaginative Cognition but not in that of Inspiration, Inspired Knowledge. In the activity of Inspired Cognition—which begins, as I have described to you, with consciousness that has been emptied of images—man is outside his physical body with the soul and spirit. Thus (c) in the diagram represents the soul and spirit outside the physical and etheric bodies.

The outer configuration must therefore be the same as in sleep. Knowledge through Inspiration is possible only when with his ego and astral body a man can be outside the etheric body.

And now, when he returns into his physical and etheric bodies, he notices the presence there of something else; the physical and etheric bodies are not at all as he is accustomed to know them; something is there within them. This is very important, because knowledge of it gives an indication of the whole process of Initiation.

At first, a certain difficulty is experienced in coming back into the physical and etheric bodies after the state of Inspiration, because there is the feeling of diving down into something quite different.

Remember what I told you yesterday about the backward survey of the memory-tableau. If this memory-tableau is blotted out in the activity of Inspired Knowledge, we perceive what it is that is present there within the physical body. And when the memory-picture of the phase between birth and the 7th year, until the time of the change of teeth, is blotted out, we perceive that within this physical body there was an Angelos, an Angel! We actually behold there a Being of the Third Hierarchy. So that what happens is this. We succeed in getting outside the physical body and then return into it as into our house and home ... and lo! we meet our Angel there when we look back upon the phase of life from birth until the 7th year.

Knowledge of such truths existed in the days of the ancient, instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge which took different forms in the various epochs of evolution; and these truths were taken into account in establishing certain customs and usages.

In olden times men were fully conscious that the giving of names should conform with spiritual realities. Generally speaking, people to-day are indifferent about the kind of names their children receive. For some the only consideration is whether the name has a pretty sound. There is often an element of coquetry in giving a name to a child; people ‘fancy’ the name. But in olden times men were mindful of the child's relation to the spiritual world and chose the name accordingly. In an epoch, for example, when a prophetic being was venerated under the name of ‘Elisha’, girls were sometimes named ‘Elisa-beth’, that is to say, the ‘house of Elisha’. In this way expression was given to the hope that by placing a child in the world with this name, the grace of the prophet would be ensured. And so the names were given with this aim in view.

What were the grounds for this? It was known that when man has been outside his body and then returns into it, he sees himself as the bearer of spiritual Beings. And the whole conception that little children, especially, are guarded by their Angel originates in the fact that when with Initiation-knowledge we look back upon the phase of life from birth to the 7th year, we experience what I described yesterday by saying that when this phase in the memory-tableau is blotted out, the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, that is to say, the deeds and activities of the Moon-sphere shine through.

Again, when we look back upon the phase from the 7th to the 14th years and then return into the body, we find an Archangelos. This Archangel is of course also present within the human being from birth until the 7th year, but we do not find the Archangel when we are looking back only at the phase between birth and the 7th year.

And so when we return into the body after having been outside it, we become aware that there, within the body, are Beings of all the higher Hierarchies. But this form of self-knowledge, the knowledge that the body is the bearer of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, cannot be acquired in any other way than by having first been outside the body and then returning into it again.

This can be understood only when it is connected with another fact. I have told you that the many stars in the heavens are but the outer signs of colonies of gods. Where the stars sparkle in the heavens there are, in reality, colonies of spiritual Beings. But you must not imagine that these gods have their consciousness only in Venus, or only in the Sun, or in Mercury, or in Sirius. They have their main habitation, the focal point of their existence in these several spheres, and this is true of all spiritual Beings of the cosmos who have anything to do with the earth. But it is impossible to say of their existence in the cosmos that they have their dwelling-place only in Mars, only in Venus, and so forth. Paradoxical as it will seem, I am nevertheless obliged to say that the Divine Beings who belong to the earth and who people Mars, Venus, Jupiter or another of the planets—also the Sun—would be blind if they inhabited only one of these spheres. They would live, they would be active—just as we can walk about and take hold of things even if we have no eyes; but they would not see—I mean, of course, in the way in which Divine Beings ‘see’—they would lack a certain faculty for perceiving what is happening in the cosmos. But this, my dear friends, will lead you to ask: Where, then, is the eye of the gods, where is their organ of perception? This organ of perception is provided by the Moon, our neighbour in the cosmos—in addition to all its other functions. All the Divine Beings belonging to the Sun, to Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, have their eye in the Moon and are at the same time in the Moon.

And now think of some of the things of which we have spoken here from time to time. Take only one fact. The Moon was once part of the earth, and separated from the earth only in the course of time. Before the separation of the Moon, therefore, the eye of the gods was bound up with the earth; the gods beheld the cosmos from the earth. Hence at that time the great primeval Teachers too were able to impart their wisdom to mankind. For in that they were living on the earth, and the Moon was still within the earth, they could gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. When the Moon departed, remembrance of this vision of the gods remained with them for a time; thus they could behold, in remembrance, what was now seen with the eye of man, and could communicate this to the gods. But the primeval Teachers themselves had then to make their way to the Moon, where they are to this day, and to found a colony there in order to be able to see with the eye of the gods.

And now turn your minds to something else. From the Moon, Jahve reigned over the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and those of the primeval Teachers who were still associated with the cult and the teaching of Jahve united with him in the Moon, in order to look out into the cosmos through his eyes. In time to come the Moon will again be united with the earth and then it will be possible for man on the earth to gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. Vision of the cosmos will then be a natural human faculty.

It is only by understanding these things that we can come to know the nature of the universe. For only when man views the universe in this way can he have any true conception of the function of the Moon.

And now we have the reason why freedom, free spiritual activity, can be unfolded in earthly life. As long as the Moon was connected with the earth, as long as the primeval Teachers taught men out of their store of remembrance, and as long as this teaching was preserved in the Mysteries—actually until the 14th century A.D.—all wisdom consisted in what had been seen with the eye of the gods. Only since the period I indicated to you, only since the year 1413, has it become utterly impossible for the earth to see with the eye of the gods. So that with the development of the Consciousness Soul, freedom begins to be within the reach of men.

But in point of fact man is on the earth only in the activity of sense-perception and intellectual knowledge, for the latter is also bound up with the physical body. The truth of the matter is as follows. Let us picture the human being. It is only in his sense and intellectual knowledge that he extends beyond the Hierarchies who are within him. In respect of all that lies behind his intellect, he is filled with the Third Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his feeling, he is filled with the Second Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his willing, he is filled with the First Hierarchy.

We are therefore in very truth within the Hierarchies and it is only in respect of our sensory organs and intellect that we extend beyond their realm. It is actually as though we were swimming, with the head rising a little out of the water. With our senses and our intellect we rise out of the ocean of the activities of the Hierarchies.

All this we find when, having experienced the reality of perception outside the body, we return again into the body. And then we find that in very truth man is the House of the Gods.

Something else will now be clear to you. When the gods desire cosmic vision, they gaze through the eye of the Moon. But when they desire to behold the cosmos from the earth—whereby an entirely different aspect is revealed—then they must look from out of man. The human race is the other eye of the gods!

In very ancient times it was natural for man to be able to see with the eye of the gods because the Moon was within the earth. And he will be able to do so again when in future time the Moon and the earth are re-united. Through Initiation, however, through becoming aware on returning into the body that the gods are present there, and through coming to know these gods, man learns to behold the world through the “eye of man.” Thus Initiation reveals to man what in earlier times was revealed to the gods through the eye of the Moon.

What we do with our everyday consciousness, the intentions we form, and so forth—all this depends upon ourselves; but our karma is shaped and fashioned by the Hierarchies within us. They are the architects and shapers of an entirely different World-Order, a World-Order belonging to the soul, to the moral sphere of life. This is the other aspect of man, the aspect of the Hierarchies who are within him.

As long as we remain at the stage of Imaginative Knowledge we are convinced, as we look back over our own earthly life, that we are a unity; we are also convinced that certain actions in life are free, because they proceed from this unity. With Imaginative Knowledge we perceive little of our karma. When we reach the stage of Inspired Knowledge, however, and then return into the body, we feel ourselves divided into a world of countless Hierarchies. We return into the body and at first do not know our identity. Are we the Angel, are we a Being of one of the Hierarchies, one of the Dynamis, or Exusiai? We are divided into a world of Beings, dazed by the multiplicity of our nature, for we are one with all these Beings.

At this point the appropriate exercises must make a man so inwardly strong that he can assert his unity over against this multiplicity. And then—it is of course all an after-effect of the life between death and rebirth—he perceives how karma is shaped by the interweaving activities of the many Beings within him. Countless Divine Beings take part in the shaping of human karma. It is therefore true to say that man leads an earthly life in the real sense only in respect of his intellectual and sensory activity. In the activity of his life of feeling and of will—yes, and even in a more remote and hidden activity of thought—man shares in the life of the gods. In a hidden thought-activity he shares in the life of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; in respect of what is hidden in his life of feeling he shares in the life of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; and in respect of his will he shares in the life of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

What we call human destiny is therefore an affair of the gods and as such it must be regarded.

But what does this mean for earthly life? If a man cannot accept his destiny with inner composure, if he rebels against his destiny, if—from his personal point of view of course—he is discontented with it, if he brings his destiny into confusion by subjective decisions, then it is as though he were continually disturbing the gods in the shaping of his destiny. Destiny can of a truth only be lived through in the right way when life is accepted with inner composure and tranquillity. To feel and perceive how destiny works is something that brings with it hard and heavy tests for human nature. If a man can succeed in taking his destiny earnestly, this experience will give him a strong and deep impulse to live in communion with the spiritual world. And life itself will unfold in him a feeling for connections of destiny, of karma.

Men of the modern age have to a great extent lost this sensitivity, this delicacy of perception; their perceptions have become crude. But suppose there is someone who looks back with more delicate perception upon the relationship he had with a human being who was an example to him in his youth—a teacher, perhaps. People do not always feel contemptuous about those who were their teachers; many look back with inner happiness to those who educated them. When this is so, the recollection can deepen into a very intimate experience. It may come to us that between our 7th and 14th years, for example, we always felt obliged to do whatever this revered teacher did; or we may realise that when this teacher told us something we felt as though we had already heard it, as though it were just being repeated. It is actually one of the most beautiful experiences in life when we remember something of this kind, feeling that it was repetition. And then it strikes us that something must underlie this experience. Healthy human reason will tell us that there is nothing to account for it in the present earthly life, and then the same reasoning faculty points us to previous lives. There are indeed many whose attention is directed in this way to earlier lives on earth.

Now what does it mean when we can look back to a teacher with feelings like these? It means that in our present life destiny has led this teacher to us. It is our karma to have such a teacher and it points to a previous earthly life.

As a rule—and this is shown by occult observation—as a rule it is not the case that in the previous earthly life the teacher was also our teacher; the relationship then was quite different. From a teacher we receive thoughts, ideas, even if they are clothed in the form of pictures; in true education we receive thoughts and ideas. When this is the case it points back, as a rule, to a relationship where feelings, not thoughts, were communicated by the person in question; there was less opportunity for receiving thoughts from him, but feelings were communicated—feelings which can be transmitted in so many different ways. And the same may apply to the present and a future earthly life.

Let us suppose that in this present life a man feels drawn by warm, inner sympathy to some other person with whom life does not bring him into specially close contact, whom he merely meets but to whom he is strongly drawn. In such a case it may happen that these feelings of sympathy lead to the other becoming his teacher in a later-life.

What, then, has actually happened? When feelings of sympathy and attraction towards another person unfold in a man, this is the result of what the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai—unfold in and around the human being.

Then, in the next life, when the influence does not work by way of the feelings but by way of thoughts and ideas, this means that the Beings of the Second Hierarchy have given over what they wrought in a preceding life, to the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; and it is they who are now working within the human being.

When, therefore, our karma unfolds from one earthly life to another, this means that actual deeds are passed on from one Hierarchy to another and that in the cosmos, in the spiritual cosmos, something of immense significance is taking place.

In looking at a man's destiny we gaze, as it were through a veil, into a wide vista of cosmic happenings. If we can become conscious of this, the impression will be one of tremendous power. You have only to picture it to yourselves, entering into it with the right feeling and understanding.

Imagine now that you are observing the manifestations of destiny in the life of a human being. This should never be done in a spirit of indifference, for in observing the destiny of a human being we are in truth beholding deeds which have poured from the highest Hierarchy into the lowest Hierarchy, and again from the lowest into the highest Hierarchy. We are gazing upon a weaving activity of life in the ranks of the Hierarchies when we study the destiny of a human being. It is something that must be contemplated with deep piety and veneration, because as we behold this destiny the world of the gods lies manifest before us.

This was the feeling I tried in some measure to convey when I was writing the Mystery Plays. Throughout the Plays you will find scenes that have their setting in earthly life and others that have their setting in the spiritual world. And I have also made it evident how not only the higher Hierarchies but elemental beings, also the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers, mingle in the living, weaving deeds that flow from above downwards and from below upwards when the destiny of man is being fulfilled.

Think of the scenes when Strader and Capesius are within the super-sensible world in quite different forms of existence but for all that the same individuals. This is only the other side of man's life which is just as truly part of him—the side that belongs to the world of the gods and not to the world of the minerals, the animals, the plants, the mountains, the clouds, the trees and so forth. To learn to contemplate the destinies of human beings with reverence and awe—that too is something that the times demand of us. It is a dreadful experience to read biographies from the pens of materialistically-minded authors to-day, for they write without an iota of reverence for the destiny of the one whose life they are narrating. Of a truth it would be well for biographers to realise that when they intrude into the life of a human being, even if only for the purpose of describing it, they are coming into invisible contact with all the Hierarchies.

Deliberations of this kind lead us to the ‘feeling’ side of Anthroposophy. We realise that everything offered to us in Anthroposophy must also move our feelings. For in Anthroposophy it is not merely a question of acquiring knowledge; feelings about the world are quickened within us, feelings which alone can enable us to find our rightful place in life. And without such feelings we cannot truly understand or perceive the laws by which the karma of man is pervaded.

Today we shall consider the differentiations in mankind from another viewpoint, namely that of history. With the express aim of promoting an understanding for the present time we shall look at human evolution starting at a point immediately following the catastrophe of Atlantis. If human evolution can be considered to encompass any evolution of civilization, then we shall find the first decisive period of development to be the culture epoch of ancient India. In my book Occult Science¹ you will find this culture of ancient India described from a particular viewpoint. Though the Vedas and Indian philosophy are rightly admired, they are actually only echoes of that ancient culture, of which there exist no written records. In the words of today we have to describe the culture of ancient India as a religious culture in the highest sense. To understand this properly we shall have to discuss it more thoroughly.

The religious element of ancient Indian culture included what we today would call science and art. The total spiritual life of the whole human being was encompassed by this culture for which the most pertinent description is that it was a religious culture. This religious culture generates the feeling in human beings that in the depths of their being they are linked with a divine, spiritual world. This feeling was developed so intensely that the whole of life was illumined by it. Their clearer states of consciousness, which were preparations for today's waking state, and also their dream consciousness, which became lost in our chaotic dream and sleep life as evolution progressed, were both states of consciousness filled with an instinctive awareness of the links between the human realm and the divine, spiritual realm.

But our idea of religion today is of something rather general. The concept of religion makes us think too strongly of something general, something abstract and rather detached from everyday life. For the people about whom we are speaking, however, religion and the content they associated with it gave them a knowledge expressed in pictures, a knowledge of the being of man and an extensive picture knowledge of the structure of the universe.

We have to imagine, though, that what lived in these people's view of the world, by way of a picture knowledge of the structure of the universe, in no way resembled our modern knowledge of astronomy or astrophysics. Our astronomy and astrophysics show us the mechanics of the universe. The ancient Indian people had a universe of picture images populated with divine, spiritual beings. There was as yet no question, in the present sense, of any external, merely mechanical rules governing the relationships between heavenly bodies or their relative movements. When those people looked up to the starry heavens they saw in the external constellations and movements of the stars only something perfectly familiar to them in their picture consciousness. It was something which may be described as follows.

Suppose we were to see a vivid, lively scene with bustling crowds and people going about all kinds of business, perhaps a public festival with much going on. Then we go home, and next morning the newspaper carries a report about the festival we ourselves attended. Our eyes fall on the dead letters of the printed page. We know what they mean and when we read the words they give us a weak, pale idea of all the lively bustle we experienced the day before. This can be compared with what the ancient Indian people saw in their instinctive vision and in relation to this what they saw in the constellations and movements of the stars. The constellations and movements of the stars were no more than written characters, indeed pale written characters. If they had copied down these characters on paper, they would have felt them to be no more than a written description of reality.

What these people saw behind the written characters was something which they not only came to know with their understanding but also to love with their feelings. They were unable merely to take into their ideas all that they grasped in pictures about the universe; they also developed lively feelings for these things. At the same time they developed a permanent feeling that whatever they did, even the most complicated actions, was an expression of the cosmos filled with divine spiritual weaving. They felt their limbs to be filled with this divine, spiritual cosmic weaving. They felt their understanding to be filled with this divine spiritual weaving, and likewise their courage and their will. Thus, speaking of their own deeds, they were able to say: Divine, spiritual beings are doing this. And since in those ancient times people knew very well that Lucifer and Ahriman are also to be found among those divine, spiritual beings, so were they aware that because divine, spiritual beings worked in them, they were therefore capable of committing evil as well as good deeds.

With this description I want to call up in you an idea of what this religion was like. It filled the whole human being, it brought the whole human being into a relationship with the abundance of the cosmos. It was cosmic wisdom and at the same time it was a wisdom which revealed man. But then progress in human evolution first caused the most intense religious feelings to pale. Of course, religion remained, in all later ages, but the intensity of religious life as it was in this first Indian age paled. First of all what paled was the feeling of standing within the realm of divine, spiritual beings with one's deeds and will impulses. In the ancient Persian age, the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, people still had this feeling to some extent, but it had paled. In the first post-Atlantean epoch this feeling was a matter of course. In the second cultural blossoming, the ancient Persian time, the profoundest, most intense religious feelings paled, so human beings had to start developing something out of themselves in order to maintain their link with the cosmic, divine spiritual realm in a more active manner than had at first been the case. So we might say: The first post-Atlantean period was the most intensely religious of all. And in the second period religion faded somewhat, but human beings had to develop something by inner activity , something which would unite them once more with the cosmic beings of spirit and soul.

Of all the words we know, there is one we could use to describe this, although it was coined in a later age. It comes from an age which still possessed an awareness of what had once been a part of human evolution in ancient times. When an ancient Indian looked up to the heavens, he sensed the presence of individual beings everywhere, one divine spiritual being next to another—a whole population of divine spiritual beings. But this faded, so that what had been individualized, what had been individual, divine, spiritual beings faded into a general, homogeneous spiritual cosmos. Think of the following picture: Imagine a swarm of birds close by. You see each individual bird, but as the swarm flies further and further away it becomes a black blur, a homogeneous shape. In the same way the divine spiritual cosmos became a blurred image when human beings moved spiritually away from it.

The ancient Greeks still had an inkling of the fact that once, in the distant past, something like this had been at the foundation of what human beings saw in the spiritual world. Therefore they took into their language the word ‘sophia’. A divine, spiritual cosmos had once, as a matter of course, poured itself into human beings and had taken human beings into itself. But now man had to approach what he saw from a spiritual distance—a homogeneous cosmos—by his own inner activity. This the Greeks, who still had a feeling for these things, called by the expression: ‘I love’; that is: ‘philo’. So we can say that in the second post-Atlantean period, that of ancient Persia, the initiates had a twofold religion where earlier on religion had been onefold. Now they had philosophy and religion. Philosophy had been achieved. Religion had come down from the more ancient past, but it had paled.

Passing now to the third post-Atlantean period, we reach a further paling of religion. But we also come to a paling of philosophy. The actual, concrete process that took place must be imagined as follows. In ancient Persian times there existed this homogeneous shape made up of cosmic beings and this was felt to be the light that flooded through the universe, the primeval light, the primeval aura, Ahura Mazda. But now people retreated even further from this vision and began in a certain way to pay more attention to the movements of the stars and of the starry constellations. They now sensed less in regard to the divine, spiritual beings who existed in the background and more in regard to the written characters. From this arose something which we find in two different forms in the Chaldean wisdom and the Egyptian wisdom, something which comprised knowledge about the constellations and the movements of the stars. At the same time, the inner activity of human beings had become even more important. They not only had to unite their love with this divine Sophia who shone through the universe as the primeval light, but they had to unite their own destiny, their own position in the world, with what they saw within the universe in a cosmic script provided by the starry constellations and the starry movements. Their new achievement was thus a Cosmo-Sophia. This cosmosophy still contained an indication of the divine, spiritual beings, but what was seen tended to be merely a cosmic script expressing the deeds of these beings. Beside this there still existed philosophy and religion, which had both faded.

In order to understand this we must realize that what we today call philosophy is naturally only an extremely weak, pale shadow image of what was still felt to be more alive in the Mysteries of the third post-Atlantean period and what in an even paler form the Greeks later called philosophy. In the culture of the third post-Atlantean period we see everywhere expressions of these three aspects of the human spirit: a cosmosophy, a philosophy and a religion.² And we only gain proper pictures of these when we know we have to remind ourselves that right up to this time human beings lived in their soul life more outside the earthly realm than within it. Looking for instance at the Egyptian culture from this point of view—and it was even more pronounced in the Chaldean—we see it rightly only if we remind ourselves that those who had any part in this culture indeed took the most intimate interest in the constellations of the stars as evening approached. For example they awaited certain manifestations from Sirius, they observed the planetary constellations and applied what they saw there to the way the Nile gave them what they needed for their earthly life. But they did not speak in the first instance of the earthly realm. This earthly realm was one field of their work, but when they spoke of the field they were tilling they did so in a way which related it to the extraterrestrial realm. And they named the varying appearances of the patch of earth they inhabited in accordance with whatever the stars revealed as the seasons followed one upon another. They judged the earth in accordance with the heavens. From the soul point of view, daytime brought them darkness. Light came into this darkness when they could interpret what the day brought in terms of what the starry heavens of the night showed them.

What people in those times saw might be expressed thus: The face of the earth is dark when the sun obscures my vision with dazzling brightness; but light falls on the field of my daily work when my soul shines upon it through starry wisdom.

Writing down a sentence like this gives us a sense for what the realm of feeling in this third post-Atlantean period was like. From this in turn we sense how those who still stood in the after-echoes of such a realm of feeling could say to the Greeks, to those who belonged to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period: Your view of the world, indeed your whole life, is childlike, for you have knowledge only of the earth. Your ancestors in ancient times knew how to illumine the earth with the light of the heavens, but you live in the darkness of earth.

The ancient Greeks experienced this darkness of earth as something light. Their inclination was gradually to overcome and transform the older cosmosophy. So, as everything that looked down from the broad heavens became paler still, they transformed the older cosmosophy into a geosophy. Cosmosophy was nothing more than a tradition for them, something they could learn about when they looked back to those who had passed it down to them from earlier times.

Pythagoras, for instance, stood at the threshold of the fourth post-Atlantean period when he journeyed to the Egyptians, to the Chaldean and even further into Asia in order to gather whatever those who lived there could give him of the wisdom of their forefathers in the Mysteries, whatever they could give him of what had been their cosmosophy, their philosophy and their religion. And what was still comprehensible for him was then just that: cosmosophy, philosophy, religion.

However, there is something we today take far too little into consideration: This geosophy of the ancient Greeks was a knowledge, a wisdom which, in relation to the earthly world, gave human beings a feeling of being truly connected with the earth, and this connection with the earth was something which had a quality of soul. The connection with the earth of a cultured Greek had a quality of soul. It was characteristic for the Greeks to populate springs with nymphs, to populate Olympus with gods. All this points, not to a geology, which envelops the earth in nothing but concepts, but to a geosophy in which spiritual beings are livingly recognized and knowingly experienced. This is something which mankind today knows only in the abstract. Yet right into the fourth century AD it was still something that was filled with life.

Right into the fourth century AD a geosophy of this kind still existed. And something of this geosophy, too, came to be preserved in tradition. For instance we can only understand what we find in the work of Scotus Erigena,³ who brought over from the island of Ireland what he later expressed in his De divisione naturae, if we take it as a tradition arising out of a geosophical view. For in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which was in preparation then and which began in the fifteenth century, geosophy, too, paled. There then began the era in which human beings lost their inner connection with, and experience of, the universe. Geosophy is transformed, we might say, into geology. This is meant in the widest possible sense and comprises not only what today's academic philosophy means by the term. Cosmosophy was transformed into cosmology. Philosophy was retained but given an abstract nature—which in reality ought to be called philology, had this term not already been taken to denote something even more atrocious than anything one might like to include in philosophy.

There remains religion, which is now totally removed from any real knowledge and basically assumed by people to be nothing more than tradition. People of a nature capable of being creatively religious are no longer a feature of civilized life in general in this fifth post Atlantean period. Look at those who have come and gone. None have been creatively religious in the true sense of the word. And this is only right and proper. In the preceding epochs, in the first, second third and fourth post-Atlantean periods, there were always those who were creatively religious, personalities who were creative in the realm of religion, for it was always possible to bring down something from the cosmos, or at least to bring something up out of the realm of the earth. So in the Greek Mysteries—those called the Chthonian Mysteries in contrast to the heavenly Mysteries—which brought up their inspiration out of the depths of the earth in various ways—in these Mysteries geosophy was chiefly brought into being.

By entering into the fifth post-Atlantean period and standing full within it, human beings were thrown back upon themselves. The now made manifest what came out of themselves, ‘-logy ‘, the lore the knowledge out of themselves. Thus knowledge of the universe becomes a world of abstractions, of logical concepts, of abstract ideas. Human beings have lived in this world of abstract ideas since the fifteenth century. And with this world of abstract ideas, which they summarize in the laws of nature, they now seek to grasp out of themselves what was revealed to human beings of earlier times. It is quite justified that this age no longer brings forth any religiously creative natures, for the Mystery of Golgotha falls in the fourth post-Atlantean period, and this Mystery of Golgotha is the final synthesis of religious life. It leads to a religion that ought to be the conclusion of earthly religious streams and strivings. With regard to religion, all subsequent ages can really only point back to this Mystery of Golgotha.

So the statement, that since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period it is no longer possible for religiously productive individuals to appear, is not a criticism or a reprimand aimed at historical development. It is a statement of something positive because it can be justified by the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In this way we conjure up before our eyes the course of human evolution with regard to spiritual streams and spiritual endeavours. In this way we can see how it has come about that we stand today in the midst of something that is, basically, no longer connected with the world about us but has come out of the human being, something in which the human being is productive and must become ever more productive. By further developing all these abstract things human beings will ascend once more through Imaginations to a kind of geosophy and cosmosophy. Through Inspiration they will deepen cosmosophy and ascend to a true philosophy, and through Intuition they will deepen philosophy until they can move towards a truly religious view of the world which will once more be able to unite with knowledge.

It is necessary to say that today we are only in the very first, most elementary beginnings of this progress. Since the final third of the nineteenth century there has shone into the earthly world from the spiritual world something which we can take to be a giving-back of spiritual revelations. But even with this we stand at the very beginning, a beginning which gives us a picture with which to characterize the attitude brought by external, abstract culture towards the first concrete statements that come from the spiritual world. When the representatives of current recognized knowledge hear what we have to say about the spiritual world, the understanding they bring to bear on what we say is of a kind that it can only be called a non-understanding. For it can be compared with the following: Suppose I were to write a sentence on this piece of paper, and suppose someone were to try to understand what I had written down by analysing the ink in which it is written. When our contemporaries write about Anthroposophy it is like somebody analysing the ink of a letter he has received. Again and again we have this impression. It is a picture very close to us, considering that we took our departure from a description of how, for human beings, in early post-Atlantean times even the starry constellations and starry movements were no more than a written expression for what they experienced as the spiritual population of the universe.

Such things are said today to a certain number of people in order to give them the feeling that Anthroposophy is not drawn from some sort of fantastic underworld but from real sources of knowledge, and that it is therefore capable of understanding the human beings of the earth to the very roots of their nature. Anthroposophy is capable of throwing light on today's differentiation of human beings into those of the West, of the middle realm and of the East, in the way mentioned yesterday. It is also capable of throwing light on differentiations which have existed in human evolution during the course of time. Only by connecting everything we can know about the differentiations according to regions of the earth with what we can know about how all this has come about can we gain an understanding of what kind of human beings inhabit our globe today.

Traditions of bygone ages have always been preserved, in some regions more, in others less. And according to those traditions the peoples of this globe are distinguished from one another. Looking eastwards we find that in later ages something was written down which during the first post-Atlantean period had existed unwritten, something which shines towards us out of the Vedas and their philosophy, something which touches us with its intimacy in the genuine philosophy of yoga. Letting all this work on us in our present-day consciousness, we begin to sense: If we immerse ourselves ever more deeply in these things, then we feel that even in the written works something lives of what existed in primeval times. But we have to add: Because the eastern world still echoes of its primeval times it is unsuited to receiving new impulses.

The western world has fewer traditions. At most, certain traditions stemming from the third post-Atlantean period, the age of cosmosophy, are contained in the writings of some secret orders. But they are traditions which are, no longer understood and are only brought before human beings in the form of incomprehensible symbols. But at the same time there is in the west an elemental strength capable of unfolding new impulses for development.

We might say that originally the primeval impulses existed. They developed by becoming ever weaker and weaker until, by about the fourth post-Atlantean period, they so to speak lost themselves in themselves, in what became Greek culture as such. Out of that, pointing towards the new, developed the abstract, prosaic sober culture of the Romans. (The lecturer draws on the blackboard). But this in turn must take spirituality into itself; it must, by becoming ever stronger and stronger, be filled with inner spirituality. Here, then, we have the symbol of the spiralling movement of humanity's impulses throughout the ages.

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This symbol has always stood for important matters in the universe. If we have to speak of an atomistic world, we should not imagine it in the abstract way common today. We should imagine it in the image of this spiral, and this has often indeed been done. But on the greatest scale, too, we have to see this spiralling movement. Today I consider that we have arrived at it in a perfectly elementary manner by way of a concrete consideration of the course of human spiritual evolution.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science—An Outline. For the post-Atlantean cultural periods see the chapter ‘Man and the Evolution of the World’.
• 2 . See also Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1984, and Rudolf Steiner's own reports of these lectures in Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1984.
• 3 . Johannes Scotus Erigena c.810-877. Irish philosopher and theologian, one of the most notable thinkers of the Carolingian Middle Ages. His principal work De divisione naturae was burnt by Pope Honorius in Paris in 1225.

Yesterday I tried to show how the anthroposophical world-conception stresses, more intensively than is possible under the influence of materialism, the artistic element; and how Anthroposophy feels about architecture, about the art of costuming (though this may call forth smiles), and about sculpture as dealing artistically with the form of man himself, whose head, in a certain sense, points to the whole human being.

Let us review the most important aspects of this threefold artistic perception of the world. In architectural forms we see what the human soul expects when it leaves the physical body at death or otherwise. During earth life the soul is (so I said) accustomed to enter into spatial relations with its environment through the physical body, and to experience spatial forms. But these are only outer forms. When at death the human soul leaves the physical world, it tries, as it were, to impress its own form on space; looks for the lines, planes and forms which can enable it to grow out of space and into the spiritual world. These are the forms of architecture insofar as they are artistic. Thus, if we would understand architecture's artistic element we must consider the soul's space-needs after it has left the three-dimensional body and three-dimensional world.

The artistic element in costuming represents something else; and I have described the joy of primitive people in their garments, and their sense—on dipping down into the physical body—of finding in it a sheath which did not harmonize with what they had experienced during their sojourn in the spiritual world; and how out of this deprivation there arose an instinctive longing to create clothes which in color and pattern corresponded to their memory of pre-earthly existence. The costumes of primitive peoples represent what might be called an unskillful copying of the astral nature of man as it existed before he entered earthly life.

Thus a contrast. Whereas architecture shows the human soul's striving on its departure from the body, the art of costuming shows the human soul's striving after descent into the physical world.

Which brings us to a consideration of sculpture.

If we feel, intimately, the significance of the formation of man's head (my last point yesterday) as a metamorphosis of his entire body formation minus head, during his previous incarnation; if we see it as the work of the higher hierarchies on the force relationship of a previous life, then we understand the head, especially its upper part. If, on the other hand, we see correctly the middle of man's head, his nose and lower eyes, then we understand how this part is adapted to his chest formation, for the nose is connected with the chest's breathing. And if we see correctly the lower head, mouth and chin, then we understand that, even in the head, there is a part adapted to the purely earthly. In this way we can understand the whole human form. Furthermore, the super-sensible human being manifests himself directly in the arching of the upper skull, and the protrusion or recession of the lower skull, the facial parts. For an intimate connection exists between the vaulting of the head and the heavens; also an inner connection between the middle of the face and everything circling the earth as air and ether; also between mouth and chin and man's limb and metabolic system, the last an indication of how man is fettered to earth. In this way we can understand the whole human form as an imprint of the spiritual on the immediate present; which means seeing man artistically.

To sum up: in sculpture we behold, spiritually, the human being as he is placed into the present; in architecture we behold something connected with his departure from the body; and in the art of costuming something connected with his entrance into that body. Which means a sharp contrast: whereas architecture begins with the erection of tombs, sculpture shows how man, through his earthly form's direct participation in the spiritual, constantly overcomes the earthly-naturalistic element, how, in every detail of his form and in its entirety, he is an expression of the spiritual.

Thus we have considered those arts which are concerned with spatial forms and which illustrate the different ways in which the human soul is related to the world through the physical body.

If we approach a step nearer the spaceless, we pass from sculpture to painting, an art experienced in the right way only if we take into full account its special medium.

Today, in the fifth post-Atlantean age, painting has assumed a character leading to naturalism. Its prime manifestation is the loss of a deeper understanding for color. The intelligence employed in contemporary painting is a falsified sculptural one. Painters see even human beings this way. The cause is space-perspective, an aspect of painting developed only after the fifth post-Atlantean period. Painters express through lines the fact that something lies in the background, something in the foreground; their purpose being to conjure up on canvas an impression of spatially formed objects. But in doing so they deny the first and foremost attribute of their special medium. A true painter does not create in space, but on the plane, in color, and it is nonsense for him to strive for the spatial.

Please, do not believe me so fantastic as to object to a feeling for space; in the evolution of mankind the development of spatial perspective on the plane was a necessity; that fact is self-evident. But it must now be overcome. This does not mean that in the future painters should be blind to spatial perspective, only that, while understanding it, they should return to color-perspective, employ color-perspective.

To accomplish this we must go beyond theoretic comprehension; the artistic impulse does not spring from theory; it requires something more forceful, something elemental. Fortunately it can be provided. For that purpose I suggest that you look again at some words of mine about the world of color as reported excellently by Albert Steffen in the weekly Das Goetheanum.¹ (The report reads better than the original lectures.) This is the first aspect.

I shall now deal with the second problem.

In nature we see objects which can be counted, weighed and measured; in short, objects dealt with in physics. They appear in various colors. Color, however—this should have become perfectly clear to anthroposophists—color is something spiritual. Now we do see colors in certain natural entities which are not spiritual; that is, in minerals. Recent physicists have made matters easier for themselves by saying that colors cannot inhere in dead substances because colors are mental; they exist within the mind only; outside, material atoms vibrating in dead matter affect eye, nerve, and something else undetermined; as a result of which colors arise in the soul.

This explanation shows physicists at a loss in regard to the problem of color. To throw light on it, let us consider from a certain aspect the colorful dead mineral world.

As pointed out, we do see colors in purely physical things which can be counted, measured, weighed on scales. But what is perceived in physics does not give us colors. We may employ number, measure and weight to our heart's content: we will not arrive at color. That is why physicists say that colors exist only in the mind.

I would like to explain by way of an image. Picture to yourselves that I hold in my left hand a red sheet, in my right a green one, and that with these colored sheets I carry out certain movements. First I cover the red with the green, then the green with the red, making these motions alternately; and in order to give them more character do something additional: move the green upward, the red downard. Say I have today carried out this maneuvre. Now let three weeks pass, at which time I bring before you not a green and red sheet, but two white sheets, and repeat the movements. You immediately remember that, contrary to my present use of white sheets, three weeks ago I produced certain visual impressions with a red and a green sheet. For politeness' sake let us assume that all of you have such a vivid imagination that, in spite of my moving white sheets, you see before you, through recollecting phantasy, the colored phenomenon of three weeks ago, forget all about the white sheets and, because I carry out the same motions, see the same color harmonies called forth, three weeks ago, with the red and green. Because I carry out the same gestures, by association you see what you saw three weeks ago.

The case is similar when we see in nature, for instance, a green precious stone. Only, the jewel is not dependent on this moment's soul-phantasy; it appeals to a phantasy concentrated in our eye, for this human eye with its blood and nerve fibers is in truth constructed by phantasy; it is the result of an effective imagination. And inasmuch as our eye is an organ imbued with phantasy, we cannot perceive a green gem in any other way than that in which, in the immeasurably distant past, it was spiritually constructed out of the green color of the spiritual world. The moment we confront a green precious stone, we transport our eye back into ages long past, and green appears because at that time divine-spiritual beings created this substance through a purely spiritual green. The moment we see green, red, blue, yellow, or any other color in a precious stone, we look back into an infinitely distant past. For (to repeat for emphasis) in beholding colors, we do not merely perceive what is contemporary, we look back into distant time-perspectives. Thus it is quite impossible to see a colored jewel merely in the present, just as it is impossible, while standing at the foot of a mountain, to see in close proximity the ruin at its top; being removed from it, we have to see it in perspective.

In confronting a topaz, say, we look back into time-perspective; look back upon the primal foundation of earthly creation, before the Lemurian epoch of evolution, and see this precious stone created out of the spiritual; that is why it appears yellow. Physics (I have characterized a recent stand) does something absurd. It places behind the world swirling atoms which are supposed to produce colors within us, when all the time it is divine-spiritual beings, creative in the infinitely distant past, who call forth, through colored minerals, a living memory of primeval acts of creativity.

And we can press on to the plant world.

Every spring, when a green carpet of plants is spread over the earth, whoever is able to understand this emergence of greenness sees not merely the present, but also the ancient Sun existence when the plant world was created out of the spiritual, in greenness. We see both mineral and plant colors in the right way when they stimulate us to see in nature the gods' primeval creative activity.

This requires an artistic living with color, which involves experiencing the plane as such. If someone covers the plane with blue, we should sense a retreat, a drawing back; if with red or yellow, we should feel an approach, a pressing forward. In other words, we acquire color-perspective instead of linear perspective: a sense for the plane, for the withdrawal and surging forward of color. In painting, the linear perspective which tries to create an impression of something essentially sculptural upon the plane falsifies; what must be acquired is a sense for the movement of color: intensive rather than extensive. Thus, if a true painter wishes to depict something aggressive, something eager to jump forward, he uses yellow-red; if something quiet, something retreating into the distance, blue-violet. Intensive color-perspective! A study of the old masters reveals that some early Renaissance painters still had what belonged to all pre-Renaissance painters: a feeling for color-perspective. Only with the advent of the fifth post-Atlantean period did linear perspective displace color-perspective.

It is through color-perspective that painting gains a relationship to the spiritual. Strange that today painters chiefly ask themselves: Can we by rendering space more spatial transcend space? Then they try to depict, in a materialistic manner, a fourth dimension. But the fourth dimension can exist only through annihilation of the third, somewhat as debts annihilate wealth. For we do not, on leaving three-dimensional space, enter a four-dimensional space; or, better said, we enter a four-dimensional space which is two-dimensional, because the fourth dimension annihilates the third; only two remain as reality. If we rise from matter's three dimensions to the etheric element, we find everything oriented two-dimensionally, and can understand the etheric only if we conceive of it so. Now you may demur: Yes, but in the etheric I move from here to there, which is to say three-dimensionally. Very well, but the third dimension has no significance for the etheric, only the other two dimensions. The third dimension expresses itself through red, yellow, blue, violet, in the way explained; for in the etheric it is not the third dimension which changes, but color. Regardless of where the plane is placed, the colors change accordingly. Only then can we live with and in color; live two-dimensionally; rise from the spatial arts to those which, like painting, are two-dimensional. We overcome the merely spatial. Our feelings have no relation to the three space-dimensions; only our will. By their very nature, feelings are bound within two dimensions. That is why they are best represented by two-dimensional painting.

You see, we have to struggle free from three-dimensional matter if we would advance from architecture, costuming as an art, and sculpture. Painting is an art which man can experience inwardly. Whether he creates as a painter or just lives in and enjoys a painting, it is a soul event. He experiences inner by outer; experiences color-perspective. We cannot say, as in the case of architecture, that the soul is striving to create the forms it needs when it gazes back into the body; nor, as in the case of sculpture, that the soul is trying to depict man's shape in such a way that it is placed into space full of present meaning. None of this concerns painting. It makes no sense in painting to speak of anything as inside or outside; of the soul as inside or outside. In experiencing color the soul is within the spiritual. Really, what is experienced in painting—despite the imperfections of pigments—is the soul's free moving about in the cosmos.

With music it is different. Now we do not merge inner with outer, but enter directly into that which the soul experiences as the spiritual or psycho-spiritual; leave space entirely. Music is line-like, one-dimensional; is experienced one-dimensionally in the line of time. In music man experiences the world as his own. Now the soul does not assert something it needs upon descending into or leaving the physical; rather it experiences something which lives and vibrates here and now, on earth, in its own soul-spirit nature. Studying the secrets of music, we can discover what the Greeks, who knew a great deal about these matters, meant by the lyre of Apollo. What is experienced musically is really man's hidden adaptation to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he was shaped. His nerve fibers, ramifications of the spinal cord, are marvelous musical strings with a metamorphosed activity. The spinal cord culminating in the brain, and distributing its nerve fibers throughout the body, is the lyre of Apollo. Upon these nerve fibers the soul-spirit man is “played” within the earthly sphere. Thus man himself is the world's most perfect instrument; and he can experience artistically the tones of an external musical instrument to the degree that he feels this connection between the sounding of strings of a new instrument, for example, and his own coursing blood and nerve fibers. In other words, man, as nerve man, is inwardly built up of music, and feels it artistically to the degree that he feels its harmonization with the mystery of his own musical structure.

Thus, in devoting himself to the musical, man appeals to his earth-dwelling soul-spirit nature. The discovery by anthroposophical vision of the mysteries of this nature will have a fructifying effect, not just on theory, but upon actual musical creation.

In discussing the various arts I have not been theorizing. It is not theorizing when I say: In beholding the lifeless material world in color we stir cosmic memory: and through anthroposophical vision learn to understand how in precious stones, in colored objects of all kinds, we call to mind the creative acts of the primordially active gods; and feel, therefore, the enthusiasm which only an experience of the spiritual kindles. This is no theorizing; this permeates the soul with inner force. Nor does any theory of art emerge therefrom. Only artistic creation and enjoyment are stimulated. For true art is an expression of man's search for a relationship with the spiritual, whether the spiritual longed for when his soul leaves the body, or the spiritual which he desires to remember when he dips down into a body, or the spiritual to which he feels more related than to his natural surroundings, or the spiritual as manifested in colors when outside and inside lose their separateness and the soul moves through the cosmos, freely, swimming and hovering, as it were, experiencing its own cosmic life, existing everywhere; or (our last consideration) the spiritual as expressed in earth life, in the relationship between man's soul-spirit and the cosmic, in music.

Which summary brings us to the world of poetry and drama.

Often in the past I have called attention to the way poetry was felt in ancient times when man still had a living relationship to the spirit-soul world, when poetry, including poetic dramas, by reason of that fact, was artistic through and through. Yesterday I pointed out that in artistic ages it would not have been considered sensible for playwrights to copy on the stage the way Smith and Jones move in the market place of Gotham or at home, inasmuch as their movements and conversation, there, are much richer than in any stage representation; that it would have seemed absurd, for instance, to the Greeks of the classical age; they never could have understood naturalism's strange attempt to imitate nature right down to “realistic” stage sets. Just as it would not be true painting if we tried to project color into three-dimensional space instead of honoring its own dynamics, so it is not stage art if we have no artistic feeling for its own particular medium. Actually a thorough-going naturalism would preclude a stage room with three walls and an audience in front of it. There are no such rooms; in winter we would freeze to death in them. To act entirely naturalistically one would have to close the stage with a fourth wall and play behind it. But how many people would buy tickets to a play enacted on a stage closed on four sides? Though speaking in extremes, I refer to a reality.

Now I must draw your attention again to the way Homer begins his Iliad: “Sing, oh Goddess, the wrath of Achilles, Son of Peleus.” This is no mere phrase. Homer experienced in a positive way the need to raise himself up to the level of a super-earthly divine-spiritual being who would make use of his body in artistic creation. Epic poetry points to the upper gods, those considered female because they transmitted fructifying forces: the Muses. Homer had to offer himself up to these upper gods in order to bring to expression, in the events of his great poem, the thought element of the cosmos. Epic poetry always means letting the upper gods speak; means putting one's person at their disposal. Homer begins his Odyssey this way: “Tell me, oh Muse, of that ingenious hero who wandered afar,” meaning Odysseus. Never would it have occurred to him to impose upon the people something which he himself had seen or thought out. Why do what everybody can do for himself? Homer put his organism at the disposal of the upper divine-spiritual beings that they might express through him how they perceived earthly human relationships. Out of such a collaboration arises epic poetry.

And the art of the drama? It originated—we need only to think of the period prior to Aeschylus—from a presentation of the god Dionysus working up out of the depths. At first it was Dionysus alone, then Dionysus and his helpers, a chorus grouped around him as a reflection of what is carried out, not by human beings, but by the subterranean gods, gods of will, making use of human beings to bring to manifestation not the human but divine will. Only gradually, in Greece, as man's connection with the spiritual fell into oblivion, did the divine action depicted on the stage turn into purely human action. The process took place between the time of Aeschylus, when divine impulses still penetrated human beings, and the time of Euripides, when men appeared on the stage as men, though still bearing super-earthly impulses. Real naturalism became possible only in modern times.

In poetry and drama man must find his way back to the spiritual.

Thus we may say in summary: Epic poetry turns to the upper gods, drama to the lower gods. True drama shows the divine world lying below the earth, the chthonic world, rising up onto the earth for the reason that man can make himself into an instrument for the action of this netherworld. In contrast, epic poetry sees the upper spiritual world sink down; the Muse descends and, making use of man through his head, proclaims man's earthly accomplishments or else those out in the universe. In drama the subterranean will of the gods rises up from the depths, making use of human bodies in order to give free reign to their wills.

One might say: Here we have the fields of earthly existence: out of the clouds descends the divine Muse of epic art; out of earthly depths there rise, like vapor and smoke, the Dionysian, chthonic divine-spiritual powers, working their way upward through men's wills. We have to penetrate earth regions to see how the dramatic element rises like a volcano, and the epic element sinks down from above, like a blessing of rain. And it is right here on this same plane with ourselves that the cosmic element is enticed and made gay, joyous, full of laughter, through nymphs and fire spirits; right here that the messengers of the upper gods cooperate with the lower: right here in the middle region that man becomes lyrical. Now man does not feel the dramatic element rising up from below, nor the epic element sinking down from above; he experiences the lyrical element living on the same plane as himself: a delicate, sensitive, spiritual element, which does not rain down upon forests nor erupt like volcanoes, splitting trees, but, rather, rustles in leaves, expresses joy through blossoms, wafts gently in wind. In whatever on our own plane lets us divine the spiritual in matter, stretching hearts, pleasantly stimulating breath, merging our souls with outer nature, as symbol of the soul-spiritual world—in all this there lives and weaves a lyrical element which looks up, with happy countenance, to the upper gods, and down, with saddened countenance, to the gods of the underworld. The lyrical can tense up into the dramatic-lyrical or quiet itself down into the epic-lyrical. For the hallmark of the lyrical, whatever its form, is this: man experiences what lives and weaves in the far reaches of the earth with his middle nature, his feeling nature.

You see, if we really enter the spirituality of world phenomena, we gradually transform dead abstract concepts into a living, colorful, form-bearing weaving and being. Because what surrounds us lives in the artistic, mere intellectual activity can, almost unnoticed, be transformed into artistic activity. That is why we constantly feel a need to enliven impertinently abstract conceptual definitions—physical body, ether body, astral body, all such concepts, these impertinently rigid, philistine and horribly scientific formulations—into artistic color and form. This is an inner, not merely outer, need of Anthroposophy.

Therefore the hope may be expressed that all mankind will extricate itself from naturalism, drowned as it is in philistinism and pedantry through everything abstract, theoretical, merely scientific, practical without being really practical. Man needs a new impetus. Without this impulse, this swing, Anthroposophy cannot thrive. In an inartistic atmosphere it goes short of breath; only in an artistic element can it breathe freely. Rightly understood, it will lead over to the genuinely artistic without losing any of its cognitional character.

• 1. Vol. II, 1922, No. 7-9: Vortraege Rudolf Steiner's ueber das Wesen der Farbe, (Rudolf Steiner's Lectures Concerning the Nature of Color.)

Easter is felt by many people to be associated on the one hand with the deepest feelings and sensibilities of the human soul, but on the other, with cosmic mysteries and enigmas as well. Our attention is drawn to this connection with world riddles by the fact that Easter is a so-called moveable feast, fixed each year by computing the position of a constellation of which we will have more to say in the following lectures. Yet if we trace the festival customs and cult rites that have become associated with the Easter Festival through the centuries—rituals having a deep meaning for a large part of mankind—we cannot fail to observe the profound significance with which humanity has endowed this Easter Festival in the course of its historical development.

Easter became an important Christian festival—not coincident with the founding of Christianity, but during the first centuries; a Christian festival linked with the fundamental idea, the basic impulse, of Christianity: the impulse to be a Christian, provided by the Resurrection of Christ.

Easter is the Festival of the Resurrection; yet it points back to periods antedating Christianity, to festivals connected with the spring equinox that plays a part in determining the date of Easter, to festivals bearing on the re-awakening of Nature, on the life burgeoning from the earth. And this leads us directly to the heart of our subject.

As a Christian festival, Easter commemorates a resurrection. The corresponding pagan festival that occurred at about the same season was, in a sense, the celebration of the resurrection of Nature, of the re-awakening of what, as Nature, had been asleep throughout the winter time. But here we must emphasize the fact that with regard to its inner meaning and essence the Christian Easter in no sense corresponds to the pagan equinox festivals. On the contrary: comparing it with those of ancient pagan times, Easter, as a Christian festival, would correspond to old festivals that grew out of the Mysteries; and these were celebrated in the autumn. And the most interesting feature connected with determining the date of Easter, which is quite obviously related to certain old Mystery customs, is this: we are reminded precisely by this Easter Festival of the radical, far-reaching misapprehensions that have crept into the philosophic conceptions of the most vital problems during the course of human evolution. Nothing less occurred, in the early Christian centuries, than the confusion of the Easter Festival with quite a different one, with the result that it was changed from an autumn festival to a spring festival.

This points to something of enormous importance in human evolution. Let us examine the substance of the Easter Festival—what is its essence? It is this: the central figure in Christian consciousness, Christ Jesus, experiences death, as commemorated by Good Friday. He remains in the grave for the period of three days, this representing His coalescence with earthly existence. This period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning. Finally, Easter Sunday is the day on which the central being of Christianity arises from the grave. It is the memorial day of this event. That is the essential substance of Easter: the death, the interval in the grave, and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Now let us turn to the corresponding old pagan festival in one of its many forms; for only by so doing can we grasp the connection between the Easter Festival and the Mysteries. Among many people of diverse localities we find ancient pagan festivals whose outer form—the nature of the rites—strongly resembles the form of what is comprised in the Christian Easter.

From among the manifold ancient festivals let us choose that of Adonis for examination. This was celebrated by certain peoples of the Near East for a long period of time during pre-Christian Antiquity. An effigy constituted the center of interest. It portrayed Adonis, the spiritual representative of all that appears in the human being as vigorous youth and beauty.

Now, the ancients undoubtedly confused, in some respects, the substance of an effigy with what it represented, hence the old religions frequently bore the character of idolatry. Many took the effigy of Adonis for the actually present god of beauty, of man's youthful strength, of the germinating force becoming outwardly manifest and revealing in living splendor all the inner worth, the inner dignity, the inner grandeur of which man is or might be possessed.

To the accompaniment of songs and of rites representing the deepest human grief and sorrow, this effigy of the god was immersed in the sea where it remained for three days. When the locality was not near the sea, a lake served the purpose; and lacking this as well, an artificial pond was dug in the vicinity of the sanctuary. During the three days of immersion a deep and serious silence enveloped the whole community that confessed this cult, that called it its own. At the end of the three days the effigy was brought out of the water, and the previous laments were changed into paeans of joy, into hymns to the resurrected god, the god come to life again.

That was an external ceremony, one that stirred the souls of a great multitude of people: through an outer act, an outer rite, it suggested what was enacted in the sanctuaries of the Mysteries in the case of every man aspiring to initiation. In these olden times every such candidate was conducted into a special chamber. The walls were black and the whole room, which contained nothing but a coffin or, at least, a coffin-like case, was dark and somber. Beside this coffin laments and songs of death were sung: the neophite was treated as one about to die. It was made clear to him that by being laid in the coffin he was to go through what a man experiences in passing through the portal of death and in the three days following this event. The procedure was such that he became fully aware of this.

On the third day there appeared, at a certain point visible for him who lay in the coffin, a branch, denoting sprouting life. In place of the laments, hymns of rejoicing were sung. The initiate arose from his grave with transformed consciousness. A new language had been imparted to him, a new script: the language and script of the spirits. Now he might see, and he was able to see the world from the viewpoint of the spirit.

Comparing this initiation that took place in the sanctuaries of the Mysteries with the rites performed publicly, we see that while the substance of the rites was symbolical, its whole form nevertheless resembled the procedure followed in the Mysteries. And in due time the cult—we may take that of Adonis as typical—was explained to those who had participated. It was celebrated in the autumn, and those who took part were instructed approximately as follows:

Behold, it is autumn. The Earth sheds its glory of flowers and leaves. All things wither. In place of the greening, burgeoning life that in the spring time began to cover the earth, snow will envelop it, or drought will bring desolation. But while everything around you dies, you shall experience that which in man partly resembles the dying in Nature. Man, too, dies: he has his autumn. When he reaches the end of his life it is fitting that the souls of his dear ones be filled with deep sorrow. But it is not enough that you should meet death only when it comes to you: its whole import must be grasped in its profound significance, and you must be able to recall it to your memory again and again. Therefore you are shown every year the death of that divine being who stands for beauty and youth and the grandeur of man: you are shown this divine being going the way of all Nature. But when Nature becomes barren and passes into death, that is the time you must remember something else. You must remember that man passes through the portal of death; that in this Earth existence he has known only what is transitory, like all that passes in the autumn, but that now he is drawn away from the Earth and finds his way into the vast cosmic ether. During three days he sees himself expand till his being contains the whole world. And then, while here the eye of the body is directed to the image of death, to the ephemeral, to what dies, yonder in the spirit there awakens after three days the immortal human soul. It arises in order to be born for the spirit land three days after death.

An intense inner transformation was brought about in the body of the candidate in the recesses of the Mysteries; and the profound impression, the terrific shock inflicted on the human life by this old method of initiation awakened inner soul forces, gave rise to vision.¹ That impression, that shock, brought the initiate to understand that henceforth he lived not merely in the sense world but in the spiritual world as well.

Other information imparted to the neophytes of the old Mysteries may be summed up thus: the Mystery ritual is an image of events in the spiritual world; what occurs in the cosmos is a likeness of what takes place in the Mysteries. No doubt was left in the mind of anyone admitted to the Mysteries that the procedure followed in these and enacted in man constituted images of what he experiences in forms of existence other than the Earth in the astral-spiritual cosmos.

Those who, owing to insufficient inner maturity, could not be deemed ready to have the spiritual world opened up to them directly were taught the corresponding truths in the cult; that is, in a semblance of the Mystery proceedings.

Thus the purpose of the Mystery festival corresponding to Easter—the one we have illustrated by the Adonis Festival—was as follows: during the autumnal withering and desolation in

Nature, the drastic autumnal representation of the transience of earthly things—autumn's picture of dying and death—the certainty was to be conveyed to the neophyte—or at least the idea—that death, which envelops all Nature in the fall, overtakes man as well; and it comes even to the representative of beauty, youth and the glory of the human soul, to the god Adonis. He also dies. He dissolves in the earthly counterpart of the cosmic ether, that is, in water. But just as he arises out of the water, as he can be lifted out of it, so the soul of man is brought back, after about three days, from the world-waters—that is, from the cosmic ether—after having passed through the portal of death here on Earth.

The mystery of death itself, that is what the autumn festivals were intended to present in these old Mysteries; and it was to be made readily intelligible by having the ritual coincide, on the one hand and in its first half, with dying, with the death of Nature; and on the other, with the opposite of this: with what represented the essence of man's being. It was intended that the initiate should contemplate the dying of Nature in order to become aware of how he, too, apparently dies, but how his inner being rises again, to take part in the spiritual world. To reveal the truth concerning death, that was the purpose of this old pagan festival deriving from the Mysteries.

Now, during the course of human evolution a most significant event took place: in the case of Christ Jesus, the transformation experienced at a certain level by the candidate for initiation in the Mysteries—the death and resurrection of the soul—embraced the physical body as well. In what light does one familiar with the Mysteries see the Mystery of Golgotha? He envisions the ancient Mysteries; he observes how the soul of the candidate was guided through death to resurrection, meaning the awakening of a higher form of consciousness in the soul. The soul died in order to awake on a higher plane of consciousness. What must here be kept in mind is that the body did not die, and that the soul died in order to be reawakened to an enlightened consciousness.

What every aspirant for initiation experienced in his soul only, Christ Jesus passed through in His bodily principle; in other words, on a different level. Because Christ was not an Earth-man but a Sun-being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, it was possible for all the human principles of this Being to undergo on Golgotha what the former initiate experienced only in his soul.

Those with intimate knowledge of the old Mystery initiation, whether living at that time or in our own day, have best understood what took place on Golgotha; for what they have known is that for thousands of years the secrets of the spiritual world have been revealed to men through the death and resurrection of their soul. During the process of initiation, body and soul had been kept apart, and the soul was led through death to eternal life. What was experienced in this manner by a number of the elect penetrated even into the physical body of a Being Who descended from the Sun at the time of the Baptism in the Jordan, and took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Initiation, enacted through many centuries, had become a historical fact.

The important part of that knowledge was this: because it was a Sun-being that took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that which in the old neophyte had to do only with the soul and its experiences could now penetrate to the bodily life. In spite of the death of the body, in spite of the dissolution of His body in the mortal Earth, the resurrection of the Christ could be brought about because this Christ ascends higher than was possible for the soul of a neophyte. The neophyte could not sink the body into such profoundly sub-sensible regions as did Christ Jesus. For this reason the former could not rise to such heights in his resurrection as could Christ. But up to this point of difference, which is one of cosmic magnitude, the ancient enactment of initiation appeared as a historical fact on the hallowed hill of Golgotha.

In the first centuries of Christianity very few men knew that a Sun-being, a cosmic being, had lived in Jesus of Nazareth, and that the Earth had been fructified by the actual coming of a being that previously could be seen from the Earth only in the Sun—by means of initiation methods. And for those who accepted Christianity with genuine knowledge of the old Mysteries, its very essence consisted in their conviction that Christ, to Whom they had raised themselves through initiation—the Christ Who could be reached through the old Mysteries by ascending to the Sun—that He had descended into a mortal body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He had come down to Earth.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, a mood of rejoicing, of holy elation, filled the souls of those who understood something of it. What then was a living substance of consciousness gradually became a festival in memory of the historical event on Golgotha—through developments to be described later.

But while this memory was gradually taking shape, the awareness of the identity of Christ as a Sun-being disappeared more and more. Those familiar with the old Mysteries could not be in doubt: they knew that the genuine initiates, by being made independent of the physical body, experienced death in their soul, ascended to the Sun sphere and there found the Christ; that from Him, the Christ in the Sun, they received the impulse for the resurrection of the soul. They knew who Christ was because they had raised themselves up to Him. From what took place on Golgotha these initiates knew that the Being who had formerly to be sought in the Sun had descended to men on Earth.

Why? Because the old process of initiation, enacted to enable the neophyte to reach Christ in the Sun, could no longer be enacted: the nature of man simply had changed in the course of time. The ancient ritual of initiation had become impossible by reason of the manner in which the human being had evolved. Christ could no longer have been found in the Sun by the old methods, so He descended in order to enact on the Earth a deed to which men could look.

What is comprised in this secret is as supremely sacred as anything that can be revealed upon Earth.

How did the matter appear to those living in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha? A diagram would have to be drawn somewhat like this:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

In the old abodes of initiation the neophyte gazed up to the Sun existence, and through initiation he became aware of Christ. To find the Christ he looked out into space. In order to show the subsequent development I must represent time—that is, the Earth proceeding in time. Spatially the Earth is, of course, always there, but we will represent the course of time in this way. The Mystery of Golgotha has taken place. Now, a man, say of the 8th Century, instead of seeking Christ in the Sun from the Mystery temple, looks upon the turning point of time at the beginning of the Christian era, looks in time toward the Mystery of Golgotha (arrow in diagram), and can find Christ in an Earth deed, in an Earth event, within the Mystery of Golgotha. What had been spatial perception was henceforth, through the Mystery of Golgotha, to be temporal perception: that was the significant feature of what had occurred.

Eut if we reflect upon the Mystery ritual, remembering that it was a picture of man's death and resurrection; and if we consider in addition the form taken by the cult—the Festival of Adonis, for example—which in turn was a picture of the Mystery procedure, this threefold phenomenon appears to us raised to the ultimate degree, unified and concentrated in the historical deed on Golgotha.

What was enacted in a profoundly inner way in the sanctuary now appears openly in external history. All men now have access to what was previously available only for the initiates. There was no further need of an image immersed in the sea and symbolically resurrected. In its place was to come the thought, the memory, of what actually took place on Golgotha. The outer symbol, referring to a process experienced in space, was to be supplanted by the inner thought, unaided by any sense image—the memory, experienced only in the soul, of the historical deed on Golgotha.

Then, in the following centuries, the evolution of humanity took a peculiar turn: men are less and less able to penetrate into spirituality; the spiritual substance of the Mystery of Golgotha can gain no foothold in the souls of men; evolution tends toward the development of a materialistic mentality. Lost is the heart's understanding of facts like the following: that precisely where Nature presents herself as ephemeral, as dying desolation, there the living spirit can best be envisioned. And lost as well is the feeling for the festival as such, the feeling that autumn is the time when the resurrection of all spirit contrasts most markedly with the death of Earth Nature.

And thus autumn can no longer be the time for the festival of resurrection; no longer can it emphasize the eternal permanence of the spirit by the impermanence of Nature. Man begins to depend upon matter, upon those elements of Nature that do not die—the force of the seed that is sunk in the ground in the fall and that germinates and sprouts in the spring resurrection. A material symbol for the spiritual is adopted because men are no longer able to respond through the material to the spiritual as such. Autumn no longer has the power to reveal, through the inner force of the human soul, the permanence of the spiritual by contrasting it with the impermanence of Nature. The imagination now needs the aid of outer Nature, outer resurrection. Men want to see the plants sprouting from the ground, the Sun gaining power, light and warmth increasing. Nature's resurrection is needed to celebrate the resurrection idea.

But this exigency also means the disappearance of the direct relationship that existed with the Festival of Adonis, and that can exist with the Mystery of Golgotha. A loss of intensity is suffered by that inner experience which can appear at physical death if the human soul knows that man passes physically through the portal of death and undergoes, for three days, what indeed can evoke a somber frame of mind; but then the soul must rejoice in a festive mood, knowing that precisely out of death—after three days—the human soul arises in spiritual immortality.

The force inherent in the Festival of Adonis was lost, and the next event ordained for mankind was the resurrection of this force in greater intensity. One beheld the death of the god, of all the beauty and grandeur and vigorous youth in mankind. On the Day of Mourning this god was immersed in the sea. A somber mood prevailed, because first a feeling for the ephemeral in Nature was to be aroused.

But the intention was to transform the mood induced by the impermanence of Nature into that evoked by the super-sensible resurrection of the human soul after three days. When the god—or his effigy—was raised up out of the water, the rightly instructed believer saw in this act the image of the human soul a few days after death: Behold! The spiritual experience of the deceased stands before thy soul in the image of the arisen god of beauty and youth.

Every year in the fall something that is indissolubly linked with human destiny was awakened within the spirit of men. At that time it would have been deemed impossible to connect all this in any way with outer Nature. All that could be experienced in the spirit was represented in the ritual, in symbolical enactment. But when the time was ripe for effacing the old-time image and having memory take its place—imageless, inner memory of the Mystery of Golgotha experienced in the soul—mankind at first lacked the power to achieve this, because the activity of the spirit lay deep down in the substrata of the human soul. So up to our own time there has remained the necessity for calling in the aid of outer Nature. But outer Nature provides no complete allegory of the destiny of man in death; and while the idea of death survived, the idea of resurrection has faded more and more. Even though resurrection figures as a tenet of faith, it is not a living fact for people of more recent times. But it must once more become so; and the awakening of men's feeling for the true idea of the resurrection must be brought about by anthroposophy.

If, therefore, as has been explained elsewhere, the anthroposophically imbued soul must sense the heralding thought of Michael, must intensify the idea of Christmas, so the idea of Easter must become especially festive; for to the idea of death anthroposophy must add the idea of resurrection. Anthroposophy itself must come to resemble an inner festival of the resurrection of the human soul. It must infuse into our philosophy a feeling for Easter, a frame of mind appropriate to Easter. This it can do if men will understand that the ancient Mysteries can live on in the true Easter Mystery, provided the body, the soul and the spirit of man—and the destiny of these in the realms of body, soul and spirit—are rightly understood.

• 1. We shall see presently why in our time initiation cannot be accomplished by this method, but must proceed quite differently.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! I would like to add a few words to what we were considering last time, and then perhaps someone will have a new question.

The question that was asked concerning man's origin can be rightly understood and answered only by looking back at the whole evolution of humanity. The assertion that men were originally animal-like, that they had an animal-like intelligence, and so forth, is nothing but a science fairy tale. It is contradicted by what has been found from the earliest historical times, and what—even though poetic in form—indicates the existence of great wisdom among the human beings who lived during those primeval earth conditions. At that time men did not feel inequality among themselves as they feel it today. The feeling of inequality always comes to the fore in an epoch when men have more or less lost real knowledge.

Only think how at a certain period in ancient Egypt slavery was widespread. But slavery was not always there; it developed at a time when men had lost real knowledge of the world, had lost real science, and no longer knew what slavery signified. And if you think intelligently you will certainly ask yourselves: Why is it that, for instance, a labor movement had to arise with such forcefulness?

Naturally it was bound to arise because conditions made it necessary, because people had come to feel that things could not go on as they were, and they wanted to call attention to how the conditions should be bettered. What makes the labor problem such a burning question is the fact that industry and all the various discoveries and inventions have gone in one particular direction. Before the spread of industry, need was not so oppressive. Why is it, then, that the advent of industry has brought this burden in its train?

As every reasonable person will admit, those few human beings who do not live in actual need—shall we say, the capitalists, as they are usually called—do not create this need deliberately for the pure joy of it. Naturally, they would prefer the needs of all human beings to be satisfied. Obviously, that must be taken into account. But then this other question arises: Why is it that the few who reach leading positions lack the capacity to change conditions so that the needs of the masses will be satisfied?

It is always the few leaders in the trade unions upon whom all the others depend. As things have developed, it is quite natural that it is always the few who lead, but they lack clear insight. And the masses of workers feel that these few do not themselves know what should be done. It has become obvious, especially just recently, that these few do not know what they should be doing. So one must say: Something is quite obviously lacking. And from the view of spiritual science, the thing lacking is knowledge of the spiritual world. This knowledge would confirm that it is absolutely untrue to say that at the beginning of their evolution human beings were unintelligent, dull, and that now they are enlightened. That is the general opinion today and it is simply not true.

At the beginning of their existence on the earth, human beings possessed a knowledge not only of what was on the earth but also of the stars in the heavens. The reason why today this knowledge has degenerated into superstition—I have often spoken of this—is that, as time went on, these things were no longer investigated and hence came to be misunderstood. Originally there was a widespread knowledge of the stars; today the only knowledge of the stars that exists is one that makes calculations about them. But it is unable to penetrate to their spiritual reality. If a being living on Mars were to know only as much about the earth as our ordinary consciousness, our ordinary science, knows about Mars, that Mars being would believe that there is not a single soul on the earth—whereas actually there are fifteen to twenty hundred million souls on the earth! It is the same with the ideas people hold now about the stars; actually the stars are full of souls—only the souls are different.

Of course you may say: But one can't see into the world of stars, so one can't know or observe the conditions there. That is an enormous error! Why can a man standing here see the piano over there? Because his eyes are so organized that he is able to see it. His eyes are not over there in the piano. In exactly the same way—as spiritual science, or anthroposophy, shows—if a human being not only develops from childhood to the level to which our modern education takes him, but develops further than that, he will in very truth be able to perceive what is spiritual in the stars, just as humanity originally perceived it. And then he will know that the stars have an influence upon the human being, each star a different influence. If, for example, it can be shown that Mars has an influence upon the development of grubs into cockchafer—it can also be shown that all the stars have an influence upon man's spiritual life. They have it indeed! But this knowledge of the stars has entirely disappeared—and what has come in its place?

In earlier times, when men looked at the moon, they knew that from the moon come the forces for all propagation on the earth. No being would have offspring if the moon did not send to earth the forces of propagation. No being or creature would grow if the forces of growth did not come from the sun. No human being would be able to think if the forces of thinking did not come from Saturn. But all that people know today is the speed at which Saturn moves, the speed at which the moon moves, and whether there are a few extinct volcanoes on the moon. They know nothing more and don't want to know anything more. They simply find out by calculation what they want to know about the stars.

But now let us turn from the world of stars to the world of men. Industry has come on the scene. In the age when all people could do about the stars was to make calculations, they began to do the same in the domain of industry. They did nothing but reckon and calculate, with the result that they forgot man altogether. They treated the human being himself as if he were part of a machine. And so the conditions have come about that prevail today. Conditions will never be satisfactory if people merely calculate what kind of conditions ought to prevail on the earth; they will have to know something beside that. That is the point. But then it must be admitted that human knowledge has deteriorated to a terrible extent in the very age that claims to be “enlightened.”

I told you that at a recent Farmers' Conference it was the unanimous opinion that all agricultural products have been deteriorating for decades. The reason for this deterioration is that, with the exception of certain peasants who have instinctively hung on to bits of the earlier knowledge, nothing is really known about the way to take care of a farm. But how is such knowledge acquired? Certainly it can never be acquired by calculation, knowing that the moon will be a full moon again in twenty-eight days, but only by knowing, for instance, how the moon forces work in the fruition of grain, and so forth. This knowledge has been entirely forgotten. People don't even know what goes on in the soil in their fields. And they know still less what is going on in the world of men.

Social science has produced nothing more than series after series of calculations. Capital, working hours, wages, are nothing but figures that have been calculated. And calculating does not come to grips with human life, or indeed with any life at all. The curse of the modern age is that everything merely is to be calculated. Instead of things being merely calculated, they should be studied and observed as they actually are, and this is only possible through first gaining knowledge of the stars. Today, the moment people hear the phrase, “knowledge of the stars,” they say immediately: That's idiotic! We've known for a long time that the stars have no influence whatever. But to assert that the stars have no influence upon what is happening on the earth, that, gentlemen, is the real idiocy! And the consequence is that there is no real knowledge left. That is a concrete fact. Take capital, for instance: It can be expressed in figures, it can be counted—and what is the result? If capital is merely a matter of calculation, it is of no importance who owns the capital, whether a single individual or everyone in common. For the same results will invariably ensue. Not until we again take hold of life so that our concern centers upon the human being as the prime reality, not until then will there be a social science capable of doing anything effective, a social science capable of really achieving something.

That is why I also like to say this: Let us see what will come about through anthroposophy. It is, of course, still only in its beginning, and naturally it appears to be similar in many respects to the other science. But it will develop gradually into a complete knowledge of the human being. In the domain of education, for instance, it has already brought into being the Waldorf School. Not until this stage of knowledge has been reached will anthroposophical science be able to be applied effectively to social problems. Today you can only realize that the world's current knowledge is incapable of really effective intervention in life; it comes to a standstill everywhere.

That is what I wanted to add. Are you satisfied so far? (Yes, yes!) Of course, a great deal could still be said, but there will be other opportunities for considering many aspects of the subject.

So now, has someone else, perhaps, thought of a question?

Question: Can anything be known about man's origin? Where he comes from?

Dr. Steiner: That is a question about which many of you who have been here for some time have heard a great deal from me. Those of you who have come recently are naturally interested in such questions, so those who have already heard my answers will perhaps be willing to hear them again.

When we look at the human being as he moves about on the earth, we see his body first and foremost. We also notice that he thinks and feels. If we look at a chair, no matter how long we wait, it doesn't begin to move about—because it cannot exercise will. We perceive that the human being wills. But speaking generally it can be said that we really see only the body.

And it is very easy to form the opinion that this body constitutes the whole of man. Moreover, if this is believed, many arguments in proof of it can be found. (You see, in anthroposophy other people's opinions cannot be treated lightly. All points of view must be seriously considered.) And so it can be pointed out, for instance, that people can lose their memory if they take poison and are not immediately killed by it. The implication is that the body is a machine and everything depends upon the running of the machine. If the blood vessels burst in a man's brain and the blood presses on the nerves, such a man may lose not only his memory but his whole intelligence. So it can be said that everything is dependent upon the body. But that kind of thinking does not hold water if one really examines it thoroughly. It simply does not hold water. If it did, we could say that man thinks with his brain. But what is actually going on in the brain when a man thinks?

Well, a real investigation of the human body shows that it is absolutely incorrect to say that when a man is thinking, something constructive is going on in his brain. On the contrary, something is always being destroyed, demolished, when he is thinking. Substances in the brain are being broken down, destroyed. Death on a small scale is perpetually taking place there.

The final death that happens once and for all means that the whole body is destroyed; but what happens all at once in the entire body when a man dies is also taking place throughout the body during life, in a piecemeal process. Man excretes not only through his organs of excretion, the urine, feces, sweat, but in other ways as well. Just think what your head would look like if you never had your hair cut! Something is excreted there, too. And think of the claws you'd have if you never cut your nails! But not only that: man is all the time sloughing off his skin—he just doesn't notice it. Man is casting off substance all the time. In the case of the urine and feces the process is not very significant, because for the most part these simply contain what has been eaten, material that has not gone into the whole body, whereas what is excreted in the nails has gone through the whole body.

Suppose you take your scissors and cut a fingernail. What you now cut away, you took in, you ate seven or eight years ago. What you ate went into the blood and nerves and passed through the whole body. It needed seven or eight years to do that. Now you cut it away. Just think of the body you have today, the body in which you are sitting there. If you had sat there seven or eight years ago, it would have been in quite another body! The body you had then has been cast away, has been sweated away, has been cut away with the nails, cut away with the hair. The entire body as it once was, has gone—with the exception of the bones and the like—and within a period of seven or eight years has been entirely renewed.

So now we must ask ourselves: Does thinking originate from the constant upbuilding of the body or from the constant tearing-down of the body? That is an important question. If you have something in your body that brings about too much upbuilding—shall I say, if you drink one tiny glass too much, or not just one—most people can manage that—but if you drink enough more so that you know you're “loaded”—what happens then, gentlemen? The blood becomes very active and a terribly rapid process of upbuilding takes place. When that happens, when the blood becomes too tumultuous, a man loses consciousness. Thinking is not the result of an upbuilding process in the brain, but of a process of small, piecemeal destruction. If no tearing-down process took place in the human body, the human being would simply not be able to think.

So the fact is that thinking does not come from our building up the body but from our continual killing of it bit by bit. That is why we have to sleep, because we don't do any thinking then. What is continually being demolished through our thinking is quickly restored in sleep. So waking and sleeping show us that while we are thinking, death is always taking place in the body on a small scale.

But now picture for a moment not a man's body, but his clothing. If you take off all your clothes you are not, it is true, fit for the drawing room, but you are still there, and you can put on different clothes. That is what man does through the whole of his earthly life. Every seven or eight years he puts on a new body and discards the other. With animals there is a clear illustration of this: if you were to collect all the skins that a snake sloughs off every year, you would find that after a certain number of years it has discarded not only the skin but the whole of its body. In our case, of course, this is not so noticeable! And what about the birds? They moult. What are they doing when they moult? They're discarding part of their body; and after a period of a few years they've discarded it all, with the exception of the bones. What is it that remained?

You yourself are sitting there today although you have nothing at all of the body you had some eight years ago. And yet there you are, sitting here. You created a new body for yourself. The soul, gentlemen, sits there. The spirit and soul sit there. The spirit and soul work on the body, building it up all the time. If you go for a walk and find a large pile of stones somewhere, you know that a house is going to be built; you will certainly not assume that the stones will suddenly have feet and will place themselves very neatly one above the other and build themselves into a house! Well, just as little do substances assemble to form themselves into our body.

We receive our first body from our father and mother; but this body is thrown off entirely, and after seven or eight years we have a new one. We do not get this one from our parents; we ourselves have to build it up. Where does it come from? The body we had during the first years of life came from our parents; we could not have had a body without them. But what builds up the second body comes from the spiritual world. I do not mean the substance, but the active principle, the essential being, that is what comes out of the spiritual world. So we can say: When the human being is born, the body he has for the first seven or eight years of his life comes from his father and mother, but the soul and spiritual entity come from the spiritual world. And every seven or eight years the human being exchanges his body but retains all of himself that is spiritual. After a certain time the body is worn out and what earlier came into it as spirit and soul goes back again into the spiritual world. Man comes from the spiritual world and returns to the spiritual world.

You can see, this is also something that has been entirely forgotten—simply because today people have become thoughtless and do not penetrate to the reality of things. Once they have seen how the body is renewed over and over again, they will realize that the force which brings about the renewal is a soul force working within the body.

And now, gentlemen, what do you eat? Let us consider the different foodstuffs a human being eats. The simplest substance of all is protein. Not only in eggs but in the greatest variety of foodstuffs, in plants too, there is protein. Then man eats fat; he eats what are called carbohydrates—in potatoes, for instance—and he eats minerals. All other substances are composite substances; man eats them; he takes them into himself. They come from the earth; they are entirely dependent upon the earth. Everything we take in through the mouth is entirely dependent upon the earth. But now we don't take things in only through the mouth; we also breathe, and through our breathing we take in substances from the air. Usually this process is described very simply by saying: Man breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide—as if he did nothing but breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out! But that is not the whole story. Very fine, rarefied substances are contained in the air we breathe. And we live not only on what we eat but also on these nourishing substances from the air. If we did nothing but eat, we would be obliged to replace our body very often, for what we eat is very rapidly transformed in the body. Only think how troublesome it is for someone when he does not get rid of what ought to be excreted within about twenty-four hours. The food that is eaten and then excreted passes through a rapid process. If we lived only on what we eat, we certainly wouldn't need seven or eight years to replace our body. It is because we take in very delicate, rarefied nourishment through the air, which is a slow process, that the replacement takes seven or eight years.

It is very important to know that man receives nourishment from the air. The food he eats is used, for example, for the constant renewing of his head. But the nourishment he needs in order, shall we say, to have fingernails does not come from what he eats but from the substances he draws from the air. And so we are nourished through eating and through breathing.

But now the really important fact is that when we take in nourishment from the cosmos through our breathing, we take in not only substance, but we take in at the same time the element of soul. The substance is in such a fine, rarefied state that the soul is able to live in it everywhere. So we may say: Man takes in bodily substance through his food; through his breathing he takes in, he lives with a soul element. But it is not the case that with every inhalation we take a piece of soul into ourselves and then with every exhalation breathe out a piece of soul again. In that event we would always be discarding the soul. No—it is like this: with our very first breath we take the soul into ourselves, and it is then the soul that brings about the breathing in us. And with our very last breath we set the soul free so that it can go back to the spiritual world.

And now that we know these things, we can make some calculations. Most of you will already know what follows, but it may still surprise you. If you investigate, you will find that a human being draws 18 breaths a minute. Now reckon how many breaths he draws in a day: 18 breaths a minute, 18 x 60 = 1080 breaths an hour; in 24 hours, 24 x 1080 = 25,920 breaths a day.

And now let us calculate—we can do so approximately—how many days a human being lives on the earth. For the sake of simplicity let us take 72 years as the average length of human life, and 360 days in a year. 72 years X 360 days = 25,920 days in a man's life. And that is the number of breaths a man draws in a day! So we can say, the human being lives as many days in his life as he draws breaths in one day.

Now we know there are one-day flies—and there could also conceivably be 1/18-of-a-minute beings! (For the length of time is not the essential point.) So if the human being were to die every time he breathes we could say: He breathes the soul in and out again with every breath. Yet he remains—remains alive for 25,920 days.

So now let us reckon those 72 years as a single breath. As I said before, with his first breath the human being breathes his soul in and with his last breath he breathes it out again. Assuming now that he lives an average of 72 years, we can say: This inbreathing and outbreathing of the soul lasts for a period of 72 years. Taking this period to be one cosmic day, we would again have to multiply 72 X 360 to get a cosmic year: 25,920! If we take the life of a human being as one cosmic day, we get the cosmic year: 25,920 cosmic days!

But this number has still another meaning. On the 21st of March, the day of the beginning of Spring, the sun rises at the present time in the constellation of Pisces. But it rises only once at that exact point. The point at which it rises shifts all the time. About five hundred years ago it did not rise in Pisces (the Fishes) but in Aries (the Ram), and earlier still in Taurus (the Bull). So the sun makes a circle round the whole zodiac, finally getting back to Pisces. At a definite time it will rise again at exactly the same point, having made a complete circuit. How long does the sun need for this? It needs 25,920 years to go around and return to the same point at which it will rise at the beginning of Spring.

When we have breathed 25,920 times, we have completed one day. Our soul remains while the breaths change. When we have completed 25,920 days, we have awakened as often as we have slept. In sleep, as we know, we do not think, we do not move, we are inactive. During sleep our spirit and soul have gone off to the spiritual world for a few hours; at waking we get them back again. Just as we let the breath go out and come back 18 times a minute, so in a day we let the soul leave once and return. Sleeping and waking, you see, are simply more lengthy breaths. We do short breathing 18 times a minute. The longer breathing is our sleeping and waking. And the longest breathing is our breathing in the soul and spirit when we are born and breathing it out again when we die. But there is still the very longest breathing of all; for we go with the sun as it completes its circuit of 25,920 years; we go into the world of the stars. When we think of the soul, gentlemen, at that very moment we leave the earth and go to the world of the stars.

So—this is just a beginning of the foundation for an answer to the question which the gentleman asked. Just think what order and regularity prevail in the universe if again and again we get the number 25,920! Man's breathing is a living expression of the course of the sun. That is a fact of tremendous significance.

So—I have begun to answer the question. I will continue next Saturday at 9 o'clock.⁴¹

• 41. This scheduled lecture did not take place. The lecture of September 24, 1924, concluding this volume was the last Rudolf Steiner was able to give to the workmen. His illness began within a few days.

The hearty words just spoken (by Dr Rittelmeyer) are an introduction of the strong impetus towards the founding of this religious community-building and the essentials which will flow through this religious working community depend upon the earnestness, I could say a deepening earnestness, which lay originally in the intention and gave the impetus towards the founding of this religious community movement. It has to be said that during the course of these years there has been within the religious community a continuation of this earnestness and that one can already say, in a certain sense, that the original intention has been proven time and again.

In this movement it also appears clearly that the outer impressions of the rituals—I mean this in the noblest sense of the word—work right into our combined spiritual movement. A strong current working from within, truly intended and also truly coming out in a devotional attitude as we recently had in one of our oldest members of our anthroposophical movement, Herman Linde, being lead to his cremation. The impressions which came out, just on this occasion, of the ritual act completely shows that the real intention is well on its way to becoming a reality, and can be spoken about in the most varied areas not mentioned until now.

I even have the feeling that the objective and progressing striving of this religious community has gone faster than the inner satisfaction and internal harmonizing in the souls of the individual carriers of these religious thoughts. Things are going well. You can feel yourself drawn out by the way these good things are developing, on the one side, and on the other side you battle with inner soul difficulties with particular meaning, because just at this gathering such inner soul difficulties can be talked about because this particular initial gathering can serve to make the difficulties you have, valid, so we can try during the next days to bring about some harmonizing of these inner difficulties.

It is completely understandable that these inner difficulties are there, because you must, while you are the representatives of the most important spiritual initiative, forever remind yourself that realities in the spiritual world work in a powerful way. Even when you are not aware of them, these realities are there. Events taking place on the surface develop roots especially when it happens in the spiritual sphere when related to good or evil. You must always be aware that if you want to work in the present in a religious area that religious orientated spiritual or non-spiritual streams develop an exceptional activity just at that moment.

Just as we are speaking about this at the moment, there is for example a gathering happening of representatives of the Roman Catholic church in a specific place in Europe, which will probably have a particularly important outcome; at least a remarkable result is being envisaged. Today in fact there are more people than one suspects whose hearts feel deserted by religion. Hearts feel deserted by religion while all too seldom words spoken to them come directly out of the spiritual realm. For quite large layers of humanity, it is simply impossible to address these deserted feelings in their hearts, when it is not addressed in words which are not merely of earthly origin, which implies words presented in a supersensible language in the rituals. You must never forget how powerfully effective the Roman Catholic Church in its mass is just at present, still in its old form yet working strongly on the soul and even more effectively in the way it can be spoken.

One must always be clear about how many powers inherent in humanity are such that errors are able to enter on this side. Consider, when you ask about circulated poetry of Central Europe today, in circles which usually discuss historical progress, and you will not once have a name mentioned such as “Thirteen Linden” von Weber, who has experienced surprisingly many conditions. Why is this so? Out of what basis, when the work of the Roman Catholic spirit is permeated ... (gap in stenographer notes).

These facts are the outer symptoms for a strong spiritual steam, particularly the Roman Catholic one, which works outwardly. This is quite clear to see. Don't forget these forces stream right through the human soul and also go through your souls and some of you probably ascribe it to a subjective experience, stirring in the objective spiritual streams at the present moment. It is of greater meaning that today some of you have formulated these subjective experiences in order for us to allow these to flow into our discussions during the next few days. You must not forget that in such a Movement, such as yours, it must be a question of working with real concrete spirits of the present time. What do people know about real spirit today? One of the most important facts for the support of inner spiritual activity in the present time will be the effect of people starting to see the indications given by Anthroposophy in America, which of course is unheard of. Now outer objects are being used to achieve insights.

Compare the world today with one of a hundred years ago. There are a multitude of differences but one could say that one of the greatest differences is that today our atmosphere is crisscrossed either with telegraph or telephone wires. In Europe this entanglement of wires looks like a child's game compared to America. Here is a trace of possible insight regarding how that might affect people. Eventually one will sense that people are not immune to the activity buzzing through telephone wires in the air, making people into actual induction apparatuses. Consider an opposing stream in their nerves and then again one in the counter direction working in the bloodstream. All of this is what humanity carries in itself today, but it is hardly even noticed. These are pre-eminently Ahrimanic forces being absorbed by people from outer culture which they can't evade. One can think about things that are possible and impossible, and yet to the most powerful realities no thought is given. At some point the difference between Goethe and present day should be spoken about, regarding the fact that Goethe wasn't surrounded by telegraph wires. You see, the desolation of the human soul is in reality connected to all of this.

When you now look around at how the highest spiritual religious needs are satisfied, you must pose the question: Are there in these gratifications already some impulses inherent which take into account an element which renders these things harmless as part of the soul-spiritual experience?—That is not so! The satisfaction of religious needs go back to a time when all of this was not present, which I have illustrated for you. Today there is a gratification of religious needs which is only valid for a few people, which is not alive in the culture we have today. Anthroposophy wants to enter here to introduce newer impulses, impulses capable of making people independent from what they can't be independent of outwardly. What is external must be absorbed inwardly. Yet the polar opposite must be created—that means a strong awareness needs to be created for the importance of your Movement in order to create more and more impulses to come out of your Movement. The most important things must be thought through when you are to answer the question: What shall we do?—The correct application of the ritual and sermon already offers the necessary strong impulse because this religious Movement is built on the basis of Anthroposophy. Yet the awareness that humanity stands in the midst of these influences in the world must be present in every single one of us. Each one of you can contribute much towards fortifying awareness in this direction by raising it up and strengthen it.

We may not forget that gradually everything in humanity has become abstract and intellectual, and that intellectualism today stands completely in the afterglow. Today we may want to just understand things but we must open our hearts for the realities of the spiritual world. Mere understanding, how this or that can be grasped, is all very good but it is not the reason for a movement to be supported. You see, some things need to be particularly perceived: those movements which are alert and equipped with strong will, sprouted from ancient humanity, have unbelievably deep roots in Central Europe and western folklore; the Roman Catholic Church is but one phase of this. Intellectualism having caused the desolation of the heart now results in crowds running in droves back to the existing church, namely the Catholic Church.

You are now only a small movement and few in numbers, but if you carry the awareness within you that you are working with Truth, then you will simply say to yourself: with spiritual movements it does not depend on how great they are in number but how strong their inner strengths are. This will be active when you have a strong awareness of what it is that is being carried. This is exactly what you must have: a strong consciousness for Truth and not allowing it to de-motivate you because in fact the truth is most detested. If you wish to spread some secular falsehood, then people will have no fear of it. Precisely when you want to spread the truth people sense your intention and there will be the strongest opposition you can find.

Today our intention is to examine two big oppositions. I don't want to refer to Jesuitism at every opportunity, also not in the usual sense; I mention it only as representative of the old spirituality penetrating present time in contrast to what modern culture has brought into the present. This stream promises the eradication of modern culture. You must not believe that the will forces in this Movement are insignificant. No doubt there is a striving to have humanity deprived of modern cultural elements, which is what this Movement carries. Modern cultural elements are considered as the devil which needs to be conquered by the old culture. Ahriman can't be eradicated but he can be refined, cleansed and made noble; he must be reckoned with alongside modern culture. Opponents know this as well and for this reason they clearly express their fear regarding your Movement because it contains truth. Errors soon come to nothing but by encountering the truth, the opposition grasp at anything in defence, big or small.

You can say that something has come out of Dornach which is connected to your Movement. However, I want to say without any ill meaning, that the destiny of the Goetheanum is also not without the link to your Movement originating from it. In the place where your actions come alive is where the burning spark is laid. Don't believe that your opposition works with limited resources. Above all we must be clear that our advancing impulse can't be located outwardly, nor can a deadening element be located externally. The one and only aspect of this Movement is its impulse of being in the inmost soul. Outer things can perhaps then take place tragically but there will be no obstacles for the impulse once it has been grasped and deepened and really expresses itself as it needs to do. It was a good impulse which has given an impetus to this religious Movement; it will express itself and bear fruit if it is continued forward with the same good sense. Now I will enter into some impulses coming from your midst, what you would like to discuss.

From the participants the following questions were brought:

1. How does our ritual relate to the cultic worship which will develop in the future? How should we work together in the right way with the Anthroposophic Movement? How can we do the right thing towards moral supportiveness of the overall Movement?

2. I ask for clarity regarding preceding historical events with particular reference to the Rhur district. (Rhurgebiet)

3. It doesn't help me to bring an objective balance to the ritual steps. They change as I practice it. The Act of Consecration of Man can be read in such a way as to physically link it to the nervous system but then it is not beneficial.

Rudolf Steiner: It is necessary to consider this last question or let someone else express it more precisely. For example, you speak a sentence and it is not always clear if it has fulfilled the ritual of worship. That is a valid question. It needs to be looked at even closer. It would not be good to bring the nervous system into it. Naturally the act of worship must be on such a level that everything coming from it is not just on the level of the nervous system, which is already considered as far too important. ... (Gap in stenographer's notes.) In your subjective experience you must honour the objective experience flowing out of the ritual.

No uncertainty may limit speaking about the relationship of the ritual to anything else. The ritual which comes about, if you ask the spiritual worlds, is the ritual which lives within you. It is not in some or other outer exceptional form but it is the ritual which is already finding its future but through life itself. The real inner involvement with the ritual is closely connected with the consciousness of the priest. The priest's consciousness can only develop when an inner honesty is outwardly present. Therefore, it would be good when the subjective soul aspect, experienced by individual personalities, as they work with the ritual, are openly spoken about on an occasion such as this. Only when you utter your subjective needs can we start talking in a fruitful way. ... (Gap in stenographer's notes.)

It boils down to the speech of the ritual being expressed as the speech of higher worlds. Human speech is from the outset an earthly speech because it finds expression in structured air. Of course it is foolish to assume that departed souls can talk in a human way. Mediums in Germany let the spirits speak German, English in England and French in France as if one can be a German, English or a Frenchman after death. A spirit does no longer speak with a human language and can't pervade the air. What streams through speech as spirit depends on how it is spoken. At the very moment you have the feeling you are speaking with reverence then you can convey something spiritual through the spoken word. What does this mean: reverence? Reverence is something our philosophers have quite unlearned. They argue that the things they are discussing need to be grasped and touched. Whoever wants to speak about spiritual things must be aware that thought is like an etheric touch and that thoughts should be formed with reverence, just as also in the physical world, if it has to be touched with awe then it only is done on the surface. This inner feeling of reverence within speaking is of course the start. As a result, talking is then not only about content but physiognomic, it becomes conscious and one can gradually become filled with the genius of speech. Through this, you start to discover talking itself as a living spiritual experience. This must be present in the ritual to the highest degree. Then you really stand within the process and therefore realize: you are not speaking subjectively but you are a tool for the spiritual world.

On this rests the substantial understanding that it can be met with the ritual. Contributing most significantly to this is the How in the speech. This How however comes through the consciousness of being a tool for the spiritual world. Every small ritual action is a continuation of what flows out of the Word. In the ritual these attribute to the words become gestures. Now the struggle surfaces in your awareness: You may think as you wish about something (this is irrelevant) but it comes down to you saying what the gods want you to say. Through this, one arrives at the point of awareness that the impulse of the Act of Consecration can be allowed to work through every little thing one does throughout the day.

What is this impulse? The impulse which comes out of the Act of Consecration lies essentially in the sacrifice/offering. In the sacrifice the earthly is offered to the spiritual world; we lay it down at the feet at the spiritual world. With communion we receive it again but now it comes out of the spiritual world. We have surrendered it out of the earthly. What happened in between? Transubstantiation; an exchange has happened with the spiritual world. This brings an awareness which allows us to stand within the spiritual world each time we experience the Act of Consecration. It is lifted higher by the Gospel reading preceding it. When the Gospel reading is a corresponding preparation for the interpenetration of the spiritual world between the offering and communion, then the right way to experience the Consecration of Man is found.

Of course an addition is implicit to this: the Act of Consecration needs to be conducted at least every day. It is prescribed for Catholic priests to perform the Mass every day; through this they receive a powerful force. This must not be celebrated absolutely every day, but it is absolutely necessary that the Mass must be celebrated every day. Through this sensing you relate to the spiritual world. This is of the utmost importance.

Something else happens between one day and the next for priests: sleep happens between the two. What does this mean, sleep? Present day science has the peculiarity that the most important things in life make sense externally, but not inwardly. What is said about sleep is that it is an illusion. During sleep the soul-spiritual part of the human being, the ‘I’ and the astral body, are separated from the physical and etheric part. Between falling asleep and waking up the physical and ether bodies work on the level of the plant kingdom. What the human being has as remnant of the plant kingdom is found in his sleep, thus the human being descends as a physical being down to the plant level. This means processes are taking place which are of a lower kind than normal when a person is fully conscious. Something “cooks” up, warmth and cold are active in lower forces of nature which work in the same way where growth takes place. Only then do we have the right feeling when waking up—this must, of course, be perceived spiritually, otherwise it can be dangerous—when we say to ourselves: our I and astral bodies were in the divine world, our bodies we had handed down to the lower worlds; we then take the body back from the lower world which actually lies beneath the actual human world. This we must not forget; from an Ahrimanic level we take our bodies back, it is full of Ahrimanic build-up which we need to destroy during our waking hours. The first hour after waking should pass in such a way that we are capable of eradicating these things deposited overnight especially in for the form of salts in our bodies. When you don't manage this then the body becomes full of rheumatism, gout and so on, and on a soul level, full of lascivious thoughts. These things come from what has been experienced during sleep.

While the human being has sunk down (during sleep) to a level below that of humanity, the priest must now restore up to a higher level. This happens when the priest practices the ritual. One does not need, like in the Catholic church, to practice the Mass every day, but one should live within the Act of Consecration. That works as powerfully as the daily read mass. It then becomes powerful objectively. These are things we must observe in reality. It is essential that the human being sleeps every night. The Act of Consecration of Man is as important as sleep. If you occupy yourself every day with the Act if Consecration, you lift yourself out of the lower level of sleep-life. The evangelical attitude knows nothing about these things; it doesn't want to lift priests out but want them to remain on the level of nightly sleep-life. This lifting out of people from their nightly life of sleep, this conscious opposition to the sinking down of people into their lower human consciousness, this is what actually constitutes the vocation of priests.

What is the level on which human beings exist? The human level lies between the plant and animal regions, also between air and water. The human being is firstly mineral, plant-like, animal-like; not yet actually human. The human being will only be formed in future. When we meditate through the Mass we don't enter the animal-like aspect but enter into the divine which otherwise can only work unconsciously in us. If we carry around with us only what is daily consciousness—yes, you see, we would not look like we look now, we would only have a body developed up to the diaphragm, men would have heads like bulls and women would have heads of lions. What we have in our day consciousness doesn't enable us to have a human physical head—that is given to us by the divine. For this reason, we see the embryo head as developed to a high degree. During normal waking hours we can't entirely embrace our total human form but we learn to take this human form which is godly, to really experience the earth. You only come to have the right to feel yourself positioned in the human physiognomy when you lift yourself out of the animalistic, during the Mass. Then you free yourself from the animal and lion nature and as a result, have a human-godly physiognomy.

This is where the Catholic Church is insistent—for the divine to speak through the human. When you start to become the practical performer of the ritual then you need to grasp these things infinitely more earnestly than in the normal sense; to the extreme it is necessary to look at it, and say to yourselves: we don't carry a human head when we interact with ordinary people, because the divine works in the human head.

For this reason, it is why the “Act of Consecration” is not a poor expression but a good one, a very good one. How your head is positioned in the world is not due to your doing but God created it thus. Ordination means taking what is firm and making it fluid, what the individual has is baptised into the spiritual. As a result, you can say: I earn the right to live in the divine through the Act of Consecration and meditation and thus allow the members of the congregation to only take part in the Act of Consecration and meditation. This doesn't contradict the social and also not the evangelical consciousness but in fact it is the right attitude to reality. Only thereby it is contradicted that you turn yourself away from the things in the ordinary world; yet by consciously juxtaposing yourself to it, you conquer it. There is always more to strive for, more to struggle through and understand because priest consciousness is not a given from one day to the next, you must first allow these things to permeate you.

A speech exercise is asked for.

Rudolf Steiner: The Catholic Church considers language seriously and insists on speech exercises. The Jesuit must recite and learn to scan, he must learn how to shape an opening sentence and a concluding sentence, how to prepare the initial sentence in order to be convincing with the second one and by ending without impoverishing it by lack of eloquence. Speech becomes something objective. Speech for most people is only an expression of a purely physical organ—the larynx and the mucous membranes. The spoken word which is to be practiced in the ritual must make itself free from the individual, it must have its foundation as a power to vibrate the air without allowing the mucus to mix into it. Today this is not something that can be done effortlessly; it needs practice. The Berlin University once had a professor of eloquence, called Curtius, but so little was known in that time that he never fulfilled this lectureship but instead recited Greek art history.

Before we go any further in our study of the Apocalypse we must add one more method to read it properly, which however is taken more from outside. Then the main thing is to apply what we read in the Apocalypse to our present time. In order to do this, we must first look at the spiritual foundations from which this Apocalypse arose. But I don't mean that one should do this by trying to explain a book through one's times in a trivial historical sense. This is not really applicable to writings like the Apocalypse which are conceived out of the spiritual world in the way I described. Nevertheless, it was created in the way that it could be created in its time in accordance with the spiritual conditions—not in accordance with external historical conditions, but in accordance with spiritual conditions. Let's take a look at this time.

Let's connect this time of the first Christian centuries with general world evolution in a spiritual way. The year 333 A.D. is an important year if we look at the evolution which occurs behind outer events. This year 333 is the point in time in which the ego shot into the intellectual or mind soul, which developed between the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha and the beginning of the age of the consciousness soul in the 15th century. This year 333 stands right in the middle. The intellectual and mind soul developed during this epoch and it played an important role in the development of the Greek mentality. It continued to work until the age of the consciousness soul began. The Mystery of Golgotha took place in this age of the development of the intellectual soul or hearty feelings soul.

Now we must realize that this shooting in of the ego into the intellectual and mind soul is something which is very important. One has to tell oneself that one understands things with the intellectual and feeling soul. But this bursting in of the ego which occurred around the year 333 nevertheless shook up the humanity which comes into consideration for the reception of spiritual influences; it really shook them up right down into the depths of their soul. Anyone who wants to participate in the spiritual life and to work along spiritual lines must see the outer facts of historical developments on their spiritual backgrounds.

Which major events must be looked at in the light of this ego-entry into man's soul at the time when it was occurring behind the illusions of outer events, as it were? It was here that the whole relation off divine beings to men started tó become uncertain, contested and misunderstood.

At this point vie have the significant dispute between Arius and Athanasius. Men started to become unsure of how they should think about the relation of the gods to the world and to human beings, etc., at the time when a somewhat unconscious question about how the divine ego lives in human nature arose from a lack of clarity which was present when the ego shot into the soul. The two views of Arius and Athanasius were sharply opposed to each other, and we see that Äthanasius' view gained the upper hand in western Europe whereas the view of Arius gradually lost favor.

Let's look at this contrast from a spiritual standpoint, because it is important that we do so if we really want to understand the inner meaning and the inner spirit of something like the Apocalypse. On the one hand Arius sees that man is climbing higher and higher, and that he's supposed to get ever closer to the divine, and on the other hand he sees the divine being. In addition to these great world principles he must also understand the Mystery of Golgotha and the nature of Christ. He wants to answer the question: How is the human or the divine nature contained in Christ? Should one look upon the Christ as a really divine being or not? And he basically answered this question with a no. He basically took the position that became the general position of a large part of the European population, namely, he put up a boundary between man and God, that is, he didn't really want to admit that God dwells in man, so he placed an abyss between God and man.

We must go back to the time of the first Christian developments in an unbiased way, which basically had nothing in common with the things that happened later when Christianity became decadent within Roman Catholicism. And this is why we should realize that it became necessary for the further evolution of mankind to decide the whole question in the way that Athanasius does, who sees a directly divine being in the Christ and who sees a really divine sun-spirit in Christ, even though this later receded into the background because of a disinclination to think of the Christ in a cosmological way. But it lay in Athanasius' whole mentality to look upon the Christ as a god who is really equal to the Father God.

This view continued to work on, although it lost its entire evolutionary thrust at the eighth council in Constantinople in 869 which basically cancelled the doctrine of this first council in Nicaea, because it declared that trichotomy is heretical. Therewith things began to degenerate. For this definitely cut off any possibility of growth into spirituality for the catholic church in later centuries.

It was definitely that shock which occurred within when the ego broke into the intellectual and feeling soul which colored this outer event and which gives the latter its real inner meaning. And if we continue to look at things in a historical way we, have to tell ourselves: After this year 333 came those times which broke away from the ancient Roman culture, especially in Europe. We see that the old Roman culture could basically not absorb Christianity, because öf what it had become. It is a marvelous picture which unrolls before us if we direct our gaze at this year 333.

This year also indicates the period in which Romanism was moved away from Rome and further over to the east. The Roman emperor who wants to appropriate Christianity flees from Rome and goes further east. We shouldn't look so much at the detrimental things and bad side-effects which arose in the council of Constantinople,—we should pay more attention to the fact that when Christianity hit Rome one had to flee from west to east. This is tremendously significant. When such an event is looked at from the spiritual world its importance is so obvious that the harmful effects which were caused by Byzantinism were relatively minor.

One would like to say that it is of tremendous importance that when Christianity or its outer form was touched by Romanism, it had to flee. Of course something then rises from the ground—from which Constantine fled towards the east with Christianity which was prepared for a long time in Roman territory, but which forces Christianity into outer, worldly forms when it matures. One should just think how significant it is that the Apocalypticer's prophetic eye sees that Christianity begins to assume ancient Roman forms at the moment when Rome decides to make Christianity its official religion. This is really the thing which becomes manifest.

On the one hand we have the spiritual dispute between Arius and Athanasius. On the other hand, we have ancient Rome which converts to Christianity but moves towards the east, while the form which remains behind in Rome takes on the shape of the Roman state and becomes the continuation of ancient Rome, even in its outer activities.

Now let's ignore certain things for a while for which we will have to give a deeper spiritual explanation later, and let's look at some historical things. The Apocalypticer's perception of this historical element is great and tremendous. He doesn't express it clearly, but he has it in his feelings and it's in the way his writing is composed, that is, he points out that the growth of what occurs in mankind and outside in history took 333 years from the Mystery of Golgotha, and that a strange, illusory development of Christianity then sets in. Christian Romanism is uprooted and goes over to the east, and Roman Christianity adapts itself completely to Roman forms. This is the soil which prepares something which again takes 333 years or until the year 666.

If you place what we said yesterday about the things which the Apocalypticer and other people who were inspired by the ancient mysteries gained from a contemplation of numbers before your soul, you will have to tell yourselves: this Apocalypticer looks at the additional 333 years during which Christianity has a deceptive outer appearance, so that it must develop in murky fogs in two directions;—it is driven eastward and it preserves the old element in the west which is like an Ahrimanic thing.

Something which had remained from the non-Christian, ancient Romanism prepares itself in the womb of earth evolution. What does this nonChristian Romanism consist of?

Now if we look into the mysteries we find that trichotomy or the holy number three had a profound significance in all of the greatest and most advanced ones. Let's take a look at what this meaning was. One thought about how a human being is born in the physical stream of heredity, approximately in the way that esoteric Hebraic teachings conceive of this. One imagined how this human being brings characteristics and capacities with him through heredity. One described the life of a human being as something which proceeds in a straight line and in which nothing important enters except what is oriented by hereditary impulses. The fathers in the ancient mysteries said: You originate from the physical forces of your parents, and the spiritual impulses of your physical parents are also at work in you. And these ideas continued to be taught in Hebraic esotericism and by the proponents of other esoteric doctrines.

However other people added something to this. In the mysteries which must be called the most advanced ones, one spoke of how the man who bears hereditary impulses and develops accordingly can also take in another impulse during his physical existence between birth and death, an impulse through which he lifts himself out of hereditary conditions, so that his soul finds its way out of them, namely, the Son impulse or Christ impulse. And one said: The impulses of heredity are in man and they constitute his straight line evolution between birth and death. They are from the Father, the Father who underlies everything. The impulses of the Son do not enter into hereditary forces, they must be taken up into the soul and elaborated by the soul; they must be able to expand the soul to such an extent that it can free itself from bodily and hereditary forces. They enter the freedom of man, in the way that one understood freedom in those times; they go into the freedom of the soul, where the latter is free from hereditary forces. They are the ones which permit man to be psychically reborn. They are the impulses which enable man to control himself during the life which is given him by the Father. And so one saw the father-man in all of these mysteries, the man who is the son of the Father and the brother of Christ and who controls himself. He gains control over that part of him which is free from the body in a certain respect, and he must bear a new realm in him which knows nothing about nature and which is a different order than nature is the realm of the Spirit.

If one were to talk about the Father God, not in the external, materialistic way in which one does this today but more like they do in Hebraic doctrine, one would be justified in speaking of effects of nature which are also spiritual effects, for spiritual activities are present in all activities of nature. The natural science which arose a while back and which is active today is merely a one-sided science of the Father. The science of the Son or the Christ is added to this; this is connected with the way man takes hold of himself and with the way man receives an impulse which he can only take in through the soul, and not through hereditary forces. The way he works his way into this is chaotic at first, without the activity and the power of laws. This activity is brought into him by the Spirit, so that according to the ancient mysteries we basically have two kingdoms the kingdom of nature or the kingdom of the Father, and the kingdom of the Spirit, and man is carried out of the kingdom of nature and into the kingdom of the Spirit by the Son or Christ.

If we become aware that such views were still present in the Apocalypticer and in the souls of all the men of his time, it will enable us to look into his prophetic soul, which could survey the future in such broad strokes, in order to look at the way he looked at what poured over the Christianity which had become a semblance of itself in two directions around the year 666.

Here his prophetic eye fell upon that doctrine which had already arisen in the east in 666, and which goes back to that Muhammedanian mystery culture which knows nothing about the Son. This Islamic mystery culture doesn't know anything about the world structure to which I referred; it doesn't know about the two kingdoms, the realm of the Father and the realm of the Spirit; it only knows one rigid thing; only the Father exists for it, there is only one God. And everything else is his prophet—mainly Muhammed. This point of view makes Islam the polar opposite of Christianity. This viewpoint leads to the will to eliminate all freedom for all times to come, to the will for determinism, and this cannot be otherwise if one only thinks of the world in connection with the Father God.

However, the Apocalypticer feels that man cannot find himself like that. Man cannot be permeated by the Christ like that; he can't grasp his humanity if he only grasps this ancient teaching about the Father. The outer human form becomes Maya for a world conception which is so strongly closed off within; for man becomes man by taking hold of himself, by making Christ alive in himself and through the fact that he can fit himself into the spiritual order of things and into the realm of the spirit which is entirely free of nature. Thereby he becomes a man; but he doesn't become a man if he falls back into the view which only reckons with the Father God.

The Apocalypticer is basically saying that after the ego broke in mankind is in danger of going astray in the permeation of this ego which is pressing into humanity from 333 on,—that humanity is in danger of being confused in its permeation of this ego with the Son God or Christ. What threatens to keep man at the animal stage rises up after a period of time which is just as long as the first period after the Mystery of Golgotha,—666 is the number of the beast.

The Apocalypticer had a decisive, inner vision of what threatens men. Christianity was made into a semblance of itself in two directions, or it would be better to say that it became obscured by fog. The year 666 marks the time of this inundation which threatens him. It is that significant year in the spiritual world when what exists in Arabism is introduced everywhere. He points to: this year 666 very clearly. People who can read in an apocalyptic way understand this quite well. For he foresaw the effect that the thing which was breaking in would have, and he called the number 666, the number of the beast.

Thus he basically anticipates everything which follows in an apocalyptic way. What follows is the streaming of Arabism towards Europe, whereupon Christianity becomes permeated by a teaching; which could only make men fail to see the humanity within them; where the Father dogma is converted into naturalism; whereby the latest view on evolution arose, which says that one must explain man by just following the sequence of animals down to the human being.

Wasn't the beast whose number is 666 still rising in Darwinism, where man couldn't comprehend that he is a human being but could only look upon himself as a beast? Don't we see these Ahrimanic resistances which are working against the Son God working further in the impregnation of Christianity with a materialistic form of the Father dogma? Isn't this still working into our time? As I have often pointed out, just take something out of recent theological developments such as Harnack's book about the nature of Christianity. One can put “Father” wherever he has the word Christ, for it is only a teaching about God and not a concrete Christ teaching. It is a denial of Christ's teaching, for a general Father God is put in the place of Christ; and no attempt is made to arrive at anything which is connected with Christology. The Apocalypticer sees this coming.

And when he sees this approaching it is already basically connected with something else which weighs upon his soul, namely, the difficulties with what one calls the transubstantiation for lack of a better word, although it doesn't really cover the spiritual elements which are involved. Now this difficulty, my dear friends you know yourselves how your souls struggled with the difficulties which are connected with transubstantiation when this Christian renewal was inaugurated; and many of you are still struggling with the difficulties which are involved in the understanding of this transubstantiation. Just think of how many hours we spent over there in that room where the Goetheanum fire started on discussions about transubstantiation; for the whole question of Son and Father is contained in transubstantiation. And one could say that some of that oppression which mankind felt in the dispute between Arianism and Athanasianism is also present in the dispute about transubstantiation which arose in the Middle Ages.

In fact, transubstantiation can only have a meaning if it is based on a real spiritual understanding of a Christology which tells one how Christ is connected with humanity and the earth. However, due to the breaking in of Arianism, the transubstantiation theory was always in danger of getting too close to the Father dogma, and it made people think that the metamorphosis of the substances which come into consideration for transubstantiation must be placed in the series of nature processes, that is, in the spiritual part of nature processes.

And all the questions which are connected with communion arise because one really says to oneself: How can what takes place in transubstantiation be grasped so that one can unite it with what one has in the way of a Father evolution of the world or of a working of the spirit through the laws of nature. This is not a matter of miracles here; this is mainly a matter of sacramentalism, which is not at all connected with the trivial question about miracles which gave people so much trouble in the 19th and already in the 18th century. The important thing here is to realize that one has the order of the Father and the order of the Spirit in the world. In between stands the Son, who raises the kingdom of nature to the kingdom of the spirit within the human sphere. If we place this before our soul, transubstantiation appears to us as something which we shouldn't look for in the wide order of nature, although it is nevertheless equipped with a reality, with a really spiritual reality, which one can speak of just as well as one can speak about a natural order. However, the Apocalypticer foresaw how difficult it would be for men to say that there is another order, a spiritual order besides the order of nature, since 666 plays into human evolution with such force.

One could say that Anthroposophy comes to the rescue here in a very modern way, and sheds light on precisely such a thing as transubstantiation. For Anthroposophy can help us to make the way man lives through repeated earth lives alive in us again, and also the way man has the impulses which lie in the hereditary line and which are connected with heredity, and with the Father force when he stands in the outer physical world with his actions. There man stands. There are the hereditary forces in the way he lives his life. There is a great deal in these hereditary forces which is connected with human destiny—if we only look at it in an external way—and which occurs through the Father forces that have been secreted into nature. The results of the previous earth life continuously play into man when he acts, so that as he acts he brings up the spirit into the physical corporeality which he has acquired in his present existence. The result of the previous earth life works in him; there are forces underlying this.

Imagine some human action. It can be looked at from two sides; from the point of view of the human being who is born from a mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But now look at the action from the other aspect. Forces are working in it which are an aftereffect of previous earth-lives. We have a completely different order here. This is why it can't be understood by any natural science, that is, by any Father science.

But it's possible to look at two things here which are essentially the same, even though they are accidentally different. On the one hand we see how karma or destiny as the result of previous earth lives develops out of the human being; we have a lawfulness there which is not a nature lawfulness at all, although it exists; and we look at the altar and at the way that transubstantiation takes place as a spiritual reality and in a way which is also not outwardly visible in the physical substances. The same laws hold sway in them. We can bring two things together here: the way that karma works and the way that transubstantiation takes place. Whoever understands the one can understand the other.

This is one of the mysteries which you must grasp in your new priesthood. This is one of the mysteries under whose light this priestly community must develop itself out of Anthroposophy. It is one of the inner reasons for this.

This also points to the tremendous difficulty which existed for an understanding of transubstantiation, because one couldn't understand the kind of a lawfulness which is present in human karma and which underlies transubstantiation. The ego which acquires freedom in physical life, which entered in 333 which wrapped Christianity in a fog in two directions, and made it flee towards the east on the one hand and into the ancient Romanism which could never be entirely Christian on the other, this year 333 and the entrance of the ego threw a shadow or a darkness over the connections between successive earth lives, and it had to throw it, because this lies within the evolution of mankind. What would have happened if this ego had not entered? Julian the Apostate would have won, although from the viewpoint of the ancient mysteries one should really call him the Confessor and not the Apostate. Of course the following is only a nebulous hypothesis, but it indicates what could have happened; if Julian had introduced teachings from the old mysteries, humanity might have received the ego which came in from spiritual worlds in such a way that one could have also understood the karma teaching with it. Mankind had to climb over higher walls in order to arrive at an understanding of Christianity, and not arrive at it as easily as they would have if Julian the Apostate had been victorious.

Thus humanity was exposed to the rising of the beast and to the consequences and results of 666. As I said, we will go into more of the inner details in the next few days. This is how the karma teaching was withheld from mankind and this is the way the transubstantiation dogma was placed into mankind, so that there is nothing analogous to it in men's world conceptions, for the closest analog for an understanding of the transubstantiation teaching is an understanding of the karma teaching. The force with which the destiny of a human being, is created in a next life out of successive lives is no force of nature, is no Father force,—it is a force of the Spirit which is mediated by the Son. It is the same force which is at work at the altar when the holy bread and wine are transformed.

And we must inscribe this deep into our souls; If we can understand this rightly, if we can lift our soul and mind and hearty feelings to the kind of spiritual impulses which work from one earth life to the next, we also understand what happens at the altar in transubstantiation. For when someone looks at the holy bread and wine with his ordinary understanding and doesn't see what's happening at all, it's no different than when someone with a materialistic mind doesn't see anything in the destiny of a human being besides what proceeds from the forces of his muscles and his blood—I'm speaking of the spiritual forces of the muscles and blood and from hereditary statistics.

These are the connections which one must understand in order to arrive at a true understanding of the Apocalypse and the Apocalypticer. These connections lead directly into the present, from the impulses which one can read quite clearly in the Apocalypse.

We have over and over again laid stress on the fact that Anthroposophy is no new thing brought to humanity only in our own times. It is particularly interesting that certain individuals not far behind us in time may be reckoned among those who may be described as Anthroposophists. Besides Herder, Jean Paul, Novalis and Lessing—Goethe steps forth as one of the most prominent. Many will object to this statement, because not much Anthroposophy can be traced in his well-known works. At the time of Goethe it was not possible to give out esoteric truths to all the world. Only in small circles, such for instance as that of the Rosicrucians, could the higher truths be promulgated. Nobody was admitted into this society without proper preparation: but those who belonged to it gave various hints as to its existence, and this Goethe did in many different parts of his works. Only a man filled with the wisdom of Anthroposophy can read Goethe aright. It is impossible for instance rightly to understand “Faust” without this help. The “Fairy Tale” is Goethe's Apocalypse, his Revelations and in its symbolical presentation the profoundest secrets are concealed. We can only understand when we have the key to it, that in this Fairy Tale Goethe revealed his Anthroposophical conception of the world. Schiller asked Goethe to work with him on a magazine called “die Horen” to which Schiller had contributed an article “On the aesthetic education of the human race”. In this the question was put:—“How can a man living in the every-day world preach the highest ideals, and establish communion between the super-sensible and that which belongs to the world of sense?” In a wonderfully impressive way he found words to point out that which to him seemed the bridge leading from the world of sense to the super-sensible world.

Goethe, however, declared that it would be impossible to him to speak of the highest questions of existence in philosophical terms, but that he would do so in a great picture. He then contributed the Fairy Tale, in which he tried to answer his question in his own way, and sent it to the Magazine, “Die Horen”.

Elsewhere too Goethe expressed himself in an absolutely Anthroposophical sense. In his earlier youth he had already concealed his conceptions in Faust. Between his student years in Leipzig and his stay in Strassburg, Goethe received an Initiation at the hands of a man who was himself deeply initiated into the secrets of the Rosicrucians. From that time on, Goethe spoke a mystical Anthroposophical language.

In the first part of Faust there is a remarkable sentence which comes under the introductory notices. It is: “The Sage speaks”. At this time Goethe already had the Anthroposophical idea that there are beings among us to-day who are further on in evolution than man, and form a ladder between him and the super-earthly spheres, although they too are incarnated in bodies.

They have attained to a knowledge reaching far beyond what can be understood by the senses. The passage is as follows:

“The Spirit world is not locked;
Thy mind is closed.
Thy heart is dead!
Up, Disciple, bathe, and cleanse.
Thy earthly breast in Morning-Redness.”

When you become acquainted with Jacob Boehme you find one of the sources (Dawn of the moving Redness, the astral world) from which Goethe created his world of Theosophy. There is much in Goethe which we can only understand when we take it in this sense. In the poem “The Divine”, Goethe speaks of the law which we call Karma, and also speaks of exalted beings:

“Nach ewigen ehern'n
Grossen Gesetzen
Müssen wir alle
Unser's Daseins
Kreise Vollenden.
Heil den unbekannten
Höheren Wesen
Die wir ahnen.”

In accordance with mighty iron laws
We must all accomplish the cycles of our being—
Hail to the unknown higher Beings
Whom we divine!

Volume 2, Page 67 – 68.

Anyone who wants a verbal proof of Goethe's Anthroposophical line of thought, need only read the poem which, under the title “God and the World” is called “Howard's memory”.

When Goethe spoke intimately to those who were in the same Lodge, he spoke of the ideal Divine Beings, which are ahead of man and shone forth to him as a prototype. What he wrote in the poem “Symbolum” for instance was intended for a small circle:

“Doch rufen von drüben
Die Stimmen der Geister
Die Stimmen der Meister.”

The voices of spirits,
The voice of the Masters,
Call from above.

He here speaks openly of the Masters, for he is speaking intimately to his brethren of the Lodge. But he leads us furthest of all in his Fairy Tale of the “Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily”. Therein we find represented the three kingdoms in which man lives, the physical, the soul-world or Astral world, and the Spirit-world. The symbol of the astral or soul-world is the water. By water Goethe always symbolised the soul, as in his poem “Fate and the Soul”. Book 11, Page 46.

He was also acquainted with the Spiritual realms in which man lives between two incarnations, between death and re-birth; that is Devachan, the Kingdom of the Gods. Man is ceaselessly striving to reach this kingdom. The Alchemists took the chemical processes as the striving after this Spiritual kingdom. They called it “the Lily”, “the realm of the Lily”. And man they called “the Lion” who fights for the kingdom, and the Lily is the bride of the Lion. Goethe indicated this in his Faust, when he says:

“Then a red Lion with the Lily wedded,
A wooer bold.”

Therein Goethe speaks of the marriage of man with the spirit. (“in tepid bath”, the bath of the soul. The soul, the water, the red Lion, man) In the Fairy Tale Goethe also represents the three kingdoms. The kingdom of the senses—as the one shore; the kingdom of the soul—as the river, and Devachan (the Spiritual Realm) as that shore on which is to be found the garden of the beautiful Lily, which to the Alchemists is the symbol of Devachan. The whole relation of man to the three kingdoms is symbolised in this beautiful story. We came across from the kingdom of the Spirit and are striving, to get back there.

Goethe had the Will of the Wisps brought across by the Ferryman from the kingdom of the spirit to that of sense. The Ferryman can bring anyone across, but he may not take them back. We come across by no will of our own, but we cannot get back again in that way. We must ourselves find the way back into the Spiritual realm.

The Will of the Wisps take gold as nourishment, they eat it, and it permeates their bodies. But at the same time they throw it from them on all sides. They wish to throw it to the Ferryman as payment, he says however, that a River cannot bear gold, it would make it surge up wildly. Gold always signifies wisdom. The Will of the Wisps are those who seek after wisdom, yet do not mingle it with their nature, but give it away again undigested. The River is the Soul-life; the totality of human instincts, desires and passions. When wisdom is introduced into that, the soul is thrown out into a state of disturbance. Goethe always pointed out that a man must first undergo Catharsis (purification) before he can take in wisdom. For if wisdom is brought into the uncleansed passions, they become fanatical; and a man then remains the slave of his lower ego. The ascent from Kama to Mana is dangerous, unless at the same time the lower ego is sacrificed. With reference to this Goethe says in his “Westöstlichen Divan”, Book 4, Page 17

A man must be prepared to sacrifice himself. The Will of the Wisps are still in Ahamkara, the slaves of the lower Ego. This wisdom cannot endure. The soul-life must be purified slowly and must ascend slowly.

The Will of the Wisps scatter their gold about in the meadow. There they meet with the Serpent who devours it and unites itself with it. The Serpent has the strength not to fill its Ego with pride, not to allow it to become self-seeking, not to raise itself up in pride to an upright position, but to pursue its way in a horizontal position and to move into the clefts of the Earth and there attain perfection gradually.

A Temple is represented, which is to be found in the clefts of the earth.

The Serpent had already passed in and out of this, and had sensed that mysterious beings are to be found therein. And now comes the Old Man with the Lamp. The Serpent, through the gold it had swallowed, has become luminous, and the Temple is illuminated by its radiance. The lamp of the Old Man has the property of only shining where light is, and it then shines with a very peculiar light. Thus, on the one hand there is the Serpent, luminous through the gold, and on the other the Old Man with the Lamp, which is also a light. Through this two-fold illumination every thing in the Temple becomes visible. In the four corners are four kings; a golden, a silver, a bronze king and one composed of a mixture of them all. Till now they could not be seen by the Serpent, he could only find them by the sense of touch; but they now become visible through their own light. They are the three higher principles of man, and the four lower principles. The bronze king is Atma—the divine Ego; the silver king is Buddhi—the love whereby all men can understand one another, and the golden king is Manas, the Wisdom that radiates out into the world and can take in the radiating Wisdom. When man has acquired Wisdom in a selfless way, he can then see things in their true nature, without the veil of Maya. The three higher principles of man now become visible to the Serpent. The golden king is Manas, for gold always signifies Manas. The four lower principles of man are symbolically represented by the fourth king, who is composed of mixtures. Atma, Buddhi and Manas are drawn into the spheres of Phenomena, but in a state of disharmony. Only when this is purified can something develop which could not live where there was a lack of harmony.

The Temple is the Sanctuary of Initiation, the Mystery school which can only be entered by those who themselves bring light, when they also are selfless like the Serpent. The Temple was one day to be revealed, and to raise itself above the river. That is the kingdom of the future, towards which we are striving, the secret places of learning must be brought up into the light of day. Everything which is man must struggle upwards, must become harmonious, must strive after the higher principles. That which was formerly taught in the Mysteries must become an open secret. The wanderers are to cross the river, must pass from the world of sense to the super-sensible world and vice versa. All mankind shall be united in harmony. The Old Man with the Lamp represents man who can today attain knowledge without climbing to the apex of wisdom, namely to the forces of piety of mind and of faith. Faith requires light from without, if it is really to lead to the higher Mysteries. The Serpent and the Old Man with the Lamp have the forces of the Spirit, which already shines in those who are to lead in the future. Even to-day anyone who feels these forces is aware of this, through certain secrets. The Old Man says he knows three secrets. But the strangest thing is said of the fourth secret. The Serpent whimpers something into his ear, whereupon the Old Man calls out, “The time has come when a great number of people shall understand which is the right road. The Serpent has proclaimed that it is ready to sacrifice itself. It has reached the point of recognising that man must die, in order to become.” (‘Denn so lang du das nicht hast, dieses stirb and werde’) (As long as thou hast not, this ‘dying and becoming’!)

To become”, in order in the fullest sense of the word “to be”; that man can only accomplish through love, devotion and sacrifice. The Serpent is ready for this. This will be made manifest, when man is ready for this sacrifice, then the Temple will be raised above the river.

The Will of the Wisps were not able to pay their debt; they had to promise the Ferryman to settle it later. The river received three of the fruits of the Earth; three cabbages, three onions and three artichokes. The Will of the Wisps go to the Wife of the Old Man and there they behave in a very curious manner; they licked the gold off the walls. They wanted to stuff themselves with wisdom in order to be able to give it forth again. Mops eats the gold and dies; for everything living must die of it; he cannot take in the truth and transmute it as does the Serpent, and therefore it is death-giving. The Old Woman had to promise the Will of the Wisps to settle their debts with the Ferryman. When the Old Man with the Lamp comes home he sees what has occurred. He tells the Old Woman she must keep her promise, but must also carry the dead Mops to the beautiful Lily, for she can bring all dead things to life. The Old Woman goes with her basket to the Ferryman:—on the way she has two remarkable experiences. She meets the great Giant, whose peculiarity is that in the evening he throws his shadow across the River so that the wanderer can pass over on it. Besides this the way is also passable when at the noonday hour the Serpent ramps across the river. The Giant can make a bridge across, but when the Sun is at its highest point, the Serpent can do so too; when through the radiant Sun of knowledge man raises his Ego to the Divine. In the sacred moments of life, at the moments of the complete blotting out of self, man unites himself with the Godhead.

The Giant is the rude physical development along which man must necessarily pass. In so doing he also reaches the yonder realm, but only in the twilight, when his consciousness is blotted out. That however is a dangerous path, which is followed by those who develop psychic forces and go into states of trance. This crossing of the bridge is accomplished in the twilight of trance. Schiller also wrote on one occasion about the Shadow of the Giant: “These are the dark powers which lead man across the Threshold.”

When the Old Woman passes him by, the giant takes from her one cabbage, one onion, and one artichoke, so that she only retained a part of that with which she was to pay the debt of the Will of the Wisps. The three-fold number is thus no longer complete. That which we require and which we must weave into our soul-life is taken from us by the twilight forces. There is danger in yielding oneself to such forces. The lower forces must be purified by the soul-forces, the body itself can only ascend when the soul completely absorbs it. Everything which encloses an inner kernel as in a shell, is a symbol for the sheaths of man. Indian allegory describes these sheaths as the petals of the lotus flower. The physical nature of man must be purified in its shell. We must pay our debts, and yield our lower principle to the soul-life. We have expressed the paying of this debt by saying that payment must be made to the river. That is the whole course of Karma. As the payment of the Old Woman was insufficient, she had to plunge her hand into the river; after that she could only feel her hand, but could no longer see it. That which in man's external, physical appearance, that which is visible in him, is the body. That must be purified by the Soul-life. This means that if man cannot pay with the plant-nature, he remains in debt. Then the actual bodily nature of man becomes invisible; because the Old Woman was not able to pay her debt she becomes invisible. The Ego can only be seen in the light of day, when purified by the soul-life;—“Oh, my hand, the loveliest part of me” The very part of man which distinguishes him from the animals. That which as spirit shines through him—becomes invisible if it is not purified by his Karma.

The beautiful youth who strove after the kingdom of the Lily (Spirituality) was crippled by her.

Goethe by this meant the ancient Wisdom, for which man must be prepared and purified and have undergone Katharsis, so that he should no longer reach Wisdom through sin but might take into himself the higher Spirituality. The youth had not been prepared by Katharsis. Every living thing which is not yet mature, is killed by the Lily. All the dead that have passed through “Stirb und Werde”, “Dying and Becoming”, are brought to life again by the Lily. Now Goethe says that one who has attained freedom within himself, is ripe for freedom. Jacob Boehme too says that man must develop himself out of his lower principle. He who does not do this before he dies, is destroyed at death. Man must first mature and be purified, before he can enter the kingdom of the Spirit (The Lily). In the old Mysteries a man had to go through various stages of purification before he could become a Mystic. The Youth too had first to pass through these stages, and he is guided through them by the Lily. The Serpent signifies development. We see the Lily gathering those together who are seeking the new way, all those who are striving after the Spiritual. But the Temple must first be lifted up above the river. They all move towards the River, the Will of the Wisps are in front and they open the door. The self-seeking Wisdom is the bridge to the selfless Wisdom. Wisdom leads a man through self to selflessness. The Serpent sacrificed itself. And now we understand the meaning of love, it is a Sacrifice of the lower self for the good of humanity, of complete brotherhood. The whole company moves towards the Temple, which rises above the river. The youth is brought to life again. He is furnished with Atma, Buddhi, Manas; Atma, in the form of the Bronze King, appears before him and gives him a sword. This represents the higher will, and is not connected with the lower will. Atma is so to work in man that the sword shall be on his left and the right hand free, till then man works separately;—the War of all against all. But when man is purified, peace comes instead of war. Only when man is purified will peace take the place of War; the sword will then be worn on the left side, for defence only, leaving the right hand free for well-doing.

The second King signifies that which at one time was known as the second principle. Buddhi (Piety, the mood in which a man turns in faith to the highest). Silver in the symbol of piety. The second King says “Feed my sheep”, for here we are concerned with the force of the spirit. The radiance here is that of Beauty. Goethe connected with art a feeling of religious reverence. He saw in it the manifestation of the Divine of the kingdom; the beautiful radiance, the realm of piety. The Bronze King signifies strength without the lower principles, the Silver King signifies peace, and the Golden King Wisdom. He says “Recognise the highest” The youth is the four principled man, who is developing his higher principles. The four lower ones are crippled by the spirit until they have undergone the purifying development; after that the three higher principles work together harmoniously in Man. He then becomes strong and able, and may mate with the Lily. That is the union between the soul and the spirit of man. The soul is always represented as something feminine in man. The Mystery of the eternal and immortal is here represented. “The eternal feminine draws us along”. Goethe makes use of the same image in his story, in the union of the Youth with the beautiful Lily. Now the sacrificed human self and all living, pass over the bridge that arches across the river. Wanderers go to and fro and all the kingdoms are now united in beautiful harmony. The Old Woman grows young, and the Old Man with the Lamp is rejuvenated; old age has passed away and everything has become new.

The Ferryman's little hut has been gilded over, and is now preserved as a sort of Altar in the Temple. What man formerly took over unconsciously, he now takes over in full consciousness. The king of many parts has collapsed. The Will of the Wisps lick the gold out of him, for that is still connected with the lower. The Giant now indicates the time. What formerly were the sense-principles (which can only lead into the shadows) which lead man across in the hour of twilight and belong to the things of sense, to nature-conditions, now points to the even and regular course of time. As long as man has not developed the three higher principles, the past and the future are in conflict. The giant then works inharmoniously. Now, through these ideal conditions, time is in harmony. Thought permanently strengthens that which was wavering, and makes it steady.

“Was im schwankende Erscheinung lebt
Befestigt mil dauernden Gedanken”.

What lives in transient phenomena
Is justified by lasting thoughts.

Faust, Prologue in Heaven.

That which in the Pythagorean schools was called the “Rhythm of the Universe”, “The Music of the Spheres”, of the planets, rhythmically revolving around the Sun, is brought about by the accomplishment of Divine Thought. To the mystic a planet was a Being of a higher order. Thus Goethe too says:

Die Sonne tönt nach Alter Weise,
In Bruder-Sphären Wettgesand,
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.

The sun rings forth in ancient fashion
In the spheres of his brother-singers.
He accomplishes his allotted journey
‘Midst resounding claps of thunder.

That man indeed has the capacity of developing to the highest Divine, Goethe says in the words; “Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Die Sonne könnt es nicht erblicken; wohnt nicht in uns des Gottes eigene Kraft, Wie könnt uns Göttliches entzücken?”

If the eye were not fashioned for the sunlight
It could not gaze upon the Sun!
If there were not in us the very force of God
How could we be charmed by the Divine?