The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If you follow the spirit of the studies we have made here during the last few days, you will find it comprehensible that not only a guiding and directing of the events on our Earth and above all in human evolution takes place through the Beings and forces of the various hierarchies, but that the Beings of these hierarchies themselves go through a sort of evolution, a sort of development. In the last lectures we spoke of how the Beings of this or that hierarchy intervene and guide, how for instance the Spirits of Form in normal and abnormal development organize the races.

Now let us ask ourselves the following: Do these spiritual Beings with whom we are now dealing also progress in their own development? As regards certain spiritual Beings we can during our own period of evolution witness the spectacle that they are, so to speak, progressing a stage further in their own development. Since the Atlantean catastrophe, ever since the post-Atlantean development began, we are living in an age in which certain Archangels, certain Beings of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi are ascending into the Hierarchy of the Archai, or Spirits of the Age. It is extremely interesting to notice this, for when we observe how the Folk-spirits, the Folk-souls whom we designate as Archangels ascend to a higher rank, then only do we obtain a correct conception of what is actually going on in the great world. This ascent is connected with the fact that into that distribution of humanity, which we must look upon as the division into races, there has been sent, since the Atlantean epoch, a second stream of humanity, of peoples. We must, as a matter of fact, look back very far indeed, back to early Atlantean times, if we want to find the period when the division into the five principal races of which we have spoken took place, if we wish to enquire when those men came to that particular spot in Africa where they then formed the black or Ethiopian race; when those other peoples came to Southern Asia, who compose the Malay race. We should have to look back to early Atlantean times. But later on other streams were sent after these early ones.

While therefore the Earth was already colonized with the foundations of these races, others were sent afterwards to those colonized parts of the Earth. Thus we have to do with a later stream, with a stream which came in later Atlantean times. If we wish to comprehend what was thus accomplished in Europe, Africa and America, in the way of the division of races, whilst Atlantis was gradually crumbling away, and what was then sent later on, towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, and part of which was only sent during the post-Atlantean evolution,—then we must clearly understand that we are dealing with that mighty stream of humanity which pushed forward into Asia, into Indian territory, and that, as has often been pointed out, bodies of people remained at the different points, from which then the various peoples of Asia, Africa and Europe arose. We have to deal therefore with an earlier division and a later advance,—with a second stream. The purpose of this second stream was, that companies of peoples who were each under the guidance of an Archangel were sent out from the West to the East. But these Archangels who were the guiding spiritual powers of these tribes that were sent out, were at different stages of development, in other words, they were nearer to or further away from the rank of a Spirit of the Age.

We have to look in the Far East for that stream of peoples whose Archangel was the first one to attain the rank of a Spirit of the Age. It was that stream of peoples who formed the ruling class of that land and laid the foundations of the first post-Atlantean civilization after their Archangel had become the Spirit of the Age, after he had been promoted to the first Spirit of the Age or Archai of the post-Atlantean age of civilization. Now this Spirit of the Age guided the primal sacred culture of India and made it the leading one in the first post-Atlantean age of civilization. The other peoples of Asia who were gradually developing, were for a long time under the guidance merely of Archangels.

Those peoples of Europe who had remained behind when the migration from West to East took place, were also under the guidance of Archangels for a long time after the Archangel of India had risen to the rank of an Archai and then acted through intuition upon those great Teachers of India, the Holy Rishis, who because they were aided by this exalted and important Spirit were able to fulfill their high mission in the manner already described. This Spirit of the Age worked on for a long time, whilst the people lying to the north of ancient India were still under the guidance of the Archangel. When the Spirit of the Age of India had fulfilled his mission, he was promoted to the guidance of the entire evolution of post-Atlantean humanity.

At the time which we designate as the Old Persian age, we have that Spirit of Personality, the Spirit of the Age, who was the guide or intuitor of the great Zarathustra or Zoroaster, the Zarathustra of ancient times. This again is an example of how an Archangel, a Folk-soul, rises to the rank of a Spirit of the Age, that is the very spectacle which, as we stated at the beginning of our lecture to-day, we are experiencing in our own time, that the Archangels work themselves up, through the mission they accomplish, to the rank of guiding and ruling Spirits of the Age.

A later rise in rank resulted from the Egyptian people and its Archangel on the one hand and from the Chaldean people and its Archangel on the other. Then took place the event in which the Archangel of the Egyptian people rose to the rank of a guiding Spirit of the Age, and undertook, so to speak, the guidance of that which formerly devolved upon the Chaldean Archangel; so that the leader in the Chaldæan-Egyptian age became the third mighty guiding Spirit of the Age who had gradually evolved himself up from the rank of the Egyptian Archangel. But that was also the age when another important development took place, which ran parallel with the Egyptian-Chaldæan civilization and with which is connected that to which we had to draw special attention in our last lecture.

We have seen that everything belonging to the Semitic tribes assumed special significance, and that from these Jahve or Jehovah had chosen one in particular and made that His own people. Hence, because He had elected one particular race to be His special people, He employed at first, while this race was gradually growing up, a sort of Archangel to be His representative with the people; so that in ancient times the gradually growing Semitic people had an Archangel who was under the continuous inspiration of Jahve or Jehovah, and who then later on grew up into a Spirit of the Age. Hence, besides the ordinary, evolving Spirits of the Age of the Old Indian, Old Persian and Old Chaldean peoples, there was yet another one who played a special part by working in a single people.

Thus we have a Spirit of the Age who in a certain respect appears in the mission of a Folk-spirit, one whom we must call the Semitic Folk-spirit. His was a very special task. This will be comprehensible to you if you call to mind that in reality this particular people was lifted out of normal evolution and had a special guidance, that so to say, special arrangements were made for the guidance of this people. Through these special arrangements this people had received a mission which was really of quite special importance and significance for the post-Atlantean epoch, and which was distinguished from the missions of all other peoples. One can best understand this mission of the Semitic people by taking it in connection with the missions of the various other peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch.

There are two spiritual currents in mankind. The one must be called, if we wish to designate it rightly, that which proceeds from plurality, which we might also say proceeds from Monadology, which therefore conceives the origin and source of existence as consisting primarily of a number of Beings and forces. You may look round wherever you will in the world, and you will see that, in some way or other, the peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch started from several gods. Begin with the trinity of ancient India, which was later expressed as Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. Look at the German mythology; there you find the trinity of Odin, HSnir, LSdur, and so on. Everywhere you will find a trinity and this again divided into a larger number. You find this peculiarity not only where myths and teachings about the gods appear, but also in the philosophies, in which we meet with the same thing again as monadology. This is the current which, because it proceeds from a number, may assume the greatest possible variety. We might say, that in the post-Atlantean epoch, from the farthest East in India and in a wide curve through Asia across to Europe, this worship of a number,—which on the whole is expressed in our Anthroposophy by our recognition of a number of different Beings belonging to the various hierarchies,—has acquired its manifold representations and forms.

This worship of many had to be opposed by a synthetic, all-comprising movement which proceeded strictly from the Monon, Monism. The actual inspirers, the impulse-givers of all Monotheism and Monism, of the worship of a single Divinity, are the Semitic peoples. It is in their nature, and if you remember what was said in the last lecture you will know that it is in their blood, to represent the one god, the Monon.

If man were however to look out into the great cosmos, he would not get very far if he were always to emphasize that there is only unity, a Monon at the foundation of the world. Monism or Monotheism, considered alone, can only represent a final ideal, but it would never lead to a real understanding of the world, to a comprehensive and exact view of it. Nevertheless in the post-Atlantean age the current of Monotheism had also to be represented, so that the task was given to one people to introduce the impulse, the ferment for this Monotheism. This task was given to the Semitic people. Hence you see how the Monistic principle is represented by this people with a certain abstract severity, with an abstract relentlessness, and how all the other peoples, in so far as their different Divine Beings are comprised in unity, received the impulse for this from them. The Monistic impulse has always come from that quarter. The other peoples have pluralistic impulses.

It is extremely important that this should be borne in mind, and one who examines the continuation of the old Hebrew impulse can still see at the present day Monotheism ruling in its greatest extreme among the learned Rabbis, in their learned Rabbinism. It is the task of this particular people to give as an impulse that the world-principle can only be unity. Therefore we might say: All the other nations, peoples, and Spirits of the Age had an analytic task, the task of representing the world-principle as being composed of different Beings; for example, the most extreme abstraction of the Monon in India was soon divided into a trinity, as the one god of Christianity is divided into Three Persons. All the other peoples have the task of analyzing the foundations of the world and thus to fill their several parts with rich contents, to fill themselves with rich material for conceptions that may lovingly comprehend the phenomena. The Semitic people has the task of ignoring all plurality and synthetically devoting itself to the unity; hence, for example, through this very impulse, the power of speculation, the power of synthetic thought is the greatest imaginable in the Kabbalistic studies.

All that could possibly ever be spun out of the unity by the synthetic, inclusive activity of the ‘I’, has been spun out by the Semitic Spirit in the course of thousands of years. That is the great polarity between Pluralism and Monism, and that is the significance of the Semitic impulse in the world. Monism is not possible without Pluralism, and the latter is not possible without the former. Therefore we must recognize the necessity for both.

The objective language of facts often leads to quite different knowledge from that to which the sympathies or antipathies which reign here or there lead. Therefore we must thoroughly understand the several Folk-spirits. Whereas the leaders of the several peoples over in Asia and Africa had long since risen to the rank of Spirits of the Age or Spirits of Personality and some of them were even already expecting to transform themselves from Spirits of the Age to the next higher stage, to Spirits of Form,—just as for instance that Spirit of the Age who was active in old India had in certain respects already risen to the rank of a Spirit of Form,—the several peoples of Europe were still for a long time guided by their several Archangels. It was only in the fourth post-Atlantean age that the Archangel of Greece raised himself out of the various peoples of Europe (who were being guided by their Archangels), to a leading position, by becoming the chief Spirit of the Age of the fourth, the Greek age of the post-Atlantean epoch; so that we see the Archangel of Greece rise to the rank of an Archai, a Spirit of Personality. That for which this Archangel of Greece had prepared himself became manifest, when he had become the Spirit of the Age, in Asia, Africa and Europe, whose centre the Greek people had become. The Archangel of the Greeks developed into an Archai, the active Zeitgeist of the Egyptians and also that of the Persians had risen to be a sort of Spirit of Form. What we are now coming to is something exceptionally interesting in the course of post-Atlantean evolution. As a result of all the development which the Archangel of the Greeks had formerly gone through, he could pass comparatively quickly through that which enabled him to take a specially prominent position as Spirit of the Age. Hence, however, something of the greatest significance occurred in the fourth age of post-Atlantean civilization.

We know that at that time the event occurred which we describe as the reception by humanity of the Christ-impulse. The Christ-impulse was received, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The impulse then given was, in the course of the following centuries and thousands of years, gradually to spread over the whole earth. This required not only the fact that this event took place, but it required certain guiding and directing Beings from the ranks of the hierarchies; and then occurred the most remarkable and interesting event, that—at a definite moment of time, which practically coincided with the coming to Earth of the Christ-impulse—the Greek Spirit of the Age renounced for this our present period his ascent into the region of the Spirits of Form, which would at that time have been possible to him, and became the guiding Spirit of the Age, who then acts on through the ages. He became the representative guiding Spirit of exoteric Christianity; so that the Archai, the guiding Spirit of the Greeks, placed himself in front of the Christ-impulse. Hence the Greek nation crumbled away so quickly at the time when Christianity developed, because it resigned its guiding Spirit of the Age that he might become the leader of exoteric Christianity. The Spirit of the Age of Ancient Greece became the missionary, the inspirer, or rather the ‘intuitor’ of the out-spreading exoteric Christianity. Here therefore we have before us the spectacle of a renunciation such as we have spoken of, in a concrete case. The Spirit of the Age of the Greeks, because he had fulfilled his mission in the fourth post-Atlantean age of civilization so exceptionally well, might have risen into a higher sphere, but he renounced that, and by so doing became the guiding Spirit of the out-spreading, exoteric Christianity, and in that capacity he worked further among the various peoples.

Another such renunciation occurred on another occasion, and this second renunciation is particularly interesting, especially to those who call themselves Anthroposophists. Whereas over in Asia and right down to the Egyptians and Greeks the several Archangels develop into the Spirits of the Age, we have on the whole in Europe various peoples and tribes who are guided by their several Archangels. Thus whereas the corresponding Archangels who were once upon a time sent from the West towards the East, had ascended to the rank of Spirits of the Age, we still have an Archangel in Europe who worked in the Germanic and above all in the Celtic peoples; in those peoples who, at the time when Christianity started, were still spread over a great part of Western Europe, as far as the present Hungary, across South Germany and the Alps. These peoples had the Celtic Folk-spirit for their Archangel. The peoples belonging to the Celtic Spirit were also spread far up towards the north-east of Europe. They were guided by an important Archangel who, soon after the Christian impulse had been given to humanity, had renounced becoming an Archai, a Spirit of Personality, and decided to remain at the stage of an Archangel and to be subordinate in future to the various Spirits of the Age who should arise in Europe. Hence also the Celtic peoples as one combined people dwindled away, because their Archangel had practiced a special resignation and had undertaken a special mission. That is a characteristic example of how in such a case the ‘remaining-behind’ helped to inaugurate special missions.

Now what became of the Archangel of the Celtic peoples, when he had renounced becoming a Spirit of Personality? He became the inspiring Spirit of esoteric Christianity; and in particular of those teachings and impulses which underlie esoteric Christianity; the real true esoteric Christianity comes from his inspirations. The secret, hidden place for those who were initiated into these Mysteries was to be found in Western Europe, and there the inspiration was given by this guiding Spirit, who had originally gone through an important training as Archangel of the Celtic people, renounced his further ascent, and had undertaken another mission, that of becoming the inspirer of esoteric Christianity, which was to work on further through the Mysteries of the Holy Grail, through Rosicrucianism. Here you have an example of a renunciation, a remaining behind of one of these Beings of the hierarchies, and at the same time you have a concrete example in which you can at once recognize the significance of thus remaining behind. Although this Archangel could have risen to the rank of an Archai, he remained in that of an Archangel and was able to lead the important current of esoteric Christianity, which is to work on further through the various Spirits of the Age. No matter how these Spirits of the Age may work, this esoteric Christianity will be a source for everything which may again be changed and metamorphosed under the influence of the various Spirits of the Age. Thus we have another example of how such a renunciation taken place, whilst on the other hand we are experiencing in our age the mighty spectacle of Folk-spirits being promoted to the rank of Spirits of the Age.

Now in Europe we have the various Germanic peoples. These peoples who originally were guided by one Archangel, were destined to come gradually under the guidance of many different Archangels, in order to form individual peoples in various ways. It is of course exceedingly difficult to speak impartially of these things,—difficult only for the reason that in certain respects passion and jealousy may easily be aroused. Hence certain mysteries belonging to this evolution can only be lightly touched upon. From among the number of those Archangels proceeded the Archai who is the guiding Spirit of the Age of our fifth age of civilization in the post-Atlantean epoch. He took the precedence long, long after one of the Archangels of the Germanic peoples had gone through a certain training. The Spirit of the Age who was the Folk-spirit in the Græco-Latin age became that Spirit of the Age who, as you know, was at a later time occupied in spreading exoteric Christianity. Later Roman history was also guided by a kind of Spirit of the Age, who had risen from having been the Archangel of the Roman people and had united his activity with that of the Christian Spirit of the Age. Both of these were the teachers of that Archangel who guided the Germanic peoples, who had been one of their guiding Archangels and had then raised himself to be the Zeitgeist, or the Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization.

There was a great deal to be done, but above all it was necessary that a strong individualizing and intermingling of the various folk-elements should take place in Europe. This was only possible because, whilst over in Asia and Africa the Archangels had long since ascended to Spirits of the Age, in Europe the guidance was still carried on by the Archangels themselves, because the several small peoples were guided by their Folk-souls and, without troubling about the Spirits of the Age, were completely devoted to the impulses of the Folk-spirits themselves. At the time when the Christian impulse passed over humanity, there was in Europe an intermingled activity of several Folk-spirits who were filled with a sense of freedom; every one of them went his own way and therefore made it difficult for a guiding Spirit of the Age to arise for the fifth age of civilization, to lead the several Folk-spirits. In order to make possible that people which occupies the country of France there was an intermingling of the Roman, Celtic and Frank folk-elements, and on account of this the whole guidance naturally assumed a different form. It passed from the several guiding Archangels,—who had received other tasks,—over to others. (In the case of the guiding Archangel of the Celts, we have said what his mission was; and in the same way we could state what were the missions of the Archangels of the other peoples.) Hence among the peoples which arose through such interminglings came other Archangels, who entered upon their office when the various elements intermingled. Thus in fact for a long time even in the Middle Ages, in Central and Northern Europe the leadership was chiefly in the hands of the Archangels who were only gradually influenced by that common Spirit of the Age who went in front of the Christ-impulse. In many cases the several Folk-spirits in Europe became the servants of the Christ Spirit of the Age. The European Archangels placed themselves in the service of this universal Christ Spirit of the Age whilst the several peoples were hardly in a position to allow any of the Archangels to rise to the rank of a Spirit of the Age. Only in the sixteenth to the seventeenth century (beginning from about the twelfth century), was preparation made for the development of the guiding Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age, under whose guidance we still are to-day. He belongs just as much to the great directing Spirits of the Age, as those who were the great directing Spirits of the Age during the Egyptian-Chaldæan-Babylonian, Old Persian, and Indian ages of civilization. But this Spirit of the Age of our fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization worked in a very unique manner. He had to make a kind of compromise with one of the old Spirits of the Age who worked before the Christian-impulse, viz., the Egyptian Spirit of the Age, who, as we have heard, had in a certain respect risen to the rank of a Spirit of Form. Thus it comes about that our fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, in which we now are, is really ruled by a Spirit of the Age who is in a certain way very much under the influence and impulses of the old Egyptian civilization, and of a Spirit of Form who is only at quite an elementary stage.

That caused the many rifts and divisions in our age. Our Spirit of the Age in the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization is striving in a certain respect to raise himself up to spiritual heights and to raise the fourth post-Atlantean age of civilization to a higher stage. But that includes the materialistic tendency and inclination, and according as the various Archangels, the various Folk-souls, have greater or less inclination towards this materialistic tendency, does a more or less materialistic people arise under the guidance of this Spirit of the Age of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, and the people itself gives a more or less materialistic shade to the Spirit of the Age. On the other hand an idealistic people is one which gives the Spirit of the Age a shade which is in the direction of Idealism.

Now from the twelfth to the sixteenth century something gradually developed, something which in a certain respect worked beside the Christian Spirit of the Age,—who is the on-working Greek Spirit of the Age,—so that in fact, in a wonderful manner, that which we call the Christian Spirit of the Age,—who was united with a real Archai of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization,—streamed into our culture; and besides this, the influence of old Egypt was also active, whose Spirit of the Age had raised himself to a certain rank among the Spirits of Form. Now for the very reason that such a triad is at work in our whole culture, it has become possible for the many different kinds of culture and the various Folk-souls to appear in our fifth age. It became possible for the Spirit of the Age to manifest the most varied colors and shades in his activity. The Archangels, who received their orders from the Spirit of the Age, worked in very many different ways.

Those of you who dwell in the North will be interested in something which in our next studies we shall have to go into more closely. The following question will especially interest you: How did that Archangel work, who was once upon a time sent up to Norway with the northern, the Scandinavian peoples, and from whom the various Archangels of Europe—especially those of Western, Central and Northern Europe—received their inspirations? In the world outside it would be reckoned as folly that the very spot in the continent of Europe should be indicated, from whence at one time the greatest impulses streamed forth in all directions, the spot which was the seat of sublime Spirits before the Celtic Folk-Spirit as Celtic Archangel had founded a new Centre in the noble citadel of the Grail. From that spot which in ancient times was the centre for the outpouring of the spirituality of Europe, there also streamed forth that which was first of all given to the Archangel of the Northern peoples as his mission. To the external world it would, as I say, appear folly, if we were to indicate the spot from which radiates that which works into the various Germanic tribes, as that part which now lies over Central Germany, but is really situated above the earth. If you were to draw something like a circle, so that the towns of Detmold and Paderborn were to lie within it, you would then arrive at that neighborhood from whence poured forth the mission of the most exalted Spirits who extended their mission to Northern and Western Europe. Hence, because the great centre of inspiration was there, later on the Saga said that Asgard had actually been situated on this part of the earth's surface. There, however, in the distant past, was that great centre of inspiration, which later on transferred its chief activity to the centre of the Holy Grail.

The peoples of Scandinavia, with their first Archangels, were at the same time given quite different tendencies, tendencies which at the present time are really only still expressed in the unique form of the Scandinavian mythology. If we compare, in the occult sense, the Scandinavian mythology with other mythologies which have reigned upon the earth, we may know that this Scandinavian mythology represents the primal tendencies of the Archangel who was sent up here to the North, the primal tendencies which have retained their original form, such as we would have to see in a child, when particular talents, latent genius, etc., remain at the stage of childhood. In the Archangel who was sent to Scandinavia we have those tendencies which were expressed later in the unique form of the Scandinavian mythology. Hence the great significance of the Scandinavian mythology for the comprehension of the real, inner being of the Scandinavian Folk-soul. Hence also the great significance which the understanding of this mythology has for the further development of this Archangel, who certainly had within him, in a certain way, the tendency to rise to the rank of an Archai. But to that end several things are necessary. It is necessary that in quite a definite way those tendencies should develop which in certain respects have to-day withdrawn behind the dim and shadowy influence of that Spirit of the Age who had placed himself in front of the impulse of Christianity. Although several things in the Germanic-Scandinavian mythology may appear curiously like the presentations of the Greek mythology, it must nevertheless be said that there is no other mythology on the earth which, in its remarkable construction and unique development, gives a more significant or a clearer picture of the evolution of the world than this Scandinavian mythology, so that this picture may be taken as a preparatory stage for the Anthroposophical picture of the evolution of the world.

In the way in which it has been developed out of the tendencies of the Archangel, Germanic mythology is in its pictures most significantly like that which, as the Anthroposophical picture of the world, is gradually to grow for humanity. The point in question will be, how those tendencies which once upon a time an Archangel brought with him into the world, may be developed after he has had the advantage of being educated by the Christ—Spirit of the Age. These tendencies will be able to become an important part in the guiding Spirit of the Age, if at a later stage in its development, this people understands how to bring to perfection the tendencies it has received at an earlier epoch.

This gives only a slight indication of an important problem, an important evolution of a European Archangel; we have indicated, in how far he has the foundations for a Spirit of the Age. At this point we shall stop for a little while, and then continue our studies in such a manner that, from the configuration of the Folk-soul, we shall endeavor to enter into an esoteric study of Mythology; and, in doing so, the description of the very interesting character of the Germanic and especially also of the Scandinavian mythology, will be brought before us as a special chapter.

In these lectures I have said many things which may, with some justification, be deemed strange and unfamiliar, in view of the materialism of our time. But it is the case that the knowledge which is gained from spheres beyond the Threshold has to do with a region of the universe other than that of the sense-perceptible facts to which science, so called, is alone willing to pay attention.

Let us remind ourselves at this point of the way in which the outer form and figure of man indicates his connection with the cosmos. The head, in its whole shape and form, is a structure which could not have come into being within Earth-existence as such, but is a product of the Moon-forces, and its individual form, in every case, is the outcome of a man's former incarnations. We have also heard that the human body (other than the head) is preparing to become head in the next incarnation. In the form of the human head, therefore, we have an indication of the previous incarnation; in the processes of the human body, we have indications of the next incarnation. In this way the human form is directly connected with the preceding and the following incarnations.

Study of the being of man in this light leads us to a knowledge of great cosmic connections.

It is well known to you that knowledge which is a remnant of the wisdom of ancient times relates the outer form of man to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac.¹ Without speaking the superficial language that is characteristic of most modern astrological lore, it is right to call attention to the fact that behind the connections which are said to exist between the human form and the universe, deeply significant mysteries lie hidden.

Astrology, as you know, relates the human head to Aries; the throat and larynx to Taurus; the shoulders, together with all that comes to expression in the arms and hands, to Gemini; the breast to Cancer, the heart to Leo; the lower part of the trunk to Virgo; the region of the loins to Libra; the sexual organs to Scorpio; the thigh to Sagittarius; the knee to Capricorn; the shank to Aquarius; the feet to Pisces.

There we have the relation of the body, with all its parts, including the head, to the forces reigning in the cosmos and which in a certain way can be pictured or symbolised in the fixed constellations of the Zodiac.

We have spoken of the head as being a transformation of the whole body, the body as it was in the previous incarnation. The organs of sight again are of a twelve-fold constitution.

The whole human body is related, as we have seen, to the twelve constellations but each part of it must also, in turn, be related to all these twelve constellations.

I must point out, too, a certain characteristic of all the great laws of the universe.—Whenever we have a “twelve-hood,” then one member of the twelve-hood, while it belongs to the whole, is at the same time an independent member. The head, for instance, is related to one constellation but is, in turn, derived from all the twelve. Hence in the next incarnation, what to-day is the whole head, will be represented by one sense-organ; what to-day is the larynx (including the neighbouring organs of speech) will be transformed, will undergo a metamorphosis, and in the next incarnation will serve another part of the organism; the arms, another, and so on.

As we stand in the world we may say that our whole body is transformed, metamorphosed to become head in the next incarnation, and in so orderly a way that the twelve-fold constitution of our present body appears again in the next incarnation in the twelve-fold constitution of the head.

It may be asked: where is there any indication that the head is really twelve-fold in its constitution? Most of you will know that twelve main nerves go out from the human head. If these twelve nerves were rightly explained—not in the miserably confused way in which they are mentioned by modern cerebral physiology—we should be able to recognise in them that which, in the previous incarnation, was contained in the whole body. It is not necessary to be puzzled by the strange dictum that, for example, the hands will be transformed into some part of the head. Even in a crude sense we may understand what is meant. Can we not observe in the hands something that points, in germ, to organs of speech? Do not the gestures of hands and arms speak an eloquent language in themselves? Is it then so impossible to imagine them changed into something different, some thing which, at another stage of existence, will appear as a sense-organ of the head? And the idea that what is physically expressed in the knee is preparing (when spread over the whole body) to become the sense of touch, will only be laughed to scorn by those who have no conception of the phenomenon of metamorphosis in life. It is not difficult to conceive that the marvellous structure of the human knee with its knee-cap and peculiar sensitiveness (a sensitiveness different from that of the organ of touch which is spread over the whole body) is preparing to become the organ for the sense of touch in the next incarnation.

The whole of our being undergoes metamorphosis and a study of this metamorphosis opens up deep mysteries before us. But if we are to penetrate these mysteries in the right way, we must not adopt the attitude of the science of to-day which is often that of cynicism. We must have true reverence for existence if we are ever to read its mysteries.

The physical organism of man and technical discoveries.

For some long time now, modern man has brought his dreadful pride and presumption into all his conceptions of the universe. When these qualities are expressed in an extreme form in individual characters, this is not a matter of surprise to those who realise that it is precisely in the intellectual and scientific life of humanity that pride and presumption are the ruling factors, albeit this is unobserved by the majority of men.

In the course of our studies in Spiritual Science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to this canker that has made its appearance in the more modern phase of evolution. Think of the way in which men write and of what they write about the achievements of the human race. Think of what can be read in school-books or in other works about the genius of discovery, about the invention, let us say, of paper. Paper is something that may well be a cause of regret when we think of the kind of stuff that is printed on it nowadays! Much has been said in praise of that capacity in man which has reached such a zenith of achievement! But as I have said before, a wasp's nest is composed of a substance that is the same as paper. Millions of years ago, the elemental Beings who stand behind the preparation of a wasp's nest, had already forestalled man in this discovery. And the same could be said in a thousand other instances. Take the telescope which can be turned in two directions, upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards. Schmieg, a man who tried in many ways to draw attention to such things, pointed to this very example of the telescope. Just think what it is that man has really achieved here. The twofold movement of the telescope—upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards—is made possible by a double apparatus for rotation: an upper apparatus known in mechanics as a hinge-joint, and a lower apparatus known as a pivot-joint. In this way, provision is made for the double rotatory movement. Now it would be absurd, as can easily be proved in the case of the telescope, to construct it the other way round, putting the pivot in place of the hinge or the hinge below the pivot. This would be quite useless. That such an adjustment of movement has been achieved may be lauded as a deeply significant discovery on the part of man. But in a much more ingenious way—and I use the word ‘ingenious’ in the objective and not in the subjective sense—you all possess this apparatus in your own bodies at the place where the head is poised upon the cervical vertebrae: above—a hinge joint; below—a pivot joint. And because of this you are able to move your heads upwards and downwards and from side to side. You see, therefore, that in the human organism itself we have exactly the same thing.

In the human organism there is to be found everything that man, through his discoveries, has made, or will yet make in the way of mechanical appliances, everything, that is to say, that can really contribute to human evolution. Only such things as can contribute nothing to human evolution are not to be found in man, or are only to be found there inasmuch as they have been inserted into his being by forces quite outside the natural course of his evolution. If, therefore, we look back to very early times, we shall say that there must have been a time when these peculiar joint-mechanisms and a great deal more as well, came into being. They are now in actual existence. We can go further and further back in human evolution (that is to say to phases of evolution when man already possessed the form that is his to-day), and we shall never find these organic arrangements absent. If, moreover, they are said to be the outcome of purely mechanical forces, how can this possibly be explained? Just think how wonderfully suitable for its purpose this particular apparatus is—so much so, indeed that it is possible even to use it on a telescope. No other arrangement would be anything like so suitable. According to a well-known principle of superficial Darwinism (I say ‘superficial’ expressly) it is the fittest who survive. But in this case, of what is the less fit supposed to consist? The less fit would make it impossible for man as he now is, to live at all. He simply would not be able to exist in the way he now exists; it is quite unthinkable that this is a case of transition from the less fit to the fit. Those who know the real truth as opposed to the dicta of superficial students of Darwinism, have always called attention to these things.

How will man in the future gain enlightenment on the subject of his connection with the cosmos? On this matter too, I have already said things that will have seemed puzzling and strange. I spoke of the modern belief that the Heavens are to be explained by the Heavens, and said that this was a mere catchword. The truth is that the secrets of the Heavens which can be investigated—and which by the Copernican school are considered to yield their own explanation—these secrets can explain what exists on the Earth; the mysteries of the Earth in their turn, can explain the mysteries of the Heavens.

Strange as it may appear, in times to come, in order to understand the Heavens, men will study the embryo (as it develops out of the cell) and its environment, up to the point of the existence of man as a complete and finished being. And the observations made will serve to reveal the mysteries of the great universe. The revelations of the Heavens will be explanatory of processes which, on the Earth, take their course in animal, plant and man—above all in embryonic life. The truth is that the Heavens explain the Earth, and the Earth the Heavens. This still seems a paradox to the modern age but it is a principle of real knowledge for the future and one that must be amplified and developed in many directions.

Aberrations in Occultism

Let me now speak again of problems connected with Lucifer and Ahriman. With some justification we look for the manifestations and revelations of Lucifer in human emotions and in the passions and feelings of men. We regard the Luciferic influence as operating more from the inner being. That Eve could set about making herself fair to look upon, could become a being who realised her own beauty and through her beauty proceed to bring about the temptation—this necessitated the help of Lucifer. When the other influence was destined to appear in the course of earthly evolution, namely, that the Sons of the Gods should find the daughters of men fair, i.e., should find the objective world beautiful, the intervention of Ahriman was required. It was necessary for Lucifer to work through Eve in order that she might realise her beauty and through her beauty bring about the temptation. That the objective world should work as beauty and influence the human soul, Ahriman was needed.

The first event fell in the Lemurian epoch, the second in the age of Atlantis.

It behoves us to increase our knowledge and understanding of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. I can, of course, only describe certain details, but these details must then be put together in order to build up a knowledge of the nature of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences as a whole.

Some of you are possibly familiar with strange things that are apt to take place in circles where occultism, pseudo-occultism, occult charlatanism and the like, are cultivated. These strange things happen again and again. Suppose, for example, that a Society which likes to call itself an ‘Occult Society,’ numbers among its adherents, certain celebrities. In these so-called ‘Occult Societies’ there are always celebrities whose word is taken for law. Something said or done by these celebrities is immediately laid down as dogma. Suppose it becomes a dogma that one or another of these persons is the reincarnation of some great individuality, has achieved something quite out of the common, has uttered sublime truths, thousands of printed copies of which are sent out into the world. The utterances are considered to be of a lofty order although they may be commonplace in the extreme. That, however, makes no difference! It happens again and again that the most superficial nonsense, if delivered with the necessary veneer of sentimentality, is accepted by thousands of people as the most profound truth.

When something of the kind happens—and I am not now speaking of a particular instance but of typical occurrences—a good many people will be roused, protesting vigorously that they will submit to no dogma that it is all nonsense, that they do not want it, and they will never believe in it. Opposition will immediately be set on foot against them. But then some celebrity comes along and meets one of these rebels. What happens? In a few hours the rebel is converted into the most rabid supporter! Sometimes, indeed, the conversion is effected in less than an hour. Such things happen again and again. People are puzzled, very naturally. They say ‘Yes, but he or she (and it is not by any means always a ‘she’ but quite often a ‘he’)—he or she used to think so clearly about these things. How could one short conversation suffice so completely to change them over that they now believe anything and everything?’

There are people sitting here who know that such things have actually happened. But can it really be said in such a case that true conviction has been brought about? No, indeed! There can be no question of what is known as conviction in ordinary waking life. The occurrence must be regarded in quite a different light and in order to understand it we must consider the character of Ahriman.

One of the main characteristics of Ahriman is that he absolutely ignores the unbiased relationship to truth which is a determining factor in the life of man on Earth. This unbiased relationship to truth, where we strive for truth as the accordance of idea with objective reality, is beyond Ahriman's ken. He neither knows nor is concerned with it. Ahriman's position in the universe makes it entirely a matter of indifference to him whether, in the forming of a concept, this concept agrees with reality. In everything which Ahriman conceives as truth (in the human sense, of course, one would not call it ‘truth’) he is concerned only with effects. What is said, is said not because it fits the facts, but in order to produce an effect. This or that is said in order that some particular effect may be produced. It would therefore be ‘Ahrimanic’ if I were to speak to someone about our Building, let us say, with entire indifference as to its truth, but merely for the sake of inducing the person in question to undertake this or that, knowing that he will acquiesce if I ask him to do so.

I am sure you realise that these things actually happen: that a man may think out some scheme, be utterly indifferent as to whether his ideas are in accordance with objective reality or not, and then make use of them in such a way that they will have a certain effect upon those who listen to him. On a small scale this happens every day and one can think of many examples. Just think of all the things match-making ladies say when they want to bring two young people together, of all they say of the doings of the future couple! The match-makers are quite unconcerned as to the truth of what they say. Their only aim is to bring off the match under the influence of what is said.

That, of course, is a very trivial example and Ahriman himself is above such trivialities. What I mean to convey is that in human life we can find analogies for everything. The point with Ahriman is always the effect that will be produced by what is said and he formulates his utterances in such a way that when it comes to the point of communicating them he can step in to help.

Now it would serve Ahriman's purposes well if there were to arise on Earth a number of human beings who hold such a definite belief as that of which I spoke just now. If a man has been initiated into the mysteries of corrupt occultism and as a result of the initiation he has received has no inclination to place himself in the ranks of true occultism, then he can enter into a pact with Ahriman and declare a truth which in the human sense, of course, is not truth at all but which will produce certain definite effects. There is always some element of this kind at work in events such as I have described: where in an incredibly short time an out-and-out rebel succumbs to suggestion practised by means of Ahrimanic arts. In league with Ahriman a man can easily induce another to believe that some personality is an incarnation of a great individuality. It is merely a question of knowing the art of sowing the seeds where they will find responsive soil—in this case the soil of humanity itself—in such a way that the effects alone, and not the fact of agreement with objective reality, are of importance.

Such things go on in many circles which like to consider themselves ‘Occult.’ In many such circles it is not a question of ideas which accord with reality but of saying things to serve a definite aim and produce definite effects in one direction or another. Certainly, there are people who are so dull-witted and simple-minded that they immediately respond to Ahrimanic impulses quite unconsciously and without any direct application of Ahrimanic arts. But it does actually happen that Ahrimanic arts, that is to say, arts practised in direct association with Ahriman, are applied in human life. In our times, things that are done as an outcome of alliance with Ahriman play a part of great significance. For much of what has been going on for a long time now in human affairs is only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of secrets which have been lightly touched upon here.

We find, therefore, that Ahriman is never concerned as to whether an idea fits the facts but only with the effects produced.

With Lucifer it is not quite the same. Lucifer has other characteristics of which we have often spoken. But one characteristic in particular shall be mentioned here in order to further our knowledge. Like Ahriman, Lucifer is never concerned with the agreement of an idea with actuality. Lucifer is out to cultivate such ideas as will generate in man the highest possible degree of consciousness. Understand me well: I mean by that, cultivation of the most enhanced consciousness, of the widest possible expansion of consciousness. This expanded consciousness in which Lucifer is interested is associated with a certain inner voluptuousness in man. This again is Lucifer’s sphere. You remember perhaps that in speaking of At1antean times I once said that all sexuality was then an unconscious process. Beautiful myths of the different people point to this unconsciousness of the sexual process in ancient times. Only in the course of time was it raised to the realm of consciousness. Lucifer plays an essential part in raising this unconsciousness greater and greater consciousness.Prematurely to induce consciousness in man, that is to say, to call forth consciousness whereas under proper conditions this particular degree of consciousness should unfold at another period of time—this is the aim of Lucifer. Lucifer does not want the attention of men to be directed altogether to externalities. He would like everything that works into the consciousness to work from within. Hence all visionary life—which is, as it were, an exudation of forces in the inner organs—is of a Luciferic nature.

When Lucifer is known—and he must be known because it is a question of keeping him in his rightful sphere and we are here concerned with spiritual forces in the universe—we realise with horror that he has not the very least understanding pf any harmless delight or amusement which a man may take in things of the outer world. Lucifer has not the remotest sympathy for harmless, amused delight aroused by something outside. What he does understand is any emotion that is kindled by the inner being of man. Lucifer well understands when a desire in man awakens voluptuousness and when some process that would otherwise remain unconscious is called in this way into the region of consciousness. But in spite of his wisdom—and Lucifer has, of course, sublime wisdom—he simply cannot understand a harmless joke occasioned by some outer event. This lies outside his province. And one can protect oneself against the attacks which Lucifer is so prone to make, precisely by taking innocent joy and delight in the world outside. Lucifer cannot bear this; it vexes him terribly, for instance, if we take delight in a good caricature.

Such are the connections which are disclosed when we pass from the world of sense to the region lying beyond the Threshold, the region where things are not as they are in the world of sense but where all is Being, living Being. Even in the world of the Elements everything is living.

It is therefore correct to say that both Ahriman and Lucifer are equally unconcerned as to whether ideas agree with actuality. Ahriman is concerned with the effects of what is said; Lucifer's aim is to bring about an enhanced consciousness in man of what, in a particular situation, should really not become conscious.

In these two ways it is possible to achieve ends which could not be achieved if care were taken to ensure absolute agreement between idea and objective reality. And just as an alliance with Ahriman is the aim of corrupt occult circles, for reasons already indicated, so too, attempts are made to enter into a pact with Lucifer, that is to say, efforts are made to influence human beings in such a way that vision is induced as the outcome of inner voluptuousness—vision that is kindled from the inner being.

What is consciously achieved in these corrupt occult circles, namely, a pact with Ahriman on the one side and with Lucifer on the other, enables Ahriman and Lucifer to work into the unconscious regions of man's being. And much of the criticism which must be directed against the character of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in the way it is expressing itself in the world, is to be traced to Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. That there is so much lying, direct and indirect, that so much is said with utter indifference as to whether it agrees with the objective reality or not but simply for the sake of satisfying some feeling or passion—all these things are directly traceable to the fact that Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences have gripped the world to-day and are causing chaos in human affairs. For at our present stage of evolution we should not be capable of making statements as the outcome of passion without any attempt to discover whether they are really in accordance with reality or not, if we only lent ourselves to the Powers of Good! During the Atlantean epoch and even afterwards—at any rate up to the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean period—the forces in man's own inner being enabled him to ensure agreement between his ideas and the corresponding objective realities. This faculty, as we know, has been lost. And our present phase of evolution is there precisely in order that men may learn to observe the outer world, to investigate it—not to make statements which are merely instigated by their own passions! To-day, when conclusions well up from the inner life and no attempt is made to ensure their agreement with objective reality, a Luciferic influence is mingling with an Ahrimanic influence, the one inducing misplaced consciousness, and the other, lying and untruthfulness. These things are very widespread at the present time. Many souls to-day ignore the necessity of ensuring that an idea shall absolutely accord with objective reality. Moreover, few enough efforts are made in this direction. When they are made they are not understood and cause, to say the least, a considerable amount of surprise! Least of all does one find understanding when one tries to give such characterisations of reality as are supported by what actually exists, simply taking the things of the world as they are and reproducing them in ideas. People do not understand that this is something radically different from things that are done and said as the outcome either of personal or national passion. Here lies the radical difference which is unobserved to-day. Statements are made and conclusions are formed by men in accordance with their own lines of thought and without regard as to whether such statements and conclusions agree with the facts or not. That statements should agree with objective facts—upon this the fate of our age depends. For only so can we hope to pass onwards to an epoch wherein the spiritual world can be perceived in its true nature. Unless we acquire the faculty for the perception of truth in this physical world we shall never be able to unfold it in regard to the spiritual world. The capacity to find our true bearings in the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. It is for this purpose that we are placed in the physical world, where it behoves us to seek agreement between idea and objective reality, in such a way that this may become natural to us, may become a habit and a faculty which we then carry with us into the spiritual world.

But in these days there are so many who make statements with utter disregard of their conformity with objective fact, simply out of their feelings and emotions! This tendency is the very reverse of what is needed for the onward progress of humanity. Thinking in accordance with reality has become terribly foreign to our materialistic age under the influences which have here been described. Thinking in accordance with reality is rare in the extreme and when it is honestly striven for it comes into clash with whole world of unreal thinking. A terrible example of this is afforded by the conflicts that arise between our Anthroposophical Movement and unreal thinking;—conflicts which must be spoken of, however unwelcome this may be, because the facts are there and because one cannot be silent about them if one is sincere in regard to the Movement.

These conflicts of thinking that is in accordance with reality with thinking that is inimical to reality (inimical in the sense explained above) are an example of what is at stake when efforts are made really to serve the interests of truth.

In every age the fight with the opposing powers has had to be waged but the particular form this fight assumes in every age and the metamorphosis it undergoes must be recognised and understood. The influence of the Scribes and Pharisees has not died out! It is still working to-day, in a different form. And we shall only make progress with the clarity that is essential when we really understand this difference between thinking that is in accordance with reality and thinking that is inimical to reality.

• 1. See also Cosmic Forces in Man. Christiania, Nov.–Dec., 1921 Anthroposophical Publishing Co.

Yesterday we brought our observations on the characteristics of imaginative knowledge to a certain point of view and emphasized that everything that a person consciously brings into their consciousness through imaginative knowledge is actually already within them. I have used the comparison that in a dark room there are various objects, or for that matter people, which cannot be seen with the physical eyes in a dark room. Then one enters with a light, and everything inside is illuminated; nothing is new in it, everything was already there before. The only difference is that the things are seen and perceived afterwards, and not before. It is the same with what imaginative knowledge presents to us. Everything that imaginative knowledge brings to consciousness is present in man, reigns and works in man down there in the hidden depths of the soul; it belongs to what lives and moves in man. And what is especially important for man on the physical plane is that he is continually increased or diminished in his powers in some way through what he absorbs, experiences and lets sink down from his imaginative life into the depths of consciousness.

I shall have more to say to you on this subject on a later occasion, for the process is very incompletely characterized when one says: Here [it is drawn] is the threshold of consciousness; here is an idea that sinks down into the subconscious and is now down there like a living being. As I said, the process is quite incompletely described. But we want to ascend slowly and gradually to the true facts in this area.

What I want to say today is that we are becoming aware of how these imaginative cognitive facts are, of course, - as you can see from the discussion - thoroughly and deeply connected with all the conditions of human life, even on the physical plane from birth to death. But they belong to the unconscious or subconscious conditions of life. So that from what we have considered, we can also gain the important truth that man, as he lives on earth, is dependent on conditions that do not enter into the bright day-consciousness that we have from birth to death, except when we sleep. So we are dependent on life factors that cannot be known with ordinary normal consciousness.

But from the way I have presented it, these life factors that prevail down there – and we said yesterday, in the etheric body – are still quite close to the person, so close that, because they are related, they connect with what the person continually lets sink down from his world of ideas. For man can, so to speak, when he transforms his thoughts into memories, transform his thoughts himself into the substance that is down there in the subconscious. It is, after all, substantively quite the same as what we think. When what we think is down there, it is just as much a seething, swirling world as what lives and moves down there, which is basically a living thought life. But this is the etheric body, which has come into the etheric body from the cosmos. And because it is related to our conscious thought life, it is still very close to the human being. And just as it lives and moves in us today in our unconscious, so it was basically fully present during the old moon existence. This [moon thinking] was - if you imagine it as a dream, if you think that it is completely immersed in dream life - generally proceeding as when you dream, but perceive the living weaving of thought in the dream. That is the old moon dweller's concept of the imagination. It is only during our life on earth that we have to make an effort to have thoughts, to form thoughts through our own efforts. The old moon dweller did not form thoughts through his own efforts. He lived in dream images, which were not as dead as our thoughts, but were living, weaving images, forming thoughts.

You can see from what I have described to you that when we immerse ourselves in the imaginative world, we gain something and lose something at the same time. We lose the reassurance of the peaceful earthly experience of thoughts; we no longer have that in our power because thoughts themselves are living inner forces. In ordinary life we feel that we are the masters of our thoughts; we do not have them in the imaginative world; but in return we also grasp a life that is just life. The thoughts we have in physical life are dead; what we grasp there lives and moves. And so it was already during the old moon existence for people, only they had it in dreams, and not consciously. Then, in the evolution on earth, there is an ascent to consciousness. And from the conscious realization of that which was a dream during the old moon existence, imaginative knowledge emerges as the first step from which spiritual-scientific knowledge must be taken. This imaginative knowledge is therefore still very much related to the human being.

Now, I said, one gains something and one loses something. People would agree with the first part, gaining something, but they do not agree with the losing. And from this, countless errors arise; very, very many errors arise from this. You see, it is not so easy if you do not make an effort to imagine what this dream-like imaginative imagining was like during the moon phase. When we live here on earth, it is inconvenient, because of the physical developmental period, to always have to form ideas and thoughts only on the basis of earthly facts. That is precisely the inconvenience of studying. One must really weigh the facts, judge the facts, and connect the facts, and one must slowly work one's way through one's own efforts into the worlds of thought and imagination, which one masters as an earthly human being with an earthly will. Some people find it much more comfortable to have the living world of thought simply handed to them, so that they only need to wait for it: when they receive the 'enlightenment' from it, it enters into their soul life, and they no longer need to develop thoughts. That is how they think, but it does not take them any further than they are. One stands much higher as an earth human than as a moon human, because one has developed further. Compared to the dreamy moon-imagination, the earthman, who combines facts and forms concepts from life experiences with his rational judgment, stands much higher than the moonman and than the one who longs for this moonman existence, which is supposed to consist of illuminations that have not been worked out through thought.

One can have peculiar experiences there. Not that a person, when he sinks back to this moon-like realization, has no thoughts. He has thoughts, but they come by themselves, he does not need to do the work of thinking. That seems rather comfortable. One can experience a certain, very important, specific experience over and over again, which must be considered if one wants to understand these things at all.

There are people who develop a certain visionary clairvoyance. This dream-like imagining, this visionary clairvoyance, always involves a regression to a lunar nature. For real clairvoyance that can be desired for the earth must be based on a higher level, on an even greater development through the world of thought than the recognition of the physical plane. The regression is not an elevation, not a development upwards for the person, but a development downwards, a becoming less intelligent than one is as a normal earth person. And then the strange experience occurs, which one can have again and again. There are people who have a certain visionary clairvoyance, but are not really intelligent at all. Yes, their clairvoyance is almost directly related to the fact that they shun intelligence, that they do not want to develop the intelligence that one has to develop as an earthly human being. It is precisely this attenuation of ordinary earthly intelligence that is very often associated with a certain degree of visionary clairvoyance, which is a lunar atavistic one. And then perhaps the following occurs: Such people can then make notes of their images. These notes are not thoughtless, but interwoven with thoughts - the thoughts come with the images and within them are interwoven spiritual, very spiritual images. And then the puzzle can arise: Yes, there is a person who describes in pictures, in very beautiful pictures, Atlantis or other things that come to him in a visionary way, and that is absolutely logically intelligent. But I never perceived such intelligent logic in that person when he was supposed to explain things of the physical plane; then he does not have it. He has not become enough of an earth person. But if he is allowed to fall back into lunar intelligence, then the intelligence comes. But then it is not his intelligence, then he is merely a medium for the lunar intelligence, then the lunar intelligence works in him. One can receive beautiful descriptions of spiritual worlds from people who have sunk a little back into the lunar stage, and who, when they want to apply their earthly acquired intelligence, cannot themselves understand what they have actually produced, and in most cases do not even want to do so.

I said: In the ascent to imaginative knowledge one must gain something and lose something, and that people usually do not want to lose anything. I also pointed out that people who have spirit do not want to lose it. These are not the people who love visionary clairvoyance, for they are quite willing to lose ordinary intelligence, ordinary thinking. But there is another group that does not want to lose this intelligence. They want to maintain this intelligence as it is on the physical plane, they just do not want to develop it further. They do not want to work on this intelligence so that the person comes to use the concepts more freely than they are used in the processes of the physical plane. And then such people come to allegorizing, to symbolizing, which is after all again only an activity of the physical plane, because it does not further the thinking, but leaves it standing, and then puts outer thought-capes on it from all kinds of exquisite occult things. It is very important to bear that in mind.

And you see, that was already in the consciousness of those who slowly and gradually worked or wanted to work their way up to the points of view that we must have in spiritual science today. Today, in spiritual science, we really must bring humanity something of clear thinking, combined with the possibility of knowing something of spiritual worlds, but in clear, completely clear thinking. It has taken a long time for the possibility to arise – and hopefully it has now – to see through these things in this way. And many people have worked their way through to this. People of such great clarity as Goethe, for example, have come very close to complete clarity. But many have worked their way through to this. Just think how Jakob Böhme wrestled with the transition points of the materialistic age, with the chaotically writhing, moving, whirling and tumbling concepts. He had already had them, but to really work through them so that what emerged is what stands with Jakob Böhme as a profound illumination of some secrets of the spiritual world.

Another person has expressed a wonderful sentence – I would say, as if illuminating the field of vision wonderfully, as dawned on modern times – from which one can see, or at least from what he has otherwise achieved, one can see how he was not able to penetrate with a completely clear view to what spiritual science should be today, but he was still able to come so far as to represent the most important nerve. The man I am talking about realized in the 18th century that if you want to know the human being, you have to penetrate through the darkness, through the confusion of external material knowledge. Even if you are at the first stage of imaginative knowledge, this is necessary. Because we have seen what weaves down there in the depths of the soul, you can't reach that with physical knowledge. You have to penetrate through the darkness. But that is not the only thing you have to do. You also have to penetrate through the confusion of ordinary concepts to knowledge, you also have to dispel these confusions. So you also have to get beyond the ordinary thinking that works on the physical plane.

And then this man coined a very beautiful sentence. The first part of this sentence is readily followed, the second part is almost never followed. But it is important to follow it. You see, most people today who want to become or be mystics in some way or other admit that one must strip away the sensual, the material, that one must strip away the confusions of the material in order to penetrate into the spiritual. But that one must also discard the forms of the spiritual that adhere to conceptual thinking, very few people admit; for they would like to take them with them, would like to manage them in the same way as on the physical plane, would like to find the thought down there in the subconscious as a possibility for remembrance in exactly the same form as it has up there.

But it would be a mistake to believe that the clairvoyant, when he looks into the human mind, finds the thoughts there in exactly the same form as the person who has them in his head. That is not true. Down there they are transformed, they are living entities, an elementary world. The world of thoughts that man has here on the physical plane is not found in the spiritual world. That is why that man coined a beautiful sentence that I want to write down for you, because it can really be seen as a kind of trial in one's own mind: how can one possibly get to know something about the worlds that lie outside the earthly world? He said, [it was written on the board]:

Dissipez vos ténèbres matérielles ei vous trouverez l'Homme

With this part of the sentence: To disperse the material darkness and confusion - people who want to be mystics agree. But people today still hardly understand the second part of the sentence. [It was written on the blackboard]:

Dissipez vos ténèbres spirituelles et vous trouverez Dieu

whereby we have to imagine the whole content of spiritual science for “Dieu”, because that is still colored by religious ideas. Not true, he could not yet find the expression that can be found today.

Now you can surely imagine that when someone reads the sentence today: “Dissipez vos ténèbres matétrielles et vous trouverez l'homme”, they think: Yes, fine, that's how I enter the spiritual world, that's what I want. But when he reads, “Dissipez vos ténèbres spirituelles et vous trouverez Dieu,” he says, “Yes, but what will remain for me then? I will have nothing?”

Yes, what remains there? Precisely that remains, which is the content of today's spiritual science. This is necessary: the content of knowledge of the physical plane, which is usually believed to be the only correct one, must be dispelled just as the material darkness is dispelled. Now notice how this is taken into account in our spiritual science... [space in the transcript].

This sentence is a sentence of the so-called “philosophe inconnu”, of Saint-Martin, who saw himself as a disciple of Jakob Böhme. Thus, we already find in Saint-Martin a deep longing for that which is to come to light in spiritual science. But he calls himself “philosophe inconnu”, unknown philosopher, because what he carried within him remained foreign to those who saw him, of course, saw his nose, saw his hands, heard the words he spoke. The actual philosopher Saint-Martin remained unknown to them, quite unknown.

So, after the discussions we had yesterday, the appropriation of imaginative knowledge is a return, a conscious return to the way in which man had his relationship to the world during the lunar time. So that we can say - you remember, we have already presented this from a different side here in lectures: In man, today, still prevail, but supersensibly, as spiritual-supersensibles, the events, which are not actually normal events on earth, but were normal events during the moon time. He has preserved these moon events; he can fall back in a certain sense. Then he produces knowledge in a completely different way than the earth man can produce such knowledge. He can have visionary clairvoyance, have subdued intelligence and pose the very riddle I spoke of earlier, namely that if one were to induce him to work reasonably scientifically, or even to make reasonable conclusions about the most ordinary, everyday events, he cannot do it, that he does not succeed; but when he writes something out of the vision, even about the events that took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, he only writes pictures, remains in the moon life, but still writes terribly cleverly. And what he writes does not match what is otherwise known about the person. So, theoretically he can do nothing, but he writes very cleverly in a mediumistic way, so that one can be amazed at the cleverness. But that is not a further development, that is a regression of the human being. Of course, that does not exclude the possibility that truths can come to light through such a person, because he is, after all, in an earthly existence and connected to the earthly existence and, in addition, has this lively moon life in him.

I have tried to depict the different types of people in the Mystery Dramas, and also to draw a character who falls back into the lunar, who is therefore unintelligent on the physical plane and yet can reveal correct things, who is therefore below the level of the normal earthly human being: that is Theodora. Theodora is a figure who is meant to be a regression into lunar consciousness. That is very clear. I would like to say that it is very clearly indicated there, as it is, by saying at the one point where Theodora appears: “Theodora, a seer. In her, the will element is transformed into naive seership.” Naive seership means, of course, naive visionary. It is a naive seership, and that is how the character is developed. And for this reason, it is also that in the last mystery, Theodora herself can no longer appear, but only her soul, because she cannot go through certain things. These Mystery Dramas should be taken very, very literally. Perhaps some of you will one day realize that hardly anything that has happened here in recent days could not already be read in the Mysteries in some form or other. If one had read it as the things were meant to be read, we would not have needed these confusions.

So let us remember: what is experienced as the imaginative world is still relatively close to the human being. What can be experienced as the inspired world, on the other hand, is much less close to the human being. For when one first enters into the inspired world, it encompasses those facts that did not take place during the moon's existence but already during the old sun's existence and that the human being has also retained. So you penetrate into even greater depths of the human soul when you work your way through to the inspired world. And the inspired world that you encounter first has a certain peculiarity.

You see, when a person works his way through to the imaginative world, he encounters facts that took place during the old moon's existence. If you imagine the old moon in the phases when it was separated from the then sun (you can read about this in “Secret Science”), then at certain times, man lived on this moon that was separated from the sun. And what the human being experienced there is what one encounters first when one returns with the old, dream-like, imaginative clairvoyance. But when one enters the inspired world, then one experiences in the return not a being split off from the sun, but a being directly inside the sun; thus the facts that the human being experienced together with the sun. One experiences truly correct solar facts. And these solar facts, you see, are actually no longer related to man. Because the way man is now, during his earthly existence, if he does not look into the depths of his soul, does not look at what is in the deeply hidden reasons of his soul, he is actually, through what he is on earth, really more of a shell. It is not a real human being, it is more of a shell. First of all, there is the physical form itself, which has been created during the earthly existence as it appears to us on the physical plane. But there are forces at work within it that cannot be seen and that are not even sought by current science.

A friend of ours has been encouraged to search in this direction with the biological material at his disposal. The friend is putting a lot of effort into it and perhaps after some time - such things require a great deal of study - will be able to come up with a way to bridge the gap to these hidden parts of human nature. But for this it is necessary to search out those biological facts that are not taken into account by present-day science, that the present-day researcher, who experiments, leaves lying, as it were. So one has to search through the preparations for what does not interest the other researchers at all, what they leave lying. Of course, a lot is still missing, and a lot of new research has to be done. It is quite possible that it will take many years of work before it can be completed. But it would be an eminently important work because it could show us what can still be achieved by physical science of what lives in human nature from the old moon. It will result in a completely new embryology, a new part, a new side to embryology. It is necessary that this be done. But that is really all; more cannot be found by looking at the human being from the outside. For what can be found today in the human being from the outside is actually not older, not even as old as the oldest time of the old moon existence. But from such research, of which I have just spoken, conclusions can be drawn about processes of the old moon existence. These will correspond with what is described in “Occult Science”. But, as I said, we do not get very far back when we look at human beings as they are today; not even to the beginning of the ancient moon existence, let alone to the ancient sun existence.

If you want to go back to the old solar existence, then you have to take much, much less material in the human being than can be taken in the science I just spoke of. Because what it is about is that something actually penetrates into human nature, which man on earth can bring to revelation, but does not have to bring to revelation. He can, but he does not have to, bring it to revelation. When, for example, an artist or poet is truly inspired, then these inspirations come from the spiritual world of the existence of the sun. They really come from the spiritual world of the existence of the sun. It is just that our time is so terribly poor in spirit that what comes from the inspirations of the existence of the sun is rejected, and people actually only ever want to create in a naturalistic way, to stick to the model, that is to say to the earthly, while what can come from the model is only the material for what one should actually create. The arts that protect the individual artist from becoming attached to the model, from falling back on the material, are architecture and music. Architecture cannot reproduce anything; it often does it quite badly. And music cannot reproduce anything either, because it is not real music if you reproduce bird calls and cat meows, as you reproduce models in painting and so on. In music, only the very highest material of sound can be used. But it should be the same in every art. Just as much as the musician takes from music, the painter must take from the model. What the tones are for the musician, the form and color must be for the painter. The model should not give him more than the material. So the artistic cannot be taken from the model, but arises from inspiration, which leads back to the ancient solar existence. Hence the strangeness to the earth of truly great works of art. I said that man can live without artistic inspiration, he can, he can indeed bring it in, but he does not need to bring it in. The Botokude, doesn't he say: Man can also live without art.

But now you can – and those who experience things in a deeper sense will do so sooner or later – you can raise an important, crucial question: Yes, if we have a Saturn existence, a Sun existence, a Moon existence, an Earth existence, all with certain facts, and in imaginative knowledge, to the sun in inspired knowledge, and from this it follows that we return to Saturn in intuitive knowledge; yes, if this is so, that we do not have new facts but return to the old facts, why then does man need further development at all?

Someone might ask this question: Why further development? Why the whole earthly existence, which detaches us from the facts through which we have developed, so that the insights are pushed down into the unconscious, and we must first recognize them again? Why the whole thing?

Yes, you see, it is only through this that we become true human beings, because only through it can we truly perfect our true nature. And this can also be seen outwardly if one really studies those personalities who had something of the flexible concepts, of this conceptual mind, as I have mentioned to you in the examples of Goethe's “Metamorphosis of Plants” and “Metamorphosis of Animals”. Such natures must be studied. And such natures show at the same time that they, when they are completely true to themselves inwardly, stand in a very definite relation to yet another world of the soul. This is especially evident in Goethe. Study “Wilhelm Meister”, study all of Goethe's poetry, and you will find that in his work there is a remarkable way of judging and passing judgment on the world. If you look into these things, you will find that in the same measure as Goethe's idea of metamorphosis develops, so does a truly genuine, magnificent inner soul tolerance. A wonderful tolerance develops in his soul, a remarkable way of relating to the world and to life, a soul tolerance! And this is connected with very deep facts.

You see, if we look at the animal world, this animal world has the most diverse forms. If we compare, for example, the hyena, which has its carrion-craving written all over its face and which carries its nature in its entire posture, with the lion, with the wolf, and if we in turn compare these animals with the eagle and the eagle with the vulture, then these animals in comparison with turtles, snakes, worms, the various insects, if we take all these different animal forms, we must still ask ourselves: How does this relate to the spiritual world?

This can only be studied by studying the old moon existence. Because why? You see, during the old moon existence, man did not yet exist in his present form. The corresponding forms that existed at the human level were the angels. The Angeloi, the angels, had very different judgments and a very different way of thinking [than we have today]. The angels were at the same level back then that people are at today, but they were not in a physical body like the people on earth today. They had a very soft, flexible body, because the spirits of form had not yet been involved in forming a solid body. Now, these angeloi thought in terms that were much more alive compared to our earthly concepts, and this was not during their time on earth but during the time on the moon. These concepts, however, have something very peculiar in addition to their liveliness. They were steeped to a high degree in impulses of feeling. Inspired by the archangels, the archai, the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, and so on upwards, the angels grasped the concepts during the lunar time. But these are living, impulsive concepts; much more impulsive than we find the concepts in today's people, who alternately become either “rapture nickels” or “poison nickels” when they put their emotions into how they judge life. There are such people, and they can be the best of people, but they will alternately be enraptured, enraptured about something, or be quite pronounced “poison nickels”, so that the whole soul is in what they express and the whole goes out in the concepts, doesn't it. Now that was present in a much higher degree - directly creative - in these angels on the moon.

Imagine a moon dweller who thinks in this way! He says to himself: Yes, I must now grasp a concept. Inspiration gives me: Wretched creature, who carries his back rising from behind to the front, who makes a repulsive face out of longing for carrion! - That is how this creature came into being, condemned to be a hyena. The creative concept is there. The forms of the animal kingdom are intimately connected with this creative thinking, which creates according to the principle of good and evil. And the whole animal kingdom in its various forms is such a manifestation of good and evil.

The people [of Earth] were not supposed to learn this. One who did not want to let go of the culture of the moon seduced people into recognizing good and evil in the way he had experienced it during the lunar period. The... [gap in the transcription] judged thus; but people should learn to judge differently. This strong identification of the emotions with the concepts should not go down into deeper psychological levels. That had to be discarded, that had to give way to a more objective, more relaxed form. Therefore man had to progress from lunar to earthly development. And if he continues to progress, he will become even more tolerant. A lunar angel, yes, he hated the hyena in an incredible way because for him it represented evil. He hated the snake, hated everything that was ugly and loved everything that was beautiful. Good and evil belonged to the realm of creative life. Man had to unlearn this. Man could not develop an earth science if he were to classify animals, as the moon angels did, into beautiful and ugly – no, we classify differently, according to objective terms – into decent and indecent animals, into playful, into cunning animals, and so on. The moon angels had all that. But it would not be scientific today, for example, if a learned book were to say: “The weasel - characteristic: cunning.” This may be the case in a satirical poem, but in science today this must be suppressed; it cannot be so today.

So in order to make progress in this field, one must be able to rise to a level at which one regards the animal kingdom without emotion in the same scientific way as one regards the natural world when one has the most intense emotions in one's earthly life. And we can see this in this peculiar distillation of Goethe's mind. For him, human life is to a much greater extent a calm stream, which he observes like natural phenomena. That is precisely the wonderful inner serenity of Goethe's view of life, that for him part of human life also enters into the stream of natural facts. This is how he was able to be so objective.

Now, from this point on, we have to take up the matter again and continue the deliberations tomorrow.

I have been speaking to you about the secrets connected with the mummy and with cult and rites, indicating how the mummy enshrined secrets of antiquity before the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas cult and ceremonial rites in their more modern forms enshrine secrets whose full significance will be revealed only in the future. Today and tomorrow I want to add something to what has already been said and to begin with I will give you a picture in the form of a kind of narrative.

If you had been able to participate in many a scene in the Mysteries during a certain epoch of Egyptian development, in times when the custom of the mummification of bodies was at its height, you would have experienced something like the following. The Priest-Instructor in the Mysteries would have tried, first, to explain to his pupils that in the human head all the mysteries of the world lie concealed, in a very special sense. He would have bidden them regard the earth, the dwelling-place of man, as a mirror, a reflection of the whole cosmos. In very truth, everything that exists in the cosmos is also to be found in the earth itself. Looking upwards to the world of stars, we see the moon as our nearest neighbour among the heavenly bodies. Think of the earth and the moon circling around the earth.¹ We can picture the course taken by the moon as it moves around the earth and all that lies between the earth and the orbit of the moon. Those who rightly understand how to interpret what they find when they dig down into the earth, will say: What is present in the environment is mirrored, and condensed, in an outermost layer of the earth itself.

And now take another planet, which together with the earth, circles round the Sun. We can picture this planet, Venus, and its path. This sphere is filled with delicate, aeriform, etheric substance. Again a lower layer in the earth must be pictured as a reflection of what is outside in the cosmos. Proceeding in this way we have the whole earth as a mirror image of the universe, remembering that what exists out yonder in a state of extremely delicate, ethereal volatility is condensed and still further condensed when it is found in the earth's strata. Thus at the centre of the earth, the outermost periphery of the universe would be condensed into a single point.

In the epoch to which I am now referring, the Initiate of Egypt spoke to his pupils of those things I have very briefly outlined. But the Initiate also said to his pupils: To understand the interaction between the cosmos and its mirror image, the earth, let us study the human head. The human head is formed in the mother's body through the combined working of the whole universe and the earth. But—so the Initiate would have said to his pupils—no observation of the human head can, in itself, enable us to understand its real nature, for the head in itself does not reveal its secrets. It contains innumerable secrets and mysteries but they remain concealed.

The human head is active from the earliest period of germination in the body of the mother until death but it does not contain within itself the effects of its own activity. The mystery of the human head is that it is infinitely active, but the effects of its activities are to be found in the other parts of the organism, not in the head itself.

An Egyptian Initiate would have spoken to his pupils just as I am speaking to you now, except that he would, of course, have used the forms of expression current in those days.

Diagrams were sketched on the blackboard, of circles one inside each other, the smallest indicating the earth in the centre and the larger circles the paths around the earth of the moon and other planets with their interpenetrating spheres

He would have made the following intelligible to his pupils. When the human eye looks at a colour, the perception of the colour gives rise to a change in the brain. What is thus produced in the human eye, with the resulting change in the brain is, in truth, a deed of the outer world. The processes that take place in the brain itself are deeds of the outer world. But the brain itself does something. When the brain receives a colour-impression from outside and a nerve-process arises inwardly as a result, the brain brings about something in the astral body and Ego. The actual effect of this, however, manifests in the other parts of the organism, not in the brain itself. Whereas the working of the external world results in a change in the brain, the brain, for its part, works, for example, upon the heart or upon some other organ of the human body. You can only perceive what the human head does when you know exactly what happens in the human physical body—so would the Initiate have spoken to his pupils.

The Egyptians had knowledge of these things, but because the possibilities that had existed in still earlier times were no longer at their disposal, the Initiates were obliged to adopt methods different from those used by the Initiates of ancient Persia or ancient India. The Initiates of ancient India let their pupils carry out exercises of Yoga, made them breathe in a particular way; and by transforming the breathing process into a sensory process the pupils acquired knowledge of the human physical body. And how did they acquire it?

We know that when man breathes in, the breath-impulse passes through the lungs into the whole of the body, through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, the breath-impulse combines with the other processes there, and then recoils. It was this recoil that the pupil of Yoga observed. The breath-impulse passes first into the lungs, through the spinal canal into the brain, and there expands; then it recoils and passes through the different organs, into the chest, and so on. Observing the recoil of the breath downwards into the organism, the pupil of Yoga was able to watch what the brain was doing in the chest, in the abdominal organs and so on. In the recoil through the spinal cord and the expansion through the whole body, the pupil of Yoga was able to observe what the head brings about in the organism. Such was the art connected with the breath, in times when the breathing process was made into a sensory process, when through observation of the breathing, a human being could answer for himself the question: How does my head work in my organism?

I told you in the last lecture that at a certain stage of the Egyptian epoch, this art had been lost and the Egyptian Initiates were obliged to resort to other means. The Initiates of Egypt led their pupils to the mummies, taught them to mummify the human organism, taught them, through observation of what was there presented to them, something that had once been learned by inner means, through contemplation of the breathing process. But I told you, too, that although the pupils of the Egyptian Initiates were no longer capable of following these spiritual processes, which are revealed as the deeds performed by the brain in the human organism—and that was the point of importance—nevertheless the Initiates were helped, as they spoke to their pupils, by the spiritual Moon-Beings. These spiritual Beings who would otherwise have wandered homeless about the earth, found dwelling places in the mummies. These were the Beings who could be observed, whose speech was still understood in that period of ancient Egyptian development and through whom the first science of nature was imparted. What the pupil of Yoga was able to perceive inwardly, through cultivation of the breathing process—these things were now taught somewhat in the following way. The Initiates would say to their pupils: The human head is involved in a constant process of dying. It is really dying all the time, and every night the organism must make efforts to counteract this dying process in the head. But what the head does during this dying process between birth and death results in the influx of new life into the other organs of the body, so that inasmuch as the forces of these other organs—not their substance, of course, but their forces—are sent on into the future, during the period between death and a new birth they become head, the head of the next earthly incarnation. But the Initiates impressed upon their pupils the necessity of understanding what is contained in the actual forms of the organs, and it was for this reason that such scrupulous care was given to the preservation of the mummies. By way of the forms in the mummy, the Moon-Spirits were able to reveal the secrets of the organs, their connection with the human head, and how they bear within them those forces of germination by means of which they become head in the next earthly life. Such was the teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt to their pupils, by means of the mummy.

At a certain period, then, it became necessary to teach in an external way what had once been inner teaching in the days when the Yoga philosophy and religion were at their prime. This, indeed, was the great transition that took place from the culture of ancient India and ancient Persia to that of Egypt: what had once been a teaching by inner means was now taught by external means.

The teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt was brought to a majestic climax when they said to their pupils: And now steep yourselves in the plastic quality of the forms lying before you in the mummy. Here you have very faint indications of that which during the life of man on earth is perpetually passing away, namely, the inner components of the human head. But you have before you in great clarity and precision the forms of the rest of the human organism. Contemplation of the mummy will not help you to study the life-processes, or the perceptive processes; but the plastic quality of the forms of the inner organs of the human body, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach, and so forth—all this you can study from the mummy. Try to picture the following. During life, the breath is drawn back into the head and then streams out into the organism. In this breath there is a plastic force, which has the tendency to shape the breath into the form of a mummy. The breath, in its drive from the head towards the body, has the tendency towards mummy-formation. And it is only because the body works against this impulse and brings about out-breathing, that this “nascent” mummy is transformed back again. Thus what is seen streaming from the human head into the other part of the organism, taking shape there as the breath passes onwards, is a form like the mummy, a form that takes shape rapidly. In that the breath is breathed out, it dissolves again. All that remains of it is a form of appearance of the etheric body, which is almost always there, notably during waking life. Observation of the etheric body gives the feeling that from the head outwards the etheric body is trying all the time to form itself into a mummy and is in turn dissolved into a kind of resemblance with the human physical organisation. The inner, plastic force of the human etheric body tends to make it assume the form of a mummy, and then to dissolve this form again so that finally the etheric body resembles the physical organism. This was taught as an apotheosis of all the manifold teachings given by the Initiates of ancient Egypt to their pupils with the help of those super-sensible, elementary Beings whom we may call the Moon-Spirits.

The Egyptian Initiates directed the attention of their pupils especially to the past, to the inner experiences of human beings in very ancient times. This, in truth, was the essence of Egyptian culture, which for us today is so fraught with riddles. Sphinxes, pyramids, mummies—they are all enigmas. But these enigmas are unveiled to spiritual science when we know that the sphinxes represent forms that were actually visible to men in the time of Atlantis, and when we remember that the teachings concerning the mummy given by the Egyptian Initiates to their pupils were an echo of the Yoga teaching imparted, for example, by Initiates of ancient India to their pupils. It was not difficult for an Initiate of ancient India to give such teaching because in those remote times the slightest impetus would enable a man to perceive within a human physical organism this momentary birth of the ether-mummy and its retransformation.

It is deeply interesting to contemplate how these mysteries were unveiled in the Egyptian centres of instruction where such intimate connections were thus established with death. Through the methods adopted in Egypt, death preserved forms, which, during life, are hidden from observation but of which there must be knowledge if the being of man is to be truly understood.

The mummies were displayed before the eyes of the ancient Egyptians and I have told you that there is something analogous for human beings who have lived since the Mystery of Golgotha. For them, cults and rites in many forms have been preserved. I told you that at the time when men needed such forms, they began to “mummify” ancient cults and rites. In its first, faint beginnings, this custom arose in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., but it comes more and more to the fore with the passage of time. In occult and other Brotherhoods, rituals are studied and enacted, but there is never anything essentially new in them. Ancient forms, ancient rituals, are preserved. Indeed those whose task it is to preserve these rites and ceremonies, who have to lead them, lay great stress upon the fact that the ceremonies and customs date back to very ancient times, that they have been preserved from remote antiquity. But we never find that the ceremonies or the effects produced by the rituals are really understood.

To “understand” such rites and ceremonies—what does this really mean? What does it mean to understand the nature of acts performed in rites and ceremonies? To answer this question we must go back to the times, say, of ancient India and ancient Persia and try to discover how ceremonies and rites were understood then. A man today is aware of a difference when, let us say, he touches a rose made of papier-mâché and when he touches a real rose. He is also aware of the difference, through his sense of smell, when he is near a rose. He is aware of the difference and says that the papier-mâché rose is a dead object whereas the rose picked from the rosebush is alive. In very early times, dating back to four or five thousand years before Christ, a man with true perception of the world seeing someone working with a machine or tool, say for cutting wood, would have called this a “dead” process; for even with the eye of spirit he would have seen not the physical substance but a kind of dead, shadow-image. But in ritualistic and ceremonial enactments he saw Spiritual Beings from the surrounding elementary world approaching and pervading all the forms and actions of the rite. He beheld spiritual reality in these enactments.

If you were to ask people today whether they have ever seen Spiritual Beings weaving and streaming through rituals and ceremonies in Churches or Lodges, you would find that this is never the case. In these ritualistic enactments today there is no more spiritual life than there was life in the Egyptian mummy of the human being who had been mummified. But inasmuch as these rituals were preserved, as the form of the human body was preserved in the Egyptian mummy, inasmuch as human enactments and rites were preserved by tradition—“mummified”, as it were—something was preserved that can and will be wakened into life when men have discovered how to bring into all their deeds the power that streams from the Mystery of Golgotha.

Men today have very little understanding of how to draw into their actions the power of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through the centuries, however, there were always individuals here and there who had some conception—even if not so clearly as in earlier times—of how the spiritual impulse that can live in the human being may be guided into all his actions, and of how the human being himself can be an intermediary between the Spirit and what comes to pass through him in the outer world. The right impulse must, of course, be at work before this can happen. Think of a man like Paracelsus. He was one of those isolated individuals who had an inkling, at least, that the spiritual must so live among men that it streams out from them into their actions. There is a great difference between man's mode of life today and what Paracelsus, for example, desired. Today people make a sharp distinction between certain domains of their life. For instance, they practise medicine, but according to materialistic conceptions. A doctor today may, of course, also be a religious man or woman in the modern sense; but the two domains are separated. Medicine is practised on the basis of materialistic principles and people seek what their souls need in an entirely separate sphere of religion—into which, as a result, a highly egoistical element finds its way. People only turn to religion when they want to know what is to become of them after death or how what they do tallies with what a God would be able to make of their deeds. Paracelsus had a very different attitude. He wanted to be a man of piety and religion as a doctor. He wanted each medical, each therapeutic deed also to be a religious deed. He regarded what he did with a sick man as the union of an external, human deed with a religious act. To Paracelsus, healing was still a sacred enactment and it was his constant ideal to make it so. His contemporaries had little understanding of this and today there is even less. It makes one's heart ache to hear the tradition which still persists in Salzburg, that Paracelsus was a drunkard and that returning to his house late one night in a state of intoxication, he met his death by falling over a rock and breaking his skull. If the real truth were told, one would, of course, have to point to the work of his enemies. Paracelsus' drunkenness was less responsible for his broken skull than were people who then proceeded to spread the fairy-tale about his habits.

Customs today are less violent in such matters—less violent but not so very different. A time will come when a deeper conception of the cult and of all ceremonial enactments will take root in men. And then the true teachers will be able to reveal to their pupils something similar to what was revealed by the Initiates of Egypt with the help of the mummy. The Egyptian Initiate was able to make his pupils realise that they could behold in the mummy something, which in still earlier times, became actual experience through transformation of the breathing process into a sensory process. And so, when the cult can once again be truly understood, those who possess this understanding will be able to make clear to their pupils that enactments in sacred cults and rites have an immeasurably greater significance for the cosmos than deeds performed by men in the external world with mechanical tools or the like. Tools, as you know, also play a part in cult and ritual. When true ceremonial, true ritualistic enactments are again established in place of what is customary today, Initiates will be able to say to their pupils: An enactment in cult or rite is a call to the spiritual Powers of the universe who through the deeds of men should be able to unite themselves with the earth. Such an enactment, performed according to a true rite, is different from an act of a purely technical nature. An act that is purely technical or mechanical, however, does bring something about, for with machines many things can be made and used in life. Clothes, for instance, are made with a sewing machine. The clothes are worn and eventually wear out. This is what happens to the products of machines. But it is not so with sacred enactments. I told you in the last lecture that provided a man has the requisite faculty and the true conception of sacred enactments, he can come into contact with spiritual Beings who are as closely connected with the earth as the Spirits who spoke to the Egyptians out of the mummies were connected with the moon. Through machines, through external technical devices, man comes into contact with the physical nature-forces of the earth. Through the sacred enactments of cult and ritual he comes into contact with the elementary-spiritual Powers of the earth, with those Powers who point the way to the future.

And so in times to come an Initiate will be able to say to his pupils: When you participate truly in a sacred enactment of cult or ritual, you are engaged in something of which the materialist says that it has no reality, or, if he is a cynic, he will say that it is all child's play. Nevertheless the enactments of a true rite contain spiritual power. The elementary spiritual Beings, who are evoked when such a rite is enacted, have need of the rite because from it they draw nourishment and forces of growth.

A time will come when the earth will no longer exist. Everything that is around our physical senses, everything that is present in the kingdoms of minerals, plants, animals, in air and clouds, even the radiance of the stars ... all this will pass away and, as I have described in An Outline Of Occult Science, the earth will prepare to pass over to the Jupiter embodiment. This future Jupiter planet will be a subsequent incarnation of the earth just as our own future earthly life will be a reincarnation of our present existence, save that the periods of time involved are immeasurably longer. Of the substance present today in minerals, plants, animals, in wind and clouds, not a single particle will remain in that distant future. The processes set up by machines and technical devices will have performed their task—and they too will have become things of the past. But within what was once earth, within what was once external, technical civilisation, something different will have been prepared.

Think of the earth and within it the different processes of nature and plant life. Machines are there, with all that they bring about on the earth; animals and the physical bodies of men move over the earth ... All this will pass away. But on this earth, in future time, sacred rites will be enacted out of a true understanding of the spiritual world. Through these rites and sacred enactments, elementary spiritual Beings are called down. As I have said, a time will come when the material substance in minerals, plants, animals, clouds, the forces working in wind and weather and also, of course, all the accoutrements used in rites and ceremonies, will pass away, will be dissipated in the universe. But the spiritual Beings who have been called down into the sphere of the rites and sacred enactments—these will remain when the earth approaches its end. They will remain, in a state of more perfect development, within the earth, just as in autumn the seed of next year's plant is concealed within the present plant; just as the dry, withered leaves fall away from the plant, so the substance in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms will disintegrate in the universe, but the perfected elementary Beings will be there, living on into the Jupiter existence as a seed of the future.

And so once again an Initiate will be able to bring the teaching given to his pupils to a grand climax. He will be able to say: “Just as the Initiate of Egypt, standing before the mummy, was able to explain to his pupils all the mysteries of the human head and therewith all the mysteries of the earth and the cosmos around the earth, I am able to explain to you how the earth will arise from its destruction—rise again through the spiritual Beings who develop onwards to the future in cults and rites enacted with true understanding.”

In the evolution of our epoch this conception has a glorious beginning. It can be pictured as follows. Human beings satisfied their hunger and thirst by what lay on the tables before them. But there came the Being Who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, Who gathered His closest disciples around Him and said: “Here is bread, here is wine. Do not now look upon what your outer eyes see in bread and wine, upon what your tongue can taste and your physical body digest. All that is earthly bears within it the seeds of decay. But if you have within you the true impulse you can permeate earthly substance with the Spirit of the earth. For then it is no longer bread, nor is it wine, but something that can live in the inmost depths of man himself, something that lives and has its being in his body and that he can spiritualise and that will be carried over into the future when everything on the earth has passed away.” Christ entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in his whole being, Jesus of Nazareth was spiritualised. He could point to bread and wine, saying: “This is not the true form of bread and wine. Their true form is what indwells the human being—this is My Body, this is My Blood.” And the words receive their full significance from those other words of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away but My Words will not pass away.”

I have said many times: The kingdom of plants, of animals, of minerals, all that lives in wind and storm, in clouds—even the radiance of the stars—will be dispersed and scattered; not one particle will remain. But what man prepares spiritually—this will remain.

In earlier times of the evolution of humanity it was known that words contain Spirit. The modern view is that when we speak, movement is brought into the air through the speech-organs and these movements then beat upon the drum of the ear [(Trommelfell, drum of the ear, so-called because the modern view is that the movements of the air, “drum” or beat upon the membrane.)], the nerves begin to move, and there the process ends. In earlier times it was known that words enshrine the movements of elementary Spirits, that forces in words spoken in sacred ritual, for example, stream into the external action and that the Spirit living in man unites with this external enactment. Thereby the elementary Spirits who are developing onwards to the future enter, in actual presence, into the sphere of the sacred rite. Men who understand these things can realise what the “word” signified in olden times. Today it means little more than “noise and smoke”, and Goethe was justified when he used the expression Schall und Rauch. But in days of yore the “word” signified the indwelling Spirit, not the abstract, conceptual properties, but the spiritual reality inherent in the word. In the word there is much that is spiritual. Christ indicates that the life with which man imbues the word is contained in what comes to pass in sacred enactments of rite and cult, namely, a process whereby elementary Spirits are borne on-wards to the fulfilment of their existence, and He said:

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will not pass away.”

And now think of the beginning of St. John's Gospel: “In the Beginning was the Logos, the Word ...” The Logos is the Christ. What, then, are the Bread and the Wine in the service of Holy Communion? The Bread and the Wine are the Body and Blood of the Logos. And as we have heard, the Logos relinquishes what is transient, seizes what is in the becoming, prepares what is to come.

Thus we can point to the Mystery of Golgotha as a glorious climax, just as teaching in days of old culminated in the revelation of the ether-body assuming the shape of a mummy and then immediately changing into a form resembling that of the human physical body. But I have emphasised over and over again that man will have to re-establish his connection with the spiritual world if the earth is to attain its goal. Just as the predecessors of the Egyptians, perceiving the breath and its expansion in the organism, inwardly experienced a nascent mummy-formation and its immediate re-transformation, so, in the future, men must perceive in the out-breathing process, in the passing of the out-breathed air into cosmic space, the communication to cosmic space of what takes shape within the human organism, the spiritualisation of the environment through the human being himself. The ancient Egyptians said: The mummy represents a form which the human being strives inwardly and spiritually to assume with every indrawn breath. Initiates of the future will say: Every out-breathing is a manifestation of man's striving to become a cosmos, a whole world. Contemplation of how the inbreathed air surges down from the head into the organism—this brings understanding of the human being. Contemplation of how the indrawn air is breathed out again by man into the world—this can bring understanding of the cosmos. Understanding of the cosmos will be born when Imaginative Knowledge is able to span the world; with Imaginative Knowledge we can also recognise what the human being himself sends forth into the external world with his out-breathing. It is what he is preparing for the future.

Thus what man does in the course of history and what comes to pass in the cosmos are interwoven, intermingled. Without realisation of this there can be no understanding of the world, for history must be studied in its cosmic aspect and historical happenings must reveal to us the workings of the cosmos.

The task that has been set here in these reflections over the past few weeks has been to place the human being in the universe in an understanding way. Yesterday I tried to indicate how, on the one hand, the human being is part of the cosmic world of thought, from which he is also formed in terms of his entire organization, so that, on the one hand, by looking at that which is not grasped by ordinary consciousness in his sensory perception, his ordinary experience of himself, the human being in relation to this organization of his, he must think of himself as belonging to the cosmos and only in relation to the ordinary life of thinking, which, as I have shown, is situated between, on the one hand, cosmic thinking and, on the other hand, thinking that can be perceived as an undercurrent of ordinary consciousness, must he think of himself as belonging to himself in the sense of his own self. The latter would now also belong to what man, as it were, has to regard as belonging to his own self. Yesterday we tried to throw some light on man in so far as he has a thought experience or is placed in the world of thought.

The more one rises to this view, the more one will learn to place the human being in all world-becoming, in all that makes him appear as a piece of cosmic becoming. And when we become so attentive to that part of the human being that is composed of the ordinary life of thought and of the undercurrent that I characterized yesterday, then we will also understand how the human being, through the possession of this part that has been so to speak set apart from the cosmos, is a free, self-reliant entity.

This consideration of the human being can be taken even further, and today we want to try to place the human being in the context of the other kingdoms of nature. I need only point out that I have said many times how wrong it is to consider the relationship of the human being to the animal kingdom, for example, merely in terms of today's anatomy and physiology. Of course, if we first consider the human being in terms of his overall form, and how this overall form is composed of the individual organs, then we will notice that the human being has roughly the same number of bones, muscles and so on as the higher animals, and that these organs or organ systems have been transformed, metamorphosed. We will be able to include the human being in the animal series. But something quite different arises – and I have often discussed this – when one considers what places the human being in a very special way in the cosmos. It must be noted that the column of the animal's back, the backbone, lies essentially horizontally, parallel to the earth's surface; the human backbone stands upright on the earth's surface. If one does not believe that everything is based on the coarse material, but if one comes to the view that what exists is based in its essence on the whole being placed in a coherent world system, then one will attach a corresponding importance to this special position of the human backbone. As a result, the human head is placed in a completely different position to the entire organization. And if one has only once risen to the view: The cosmos is interwoven and interwoven by thoughts - then, insofar as the cosmos is to be regarded as spatial, one will see in the currents of thought that go through the cosmos, an essential and one will be able to see that it makes a difference whether the current that runs along the spine in humans is aligned with the radial direction of the earth or whether, as in animals, it runs parallel to the surface of the earth.

This being placed of the human being in a certain way in the cosmos must then be looked at with regard to the overall organization, and thus also for the individual organs. Each organ and each organ system is located differently in relation to the cosmos in humans than in animals. This is not affected by the fact that someone might say that the human backbone is horizontal when sleeping. It does not depend on the individual position, but on how the whole growth is assessed, how an organ system is integrated into the whole organism. And if we bear in mind that we have the animal backbone parallel to the earth's surface and the human backbone perpendicular to it, then we shall be able to appreciate in the right way other processes that can be observed in man. And here I would first like to draw your attention to a different system of the soul than the one we looked at yesterday. Yesterday we looked at the thought system; today we want to look at the will system.

We can also look at this will system by becoming aware that the human being's life rhythmically breaks down into the states of sleeping and waking. During waking hours, the human being is completely devoted to his physicality; during sleep, the I and the astral body are outside of physicality, both the physical and the etheric physicality. When we wake up in the morning, I told you yesterday, we bring with us at most a faint memory from the thoughts of the universe. So that we can become aware: In the whole time from falling asleep to waking up, we were immersed in a surging sea of cosmic thoughts. But what we bring with us when we wake up and what then determines us throughout the day while we are awake is the will, that is, emerging from this nocturnal, or let us say, during our sleep, our element-forming thought-sea of the cosmos. We emerge with the will, which, as I have characterized it, introduces logic into our inner soul life. We may still notice, when we wake up, in the dreams that crowd in, what our soul life would be like if this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, did not penetrate it logically.

In a sense, then, this will strikes into what is surging and swirling in the human organism. Let us take a very close look at this impact of the will. Let us become aware of where the will is striking into: It is precisely the chaotic swirling of dream images and also of those dream textures that we have as undercurrents of our ordinary consciousness. So that we can say: While we sleep, this web of thoughts is released from the organic mechanism within us, completely drowned out by the web of thoughts interwoven with logic in the waking state, from waking to falling asleep. It is this chaotic jumble of dream images and dream ideas that the will strikes, which we bring into our organism from the cosmos when we wake up. Let us see what this will initially brings with it.

This will that strikes in initially has the effect that thoughts do not arise as they are in this dreamy chaos. We would get off badly in life if thoughts arose as they do in this dreamy chaos. What must thoughts be like when they arise in normal mental life? They must somehow be connected with our life. They must be able to remember in some way. That is, in a sense, the first thing that the will, which has made an impact, does with our thoughts. It organizes them in such a way that we carry the right memory image within us. We can therefore say: we have, as it were, the chaotic web of thoughts swirling up out of our organism (see drawing, red). It is something that is particularly strong in dreamy natures, who are often not satisfied with indulging in the normal memories of life, who take pleasure and delight when thoughts come together and separate again after allusions and similarities. Dreamy natures are overwhelmed by this chaotic web of thoughts. But even a person who is well aware of himself will always notice, if he lets himself go just a little during waking life, I would say, that this confusion of thoughts is present in the main, underlying current. The will, which strikes there when one wakes up, it strikes this web of thoughts. Where does it come from?

Now, in bed lay the physical body (blue) and the etheric body (yellow). What I have drawn schematically on the board here is basically what we leave in bed when we fall asleep and what we encounter again in the morning. We allow our will to be woven into it. I will characterize this will that is woven into it through these lines here (see drawing, arrows from above). So the first thing that the will has to do is to reshape this chaotic web of thoughts into our normal memory. We can therefore say that, initially, this will that is woven into it shapes the web of thoughts into normal memory. One might say: the etheric body, the physical body, that is what we encounter in the morning, is still very powerful in our memory. These thoughts are reflected back to us. But it is the will that strikes and really has something to do by striking. You can see that. Just try to remember how, when you wake up in the morning, everything swirls up like currents from the soul like an event you experienced at the age of five, at the age of seven, again at the age of six year, again in the fifteenth year, in the sixty-fifth year for all I care, then in the twenty-first, seventeenth year, again in the eighth year, how it all swirls and tumbles in a colorful mess. The will has to strike into this. Then, in a sense, it organizes it all again so that it is a proper memory, so that an event that took place in the ninth year does not get mixed up with what happened in the eighth year and the like. So the will strikes into it, and it forms memory out of this chaotic web of dreams. In memory, you still notice little of the will. Most people will not want to see the will at all in memory. But it is there, it is just that the impact of the will, in so far as it forms memory, is much more unconscious.

The second is something that a person can already recognize as their will. This is what this will, which we bring with us when we wake up, makes out of this surge of thoughts: this is the imagination, this is the fantasy (see drawing). That is the second element. There you can already see that you can move in it with your arbitrariness. While the memory is being formed, you still have to be constrained by your organism; the physical body and etheric body are very influential. In the imagination, this is less so, and you can move about in it with your will. But there is an enormous difference between a person who is imaginative and a person who dreams, who simply surrenders to the surge of arbitrary thought. A person who lets his imagination run wild knows how his will rules in these interweaving images, and he shapes them according to his will.

But now for the third. The third is something that, on the one hand, is really completely given over to the will and, on the other hand, is such that the will does not move as freely as in imagination. It is logical thinking, on which we depend in life and in science. There, in this logical thinking, our will is certainly active; but it surrenders its own freedom and submits to the laws of logic. Yet it is its doing that it submits to the law of logic. So that is the third thing: logical thinking.

Why is logical thinking, on the one hand, absolutely subject to the will? If we did not form our logical thinking out of our own will, it would be obsessive thoughts. We must form our logical thoughts out of our own will. But we form them in such a way that we orient ourselves to the external world, which, after all, is essentially the great teacher of logic in the first place. We imbue the chaotic world of images with the laws of logic. We thus surrender to these laws of logic through our will; in a sense, we surrender to the arbitrary workings of logic. On the one hand, the will is free in thought; on the other hand, it surrenders its freedom in favor of logic. But in these three stages – memory, imagination, logical thinking – the will is active; that will that from falling asleep to waking up does not work in the human physical and etheric organism and that in the morning when waking up into the physical and etheric organism, and which this, I would like to say, indeterminate fire of the etheric and physical body, kindled in the surge of thought, is divided into memory, imagination, logical thinking.

It is already the case in logical thinking that we are no longer completely in control with our will. We are not. When we let our imagination run free, in which we clearly notice our will, then we know how we are within ourselves; when we let our logical thinking run free, we are no longer completely within ourselves. We know that we adapt ourselves completely to the cosmos, but not only to the extra-human cosmos, but to the whole cosmos, which includes the human being. For it is self-evident that logic applies not only to the extra-human cosmos, but also to the cosmos plus the human being. Logic is neither subjective nor objective, but logic is both at the same time.

In a sense, we can see the part that what we bring with us from the world of sleep into our soul life in the morning plays. And we can also know approximately: when what has entered as will withdraws back into the cosmic world of thought, only what rises up from the physical body and etheric body rules in us again.

Now this is one aspect of the will that rules in us. It is, so to speak, the cosmic side of the will, the side that we take out of us in the evening and bring back into us again in the morning. But self-reflection will indeed teach people that not only this will is present in him, of which I have just spoken, because this will expresses itself essentially in the so-called soul life, in memory, in imagination, in logical thinking. But when we walk, when we grasp, when we somehow use an instrument, the will is also active. In these activities, the will is not only active in the soul, as I have just described it; in these activities, the will takes hold of our physical organization and our etheric organization. Therefore, I cannot characterize the will only in these arrows here, but I must also depict the will permeating the physical and etheric bodies (see drawing on page 157, arrows from below). So I have to say: The will is also present in that which remains in the bed during sleep. The will, which must be characterized in this latter sense, comes, as it were, towards the other will, which is not in the physical body of the person during sleep. And this latter will basically becomes an external activity. So this will, which lives in the organs, which lives in the physical and etheric organization, is called upon by the other will coming to meet it. But when we are active as an awake person, we can clearly distinguish these two spheres of will.

Please note that on the one hand there is a will that counteracts the will coming from the other side. We have, so to speak, the interaction of two currents of will. One of these currents of will swirls through the human organism and the whole context shows you that you have to look at it as swirling from bottom to top. The other current swirls from top to bottom. Here the directions in the cosmos come into play, and we notice that it must be different in animals, in that the main direction of their bodily organization is precisely perpendicular to the main direction of the bodily organization of humans. The directions of will are differently integrated into the cosmos. So, too, when we, I would like to say, go into the differentiations of the human being, when we realize how this human being is composed of individual currents, then we notice the importance of the human being's being placed in the cosmos.

Now let us take a closer look at these two currents of will. As with many things in spiritual science, you will not be able to proceed in such a way that you, I might say, derive one from the other as in mathematical derivation, but in spiritual science the way to arrive at the truths is as follows: one truth is juxtaposed with the other and one must then seek the connection. With superficial simpletons this very easily leads to the objection that one does not “prove”. It is just as if someone, when he sees a horse and a cow standing side by side in a field, and they are certainly standing side by side for some reason, were to demand that someone should prove to him from the horse that the cow is standing beside it. Of course, one cannot prove from the essence of the horse that the cow is standing next to it. This is roughly the content of the objection that many people raise with regard to proof in spiritual science.

I would now like to present you with another fact, in addition to the one I have just mentioned, which you must gradually try to put into the appropriate context, based on what I have just discussed.

Everything that is in the soul of a person is also expressed in the physical body, and is imprinted in the physical body. The human being is organized in such a way that he awakens memory, imagination, and logical thinking by waking up, and that he allows them to rest within him, so to speak, while sleeping. This is a kind of rhythm. This rhythm is juxtaposed with another: the stream of will, which I have indicated here as being located in the organs. What confronts each other as two currents, you can, I would like to say, find it depicted in the human being: you can find it by looking at the system that is given by the human breathing rhythm. A few days ago, I already pointed out how the breathing rhythm can really be thought of in connection with falling asleep and waking up. Even if breathing naturally outlasts sleep, one still recognizes the connection in everything that somehow impairs calm breathing during sleep, for example. This connection between breathing and the rhythm of waking up, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep is not so obvious, but this connection, this relationship is there nevertheless. And when we consider the human being in relation to his upward striving, we have to consider the breathing rhythm as something essential that is connected with this upward striving, the whole respiratory system, also insofar as it is expressed in the speech system. We breathe, we speak as human beings essentially upwards, even if this is transformed by the position of our throat into speaking forwards. There we have one rhythm, a unified rhythm.

We have another rhythm, we have the rhythm of circulation, the rhythm that is given to us in the pulse, and we know that the pulse rhythm is roughly related to the respiratory rhythm as four to one. You need only reflect a little on the anatomical and physiological aspects to realize that the pulse rhythm, the rhythm of circulation, is intimately connected with the metabolic-limb system of the human being. The actual rhythmic system is, I would say, separated out in the respiratory system. The more one engages with a characteristic of the respiratory system on the one hand and a characteristic of the pulse system on the other, the more one notices that everything that is present as an organ for the formation of memory, imagination, logical and that everything else that is connected with the will that flows through the organs can be related to the pulse rhythm by expressing itself upwards. Just as the will that is in our organs coincides with the will that we bring with us from the cosmos when we wake up, so the respiratory rhythm coincides with the pulse rhythm, with the circulation rhythm. And there we have in the interaction of the respiratory rhythm and the pulse rhythm, in a very physical way, what comes up from below and what strikes down from above, but in such a way that what strikes down from above is four times slower than what comes up from below. If I were to take this stroke as the time consideration for the breathing rhythm, I would have to take four for the pulse rhythm.

In fact, everything that man develops in the way of art, of rhythmic art, is based on this relationship between the pulse rhythm and the respiratory rhythm. I have already said this on the occasion of the discussion about the art of recitation. You can go into more detail. You can think that if you base it more on the pulse rhythm, you get: short syllable, long syllable. If you combine the breathing rhythm with the pulse rhythm, you get, for example, the meter of the hexameter, and so on. All meters are based on these relationships of rhythms that are within the human being itself.

Now, when you look at the blood rhythm, you look, so to speak, more at the physical; when you look more at the breathing rhythm, you look at the soul. The breathing rhythm is much more closely related to the soul than the blood rhythm. The breathing rhythm also opens outwards, just as logic and logical thinking open outwards. Now, irregularities in these rhythms are the cause of irregularities in human life. You can well imagine that if there really is such a ratio of four to one or one to four, then it must mean something if, let us say, the breathing rhythm becomes too long or the pulse rhythm too short. And yet this can be the case with humans. It can even be the case in a very insignificant way; then it manifests itself immediately.

Now I will present the radical cases. Imagine a person gets excited. He begins to become passionate. He starts ranting about something. This can go as far as raving. Or a person gets into the state that is described as follows: the thoughts do not want to, they stand still; one cannot think properly, they stay away. Just as the raving was the most radical expression of the process, from becoming passionate through ranting to becoming raving, it is the same with thoughts standing still, gradually leading to a kind of unconsciousness. The former, becoming passionate, becoming emotional, is based on the pulse rhythm becoming too fast. The stopping of thought and the fainting are due to a slowing of the respiratory rhythm.

So you see, the human being is interwoven with the rhythms of the whole world. And how we are within this world rhythm determines how we appear to us physically and mentally. The emotional life also expresses itself physically: the current that flows through the organism from bottom to top becomes too fast, it shakes the organs, and when it comes to raging, you can see how the organs are shaken. The current that flows from top to bottom becomes too slow; thoughts do not want to go from top to bottom. Here again we see how important it is that we can form a picture of man's place in the whole cosmic context, how he fits into it, and how it is mere childishness to count the bones, muscles, etc., and say: Man is only a higher animal formation — and not to take into account that what matters is this placing in the whole cosmic context.

Now I will tell you something that seems very far removed from what I have just explained, but which, in tomorrow's lecture, will nevertheless be linked to what I have just explained to form a whole. Let us now move from human existence to human development. You know that we are now living in the so-called fifth post-Atlantic period, which began around 1415 or 1413 and will continue. It is preceded by the fourth, which began around 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha, and this in turn is preceded by the third, which goes back to the 4th millennium.

Now, if we consider these periods, we can form the following schematic picture of their succession. Please imagine that the Atlantean period was preceded by what I called the Lemurian period in my “Occult Science”. I will assume here only the last phases of this Lemurian period, and now draw the seven successive cultural conditions of the Atlantean period: and now we have, in succession, the primeval Indian, primeval Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Latin, and now our fifth period; that would be the last period. I have schematically presented the successive periods to you.

You now also know from my “Secret Science” and from other presentations that I have given that such a period lasts approximately until the vernal point of the sun has completed the entire passage through the zodiac. It is only approximate, but for what we want to consider now, this approximation will have its good meaning. In 747 BC, before the event of Golgotha, the vernal point entered the zodiacal sign of Aries. It remained in this zodiacal sign until the 15th century. Then it passed over and is now in the zodiacal picture of Pisces. Before 747 the vernal point was in the sign of Taurus, so throughout the entire Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period the sun rose in spring in the constellation of Taurus; hence the bull service. Then came the ancient Persian period; the sun rose in the constellation of Gemini. During the time of ancient India, the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer. Then we come back to the Atlantean time and have the seven cultural periods in the Atlantean time. Now I ask you to consider the following and to visualize it as a question that we are initially presenting today.

Let us draw the sequence of the zodiacal constellations. So we have: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. We will now schematically draw here how it stands with the successive cultural periods. We know that we are now in the Pisces sign at the vernal equinox, and have the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period. We go back (see drawing, page 165, dark hatched): Aries fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, Taurus third post-Atlantic cultural period, Gemini second post-Atlantic cultural period, Cancer first post-Atlantic cultural period. We are now returning to the Atlantean period. The seven periods of the Atlantean period (light shading): Leo the seventh, Virgo the sixth, Libra the fifth, Scorpio the fourth, Sagittarius the third, Capricorn the second, Aquarius the first; and now we are returning to the Lemurian period and we are back to Pisces.

You see, when you consider the important time of the last culture, the last cultural epoch of the Lemurian period, and when you read about this important period of the development of the earth and humanity in my book “Occult Science”, you will be faced with a big question. If you take what I have presented in my “Occult Science in Outline”, especially in the presentations that appeared separately as “Our Atlantean Ancestors”, then you will see how one can actually speak of humanity, insofar as it is humanity today, only from this period onwards, and this period is the one in which the vernal point was in the same zodiacal constellation as it is now. We have, as humanity, gone through a complete cycle around the heavens and, in a certain sense, have arrived back at the starting point.

What I have just said relates to human becoming. We have often tried to show how the human soul life has changed in the time since the Atlantean period. We know how different this entire human soul life was in the time of the ancient Indians, and how it was still different in the Atlantean period. But if you read my writing about the Atlantean ancestors, you will see that we go back to a time in the Atlantean period when the human configuration manifests itself physically in the same way as the human soul was at that time. While in the post-Atlantean period the soul life works essentially differently, during the Atlantean period the whole body is metamorphosed. We thus come back more and more, I would say, from the region which I characterized above as the soul region, to what is here below the bodily region, which is permeated by the other stream of will. And as we go further back in Atlantis, we come back to the metamorphoses that relate to the shaping of the body. So that we can say that during the passage of the vernal point through Pisces, human beings were scarcely present in the bodily form as it is (light shading). Here it is taking on more and more of a bodily form. And here it is only just beginning to take on a soul form, in order to return to the point from which it once emerged in terms of its bodily form. So that you can say, the zodiac signs of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Libra, up to Virgo (light shading) correspond to the transformation of the human physical form; and only these upper zodiac signs correspond to the transformation of the human soul for us.

These things must first be considered from the point of view of spiritual science, and it will be seen that only then can concepts and ideas be formed about the essence of the human being. On the other hand, however, it may at least cast a light on what I have often said here, that we live in an important age. For while we have developed as humanity on Earth, the vernal point of the Sun has gone around the whole universe and has returned again in our era. We must therefore fulfill tasks that are, so to speak, guided by the fact that humanity has returned to its starting point, that it must undertake something in its soul life that corresponds to this return to the starting point. Today I only wanted to hint at what can be derived from such a consideration of the importance of the present human period of time. What I have said applies to the most advanced members of civilized humanity; but in the end it is they who are actually important for the development of humanity.

We will continue our discussion tomorrow, and focus on how these things relate to the latter.

Today's lecture will add further details to an image which I finally hope to present in its entirety tomorrow.

We are living at a time—yesterday's lecture will have given you an idea of this—of which we can say that much will have to change in the way people think, feel and use their will. Our inner aims will have to change. It is especially with regard to our innermost being that old, inherited and acquired habits will have to go and a new way of thinking and feeling develop. This is what our time demands. I think it can have a profound and truly significant effect on people to ponder the truth I presented yesterday which is, to put it simply, that there can only be one of two things: destructive processes here on the physical plane, or the spiritual development of humanity. Just think what it means—that, knowing this truth, we shall be compelled to feel socially at one with the dead, the departed. Our inner response to present events on this physical plane is one of deep pain, and it is right this should be so; on the other hand, we should not forget that the number of people who have taken up spiritual life in recent decades is small, and the souls of those who have not done so are thirsting for destructive processes here on the physical plane because these will give them the powers they need for the life of soul and spirit which comes after death. In practice this means we are challenged to do everything we can to encourage spiritual life as the only way of freeing future humanity from those destructive forces. It has to be clearly understood, of course, that this was different in the past, when the fact that an age of materialism must inevitably summon up an age of wars and devastation did not hold true to the same degree. It will, however, hold true in future.

Humanity is labouring under numerous illusions that have their origin in the past. The consequences of these have not been as serious in the past as they will be in the future evolution of humanity. I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, human souls are still very much asleep at the present time, and fail to notice many of the tremendous changes now taking place. Sometimes, however, some of this comes through at an instinctive level, and individuals are then aware of the great riddles of the age. However, many are not fully active inwardly and therefore not yet able to experience these riddles in their full depth.

Taking note of the turbulent and destructive events of today, some individuals are becoming aware of one such riddle. Yet they are in many respects quite unable to find the answers. The riddle I am speaking of is the discrepancy between intellectual and moral development in human evolution. Strangely enough, recent developments in materialistic thinking have lead none other than the Darwinists to this conclusion. Haeckel, too, has commented to this effect in his Welträtsel.¹ Now, in these times of war, it can be seen again and again that this imbalance between intellectual and moral life in human evolution is beginning to puzzle people. They say to themselves, quite rightly, that the life of the intellect, the rational mind, has made tremendous advances. This is what many people call the realm of science today; it provides the basis for the modern materialistic view. Consider the tremendous advances made as the laws of nature have been penetrated, studied and finally used to build all kinds of instruments—most recently especially the instruments for murder! People will also begin to consider other things in the light of this science of theirs. They will analyse foods for their constituents and manufacture chemical foods, never realizing that chemical foods are not the same as those provided by nature, even if they do have the same constituents.

Intellectual, or we may also say scientific, development has shown an upward trend. Moral development has not progressed to the same extent. Surely the present world catastrophe could not have arisen, or taken the course it has taken, if moral development had kept pace with intellectual development. It would be right to say that because moral development has not progressed, intellectual development has assumed something of an amoral character and has in many respects become downright destructive. Many people are beginning to notice that the moral development has not been keeping pace with the intellectual development of humanity today. However, no one asks at the present time that issues like these should be gone into sufficiently deeply so that they may serve a truly human evolution. No one asks that they should be tackled at the point where it is fully evident that modern people simply cannot penetrate to the deeper sources of human thinking and human actions, because elements which are separate and distinct in man and relate to quite different regions of the universe are all mixed up in people's minds.

Modern scientists are faced with a human being consisting of physical body, etheric body—the body of generative powers—astral body and ego; but everything is mixed up. People do not make the distinction in modern science. How can we arrive at a science that will enable us to grasp these things if everything is mixed up together? The truth is that these different aspects of human nature belong to entirely different regions and spheres of the universe. Our physical body and our generative powers relate to the physical world; with the astral body and the ego we enter a totally different world every night, and initially this has extraordinarily little to do with the world in which we are awake during the day. The two worlds really only work together in so far as they are brought together in the human realm.

Consider also that the human ego and astral body are much younger than the physical and etheric bodies. The first beginnings of the physical body go back to the time of ancient Saturn. That early body progressed through four stages—Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth—to reach its present level of evolution on earth. The etheric body has gone through three stages, the astral body through two stages. The ego has only come in during Earth evolution; it is young and belongs to an entirely different cosmic age. The apparatus or instrument of our human intellect is intimately bound up with the physical body. It has reached a great level of perfection because the physical body has gone through such a comprehensive process of development in the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods. We can see this from the level to which the nerves, the brain and the blood have developed. This, then, is the highly developed instrument we use for our intellectual activity.

On a previous occasion here in Dornach I suggested that the human being is much more complex than we are inclined to think. When we say ‘physical body’ we are speaking of something that is far from simple. It is based on principles that go back to ancient Saturn. Then the etheric body was added. This created its own element in the physical body; the astral body also created its own element in the physical body, and so did the ego. The physical body thus really has four elements to it. One of these relates to the physical body as such, one to the etheric body, one to the astral body and one to the ego. The etheric body has three elements—one related to itself, one to the astral body, one to the ego.

Let us stay with the physical body for the moment. We find that during the night, when we are asleep, the element of the physical body relating to the physical body continues in the usual way. The element relating to the etheric body can also continue, for the etheric body stays with the physical body. But what happens to the element relating to the astral body, which is organized to meet the needs of an astral body that wants to go outside, and with the element relating to an ego which has also gone outside? During the night, these two elements—let us call them the astral physical body and the ego's physical body—are forsaken by the principles on which their whole organization is based. The ego and the astral body are then outside the parts of the physical body to which they belong. For as long as we live between birth and death we are really leaving something behind in bed every night which is not taken care of by the principle to which it relates. It clearly has to function differently during the night than it does during the day; I think you can see this. During the day the astral body and the ego are active and aglow in it; during the night they are not. People do not enquire into these things today because everything has merged into one and become mixed up in their minds, as I have said. They do not distinguish between the different aspects of their body, though these can be quite clearly distinguished.

During the night when we are asleep the ‘astral physical’ element in the physical body exercises powers very similar to the powers of Mercury, the mercurial powers that make mercury liquid, and so on. The part of the physical body relating to the ego acts like salt during sleep. Human beings thus have Salt and Mercury flowing through them during sleep.

Up to the fourteenth century, those alchemists who must be taken seriously still knew of these things. After this, sectarianism came into alchemy and the books were written which are generally read today. The old knowledge was still to be found with Jacob Boehme,² however, who used the terms Salt, Mercury and Sulphur.

These are some of the secrets of human nature. We say, then, that when we are asleep we look down on a body that has become mercurial and salty. The fact that the body becomes mercurial has highly significant consequences and we may be able to say more about this in the course of these weeks. The fact that it becomes salty—well, I think it is not at all difficult for people to discover this for themselves when they get up in the mornings.

What is the significance, however? It is more or less like this: On waking, the ego and astral body, having been outside in the world of the spirit during sleep, enter into the salty, or mineral, principle in the human body and into the mercurial principle, which flows within the human being as a vitalizing principle. Principles which have been separated during the night now come together. As they interact, opportunity is given for the things acquired in the world of the spirit to be brought in. Mercury and Salt have been resting; now the ego and astral body enter and fill them with what they have gained in the world of the spirit. As a result, the physical body, the instrument which has evolved from ancient Saturn, is enriched still further. On the one hand the physical body is the instrument we use for intellectual activity and it is truly venerable and highly developed because it has evolved over such a long time. Yet, on the other hand, the process I have just described can bring the influence of the spiritual world to bear in the present time. As a result, human beings are now able to influence the instrument of the intellect from the world of the spirit and intellectual thinking can play such a significant role in the present age.

The world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does, however, have one peculiarity—there is nothing in it by way of moral laws. Strange as it may seem, between going to sleep and waking up again you are in a world devoid of moral laws. We might also say it is a world that is not yet moral. When we wake up, the impulses we bring from this world may take hold of the physical body and the etheric body with regard to the intellect, but cannot in any way take hold of them in any moral sense. This is quite impossible, for the world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does not have moral laws. People who think it would have been better for the gods to arrange things in such a way that humans did not have to live on the physical plane at all are very much mistaken; for in that case people could never become moral. Human beings acquire morality by living here on the physical plane. In short, we bring wisdom to the physical body from the world of the spirit, but not morality.

This is tremendously important and significant, for it explains why humanity must inevitably lag behind when it comes to moral principles, whereas the gods have made excellent provision for their intellectual development, not only providing them with an instrument which has evolved through the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods, but also giving them the wherewithal by which to maintain the intellect by filling them with wisdom in the world which they enter during sleep. It will not be until later periods, in the second half of Venus evolution, that we make connection with a moral world during sleep. Clearly, it is therefore tremendously important for us to see to it that our social life becomes truly moral.

These are the things modern humanity does not want to consider. Some are aware of the riddles, as I have said, but people do not want to consider the deeper reasons, for that would be too much of an effort. They want to take human nature as it presents itself and refuse to consider that in many respects it extends into the worlds of the cosmos, beyond space and beyond time, and that human nature cannot be explained if we merely look at it the way in which it normally comes to expression and do not take account of these other aspects. It is a magnificent and awesome truth that sleep helps our intellectual thinking, even our genius—for geniuses, too, bring back elements from sleep that enter into their mercurial and salt principles—in fact, it is this which makes someone a genius; but morality can only be provided for if human beings gradually let the moral element enter into them here on the physical plane.

For humanity here on earth, the Christ impulse is the heart of the moral life. It is therefore most important—I have stressed this before, from other points of view—that human beings encounter the Christ impulse here on the physical plane. We have to look at this from many different points of view. So it seems we can now understand why people who have all kinds of impulses based on wisdom at an instinctive level—for these impulses are given in sleep—and are able to invent tremendously complex machines, playing a role in the advance of science and technology, need not connect this in any way with morality, for morality belongs to a totally different sphere.

People do not like to hear or know such things today. Yet they will have to be known if we are to escape from the chaos that has arisen in the world. And this is a very serious matter. Human evolution will not progress unless these truths become part of our life on earth. The gods did not intend human beings to become automatons which they could influence like automatic machines. They wanted them to be free individuals who realize what will take them forward. It is wrong to ask why the gods do not intervene. Attempts have to be made; and if one such undertaking should go awry, we should not draw the wrong conclusions. Instead, those who come later must let this give them an even greater impetus to work in a way that helps to encourage such an attempt at further development in the spirit. I have recently been much concerned with a significant attempt made in the past which did not entirely come off. I discussed this in the first part of my essay on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459—it is to be continued in Das Reich.³ The work was written in the early seventeenth century. People were given it to read as early as 1603, and it was published in 1616. The author, Johann Valentin Andreae, also wrote Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci, unusual works which attracted all kinds of comment, some sensible but most of them absurd. All I want to say about them today is that although they may at first sight appear to be satirical, they nevertheless represent one great impulse—to deepen insight into nature in its spiritual aspect to a point where deeper knowledge of the laws of nature also discovers the laws that govern human social life.

This is an area where people find it particularly difficult to distinguish between maya—illusion—and reality. The motives we ourselves or others tend to ascribe to our actions are not the true ones. It is painful to have to realize this, but—I have spoken of this on several occasions—they are not our true motives. Nor are the outward positions people hold in social life their true positions. People are usually completely different inside from the way they present themselves in the social sphere and also from the way they see themselves. People believe so strongly that their actions are based on a particular motive. Some think their motives are entirely selfless, when in reality they are nothing but the most brutal egotism. People are not aware of this because they have such illusions concerning themselves and their social connections. This is another area where we can only discover the truth if we look more deeply into the whole scheme of things.

Johann Valentin Andreae was someone who wanted to look more deeply. What mattered to him, among other things, was to see beyond maya into reality. He was not the kind of superficial person who thinks he can do this with all those harangues profound educationists and others today think will reform the world; he realized that one must look more deeply into the whole scheme which lies behind the world of nature if one is to find the spirit in nature. Then one will also find the threads which truly connect human beings with the spirit. And only then shall we really know the social laws that are needed. You cannot reflect on social relationships today if you think the way people do in modern science, for this will only give you the surface of nature and the surface of social life. Johann Valentin Andreae looked deep down to find nature and the social life, for only there do they come together. It really is like this: Think of the borderline between maya and reality—there you have a peep-hole on nature on the one side and a peep-hole on social life on the other. And you have to look deeper before you realize that they actually only meet a long way back.

People will never reach this point, however. They will continue to look at some of the laws of nature at a surface level and will then speak about social life out of their feeling, out of superficiality. This will not help us to see the scheffle of things, however, that Johann Valentin Andreae sought to find. At most we shall get to be—excuse me calling a spade a spade—a Woodrow Wilson. Andreae wanted to discover the scheme of things, and his desire to do so fills such works as his Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci. He was addressing the leaders, the statesmen of his time; it was an attempt to establish a social order based on truth and not illusion. The Fama appeared in 1614, the Confessio in 1615, and The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in 1616, though it had already been written in 1603. The year 1618 marked the beginning of the Thirty Years War,⁴ which brought conditions in which the truly great things aimed at in the Fama and the Confessio were swept away.

We are now living in an age when one year of war is equal to more than ten years of war in the seventeenth century, because war has become so much more destructive. By the standards of those times we have more than a Thirty Years War behind us already.

Try and see this as something that can guide you towards the will and endeavour that arose in the seventeenth century but was brought to a halt by the Thirty Years War. As I have said, if there have been such attempts and a beginning has been made, we must not let ourselves be put off by this but rather let it spur us on to even greater activity; then a later attempt may not end in failure. The first condition is, however, that we really come to know life.

I now want to relate this to matters I discussed with you last year and at the beginning of this year. I drew your attention to the strange course that the whole of human life and human evolution is taking. Individuals will gain in years, being 1, 2, 3, 4, years old, and later 30, 35, 40, and so on, years old; but the opposite is true for humanity as a whole. Humanity was old to begin with and is getting younger and younger. If we go back in time—for our present purposes we need only go back as far as the watershed between Atlantean and post-Atlantean life when the catastrophe happened on Atlantis—we come first of all to ancient Indian times. Conditions were very different then; humanity as a whole remained capable of further development beyond the 50s. Today we are only capable of developing in such a way in childhood and up to a certain time of our youth, for only then is our physical development directly connected with the development of soul and spirit, and the two run parallel. This soon comes to an end, however. In ancient Indian times, development in soul and spirit continued to be dependent on physical development until well into the 50s. People went on developing the way a child develops, and this only came to an end when they were old men and women. This is the reason why people looked up with such humility to their old people.

During the time of ancient Persia, people were no longer able to develop to such a high level but only into their 40s and early 50s; and in Egyptian and Chaldean times only into their 40s. In Graeco-Latin times, this kind of development went only as far as the thirty-fifth year. Then came a time—you will remember, the Graeco-Latin age began in the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha—when human beings were only capable of development up to their thirty-third year. That was the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The age of humanity then matched the age at which Christ went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

After this, the human race got younger and younger. By the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age, in the fifteenth century, humanity was only able to develop up to the age of 28, with no further development after this, and today we have reached a point where people only reach the age of 27, if this is left to nature. In the past, human beings naturally remained capable of development into a ripe old age. Today people must conclude such development as comes of its own accord and is tied to the physical body by the age of 27, unless they take up a spiritual impulse in their inner life and push on from within. People who do not take up anything spiritual remain 27 years old even if they live to be 100. It means they have the characteristics of 27-year-olds. And with people refusing to look for inner spiritual impulses we now have a culture and a social life that is 27 years of age. We do not grow beyond the age of 27 in our outer social life. This age now rules humanity. If we go on like this, humanity will go down to 26, 25 and 24 years, then in the sixth post-Atlantean age to the twenty-first and later to the fourteenth year.

These things must be looked into, and they should not be taken pessimistically; instead they should give us the inner impulse to go towards the life of the Spirit and set out on an inner quest to look for the elements nature is unable to provide.

This is another point of view from which it is apparent that spiritual impulses are needed in civilization. The most characteristic people of our age, those who take the lead today, are people who do not get beyond their twenty-seventh year. The question is, what would really make someone a present-day leader? Well, let us say we have someone who is born and is very much alive, who does not take in much by way of tradition but only what comes by nature, without undue influence from outside; this individual would be very much determined by what comes of its own accord. Education usually gives colour and nuance to this in most people. But let us take a really typical individual who essentially shows only the characteristics of the present age, someone born into poverty perhaps and not given an education that puts much emphasis on tradition, but who would only be influenced by whatever arises from circumstance. Such a person would grow up, would be very active initially, for it is Part of the present age that one is active up to the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first year, and perhaps be a forceful personality up to his twenty-first year. But unless he is able to develop spiritually, then, being very much a representative of the age, he will come to a halt at the age of 27. Now if he were to be truly representative of the age, something like the following would have to happen: At the age of 27 he would come to a key point in his life, to such effect that the circumstances he creates for himself at the age of 27, committing himself for life, would not allow him to progress beyond this. In modern life this could take the form, for instance, that such a person, a self-made man with tremendous energies and all kinds of impulses arising from the time itself, gets himself elected to parliament at the age of 27. To get oneself elected to parliament means one has committed oneself and there are some things that now have to be maintained. And so the individual remains as he is—which is entirely due to this development in the present age—and he is highly representative of the present age. Parliament being the great ideal in the present day and age, this would be a key point in the life of an individual who would then refuse to accept anything capable of growth for the future and who would have become completely adapted to external circumstances or, in a word, remained 27 years of age. And so at the age of 27 this would be a strong, powerful individual imbued with the impulses of the age who now entered parliament. After some time he would even be a minister and advance to become one of the leading figures. But he would merely be a man of our time, a typical 27-year-old.

There is such an individual, someone born into such circumstances who only took in what came, nothing by way of tradition. He grew strong and powerful under these circumstances—someone who would go through thick and thin for anything that came to him in the first twenty-seven years of his life and who did, in fact, become a Member of Parliament at the age of 27. He was a thorn in the flesh at first, being in opposition, but soon rose further and has become a kind of axis of rotation at the present time—and this is Lloyd George.⁵ No one is more characteristic of the present age than Lloyd George. ‘His own man’, he committed himself for life within a week of his twenty-seventh year by getting himself elected to the House of Commons. This and the rest of his life story show him to be a typical representative of life in the present age, a life we should not follow, for spiritual impulses should have taken over in the twenty-seventh year.

If one is able to penetrate the inner aspects of life one sees the most important events of the present time to be events to which other people are asleep. To anyone who can take a wider view it is immensely significant that such a self-made man is elected to the British Parliament exactly at the age of 27 and thus commits himself.

These are the realities which people must gradually learn to observe and consider, for they reveal the deeper connections in life. People like to skip over them today because they are not easy. Reluctance is felt because people prefer to give free rein to their passions, the emotions they create for themselves in the outer world and to their instincts, rather than seek to gain insight. They want to live the life of the world, basing themselves on these emotions and not on their true selves.

• 1. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German naturalist. His Welträtsel first appeared in 1899. Rudolf Steiner was probably referring to the following statement from the first chapter:
  
  Today we feel justifiably proud as we see the tremendous advances made in the pure and applied science of nature in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the picture is entirely different and far from pleasing when we consider other aspects of modern civilization that are no less important. Much to our regret, we have to agree with Alfred Wallace who wrote that compared to our remarkable progress in the physical sciences and their practical application, our system of government, the justiciary, national education and the whole of our social and moral organization was still in a state of barbarism.
• 2. Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), shoemaker in Goerlitz, Germany,. was a mystic whose influence went beyond Germany to Holland and England. He was studied by Henry More, Newton and William Law among others. His main works were Aurora (1612), Vom irdischen und himmlischen Mysterium (title translates as ‘The mystery of earth and heaven’—not available in English) and Der Weg zu Christo in acht Buchern (title translates as ‘The road to Christ in eight books’—not available in English).
• 3. Das Reich was a quarterly published in Munich and Heidelberg by Alexander Freiherr von Bernus. Rudolf Steiner contributed three consecutive essays on the subject in Nos. 3 and 4 of the second and No. 1 of the third volume (October 1917 and January and April 1918). These have been Philosophie und Anthroposophie (GA 35) 1965. Johann Valentin Andreae's (1586–1654) work was translated into modern German and published by Walter Weber in Dornach in 1942; 2nd improved edition, Stuttgart 1957. Available in English as The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459, as translated by Edward Foxcroft in 1690. Minerva Books, London (no date).
• 4. The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648, devastated Central Europe. It held great terrors for the civilian population, which have lived on in people's memories, in tales, legends and in the literature and were still very real to people in Germany up to the Second World War. (Trans.)
• 5. David Lloyd George, later Lloyd George of Dwyfor (1863–1945), elected as an Advanced Liberal for Carnarvon Boroughs in 1890, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1916 to 1922.

Also known as: Archangels and the Living Source of Speech Lecture 2 of 13 from the lecture series: The Human Soul in its Connection with Godly-Spiritual Individualities.

If you will remind yourselves of some of the things I have said in recent lectures, you will, I think, be able to call up a picture of the relationship of man's faculty of speech to those Beings in the spiritual world whom we are accustomed to assign to the Hierarchy of the Archangels. You will remember I explained to you the difference it makes to man whether the words he speaks are formed in such a way as to refer only to material things, in which case speech assumes a materialistic character, or whether in his speaking he unfolds a certain idealism, so that every time he utters a word, the feeling is present in him that he belongs to a spiritual world and that the words that ring in his speaking, coming as they do from the soul, must have some relation to Spirits. According as the one or the other is true, so does man come, between falling asleep and awakening, into a wrong or right relation with the Archangels. If he allows idealism to disappear altogether from his speaking, then he gradually loses the connection, which is so essential to him, with the Archangels. I am reminding you of this, because I want to speak to-day more particularly of one aspect of this relationship of human speech with the hierarchy of the Archangels. Speech, like everything else in evolution that has to do with man, as we have had full opportunity of realising in our study of his being, has had its history. What I want to bring forward does not refer to any one language in particular. The periods of time we have to take into view when we are studying some deep-seated change in speech are so long that even primitive languages show the same character as civilised ones in respect of such matters as we shall be considering. To-day therefore we shall not concern ourselves with the differences that exist between the several languages, but rather with those metamorphoses which human language in general has undergone in the course of the evolution of mankind on Earth.

If we consider the relationship man has to-day to language, we find that the words he speaks are nearly all of them signs for things that are round about him. As you will know, we have in the course of our studies alluded to a more intimate relationship between word and object. In our day however there is hardly any feeling left for this; words are very little more than mere outward signs for the objects indicated. Who is there who still feels, when the word Blitz (lightning) is uttered, something of the same experience he has when lightning actually flashes through space? To-day we are inclined to look on the word merely as a combination of sounds that is a sign for the phenomenon of the flash of lightning. It was not always so. If we go no farther back than to the earlier part of the Greek civilisation, we find that man's relation to language was not then one of thought, where the word is for him a sign and a symbol. The man of olden time entered with heart and soul into the sounds of his words and into the whole way the sounds were formed and arranged. And in the case of the languages of Northern Europe we do not even need to go back so far before we come to a time when the word Pflug (plough) gave man the same inner experience as did the activity of ploughing. This has been lost, and the word has become no more than a sign. But it is scarcely more than 1500 years or so since words were still felt in this way in the Northern parts of Europe. The feeling a man had when he was ploughing was similar to the feeling he had when he heard the word which in those days designated the plough. When anyone was listening to or speaking a word, it was not so much his thinking that partook in the experience as his feeling.

If now we go back into more remote ages, we find something different again; the will takes an intense and active part in the forming of words. But in order to study the times when man's relationship to external Nature was pre-eminently one of will, we must take our thoughts right back to Atlantis. For we have to reckon with long epochs of time when we are considering the evolution of language.

Within language lives the Genius of language. Language is not dependent for its evolution on the decision of man. In language lives the Genius of language. And the Genius of Language belongs to the hierarchy of the Archangels. When man speaks—when, that is, an atmosphere is prepared around the Earth within which can live man's utterances articulated into speech, then that atmosphere of speech and language is the element of the Archangels. Hence are the Archangels the Spirits of the different peoples—the Folk Spirits as we call them. You will know of this from the lectures I gave on the Mission of the Folk-Souls.

The evolution of language on Earth has thus a deep and intimate connection with the evolution of the Archangels. We can go so far as to say that in the evolution of speech and language we are beholding the evolution of the Archangels themselves. For even when we are studying something that has to do with the Earth, it is by no means impossible in the course of that very study to come to a knowledge of the evolution of higher spiritual Beings. We need only learn how to relate particular facts and phenomena to particular higher spiritual Beings, and we can arrive at a clear perception of how the continuous evolution of the Archangels is expressed and revealed in the changes that are to be observed in man's faculty of speech.

Now in those far-off times when an element of will came to expression in man's speech—that is, in the later part of the Atlantean evolution—it was not the same Beings of the Hierarchy who lived in his language as in more recent times. The whole relationship moreover was different. In those remote times man was not yet so interested in the feelings aroused in him at the sight, for example, of the blossoming of flowers or by changes in weather. These feelings interested him, it is true, in another connection, but not in respect of the faculty whereby the word welled up from the depths of his soul. Whether danger threatened him from this or that fact in Nature, summoning him to defend himself, or whether something else had a kindly and favourable influence and he would fain bring it into the orbit of his life, or again whether another object of perception were good or bad for his health,—in effect, how his will was aroused to activity, what he was induced to do under the influence of some fact or other,—this was the aspect of experience that interested him, and he formed his words accordingly. So that in those older times we find words that express how man reacts, what he finds himself impelled to do under the influence of the world around him. The most ancient language of all consisted almost entirely of expressions of will. How do we account for this? It was due to the fact that the Archangels came to language by way of Intuition. Read the descriptions I have given in my books of the nature of Intuition, and you will have a picture of the activity exercised by the Archangels in the later part of the Atlantean evolution, when they bestowed upon man the language of will.

Later, these Archangels moved forward in their own evolution. In my little book, “The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind,” I spoke about the evolution of the Leaders and Guides of humanity who live in the spiritual world. To-day we will extend this into a realm to which on that occasion we gave little attention,—the realm of speech and language. The advance made by the Archangels in their relation to language may be described in the following way. In the older faculty of Intuition they were standing within the world of still higher Hierarchies, giving themselves up in devotion to these worlds, so that together with speech they received something of the very being of higher Hierarchies than themselves. So long as it all depended upon Intuition, the Archangels surrendered themselves to the next higher Hierarchy,—Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai. They were within the worlds of this higher Hierarchy, and it was the experience of standing intuitively within this higher Hierarchy that enabled them to put the speech-forming power into human life on Earth.

In the next epoch the Archangels make, as it were, a step forward and then their speech-forming power flows no longer out of Intuition but out of Inspiration. They are not now completely surrendered to the next higher Hierarchy. (What they did still receive through their devotion to this Hierarchy underwent a change; it ceased to be something they could then communicate to man as speech or language). Now they hearken to the Inspirations of the First Hierarchy,—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim,—and from out of this Inspiration they pour down to Earth the speech-forming power.

If we go back to the earliest times of Post-Atlantean evolution, or even only as far as ancient Egypt and Chaldea, we find in every land that the source from which the Archangels drew, in order to communicate speech to man, is Inspiration. Language itself is metamorphosed. Words become an expression before all else of sympathy and antipathy, of every shade of human feeling. Instead of a language of will, as in former times, we have now a language of feeling. We have come to a stage where this feeling, which is called forth in man by an external process or being is the very same as is experienced when the sounds issuing forth from the depths of his being are uttered by the speech organs and articulated into the word.

We have reached a significant phase in the evolution of mankind. The Hierarchy of the Archangels is at first the receiver of Intuitions; and the language of will, brought down as it were out of these Intuitions, is created by these Beings. The Archangels move on further and become the receivers of Inspiration. And what they receive through the inspiration of Beings of the First Hierarchy, gives rise to the language of feeling.

It was out of an extraordinarily deep perception that the well-known scholar and writer on the history of Art, Hermann Grimm, drew a clear line of division between the Greeks and the Romans. When we learn history at school or at the university, we are, he said, exhorted to take pains to understand what we learn; but as we go back over the evolution of mankind, we can only understand history as far back as Roman times. Cicero and Caesar we can still understand, for up to a point they are similar to the man of the present day,—although it must be said that the understanding generally brought to a study of Caesar is far from being free and natural. If we were not so thoroughly drilled and trained to it, we would never take much interest in Caesar! We would leave it to the pupils in military schools. Generally speaking, however, it is possible to trace a continuous stream back from our own day to Rome. A certain element of pedantry, which has gradually been creeping into man's life and has to-day reached a kind of culmination, first began to show itself in Rome. But, thinks Hermann Grimm, if we are honest with ourselves, we cannot claim to understand Pericles or Alcibiades. We understand them in the same way as we understand characters in fairy tales. As a matter of fact, it is only through a deeper study of Anthroposophy that one can come again to an understanding of the soul life of such figures; as you know, we have sought here again and again to enter into the whole way in which a Greek thinks and forms his ideas. Hermann Grimm is aware of the distance that lies between the inner life of a Greek and the inner life of a man of the present day. To the Roman we can still feel ourselves near; then comes a great gulf. The way the Greeks are described in the schools to-day is really deplorable! They are made out to be just like ourselves. They were not so at all, their whole life of soul was of a different character altogether. We need to look round for quite other methods to describe the Greeks. You could not have more striking evidence of this than when the learned Wilamowitz undertakes to translate the Greek tragedians. The whole affair is simply a disgrace. I need hardly say, there is nothing of the Greek tragedies left in his translations, not a trace! And yet people are immensely pleased, quite enchanted with them. Their dramatis personae simply do not exist in the tragedies themselves.

Hermann Grimm showed a true and sure instinct, when he said that we come into an entirely different world when we come to Greece—to say nothing of the Orient. It is really no more than a ridiculous mockery for modern man to imagine he can understand anything of the true Orient out of Deussen's translations. The first thing necessary is to be able to comprehend the change that has come about since then in the very being of man's soul.

And now when we come to consider our particular sphere, the sphere of speech or language, then we find that the language of feeling still prevailed in Greece among the philosophers up to the time of Plato. The first philosophical pedant is Aristotle, the great and universal spirit.¹ It will surprise you that I give him these two appellations, one after the other, but we do not understand Aristotle unless we see in him the first philosophical pedant and at the same time the universal spirit. He is great in a certain aspect but he is in another aspect the first pedant philosopher, for he made out of words categories of thought. It would never have occurred to the Greek of an older time to take words and force them, as it were, to yield categories of thought; he still felt the words as something that is inspired into man, still felt the presence of higher Spirits in speech and language.

Well on into the Greek epoch and—for the man in the street, as we say—as late as the Mystery of Golgotha, we can still detect in the speech-forming power of man the element of Inspiration, as it lives in the soul of the Archangel. True, the ordinary person lags behind the philosopher in certain respects; but in spiritual matters he is often less behind, and in the matter of the speech-forming faculty, he retains the Inspirations longer. Dates can of course be no more than approximate. In one region of the earth Inspiration lasts a longer, in another a shorter, time. In one region, men still feel how the word pulsates in them as the blood pulsates in the body; they feel it in the power of the breath. In the power of the breath as it enfills and surges through the body, they feel the presence of the Archangel, who is himself subject to Inspiration.

Then we come into a time when it is no longer so that the Archangel is yielding to Inspiration when he communicates to man the power of speech, but to Imagination. And language becomes the language of thought. Man begins to speak more out of thoughts; language approaches the abstract. And behind this lies a fact of great significance.

The Archangels, who belong to the Third Hierarchy, received Intuitions from the Second Hierarchy, and Inspirations from Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—the First Hierarchy. Whence do they receive Imagination? There is no Hierarchy beyond the First! The Imaginations cannot at any rate come to them from any one of the Hierarchies named in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. For he tells of no Hierarchy beyond the first. Certain Archangel Beings were therefore obliged to turn to the past for Imaginations, to find in the past the pictures of the speech-forming power,—for that is what the Imaginations are. What came from an earlier time had to be carried on into the future. There was no longer any immediate and present flow of the speech-forming power. And inasmuch as speech now took its source from an earlier stage, into it crept an Ahrimanic element. This is a fact of incalculable significance. And what the Archangels felt above them came to expression in the world of man in a deadening of speech and language. Language became polished and at the same time paralysed, it no longer retained the livingness it had in earlier days.

Try to understand the significance of this change. Something enters into the life of man that in reality requires a higher hierarchy than the First. If we have a right understanding for this event in human development in all its tremendous significance, we shall come to see that a time had arrived when the Gods had to grow out beyond what is contained in the First Hierarchy. There is one thing that up to that time had not yet been achieved by the Gods, and was already present here on Earth in picture. What the Gods had not yet achieved is the passage through Death. You have often heard me speak of this. The Gods who stand above man in the various Hierarchies knew only of changes from one form of life into another. The actual event of death in life had not, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, been an experience of the Gods. Death came as a result of Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences; it came, that is, through the agency of Divine Beings who had either remained behind in evolution or pressed forward too quickly. Death had no place in the life-experience of the higher Hierarchies. It enters into their experience in the moment when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha—passes, that is, through Death, uniting Himself so deeply with the destiny of Earth Man as to have this also in common with him,—that He passes through Death. The event of Golgotha is accordingly more than an event of the life of Earth, it is an event of the life of the Gods. The actual event that took place in that moment on Earth, and the knowledge of the Event that finds its way into the hearts and minds of men—all this is an image of the infinitely more lofty and sublime and far-reaching Event that took place in the worlds of the Gods themselves. Christ's passing through death on Golgotha is an event whereby the First Hierarchy reached up into a still higher realm. Therefore have I always had to speak to you of the Trinity as standing above the First Hierarchy. In reality It only came there in the course of evolution. Everywhere there is evolution.

And so, if we are speaking of the Hierarchies as described in Dionysius the Areopagite, we have to say that the Archangels lose the possibility of forming Imaginations from above. Consequently Man loses the possibility of continuing to build and fashion his language in a living manner. In the world of the Gods an event takes place of which the Mystery of Golgotha is an earthly reflection. Therefore the Event of Golgotha contains among its many implications also this,—that as men gradually receive into themselves more and more of the Christ Impulse, they receive again through the Christ Impulse the living spring and fountain of language.

We have to-day the various languages that run their course like diverging streams. And if we look at these various languages in a free and unbiassed way, we cannot fail to observe how they carry in them—and more especially, the farther we go Westward—an element of death, how they tend to become mere empty husks. In Asia things have not yet gone so far, but as we go West we find increasingly how the languages show signs of dying.

There is only one way whereby the speech-creating power can be quickened into life,—and that is through men coming to realise the Christ Impulse as a living Impulse. Then the Christ Impulse can become a power in man that can create speech. And among all the facts to be noted if we want to form a true picture of the significance of the Christ Impulse in the whole evolution of mankind, this must also have place, that at the time when man went forward into freedom, he came right out of the Divine and spiritual stream in which he had been steeped hitherto. Had speech remained as it was in the time of ancient Greece, man would not have been able to evolve to freedom. That speech serves the purpose merely of a sign,—this absurdity (for so I must call it) had to come about when the Archangels lost the possibility of forming Imaginations from the present and had to resort to the past. During the time since the Christ first made Himself known to men, during all this time while He has let the Mystery of His Being and His activity be there on record in the Gospels, the knowledge of Christ has not come in its fullness, the knowledge men have had of Him has not been sufficiently spiritual, it has often been merely traditional. But when the word of the Gospel is quickened to life by an understanding of the Christ, an understanding that derives from the Christ Himself as He still works on in the world, continuing to have influence always upon man, then—and only then—will proceed from the Christ Impulse, from the living Christ Impulse, the speech-forming power.

Let us now set down on the blackboard what I have been indicating. Here up above, the Gods grow more and more exalted. Down below an evolution goes on among men. On the one hand they receive more and more of the Christ Impulse, on the other hand they move further and further forward in the direction of freedom.

And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ Impulse, on the other hand they move further and further forward in the direction of freedom. And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ, Who has found His home in the hearts of men on Earth; He enters with His Impulse right into the Imaginations of the Archangels, and these become alive, become quick with immediate present life.

We shall in the future have an altogether different kind of language-forming power. A quite new kind will begin to work. I have spoken of this from other points of view in earlier lectures.

We can describe the evolution that goes on above in the Heavens at the same time as mankind evolves on the Earth below. And we can also describe its copy or reflection on Earth,—the progress from the language of will to the language of feeling and thence to the language of thought or symbol. And we can know that amidst it all Archangels are ascending—or shall we rather say descending—from Intuition to Inspiration and to Imagination. We behold first the evolution of the Archangels and all that takes place in connection therewith among the higher Hierarchies, and when we turn from that to man in his evolution, it is on the evolution of language and of the word that we have to fix our attention. We will consider one particular stream in the whole history of mankind, into which a divine stream was interwoven. It goes back to the origin of all things, the far beginning of all things. “In the Beginning was the Word” where was the word in those distant ages, when mankind had a language of the will? The Word was with God, it had to be sought there by means of Intuition. “The Word was with God ”.

The Archangels had to transpose themselves by means of Intuition into the Being of the Second Hierarchy. The Being that flowed over into Them was the Word. “And a God was the Word”.

In the Beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And a God was the Word.

We see how intimate is the connection of that stream in evolution which finds its culmination in the Mystery of Golgotha with the Logos, the Word. And it is all bound up with the great cosmic event of man's “becoming” and the passage of Christ through death. When those great sentences were uttered: “In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and a God was the Word ”—in those days the Word was felt as moving and weaving in the soul of man. With the Advent of the Mystery of Golgotha came a time when Christ was present in a human body—men beheld Him through the Word. The Word had entered into physical man. “ And the Word became flesh ”.

Deep truths, deep facts of evolution, lie hidden in the ancient writings, but earnest and persistent work is needed to find them again. We must first be able to observe in the spiritual world. Above all, we must approach these ancient writings with reverence, knowing that we shall only be able to deepen our understanding of their content by learning to investigate these sublime matters for ourselves. And as we are able to enter into their deeper meaning we enter also into spiritual life itself.

Well indeed would it be for us in this age, had we a Michael civilisation, a culture and a civilisation fired by what I recently called the Michael thought! This Michael thought should be alive, above all, in the autumn time. The festival of autumn should be filled with it. The leaves have withered and are falling from the branches of the trees, the plants are fading away, life is being mineralised. All the fresh young sprouting life that we saw in the earlier part of the year is receiving death into itself, death and decay, and is fast undergoing mineralisation. Now must the Michael power well up from man's inner being; now must man recognise how, just where the physical and material grows weak and faint and tends to die away,—just there the spiritual enters in! The Autumn Festival of Michaelmas at the end of September should become a festival filled with life and impulse. It has to express how man, while he stands right within the decaying processes of Nature, grows correspondingly active in his soul. When the Michael Festival shall have this character, then all human activity will be fructified from it. And how sore is the need to-day for such fructification! Let me give you an instance.

A short while ago, we heard a great deal about a resolve some people had made to study language. Nothing came of it, nothing at all. All manner of facts about language were collected, but the whole effort was completely lacking in spirituality. It was really so. There you had a group of young people, straight from school. At school of course, they had not yet woken up, but now—they are going to “study language”! They begin to plan it all and think how it will be when they have gone on studying for some time; a dazzling picture floats before their eyes of the fruit of all their labours. Actually all the preliminary steps are there; they could quite well have gone on to a recognition of the great miracle that unfolds before us when we look away from the present-day language of thought, through the language of feeling, to the language of will, and behold there the wonderful working and weaving of the Divine Archangels, behold too how their working and weaving stirs even yet in the language corpses of to-day. Were the life of the First Beginnings to flow again in language, what a sublime greatness were there revealed!

You must understand that the Michael thought is not a thing to be taken easily. You cannot simply say: Let us inaugurate a Michael Festival; it will be wonderful, and we shall then be in the very forefront of progress. The Michael thought has relation to the strongest and deepest impulses of the human will. It must reckon with these innermost impulses, and a Michael Festival cannot be other than a festival which gives a tremendous urge to human life, much as in those olden times, when man had the power to create festivals, the institution of the Christmas Festival or of the Easter Festival gave a new urge and impetus to the whole life of man on Earth.

• 1. Pedant’ seems to be, in this connection, the nearest rendering for ‘Philinter.’ (Note by Translator).

Before I set out on my journey to southern and western Germany, I would like to speak to you once again about the nature of the Theosophical movement and its relationship to the Theosophical Society, for the Theosophical movement is of such comprehensive significance that at the beginning of a new year - which may be a very fruitful one for our work - we may recall the task, goals and working methods of this Theosophical movement.

The theosophical movement is not one that can be compared to any other movement in the present day, not even remotely. The most diverse people face this movement – which has spread across all developed countries of our earth in its not yet thirty-year existence – they face it in different ways and have faced it from the very beginning.

Ever since the emissary of our great and exalted masters, Mrs. Blavatsky, founded this movement, it has undergone many changes. She has seen people in her midst who have left her and others who have remained loyal and zealous since they entered it, and have also persevered with her. There have been members who have come to the Theosophical Society out of curiosity, who have come to learn about the insights that humans can gain into higher, spiritual worlds, among many other interesting things that one can learn about in the present.

But because the path that the theosophical movement can offer people is a safe one, it is not the easiest, not the most comfortable, not the one that can be taken from one day to the next, so that the highest spiritual phenomena immediately present themselves as an absolute truth. Rather, a zealous endeavor, a truly intense devotion, is necessary. That is why those who enter the theosophical movement out of curiosity become apostates over time, because they believe that they cannot achieve what they want to achieve in a short period of time; or because they believe that the theosophical movement has nothing to offer them.

Of course, the Theosophical Society did not expect many such curious people from the outset, although curiosity is often a detour to the truth and to theosophical knowledge. For many, curiosity later developed into a real theosophical pursuit. Others come to the Theosophical Society to truly undergo an inner psychological development. They really want to arrive at the certainty of a soul and spiritual life and achieve mystical deepening in order to become an important link in human development. These are better members. To begin with, they strive to recognize and experience as much as possible within themselves. In the higher sense, this is still a selfish pursuit; but even the highest pursuit of knowledge is a selfish and not a selfless pursuit. They also know that this is not the highest goal. But there is a beautiful saying that characterizes this state of affairs: “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.” The detour via this egoism is thus a serious and good one, and those who take it can be worthy and genuine members of the Theosophical movement. Perhaps they are right to strive for their own perfection, because a person will only become a useful and valuable member of society when he has perfected himself. What use is an imperfect person to his fellow human beings? What use is someone who has only a superficial understanding of life? Only when one is able to look into human hearts and souls, when one is able to solve the great riddles of the world to some extent for oneself, can one intervene in the human hustle and bustle; only then can one do something for one's fellow human beings and for the world in the right way. Therefore, self-perfection, the absorption of spiritual knowledge, is a right and good path. No one can be reproached for being selfish if he seeks the path of self-perfection. And he who remains [true] will find that he has not searched in vain in the theosophical movement, that the path leads quietly but surely to what he seeks. Some may say that there are other paths. These other paths are not to be fought or opposed in the slightest. I know how the other spiritual movements serve the world. Not a word of contradiction will come from a true Theosophist. There can be no question of that.

But the one who seeks the spirit in the highest sense must seek this spirit through self-knowledge. Everyone has the spirit within them, and it is basically not useful to seek spiritual knowledge in the world around us if we do not want to recognize the most accessible spirit, the spirit within ourselves, in the true sense of the word. There are many who seek to recognize the spirit through all kinds of artificial means, and in doing so completely forget what spirit is in such close proximity: it is our own soul, our own spirit. We can find it if we want to search in the right way. But it lies deep within the human heart. We must search for it deeper and deeper in the layers of our own inner being. For what dwells within us is the same that dwells in the world as spirit and soul. The God who creates in the world, who has been creating in the world for millions of years, can be found in the human heart. And just as the natural scientist studies the world outside, seeking to understand the physical forces of stones, plants, animals and human beings, so too can no one truly recognize the soul and spirit in the world without really studying the soul and spirit. And the spirit, which has always created in the world and will always create in the world, dwells in a reflection, in a mirror image in ourselves. We develop further and further towards this spirit, our soul becomes ever more extensive.

Thus, theosophical striving is nothing other than the striving to become aware of the creative soul and spiritual beings in the world. What we carry within us today, what we find when we descend into the layers of our soul life, we once created and developed. If we could go back – and the theosophist gradually learns to go back into the distant past – then we would find the same soul forces building the world structure before there was any physical substance out there. And we would find the spirit that lives as a spark within us, creating out there in the world before there were chemical and physical forces. Spiritual and divine forces were at work. And higher than all physical existence, than all corporeal existence, is this spiritual existence; and not only higher, but older is this spiritual existence than the corporeal.

So we descend within ourselves and bring up from our own heart and soul layers the primal riddle-question with its solution, through which the world itself came into being. Those who immerse themselves in theosophy and descend into the layers of their own soul and spiritual life will find the forces that were at work before an eye saw or an ear heard. Before fire, air and water were on our earth, soul and spirit were in the sky and brought all this into being. We find something lasting and superior to the physical when we descend into these layers of our heart and mind. And then we do not draw from ourselves, but from the formative forces of the world. The great teachers and all those you have met among the great souls and spirits have gone down into the human interior. They have not only recognized themselves, but have opened their view beyond the stars and infinities.

Through self-knowledge, we are also able to recognize how the worlds were created and where man had his origin; and also the goals of man, the distant and the near, and our world task we are able to get out of the layers of the spirit through self-knowledge. What we know about the origin of planets, rounds and races, what we know about solar bodies and solar systems, and what we know about the emergence of living beings from the solar system and the world bodies, has been gained through self-knowledge, through that self-knowledge which has struggled to recognize in one's own spirit what it is today, what has been drawn into it through eons. What is present in him today leads us to the realization of what has always been present in him – present in him and at the same time outside in the world.

When you look at a tree, it has annual rings. But you first have to cut through the trunk to be able to see the annual rings. In the same way, the soul has received its rings for the one who can observe it. Each year such rings are added. The soul has passed through the cycles, the rounds and the races, and everywhere it has formed such an annual ring. This view is not seen by man today. But when he has become seeing, he sees what has remained as a result of the development. That is the way of self-knowledge, of self-perfection. Thus, through self-knowledge, the world unlocks. Thus man gets to know his task through this self-knowledge. And then he comes to an understanding of [the task of] the theosophical movement.

And that is the realization that presents itself to us, that the theosophical movement is a necessity for present and future humanity. I can only hint at what I have often said. Other races preceded our race; other races that still had spiritual knowledge. The Lemurian race, although not so advanced in mind and imagination and then perished by fire, still had a direct connection with the spiritual beings of the world, a direct knowledge of people was present. Man has lost his spiritual knowledge because he was called to develop his mind, because he was called to develop his mind through the senses.

The Atlanteans were still able to connect spiritually with other superior beings. We know that the Lemurians were brought over to the Atlanteans in small colonies to form the new root race. And we also know that when the floods began to break in, through which the Atlantic continent perished, the Manu sent a small group to the center of Asia. And when the old Atlantis was drawing to a close, the Manu led his little band, which was to form the basis for our race, into the Gobi or Shamo desert. There they were protected from the decadent inhabitants who had remained from the Atlanteans and Lemurians. And so the first sub-race of our race formed. They moved to the west. The other races remained behind. We ourselves descend from this small group. Our fifth root race will not meet its downfall through fire or water, but in a different way our present race will experience its twilight, in order to be led to a new stage, to a new existence. The theosophist learns about this stage, and he does preparatory work for the future of humanity, for the coming race. The struggle for existence will be the form of our

It will be saved in a small group. This will be recruited from those who have recognized that they must lead, and who have sought soul and spirit again.

Unlike in the past, work must be done in the present time. In the past, people were separated into small cultural areas, and each culture could only work in a small area. Even during the ancient Indian culture, and also during the Persian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures, people were limited to smaller territories. Now the whole earth has become our dwelling place. Our technology, which is the greatness of our race, spans the whole earth. There is no longer any separation. Goods produced far from us are distributed all over the earth. The earth has become a common dwelling place. People can no longer be distinguished by individual colors, races, climates; they now exchange not only goods but also opinions.

Nothing can exist anymore for a small group only. Today we have a new task through which we can all grow into a new future. It is the task of the Theosophical movement to grasp this.

The leaders of humanity at the beginning and during the [first sub-race] of the fifth root race were the Rishis in India, of whom the modern researcher knows almost nothing. Only those who have come to the vision of the higher worlds through mystical knowledge can tell of them. They created that wonderful culture of which the Vedic culture is only a faint reflection. All that we know of Vedic culture originated in much later times. For those who are able to observe the world spiritually, there is a time of which no document reports, a time when in ancient India, God-gifted spirits, the Rishis, taught directly. That was a land culture.

Then comes a culture that is again limited to one country: the ancient Persian, the Zarathustrian culture. There have been seven Zarathustras. The Zarathustra who is usually mentioned is the seventh. He is the incarnation of all previous Zarathustras. What is preserved in the books of the Persian religion was only recorded in much later times. Here we look back on a second inspired creed in our racial development.

We now move west. We encounter the wonderful Egyptian culture, a culture of which books give us knowledge. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a result of the culture of Hermes. Then we come to Greece and Italy to the Orphic primeval culture, which arose on European soil and from which we still draw. Then we come up to the sublime religion of the founder of Christianity and finally into our time.

We have thus glimpsed a series of human religious beliefs that originated with individual great founders of religions. For us, these great, exalted founders are nothing more than members of a spiritual community of beings and individualities that stand highly exalted above our humanity, so highly exalted that today man can only look up with admiration and humility to the great ones who have brought the spiritual [impulses] of our development. But at the same time, as we look up to them, we know that we too are called to ascend to such clarity and spirituality. The holy men have emerged from what we call the lodge of exalted human leaders.

Those who brought Egyptian culture then moved west and, when they came as emissaries to the west, to Europe, they brought the peoples the knowledge that they used according to their circumstances. The White Lodge has worked so that every people could understand it. Every people needed something special over time. Each nation was confined to a narrower space. What did the ancient Indians know, for example, of what was happening in Europe? They lived in very special social conditions. The great initiates spoke to them as they needed to. And so they spoke to all nations.

Today, humanity is called upon to become one family, today people are called upon to engage in exchange, not only of goods, but also of what people recognize as truth. What the ancient Rishis taught is no longer closed to people. So it had become necessary for the Exalted Ones of the Great White Lodge to speak to humanity again. The same Beings who were once active in the founding of ancient Hinduism, the same Beings who were active in the founding of ancient Zoroastrianism and in the founding of the religion of the Egyptians, had to speak to humanity in a new form, in a new sense; the same Being who once offered the body of the Christ to the Deity in order to be able to work here on earth, Jesus of Nazareth. That is why these entities speak in such a way that in their language no distinction is made between race and language, no distinction between gender and class. There can no longer be any special alliances, but humanity must have something in common. And such a commonality is our theosophical teaching, through which we develop into the new race. That is the meaning, the spirit of the modern theosophical movement.

Those who understand the theosophical movement as the spoken word of those who have given [wisdom and] the harmony of feeling from the beginning of humanity, know that Theosophy is nothing other than the pioneering movement that can prepare the way for a new humanity that is to bring happiness to humanity. Those who believe that all the big questions that are knocking at the door must be solved by the theosophical central movement understand the theosophical movement correctly.

Some seek their salvation through a social movement, others through a spiritualist movement, others through a moral reform of food and drink, and still others through a reform of food and drink. All [such movements] are great, significant and useful. But they are only preliminary. They will only be able to bear fruit if they become branches of the great theosophical movement. Not through external improvements in food, industry, or work can anything be achieved, but only by helping souls to progress. Anyone who has carefully studied all these movements knows how they must merge into the theosophical movement.

Demand of your fellow human beings that they should not be so terrible to each other in the struggle for existence, but should behave as you would wish them to behave towards you, and it will be bearable. But if you write “struggle” on your banner, you will achieve nothing. Only through love, through union, through the harmony of all our souls can salvation be found. Only when we have realized once more that we are all spiritual beings, and that our soul and our spirit are sparks of the primal fire and our mission is to unite in this primal fire, will we work for the good of our future. Then we will live into the time in which we must live, but which we must also shape. And that will depend on the work we do on our own soul.

Many demand that people change: this class, that state should change, people are needed differently. They fight against them. But who can guarantee that such a fight will ever succeed? One thing must succeed, however: We can never go wrong if we improve our own inner being, if we each begin to reform our own inner being, that is, if each of us improves himself. In this endeavor, there can be no distinction of class, race, station, or sex. And that is the meaning of the Theosophical movement, which makes it a great movement of the future. The exalted beings who have spoken to us in tones that promise the future have taught us this. Many have come to the theosophical movement and ask: You tell us that so-called “masters” are at the head of the movement; but we do not see these masters. That is not surprising. Do not believe that it is in the will of the masters not to come and speak to you themselves. If they could, if they were allowed to, each of them would do so. But I would like to give you just a small idea of why the master must be separated from those he loves and why he must seek messengers who proclaim his word with their physical word.

The laws by which the world and humanity are governed are infinitely higher than what the average person of today can imagine. Only someone who works solely in the service of these exalted cosmic laws – after he has recognized them – can guide humanity in a spiritual and mental way. The master sees not only years, but centuries and millennia. He sees into the distant future. The teachings he gives are those that should serve as a goal for humanity to advance. The Master does not give idle teachings for curiosity, but teachings of great human love that will lead to the happiness of humanity in the future.

Look at people, how they live, how they depend on a thousand little things of the day. And I do not even want to point out the thousand little things of the day, but only how they depend on space and time, how they find it difficult to gain a free judgment, to admit to themselves what is necessary to help their fellow human beings. A thousand and a million considerations to which man is hourly bound make it impossible for him to gain a free, independent judgment. If one can only follow the innermost voice of the divine within, then one is called to lead, guide and direct people. That is the task of the Master.

Few can imagine the extent of the freedom of judgment that the Master has to express, unfettered by any consideration. Only in a weak ray, in a darkened reflection, can we express in the physical realm what the Masters express from their exalted seat.

Consideration must be given to country, culture and education. Only in a refracted ray can that which the divine leader can impart as the great law of the world come to humanity. Only the one who is able to listen to the master so that not the slightest contradiction stirs in the heart, who does not take time and space into consideration, but completely devotes his ear to the master in perfect devotion, only he is called to hear the master, who does not respond to everything with “yes and but,” but knows that the master speaks from the divine.

Everyone must fall silent in the face of divine truths. What is most prevalent today must cease: the insistence on one's own judgment. The Master does not impose his judgment on us, but he does want to inspire us. As long as we criticize, we are dependent on time and space, and until then, the voice of the Master cannot reach our ears. When we develop a ruthlessness towards everything that binds us to the personal, the temporary, the ephemeral, when we leave these considerations behind us, create moments of celebration for ourselves, tear ourselves away from what lives around us and only listen to the inner voice, then the moments are there in which the master can speak to us. Those who have gained that great freedom have also gained the opportunity to have a master themselves; they have managed to have the certainty that they exist in the glory of these high beings, surrounded by light.

They have given up the “test everything and keep the best”, because those who want to approach the master have to give that up. In doing so, they establish principles about things that one truly already knows. But if one wants to learn, then this principle ceases to exist. Who is to decide what is best? Those who have it, or those who have recognized it? We should not become judgmental or uncritical, but should be able to put ourselves in a truly independent frame of mind if we want to ascend to these lofty heights.

Above all, this is something that must flow through the theosophist as a feeling. And if he imbues himself more and more with this feeling, then he himself will be led up to the heights where the Master can speak to him.

Do not ask: Why are the masters in separate places? Because it is true that in St. Petersburg, Berlin and London and so on, the masters are staying and can be spoken to by those who want to speak to them and can do so; for those who have attained the necessary mood through inner self-conquest. When the theosophist imbues himself with this mood, he becomes a member of that part of humanity that is being led up to a new, elevated existence. And because that is the case, the Theosophical movement is also the most practical movement we can have in the present day. Many object that it is idealistic, fantastic, impractical.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, a little reflection can teach you that this movement does not have to be impractical just because many practical people – that is, people who call themselves such – consider it impractical. But just take a look at the people who consider themselves so practical. It is a strange thing about such people who have found themselves so practical. Some examples of what the practitioners did in the world of the 19th century may show this. For example, until the middle of the 19th century, the practitioners had a highly impractical postal system. With this postal system, the practitioners, just as today, insisted on their practice. But then a school teacher came along in England who invented the postage stamp. He was an “impractical” idealist named Hill. At the head of the English postal service was a “practitioner” named [Lord Lichfield]. He declared in Parliament that the introduction of the postage stamp could not be implemented. He said: The “practitioner” knows that it won't work. The traffic could increase, but then the post offices would no longer be sufficient, so the idea is bad. - That was roughly the response to an “unpractical” invention like the postage stamp.

Likewise, Gauss had invented an electromagnetic telegraph as early as the first third of the 19th century. It was not introduced. It was the idealists who made the inventions, and the practical people refused the funds.

The same applied to the railroad. What did the practitioners do when the railroad was to be set up? Postmaster Nagler said at the time: Why a railroad? I already have sixteen buses going to Potsdam every day and nobody is sitting in them. So what about the railroad? In addition, the Bavarian Medical Council issued a statement on the construction of the railways. The document can still be seen today. They said that no railways should be built because people would get concussions if they were to drive on them; at the very least, the railway line would have to be surrounded by wooden fences on both sides so that the people it passes by would not suffer from concussions or other damage.

All great achievements of mankind have never arisen from the minds of those who think they are practitioners. The practitioners have no judgment about true human progress. Only when man rises to the great culture-moving factors that come from the spirit and the soul, only when he is under spiritual guidance, can he give great impulses to humanity. Unconsciously, these inventors were influenced by the masters. Without the chemist knowing it in the laboratory or in the factory, he is influenced by the spiritual hierarchy of the masters, whom we shall get to know better through the theosophical movement. The theosophical movement will intervene in the immediate movement of the day, will not only live in the hearts and minds. Yes, it will live in the hearts, but it will inspire people to the tips of their fingers and transform their whole lives. Then it will be the most practical movement, directly influencing what surrounds us every hour, every minute.

This is not said by someone who wants to preach the movement fanatically, but by someone who is called to do so. We have gone through many errors; we have sought the factors that bring social progress in the world, but we have realized that progress must be sought in the soul, that progress must spring from the soul, and that it must also be implemented. Wherever this is in the background, we unite in the right way in the Theosophical Society.

The Theosophical Society is only the outer tool for those who believe that they must take part in the cultural movement prescribed by the theosophical movement. When the Masters are asked what must be done to come into contact with them, they answer: A person can make contact through the Theosophical Society; this gives the person a claim. What comes to life in us is what the Theosophical movement is about. The teachings we spread are the means to ignite the [inner] life in man. For the one who speaks to his fellow human beings, it is not the word that works, but rather what flows mysteriously through the word. It is not only the sound waves, but rather the spiritual power that is to flow through the word to us. Through this spiritual power, the word, the power of the masters, the great leaders, works on us so that we are united in spirit and our hearts beat together. That is what matters: that we feel in harmony with each other, that we feel within ourselves; when the current weaves from heart to heart, from soul to soul, the power that stands behind us goes through them.

It depends on the attitude. That is why we work in our branches in such an attitude, that is why the masters teach us that we should not acquire knowledge out of curiosity, just to constantly know more, but so that we can unite in the harmony of feelings. That is why we will never leave theosophical meetings as one would leave other meetings. Annie Besant once said that it is out of place to complain, “How little I got out of this meeting today!” That is not the point. The theosophist should not ask, “How boring was it?” but rather, “How boring was I?” We do not come together to learn, but we do work with our soul and spirit when we create thought forms that resonate with each other. Every theosophical gathering and every branch should be an accumulator of power. Each such branch has an effect on the surrounding area. The spiritual power does not need anyone to spread the word. The power of such a branch goes out into the world through mysterious waves. Anyone who believes that there is a spiritual reality will understand this, will know that a powerful movement emanates from such theosophical lodges. Every theosophical lodge is an invisible, sometimes incomprehensible force. A preacher teaches differently. No teacher teaches us, no connection was with a theosophical lodge and yet the spiritual word finds its way to his community. Chemists and physicists in the laboratory receive new ideas: it is an effect of the theosophical association. Only those who have the stated attitude, who cherish and cultivate what they possess of love and kindness and who also appear when there is no interesting speaker to be heard, know that effects are also present where they are not materially visible, and are true Theosophists. Because some things in the Theosophical movement have faltered, [the Masters] have given us the impulse to speak as I have now spoken to you. This is how it was recently spoken in England, America and India. This has been done on behalf of the masters, that we draw attention to the true spiritual attitude of a theosophical lodge. Leadbeater speaks in America, Annie Besant in London and in India, and so we must speak. It is not a question of whether we like one more or less according to our personal ideas, but that we come together unselfishly. Then we not only take, but we also give. We also give above all when we give our soul. And that is the best gift. In this sense, we want to unite in our branch as well. More and more, the theosophical branches must take on this form, so that all criticism and all knowing-better must fall silent, so that we work as positively as possible, so that we work in our soul, as has been indicated.

If we can be convinced that the effects are not outwardly visible, but invisible, then our theosophical attitude will be such that we make the theosophical movement what it should be.

All great spiritual movements have worked in silence. No contemporary messages have been handed down from Jesus Christ. Philo of Alexandria has brought us no message from the Master. Only later documents tell us about the master. The master of the Christian religion was also known in his true form only by the great and the faithful. Herein lies his strength and his tremendous impact, which is far from exhausted and will continue to have an effect in the distant future.

Do you believe in the spirituality of the words, which does not have to be manifested in external success, then you understand the earnest meaning of the theosophical movement. Let us truly take this to heart at the beginning of the new year, let us come together in this spirit, and may this New Year's greeting flow from every single soul, that we will do our theosophical work in the spirit of our exalted beings who stand above us.

You will have seen how we are trying in these lectures to prepare the ground for an adequate World-picture. As I have pointed out again and again, the astronomical phenomena themselves impel us to advance from the merely quantitative to the qualitative aspect. Under the influence of Natural Science there is a tendency, in modern scholarship altogether, to neglect the qualitative side and to translate what is really qualitative into quantitative terms, or at least into rigid forms. For when we study things from a formal aspect we tend to pass quite involuntarily into rigid forms, even if we went to keep them mobile. But the question is, whether an adequate understanding of the phenomena of the Universe is possible at all in terms of rigid, formal concepts. We cannot build an astronomical World-picture until this question has been answered.

This proneness to the quantitative, abstracting from the qualitative aspect, has led to a downright mania for abstraction which is doing no little harm in scientific life, for it leads right away from reality. People will calculate for instance under what conditions, if two sound-waves are emitted one after the other, the sound omitted later will be heard before the other. All that is necessary is the trifling detail that we ourselves should be moving with a velocity greater than that of sound. But anyone who thinks in keeping with real life instead of letting his thoughts and concepts run away from the reality, will, when he finds them incompatible with the conditions of man's co-existence with his environment, stop forming concepts in this direction. He cannot but do so. There is no sense whatever in formulating concepts for situations in which one can never be.

To be a spiritual scientist one must educate oneself to look at things in this way. The spiritual scientist will always want his concepts to be united with reality. He does not want to form concepts remote from reality, going off at a tangent,—or at least not for long. He brings them back to reality again and again. The harm that is done by the wrong kinds of hypothesis in modern time is due above all to the deficient feeling for the reality in which one lives. A conception of the world free of hypotheses, for which we strive and ought to strive, would be achieved far more quickly if we could only permeate ourselves with this sense of reality. And we should then be prepared, really to see what the phenomenal world presents. In point of fact this is not done today. If the phenomena were looked at without prejudice, quite another world-picture would arise than the world-pictures of contemporary science, from which far-fetched conclusions are deduced to no real purpose, piling one unreality upon another in merely hypothetical thought-structures.

Starting from this and from what was given yesterday, I must again introduce certain concepts which may not seem at first to be connected with our subject, though in the further course you will see that they too are necessary for the building of a true World-picture. I shall again refer to what was said yesterday in connection with the Ice-ages and with the evolution of the Earth altogether. To begin with however, we will take our start from another direction.

Our life of knowledge is made up of the sense-impressions we receive and of what comes into being when we assimilate the sense-impressions in our inner mental life. Rightly and naturally, we distinguish in our cognitional life the sense-perceptions as such and the inner life of ‘ideas’—mental pictures. To approach the reality of this domain we must being by forming these two concepts: That of the sense-perception pure and simple, and of the sense-perception transformed and assimilated into a mental picture.

It is important to see without prejudice, what is the real difference between our cognitional life insofar as this is permeated with actual sense-perceptions and insofar as it consists of mere mental picture. We need to see these things not merely side by side in an indifferent way; we need to recognize the subtle differences of quality and intensity with which they come into our inner life.

If we compare the realm of our sense-perceptions—the way in which we experience them—with our dream-life, we shall of course observe an essential qualitative difference between the two. But it is not the same as regards our inner life of ideas and mental pictures. I am referring now, not to their content but to their inner quality. Concerning this, the content—permeated as it is with reminiscences of sense-perceptions—easily deludes us. Leaving aside the actual content and looking only at its inner quality and character—the whole way we experience it,—there is no qualitative difference between our inner life in ideas and mental pictures and our life of dreams. Think of our waking life by day, or all that is present in the field of our consciousness in that we open our senses to the outer world and are thereby active in our inner life, forming mental pictures and ideas. In all this forming of mental pictures we have precisely the same kind of inner activity as in our dream-life; the only thing that is added to it is the content determined by sense-perception.

This also helps us realize that man's life of ideation—his forming of mental pictures—is a more inward process than sense-perception. Even the structure of our sense-organs—the way they are built into the body—shows it. The processes in which we live by virtue of these organs are not a little detached from the rest of the bodily organic life. As a pure matter of fact, it is far truer to describe the life of our senses as a gulf-like penetration of the outer world into our body (Fig. 1) than as something primarily contained within the latter. Once more, it is truer to the facts to say that through the eye, for instance, we experience a gulf-like entry of the outer world. The relative detachment of the sense-organs enables us consciously to share in the domain of the outer world. Our most characteristic organs of sense are precisely the part of us which is least closely bound to the inner life and organization of the body. Our inner life of ideation on the other hand—our forming of mental pictures—is very closely bound to it. Ideation therefore is quite another element in our cognitional life than sense-perception as such. (Remember always that I am thinking of these processes such as they are at the present stage in human evolution.)

Now think again of what I spoke of yesterday—the evolution of the life of knowledge from one Ice-Age to another. Looking back in time, you will observe that the whole interplay of sense-perceptions with the inner life of ideation—the forming of mental pictures—has undergone a change since the last Ice-Age. If you perceive the very essence of that metamorphosis in the life of knowledge which I was describing yesterday, then you will realize that in the times immediately after the decline of the Ice-Age the human life of cognition took its start from quite another quality of experience than we have today. To describe it more definitely; whilst our cognitional life has become more permeated and determined by the senses and all that we receive from them, what we do not receive from the senses—what we received long, long ago through quite another way of living with the outer world—has faded out and vanished, ever more as time went on. This other quality—this other way of living with the world—belongs however to this day to our ideas and mental pictures. In quality they are like dreams. Fro in our dreams we have a feeling of being given up to, surrendered to the world around us. We have the same kind of experience in our mental pictures. While forming mental pictures we do not really differentiate between ourselves and the world that then surrounds us; we are quite given up to the latter. Only in the act of sense-perception do we separate ourselves from the surrounding world. Now this is just what happened to the whole character of man's cognitional life since the last Ice-Age. Self-consciousness was kindled. Again and again the feeling of the “I” lit up, and this became ever more so.

What do we come to therefore, as we go back in evolution beyond the last Ice-Age? (We are not making hypotheses; we are observing what really happened.) We come to a human life of soul, not only more dream-like than that of today, but akin to our present life of ideation rather than to our life in actual sense-perception. Now ideation—once again, the forming of mental pictures—is more closely bound to the bodily nature than is the life of the senses. Therefore what lives and works in this realm will find expression rather within the bodily nature than independently of the latter. Remembering what was said in the last few lectures, this will then lead you from the daily to the yearly influences of the surrounding world. The daily influences, as I showed, are those which tend to form our conscious picture of the world, whereas the yearly influences affect our bodily nature as such. Hence if we trace what has been going on in man's inner life, as we go back in time we are led from the conscious life of soul deeper and deeper into the bodily organic life.

In other works; before the last Ice-Age the course of the year and the seasons had a far greater influence on man than after. Man, once again, is the reagent whereby we can discern the cosmic influences which surround the Earth. Only when this is seen can we form true ideas of the relations—including even those of movement—between the Earth and the surrounding heavenly bodies. To penetrate the phenomena of movement in the Heavens, we have to take our start from man—man, the most sensitive of instruments, if I may call him so. And to this end we need to know man; we must be able to discern what belongs to the one realm, namely the influences of the day, and to the other, the influences of the year.

Those who have made a more intensive study of Anthroposophical Science may be reminded here of what I have often described from spiritual perception; the conditions of life in old Atlantis, that is before the last Ice-Age. For I was there describing from another aspect—namely from direct spiritual sight—the very same things which we are here approaching more by the light of reason, taking our start from the facts of the external world.

We are led back then to a kind of interplay between the Earth and its celestial environment which gave men an inner life of ideation—mental pictures—and which was afterwards transmuted in such a way as to give rise to the life of sense-perception in its present form. (The life of the senses as such is of course a much wider concept; we are here referring to the form it takes in present time.)

But we must make a yet more subtle distinction. It is true that self-consciousness or Ego-consciousness, such as we have it in our ordinary life today, is only kindled in us in the moment of awakening. Self-consciousness trikes in upon us the moment we awaken. It is our relation to the outer world—that relation to it, into which we enter by the use of our senses—to which we owe our self-consciousness. But if we really analyze what it is that thus strikes in upon us, we shall perceive the following. If our inner life in mental pictures retained its dream-like quality and only the life of the senses were added to it, something would still be lacking. Our concepts would remain like the concepts of fantasy or fancy (I do not say identical with these, but like them). We should not get the sharply outlined concepts which we need for outer life. Simultaneously therefore with the life of the senses, something flows into us from the outer world which gives sharp outlines and contours to the mental pictures of our every-day cognitional life. This too is given to us by the outer world. Were it not for this, the mere interplay of sensory effects with the forming of ideas and mental pictures would bring about in us a life of fantasy or fancy and nothing more; we should never achieve the sharp precision of every-day waking life.

Now let us look at the different phenomena quite simply in Goethe's way, or—as has since been said, rather more abstractly—in Kizchhoff's way. Before doing so I must however make another incidental remark, Scientists nowadays speak of a “physiology of the senses”, and even try to build on this foundation a “psychology of the senses”, of which there are different schools. But if you see things as they are, you will find little reality under these headings. In effect, our senses are so radically different from one-another that a “Physiology of the senses”, claiming to treat them all together, can at more be highly abstract. All that emerges, in the last resort, is a rather scanty and even then very questionable physiology and psychology of the sense of touch, which is transferred by analogy to the other senses. If you look for what is real, you will require a distinct physiology and a distinct psychology for every one of the senses.

Provided we remember this, we may proceed. With all the necessary qualifications, we can then say the following. Look at the human eye. (I cannot now repeat the elementary details which you can find in any scientific text-book.) Look at the human eye, one of the organs giving us impressions of the outer world,—sense-impressions and also what gives them form and contour. These impressions, received through the eye, are—once again—connected with all the mental pictures which we then make of them in our inner life.

Let us now make the clear distinction, so as to perceive what underlies the sharp outline and configuration which makes our mental images more than mere pictures of fancy, giving them clear and precise outline. We will distinguish this from the whole realm of imagery where this clarity and sharpness is not to be found,—where in effect we should be living in fantasies. Even through what we experience with the help of our sense-organs—and what our inner faculty of ideation makes of it—we should still be floating in a realm of fancies. It is through the outer world that all this imagery receives clear outline, finished contours. It is through something from the outer world, which in a certain way comes into a definite relation to our eye.

And now look around. Transfer, what we have thus recognized as regards the human eye, to the human being as a whole. Look for it, simply and empirically, in the human being as a whole. Where do we find—though in a metamorphosed form—what makes a similar impression? We find it in the process of fertilization. The relation of the human being as a whole—the female human body—to the environment is, in a metamorphosed form, the same as the relation of the eye to the environment. To one who is ready to enter into these things it will be fully clear. Only translated, one might say, into the material domain, the female life is the life of fantasy or fancy of the Universe, whereas the male is that which forms the contours and sharp outlines. It is the male which transforms the undetermined life of fancy into a life of determined form and outline. Seen in the way we have described in today's lecture, the process of sight is none other than a direct metamorphosis of that of fertilization; and vice-versa.

We cannot reach workable ideas about the Universe without entering into such things as these. I am only sorry that I can do no more than indicate them, but after all, these lectures are meant as a stimulus to further work. This I conceive to be the purpose of such lectures; as an outcome, every one of you should be able to go on working in one or other of the directions indicated. I only want to show the directions; they can be followed up in diverse ways. There are indeed countless possibilities in our time, to carry scientific methods of research into new directions. Only we need to lay more stress on the qualitative aspects, even in those domains where one has grown accustomed to a mere quantitative treatment.

What do we do, in quantitative treatment? Mathematics is the obvious example; ‘Phoronomy’ (Kinematics) is another. We ourselves first develop such a science, and we then look to find its truths in the external, empirical reality. But in approaching the empirical reality in its completeness we need more than this. We need a richer content to approach it with, than merely mathematical and phoronomical ideas. Approach the world with the premises of Phoronomy and Mathematics, and we shall naturally find starry worlds, or developmental mechanisms as the case may be, phoronomically and mathematically ordered. We shall find other contents in the world if once we take our start from other realms than the mathematical and phoronomical. Even in experimental research we shall do so.

The clear differentiation between the life of the senses and the organic life of the human being as a whole had not yet taken place in the time preceding the last Ice-Age. The human being still enjoyed a more synthetic, more ‘single’ organic life. Since the last Ice-Age man's organic life has undergone, as one might say, a very real ‘analysis’. This too is an indication that the relation of the Earth to the Sun was different before the last Ice-Age from what it afterwards became. This is the kind of premise from which we have to take our start, so as to reach genuine pictures and ideas about the Universe in its relation to the Earth and man.

Moreover our attention is here drawn to another question, my dear Friends. To what extent is ‘Euclidean space’—the name, of course, does not matter—I mean the space which is characterized by three rigid directions at right angles to each other. This, surely, is a rough and ready definition of Euclidean space. I might also call it ‘Kantian space’, for Kant's arguments are based on this assumption. Now as regards this Euclidean—or, if you will, Kantian—space we have to put the question: Does it correspond to a reality, or is it only a thought-picture, an abstraction? After all, it might well be that there is really no such thing as this rigid space. Now you will have to admit; when we do analytical geometry we start with the assumption that the X-, Y- and Z-axes may be taken in this immobile way. We assume that this inner rigidity of the X, Y and Z has something to do with the real world. What if there were nothing after all, in the realms of reality, to justify our setting up the three coordinate axes of analytical geometry in this rigid way? Then too the whole of our Euclidean Mathematics would be at most a kind of approximation to the reality—an approximation which we ourselves develop in our inner life,—convenient framework with which to approach it in the first place. It would not hold out any promise, when applied to the real world, to give us real information.

The question now is, are there any indications pointing in this direction,—suggesting, in effect, that this rigidity of space can not, after all, be maintained? I know, what I am here approaching will cause great difficulty to many people of today, for the simple reason that they do not keep step with reality in their thinking. They think you can rely upon an endless chain of concepts, deducing one thing logically from another, drawing logical and mathematical conclusions without limit. In contrast to this tendency in science nowadays, we have to learn to think with the reality,—not to permit ourselves merely to entertain a thought-picture without at least looking to see whether or not it is in accord with reality. So in this instance, we should investigate. Perhaps after all, by looking into the world of concrete things, there is some way of reaching a more qualitative determination of space.

I am aware, my dear Friends, that the ideas I shall now set forth will meet with great resistance. Yet it is necessary to draw attention to such things. The theory of evolution has entered ever more into the different fields of science. They even began applying it to Astronomy. (This phase, perhaps, is over now, but it was so a little while ago.) They began to speak of a kind of natural selection. Then as the radical Darwinians would do for living organisms, so they began to attribute the genesis of heavenly bodies to a kind of natural selection, as though the eventual form of our solar system had arisen by selection from among all the bodies that had first been ejected. Even this theory was once put forward. There is this p to the whole Universe the leading ideas that have once been gaining some particular domain of science.

So too it came about that man was simply placed at the latter end of the evolutionary series of the animal kingdom. Human morphology, physiology etc. were thus interpreted. But the question is whether this kind of investigation can do justice to man's organization in its totality. For, to begin with, it omits what is most striking and essential even from a purely empirical point of view. One saw the evolutionists of Haechel's school simply counting how many bones, muscles and so on man and the higher animals respectively possess. Counting in that way, one can hardly do otherwise than put man at the end of the animal kingdom. Yet it is quite another matter when you envisage what is evident for all eyes to see, namely that the spine of man is vertical while that of the animal is mainly horizontal. Approximate though this may be, it is definite and evident. The deviations in certain animals—looked into empirically—will prove to be of definite significance in each single case. Where the direction of the spine is turned towards the vertical, corresponding changes are called forth in the animal as a whole. But the essential thing is to observe this very characteristic difference between man and animal. The human spine follows the vertical direction of the radius of the Earth, whereas the animal spine is parallel to the Earth's surface. Here you have purely spatial phenomena with a quite evident inner differentiation, inasmuch as they apply to the whole figure and formation of the animal and man. Taking our start from the realities of the world, we cannot treat the horizontal in the same way as the vertical. Enter into the reality of space—see what is happening in space, such as it really is,—you cannot possibly regard the horizontal as though it were equivalent or interchangeable with the vertical dimension.

Now there is a further consequence of this. Look at the animal form and at the form of man. We will take our start from the animal, and please fill in for yourselves on some convenient occasion what I shall now be indicating. I mean, observe and contemplate for yourselves the skeleton of an mammal. The usual reflections in this realm are not nearly concrete enough; they do not enter thoroughly enough into the details.

Consider then the skeleton of an animal. I will go no farther than the skeleton, but what I say of this is true in an even higher degree of the other parts and systems in the human and animal body. Look at the obvious differentiation, comparing the skull with the opposite end of the animal. If you do this with morphological insight, you will perceive characteristic harmonies or agreements, and also characteristic diversities. Here is a line of research which should be followed in far greater detail. Here is something to be seen and recognized, which will lead far more deeply into realty than scientists today are wont to go.

It lies in the very nature of these lectures that I can only hint at such things, leaving out many an intervening link. I must appeal to your own intuition, trusting you to think it out and fill in what is missing between one lecture and the next. You will then see how all these things are connected. If I did otherwise in these few lectures, we should not reach the desired end.

Diagrammatically now (Fig. 2), let this be the animal form. If after going into an untold number of intervening links in the investigation, you put the question: ‘What is the characteristic difference of the front and the back, the head and the tail end due to?’, you will reach a very interesting conclusion. Namely you will connect the differentiation of the front end with the influences of the Sun. Here is the Earth (Fig. 3). You have an animal on the side of the Earth exposed to the Sun. Now take the side of the Earth that is turned away from the Sun. In one way or another it will come about that the animal is on this other side. Here too the Sun's rays will be influencing the animal, but the earth is now between. In the one case the rays of the Sun are working on the animal directly; in the other case indirectly, inasmuch as the Earth is between and the Sun's rays first have to pass through the Earth (Fig. 3).

Expose the animal form to the direct influence of the Sun and you get the head. Expose the animal to those rays of the Sun which have first gone through the Earth and you get the opposite pole to the head. Study the skull, so as to recognize in it the direct outcome of the influences of the Sun. Study the forms, the whole morphology of the opposite pole, so as to recognize the working of the Sun's rays before which the Earth is interposed—the indirect rays of the Sun. Thus the morphology of the animal itself draws our attention to a certain interrelation between Earth and Sun. For a true knowledge of the mutual relations of Earth and Sun we must create the requisite conditions, not by the mere visual appearance (even though the eye be armed with telescopes), but by perceiving also how the animal is formed—how the whole animal form comes into being.

Now think again of how the human spine is displaced through right angle in relation to the animal. All the effects which we have been describing will undergo further modification where man is concerned. The influences of the Sun will therefore be different in man than in the animal. The way it works in man will be like a resultant (Fig. 4). That is to say, if we symbolize the horizontal line—whether it represent the direct or the indirect influence of the Sun—by this length, we shall have to say; here is a vertical line; this also will be acting. And we shall only get what really works in man by forming the resultant of the two.

Suppose in other words that we are led to relate animal formation quite fundamentally to some form of cosmic movement—say, a rotation of the Sun about the Earth, or a rotation of the Earth about its own axis. If then this movement underlies animal formation, we shall be led inevitably to attribute to the Earth or to the Sun yet another movement, related to the forming of man himself,—a movement which, for its ultimate effect, unites to a resultant with the first. From what emerges in man and in the animal we must derive the basis for a true recognition of the mutual movements among the heavenly bodies.

The study of Astronomy will thus be lifted right out of its present limited domain, where one merely takes the outward visual appearance, even if calling in the aid of telescopes, mathematical calculations and mechanics. It will be lifted into what finds expression in this most sensitive of instruments, the living body. The forming forces working in the animal, and then again in man, are a clear indication of the real movements in celestial space.

This is indeed a kind of qualitative Mathematics. How, then, shall we metamorphose the idea when we pass on from the animal to the plant? We can no longer make use of either of the two directions we have hitherto been using. Admittedly, it might appear as though the vertical direction of the plant coincided with that of the human spine. From the aspect of Euclidean space it does, no doubt (Euclidean space, that is to say, not with respect to detailed configuration but simply with respect to its rigidity.) But it will not be the same in an inherently mobile space. I mean a space, the dimensions of which are so inherently mobile that in the relevant equations, for example, we cannot merely equate the \(x\)- and the \(y\)-dimensions: \(y = ƒ(x)\). (The equation might be written very differently from this. You will see what I intend more from the words I use than from the symbols; it is by no means easy to express in mathematical form.) In a co-ordinate system answering to what I now intend, it would no longer be permissible to measure the ordinates with the same inherent measures as the abscissae. We could not keep the measures rigid when passing from the one to the other. We should be led in this way from the rigid co-ordinate system of Euclidean space to a co-ordinate system that is inherently mobile.

And if we now once more ask the question: How are the vertical directions of plant growth and of human growth respectively related?—we shall be led to differentiate one vertical from another. The question is, then, how to find the way to a different idea of space from the rigid one of Euclid. For it may well be that the celestial phenomena can only be understood in terms of quite another kind of space—neither Euclidean, nor any abstractly conceived space of modern Mathematics, but a form of space derived from the reality itself. if this is so, then there is no alternative; it is in such a space and not in the rigid space of Euclid that we shall have to understand them.

Thus we are led into quite other realms, namely to the Ice-Age on the one hand and on the other to a much needed reform of the Euclidean idea of space. But this reform will be in a different spirit than in the work of Minkowski and others. Simply in contemplating the given facts and trying to build up a science free of hypotheses, we are confronted with the need for a thoroughgoing revision of the concept of space itself. Of these things we shall speak again tomorrow.

The present lecture is to be a short preparation for the study of the Mystery of Golgotha, which will be more fully explained on the second day of our Easter Festival. As the basis for our study, let us take a text which to many appears incomprehensible, or, at any rate, difficult, and can only be understood when connected with the deepest esoteric meaning. This text will lead us to-day still deeper into the spirit and meaning of Christianity: ‘All sins may be forgiven except the sin against the Holy Spirit.’

These words really contain the purpose and mission of Christianity, and Anthroposophy is the right instrument with which to reveal and express the profound meaning hidden in these words. Anthroposophy does not wish to inaugurate a new faith or found a new sect; the time is past when new faiths or new special religions can be founded. The task of the future is the formation of the already existing religions into one great common religion of humanity. Anthroposophy does not wish to preach a new religion; it is rather the means for teaching the various religions how to comprehend the profound truths contained in them, and which fundamentally are one and only one!

The tendency of the age is to make trivial the religious truths. From the modern standpoint people like to consider Christ Jesus as ‘the simple Man of Nazareth’; they like to look upon Him as a sort of higher ideal man, in somewhat the same manner as Socrates, Plato, Goethe and others are also looked upon as ideals; they do not wish to uplift Him too far above the level of humanity; they are far from recognising that in this Christ Jesus there lived something which towered far above humanity.

But in order to have at least some small perception of the Mystery of Christ Jesus we must throw a strong light upon the old Gnostic questions. We must bring to our help all human wisdom to understand what happened between the first and thirtieth years of our era.

The religious records are certainly not there to be explained by trivialities, and there is no wisdom deep or wise enough to unveil the deep meaning in this Mystery. It is certainly true that the understanding of this Mystery ought also to be brought down to the simple mind, but it is also true that it is so profound and full of wisdom that no wisdom reaches far enough to measure all its depths! From this standpoint and in this frame of mind we may first explain what is understood in Christianity—in true esoteric Christianity—by the Holy Spirit, the Son—also called the Word or Logos—and the Father. We shall not penetrate into the meaning of these conceptions by means of philosophic speculations; we shall not give them an arbitrary meaning. The meaning was attached by the initiates, and we have to keep to what was taught in the schools of the Christian Initiates. It is bad when one probes into the Bible and speculates as to what this or that means. We know that there are schools in which the meaning has been taught from very ancient times and it is always the same meaning, there was never a different knowledge; there were never at any time different standpoints in it.

If we hold to what has come most to the surface of history, we find the esoteric school which St. Paul had at Athens, the school of Dionysius. The learned are accustomed to speak of a pseudo Dionysius, because the existence of these schools is not sufficiently indicated by documentary evidence; only in the sixth century a.d. do we find written traditions of them.

We must clearly understand that as regards writing the custom has radically changed. When at the present day a person has a clever thought he cannot wait, but must have it printed at once and scattered over the world. But the earlier custom was otherwise. The profoundest thoughts were strictly withheld from publicity; they were not thrown at everybody’s head; they were only given to one who was known, only to one who had been found worthy to receive them. Only he who had a sense of truth was allowed to receive the truths. They were only given to one who devotedly and with a true feeling towards the truths, opened his heart to receive them. What the pupil had to acquire was calmness, a deep longing, a feeling of devotion towards the higher truths. This was quite a different view from that of the present day, for now everyone may receive the truths, quite irrespective of the frame of mind in which he approaches them. In those days, however, it was held that one might not receive indifferently a truth, for example, about the starry heavens. It was clearly understood that the frame of mind was important if the truths were really to influence: only in a pure and uplifted frame of mind were even simple truths received, such as the truths of mathematics, and the student’s preparation before he was allowed to receive the truths consisted in the production of the right frame of mind.

This was also the case in the school of St. Paul: the pupils were most strictly prepared before they were allowed to receive the highest truths. This preparation—as well as the subsequent training—was given by word of mouth; the living spirit passed on from teacher to pupil, for a long period of time, and the highest Initiates who were the vehicles of the esoteric truths, always bore the same name. Thus in the sixth century the recorder of the Dionysian training was still known as Dionysius. One has to know this in order to be able to judge correctly when a pseudo Dionysius is spoken of.

Now to-day let us investigate according to esoteric Christianity into the profound meaning of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In our lecture on the Lord’s Prayer we have already discussed this meaning. We have learned how the Godhead is expressed in the three higher principles of man. We have heard that behind the ‘Father’ stands the Divine Will, behind the ‘Kingdom’ there is the Word, the Logos, and behind the ‘Name’ the Holy Spirit.

We shall now consider these three principles from a different point of view, in the manner taught in Christian esoteric training. Let us briefly recall the relations between the higher and lower parts of man. We have always learned that man consists of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, and within the astral body dwells the ‘I’; this was once the so-called sacred quaternary. We have also learned how in the course of human evolution the three bodies are transformed. The ‘I’ transforms the astral body, which is the vehicle of passions, impulses and desires; it may also be called the consciousness- body. In esoteric Christianity one is also taught to ennoble, cleanse and purify this body; and as far as this takes place in man it is called the work of the Holy Spirit. One might say that that part of the astral body which is purified by Manas or Spirit-Self, is called in Christianity: ‘To be seized by the Holy Spirit.’

We know that the ‘I’ also works transformingly on the etheric body. Now this is much more difficult. What man receives from art and religion alone works in a transforming, ennobling way upon the etheric body. Art sees and perceives the Eternal; the Eternal shines through it, and the impulses of art act more strongly on the ennobling of mankind than all the laws of ethics. But the religious impulses work the most strongly! One who with deep devotion looks up to the Eternal, who opens himself towards It and allows It to stream in, receives Buddhi or Life-Spirit—in a Christian sense, the Logos, Christ. In esoteric Christianity this is known as ‘taking the Christ into oneself.’ In order to explain to you the third principle, the process of taking in the Father, you must allow me to make a slight digression.

I beg you always to remember that Anthroposophy is absolutely not a colourless theory, for then it would run into the danger of forming a sect; no, it is to act upon the daily life, it is to ennoble and spiritualise it—then it is practical Anthroposophy. It does not wish to weave fancies, to excogitate anything, it intends that the spirit shall flow into the whole of our civilisation, and therefore it also draws attention to the practical side.

When you are in the midst of life, when the multitude of impressions press in upon you from life, then what you experience in this way is but a portion of the sum-total of your experiences. One who does not take this into account cannot unravel the secrets of life! The anthroposophist looks deeper; he knows that the etheric body and the astral body are influenced in various ways by his daily experiences. What you take into yourselves consciously, what attracts your conscious attention, for example, as you go along the street, is expressed in ebullitions and currents in the astral body. The occultist can observe these ebullitions and movements. But there are other impressions which do not usually engage one’s full attention. I will give an example to explain what I mean. We walk along a street and pass numberless things which do not arouse our strict attention; we know that we have passed shop windows left and right, that there were buildings left and right, and that we met human beings and carriages, but our attention was not directed to them, we have not consciously received anything from them. However, it does not on this account pass by us without leaving a trace; it makes a certain impression upon us. When we look at a placard or skim through a comic paper, not only what we follow consciously remains within us, but the things of which we are unconscious also make an impression upon us. One is wont to say that these impressions remain below the threshold of consciousness; but in truth it is different. Many things act upon a human being without coming to his consciousness, and in the meantime they act upon him deeply and produce an important effect. To begin with, they act on the etheric body. This body is continually taking in impressions, and from this we may gather how tremendously important to human development is also that to which a person pays no attention.

Everything that takes place on the surface of civilisation acts upon human beings; all these things call forth pictures in them. But Anthroposophy indicates the undercurrents of our civilisation; again and again it emphasises the need of understanding the spiritual world which lies behind the physical, it draws attention to the deep connection between the external world and spiritual things.

One age thinks differently from another and has different inclinations; in one age the spiritual movements are higher and in another lower, depending more upon sensation. To the occult investigator all this which makes an impression upon the etheric body is reflected as secret influences which act upon human beings. When in an occult manner one investigates the temperament, inclinations and sentiments of the people in central Europe in the eleventh or twelfth century one has to trace back the results to the style of architecture, the art, the means of civilisation which at the time surrounded them. The effect upon a man of that particular age in passing along the street of his town was different from the effect produced upon a man of the present age; other objects surrounded him and other sentiments filled him.

One must not leave out of account the fact that what lies more deeply down than the consciousness, is profoundly influenced by such impulses. And on this account one must not undervalue the seriousness of the statement when I say that just at the present time it is in the underground of our civilisation that the real foundation for materialism is found. I should not on this account be considered as a reactionary. The one who guides his method of observation by spiritual truths knows that the profound and noble things which act upon the etheric body also provide it with constructive forces; and when he extends this method of observation to what is produced by the materialistic way of looking at things it is then clear to him that nothing can be done by theories and teachings if they do not come down to these things. A change for the better cannot be expected until the spiritual truths are reflected in what surrounds man and influences him, even though his attention may not be continually directed towards it. With these remarks as a basis we may now consider the part of the higher man called the Spirit Man, Atma, Father.

We know that, starting from ‘I,’ the physical body also can be transformed. This transformation takes place consciously through what is taught in esoteric training. All that the pupil can learn with the intellect, all that influences his astral body is only the preparation; the training begins when the ‘I’ begins to work upon the etheric body, when he conquers his temperament, his inclinations and habits, when he becomes a different man. Through this he gains insight into the higher worlds. All that he learns, all that gives him a theoretical insight, all sciences, only influence the astral body; but all that works upon his etheric body gives such an impetus to his development that gradually the spiritual organs are formed in him and he begins to see in the higher worlds. Thus we see how the astral body and etheric body are transformed. That which transforms the physical body comes from the breathing process; this purifies and spiritualises the physical body. Christian esotericism calls this the Father. We have to distinguish that as much as a person has within him of what purifies and transforms the astral body, so much has he of the Holy Spirit within him.

As far as a person has within him that which purifies and transforms the etheric body, so far has he the Son, the Logos, within him.

As far as a person has within him (this is only known to an Initiate) that which ennobles and transforms the physical body, so far has he the Father within him.

If we wish to distinguish between the sins or blasphemies against the Holy Spirit, against the Son, and against the Father, we have to remember what the esoteric teachers understood as the mission of Christianity. You will find this mission expressed in the words which Christ Jesus uttered when He was told that His mother and His brethren were outside: ‘He who does not leave father and mother, etc., has no part in Me,’ or ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me’ (Matt. 10, 37).

In Mark and Luke it is somewhat different. There He says: ‘My mother and My brethren are those who hear God’s word and do it’ (Luke 8, 21; Mark 3, 33; Matt. 12, 46-50).

In all these statements we have the true mission of Christianity; let us now go into this more closely and we shall gain at the same time the best preparation for our Easter Festival—the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we go a long way back along the path of the development of humanity we arrive at the Lemurian epoch. We know that ancient Lemuria lay south of present-day Asia, in the part now occupied by the Indian Ocean. In ancient Lemuria we find the four-membered, half-animal man, who indeed was already gifted with his fourfold nature, the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the germ of the ‘I,’ but he was not yet able to work even to the very tiniest extent, on the three lower coverings, for the forces necessary for the work on these coverings had first to come into the vehicle of these coverings. That which is the content of your soul did not at that time exist in man! The ‘I’ was, as it were, a hollow space into which these forces could come, and this hollow space still exists within man. That which at the present time is called the depth of his inner being was formerly outside him, and at that time it sank into the human shell. Previously it was a part of the Divine Nature, it still rested in the Bosom of the Deity. We have often represented the outpouring of this divine part by saying that it was as if a number of little human sponges had each absorbed a drop, as it were, of this divine spiritual substance, which we pictured as a body of water. What is now within you, which forms your soul and which formerly rested in the Divine Bosom, was divided up among the several human bodies so that each one received a drop of this common divine substance. This common substance thus individualised itself into parts of the Deity. Just as each finger has its own life and still belongs to the whole human organism and from it receives its life, so each drop in each human being received its own life and dwelt in the human bodies which had prepared themselves to receive it and which waited to be ensouled by the Deity.

Now those human beings looked very different from what they do at present. You would be much astonished if I were to describe those grotesque bodies which absorbed the souls! Who worked so that these grotesque bodies developed into our present human bodies? Who did this? It is the work of the soul which is active within I From within, it shapes and forms the human body.

One may gain an idea of this work of the soul-forces by observing the remains of this self-out-shaping of the soul in the body of a human being of the present day; for example, when we consider the feeling of shame. The soul drives the blush of shame to the face; what is in the soul, namely, shame, expresses itself in the body in the blush of shame. Anxiety, fear, terror—these psychic experiences express themselves in the body as pallor. We all know that this is connected with the blood; the blood is the expression of the being that works within. But this only applies to warm blood! Just as it is true that at the present day in the feeling of shame, fear, anxiety and terror the ‘I’ acts on the blood and expresses itself in the body in a very limited way, so it is also true that in the remote past the effect was very great; at that time the blood expressed the inner force very accurately and minutely; it formed and fashioned the human figure through the several races. The inner experiences and feelings fashioned the human body when it was still soft and plastic, and their activity, their constructive forces, worked indirectly through the blood. The creator, the inner being, the power which shaped the body plastically, worked from the ‘I,’ indirectly through the blood, at the construction of the human being. Thus we may recognise that the blood is the vehicle of the ‘I.’

In this thought we have an explanation of the statement in the Bible that Adam was hundreds of years old. This depends upon endogamy or near marriage. In the earlier days of human evolution we find in every race smaller groups who were related to one another by blood, for they married exclusively within their groups and tribes. This had an important result, which is indicated in the following conversation between the authors Anzengruber and Rosegger. Rosegger describes his peasants in a dry matter-of-fact way, but Anzengruber describes them much more vividly, his peasants truly five before us. Once when these two authors were together, Rosegger gave Anzengruber the advice that he ought to go to the country and there five for a time amongst the peasants in order to see them and thus be able to describe them more vividly. But Anzengruber answered: ‘That I would never do, for then I should forget all my art. I have never seen a peasant, but the understanding of them is in my blood; I do not need to have seen them to be able to describe them, for the blood of generations of peasants flows through my veins. The spirit which lives in the peasants Eves in me, it passes through my father, grandfather and great-grandfather to me—for all my ancestors were peasants.’

Thus in Anzengruber there was still a degree of the peasant consciousness. And this was much more the case in ancient times! In those days a son did not merely feel in the same way as his father and grandfather had felt, but in him there was actually a vivid remembrance of the experiences of his ancestors.

There was a time when man had in his memory not only what he himself, but also what his father and grandfather had experienced. And therefore in those ancient, strictly limited communities a son said in regard to what his father had experienced: ‘I have experienced’ it. This was also the case in the generation of Adam, his ‘I’ was preserved for nine hundred years.

The ‘I’ continued through the generations; it was a common ‘I,’ a group ‘I.’ This ‘I’ which passed through several generations was called ‘Adam,’ and for this reason it is said that Adam lived for so long. This fact is hidden behind the statements in the Bible regarding the longevity of the persons mentioned at the beginning of the Bible.

From this we see how the blood, which was common to these narrowly limited groups, comes into consideration as the expression of the inner creative soul of man and how it binds these people to a certain extent into unity.

Now how was this broken through? By what means was the memory of the human being limited to his own life? It was through exogamy! By this means the narrowly limited tribe was loosened and expanded into a nation. Man would have been unable to develop if this strict community had not been broken through. The memory of the members of these blood-related communities extended up through the generations. Now we must remember that the vehicle of the memory is the etheric body. And here we have the intimate connection between the blood and the etheric body. The ‘I’ imprints itself into the etheric body, and is expressed in that which shoots into the blood.

Let us remember what he who is to be initiated has to accomplish in his etheric body and we shall to-day learn what this has to do with his blood. We know whence these schools of initiation originated; they can be traced back to the ancient Turanian Adept-Schools of Atlantis. And let us now call to mind how initiation took place. We know that when the pupil was sufficiently prepared he was put into a sleep by the Initiator for three days, and this made it possible for the Initiator to lift the etheric body of the pupil out of his physical body. The etheric body then lived in the higher worlds; the pupil consciously experienced the higher worlds; he knew their reality from his own experience. Only through his being prepared did he gain this power. When he returned again into his physical body he could bear witness to the reality of the higher worlds in which he had lived.

We see that this initiation depended upon one thing. The pupil had to suppress his consciousness, which was absolutely under the control of the Initiator. The Initiators worked through the Initiates into life, to a certain extent they were at the head of the social structure, they were there like a social pyramid, everyone believed them, everyone looked up to them. Through acting upon the impulses of the Initiates they had everything under their authority. And this authority was founded upon truth and wisdom, for only wise ones might exercise this authority without harm coming to humanity.

In Initiation all depends upon leading out the etheric body in the right way. The Initiator could not do this with everyone. In order to initiate a person in this way long and careful preparations were necessary. It depended upon the blood of the neophyte being of the right composition. This was the reason for the great value attached to the priestly caste or tribe which might not be mixed with other blood. For centuries they were prepared; people were brought together who were necessary for this right mixture of blood, until one was produced who could become an Initiate. This was handling human life in grand style! The greatest Initiates were prepared for centuries with respect to their mixture of blood. This was the method of initiation of pre-Christian times. But this could not remain the same for ever in the course of human development; for with what is it connected? It is connected with the small blood-communities. The further we go back the more do we come to this principle of initiation. Then this blood principle was broken through; the family expanded to the tribe and the tribe to the nation. It was then proclaimed that all such limited blood-ties had to be broken through; for where dwelt the communal principle in man? It came through his blood. When in ancient times it was made possible by means of warm blood for the Divine to be implanted in the developing humanity—how did this implantation take place? It surged through the blood. Where did He work most powerfully Who said: ‘I Am He Who is, Who was and Who will be’? In the blood running through the veins. When one led a human being to the highest, to initiation, one led him by handling his blood!

He who only considers the Mystery of Christianity externally understands it badly! Christianity itself is a mystical fact! We can only understand it as we understand the mystery of blood.

With the advent of Christ Jesus a new configuration of our planet came about! If someone on another planet had been able to observe ours, from a few centuries before Christ, if he had directed his attention to it through the centuries and right into the distant future, if he saw it, not with his physical eyes, but directing his attention to the astral and etheric atmosphere of our planet, he would have seen that from the sixth century before Christ our planet slowly changed. Then it made a sudden leap, it gained a new impulse; something else entered into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth.

Only he who admits that there is something spiritual around the earth, and who considers this as something real and actual, can understand what this means! He who considers it in this way will find the expression for this transformation in the spiritual, and to such an one we say: All that holds people together in small blood communities gradually breaks asunder. There comes the time when a person leaves father, mother, etc. All that which acts upon the blood as a kind of ‘group “ I ”’ has to disappear from the earth! When it is ready to become a new, astral planet all this must have disappeared and in the place of what has disappeared something new will come I A great bond of brotherhood will then bind humanity, and the impulse for this brotherhood is given by Christ Jesus! He is the spiritual fact which effects this transformation. Hence the ideal which He presents when He says, ‘He who does not leave father and mother cannot be My disciple,’ and the indication which He gives: ‘They who believe in the Divine Spirit are My brothers and My sisters !’ Hence the non-recognition of those related to Him, for these ties of blood were something which had been overcome. It is from this standpoint that we have to consider these words of Christ, not as a symbol, not as a comparison, but as reality I For they are a reality!

Now consider the uplifted cross and the blood which flows from the wounds 1 Understand well the profound significance of this in the course of the world’s history I Why does it flow? Why is the blood spoken of? It is that which has to lose its importance in this narrow sense if humanity is to broaden out to the coming ideal, to the common brotherhood! That which is to make all humanity one is no longer to depend upon the blood which pulsates in the ‘I.’ Therefore the superfluous ‘I’-blood flows through the wounds of Christ. All egoistic, self-seeking blood which unites a man with mother, father, brother, sister—all this has to flow! This is the real fact! With the amount of blood which flows there is lost the tendency to form limited communities, and there originates the tendency for the whole of humanity to be united into one great community. No one has come so close to this as Richard Wagner in his ‘Parsifal’ I Never did an exoteric person approach so closely to the deepest truth of the esoteric secrets of Christianity!

When we learn to understand it in this way, we shall see that the deepest purpose of Christianity is to unloose that which binds mankind within narrow egoistic limits. It will split up mankind into individuals who feel themselves to be separate, and who unite again in love of their own free will; who increase in individuality to the same extent that they feel themselves to be part of the whole world. This you see in the Mystery of Golgotha, in this religious impulse. which is of the very greatest importance. Here everything that is to come about in the future is prepared! It begins to work at Whitsuntide when the Holy Spirit is poured forth, that is, when the understanding of this tie of brotherhood begins to stir. This is expressed in a most beautiful symbol when we are told that the Apostles spoke to all nations in every tongue! That which had flowed through the blood of the Logos is there spread abroad by the Holy Spirit!

Let us go back to the ancient principle of initiation. At that time everything depended upon the Initiates. The whole of civilisation received its impulses from them. This now ceased. The splitting up of mankind into individuals had to take place and thereby the impulse towards brotherhood was created at the same time. The ancient principle of initiation exercised by the Initiators of truth and wisdom no longer sufficed if humanity was to mature to this brotherhood. Each human being must himself be in possession of truth and wisdom. We then see the spreading abroad of this wisdom step by step and its co-operation with the individual, in the activity of the Holy Spirit, how it worked from then onwards in humanity. As long as man listened to authority he could five quietly in the narrowest circles, for this authority took care of the whole group; but this now ceases, the limited community is broken through, each one must now take care of himself; each individual has now to receive that which holds good for each human being. What can this be?

The wisdom which was poured into humanity through the Initiates was One; when, however, it was to be given to the individual human being it was specialised. Thus originated the teachings which Buddha, Zoroaster, Hermes and others brought to mankind; the smaller the community the more it was specialised.

When brotherhood was founded there had to flow down into the whole of humanity that of which the Initiates had formerly taken care. In this wisdom we have that which unites, that which will unite the human beings who have left father and mother. But so far removed are people from this universal wisdom that they talk about ‘their own opinions,’ and they say, ‘I find this,’ ‘I believe that.’ They have passed over to egotism; they are in a condition of separation, but they have not yet made their connection with universal wisdom. They are as individual as possible! They must first disaccustom themselves from saying, when they are speaking about the knowledge of wisdom, ‘This is my standpoint.’ That is a childish position! There is no special standpoint in regard to wisdom. He only has comprehended the idea of the Holy Spirit who has comprehended that truth and wisdom are one I He who presses forward along the path knows that there is no such thing as different standpoints in truth; he knows that he is dealing with a fundamental unity. He no longer needs to attach himself to an authority, because the universal common Spirit of Wisdom and Truth joins mankind together into the great brotherhood I That is the experience at Whitsuntide, when the Apostles speak from the hearts of all men to all men. The festival of Whitsuntide is the indication that with the development of the highest authority, the Spirit of Truth unites us all. That which from that time on will five and work is the unifying wisdom which can be revealed to us as soon as we open ourselves to it and wish to receive it!

And he who sins against this wisdom which forms humanity into one brotherhood, he who sins against this universal Spirit of Truth and Wisdom, commits the great sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven him, because he is sinning against the development of the earth, because he is teaching the spirit of division and not the Unifying Spirit who will form the brotherhood of the future.

What teaches us this Unifying Spirit? Anthroposophy! Therefore positive Anthroposophy is also positive wisdom. It does not wish to preach in general ethical terms, for it is unnecessary to preach brotherhood to humanity; it wishes to give humanity wisdom, concrete wisdom which must lead to brotherhood. It gives this wisdom by teaching people to understand their own being, by answering the profound riddles of existence as to the whence and whither of man, by teaching the evolution of the world! He who thus penetrates into the wisdom, he who thus gathers knowledge, he who is prepared in this way by the positive teachings of Anthroposophy, comes entirely of himself to the union with humanity, for people are united into a brotherhood when the Sun of Wisdom unites them in the spirit; it completely ennobles them, completely transfigures them, completely unites them.

That is the mission of Christianity. Christianity is the expression of the connection between human beings who are becoming freer and freer, and it is the union in perfect freedom into a brotherhood in the light of the one truth I This brotherhood develops entirely of itself when you pay heed to those sublime words of Christ: ‘Ye will know truth by means of truth and the truth shall make you free.’

There will not be two thoughts about one and the same thing when humanity has come to this brotherhood in the spiritual; that is the profound meaning of this statement.

When humanity has known the truth, when it has lived the truth, it will have found the truth, through itself; it will then be truly free and will know the depth of the statement: ‘Ye will know the truth by means of truth and will make yourselves free!’