The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anyone not sufficiently prepared may well have found it very strange, in yesterday's lecture, to hear the name of the Father Spirit of the world linked with the name of death. You must not forget, however, what was said at the same time: that the form in which death appears to men in the physical world is not its true form, and that therefore the outer sense world, which appears to be inevitably subject to death, is for this very reason not the true expression of what really underlies it, of the divine-spiritual Being at its root. This is really equivalent to saying that man suffers from an illusion, a monstrous deception, a maya, concerning all that is spread out around him in space for his senses to perceive. Could he recognize the true form he would not perceive the sense image but would discern the spirit. Could he recognize death in its real aspect he would see in death the form this sense world would have if it were to be the true expression of the divine Father Spirit.

In order that this earth-world of ours might come into being at all, an earlier, supra-terrestrial world had to condense into physical matter, into physical substance as we know it. In this way the outer world could become the expression of a divine-spiritual world, a divine-spiritual world which thus embraced something like creations apart from the outside proper. All previous forms of our cosmic existence manifested themselves as being contained more or less within the divine Being. On the old Saturn there existed, as yet, nothing of our air, our water, our earth—that is, our solid bodies: Saturn was a body consisting exclusively of warmth—a warmth-filled space—and all the beings it harbored still dwelt in the bosom of the divine Father Spirit. And so it was too on the old Sun, although its condensation had advanced to the gaseous state: this air planet, the old Sun, contained all its creatures within itself, and that means, within the divine-spiritual Being. Even on the old Moon this condition prevailed.

It was on the Earth, however, that creation emerged for the first time from the womb of the divine-spiritual Nature and began to exist alongside of it. But in this new element that arose and henceforth appeared side by side with the divine-spiritual Being—even constituting the habiliment, the envelope, the physical corporeality of man—all the retarded spirits gradually ensconced themselves; and this meant that it became a creation different from what it should have been as an image of the divine-spiritual Being. Having borne within itself all creatures—our present mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms—the divine spiritual Being sent them forth, as it were, spread them out like a carpet; and that was then the image of the divine-spiritual Being. And that is the way it should have remained. But into it there crept the retarded element that had previously been expelled by the divine-spiritual Being, became interwoven with it; and this in a way dimmed the luster of creation: its value was rendered less than it would otherwise have been.

This dimming commenced in the age in which the moon split off from the earth, the age of which we have said that if nothing else had occurred, and if the moon had not been cast out, the earth would have become waste even at that time. But man was to be fostered in such a way as to enable him to achieve his independence. and this called for embodiment in earthly-physical matter. Beginning with the Lemurian age, then down through the Atlantean time, he had to be led to an ever-increasing ability to incarnate in some physical-sensible substance. But this substance now contained all the retarded beings, so that man could incarnate only in bodily sheaths inhabited by such beings.

In the Atlantean age there existed certain beings that were companions of the human beings. At that time man himself, as we know, was embodied in a soft substance, and what today is his flesh was not at all as it is at present. The man of old Atlantis, where the air was wholly permeated by dense, heavy, aqueous vapor, and where human beings were water beings, was constituted like certain present-day jellyfish of the sea, scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding water. Potentially all his organs were present, but they solidified only gradually—his bones, and so forth. The more tenuous material predisposition for the organs was there, but these hardened only in the course of time. In the early Atlantean period, then, there existed beings who in a sense were still men's companions, in so far as man was clairvoyant and could discern even those beings who had really established their habitation on the sun, but who streamed toward him in the sun's rays. For not only did physical sunlight come to man, but in this physical sunlight he saw beings approaching him; and when in a state comparable to sleep, he could say, Now I am outside my body in the sphere where sun beings dwell.

But then came the time, toward the middle and last third of the Atlantean age, in which the earth condensed more and more into its physical substance, and the impulse arose in man to develop his self-consciousness. Thenceforth there were no longer any such beings for men to see, for these had to withdraw from the earth, to cease revealing themselves to men's earthly sight. It was with cumulative force that human beings felt themselves drawn down into dense matter by the Luciferic influence; and in this way it became possible for a being, whom we must term Lucifer, to take possession of the human astral body to such an extent that man inevitably sank ever deeper into a dense physical body. But at the same time beings who had formerly been his companions rose ever higher, refusing to have anything to do with the retarded beings: they broke away from them. While the Luciferic beings invaded the human astral body, the higher beings cast them down, saying, in effect, Ye shall not rise with us: get on below as best ye can!

One of these higher beings is represented in Michael, who cast the Luciferic beings into the abyss and assigned the earth to them as their sphere of action; and it was within the astral body of man that they sought to exercise their influence. “Heaven” was no longer the habitation of these beings: they had been cast down to earth by the beings now to be found above. All evil, however, all harm, has its good side and its place in cosmic wisdom. Thus it was inevitable that these beings had to remain behind in evolution if they were to drag man down into physical matter, where alone he could learn to address himself as “I”, to develop his self-consciousness. Without being enmeshed in maya he never could learn this. But on the other hand, he would have perished in illusion if illusion and its powers—Lucifer-Ahriman—had succeeded in holding him permanently.

I must now express certain thoughts which I beg you to listen to with all possible circumspection; for only by further developing them and by taking them literally—though not in the literal sense of a materialistically minded person—can they be rightly understood.

What was the aim and intention of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings concerning the physical world? What did they want to bring about in all the beings now dwelling in the world, beings whom they were able to influence after they had united with human evolution in the Atlantean time? These beings, Lucifer-Ahriman, intended nothing less than to keep all earth beings in the form of dense, physical matter in which they are enmeshed. For example: when a plant grows forth from its root, sprouts leaf after leaf, and finally produces the blossom, it is Lucifer-Ahriman's purpose to foster this growth and expansion indefinitely; that is, to make this growing being resemble the physical form it inhabits, to preserve it as it is, thereby snatching it from the spiritual world. For were they to succeed in making this being of the spiritual world resemble the physical form, they would be wresting heaven from the earth, so to speak. In the animal kingdom as well the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings have the tendency to make all animals resemble the body in which they live, and to cause them, within their material substance, to forget their divine-spiritual origin. And it is the same in the case of the human being.

In order to prevent this, the divine-spiritual Father spoke: In their culmination, in man, the beings of earth have attained to external knowledge in their ego; but we cannot yet entrust them with life.—For life would in that case take a course in which the beings would be torn from their divine-spiritual root in this life: the human being would become an integral part of the physical body and would for all time forget his divine-spiritual origin. Only by bestowing the boon of death upon all things attracted into matter could the divine Father Spirit rescue the memory of divine origin. Thus it became possible for the growing plant to shoot upward until the impulse of fructification entered, and then for its form to wither and a new one to spring from its seed. But in entering the seed state, the plant is for a moment in the divine-spiritual world, and the divine-spiritual world refreshes it. And all this applies pre-eminently to the human being. He would be banished and chained to the earth and would forget his divine-spiritual origin were not death spread over the earth—were he not provided with ever-fresh sources of strength between death and a new birth—in order that he may not forget his divine-spiritual origin.

Death? Yes, where indeed is death to be found on the earth? Let us enquire of some plant being that delights us. There we have a being that gladdens our eyes with its glorious blossoms—and within a few months it is no longer there: death has claimed it. Or take an animal—perhaps one that has been faithful to us, or any other animal: in a short time it will be gone, taken by death. Consider the human being as he is placed in the physical world: after a certain span death will come to him, he will no longer be; for if he continued to be here he would forget his divine-spiritual origin. Think of a mountain: the time will come when the volcanic action of our earth will have engulfed it; death passes over it. Seek as you will, nothing is to be found that is not interwoven with death. Everything on earth is steeped in death.

Thus death is the benefactor that snatches man out of a domain which would wholly estrange him from the divine-spiritual world. Yet it was necessary for him to come into this physical world of sense, for only there could he achieve his self-consciousness, his human egoity. Were he to keep passing through death without the capacity for taking something along from this realm of death, he would be able, to be sure, to return to the divine-spiritual world, but without consciousness, without egoity; whereas he must enter the divine-spiritual world possessed of his egoity. That is why he must be able to fructify the earthly realm, the realm wholly permeated by death, in such a way that death becomes the seed of an ego principle in the eternal realm, the spiritual realm.

But this possibility of transforming death, which would otherwise mean annihilation, into the seed of eternal egoity was provided by the Christ impulse. On Golgotha the true aspect of death was manifested to all mankind for the first time; and as a result of Christ's having espoused death—Christ, image of the Father Spirit, Son of the Father Spirit—death became the well-spring of a new life—and, as we learned yesterday, of a new sun. And now that man has achieved an ego for all eternity, everything that formerly existed as his apprenticeship can henceforth vanish, and he can advance into the future with his rescued ego principle which will more and more be fashioned after the ego principle in Christ.

As an illustration of what has just been set forth, let us take a seven-armed candelabrum and light it step by step, and let us consider the first flame of its sevenfold unity a symbol of the first phase of human evolution, the Saturn phase. Every evolution proceeds in seven subdivisions, so in the first flame we see a symbol of the forces that flowed into man during the Saturn period. Passing to the second flame of this sevenfold candelabrum we have the symbol of the forces that came to man during the Sun phase. In like manner we can see in the third unit the forces from the Moon, and in the fourth, the symbol of everything that streamed into man from the Earth evolution. Now let us imagine the middle light as burning brightly, while the next three are but very dim. The middle light represents the time when Christ entered evolution; and never could the remaining candles be kindled, never could the next evolutionary epochs come about, had not the Christ impulse intervened in the evolution of mankind—indeed, they are still dark today.

If we were now to represent future evolution in the same symbolical way we should have to do it thus: as the light following the middle one kindles and increases in luster, the first one must be gradually extinguished; with the lighting of the next one, the second would die away; and so forth—for here is the beginning of a new Sun evolution. And when all the last lights are burning it is fitting that the first three be extinguished, because their fruits have flowed into the last three, have passed over into the future.—There you have a picture of past evolution which received its forces from the Father Spirit. Had the Father Spirit held to this course, all the lights would have gradually faded out, by reason of the interference of Lucifer-Ahriman. But the coming of the Christ impulse kindled a new light—and a cosmic sun begins its course.

Yes, it was inevitable that death should form part of all nature being, because this is interpenetrated by Lucifer-Ahriman. On the other hand, mankind would never have achieved its independence without Lucifer-Ahriman; yet through Lucifer-Ahriman alone this independence would have expanded to such an extent that in the end it would have led to the forgetting of our divine-spiritual origin. For this reason death had to become an ingredient even of our physical body: we would never be able to carry our ego principle over into eternity if its outer expression, which is our blood, had not been permeated by death.

We have within us the blood of life—the red blood stream; and we have the blood of death—the blue blood. In order to provide life for our egoity, the life that flows in the red blood must at every moment be destroyed in the blue blood. Were it not so destroyed man would be so deeply submerged in life that he would forget his divine-spiritual origin. Western esotericism has a symbol for these two kinds of blood: two pillars, a red one and blue one. The one symbolizes a life flowing from the Father Spirit, but in a form suggesting the tendency to lose itself; and the other represents the annihilation of the former. Death is the stronger, the more powerful of the two: it is the factor that brings about the destruction of that which otherwise would lose itself inwardly. But the destruction of what would otherwise lose itself means a call to resurrection.

Thus you see how an adequate interpretation of the John Gospel provides insight into the meaning of all life. What we have learned yesterday and today amounts simply to this: at that point of time which our Christian reckoning designates the new “Year 1” there occurred something of the most profound significance for the entire Earth evolution and, in as far as cosmic evolution is connected with the earth, for cosmic evolution as well. It can be said that with the event of Golgotha a new center was created: ever since then the Christ Spirit has been united with the earth. It had long been gradually approaching, but since that time it has been within the earth; and now men's task is to learn to grasp this fact: that since the Golgotha event the Christ Spirit has been in the earth and in everything it brings forth. Human beings must also learn that failure to recognize the Christ Spirit in all things means seeing them from the aspect of death, whereas finding the Christ Spirit in them means understanding them from the vantage point of life.

We are only at the beginning of the evolution that is specifically Christian. The form it will take in the future is of such import that men will see in the whole earth the body of Christ. For Christ has entered the earth and has therein created a new light center; He permeates the earth, shines forth into the world, and is for all time interwoven with the earth's aura. So if today we see the earth devoid of its underlying Christ Spirit, we see what is decaying, rotting—its decomposing corpse. Split it up as we may into minute particles, unless we understand the Christ, we see but the disintegrating corpse. Wherever we see only matter, we see what is not true.

You do not find the truth by studying man as a being of this earth, for you will be studying only his disintegrating corpse; and if you study this corpse you can be consistent in estimating the elements of the earth only by regarding the latter as composed of material atoms, regardless of whether these are spatially extended or whether they form force centers—that is immaterial. If we see atoms of which our earth is supposed to consist we see the earth's corpse, we see that which is constantly disintegrating and which in time will no longer exist when the earth no longer exists—and the earth is in a process of dissolution. We shall see things in their true light only if we discern in every atom something of the Christ Spirit that has imbued it since the time we speak of. Of what has the earth consisted since the Christ Spirit permeated it? Of life—right down to the atom. No atom has any value, nor can it be understood, except as you see in it a sheath encompassing spirit; and this spiritual element is a part of the Christ.

And now, consider anything whatever that pertains to the earth: when do you understand it aright? When you say, That is a part of the body of Christ. What was Christ able to say to those who would learn to understand Him? As He broke the bread made of the grain of the earth He could say,

This is my body.

And what could He say to them as he gave them the juice of the grape—the sap of a plant?

This is my blood.

Because He had become the soul of the earth He could say of the solid substance, “This is my body,” and of the plant's fluid, “This is my blood”—just as you say of your body, This is my body, and of your blood, This is my blood. And those who are able to grasp the true meaning of these words of Christ create for themselves thought images that attract the body and the blood of Christ in the bread and the wine, and they unite with the Christ Spirit.

In this way our symbol of the Lord's Supper becomes a reality. Lacking in our hearts the thought that unites us with Christ we cannot engender the force of attraction that draws the Christ Spirit to us at Holy Communion; but by means of such a thought form the attraction is generated. For those, then, who need the outer symbol in order to perform the spiritual act—that is, to unite with the Christ—Communion will be the way until such time as their inner strength will have so grown, and they are so permeated by the Christ, that they can dispense with the outer physical agency. The Sacrament of Communion is the preparation for the mystical union with the Christ, the preparatory schooling. That is the light in which we must see these things. And just as everything evolves from matter upward toward spirit under the Christian influence, so those things which existed primarily as a bridge must then grow and develop under the influence of Christ. The Sacrament of Communion must rise from the physical to the spiritual plane if it is to lead to a true union with the Christ.—One can do no more than hint at such matters, for only if they are received with a full sense of their sacred nature will they be rightly understood.

To recognize that through the event of Golgotha Christ entered the earth—this was a task set mankind. Men were to realize it more and more, and to become increasingly permeated by it. But this called for mediators; and one of the first great ones was he who had been Saul and became Paul. How far could Saul's knowledge extend, considering that he was a Jewish initiate? We can express it somewhat as follows: he could know what was contained in the Hebrew teachings. He knew that what Zarathustra had seen as Ahura Mazdo and what Moses had beheld as Ehjeh asher ehjehas Jahve or Jehova—in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai—he knew that this had come nearer the earth, had approached, and would one day occupy a human body, and that in this human body it would effect a rejuvenation of the earth. On the other hand, he was influenced by the views of his time and by Jewish law. He had witnessed the event of Golgotha but was unable to admit that He Who had died on the Cross was the Bearer of the Christ. None of the events he had heard of or experienced could convince him that He Who was expected, according to the Jewish initiation, had been incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, what would Saul have to experience to be convinced that the immortal Christ Spirit had really been present in the dying body of Jesus of Nazareth on Golgotha? From his Hebrew initiation he knew that after the Christ Spirit had dwelt in a human body and this human body had died, the Christ must be present in the earth's aura; hence it should be possible for the Christ to become visible to one able to see into the earth's aura with the eyes of the spirit. That he knew; but hitherto he had not achieved the capacity for seeing into the earth's aura. He was an initiate in wisdom, but not a clairvoyant. He did, however, possess the prerequisite for becoming clairvoyant in an abnormal manner, and he himself mentions this. He refers to it as “grace,” bestowed upon him from above; and he tells us that he was born prematurely—usually translated “out of due time.” He was not carried the full time in the maternal womb, but descended from the spiritual to the physical world before being wholly immersed in all the elements of earthly existence; that is, he came into the world before the moment when ordinarily the unconscious ties which bind men to the spiritual powers are broken. The vision on the road to Damascus was made possible for one whose spiritual eyes had been opened through the agency of an untimely birth. His spiritual vision having been bestowed upon him as a consequence of his premature birth, he now gazed into the earth's aura and there beheld the Christ. Therefore the span of time during which this Christ had walked the earth must have already lapsed. Here was proof that it was Christ Who had died on the Cross; for He Who, Paul knew, was to conquer death on the earth had appeared to him as a spiritual living being. Now he knew the meaning of the event of Golgotha: he knew that Christ was risen; for He Whom Paul had beheld could never before have been seen in the earth's aura. Now he understood the words:

It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

What are the “pricks”? Paul himself tells us:

O death, where is thy sting?¹

In vain wouldst thou kick against the pricks, for thou wouldst recognize only death. But henceforth thou canst no longer kick against death, for thou hast seen Him Who conquered death.—In this way Paul became the apostle of Christianity who proclaimed most emphatically the living—the spiritually living—Christ.

What made it possible for the Christ to be seen in the earth's aura? The fact that in Christ Jesus—as in a primal impetus given earth evolution for the future—the etheric body was completely permeated by the Christ. The etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth could not be otherwise than wholly permeated by the Christ; and because this was so it exerted full mastery over the physical body, even to the extent of being able to restore the latter after its death; that is, it could appear in such a form as to contain again all that the physical body had embraced before death—but through the power of the etheric body. So when Christ was seen after His death, it was His etheric body was seen; but for those who were able, as a result of the strength imparted to them through the events in question, not only to recognize a physical-sensible body, but to see in an etheric body a real body with all the marks of a physical body—for such as these Christ was risen in reality. And in truth, He was.

We are further told in the Gospel that when a man has advanced to the stage in which his corruptible principle develops the incorruptible, he becomes endowed with higher vision; and we are also told that those who had already achieved this higher vision as a result of self-development could see the Christ and know Him as such. That is told us clearly enough, but people lack the will really to read what it actually says in the Gospel. Take, for example, the first appearance of Christ after death. We read:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

Now, imagine you meet someone whom you had seen but a few days before: can you believe yourself incapable of recognizing him? Can you imagine asking him whether he is the gardener, and where they had laid him—when he himself was the man you saw before you? But that is exactly what you would have to impute to Mary—or to her who is here called Mary—were you to assume that every physical eye could have recognized Christ and seen Him as previously the physical eye had seen Him. Read the Gospels with their spirit in mind!—No, the sacred power of words had first to penetrate the woman as a force: that was essential. Then the words echoed in her heart and rekindled all that she had witnessed. That was what gave her the spiritual vision to see Him Who was risen from the dead.

And does not Paul tell us the same thing? In the case of Paul it cannot be doubted that, with spiritual vision, he saw Christ on the spiritual plane, in the aura of the earth; and as proof that Christ lived he affirms that Christ had appeared. Then, as appearances of equal importance, he mentions first:

... that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethern at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle.

Paul placed the vision of others entirely on a par with his own, which was made possible by his spiritual sight; hence he says literally:

In like manner as I have seen the Christ, so has he been seen by the others also.

Their experiences, says Paul, engendered in them the power to see Christ as one arisen from the dead. Now we understand what Paul means, and his viewpoint is at once recognizable as the anthroposophic-spiritual viewpoint; for it tells us that there is a spiritual world, and if we contemplate it by means of the impulse given us through the power of Christ, we shall penetrate it in such a way as to find there the Christ Himself, Christ Who had passed through the event of Golgotha. That is the meaning of what Paul tells us. And it is possible for the human being—especially through what is known as Christian initiation—with patience and endurance gradually to become a successor to Paul, so to speak; to acquire for himself the faculties that will enable him to see into the spiritual world and spiritually to behold the Christ face to face.

In other lectures I have repeatedly set forth the first steps leading to a vision of the Christ Being Himself: the aspirant must live over again what is delineated for us in the Gospel of St. John. I will now merely indicate in briefest outline, in this connection, how man—if he resolves to pass through a certain gamut of feelings—can rise to the spiritual world in which, since the event of Golgotha, there shines the light of Christ.

We begin by saying to ourself, I observe the plant. It grows out of the mineral soil, grows and flowers. But if it could develop consciousness, as does man, it would have to bend down to the soil of the earth, the mineral kingdom from which it grows, and say, Among the present beings of nature thou stone art a lower being than I; but without thee, lower kingdom, I could not subsist.—Similarly, were the animal able to sense the plant as the indispensable condition of its existence, it would have to confess, I, as an animal, am a higher being than thou, the plant; but without thee I should perish. Humbly it would have to bow down to the plant and say, To thee, a lower being, I owe my existence.—And in the kingdom of man it should be thus: Everyone who has reached a given rung of the ladder should look upon those who in a spiritual sense stand beneath him, and say, True, ye belong to a lower world; but as the plant must bow before the mineral, and the animal before the plant, so should I who stand on a higher rung say: To thee, a humbler one, I owe my existence.—Then, when for weeks and months—possibly years under the guidance of the right teacher—a man has completely immersed himself in such feelings of universal humility, he will know the meaning of the Washing of the Feet. He will have a direct spiritual vision of what Christ, as the higher Being, did in bending down to the Twelve and washing their feet. The whole significance of this event dawns on the disciple like a vision, and he knows that it took place. His enlightenment is such as to demand no further proof: he now gazes directly into the spiritual world and beholds Christ in the scene in question.

Then, stimulated by the teacher, this man can gain the strength to say, I shall courageously endure whatever sorrow and suffering this world may bring, and shall not complain. I shall steel myself to the point at which these no longer mean suffering and sorrow for me, because I shall know them for necessities in the world.—And when he has become sufficiently stanch of soul, there springs from this contemplation the feeling of the Scourging: spiritually he feels it taking place in himself. And this opens his spiritual vision, enabling him to see for himself the Scourging as it is described in the Gospel of St. John.

Then the pupil is shown how to develop the strength for the next step, where he is able not only to bear sorrow and suffering at the hands of all mankind, but to say: I possess something so sacred that I stake my whole being on it. Should all the world overwhelm me with scorn and mockery, this remains holiest for me. No derision or disdain will keep me from cherishing it, though I stand alone. I profess it, and shall defend it.—Then he experiences spiritually within him the Crowning with Thorns; and without the aid of any historical document his spiritual vision transmits to him this scene as described in the Gospel of St. John.

Then, when through proper guidance he has learned to regard his physical existence in quite a new light, to think of his own body as something external—when it has become a matter of course to feel and sense that he carries his physical body about with him as a material instrument—then he has reached the fourth stage of Christian initiation, the Bearing of the Cross. This has by no means made a frail ascetic of him: on the contrary, he learns to employ his physical instrument far more effectively than theretofore. When you have learned to regard your body as something you carry, you have arrived at the fourth stage of Christian initiation, the Bearing of the Cross; and therewith you have attained to the enlightenment that enables you to see spiritually the scene in which Christ bears His Cross on His back, just as you have learned by the elevation of your soul to carry your body as you might a piece of wood.

Now something occurs which is to be regarded as the fifth stage of Christian initiation: it is called the “mystical death”. Here, as a consequence of the inner maturity we have gained, everything that surrounds us—the whole physical world of the senses—appears to be extinguished: we are in darkness. And then comes a moment when this darkness is torn apart like a curtain, and we see behind this physical world into the spiritual world. At the same moment, however, something else occurs as well: we have learned to recognize sin and evil in their true forms; that is, in this stage we have learned the meaning of the Descent into Hell.

In the next stage we learn not only to regard our body as something alien, but also to feel everything else as being as much a part of us as our body, to look upon everything on earth as pertaining to us, as was a matter of course in ancient clairvoyance; and, inasmuch as we all belong to one great organism, we further learn to regard the suffering of others as our own. Then, in proportion to our understanding of this, we are united with the earth, and we experience the act of being laid in the earth, the Burial. And by being united with the earth we are also risen out of it; for this experience has given us the first insight into the meaning of the words, “The earth is in the process of becoming a new sun.”

The attainment of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of Christian initiation enables us to see for ourselves the event of Golgotha, to merge with it. We no longer need documents: these served merely as rungs of the ladder.

Finally there is the seventh stage, known as the Ascension—in other words, the awakening in the spiritual world. It is rightly said of this stage that it cannot be expressed in any words of human language, that it can be imagined only by one who has learned to think without the instrumentality of the brain. The miracles of resurrection can be thought only when the physical brain is no longer needed as an instrument.

By reason of having had their spiritual eyes opened and of thus being able to see what took place, those who were present as believers when the event of Golgotha occurred could have seen the Christ in the way I have indicated—that is, if He had manifested Himself to their spiritual sight in the earth's aura. But even had Christ always retained, in a certain sense, the same form He had assumed at that time, the faithful would not have been able to see Him had He—the Christ—not achieved something for Himself as well—by conquering death.

This brings us to a concept which is indeed difficult to grasp. The human being continues to learn incessantly as he develops his capacities, at whatever stage he finds himself. Not only man, however, but every being, from the humblest to the most exalted divine being, learns while developing farther and farther. What Christ did as a divine Being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth we have thus far described with reference to its fruits and its effect on mankind. But now we must ask, did Christ thereby also experience something within Himself that led Him to a higher stage? And the answer is, He did. Even divine-spiritual beings can experience what leads them to more advanced stages; and what He experienced—His ascent into a world still more exalted than the one in which He had previously had His being—this He revealed in His Ascension to those who were His companions on the earth. That is why the first six stages of Christian initiation can be understood—though not perceived—by one who is neither an initiate nor a clairvoyant, but who lives in dependence, for his thinking, on the physical brain; whereas the seventh stage, the Ascension, can be comprehended only by the clairvoyant who is no longer bound to the instrumentality of his physical brain, who has experienced for himself what it means to think without the brain and to see without the brain.

That is the way in which these matters are interrelated; and such was the course of the world's development during the period we have been privileged to discuss in these fourteen lectures.

We have already learned what Christ indicated in healing the man who had been born blind, namely, that the sins he committed in a former life should now become manifest in him. What Christ did, then, was to teach the idea of reincarnation, in as far as people could understand it—karma, the extension of causes from one incarnation to another, that is what He taught; and He taught as one does with practical life in mind. What He meant was this: There will be a future time in which all men will recognize karma. They will understand that when a man does evil he need not be punished by an external, earthly power, for the evil he did inevitably entails its compensation in this or in some future incarnation. Then we shall only need to enter this deed in the great law book of the akashic record, inscribe it in the spiritual world. Then we human beings need not condemn him: then we can entrust the judging of his deeds to the spiritual laws, to be inscribed in the spiritual world: we can leave him to karma.

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned but what sayest thou?

This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground.

What was it He wrote? He inscribed the sin in the spiritual world, indicating that through the spiritual world the sin would find its compensation. The others, however, He reminded to ask themselves whether they were without sin; for only if they harbored nothing that called for compensation could they feel themselves to be in no way connected with the sin of this woman and therefore qualified to judge her. As it was, they had no way of knowing whether, in their previous life, they themselves might not have provided the cause of what had now come to this woman: they could not know whether in former lives they had induced what had now caused her to commit adultery; whether they themselves had committed the sin or laid its foundations in an earlier incarnation. All is inscribed in karma. Jesus wrote on the ground which He had already permeated with His spiritual light; that is, He confided to the earth what should be the karma of the adulteress. What He meant was: Follow the path which I now mark out for you. Learn not to judge, but to leave what is in man to karmic adjustment.—If we abide by this rule we will come to understand karma. Karma need not be taught as a dogma, for it is taught by facts. That was Christ's way of teaching.

Here we should pause to realize that such things could be written only by that one of Christ's pupils and disciples whom He himself had initiated: Lazarus-John. Hence it was this pupil alone who fully understood the power attained to by a Being Who, beginning with the Baptism, had gradually gained in His etheric body mastery over the physical body, to the extent of endowing the latter with ever new life. And for the same reason, this writer of the John. Gospel knew that it was possible to transform what appeared to be water—through its being received into the human organs—into wine. He understood how the power of the etheric body could be employed in such a way that a few fishes and loaves sufficed to satisfy the hunger of many. That is what the author of the John Gospel told us, if only we take the Gospel seriously. Does he say anywhere that the few loaves and fishes were eaten in the ordinary physical way? No, you will not find that in the Gospel. He says clearly and distinctly, as you will see by taking every word literally, that Christ broke the bread; but also, that He offered up thanks to heaven:

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

The meaning of these words as they appear in the original text, which is poorly reproduced in translation, is about as follows: The disciples passed on the loaves and the fishes, letting each do with them what he would. But none desired anything whatever save to feel, at this moment, what emanated as a force from the mighty etheric body of Christ Jesus. No one had any other wish.

And by what means had their hunger been stilled? In the 23rd verse it says:

Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks.²

p>It was through the agency of the prayer that the people had eaten the bread. They had eaten bread without the physical act having taken place. Hence Christ Jesus could later throw light on what had occurred by saying,

I am the bread of life.

What, then, had the people eaten? They had partaken of the power of Christ's body. And what could remain? Only the power of Christ's body; and the effect of this was so strong that there remained fragments to be gathered up.

According to occult teaching, every body consists of twelve members. The one uppermost is called the Ram; the adjacent one, the Bull; the one with the hands, the Twins; the chest is called the Crab; everything in the region of the heart is the Lion; below it—the trunk—is the Virgin; the hips, the Scales; below this, the Scorpion; and still farther down: the thigh, the Archer; the knee, the Goat; the lower leg, the Water-carrier; and the feet, the Fishes.

The human body, then, is divided into twelve members—and with good reason. Now, if the fragments were to be gathered up after the power of Christ's body had been used to satisfy hunger, they would have to be gathered in twelve measures.

Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.

It was not the barley loaves they had eaten: they had partaken of the power emanating from Christ; and they had been satisfied by the power that radiated from Christ through His thanksgiving when He appealed to the spheres from which He had descended. That is the sense in which we must understand the influence of the spiritual world on the physical world; and thus we can also understand the relation of the single incidents to the basic event, the evolution of our earth into a sun. They all take their place as mighty force-revealing events in the earth's process of becoming a sun. But it now becomes comprehensible that what communicated itself to the earth at that time as a mighty impulse can reach human beings only by slow degrees, that it can be infused into humanity but slowly and gradually.

As was indicated yesterday, the Gospel which in the beginning was best suited to convey the great truths to those able to receive them was St. Mark's Gospel. That was during the first centuries, when it was men's task to reconquer through their own efforts the realms from which they had strayed. Let us try to understand how man himself descended from divine-spiritual heights to the lowest point, which occurred when the intervention of Golgotha provided an impetus to man's return to an upward striving. This acted like a mighty impulse, drawing man aloft again. He had descended from divine-spiritual heights and had sunk ever deeper; then, having saturated himself with the newly born spiritual light, he received from the Christ impulse the strength gradually to recover all that he had once possessed. And this he would have to accomplish in the following manner: In the time immediately following the Christ event he had to regain what he had lost during the last pre-Christian centuries, and this could be done with the help of the Mark Gospel.

What he had lost in a still earlier time had to be recaptured in the succeeding period by means of a Gospel directing his attention more to his inner life, and this was the Gospel of St. Luke. But we have also said that six hundred years before the appearance of Christ on earth, everything of a spiritual nature which had been vouchsafed mankind in earlier centuries, and which had gradually been lost, was gathered together in the great being of Buddha. At that time, six centuries before Christ, the Buddha being lived, epitomizing everything that existed in the way of primeval wisdom—all that mankind had lost and that Buddha had come to proclaim. Hence it is narrated that when Buddha came into the world his birth had been foretold by his mother Maya. We are further told of one who had prophesied of the child that it would become a Buddha, the Redeemer, the Guide to immortality, freedom, and light. And there is many a Buddha legend reporting that as a twelve-year-old boy Buddha had strayed from home, and that he was found again under a tree surrounded by the poets and sages of Antiquity, whom he taught. In my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, you will find set forth how in the Luke Gospel, six hundred years later, there crop up again the same legends that were told of Buddha; how his revelations reappear in a new form. That is why we encounter in the Luke Gospel what was already contained in the Buddha legends. So perfect is the agreement in such matters when seen in the light of spiritual science!

This should lead us to realize that a document such as the Gospel of St. John, and the others that complement it, are of an infinite profundity which we have studied in a series of lectures; and if we could continue our lectures and make them twice as long, we could find ever new depths in the Gospels. Endless abundance would be disclosed could we extend the time indefinitely; and it would be borne in upon us that with the future development of mankind, still new and ever new depths in these documents will be fathomed. Truly, men will never exhaust their contents. There is nothing one has to read into them; we must merely prepare ourselves, by means of occult truths, to find out what they really contain. Then the whole universal complex of mankind, as well as the relation of this complex to the cosmos, will reveal itself to us; and we shall come to see ever deeper into the spiritual world.

But having heard a lecture cycle of such a nature, it is essential to realize that we have not just acquired a store of knowledge, a sum of isolated truths. Though indispensable, that would be the lesser demand: it is simply a matter of its being impossible to arrive at the deeper goal without it. No, the special fruit that should ripen for us as a result of these studies is that everything we have received through our mind, if we let it sink into our heart, should become a deeply felt understanding of it all, should be transformed into emotions—even into impulses of the will. When all that we have understood and received through our mind comes to glow in our heart it becomes a force within us, a healing force for spirit, soul, and body. And then we shall contemplate this past fortnight as follows: We have been immersed in the life of spirit and have acquired a great deal in many ways. Our gain, however, has not been a mere matter of empty concepts and ideas, but rather, of truths, concepts, and ideas capable of springing from our soul as living forces in our feelings and in our sensibilities. And these feelings and sensibilities will remain for us: we can never lose them, and we shall carry them with us in the world. We have not merely learned something: we have become more alive through what we have learned.

If, in taking leave of this cycle, we make such feelings our very own, spiritual science will fill our life. It will not withdraw us from our ordinary life, but will become for us something like an image of the loftiest concept presented in these lectures. What was set forth is this: Death in the world was inevitable, but the view we hold of death is erroneous. Christ taught us the true view of death, whereby death becomes the seed of a higher life.

Out yonder, beyond the sphere of these lectures, life surges; everyday existence flows on and men live in it. Spiritual research detracts not from that life by an iota, robs it of nothing; but the view commonly held regarding it—before penetrating it with the eye of the spirit—is erroneous, and this error must come to signify life's illusion. This we must let perish in us; then the seed we have acquired by means of an illusion will blossom into a higher life. But only if we receive into ourselves the living, spiritual point of view can this come about: Far from making us ascetic in our lives, it is precisely thereby that we learn to know life in its true form, to master it in the right way, and to endow it with genuine fruitfulness. In proportion as we experience spiritual science itself in a Christian way we christianize life, and we experience that image of life which we have learned to see in death. As we adopt spiritual science as our way of thinking, in the same measure will we—not become estranged from life, but rather, discover in what way our view of this life is faulty. Then, strengthened by a true conception of it, we shall enter it as active workers. There will be no withdrawing from life, for we shall have gained power and strength from studies that lead us into the spiritual world.

If I have in some measure succeeded in so shaping these lectures that they may bear fruit in your lives, that they may contribute, even to a slight degree, to making you feel spiritual cognition as being an exaltation of life—living warmth in your feeling, thinking, and willing; in your working—then the light enkindled for us through our anthroposophical Weltanschauung can glow as the fire of life's ardor, as the fire of life itself. And if this fire proves at all strong enough to endure and burn on through life, I shall have achieved my aim in undertaking this series of lectures.

May these feelings live on in your hearts as a subject of inner meditation!

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• 1. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:—The German translations of the New Testament employ the same word for “pricks” and “sting” (Stachel)
• 2. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:—Luther appears to have understood this point better than did the authors of the King James version: in place of our “... after that the Lord had given thanks”, the German Gospel has the equivalent of “... through (or by means of) the Lord's thanksgiving” (... durch des Herrn Danksagung).

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain, for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning. Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna. All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant; were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully-developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom, a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom, might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully-developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison. It then also becomes clear that that which is some day to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles, had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the “ego” into the evolution of mankind. If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse—in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha—that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances. The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha, a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it. After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent

the whole connection, symbolically. If we take this circle (Diagram 1) as representing the human soul, we may say that the spiritual light streams in from without from all sides into this human soul. Then comes the Mystery of Golgotha, after which the soul possesses the Christ-Impulse in itself and radiates Forth that which is contained in the Christ-Impulse (Diagram 2). Just as a drop which is illumined from all sides radiates and reflects this illumination, so does the soul appear before the Christ-Impulse. As a flame which is alight within and radiates forth its light, thus does the soul appear after the Mystery of Golgotha, if it has been able to receive the Christ-Impulse.

Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse. Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state. What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one—whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides—is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line a-b as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilisation was then in the Sattva condition.

 7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D. A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B
 Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age. 

Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age, but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations we have the first age—which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition—occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age.' We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity—the Chaldean-Egyptian—and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking. If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Vedas—although that belongs to a still earlier age. Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body—which was woven of the etheric body alone—he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world. Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the earth. He felt his being growing into the earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old old age—the third—should so completely cease, and the new age—the fourth—should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described, would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the earth and the head was that which projected out of the earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, whilst outside the earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

“The serpent is active within me,” said he. To perceive was therefore in the olden time something like this: “I rouse the serpent within me to a state of activity; I feel my serpent-nature.” What had to happen, so that the new age should come in, that the new method of

perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the earth through his legs and feet; besides which perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch, comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun; although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly-arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch, still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth. There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say—a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience. Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna-and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body—the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and amongst the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third Post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge, was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a world-wide historical Hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end—outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric, not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organisation of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired. Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world, which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realise much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see—one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man, it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it; the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, whilst he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilisation. That is the being of Krishna. What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavours to overcome that, which even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch, which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality; that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha. Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age—making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy—he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition—that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone, in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply-defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind, does so full of enthusiasm; in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualising of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga, as a side-issue. St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality. Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style, and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works, almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance-to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this. Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new—I would remind you of my little pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood—we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the Post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form: and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy, we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby, Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions. But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms; Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of—Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly I but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown; alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way if man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti—the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation, has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion, we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realise itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle, which, however, we only meet with in miniature, as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against Soul, the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognises this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance, but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition, they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit, at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation, it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle-the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer; then in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which, in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity and we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterised that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti, we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood, but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter, in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty Poem—the Bhagavad Gita—that which was necessary for the old times-with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings. Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it, but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna—who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture—on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body, or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous; the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher—and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity, not merely against Tamas and Rajas, but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all. The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna, the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Visudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognise as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas, will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such, is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up. We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna. Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterised you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times, may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future-certainly more perfect, more all-embracing world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete. Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognise, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita, the very, very significant imperfections—they must not be disguised—but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul¹ is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls² I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,³ a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Galatians 2:20
• 2. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121
• 3. the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)

From our considerations of yesterday you will have seen how easily the whole course of human evolution can be misunderstood and how it is particularly misunderstood from many sides today to the detriment of present knowledge as well as of the present social striving of mankind. (see Z-7.) Today we will for once call up before our souls some results of Spiritual Science of such a nature that they can throw light, it may be said, from another side on what becomes so enigmatical if looked at from the points of view holding good at present. Now I have told you that man can come to terms with this present time only if he makes up his mind to find his real bearings by starting on the path to the spirit. He must decide to look for a new relation to external nature since the old means to this end no longer suffice, and also find his way to a new relation to his fellow men, the old relation no longer being suitable, so that he sees what impulses are necessary for the modern social structure of mankind. If we wish to be successful in this, we must earnestly keep before our souls the following—that as man is placed in the world today, in earthly existence between birth and death, he sees but the outer manifestation of his own essential being and enters into actual relationship with merely the outer manifestation of his fellowmen. Life takes on a different form for the different epochs of mankind's evolution, and we exert ourselves really to study these things just in their relation to men of the present time. For the present age is a very critical one for men on earth. Up to the fifteenth century, and, since things do not change in a flash, one might say on into the present time, man is still actually more or less dominated by inherited concepts and impulses of the past. This fifth post-Atlantean epoch is indeed in a certain sense rather out of the ordinary where the evolution of men is concerned. For you certainly know that taking earthly evolution as a whole it divides itself into seven great successive epochs, of which the fourth was the Atlantean epoch and the fifth, our present one, the post-Atlantean. The sixth and the seventh should then follow.

In the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis. For up to that time the whole of the earth's existence was a recapitulation of the earlier existence of Saturn, Sun and Moon. During the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis but it is true only the beginning of a crisis. There was merely a preparation of things that were actually to be developed in the following evolution of the earth. So that up to Atlantean times man was really only what he had been in his different forms as man on Saturn, Sun and Moon. In Atlantean times, however, he had only intimations of what he was supposed actually to become as man of the earth; then he continues on, and now we are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, throughout the old Indian end old Persian development, and so on, ever more definite relations were arising. But the Greco-Latin time, the fourth post-Atlantean period, gives us again even though in another form merely a kind of repetition of what existed on another level of existence in Atlantis. It is only now in the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the time since the fifteenth century, that man stands within his whole evolution in such a way that new impulses arise—impulses which are perceptible in his very being. Previously they were not so noticeable; now they appear in his being noticeably, nevertheless there are still only intimations of their presence. The terrible, catastrophic events of our time, the consequences of which—one can already foresee—will be shattering to mankind, are the expression of how new relations are making their way into mankind's evolution. I have already indicated how from a certain aspect these new relations can be described by pointing to the way in which an on-rolling spiritual wave is clearly perceived, arising from, as it were, a surging up into evolution of the Spirits of Personality.

Now we notice it after the manner of Spiritual Science we keep in mind this particular state of soul in which modern man is found here on earth, it is markedly noticeable today, according to the outlook of Spiritual Science, how man when he perceives or is outwardly active in his willing is really surrounded only by manifestations of the being of nature, and the being of his fellow men. He is not surrounded by the real beings into whom he must, as it were, grow in the course of evolution, into whom he will have grown at a later stage of evolution. As you know, man's position in the world is such that—to describe it broadly—he perceives the surrounding world in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom and in his own human kingdom. This is what is visible around man. And in the visible human kingdom there is played out what comes from the will and what should find a certain ordering for the social structure.

Now people have reflected a great deal about man's attitude to his environment, though insufficient thought has gone into their reflections. But the result of these reflections has been worked into various theories of knowledge. We get very little, however, from these theories of knowledge. And what in schoolmaster fashion is given in these theories today to the young people, who are then supposed to speak to the world as philosophers, is really perfectly inadequate nonsense. For a true insight into what is really revealed in man's surroundings, a real insight, can only be gained when the matter is observed according to the way of Spiritual Science. You see, on one side man can look upon the mineral kingdom and the plant kingdom; on the other side he can look on the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man himself. Both—mineral kingdom and plant kingdom as well as human kingdom and animal kingdom—unveil themselves to him in such a way that if now in a theoretical sense he is honest, in this unveiling, in this revealing, he notices contradictions. He is unable to make anything of the way in which on the one hand the mineral kingdom and plant kingdom, and on the other hand the animal kingdom and human kingdom reveal themselves to him. And when people believe they can succeed in doing so this comes from a certain dullness. Because they take life too easily they are unwilling to go into all the doubts which arise from observing the kingdoms of Nature. But now, when one presses on to knowledge, when one trains oneself in the direction given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then to a certain extent a change takes place in our contemplation of the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as in our view of the connection with the animal and human kingdoms. Unconsciously men already have, to a high degree today, a feeling for this change, even if it does not enter consciousness. It remains indeed in the unconscious—just as I told you that today in the natural course of evolution man passes by the Guardian of the Threshold unconsciously. It is actually a certain fear of the truth which always unconsciously holds men back from really pressing on so that they come to this change. I am speaking in Imaginations, my dear friends, in Imaginations translated into words. In reality these things cannot be appropriately described in any other way. For when man brings to life within him what can be made living, when he applies himself to what is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms with this transformed power of cognition, he will always experience something like fear. But you should not have to shudder nor get gooseflesh at the description of these conditions. People avoid them because they are afraid. From this you ought to understand that of course when picturing these conditions one can indeed get gooseflesh to a certain degree, and on that account people just get frightened. When such knowledge is acquired, on looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms, one always experiences something like the smell of a corpse; there is a corpse-like smell which characterises as if in a vivid feeling what is living in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On the contrary, When with transformed cognition we look at the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man, there is always a sensation that can be described by saying: actually (you will forgive me, I know, for putting this Imagination into words) actually so long as they are in a physical body men remain—even the most advanced of them—where what in reality is hidden within them is concerned, always children, thorough children. The simple truth is that far more lies hidden in a man between birth and death than he can develop outwardly, can bring to manifestation out of himself.

Therefore, because in supersensible knowledge there is always a gradual ascent from semblance to actual reality, you see that when looking at, observing the outer world as it now is, we actually have to do with semblance alone. For the corpse-like smell of which I have spoken and, forgive me, the childishness of men, are veiled. The corpse-like smell finds, if I may say so, too dull a nose in our physical men, the etheric nose not being sufficiently developed. And the childishness of men does not allow us to confess its presence because , as men, we are too conceited to do so. Yet this is how the matter stands. My explaining what I have just been describing one points at the same time to there being far more hidden in in man than can be given practical proof. The question may now be asked: If man does not perceive the reality in minerals nor plants, if he perceives no reality in animals either—not even in his own being as man, where then is his right setting on earth? Strange as it may seem we find him placed among beings who belong neither to the mineral and plant kingdoms, nor to the animal and human kingdoms, but lie between them. He bases his being upon a kind of plant-animal, or animal-plant. were there a being here on earth neither wholly plant nor wholly animal, but having mere plant nature where their inner organisation is concerned, and having the power to go around, to move about at will like the animals—now this is what I meant were there beings who on being examined anatomically would not be found to have muscles and blood within them but whose anatomy would resemble that of the plants, with only their cells and tissue, but if these beings were able to move at will like the animals, or were there wandering round our earth animals that on dying left plantlike corpses, then man in his whole attitude of soul would really belong among these beings. Here in his earthly existence man would really be able to comprehend such beings. But again the remarkable thing is that for their part these beings could not exist on earth, these beings are only to be found in other worlds. They could not flourish in earth existence. Thus, we may say that man really lacks the faculty for knowledge—and this particularly apparent today's—which enables him to penetrate directly into the being of minerals and plants. and also of animals and men. And the beings he would directly perceive in their whole constitution are just these which could not live on the earth. This is the remarkable position of man where his relation to nature around him is concerned.

But here on earth man stands also in a strange relation to himself. Man is on the one hand a being who has conceptions. When, however, he puts this faculty for conceiving, for having ideas, into action, in the conception he loses his own identity. And he actually has his identity, that is not able to make an appearance in the conception, only when something—his will—works up out of the unconscious. If the will were not to work up and we were to have no trace of it in us, could we have andy ideas about it. The whole world would seem to us ghostly. We should have a ghostly world before us, which about describes the world of scientific concepts; this would actually constitute our world. Imagine the world looking as it is described by natural scientists or zoologists; just think of it being nothing more than what is found in books on Botany and Mineralogy. Real Botany and Mineralogy contain far more than what we find in books. But imagine you were taken into a world described in books, where there was nothing more than what is described in books; it would indeed be a world of mere apparitions, a proper world of ghosts. The world not being one of ghosts is amply due to the will having something to say. Now look! Were you able to fly—I don't mean with a machine but were you able to fly yourself, if you had no need of earth under your feet and were you able to move freely without the earth—then you would come near to perceiving the world in this ghostly fashion. Even if you could only follow the world with your eyes when awake it would appear very ghostly, not so much so as when described by the natural scientist, but all the same it would appear very ghostly. You have a feeling of the solidity of world existence only because you stand with your feet on the ground. And this pressure of your feet against the ground gives you the feeling, akin to the will, but watered-down will, that you are not in a ghostly world but in one that is solid. Were you not to have this feeling, should you only see, the world would appear to you a very ghostly place. You do not tell yourself what is going on in the subconscious; in the subconscious something is going on that makes man say (in the subconscious he does say it): Yes, the world looks very like a ghost! Were it really what is presented by my eyes I should never be able to stand firm, I should have to sink down; and as I do not sink, the world is not as presented by my eyes. This conclusion is constantly being arrived at in the unconscious. The entirely ordinary, most everyday relation to the world is as complicated as this. It is always an unconscious conclusion that to a certain extent originates with the will. Thus in mere conception we actually lack—to use an erudite expression, a pedantic expression—we lack the subject, it drops out. That we have a subject and feel ourselves bound up with the world comes from the will.

Again, when we will, when we develop the will, the object is actually lacking. The object does not come into our consciousness at all as something properly solid. If I want simply to lift this little book from the left side over to the right, and actually do it—the real object of the will does not enter consciousness at all. You can see the passage of the book, the conception which takes its ghostly way into the will, but the actual object of the will does not enter consciousness. So that man when he makes conceptions and also when he wills (this again sounds grotesque because an Imagination is being clothed in words) man as a conceiver as well as a willer is—if you will forgive me—a cripple. He conceives in a ghostly way and wills incompletely. What man is in reality, is actually neither quite within his conception nor his will; once again it is in the centre between the conception and the will. But all this goes on in ordinary life without being able to enter consciousness. In the same way as the plant-animal is unable to enter external nature, what man actually is cannot enter his consciousness. For this reason I have often spoken to you of the fact from another point of view by saying: man perceives the real ego like a hole in life's events. You see we have to be clear that holes can also be perceived. Man knows nothing of sleep, he wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps. But reviewing the course of his life he is faced by empty space in his consciousness, the hole in consciousness, and he sees just as if there were a white surface before him with black holes where really nothing is to be seen. Thus he looks at the holes that, during sleep, are there in consciousness. But it is also the same with our ego in waking life. Our ego is not in reality brought into consciousness: in the consciousness there is only a hole for this ego, and perceiving this hole is the only thing that makes us aware that we really have an ego.

These things, that appear to the insensitive men of today as sophistry, must gradually become an elementary consciousness in man. For in the future man will not be able to found life on dogmatic conceptions, as has been possible for him in the past owing to the still existing remains and after effects of atavistic clairvoyance. In future we shall have to base life on grounds that are easy to detect. It will have to be part of our everyday conceptions that mineral and plant kingdoms are observed after the manner of Goethe. For Goethe only examined the phenomenon, and did not believe that in the phenomenon there was revealed anything but, at best, the basic phenomena, the archetypal phenomena and that phenomena do not reveal in laws of nature which can be put thoughts. Goethe never looked for laws of nature, for this would have seemed to him very fantastic; he wanted to pursue the phenomena because the external world shows us in the mineral and plant kingdoms nothing but perceptions, appearances. Thus man has to look at the external world to become conscious of himself. In the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom I really see only the outer side, and when confronted by the animal and human kingdoms I actually see only something like an embryo of the complete being. That also must be so. For you see, in the mineral and plant kingdoms in reality there exist beings who, when observed by man, reveal only a certain side of themselves because it may be said they cannot reveal themselves in any other way. For in the mineral and plant kingdoms lives something man can only fully recognise if—please understand me, thoroughly he looks back to the world from which he came on entering physical existence through birth. Could you after birth with your thought keep possession of the consciousness that stretches backward before birth, could you, that is, look upon being born as an event in your life like—shall we say—the passing from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, and were the backward-running thread of consciousness to remain unbroken—the consciousness being quite different before birth, before conception—without more ado you would get a view of mineral and plant kingdoms quite different from the one you get on looking from the standpoint of life between birth and death. For you would then say to yourself the followings I have come from the spiritual world through birth. I have entered this physical realm. Why should I have done this? Why should I not have remained in the spiritual realm? Why have I been enticed down to earth at all? For one may speak here of enticement. Then, if you were able to remember, you might says I have been enticed to earth for the reason that suddenly in the course of my development between death and a new birth, it seemed—I came into a sphere where it seemed—as if certain beings had flown away, as if they really should be there, were missing—and were not there. To put it bluntly, in the time just before birth in the spiritual world one is dogged by the feeling that one misses certain beings which actually belong there and are not there. Everything goes to show that these beings are lacking. And if one comes down through birth, these beings are there in the minerals and in the plants, but as though banished, as if these beings were banished from the world just left, as if they could not really flourish, would half die and thus create the corpse-like smell, would become half dead in the world one has entered. Before birth we long to know certain exiles. We only know there are banished beings, but where are they? Then we go into the physical world and perceive them, but they might be said to be embalmed, mummified. For in the world we have entered it is only possible for them to be embalmed, mummified, dried up. It is perfectly right, on being confronted by the mineral world and the world of the plants, that we should have the feeling we are looking at beings exiled from the spiritual world, from the regions in which we were before having to enter physical life.

And when we look at animals and men end see their childishness, then, if we can develop the power to see more deeply into being, we remember that these animals and men, as they actually are here in the world in which we live between birth and death are never finished, never actually bring to completion the whole of their life which is conditioned by their inner being. Anyone looking at animals in the right way, anyone who can look at them with full inward and living force of knowledge, knows well that animals are not immortal, but knows too that animals experience in their group souls the whole tragedy of this not being immortal. The group souls outlast the individual life of the animal but what there is here on earth of the animals is—as I recently sale—in reality sick (see Lecture 1), and this is so on account of its deterioration through belonging to s world from which it is banished. And in his outer physical form man also is an exile in this world. He therefore remains crippled and a mere child. Man remains a child, the animal in his general being, in his physical form, is dried up. For what belongs to animal and man is found when we go through death and enter directly into the spiritual world, which then after death we observe. For actually a circle is described in the life between death and a new birth. What remains hidden here of animal kingdom and plant kingdom, what causes us to perceive that animals and men—as far as men's physical forms are concerned—are exiles from the spiritual world, banished out of the spiritual world, is first perceived by us when we pass into the spiritual world through the gate of death. There we go through an evolution and as we approach ever nearer the cosmic midnight, described in my mystery play, (see The Soul's Awakening, scene 6) we become clear that something is missing, that what is missing has run away from the spiritual world; we pursue it through birth and find it on the physical earth in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On entering this existence through birth we are never really surprised about the mineral and plant kingdoms because they are what we have been expecting. Finding animals on the physical earth, too, and men with an outer form that recalls that of the animal though it is more perfect, is astonishing to us in some measure after being born with our gift of consciousness. We begin ia understand this, however, when we know that a beginning has been made with this outer form of animal and man, which only develops in the world we enter through the gate of death.

Now it might be said: For the abstract and completely dried up religious conceptions that still persist (these conceptions were once much more full of life and really gave men something) for these abstract, dried up conceptions still remaining in our age of consciousness, all that men perceive here in the physical world, all that they should conceive as underlying the world experienced by man between death and a new birth, comes upon them too abruptly. What man experiences between death and a new birth remains on this account so problematical for men today, and can so easily be denied by the grossly material mind, because men in arriving at the age of the consciousness soul, which means the age of the intellect, lives as I have explained only in what is reflected into his consciousness. Therefore, he is also only able to live in reflected images when he goes out beyond the perceptions to where, if he stands firmly on his feet, the will plays into him in the way I have previously indicated. If no will plays in however—and in the immortal life after death no will does play in—when there is no interplay of the will and man is restricted to placing before his soul, the reflected images of his conceptions of what the world is between death and a new birth, then this world will have no certainty and will be not only ghostly but without certainty. Indeed we can go as far as to say that if men obstinately cling only to science, if they fix, their attention only upon the ghostly world given them by science, then they are quite right in denying any life at all after going through the gate of death. For what is given by science is only pictures, apparitions. And even this comes to an end when we pass the gate of death. Science is unable to contain anything of what we experience in the realm after death and before birth. For, you see, in books on mineralogy, in books on botany, in everything connected with Physiology, Geology end so forth, in any of the conceptions you can absorb about plants and minerals, you can absorb only about beings who are living in banishment here in this physical world. Again, you can also perceive in the bodies of animals and men only what has been banished here—even with all the help of your books on Zoology and Anthropology, and, if you widen the field of your thought you can really put all knowledge in the same category—you are only able to perceive what is living down here in banishment. But when you reflect that before birth you feel the lack because they really are not there of just these beings experienced here after birth, that in animals and men you then experience what does not exist down here, you will understand that into the conceptual life of science nothing at all of immortal life can enter, and that since it lives in images science in its own domain has a perfect right not to trouble itself about immortal life. It in for this reason that, since the fifteenth century, in the epoch when the conceptions of science are dominating the whole of mankind, man has on the one side the robust, crude nature actually representing for him the whole of reality, and on the other side a realm that he wishes to reach with only the weakened mirrored images of the age of the consciousness soul. This comes before him as though he were saying to himself: Now that I come to see (this happens in the subconscious, for it is there he comes to doubt immortality) when I come to see that what I think are only reflected images, then were I to believe these reflected images would still be there after my death, including the images of my self, I should be just as stupid as if I believed that there were coming towards me out of my mirror here on the wall the men who appear to approach me—that they were not simply reflected but were actually coming towards me.

It is simply characteristic of this epoch of the development of the consciousness soul that if man will not advance to a spiritual comprehension of the world, then connection with the world into which he will enter once he has passed through the gate of death will vanish from him more and more. It will also disappear from his thought life, from his conscious life, but he will not cease to long for it. And even the most hardened deniers of immortality have in the depths of their will, where longing is born, the longing to experience something of the world man enters through the gate of death, the world from which he comes on passing through the gate of birth. They have a longing. The present time is sick with this longing. And the many illnesses of the present time are the expression of this longing holding sway in man, and of man's inability to find conscious conceptions for his longing. If anything is living in the sphere of the will which we are unable to master by conception (again one has to develop very fundamental concepts to speaker these things) when man cannot overcome by his conception what is living in the sphere of his will, then he starts to rage. This is the essence of raging, or frenzy, that something is living in the realm of the will that man cannot comprehend with his capacity for conception. And if man refuses to give in and agree to recognise the existence of the spiritual world, so that through the recognition of the spiritual world he comprehends what has already taken shape in the sphere of the will, than this raging will become ever greater and greater in the world; the raging which indeed presents itself today as the next stage for men after the—not forthcoming but always hoped for—conclusion of peace. This is not anything which can be talked about in the way things ere discussed at a bowling club where, according to the usual philistine conceptions, people come to an understanding as to the possibility of getting some kind of relief or redress. No, it is something connected with the deepest reality of human evolution. Man cannot struggle against the development in him of what enters the sphere of his will. He has no power over it. He is able only to make up his mind consciously to penetrate to the sphere of the spirit so that he learns to understand what is permeating the region of his will. By this means an ordered co-operative life for men can be developed in future in place of this raging.

You see, men turning to the spiritual world which will be revealed in our time by a special wave of events, is not an affair only affecting mean subjectively; it is an objective necessity for man to turn to the spiritual world in this age of the consciousness soul. For changes have even now entered human evolution.

Up to the time in the Mystery of Golgotha took place in earthly life, up to that time, everything man needed for standing here in the world with some measure of security came just through sleep. Before the Mystery of Golgotha man slept in a different way from what he now sleeps, whatever the physiologists may say. Those prophetic natures like the Hebrew prophets to whom such sublime things were revealed in dreams, exist no longer, therefore, in the same form. For today these things are not given to men by God in sleep. This used to happen. This is just the great crossing point in evolution. And pictures of the future were not given only to the prophetic natures but in the time of the Greeks men still had their thoughts given them during sleep. On waking, man brought his thoughts back with him. The structure of the human organism was still such that man could bring back his thoughts. For quite a while this went on working, for the fact is that men actually became headless in the fifteenth century—you will forgive mel To become headless means that the head could no longer he used properly, the head could no longer bring back thoughts out of sleep.

One of the results arrived at through Spiritual Science is that we recognise our head as an instrument to have been really of much less use and much more dried up since the fifteenth century than it was before that time. But it is only now that this has become so noticeable; and it will become ever more noticeable if some means is not found to compensate, s0 that the evaporation of the head is made good again by the spiritual world. For up to the present, up to the nineteenth century, the other nature, man's breast nature has always been accustomed to what the head was still getting from sleep during the Greco-Latin period. The breast nature was inured to this, and in their headless condition men were still receiving impulses as an after effect; they were still in the habit—or I might say men still had the gesture of the thought, the shadow of the thought. But this shadow too will pass away and men will have no thoughts at all if they leave their thinking only to their head. And this is really how the matter stands; it is shown by men's reluctance to think. They have less and less will to think. On the one side they want to have thoughts dictated by nature, for what they like best is merely to make experiments and let the experiments say what they themselves should be thinking. But men prefer not to do the thinking themselves. They even have no proper faith in it, for it is their opinion that what they think out lacks true reality. It is true that there is no reality if you take the mere thoughts. We can come to see, however, that thinking, not the thoughts but the thinking, must become active. And when thinking is made active, this means the spiritual world is coming into play. Today when you really begin to think actively, you can do nothing further than let the spiritual world play a part in you. Otherwise you do not think; you think as little as the scientist thinks today who prefers to let his experiments or his investigations dictate everything to him. Or you think so little as the modern students of sociology who, because they have no will to be active, because they do not come to grips with real social impulses which can be grasped only by being active, actually work with what can be discovered in history, what is inherited from the past. Think for once how men, because they themselves no longer have impulses able to create the social structure, have come down to looking back to the time when thoughts were still formed. The matter is then seen from only a false point of view. It was Rousseau who held up to men the natural state, because he had the feeling that in his day nothing could be gained unless men became active in their pursuit of knowledge of the higher worlds. Well, and even modern socialism likes to indulge in a study of mankind's primitive state; it is something that particularly interests the socialists. They study the original conditions of mankind, their primitive conditions, they study the most savage original peoples, primitive peoples, so as to understand how men are meant to live in social co-operation. This is recognised by all who are familiar with these things. Everywhere there is a certain fear of what is making its presence so inevitably felt as the first dawning of connection with the spiritual world, a certain fear of active thinking. This is why there is difficulty in understanding my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for example, which makes such demands on active thinking. In it the thoughts are different from the usual thoughts of today. And people often stop short when reading this book for the simple reason that they would like to read it as any other book is read. But the other books particularly popular today—well, I think you will agree, they are read in a comfortable easy chair where one can just let thoughts go by with as little trouble as possible. Many people do any reading they go in for just like that. Don't delude yourselves into believing that these men often read newspapers in a different way (present company, of course, always excluded); it is true that emotions are mixed up with this reading, and worries too. But even the newspapers that are devoured so sensationally are also read by letting the pictures slip by. Ah, but all one has tried to put into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be read just like that. There you have continually to give yourself a shake to prevent the thoughts sending you to sleep, my dear friends! For it was not written with the idea that you would simply sit in an easy chair; naturally you can sit, even rest your back, but then, just because you are physically at rest, you have to try with the whole of you to set the inner being of soul and spirit in motion so that the whole thinking begins to move. Otherwise you get nowhere but go to sleep. Many indeed do go to sleep and they are not always the least sincere; the insincere ones are those who read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity just like any other book and then believe they have really followed the thoughts. They have not followed them, they have on the contrary just jumped over them as if they were the husks of words; they go on reading the words without taking in what actually follows from the words as the spark should be produced by flint and steel. But this is something that must be required of what has to take hold of the evolution of mankind in the present and the immediate future, for through it man will gradually raise himself to the spiritual world in the right way. By active thinking man's inner relations to the spiritual world will be kindled and then he will make ever greater progress. Today he can already get very far by carrying out such things as are described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But there too it is sufficiently indicated how pre-eminently necessary it is to develop coherent, connected thinking where there is no broken thread—when the thread of the thought is carefully followed.

In this longing, today more or less lacking in clarity and consciousness, to push oneself upward with unconscious thinking to the sphere of the spirit—and it is possible to do this—there is mingled a desire from the past, a weary desire, to go on thinking incoherently. Just recently I have drawn your attention to how contrary it is to men's sense of comfort to have to progress step by step in conscious thinking. They would much prefer to leave things more to the unconscious, and not in thought go on to the next point and then again to make a further step. Isn't it so? You see, Spiritual Science as we understand it here and as in a sane way it reckons with the unbroken sequence of the thoughts in the way you know—well, it is not that this Spiritual Science cannot be understood if thinking is made active, but men simply want to understand Spiritual Science in a different way from how they must understand it; instead of which they would like the thread to be continually broken. When you go deeply into what Spiritual Science gives you, when you plunge into it with real energy (have patience, in the present epoch only faint indications of this can as yet exist) then, already today, by developing the power of thought, by following in thought Saturn, Sun and Moon, as described in my Occult Science, you can follow this evolution up to where man stands there in the world, and you can press on to your own life, penetrate this life of yours with the thought which is thus made vigorous. Then you come to certain conceptions which, although not as you would like them to appear but entirely in the connection, in the coherence, of the thinking, enlighten you about their being, about their nature, about what they are and their character. By bringing to life what is said about Saturn, Sun, Moon and their corresponding details, and then about the evolution of the earth, applying all this to your individual selves, you would be able to progress to your own being; only you have to go on in your thought to the perception of yourself, not letting the thoughts be broken but keeping them coherent and connected. What in this way man begins rightly today enlightens him up to the stage where he should become clear about his own personal being. In this longing, still present more or less unconsciously in men, however, something else is mingled with the broken thread of thought, something calculated! Man would like to find out something of the kind about his being; what does he do? He takes old antiquated knowledge of which, it goes without saying, the venerable nature is certainly not to be disparaged, which, however, has need of explanation when applied in a new epoch—he calculates, reckons, breaks the thread of thought at any point, calculates constellation of the stars, and after that the thread of thought can break, and quite externally without any sequence in the thought this being of man as he appears on earth is supposed to develop without any thinking.

You see, even if the Church, the Roman Catholic Church as I described it to you yesterday, denies what today is most necessary of all, this can be made good just by taking anything like the description of the inner vision of John of the Cross and living today in the sense of the evolution that conforms with Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. What is contained in this book follows on today precisely from what a man such as St. John of the Cross wills; whereas the Catholic Church denies it and wishes even today to see the old way of John of the Cross applied to modern man, as indeed it is to so many people. Because they are too comfort-loving they do not want a life that is active in spirit, a life that has already reached a stage of energetic activity when conceptions are accepted such as those given by Spiritual Science. They would like these to be brought up to date in a more usual form of thought, preferring to remain with what is old and hoping that out of this lack of thought there might spring what should explain present-day mankind. Naturally this is no adverse judgment about what is venerable, but from every point of view it must be indicated that one should not venture to deny what is placed as spiritual necessity into the present evolution of mankind, the evolution beginning with the age of the consciousness soul. The important thing is for man really to understand what today is required of mankind in world-evolution. I believe that out of right feeling for the very things which men find irksome, and do not want, a better attitude towards Spiritual Science will be adopted more and more, and only when this better attitude to Spiritual Science has come about will the social life also be enriched. At this point man will be able to become clear about the life of mankind because he will then have the necessary strength of thought to enlighten himself concerning man's life. For where this enlightenment about man's life is concerned man of today suffers from a very precarious state of affairs. Whether you are a follower of Lenin or Trotsky, whether you are a Marxist or any other kind of thinker about the right form for the social structure of men, in each of these views there lives a state of affairs that is precarious and cannot be understood without the fruitful intervention of Spiritual Science. Doubtless you will admit that man has now entered the epoch of the consciousness soul. He has to develop consciously what arises as social structure. Otherwise nothing will go right. He has to take his place consciously in the world; it is really necessary that man should be conscious. But he should also consciously grasp the relation between men, life in society, the social life. An uncertain state of affairs hinders him in this. The fatal thing is that man can never have a conception of more than one man. And as neither two men (I mean physical men) nor two things (physical things) can be in the same place at the same time—which decides the law of impermeability—two men cannot be in human consciousness at the same time, the actual conception cannot be made of two men! simultaneously. It is very important to take note of this. We cannot live with another man without making a conception of him, neither can we develop any knowledge about the social life in common unless we make conceptions about other men. But today man, because he is able to conceive only of one man, generally prefers to conceive only of himself, to make a conception of himself as man. And social thinking is content to demand a co-operative life in which man's conception is always merely of himself. Man does not get away from the conception of his own self; he often talks of doing so, but in reality today he does not easily get rid of himself. It is only when he makes every effort to fulfil the requirements of Spiritual Science that he gradually finds it possible in some measure to get free of himself. For Spiritual Science sows in the world the seeds of thoughts having a very wide perspective, and this is how man grows into the habit of getting free from himself. As today, if he becomes a spiritualist, man grows more egoistic than he was before, if he would penetrate into the spiritual world on that other path, the path of Spiritual Science, he becomes more selfless. Spiritual Science, therefore, is not simply the handing over of knowledge, but spirit-knowledge is actually something unconditionally necessary for educating modern man in social life. It is for this reason that no cure will be forthcoming if a start is not made in this matter, it men do not really give heed to the necessity for first making a conception. There can be no social reform without schooling to begin with, without men first being instructed. And when this is neglected men miss the possibility of receiving concepts that embrace their longing. And, if I am to get at the root of the matter, men will became more frenzied than ever.

This is the inner connection, my dear friends. But it is desirable that this same inner connection should be perceived. One would wish above all things that this inner connection should be felt by everyone entering upon Spiritual Science and wishing to live in it up to some point or other. This is something that everyone will want to ponder who has the wish to take Spiritual Science and the Movement of Spiritual Science in earnest. It cannot well be overlooked, it cannot well remain unnoticed, that when we enter into relation with Spiritual Science this Spiritual Science makes certain demands on the human heart and mind to widen the interests beyond narrow, personal interests. It is really true that in talking of Spiritual Science one simply speaks of things which, if a right relation is to be established with them, makes it necessary for man to free himself from his most narrow interests! He need have no fear of becoming unpractical on that account: he becomes much more practical. It is just this belief that he is practical which has gradually been arrived at through being unspiritual. In reality the practical man of today is terribly unpractical. And these 'practical' men have actually landed us in the present catastrophe. Herein lies something of tremendous importance which man really must always take for granted if he wishes rightly to understand what has to do with Spiritual Science, namely that he must get free from his narrowest interests. He must rid himself of the immediately personal; for it does not help matters when people carry their narrow personal interests into the Anthroposophical Movement. That is always just the cause of any kind of mischief in the relation taken up towards Spiritual Science. It is also naturally the reason for what is still such a difficulty in our Movement, that people although often abstractly in theory, having the good will to come to Spiritual Science with their own thinking, feeling and willing, nevertheless do not bring all the necessary strength really to enter upon selflessness, which indeed must be called upon for understanding rightly what is said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Thus a kind of spirit-condition not easily found today in the world, but the opposite of which is prevalent in the modern world, must be demanded for the health of the Anthroposophical Movement, my dear friends! For the difference between the sincere presentation of the knowledge of Spiritual Science and all other knowledge arising at present, lies in this presentation of Spiritual Science being no personal affair, no personal opinion. Were I obliged to hold the view that I should lecture only about merely personal opinions and not concerning what is revealed today and just what is necessary for mankind, I should prefer to remain silent. For to uphold personal opinions and personal aspirations in a Movement that is anthroposophical is something impermissible. That should not be. A Movement such as is striven for here is justified only when there is the will to present merely what one is allowed to observe out of the spiritual world.

When you describe the appearance of any town you may, according to circumstance, make the description either interesting or tedious, but what the town looks like does not depend upon you. You describe something objective. What you yourself want, what is your own opinion, should come just as little to expression in Spiritual Science. What must take effect in Spiritual Science according to modern demands is all that is spiritually observed. Those who are able actually to will merely what is personal can for that reason only imperfectly understand what should hold good in a movement for Spiritual Science. They continually confuse what should hold good in a Movement such as is meant here with something else drawn, more than ever from the personal. How many there are who coming to Anthroposophy would like their own opinion to be justified by Spiritual Science. They are not always equipped with the open mind necessary for the acceptance of Spiritual Science. Very often they come to it with something quite different to this open mind. They would like this or that to be true, then in some way, while admitting that the investigator of Spiritual science may know something about the truth, persuade themselves that what one thinks oneself one says. Then they would be happy. But this fine distinction must be noticed; it is a fine distinction although a tremendously far-reaching one; there is a far reaching and important distinction between the one who wants to accept what is imparted by the spiritual world and the one who actually wishes only to have confirmation of what it pleases him to think. Only by the most punctilious self-examination, by conscientious self-examination, will the distinction be discovered. The distinction is often unnoticed by those who come to Spiritual Science; it must, however, be noticed. If it is noticed it will become apparent that through a Movement for Spiritual Science something of a new stream of life must flow which was not there before. It is really not possible for an Anthroposophical Movement to be like a mere soft current of air blowing towards anyone who brings to Spiritual Science the Philistine tendencies of his earlier life and then believes he will find what he is only too willing to acknowledge in Philistinism corroborated by Spiritual Science.

When we proceed in this matter earnestly, conscientiously, we shall not want merely to find corroboration of our actual individual opinion; and we shall also come to understand many things which might be said to be obliged to arise as new things in a Movement for Spiritual Science of this kind, things that must do harm if left unnoticed. In a movement in the act of arising like this Movement for Spiritual Science much can work harmfully that cannot cause so much harm in old, dried up Movements, no longer of use or of very little use. We have really to go into these fins points, my dear friends! You see, connected with the endeavour merely to see our own opinions, our own aspirations, justified by what is revealed through Spiritual Science, a remarkable technique of 'touching-up' is developed concerning what comes forth and comes forth perfectly naturally, within a movement such as ours. In this movement for Spiritual Science we must be alive to the fact that phenomena with men cannot be taken as if in a bowling club or something of the kind where men can reveal how verbose they have become in the ordinary world where nothing new is required of them. We must recognise in all earnestness that the aims of investigation into what is spiritual cannot find expression through our own conceptions; we must really prepare ourselves to receive the things. We should picture that something is wishing to flow into the world, something that should more and more widen itself out, so that everything should really be received in full consciousness. Many connections not yet perceived will be perceived later. This willingness to receive everything as in some sense a preparation, will certainly not be present in those who carry their personal aspirations into the impulse of Spiritual Science, for at the first possible moment they will get done with things, giving them the bent of their ordinary opinions. They do not mould their opinions in accordance with Spiritual Science, they mould the knowledge gained through Spiritual Science in accordance with their opinions. And so we often have given out the kind of thing I would like to describe in the following way.

Now you know that the Anthroposophist has to judge the world in a certain way, the world of nature as well as the world of human beings. Education in Spiritual Science consists indeed in our learning to judge afresh the surrounding world and our relation to it and in our learning to look more deeply, into the world. People very often remark when, let us say, the relation of three men is in question: The Anthroposophist B. has been criticizing the man A. And, my dear friends, as soon as we overstep the usual Philistine sphere, so largely around us today, two standpoints can be put forward where the formation of judgment between man and man is concerned: one of these standpoints is that of reason, the second being the standpoint of sympathy. Thus B's judgment of A may be in accordance with what arises from an inner necessity at same time to do something or other purely out of his—B's—sympathy for A. Should it now suit C to be antipathetic because he does not reflect sufficiently and does not assume that it may be possible for pure sympathy to come into the matter here, out of necessity, then, basing his judgment simply on reason he will say: whatever can he be doing that for? Or this inner necessity may speak in such a way that it is not sympathy that becomes dominant but, because of certain factors, reason. Yes, and when it suits the other better he lets sympathy have its say and gives as his verdict: what an unsympathetic person! How utterly without feeling the man is and what a prosy rationalist! He judges purely from the standpoint of reason. In this way the crudest misunderstandings arise in the case of just those who bestir themselves to grasp the inner nerve of existence, where they have at one time to do something based on reason, another time something just out of sympathy. And when it suits this other man (C) in accordance with the sympathetic view he condemns what is done from reason, and what is done out of sympathy he condemns from the point of view of reason, and he can always condemn or praise as he likes. By this path we never arrive at what is right, we only arrive at what is right if we begin by saying: I must consider the case, I must look into the causes why sympathy or reason have held sway here. It is things like this out of which the little misunderstandings in life arise which often grow to very destructive proportions in men's life in common. It is just this that our education in Spiritual Science should help us to overcome. For life is such that it expresses itself in a twofold way. And because it expresses itself in a twofold way one can always condemn at pleasure one of the two cases. This is very little taken into account, however, above all not taken into account where the teachings of Spiritual Science itself is concerned. This, too, must be placed in the world with definite intention. In an individual case either one or other of the two standpoints can be chosen according to convenience, if greater attention is not paid to the deeper grounds out of which the spiritual seeker is obliged to act. He may often be misunderstood. And if there is no agreement in what must be done out of inner duty in accordance with the facts, then it is possible to misunderstand everything, since the world has this dual form of expression.

You see we can fall into the following error for example. When anyone is eager to have what suits him substantiated, he may just fall into the worst form of belief in authority. Belief in authority can naturally make its influence felt, and this influence is actually frequent and of wide range in the very sphere where Spiritual Science also would be active, which wishes to make man into a perfectly free, self-reliant being. The other pole of the belief in authority, however, is hatred of authority. And fundamentally the man who does not feel himself drawn to Spiritual Science through entering into the facts revealed from the spiritual world, but wishes to have these truths conveyed to him by authority, wanting to believe in authority because it is easier than going into things—this man is terribly apt to spring over from his belief in authority, that always has in it a certain kind of love of authority, to hatred of authority. And all manifestations that have arisen in our particular movement of this leap from blind worship of authority, which sometimes has even appeared with a certain shamelessness in the moment of passing over to hatred, this passing from blind worship of authority to hate—all this is something inwardly present as a danger. It is very important to keep these connections in mind, for these connections make it terribly difficult today to create an Anthroposophical Movement so that it will prosper. It must be created in a successful way for the sake of mankind's welfare.

Now, my dear friends, in my life I have found quite a number of people who were spiritual people and were seeking in all sincerity away into Spiritual Science, into some kind of Spiritual Science, who were also in a way advanced in their development. A certain type among them was disillusioned, people who had been disillusioned by one or other of the modern spiritual movements and who then in some place or another came across us—how many are disillusioned today by the Blavatsky Movement, the Besant Movement or some other Movement. There we do not see the characteristic phenomenon that takes such curious forms in the Anthroposophical Movement; but there we have people, for example, who are to a certain extent spiritually advanced; then after some time one again comes across them but now they say: You are completely wrong! And these meetings are not infrequent. Spirituality today is not at all common but there are men indeed who say to one after a time: You are actually wrong, for, you see, the things you give out in Spiritual Science—there's no possible sense in publishing them! But men are not in inclined to accept them; they are certainly not sufficiently mature. All this can only serve one purpose to be developed in oneself and then kept to oneself. I have found many such people who say: It is a definite characteristic of the man who is really advanced spiritually that it no longer enters his head to speak about it to his fellowmen; he keeps the matter to himself. There is indeed no lack of such people in the world. I have never been able to come to an understanding with these people about what out of a certain inner ground I learn from the spiritual world. These men do quite useful work in a spiritual community but they have a hermit tendency, even when at the same time they remain in association with others. For it is possible to become a hermit in spite of wearing elegant shoes and leading an Hotel life. This one sees this double life being led by a number of people; they are indeed the modern Hotel dwellers; for all I care they may be well dressed but they lead this life as an outward mask to hide what is within them; they have their inner life of the spirit with no wish to share it with their fellow men. This seems to one to be doing what is not right, to be sinning against mankind. For one is right in saying that such men have en effect on the spiritual life, what they experience goes into the spiritual stream. Man is not a self-contained being, therefore what he experiences has value and its own significance in the spiritual world, but the question of time always plays its part there. Men like this who live in such a way nowadays, as many do whom I have known, bring about something indeed in the spiritual world which however only comes to maturity after a long time, in the later epochs of mankind. Then, however, can, and quite certainly would, were there always only those who as hermits develop their spiritual being, having no wish to teach what knowledge they have gained from the spiritual world, what they have developed in themselves—then by the time the fruits of these men are ripe, people outside would have so deteriorated that they would no longer be able to receive the knowledge! Earth evolution would be endangered: connection would be missed. We live indeed today at a time when certain spiritual truths such as those of which we have been speaking must unconditionally be imparted to mankind. Things will not be helped by the attitude expressed, for example, by one of my acquaintances who in a certain sense was spiritually advanced. He came to Berlin and I asked him whether he would come to hear a lecture of mine, just to see how the Movement was run (this is some time ago). He answered: No, holding lectures and talking to people serves no possible purpose! To sit together for half-an-hour and have a little talk I find very pleasant—but let us leave spiritual things alone when we can; everyone must settle those for himself! To pay a civil visit and pass the time of day is best for just those people who are seeking the spiritual. And this attitude is a prevalent one. It would be more comfortable, my dear friends, to live in accordance with such an attitude. And the word comfortable certainly does not describe what it is nowadays days to get up in front of people to impart what one feels impelled to impart as a duty. In an Anthroposophical Movement it should be borne in mind that work is done out of inner necessity, and what happens is not a matter of choice but the punctual observance of a duty.

I have used these words at the end of our studies today because I have wanted once again to take the opportunity of calling attention to what is necessary if a movement for Spiritual Science is to be taken nowadays as earnestly as it should be taken. For what can be made of an Anthroposophical Movement, if personal aspirations, personal ambition, is brought in, can cause much injury must cause much injury. Besides there is still the shadow side, namely, that whoever thinks to find only what is just personal corroborated through Spiritual Science cannot discern whether the other may not be acting also merely from personal ambition. And a terrible doom is then forthcoming. I wanted to give an indication of these things, my dear friends. We shall be speaking further next Friday.