The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I should like you really to speak out what is in your minds so that the discussion can center around it.

Question: A question in the hearts of all of us is how to succeed with the meditations that we have been given. At what times ought we to do them, ought they to be done in rhythmic sequence, how ought they to be done, ought those given at Christmas to be done at the same time as the others? We think that at any rate most of us feel rather oppressed with all the substance that is contained in the meditations and we do not yet know how to live with them properly.

In these things one really ought not to give such strict indications for this would be to encroach too much upon the freedom of the individual. If things are looked at in the right way it is not likely that there will be any feeling of oppression. When the meditations were given here at Christmas it was also indicated in which direction they move the soul. It was said—and the same applies to the meditations that are now being given in the First Class—that with these meditations it is rather different than when someone comes and wishes to have a personal meditation. In the case of a personal meditation one must naturally indicate whether the meditation should be done in the morning or the evening, how the person must act in the sense of this meditation, and so on. These meditations are intended to be part of the esoteric life of the individual according to his capacities and his karma. They then lead of themselves to the individual not remaining in isolation but unfolding within himself the impulse to recognize those who have similar aspirations. Such meditation must be regarded as a personal meditation.

So far as the other kind of meditations are concerned it would be good if they were done at a definite time or in special circumstances, or when accompanied by definite circumstances. In giving all meditations like those of the esoteric instruction given at Christmas, one has in mind the goal that is striven for. And then it is a matter of using the circumstances of one's life, the special situations of one's life, to make such meditations. Such meditations are done when one finds the necessary spare time for them—the more often the better. They will always have their effect. Precisely with such meditations the striving should be for personal development. One should try to find the link from the results that happen in the spiritual life, and one will, moreover, find it. In reality, the feeling of oppression would come if definite rules were laid down in regard to individuals or a group doing them at the same time as you say. Moreover this would lead to the meditation losing something that it really ought to have. Every meditation, you see, is impaired if one starts from the feeling that it is one's duty to do it. You must bear this well in mind. Every meditation is impaired by the feeling of being obliged to do it. Therefore in the case of the personal meditations it is absolutely necessary for this personal meditation gradually to become something that the human being feels in his soul to be like a thirst for meditation. Those who really thirst for their meditation just as a man eats when he is hungry, do their morning and evening meditations in the best way. When meditation becomes something without which a person cannot exist, when he feels that it is part and parcel of the whole life of his soul, then he has the right attitude to meditation.

With the other meditations, what matters is the inner desire, the inner will to become a physician and to say to oneself: “This is my path and I will meditate as often as I possibly can. I realize that when I do the one or the other meditation, it has this or that aim.” Out of the free, inner will of man, therefore, there must arise the urge to such meditation, to the carrying out of such a meditation. It is really inconceivable how anyone can feel a sense of oppression. For why should anything for which one thirsts inwardly, also give rise to a sense of oppression? If it oppresses, it has already been made into a matter of duty and that is just what meditation should never be. It should never be a matter of duty. Precisely when it is a question of becoming a physician, the following ought to be taken in the very deepest sense: The conception of becoming a physician ought not to be as it is today, namely, entering a profession. One ought really to become a physician because of an inner calling, an inner devotion to healing. This general urge to be able to heal is the true accompaniment, and one is then led towards the goal. Perhaps in few professions is it so harmful as it is in the profession of the physician to think of this profession as an external duty. Love for humanity must be implicit in the physician's profession. A physician should find his bearings quite naturally in his work.

Now, although in modern medicine, in modern medical studies, it is not very favorable for real healing when people become physicians just because they must become something or other and because the medical profession seems for some reason to be desirable, it is still worse when someone thinks he can become a physician artificially, through meditation, without feeling this thirst of which I have spoken. If the aim is a true one, ancient esoteric methods of development demand infinitely more than an external decision; and they do much more harm than external circumstances of life if they do not spring from the right attitude of soul. But you must also have a right conception of what I have here called the “attitude of soul.” What we call karma is not, as a rule, taken very seriously in life. An inner vocation arises, of course, because karma has put a person in a certain place. We must realize that to follow something out of a sense of duty is injurious, but to follow karma is something that accords entirely with the direction of human evolution. The karma of all of you has brought you to work in medicine, and now if only you will look deeply enough within yourselves you will find that you really do feel the thirst of which I have spoken. And you will find, too, the moments and hours when you want to do such meditations.

Now just when one takes up such a serious profession in all earnestness, the following (which has happened frequently since the Christmas Foundation Meeting) really should not be. It is not connected directly with medical work, but it is connected very strongly with the “human universal” inasmuch as it exists within the general Anthroposophical movement, and so it is also of importance to you. I shall speak about it in another place, but because it holds good very specially for you, I will say it here too. It was said at the Christmas Foundation that a new character must come into the Anthroposophical movement, that inner work must be done. Now many people drew a strange conclusion from this. There are people within the Anthroposophical movement who have definite positions and offices. Such people have written: Yes, I understand perfectly that a new character is to come into the Anthroposophical movement. I place myself entirely at the disposal of this, I do not want to remain in my old position. But this can never lead to anything. It can only lead to something when the person concerned knows that at the place at which he stands he must find his development, find it in reality, also in connection with the faculties which he uses and applies. This, naturally, is the case with you who have begun to work in the medical profession. You must regard it as karma and you must realize that your work in the future will be tremendous. You must realize, secondly, that the thirst of which I have spoken, the thirst to approach the true preparation for medicine by way of meditation, is also to be found in the soul.

This is what I wanted to say about the practice of meditation. Each meditation should enlighten and support the other. It may well be that some one meditation has worked strongly, and now you must do a different one in order to strengthen the effects still more. You do one meditation once, twice; you do another twelve times. This is something that comes when you really take to heart what is given as a meditation, when you experience it inwardly, and also when you take to heart what has been said about the goal of meditation. We must use this opportunity for developing much that was touched upon at Christmas.

Question: My conception was not that it was a question of meditating at definite times, but in spite of that I was aware of a sense of oppression because I considered it a duty to do this meditation and often I was not really fresh enough to feel it as a need. Perhaps this is due to the fact, in my case at least, that up to now I have not had the attitude that one ought to have as a physician, that I have not had the real will to heal. I think it has been the same with one or two of us. Many of us have not become physicians in order to heal, but we have become physicians because of the great interest that we had in getting to know the nature of man, his conditions of disease and his normal conditions. We approached medicine entirely from the side of knowledge. Up till Christmas the will to heal was something entirely foreign to me; and so, to begin with, my work made me very unhappy because I had a great deal to do and at the beginning was too tired for meditation. But this work brought me more together with patients so that now I have an inkling of what it means to have the will to heal, and I think that now I shall be better able to meditate because this springs from a real need. Meditation can then really be seen as a path to the goal. Precisely this devotion to human destiny, this sympathy that one feels as a physician for everyone—this, and the will to heal which was not indicated through one's studies which lead to medicine more from the side of knowledge—is surely something that, until recently, has caused difficulties to many of us.

You must remember the following. When, in the sphere of medicine you divide these two things, the side of knowledge and the will to heal, it is a contradiction of the reality. It is very important to realize what is at stake here. Knowledge of the nature of man is necessary in many different fields of human activity. In pedagogy, for example, the essential starting point is a knowledge of the nature of the human being. In other domains, too, there must be knowledge of the nature of man if we have an eye to realities. Knowledge of the nature of man is essential for everyone who wants to get beyond superficialities. It is necessary for everyone. The fact that knowledge of the real nature of man is not sought for in many fields of activity is a consequence of the errors into which modern civilization has lapsed. In a certain sense this knowledge is sought for—although it cannot be found there because it can only be found today by way of Anthroposophy. It is sought for by theologians (I mean by the ordinary theologians). All kinds of people are looking and seeking for knowledge of the being of man. The only ones who are not seeking for it are the lawyers, because jurisprudence today is something which simply cannot be said to take hold of the realities of the world. The essential thing is that knowledge of the human being has to be somewhat specialized in the various domains of life. The physician needs a rather different kind of knowledge from the educator—a rather different kind only. It is necessary for educators to know as much as possible about education. There ought certainly to be connecting threads; there should be a hither and thither between the one and the other field of activity, based upon knowledge of the human being.

So far as concrete details of knowledge of the human being are concerned, the following must be remembered. You spoke about knowing the conditions of disease in a human being. This is a preconception—the outcome of materialism. In itself it is a materialistic preconception. Taken in the concrete, what does it mean to know the conditions of disease in the human being? How can I know anything about a disease that is localized, let us say, in the liver, in the spleen, in the lungs, in the heart? How do I get knowledge of it? When I know what kind of healing process might be capable of overcoming the process of disease. In reality the process of disease is the question and one remains at a standstill at this point if one's only aim is to get knowledge of the process of disease. The answer is the healing process. We know nothing at all about a process of disease when we do not know how it can be healed. Understanding consists in the knowledge of how the morbid process can be eliminated. Without the will to heal there can be no medical study in the true sense. To know conditions of disease means nothing. Without passing on from the pathology to the therapy one would simply be concerned with the pathological aspect, imagining that one was thus getting knowledge of the human being. One would simply be describing a diseased organ. But a description of this kind is quite inadequate; is not of the least value. So far as mere description and abstract knowledge are concerned there is no essential difference between a healthy or a diseased liver. In the sense of natural science there is no distinction to be made between a healthy and a diseased liver. The most that can be said is that a healthy liver is more frequent than a diseased one. But this is an external condition. If you want to get knowledge of a diseased liver, you must go into what is able to heal the diseased liver.

Upon what does healing depend? It depends upon knowing which substances, which forces must be applied to the human being in order that the process of disease may pass over into the healthy process. Such knowledge is transmitted, for instance, by the fact that one knows: Equisetum, within the human organism, takes over the activity of the kidneys. When, therefore, the activity of the kidneys is not sufficiently cared for by the astral body, I shall see that they are cared for by equisetum. I give support to the astral body by means of equisetum arvense. Here for the first time is the answer to what is really happening. The same process in the external world which leads to equisetum also takes its course in the human kidneys. The equisetum process must be studied in connection with the kidneys. This leads us to the domain of healing.

Thus it can never be a matter of pathology in a merely abstract sense or of a description of conditions of disease—all this amounts to nothing in reality. Our picture of a condition of disease should be that such and such a remedy works in such and such a way. The feeling that we have about knowledge in all domains of life should lead on to reality, not to formalism. It was always so when knowledge was everywhere connected with the Mysteries. In the Mysteries, knowledge was inevitably withheld from those who merely desired it in the formal sense and imparted only to those who had the will to lead over this knowledge into reality. Is that an answer to your question?

Question: I may have expressed myself rather radically when I spoke only about health and disease. In point of fact, I do consider the way in which the human being should be healed also to be a part of knowledge. I meant something rather different, namely, that one may know how a person can be healed but may not have the will to heal him. Up to now I have not, inwardly, had the impulse only to understand the human being in order to heal. I had not the impulse to let the whole of my work and studies and knowledge be filled entirely with the realization: I must be capable of healing the human being.

That is hypertrophy of knowledge.

Question: This is a fact with me and I wanted to speak about it because it is so. Perhaps it sounds very strange.

What I am going to say may sound very trivial and simple. It is as well that this kind of attitude cannot make clocks, for if it could, you would have clocks put together quite correctly according to the clock maker's art, but they would not want to go. By letting his will hypertrophy towards the one side or the other, a person can develop this or that, but the result will be of such a nature that it is not in line with the healthy evolution of human nature. Knowledge of healing should simply not exist without the will to heal. Today you ought to be speaking of something quite different. You should really be saying: “Yes, I have studied medicine for a short time and now I have an ungovernable will to heal. I must restrain myself so that this will which comes from knowledge does not break loose in such a way that I want to heal all the healthy people!” This is really not a joke. The voice should be a voice of restraint. It should simply not be possible to say: “I have striven for the knowledge of healing but not the will to heal!” For a knowledge that is real cannot separate itself from the will—that is quite impossible.

Question: I think that what was expressed in the previous question is a condition brought about by the kind of studies that are pursued at the universities. It seems to me to be a final result of such studies. The aim of all medical science is really knowledge, without leading over to the therapeutic aspect. In the lecture halls and the clinical courses one hears a little about diagnosis and when the professor does not know what to do until the new patient is brought in, he throws in a few words about the therapy. In a course on gynecology once, the lecturer spoke about the work of the physician in his practice. “Has it not struck you,” he said, “that in reality so little is said about therapy? You will realize this for the first time when you begin to practice. That is what happened to me. I had a head full of knowledge and then I realized the other.” Then he said that five minutes were given to the therapy and forty minutes to the diagnosis. Nobody realized that during all their studies they had heard nothing about therapy. This leads me to a question, because this fundamental attitude of modern science causes me many difficulties and conflicts. As a physician I was looking for something different in scientific medicine. This entirely superficial attitude which leads to all kinds of things, especially in diagnosis, often gives rise to results that are really repellent. Let me give an example. A patient came to me and asked, could I not help her? She suffered from recurrent inflammation of the frontal sinuses and she had been many times to a specialist. Among other things perforation had been done by way of the nose. She said she could not bear it any longer, she felt that the whole interpretation of her condition was too physical, and she asked if I could not help her in some other way. This attitude that the patient had realized is universal. It simply gropes on the surface and leads nowhere. It can only remain on the surface and it cannot lead to the real state of the case. And so I have often asked myself: Is it really good or indeed is it necessary to go so deeply into these methods which are considered a sine qua non in medical studies—methods which simply reach the point of monstrosity in gynecological research and simply have no relation to the final outcome? Is it necessary to go through all these things? I have the feeling that any instinct for healing which may exist is suppressed entirely by going through these things. I would like to mention something told to me by a former colleague. He was speaking of a peasant doctor in the Bavarian Alps who used to perform all kinds of orthopedic cures with such skill that he became famous. An orthopedic specialist in Munich got to hear of what this man was doing, went to see him and told him that he should come to him in his clinic. This man saw all the apparatus in the clinic and the specialist told him to show him how he worked. The peasant doctor looked at it all and from then onwards he could no longer cure people. Ought we to go through all the methods of scientific medical training or ought we to avoid them as far as is at all possible?

When you approach the question in this way, it becomes extremely important. You are right in thinking that I did not want to speak about personal characteristics of the prior questioner but to describe the attitude that inevitably arises from the modern methods of study. The true kind of medical studies would never lead anyone to desire knowledge of conditions of disease or processes of healing without at the same time having the will to heal. Such a thing would never arise out of true medical studies. It arises because of the way medical studies are arranged today. It must be admitted on the one side that by far the greatest part of what the medical student has to learn today in his various courses has nothing fundamentally to do with healing as such as therefore burdens the mind with all kinds of impossible things. In modern medical training it is more or less the same as it would be to make a sculptor, let us say, learn first of all about the scientific properties of marble and wood with which, in reality, he is not concerned. A great deal of what is contained in the medical textbooks today or is done in clinics has little to do with medicine in the real sense.

The moment you pass on from the physical description—this was what the lady of whom you spoke felt to be too physical—the moment you pass on to the etheric body, most of the things in the medical textbooks lose their significance because the moment you come to the etheric body the organs present quite a different aspect. When you pass from the physical to the etheric body, intellectual knowledge alone will get you nowhere. You will learn much more if you learn how to sculpture, if you learn the hand grip, the feeling for space that is needed by the sculptor.

So far as knowledge of the astral body is concerned, you learn far more when you can apply the laws of music. From music you learn an enormous amount about the forming of the human organism, how this process of formation develops out of the astral body. Inasmuch as the human being is organized for movement, for activity, he is built up, in reality, like a musical scale. Here (back of the shoulders) begins the tonic; then it passes over into the second, then into the third in the lower arms, where there are two bones because there are two thirds. This brings you to truths quite different from those which are considered nowadays to pertain to a real knowledge of the human being and quite a different course of teaching would really be necessary for one who is approaching medicine in the true sense.

The modern form of teaching has arisen from the fact that therapy has become nihilistic. Not only in the Viennese school of medicine has this been the case, but everywhere it is the same. Among the professors and lecturers who represent the various scientific faculties there have, at least, been serious minds who, in spite of all their shortsightedness, were, at any rate, scientific. At all events a certain earnestness was present. But when one comes to those who lecture about remedies, the earnestness ceases. The lecturer himself has no fundamental belief in what he is lecturing about. The earnestness stops at the point where the therapy begins.

From where, then, is the will to heal to proceed? It must proceed from a course of medical studies such as I outlined in connection with the course given at Christmas, where I spoke of what the sequence of studies should be. That, of course, is very different from the things that go on today and do not lead to a real art of medicine. In most cases, the practitioner has to learn things by dint of great effort when he has left his medical school. This is often not an altogether easy matter because the things he has learned are not only useless but actually harmful to him. He cannot see the real process of disease because all sorts of things are memorized in his head and he cannot see the process of disease in its reality. That is the one side.

But now, you are a group of young physicians. In the spiritual sense you have to be something more. The best way to attain that would be to say: Leave all medical studies alone, there is no true medical faculty today where you can study medicine in the real sense—come here and learn the essentials. In the radical sense, that is what one would say. But where would you be then? The world would reject you, would not recognize you as physicians. The only course open to the young physician is to go through the whole thing and then be healed by what he can learn of medicine here. With all the repugnance that you may feel, you must take the orthodox and regular course of study. There is no other alternative; it is absolutely necessary. That is the other side of the picture.

People like magnetic healers and amateurs who dabble in medicine abuse the university schools, but that is no use at all. Those who know how things are and who are led by experience to real understanding—they will be the true pioneers of reasonable medical study. This should be your endeavor: to awaken public opinion about the state of affairs. You realize, of course, that it is not you alone who speak as you have done. There are many physicians who speak in the same way, but they need what can be given here. And why? When one is an intelligent person today and becomes a physician, having passed through the university, one can, of course, criticize orthodox medicine. One has passed through the whole thing and knows what one lacks. But this knowledge can become effective only when one has got something to put in its place. Only then can it be effective. This, of course, is the other side. And so you must not take what I am saying here in the sense that I have any desire to hold back young physicians from completing their study. Bad as it may be, it is still necessary today to eat the bitter apple. When it is possible to speak on the platform of things which ought not to be—then and only then will there be a gradual improvement.

In this connection, you see, there is still a great deal to be done. I think I have already told the story of how I was once invited to speak about some medical subject to a group of physicians in Zurich. A professor of gynecology was also there. I saw that he had come with the attitude: “Well, we will listen to this lunatic so that at least we can abuse him, being justified by the fact that we did actually hear what he had to say” He came quite honestly in order to be amused by listening to a lunatic. His manner grew stranger and stranger and he listened in a most peculiar way. It was very unpleasant for him to find that he was not listening to a lunatic, that it could not all be put down as pure nonsense. I myself found it most amusing. I said to him: “This has made a strange impression on you, professor.” He replied: “Yes, one simply cannot speak about it. It is decidedly a different point of view.” It is, after all, a sign of progress when one gets to the point where people say: “It is a different point of view.”

What is it that has arisen by the side of scientific medicine which, after all, still towers above anything that has been achieved by the medicine of amateurs? I know that laymen have made progress. But it amounts to nothing. The valve in a steam engine was invented by a small boy one day when he was bored. One could not say of him that he was really capable of constructing engines because he invented the valve. Those who abuse scientific medicine today are really not justified in abusing it for they are talking about something of which they have no knowledge. What we have to achieve is not to mix up anthroposophical conceptions in medicine with what is already in existence. If in doing so we succeed in showing that we are sincere and serious, then great progress will have been achieved.

As you are young, I would like especially to lay this on your hearts. Let the aim of all the esotericism you receive be to make you capable of working also in the world, so that the real will to heal may unfold. Your aim cannot be to shut yourselves off, each one in the chamber of his heart. You must work to the end that medicine shall make real progress, just as the aim of educators is to enable education to make progress.

It is not possible for me to speak in detail of how most things that go on today in medical studies are really not essential for the understanding of the healthy and the sick human being. But if you study what I have given in the various lecture courses and cycles, you will find it. Suppose when a baby is born we were to ask ourselves how it should be fed, imagining that it is not possible to feed a baby properly before one has given him some idea about the nature of the foodstuffs: so it is with many things today. What I mean to convey is that one should have the intuition to understand a process spiritually, not physically. In diagnosis it is often more necessary to go back to the early causes which may lie at a definite time, very far back in the case of some patients. Methods are taught today for recognizing the condition of the diseased or the healthy organism at the actual time when the patient comes. But what is lacking is the kind of thinking which enables one to say to the patient: Fifty years ago this or that happened to you and that is the primary cause of your illness. As a rule, physicians depend upon what the patient himself says, and that is unreliable. The first cause is the external cause—it comes from outside. A physician in Christiania once brought a man of sixty to me. He had all kinds of eczema which it was easy to diagnose. But nothing that was applied was any help. The physician brought him to me, and the state of things was quite clear—I mention one example from hundreds—if one is to help in such a case, one must know the real starting point. In this case it was not very difficult. I very soon discovered that thirty or thirty-five years previously the man must have suffered from severe poisoning. This was still working in him. I told him to try and remember what had happened to him thirty-five years before. He told me that nobody had yet asked him such a thing. He said that he was in school and beside his classroom there had been a chemical laboratory where he had seen a glass containing liquid. He was thirsty and he drank the liquid. It was hydrochloric acid and he was severely poisoned.

It is very important to know such things. They lead one beyond the condition of the moment. Thus it is often important, for example, with certain conditions of hysteria, to know whether the person concerned has undergone the shock of having been nearly drowned. These things must be gone into. We go into them quite naturally when we have real sympathy for the human being whom we want to heal, and all medicine must take its start from sympathy with the human being. If this sympathy is lacking, the most significant things will be forgotten. That is what must be remembered in this direction.

Do all of you intend to come tomorrow? If so, we will say more about these things. I wanted now—without giving any explanation, for that I will do tomorrow—to give you certain lines which may become a central meditation. If you think about these lines again and again they will help you to realize what is built into the human being out of the cosmos, out of the earth's periphery, and by earthly forces. If you ask yourselves in connection with the formation of the eye: How is the eye formed from the cosmos?—if you ask yourselves how a lung is formed out of the forces of the earth's periphery, out of the planetary forces moving in the elements of air and water—if you ask how metabolism in the human being arises in connection with the earthly—then, if you will meditate on these questions in the light of the following lines, you will learn to look into the real nature of the human being.

Automated Translation

My dear friends! We have been studying the position of the human being in relation to the Guardian of the Threshold, and have led the soul in progressive steps into an understanding of the relationship a person has with the Guardian of the Threshold along the path of knowledge. Today we will initially focus our attention on the situation before Guardian of the Threshold, bringing it once again fully alive before our souls, in order to progress a bit forward by means of this esoteric consideration.

A person must forsake, and here I repeat what is appropriate for today and has been covered in prior lessons, a person must forsake the physical world, in which his customary awareness is in force. He comes to know that the sensory-physical world can be grand and joyful, but also full of sorrow and pain, that it can in fact be majestic, and that he has every reason in the world to remain within it, in his awareness. But he also comes to know that he cannot ever get to know himself if he only directs his contemplative eye and sensitive soul out upon this physical world. And he must say to himself, that it is quite grand, arrayed color upon color and arranged form on form, but that just what he himself springs from and is patterned after cannot be found in the encircling wide reaches around.

Yet even at this moment there rings forth from all sides unto a person, as the most noteworthy challenge in one’s life, the word of self-awareness: O man, know yourself!

And in this way, a person will become clearly aware that in customary life he is certainly safeguarded from entering unprepared into what in certainty is the world of his own essential being. Moreover, the Guardian of the Threshold is the same high being who shelters a person as he enters the spiritual world every night in sleep, who shelters the person from consciously experiencing what in sleep is all around him, for otherwise he would be terribly upset in experiencing all this in sleep, if he experienced it unprepared, so much so that he would not be able to continue on in waking life as a human being with strength intact. But at the same time, the Guardian of the Threshold makes it clear to a person that he, the Guardian himself, is the only portal to true, to authentic knowledge.

At this point, a person notices that he comes to an abyss, before entering the realm of knowledge, an abyss displayed as a bottomless chasm. The supporting pillars, that one stands on in the physical world, are gone. One cannot simply march over it. One can only carry himself across when freed of the physical, expressed symbolically, when one “grows wings”, so that one journeys over the abyss as a being of spirit and soul.

But first the Guardian of the Threshold calls out for you to be mindful in regard to the abyss, particularly in regard to the beasts that emerge as spirit-formations from the abyss, for these beasts are the external reflections of impure willing, feeling, and thinking, and these beasts must first be overcome. And in vivid pictures displayed before one’s eyes, willing, feeling, and thinking are revealed in the three beasts, one shown as spectral, one ghoulish, and so forth.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold shows us in greater depth how, in and of themselves, thinking, feeling, and willing can be strengthened, according to whether one has resolved in full awareness to overcome the beasts. And then, before someone actually enters the spiritual world, it is necessary to engage in situational meditations in perceiving the spiritual world, within which to discover how the cosmos speaks to a person, how the hierarchies speak to him, how at first all the things are proclaimed that await him there in the spiritual world.

And we will become progressively more aware, through what is played out before our souls in the mantras, that a person must become something else, if he would stride over the abyss, if he would live within what is on the other side of the abyss. Ever more and more, we will become aware that here on the earth, we are in the company of the beings of the three realms of nature and in the company of people, but over there we are in the company of disembodied souls and in the company of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. A different sort of acquaintanceship is present there. Quite a different constitution of soul is required there for this quite different acquaintanceship.

Once again, it is the business of the Guardian of the Threshold there to forcefully advise a person about how to comport himself, specifically about how to comport himself when striding across the Threshold and actually confronting the things of the spiritual world in their reality, about how in arriving there he must come to possess a wholly different soul-constitution.

There, a person will be aware that within himself two conditions of soul can become a reality, the soul-condition of customary awareness on this side of the abyss, and the soul-condition outside of the physical and etheric bodies on the other side of the abyss, which is the soul-condition of the purely spiritual world.

There, where the difference in these soul-conditions appear, great dangers await a person, dangers however, that initially present themselves in such a way that we have to characterize them as minor departures from normal conditions of soul, but that remain always within the soul when we characterize them properly, for they involve an extreme sickly soul-deformation. It must of course always be said, that when one’s path in the higher worlds is undertaken in the way so painstakingly delineated in the book How to Know Higher Worlds, in many smaller published anthroposophical works, and in the second part of my Outline of Occult Science, then straying from a normal soul-constitution should not happen, at least not easily. A person passing over into the spiritual world through healthy human understanding should be as fully aware of knowledge, initially, as one is through initiation. But a person must know that he may emerge in two different ways from the daily condition of soul-life that he is immersed in, if he does not pay attention to the proper sign-posts along the spiritual world’s pathway.

Here on this side of the Threshold we stand upon the earth, upon the fixed elements of earth. The ground is under our feet. The ground supports us. The watery element is around us, that also takes part in the formation of our own body. This watery element cannot support us in normal life, but infuses throughout us, attaching itself to our blood. It is contained within our forces of growth, within our forces of nourishment. The air is what we breathe. The aeriform, the gaseous element is all around us. Warmth is also all around us, the warmth-ether, the fourth element.

They are disconnected from one another in normal life. Where there is solid earth, there is no water. Where there is water, there is no air. Where there is air, there is no water. Only the fiery warmth presses into and throughout it all, for it is the only one that begins to press itself into everything.

But the moment we take leave, even the first time, my dear friends, the moment we take leave of our physical body, these differentiations cease. The different elements cease to have individual borders. We ourselves enlarge, we extend ourselves out, and we are simultaneously in earth, water, fire, and air. We can no longer differentiate one from another. The attributes held individually by the four elements cease. The earth no longer supports us, for its fixed solidity ceases. Water no longer forms us, for its formative forces cease. In other words, when we plunge into water, it is not as in swimming, where we are separated from the water, but rather it is as if we dissolve into it, as ice dissolves into warm water, as if in becoming one with the water, then we no longer carry, when we pass over into the spiritual world, we no longer carry our blood as a separate element in our vascular circulation, but rather our blood becomes one with the ever-moving watery element of the universe. And just so, air ceases to be a formative breathing-force in us. And warmth ceases to engender our ego-force, ceases to inflame us in warmth to the feeling of individuality. It all ceases. This must be confronted, it must be confronted in the proper manner, this cessation of the differentiation of earth, water, air, and fire.

To do this we may engage, in thought, in having already flown over the abyss. We have arrived on the other side, my dear brothers and sisters. There the Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us, that we should turn, lift our gaze, and face him.

Now think, my dear brothers and sisters, have a lively imagination, imagine a person’s arrival there on the other side, where in certainty the knowledge of the spiritual world is revealed to him. He is there. The Guardian of the Threshold prompts him to look about, to take up the admonitions that he now needs, that in a certain fashion he has now become accustomed to, in the soul-condition that is present there, on the other side of the Threshold, within the spiritual world, there where he lives pressed into the four elements themselves, into earth, water, air, and fire.

Just there a great danger appears, and please forgive the seeming triviality of the expression, my dear brothers and sisters, but if the person has possibly fallen in love with the illusion of disconnectedness of the solid earth, from the formative forces of water, from the creative forces of air, from the ego-awakening forces of warmth, then he may feel delighted merely in spiritual bliss, in giving himself over to the wonder of the spirit, and so he might remain within this spirit-bliss.

A person may be overwhelmed, as the alluring power of Lucifer musters up against him. It depends on his karma, whether a person is more or less susceptible to the alluring power of Lucifer. If he is susceptible, so that he simply totally and completely falls in love with dissolving into earth, water, air, and fire, then the Luciferic attaches itself to him, and he will no longer be able to emerge from this demeanor of soul. He runs the risk, when he once again returns to daily life, of remaining within this soul-demeanor. And so the Guardian of the Threshold must and does call out to him, “You may not do it. You may not fall under the sway of Lucifer. In the dissolution in earth, water, fire, and air you may not simply feel the solitary wonder of bliss. You must take yourself firmly in hand, or else, when you again return to the physical world, as a person in the physical world, when you take up the soul-condition of customary awareness of the physical world, then from then on you will be a person quite confused.”

That is the Luciferic danger, that on the return from the spiritual world, from the other side of the Threshold, a person may be bewildered and no longer have his senses about him, but would be an enthusiastic dreamer, an enthusiastic adherent of idealism, disdainful of customary awareness. That one may not do. And the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes, insistently, that one should be resolutely determined to live in the way corresponding to whatever world one is in, be it earthly or transcendental.

But the Guardian of the Threshold sets down a second admonition. The second admonition is this, that one should take care, when one has arrived on the other side with his thinking, feeling, and willing split apart, one should take care of how much of his thinking, feeling, and willing at hand is still connected to the earthly, is still inclined to the earthly.

There a person can once again be predisposed to remain in what has given him the experiences on this side in the fixed support of earth, to hold on tightly and cross over to the other side of the Threshold with a materialistic soul-constitution, to cross over with the formative forces of water frozen, solidified. Then he can become afflicted with an overweening earthly pride, and can say to himself, “In life on earth I have breathed in, have drawn into myself the very breath, out of which in times past the Father-God has formed human souls, human lives, which I can do also, when freed from earthly life’s confines.”

But if a person carries over into the spiritual world what he perceives in his breath as the creative force of God, then he falls under the sway of the Ahrimanic alluring power. In this condition he cannot return, because before he would return, there in the spiritual world he is enfolded in powerlessness. He would be non-sentient, more or less. His awareness would be disabled, crippled. In this manner, his awareness having been stunted, he would more or less be a sort of tool or implement of the Ahrimanic powers there in the spiritual world.

It is certainly so today since the beginning of the age of Michael, that the spiritual life of human beings, which today is crass and crude, frozen in materialism, is for the most part carried over as such into the spiritual world. And what this means, what it entails, is that the Ahrimanic powers enfold the human being in their grasp whenever his awareness has been stunted into something other than the condition of full wakefulness, and yes, my friends, this has been in evidence everywhere energetically ever since the outbreak of the great World War.

As I have most certainly said many times since the outbreak of the World War, the history of this war cannot be written about from the physical plane’s standpoint alone. Documents by themselves do not reveal the truth, that of the thirty or forty people who were most certainly engaged in the production of the war, a great number at various times were in a state of clouded awareness, and were therefore implements of the Ahrimanic powers. In this way much of what transpired in the World War was a legacy of Ahrimanic powers. This World War can only be written about in an occult manner. Whatever one has seen after a fashion, in his wanderings on this side of the Threshold, of various leading personalities immediately before the outbreak of the World War, all that can be taken truly to be indicative of the habits of soul that are carried over to the other side of the Threshold, and over there then become stunted, become stunted in awareness, and become, therefore, a working force of the Ahrimanic powers.

A person must be clear and fully self-possessed about this, that he may not carry back to this side, the soul-constitution of the other side of the Threshold. He may not carry the soul-constitution of this side of the Threshold to the other side, but rather, for every domain, this side and the other side of the abyss, a strongly stark human inner awareness must be developed.

It arises in this manner for all four elements in the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold. And again, we should delve into this admonition meditatively.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, imagine that you are standing there on the other side of the Threshold. The Guardian has beckoned. You look straight at him. First, he calls out to you, admonishing.

Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?

One no longer has it. But your heart moves, deep within, and would give an answer. But the heart can be moved inwardly in a three-fold manner, an answer emerging by means of and from the cosmos. It can be moved, this heart, by Christ and his force. Then it answers:

I leave its solid ground,

meaning, the earth’s firmness,

as long¹ as the spirit carries me.

That is the right demeanor of soul. I relinquish the pillars of earth, as long as the spirit carries me within the spirit-domain, as long as I am outside of the body. But the heart can also be moved by Lucifer. Then it answers:

I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.

So speaks the person in his lofty pride, in his self-satisfaction, as if he also would not need the support, when he traverses back into the physical world. Or the heart can be moved by Ahriman. Then it answers:

I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

The support is referred to here, and carrying the hammered support out and over.

No one should shrink back in fear from meditative soul-consideration of all three answers again and again, in order in this way to be able to choose and align with the first answer in freedom. For one must feel the inherent inward vacillation, the alignment with Lucifer, then with Ahriman. One must place this in meditation firmly within one’s vision. The meditation in this manner must embody the earthen element. [The first part of the mantra was now written on the board.] First the Guardian speaks:

I) Guardian: Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?

The human heart must give answer. When moved by Christ, it answers:

Christ: I leave its solid ground, as long as the spirit carries me.

If the soul has been moved by Lucifer, it answers in this way:

Lucifer: I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.

The phrase “as long as” [The words “as long as” were underlined.] emerges from the heart, draws the eternal into temporality, and so transforms the sentence. If the heart has been moved by Ahriman, it answers in this way:

Ahriman: I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

And then, progressing further, so that the soul can fully devote itself to what stands there before it, the second admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold appears, pointing to the formative force of water. This formative force of water is what builds the fixed organs in us, drawing them out of the fluid elements. All that we take in as nourishment must first become fluid, and then the organs are formed out of it. All of a person’s sharply contoured organs have been cast out of fluid elements. This formative force ceases as soon as a person enters the domain on the other side of the Threshold. The Guardian warns, that this is the case. He calls out to us, when we stand there on the other side of the Threshold, our gaze directed onto his stern face. [The second part of the mantra was now written on the board.]

II) Guardian: Where is water’s forming force, that permeated you?

The person answers, if he has been moved in his heart by Christ, “My life extinguishes it, quenches it, as long as the spirit forms me.” The spirit begins to work on you over there, half out of your body.

Christ: My life extinguishes it,

in the sense of quenching it, putting it out, and by “it” is meant the forming force,

as long as the spirit forms me.

Again appears “as long as”, again unobtrusively. [The words “as long as” were underlined.] If the soul has been moved by Lucifer, however, then the phrase “as long as” is left out, and the sentence emerges with haughty arrogance:

Lucifer: My life expunges it, in the sense of melting it away,

Well, what has been extinguished can be rekindled, but what has been melted away, expunged, remains expunged. “My life expunges it”

that I may be released from it.

If the soul has been moved by Ahriman, then it answers:

Ahriman: My life affixes it, in the sense of holding it fast, that I may carry it to spirit realms.

Please take note, my dear brothers and sisters, how everything in mantric verse is fashioned inwardly, meaningfully, and with confident certainty. Here [The first verse was indicated.] we see, “I leave”, “I feel”, “I will.” The ego speaks in the answer. In the second verse the ego speaks, but not so egocentrically, but rather says, “My life”, as in “My life extinguishes it”, “My life expunges it”, “My life affixes it.” Any entry into all reality is only spoken about properly, if it is spoken about accurately in every aspect. Lassitude in the formation of sentences, which is appropriate for people in the physical domain, may not be carried forward into the spirit-domain. In the spirit-domain speaking must be exact and accurate.

You should also most certainly keep in mind, my dear friends, that it all corresponds to a reality, that this esoteric school has not been constituted out of human intentions, but rather out of those of the spiritual world, as was said at the outset, that all that comes to the fore here in the esoteric school of the Goetheanum, even though it is said through my mouth, is nevertheless a dictum of the spiritual world. This must be so in every rightfully constituted esoteric school, certainly in the present and in times to come, just as it was in the ancient holy mysteries. And this esoteric school is the true Michael School, the institution of those high spiritual beings partaking immediately of the inspiration of the cosmic will of Michael.

Concerning the domain of air, the Guardian of the Threshold once again speaks in admonition,

Where is air’s stimulation,² that waked³ you?

waking you into existence. As Jehovah, by means of his infusion of the breath of life into humans, transformed simple living beings, by means of the stimulus inherent in his breath, into beings that can perceive, so a person, through sensing, through the stimulus that the external world brings to bear on the senses, becomes a being who perceives. But what exactly are the senses?

My dear brothers and sisters, the senses are most certainly just refined organs of breathing. The breath broadens itself out into all the senses. As it lives in the lungs, so it lives in the eyes. Only that in the lungs it is bound up with carbon, but in the eyes with the more refined silica. In one’s organism carbonic acid is produced. [It was drawn in red and the word carbonic acid⁴ was written down.] In the senses silicic acid is produced in a much more refined state. [Drawn in yellow, silicic acid⁵ was written down.] A person lives in his lower pole where oxygen combines with carbonic acid, and in his upper pole, in the domain of his nerve-sense system, where oxygen combines with silicon, with silica, and forms refined silicic acid [green]. A human being lives in such a way, that when the breath forms up in the blood, he produces carbonic acid, and when the breath forms up in the senses, he produces silicic acid [yellow arrows], below and outwardly through the breath carbonic acid, in the senses and returning from the senses within the breathing-process silicic acid in a totally more refined dose.

The Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us concerning what is in the air:

Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?

He who is moved by Christ in his heart answers:

My soul breathes heaven’s air,

no longer earth’s air, but heaven’s air,

as long as the spirit is about me.

The heart moved by Lucifer answers:

My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.

The heart moved by Ahriman answers:

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

As Jehovah once created with his breath, so those swayed by Ahriman absorb the air, in order to carry it along while crossing over into the spiritual world.

III) Guardian: Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?

The heart moved by Christ speaks:

Christ: My soul breathes heaven’s air, as long as the spirit is about me

The heart moved by Lucifer speaks:

Lucifer: My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.

The air’s power to stimulate is not noticed at all.

The heart moved by Ahriman speaks:

Ahriman: My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

Concerning the fiery or warmth elements, the Guardian now speaks his last elementary word, admonishing that a person should not lose himself in the element of warmth, but also not carry over into the spiritual world the warmth-element as it is in physical existence, as displayed on earth.

Just before I do this, however, my dear brothers and sisters, I would like to call your attention to this progression along the ascent:

“I” is spoken by the person first.
“My life” is spoken next by the person.
“My soul” is then spoken by the person.

Now the Guardian speaks in warning concerning the fiery elements: [The fourth part of the mantra was written on the board, and at the same time in the Christ-line “as long as” was underlined.]

IV) Guardian: Where is fire’s cleansing,

or cleansing catharsis

that inflamed in you the I?

Our ego lives in warmth, in what presses into and throughout us as warmth. I have often, my dear brothers and sisters, remarked on this in the esoteric school, that the fixed elements remain unconscious within, and also the fluid elements, even though in one’s feeling of satisfaction, one already feels the perfusion of the fluid elements. In satiety or in hunger one experiences the essential nature of the fluid element. The aeriform element is experienced soulfully. A person becomes breathless when not connecting properly with air, and fear comes with breathlessness. This already enters the realm of soul. Warmth is something in which one feels wholly at home. He participates in his condition of warmth or of cold with the whole of his ego. Fire inflames his ego.

The heart moved by Christ answers:

Christ: My “I” blazes in God-Fire, as long as the spirit kindles me.

A person does not need the material warmth of earth when the spirit supplies the spark and ignites his ego. For the ego blazes there not in earthly warmth, not in earthly fire, but within the fire of God.

But the heart moved by Lucifer answers:

Lucifer: My “I” has flaming power through spirit sun-craft.

The heart moved by Ahriman answers, as if the fire begun upon the earth is taken as his own and carried over into the spiritual world, to master the spiritual world with the ego-fire of the physical world.

Ahriman: My “I” has its own fire, that flames purely through self-unfolding.

The ego will not blaze up except by deploying its own fire.

Once again, the progression arising in the formulation first appears in the person speaking “I”.

I leave
I feel
I will

It then becomes more objective, in that the person addresses the things pertaining to himself as “Mine”.

My life extinguishes it
My life expunges it
My life affixes it

It then goes more inwardly, so inner nature becomes objective.

My soul breathes
My soul cares not
My soul absorbs

Now he climbs somewhat further into himself. And take note of the difference, my dear brothers and sisters. Early on is said merely “I”. Then “I” becomes objective, “my I”, as if it were another’s, as one would speak of another’s property. One is externalized even more, one is externalized out of the physical body, even to the extent initially of allowing one to speak fully egoistically of the ego, and one says:

My “I”

as if it were an object. That is the proper way to render it here.

One becomes acquainted with this rendering, my dear brothers and sisters, in all its depth and intensity, when one speaks with souls who have gone through the portal of death and have been in the spiritual world awhile. They do not say “I”, but rather they always say “my I”. I have not yet heard of one departed after death who has said “I”, except at most for a very brief time after death. So some time after death, the dead one says “my I”, because he gazes upon the ego with the eyes of the gods. It becomes objective for him, characteristically objective. Therefore, an account, from someone who has been dead for a somewhat longer time, cannot be accurate if the departed says “I”, if he does not say “my I”. So here in the fourth progressive section, before the Guardian of the Threshold, the soul says “my I”.

And that, my dear friends, is the wonderful spoken exchange at the Threshold, between the Guardian of the Threshold and the human personality, that actually takes place when one stands there before the Guardian of the Threshold, as illustrated here, which must be attended to, in order to catch the feeling in its essential actuality when deploying and immersing oneself in this dialogue properly in meditation. So you form the words up in meditation properly, my dear brothers and sisters, the mantric words coming to you here today, when in a certain sense you hear the words that you yourself are speaking, but only in the course of the Guardian having been heard to be speaking before us first in a manner of soul. Therefore this is how one meditates, as if hearing four times over the Guardian of the Threshold at the start of each section, concerning earth, water, air, and fire, and then allowing one’s own true soul to answer, but in such a manner that one immediately hears the first answer as if inwardly ensouled by Christ, the second answer in the voice of the tempter, and the third answer in the voice of the pompous materialistic Ahriman-Spirit, who approaches a person with the desire to carry over into the spirit the manner of being of the mineralized human.

Now, in closing today’s esoteric lesson, we will allow the characteristic way this is to be meditated to sound forth with firm effect.

Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?
I leave its solid ground, as long as the spirit carries me.
I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.
I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

Where is water’s forming force, that permeated you?
My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.
My life expunges it, that I may be released from it.
My life affixes it, that I may carry it to spirit realms.

Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?
My soul breathes heaven’s air, as long as the spirit is about me.
My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.
My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

Where is fire’s cleansing, that inflamed in you the I?
My “I” blazes in God-Fire, as long as the spirit kindles me.
My “I” has flaming power through spirit sun-craft.
My “I” has its own fire, that flames purely through self-unfolding.

• 1. so lang: Translating so lang as "so long as" carries a hint of inevitability that this condition is bound to end sooner or later, whereas translating it more correctly as "as long as" still has the same sense of contingency, but additionally carries the sense that in choosing this condition it can carry on forever.
• 2. Reizgewalt means alluring, stimulating power
• 3. erwechte: The verb in this line is not erwachte, which translates as the intransitive awakened, but rather the transitive erweckte, which translates as waked (inspired, excited, aroused).
• 4. Kohlensäure
• 5. Kieselsäure

The present lectures for members given in Dornach in June 1923 are based on the attempt by Rudolf Steiner to encourage the Anthroposophical Society to reconsider the real foundations of anthroposophy and the inner requirements for tackling the tasks of the age. After the First World War, the Society had increasingly splintered into a variety of external initiatives and practical projects. Although Rudolf Steiner had spoken warning words from 1921 onwards, and at the end of 1922 had called on leading members to make proposals for its reconsolidation, a real rethink did not take place until New Year's Eve 1922, when the destruction by fire of the first Goetheanum provided the catalyst. As a consequence, regional societies were founded in a number of countries in 1923. On 10 June, immediately preceding the first lecture in this volume, the General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland decided, on the basis of a motion from the Society in Great Britain, to call a meeting of delegates from all countries for the end of July to decide the measures for the reconstruction of the Goetheanum. This international delegate meeting further decided to combine the individual regional societies into an International Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum at Christmas 1923. Its leadership was to be assumed by a General Secretary to be elected at that time, but shortly before Christmas Rudolf Steiner decided to take over the chairmanship himself.

Textual basis: These lectures were taken down in shorthand by Helene Finckh. Her own transcription of these notes forms the basis for this volume.

The first edition was published by Marie Steiner in 1931 with a Foreword by her. The second edition was undertaken by H.W. Zbinden. The third edition in 1981 included an expanded Contents and additional Notes.

Works by Rudolf Steiner which have not been translated and which have appeared as part of the Complete Edition (Gesamtausgabe = GA) are referred to in the Notes by their bibliographical number.

There is a significant contrast between the Christmas thought and the Easter thought. Understanding of the contrast and also of the living relationship between them will lead to an experience which, in a certain way, embraces the whole riddle of human existence.

The Christmas thought points to birth. Through birth, the eternal being of man comes into the world whence his material, bodily constitution is derived. The Christmas thought, therefore, links us with the super-sensible. Together with all its other associations, it points to the one pole of our existence, where as physical-material beings we are connected with the spiritual and super-sensible. Obviously, therefore, the birth of a human being in its full significance can never be explained by a science based entirely upon observation of material existence.

The thought underlying the Easter festival lies at the other pole of human experience. In the course of the development of Western civilisation this Easter thought assumed a form which has influenced the growth of the materialistic conceptions prevailing in the West. The Easter thought can be grasped—in a more abstract way, to begin with—when it is realised that the immortal, eternal being of man, the spiritual and super-sensible essence of being that cannot in the real sense be born, descends from spiritual worlds and is clothed in the human physical body. From the very beginning of physical existence the working of the spirit within the physical body actually leads this physical body towards death. The thought of death is therefore implicit in that of birth.

On other occasions I have said that the head-organisation of man can be understood only in the light of the knowledge that in the head a continual process of dying is taking place, but is counteracted by the life-forces in the rest of the organism. The moment the forces of death that are all the time present in the head and enable man to think, get the upper hand of his transient, mortal nature—at that moment actual death occurs.

In truth, therefore, the thought of death is merely the other side of that of birth and cannot be an essential part of the Easter thought. Hence at the time when Pauline Christianity was beginning to emerge from conceptions still based upon Eastern wisdom, it was not to the Death but to the Resurrection of Christ Jesus that men's minds were directed by words of power such as those of Paul: “If Christ be not risen, then is your faith vain.”

The Resurrection, the triumphant victory over death, the overcoming of death—this was the essence of the Easter thought in the form of early Christianity that was still an echo of Eastern wisdom. On the other hand, there are pictures in which Christ Jesus is portrayed as the Good Shepherd, watching over the eternal interests of man as he sleeps through his mortal existence. In early Christianity, man is everywhere directed to the words of the Gospel: “He Whom ye seek is not here.” Expanding this, we might say: Seek Him in spiritual worlds, not in the physical-material world. For if you seek Him in the physical-material world, you can but be told: He Whom you seek is no longer here.

The all-embracing wisdom by means of which in the first centuries of Christendom men were still endeavouring to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and all that pertained to it, was gradually submerged by the materialism of the West. In those early centuries, materialism had not reached anything like its full power, but was only slowly being prepared. It was not until much later that these first, still feeble and hardly noticeable tendencies were transformed into the materialism which took stronger and stronger hold of Western civilisation. The original Eastern concept of religion came to be bound up with the concept of the State that was developing in the West. In the fourth century A.D., Christianity became a State religion—in other words, there crept into Christianity something that is not religion at all.

Julian the Apostate, who was no Christian, but for all that a deeply religious man, could not accept what Christianity had become under Constantine. And so we see how in the fusion of Christianity with the declining culture of Rome, the influence of Western materialism begins to take effect—very slightly to begin with, but nevertheless perceptibly. And under this influence there appeared a picture of Christ Jesus which at the beginning simply was not there, was not part of Christianity in its original form: the picture of Christ Jesus as the crucified One, the Man of Sorrows, brought to His death by the indescribable suffering that was His lot.

This made a breach in the whole outlook of the Christian world. For the picture which from then onwards persisted through the centuries—the picture of Christ agonising on the Cross—is of the Christ Who could no longer be comprehended in His spiritual nature but in His bodily nature only. And the greater the emphasis that was laid on the signs of suffering in the human body, the more perfect the skill with which art succeeded at different periods in portraying the sufferings, the more firmly were the seeds of materialism planted in Christian feeling. The crucifix is the expression of the transition to Christian materialism. This in no way gainsays the profundity and significance with which art portrayed the sufferings of the Redeemer. Nevertheless it is a fact that with the concentration on this picture of the Redeemer suffering and dying on the Cross, leave was taken of a truly spiritual conception of Christianity.

Then there crept into this conception of the Man of Sorrows, that of Christ as Judge of the world, who must be regarded as merely another expression of Jahve or Jehovah—the figure portrayed so magnificently in the Sistine Chapel at Rome as the Dispenser of Judgment. The attitude of mind which caused the triumphant Spirit, the Victor over death, to vanish from the picture of the grave from which the Redeemer rises—this same attitude of mind, in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, declared belief in the Spirit to be heretical, decreed that man is to be conceived as consisting only of body and soul, the soul merely having certain spiritual qualities. Just as we see the spiritual reality expelled by the crucifix, just as the portrayals of the physical give expression to the pain-racked soul without the Spirit triumphant by Whom mankind is guarded and sustained, so do we see the Spirit struck away from the being of man by the decree of an Ecumenical Council.

The Good Friday festival and the Easter festival of Resurrection were largely combined. Even in days when men were not yet so arid, so empty of understanding, Good Friday became a festival in which the Easter thought was transformed in an altogether egotistic direction. Wallowing in pain, steeping the soul voluptuously in pain, feeling ecstasy in pain—this, for centuries, was associated with the Good Friday thought which, in truth, should merely have formed the background for the Easter thought. But men became less and less capable of grasping the Easter thought in its true form. The same humanity into whose creed had been accepted the principle that man consists of body and soul only—this same humanity demanded, for the sake of emotional life, the picture of the dying Redeemer as the counter-image of its own physical suffering, in order that this might serve—outwardly at least—as a background for the direct consciousness that the living Spirit must always be victorious over everything that can befall the physical body. Men needed, first, the picture of the martyr's death, in order to experience, by way of contrast, the true Easter thought.

We must always feel profoundly how, in this way, vision and experience of the Spirit gradually faded from Western culture, and we shall certainly look with wonder, but at the same time with a feeling of the tragedy of it all, at the attempts made by art to portray the Man of Sorrows on the Cross. Casual thoughts and feelings about what is needed in our time are not enough, my dear friends. The decline that has taken place in Western culture in respect of the understanding of the spiritual, must be perceived with all clarity. What has to be recognised to-day is that even the greatest achievements in a certain domain are something that humanity must now surmount. The whole of our Western culture needs the Easter thought, needs, in other words, to be lifted to the Spirit. The holy Mystery of Birth, the Christmas Mystery once revealed in such glory, gradually deteriorated in the course of Western civilisation into those sentimentalities which revelled in hymns and songs about the Jesus Babe and were in truth merely the corresponding pole of the increasing materialism. Men wallowed in sentimentalities over the little Child. Banal hymns about the Jesus Babe gradually became the vogue, obscuring men's feeling of the stupendous Christmas Mystery of the coming of a super-earthly Spirit. It is characteristic of a Christianity developing more and more in the direction of intellectualism that certain of its representatives to-day even go as far as to say that the Gospels are concerned primarily with the Father, not with the Son. True, the Resurrection thought has remained, but it is associated always with the thought of Death. A characteristic symptom is that with the development of modern civilisation, the Good Friday thought has come increasingly to the fore, while the Resurrection thought, the true Easter thought, has fallen more and more into the background. In an age when it is incumbent upon man to experience the resurrection of his own being in the Spirit, particular emphasis must be laid upon the Easter thought. We must learn to understand the Easter thought in all its depths. But this entails the realisation that the picture of the Man of Sorrows on the one side and that of the Judge of the world on the other, are both symptomatic of the march of Western civilisation into materialism. Christ as a super-sensible, super-earthly Being Who entered nevertheless into the stream of earthly evolution—that is the Sun-thought to the attainment of which all the forces of human thinking must be applied.

Just as we must realise that the Christmas thought of birth has become something that has dragged the greatest of Mysteries into the realm of trivial sentimentality, so too we must realise how necessary it is to emphasise through the Easter thought that there entered into human evolution at that time something that is forever inexplicable by earthly theories, but is comprehensible to spiritual knowledge, to spiritual insight.

Spiritual understanding finds in the Resurrection thought the first great source of strength, knowing that the spiritual and eternal—even within man—remains unaffected by the physical and bodily. In the words of St. Paul, “If Christ be not risen, then is your faith vain,” it recognises a confirmation—which in the modern age must be reached in a different, more conscious way—of the real nature of the Being of Christ.

This is what the Easter thought must call up in us to-day. Easter must become an inner festival, a festival in which we celebrate in ourselves the victory of the Spirit over the body. As history cannot be disregarded, we shall not ignore the figure of the pain-stricken Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, on the Cross; but above the Cross we must behold the Victor Who remains unaffected by birth as well as by death, and Who alone can lead our vision up to the eternal pastures of life in the Spirit. Only so shall we draw near again to the true Being of Christ. Western humanity has drawn Christ down to its own level, drawn Him down as the helpless Child, and as one associated pre-eminently with suffering and death.

I have often pointed out that the words, “Death is evil,” fell from the Buddha's lips as long before the Mystery of Golgotha as, after the Mystery of Golgotha, there appeared the crucifix, the figure of the crucified One. And I have also shown how then, in the sixth century, men looked upon death and felt it to be no evil but something that had no real existence. But this feeling, which was an echo from an Eastern wisdom even more profound than Buddhisn, was gradually obscured by the other, which clung to the picture of the pain-racked Sufferer.

We must grasp with the whole range of our feelings—not with thoughts alone, for their range is too limited—what the fate of man's conception of the Mystery of Golgotha has been in the course of the centuries. A true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha is what we must again acquire. And be it remembered that even in the days of Hebraic antiquity, Jahve was not conceived as the Judge of the world in any juristic sense. In the Book of Job, the greatest dramatic presentation of religious experience in Hebraic antiquity, Job is presented as the suffering man, but the idea of the execution of justice from without is essentially absent. Job is the suffering man, the man who regards what outer circumstances inflict upon him, as his destiny. Only gradually does the juristic concept of retribution, punishment, become part of the world-order. Michelangelo's picture over the altar of the Sistine Chapel represents in one aspect, a kind of revival of the Jahve principle. But we need the Christ for Whom we can seek in our inmost being, because when we truly seek Him, He at once appears. We need the Christ Who draws into our will, warming, kindling, strengthening it for deeds demanded of us for the sake of human evolution. We need, not the suffering Christ, but the Christ Who hovers above the Cross, looking down upon that which—no longer a living reality—comes to an end on the Cross. We need the strong consciousness of the eternity of the Spirit, and this consciousness will not be attained if we give ourselves up to the picture of the crucifix alone. And when we see how the crucifix has gradually come to be a picture of the Man of suffering and pain, we shall realise what power this direction of human feeling has acquired. Men's gaze has been diverted from the spiritual to the earthly and physical. This aspect, it is true, has often been magnificently portrayed, but to those, as for example Goethe, who feel the need for our civilisation again to reach the Spirit, it is something, which, in a way, rouses their antipathy. Goethe has made it abundantly clear that the figure of the crucified Redeemer does not express what he feels to be the essence of Christianity, namely, the lifting of man to the Spirit.

The Good Friday mood, as well as the Easter mood, needs to be transformed. The Good Friday mood must be one that realises when contemplating the dying Jesus: This is only the other side of birth. Not to recognise that dying is also implicit in the fact of being born, is to lose sight of the full reality. A man who is able to feel that the mood of death associated with Good Friday merely presents the other pole of the entrance of the child into the world at birth, is making the right preparation for the mood of Easter—which can, in truth consist only in the knowledge: “Into whatever human sheath I have been born, my real being is both unborn and deathless.”—In his own eternal being man must unite with the Christ Who came into the world and cannot die, Who when He beholds the Man of Sorrows on the Cross, is looking down, not upon the eternal Self, but upon Himself incarnate in another.

We must be aware of what has actually happened in consequence of the fact that since the end of the first Christian century, Western civilisation has gradually lost the conception of the Spirit. When a sufficiently large number of men realise that the Spirit must come to life again in modern civilisation, the World-Easter thought will become a reality. This will express itself outwardly in the fact that man will not be satisfied with investigating the laws of nature only, or the laws of history which are akin to those of nature, but will yearn for understanding of his own will, for knowledge of his own inner freedom, and of the real nature of the will which bears him through and beyond the gate of death, but which in its true nature must be seen spiritually.

How is man to acquire the power to grasp the Pentecost thought, the outpouring of the Spirit, since this thought has been dogmatically declared by the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople to be an empty phrase? How is man to acquire the power to grasp this Pentecost thought if he is incapable of apprehending the true Easter thought—the Resurrection of the Spirit? The picture of the dying, pain-racked Redeemer must not confound him; he must learn that pain is inseparable from material existence.

The knowledge of this was a fundamental principle of the ancient wisdom which still sprang from instinctive depths of man's cognitional life. We must acquire this knowledge again, but now through acts of conscious cognition. It was a fundamental principle of the ancient wisdom that pain and suffering originate from man's union with matter. It would be foolishness to believe that because Christ passed through death as a Divine-Spiritual Being, He did not suffer pain; to declare that the pain associated with the Mystery of Golgotha was a mere semblance of pain would be to voice an unreality. In the deepest sense, this pain must be conceived as reality—and not as its mere counter-image. We must gain something from what stands before us when, in surveying the whole sweep of the evolution of humanity, we contemplate the Mystery of Golgotha.

When the picture of the man who had attained freedom at the highest level was presented to the candidates for ancient Initiation after they had completed the preparatory stages, had undergone all the exercises by which they could acquire certain knowledge presented to them in dramatic imagery, they were led at last before the figure of the Chrestos—the man suffering within the physical body, in the purple robe and wearing the crown of thorns. The sight of this Chrestos was meant to kindle in the soul the power that makes man truly man. And the drops of blood which the aspirant for Initiation beheld at vital points on the Chrestos figure were intended to be a stimulus for overcoming human weaknesses and for raising the Spirit triumphant from the inmost being. The sight of pain was meant to betoken the resurrection of the spiritual nature. The purpose of the figure before the candidate was to convey to him the deepest import of what may be expressed in these simple words: For your happiness you may thank many things in life—but if you have gained knowledge and insight into the spiritual connections of existence, for that you have to thank your Buffering, your pain. You owe your knowledge to the fact that you did not allow yourself to be mastered by suffering and pain but were strong enough to rise above them. And so in the ancient Mysteries, the figure of the suffering Chrestos was in turn replaced by the figure of the Christ triumphant Who looks down upon the suffering Chrestos as upon that which has been overcome. And now again it must be possible for the soul to have the Christ triumphant before and within it, especially in the will. That must be the ideal before us in this present time, above all in regard to what we wish to do for the future well-being of mankind.

But the true Easter thought will never be within our reach if we cannot realise that whenever we speak of Christ we must look beyond the earthly into the cosmic. Modern thinking has made the cosmos into a corpse. To-day we gaze at the stars and calculate their movements—in other words we make calculations about the corpse of the universe, never perceiving that in the stars there is life, and that the will of the cosmic Spirit prevails in their courses. Christ descended to humanity in order to unite the souls of men with this cosmic Spirit. And he alone proclaims the Gospel of Christ truly, who affirms that what the sun reveals to the physical senses is the outer expression of the Spirit of our universe, of its resurrecting Spirit.

There must be a living realisation of the connection of this Spirit of the universe with the sun, and of how the time of the Easter festival has been determined by the relationship prevailing between the sun and the moon in spring. A link must be made with that cosmic reality in accordance with which the Easter festival was established in earth-evolution. We must come to realise that it was the ever-watchful Guardian-Spirits of the cosmos who, through the great cosmic timepiece in which the sun and the moon are the hands in respect of earthly existence, have pointed explicitly to the time in the evolution of the world and of humanity at which the Festival of the Resurrection is to be celebrated. With spiritual insight we must learn to perceive the course of the sun and moon as the two hands of the cosmic time piece, just as for the affairs of physical existence we learn to understand the movements of the hands on a clock. The physical and earthly must be linked to the super-physical and the super-earthly.

The Easter thought can be interpreted only in the light of super-earthly realities, for the Mystery of Golgotha, in its aspect as the Resurrection Mystery, must be distinguished from ordinary human happenings. Human affairs take their course on the earth in an altogether different way. The earth received the cosmic forces and, in the course of its evolution, the human powers of will penetrate the metabolic processes of man's being. But since the Mystery of Golgotha took place, a new influx of will streamed into earthly happenings. There took place on earth a cosmic event, for which the earth is merely the stage. Thereby man was again united with the cosmos.

That is what must be understood, for only so can the Easter thought be grasped in all its magnitude. Therefore it is not the picture of the crucifix alone that must stand before us, however grandly and sublimely portrayed by art. “He Whom ye seek is not here”—is the thought that must arise. Above the Cross there must appear to you the One Who is here now, Who by the spirit calls you to a spirit-awakening.

This is the true Easter thought that must find its way into the evolution of mankind; it is to this that the human heart and mind must be lifted. Our age demands of us that we shall not only deepen our understanding of what has been created, but that we shall become creators of the new. And even if it be the Cross itself, in all the beauty with which artists have endowed it, we may not rest content with that picture; we must hear the words of the Angels who, when we seek in death and suffering, exclaim to us: “He Whom ye seek is no longer here.”

We have to seek the One Who is here, by turning at Eastertime to the Spirit of Whom the only true picture is that of the Resurrection. Then we shall be able, in the right way, to pass from the Good Friday mood of suffering to the spiritual mood of Easter Day. In this Easter mood we shall also be able to find the strength with which our will must be imbued if the forces of decline are to be countered by those which lead humanity upwards. We need the forces that can bring about this ascent. And the moment we truly understand the Easter thought of Resurrection, this Easter thought—bringing warmth and illumination—will kindle within us the forces needed for the future evolution of mankind.

As we are together for the last time during this Christmas Meeting which should be a source of strength and of vital importance for the Anthroposophical Movement, you will allow me to give this lecture as a supplement to the many vistas opened for us by the series of lectures just finished, while also giving tentative indications concerning the future of anthroposophical strivings.

When we look at the world to-day—and it has been the same for years now—destructive elements on a colossal scale are everywhere in evidence. Forces that are actively at work enable us to have forebodings of the abysses into which Western civilisation will continue to steer. When we think of those individuals who are outwardly the spiritual leaders in various domains of life, we shall perceive that these men are in the throes of an ominous, universal sleep. They think, or at least most of them were still thinking only a short time ago, that until the nineteenth century mankind was childish and primitive in respect of understanding and conceptions of the world. Then modern science appeared in its many branches and now—so it is thought—there exists something that must through all eternity be cultivated as the truth.

The people who think this are really giving way to extreme arrogance, only they are not aware of it. On the other hand there sometimes arises, even in men to-day, a premonition that things are not, after all, as I have described.

Some little time ago it was still possible for me to give lectures in Germany organised by the Wolff Bureau. They attracted extraordinarily large audiences so that the existence of a desire for Anthroposophy became obvious to many people. Among the many nonsensical utterances of opponents there was one voice which to be sure was not much cleverer than the others in respect of content but which nevertheless indicated a remarkable premonition. It consisted in a newspaper report of one of the lectures I had given in Berlin. The notice was to this effect: When one listens to something of this kind, one becomes attentive to the fact that something is going on not only on the Earth—I am quoting the notice approximately—but in the whole Cosmos something is happening which summons men to adopt a spirituality different from what existed previously. Now, the forces of the Cosmos—not only earthly impulses—demand something from men. A kind of revolution is taking place in the Cosmos, the result of which must be the striving for a new spirituality.

Such utterances were constantly to be heard and were very worthy of note. The fact of the matter is this: the impulse that must be working in what is now to go out from Dornach must—as I emphasised from every possible point of view during the Meeting itself—be an impulse originating in the spiritual world, not on the Earth. Our striving here is to develop the strength to follow impulses from the spiritual world. That is why, in the evening lectures during this Christmas Meeting, I spoke of manifold impulses at work in the course of historical evolution in order that hearts could be opened for the reception of the spiritual impulses which have yet to stream into the earthly world, which are not derived from that world itself. Everything for which the earthly world hitherto has rightly been the vehicle, proceeded from the spiritual world. And if we are to achieve anything fruitful for the earthly world, the impulses for it must be brought from the spiritual world.

This prompts the assertion that the impulses we ought rightly to take with us from the Meeting for our further activity must be connected with great responsibility.

Let us think for a short time of the responsibility laid upon us by that Meeting. Anyone with a sense of the reality of the spiritual world could encounter many personalities during recent decades, and observing them spiritually experience bitter feelings regarding the future destiny of humanity on Earth. One could encounter one's fellow men on the Earth in the way that is possible spiritually and observe these human beings during their sleep while they are in the spiritual world with Ego and astral body, having left their physical and etheric bodies. During recent decades, explorations connected with the destinies of Egos and astral bodies during the sleep of human beings have resulted in knowledge calling for great responsibility on the part of those who possess it. One often saw souls, who had left their physical and etheric bodies during sleep, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold.

In the course of evolution the Guardian of the Threshold has been brought to men's consciousness in very many different ways. Many a legend, many a saga—for it is in this form, not in the form of historical tradition that things of the greatest importance are preserved—many a legend tells of how, in earlier times, this or that personality met the Guardian of the Threshold and was instructed by him how to enter the spiritual world and return again into the physical world. Every legitimate entry into the spiritual world must include the possibility of being able at any and every minute to return into the physical world and to live there as a practical, thoughtful human being, not as a visionary or as an ecstatic mystic.

Fundamentally speaking, it was this that was demanded by the Guardian of the Threshold through all the ages of human endeavours to enter the spiritual world. But notably in the last third of the nineteenth century hardly any human beings who succeeded in approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in waking consciousness were to be seen. In our present time, when it is historically incumbent upon the whole of mankind to encounter the Guardian of the Threshold in some form, one finds how souls during sleep approach the Guardian of the Threshold as Egos and astral bodies, and the pictures that are revealed are full of significance. The stern Guardian of the Threshold has around him groups of human souls in the state of sleep, souls who in waking consciousness lack the strength to approach this Guardian of the Threshold. They approach him while they sleep.

When one watches the scene presented there, a thought connected with what I have called the seed of great and essential responsibility comes to one. The souls approaching the Guardian of the Threshold during the state of sleep plead with the consciousness then prevailing—in the waking state everything remains unconscious or subconscious—plead to be admitted into the spiritual world, to be allowed to cross the threshold. And in numberless cases one then hears the voice of the stern Guardian of the Threshold saying: For your own well-being you may not cross the threshold. You may not be allowed to enter the spiritual world. You must go back!—For if the Guardian of the Threshold were to permit such souls to enter the spiritual world, they would cross the threshold and enter that world with the concepts imparted to them by the schools, education and civilisation of to-day, with the concepts and ideas with which the human being is obliged to grow up from about the age of six to basically the end of his life on Earth.

The intrinsic character of these concepts and ideas is such that what a man has become through them in modern civilisation and education means that he enters the spiritual world paralysed in soul. Moreover, he would return to the physical world empty-headed in respect of thoughts and ideas. If the Guardian of the Threshold were not to reject many human souls of the modern age but allow them to enter the spiritual world, they would feel on awakening: I am incapable of thinking, my thoughts do not connect with my brain, I am obliged to go through the world void of thoughts. For such is the effect of the abstract ideas which man applies to everything to-day. With these ideas he can enter the spiritual world but not come forth from it again. And when one witnesses this scene which is experienced during sleep by more souls than is usually imagined, one feels: Oh! if only it were possible to protect these souls from having also to experience at death what they experience during sleep. For if the condition that is experienced in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold were to be repeated for a sufficient length of time, if civilisation were to remain long enough under the sway of what current education provides, then the souls of men would pass through the gates of death into the spiritual world but would be unable to bring any mental vigour into the next earthly life. With the thoughts prevailing to-day it is possible for a man to enter the spiritual world but he can only come out of it again paralysed in soul.

You see, modern civilisation adopts the form of spiritual life that has for so long been cultivated, but real life does not allow this. Civilisation as it now is might continue to progress for a time. During waking life souls would have no inkling of the existence of the Guardian of the Threshold and during sleep would be rejected by him in order to avoid mental paralysis; and this would finally result in a race of men being born in the future with no understanding, no possibility of applying ideas in their future earthly life; and all thinking, all ideation would vanish from the Earth. A diseased, purely instinctive human race would people the Earth. Evil feelings and unbridled emotions without the guiding power of ideas would take hold of the evolution of humanity. It is not only through observation of the souls confronting the Guardian of the Threshold—souls which can gain no entrance to the spiritual world—it is not only through observing this that a sorrowful picture is presented to the seer, but in a different connection there is another factor as well.

If on the journey of which I have spoken, when the souls of sleeping human beings confronting the Guardian of the Threshold can be observed, one is accompanied by a human being belonging not to Western but to Oriental civilisation, a terrible reproach of the whole of Western civilisation may be heard from him, to this effect: If things continue as they now are, when the human beings living to-day appear on Earth in new incarnations, the Earth will become barbaric. Human beings will live devoid of ideas, in instincts only. You Westerners have brought things to this pass because you have abandoned the ancient spirituality of the East.

A glimpse into the spiritual world such as I have described may well give rise to a sense of great responsibility. And here in Dornach there must be a place where for those human beings who have ears to hear, direct and significant experiences in the spiritual world can be described. Here there must be a place where sufficient strength is generated not merely to indicate in terms of the dialectic-empirical mentality of to-day that here or there little traces of spiritual reality exist. If Dornach is to fulfil its task, actual happenings in the spiritual world must be spoken of openly. Men must be able to hear of the impulses in the spiritual world which then pour into and control the natural world and Nature itself. In Dornach men must be able to hear of actual experiences, actual forces, actual Beings of the spiritual world. Here there must be the High School of true Spiritual Science. Henceforth we must not draw back when confronted by the shallowness of the scientific thoughts of to-day which, as I have described, lead in the state of sleep to the stern Guardian of the Threshold. In Dornach the strength must be acquired to confront and experience the spiritual world in its reality.

There must be no dialectical tirades from here on the subject of the inadequacy of modern scientific theory. I was obliged, however, to call attention to the position in which human beings are placed when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold on account of these scientific theories and their offshoots in the orthodox schools of to-day. If what has been said at this Christmas Meeting is sincerely applied in the life of soul, the Meeting will be a forceful impulse which the soul can then apply in the activity that is needed in this age so that in their next incarnations men may be able to confront the Guardian of the Threshold in the right way. This will ensure that civilisation in its own right can enable men to face and hold their own when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold.

Just compare the civilisation of to-day with that of earlier times during all of which men's thoughts and concepts were directed primarily to the super-sensible world, to the Gods, to the world of productive, generative, creative forces. With concepts that were concerned primarily with the Gods, men were able to contemplate the earthly world and also to understand it in the light of these concepts and ideas. If with these concepts—worthy of the Gods as they were—a man came before the Guardian of the Threshold, the Guardian would say to him: You may pass, for you bring over the threshold into the super-sensible world thoughts that were already directed to the super-sensible world during your earthly life in a physical body. Thus when you return into the physical world of the senses you will have enough strength to protect you from being paralysed by the spectacle of the super-sensible world.

To-day man develops concepts and ideas which in accordance with the genius of the age he wants to apply only to the material world. These concepts and ideas are concerned with every possible aspect of weight, measure and the like, but they have nothing to do with the Gods and are not worthy of the Gods. Hence to souls who have completely succumbed to materialistic ideas that are unworthy of the Gods, the voice of the Guardian of the Threshold thunders when they pass before him in the state of sleep: Do not cross the threshold! You have squandered your ideas on the world of the senses. Hence you must remain with them in the world of the senses. If you do not wish to be paralysed in your life of soul you may not enter the world of the Gods as long as you hold such ideas.

These things must be said, not in order to be the subject of argument but because every individual should let his mind and soul be permeated by them and thus develop the attitude of mind that should have been generated in him by this solemn Christmas Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. For more important than anything else we take with us is the recognition of the spiritual world which gives the certainty that in Dornach there will be created a living centre of spiritual knowledge.

Hence a really splendid note was struck this morning when Dr. Zeylmans spoke in connection with the sphere of medicine, saying that it is no longer possible to-day for bridges to be built from orthodox science to what it is our aim to found in Dornach. If we were to speak of what it is hoped to develop in the sphere of medicine here by boasting that our products can stand the test of all modern clinical requirements, then we should never reach any definite goal. For then other people would simply say: That is just a new remedy; and we too have produced plenty of new remedies!

It is of essential importance that a branch of practical life such as medicine should be taken in the real sense into anthroposophical life. That is what I certainly understood to be Dr. Zeylmans' wish when he said this morning that an individual who becomes a doctor to-day really longs for something that gives impulses from a new corner of the world. In the domain of medicine this is just what will be done from here in the future, together with many another branch of genuine anthroposophical activity. It will be worked out now, with Dr. Wegman as my helper, as a system of medicine based upon Anthroposophy. It is a dire need of humanity and will soon be available. It is also my intention to establish as soon as possible a close relationship between the Goetheanum and the Clinic in Arlesheim that is proving to be so beneficial. The work there will be orientated entirely towards Anthroposophy. That is also Dr. Wegman's intention.

In speaking as he did, Dr. Zeylmans also indicated what attitude the Vorstand in Dornach will adopt in all spheres of anthroposophical activity. In future we shall know exactly how matters stand. We shall not say: let us bring Eurythmy to this or that town, for if people first see Eurythmy without hearing anything about Anthroposophy, Eurythmy will please them. Then, later on perhaps, they will come to us, and because they have liked Eurythmy and have heard that Anthroposophy is behind it, Anthroposophy too may please them! Or again, it may be said: In the practice of medicine people must be shown that ours are the right remedies and then they will buy them; later on they may discover that Anthroposophy is behind them and then they will come to Anthroposophy!

We must have the courage to realise that such procedure is dishonest and must be abandoned. Anthroposophy will then find its way in the world. Our striving for truth here in Dornach will in the future be without fanaticism, will be advocated honestly and candidly. Perhaps in this way we can make reparation for principles that have been gravely sinned against in recent years.

We must leave this Meeting, which has led to the Founding of the General Anthroposophical Society, not with trifling but with solemn thoughts. But I think that nobody need have experienced any pessimism as a result of what took place here at Christmas. We had, it is true, to pass the tragic ruins of the Goetheanum every day but I think that all those who climbed the hill and passed the ruins during the Meeting will have become aware of what our friends have understood in their hearts and that the following thought will have become a reality to them: Spiritual flames of fire will go forth from the new Goetheanum that will come into being in the future, for the blessing of mankind, will come into being through our activity and devotion. And the greater the courage with which to conduct the affairs of Anthroposophy that we take with us from this Meeting, the more effectively have we grasped the spiritual impulse of hope that has pervaded the Meeting.

The scene that I have described to you—the scene that is so often to be seen of modern man with the results of his civilisation and education facing the Guardian of the Threshold—this scene does not actually occur among perceptive Anthroposophists. But it does sometimes happen that this warning is necessary: You must develop the resolute courage to become aware of and avow your obedience to this voice from the spiritual world, for you have begun to wake. Courage will keep you wakeful; lack of courage—that and that alone could cause you to sleep.

The voice of exhortation to unfold courage and wakefulness—that is the other variant for Anthroposophists in the life of modern civilisation. Non-Anthroposophists hear the voice which says: Remain outside the spiritual world, for you have misused the ideas which are coined for purely earthly objects; you have amassed no ideas that are worthy of the Gods. Hence you would be paralysed on your return into the physical world of the senses. To the souls who are truly anthroposophical souls, however, it is said: You have now to be tested in respect only of your courage to avow adherence to the voice which because of the trend and inclination of your souls and hearts you can certainly hear and understand.

Yesterday, a year ago, we were watching the flames that were destroying the old Goetheanum, but just as we did not allow ourselves then to be interrupted in our continuation of the work, so to-day we are justified in hoping that when a physical Goetheanum will again be there, it will be merely the symbol of our spiritual Goetheanum which we will bear with us as idea when we now again go out into the world.

Over the Foundation Stone laid here will be erected the building in which the single stones will be the work achieved in every one of our Groups all over the world. We will now turn our thoughts to this work and become conscious of the responsibility of the men of to-day when they are standing before the Guardian of the Threshold who is obliged to forbid them entrance into the spiritual world.

Quite certainly it will never occur to us to feel anything except, the deepest pain and sorrow for what happened to us a year ago. But of one thing we may be sure—everything in the world that has achieved some measure of greatness is born from pain. May our own pain be applied in such a way that a vigorous, light-filled Anthroposophical Society will come into being as the result of your work, my dear friends.

To this end we will ponder deeply on the words with which I began the Christmas Meeting and with which I want to end it. May it become for us a festival of consecration not only of a year's beginning but of the beginning of a turning-point of worlds, to which we will dedicate ourselves in selfless cultivation of the spiritual life:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the Limbs
Which bear thee through the world of Space
Into the ocean-being of the Spirit.
Practise Spirit-Recollection
In the depths of soul.
Where in the wielding
World-Creator-Life
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within the I of God.
Then in the All-World-Being of Man
Thou wilt truly live.

For the Father-Spirit of the Heights holds sway
In Depths of Worlds begetting Life.
Spirits of Strength!
Let this ring out from the Heights
And in the Depths be echoed,
Speaking:
From God, Mankind has Being.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of Heart and Lung
Which leads thee through the rhythmic tides of Time
Into the feeling of thine own Soul-being.
Practise Spirit-Mindfulness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging
Deeds of the World's Becoming
Do thine own I
Unite
Unto the I of the World.
Then 'mid the weaving of the Soul of Man
Thou wilt truly feel.
For the Christ-Will in the encircling Round holds sway
the Rhythms of the Worlds, blessing the Soul.
Spirits of Light!
Let this be fired from the East
And through the West be formed,
Speaking:
In Christ, Death becomes Life.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting Head
Which from the ground of the Eternal
Opens to thee the Thoughts of Worlds.
Practise Spirit-Vision
In quietness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free Willing.
Then from the ground of the Spirit in Man
Thou wilt truly think.

For the Spirit's Universal Thoughts hold sway
the Beings of all Worlds, craving for Light.
Spirits of Soul!
Let this be prayed in the Depths
And from the Heights be answered,
Speaking:
the Spirit's Universal Thoughts, the Soul awakens.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

At the turning-point of Time
The Spirit-Light of the World
Entered the stream of Earthly Being.
Darkness of Night
Had held its sway;
Day-radiant Light
Poured into the souls of men;
Light that gives Warmth
To simple Shepherds' Hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise Heads of Kings.

O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou
Our Hearts
Enlighten Thou
Our Heads,
That good may become
What from our Hearts we would found
And from our Heads direct
With single purpose.

And so, my dear friends, carry out into the world your warm hearts in which you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, carry out into the world these warm hearts which promote strong, health-giving activity in the world. And help will be vouchsafed to you, enlightening your heads in what you would fain direct with single purpose. We will set about this with all possible strength. And if we prove to be worthy of this aim we shall see that a good star will hold sway over what is willed from here. Follow this good star, my dear friends! We shall see whither the Gods will lead us by the light of this star.

O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou
Our Hearts
Enlighten Thou
Our Heads.

We have heard how there grew out of the Mysteries that which unites the consciousness of men with the world in such manner that this union comes to expression in the festivals of the year. We have understood above all how the Easter Festival grew out of the principle of initiation. From all this you will have realised how great a part the Mysteries have played in the whole evolution of mankind. All the spiritual life that passed through the world and evolved through mankind proceeded in ancient times from the Mysteries. The Mysteries were very powerful with respect to the whole guidance of the spiritual life.

Now mankind was predestined from the outset to evolve to spiritual freedom. The development of freedom necessarily involved a decline in the ancient Mysteries. For a period of time human beings had to stand less in connection with such a mighty guidance as proceeded from the Mysteries; they had to be left more to their own resources. Certainly we cannot say that the time has already come today when men have won true inner freedom and are ripe to pass on to what should follow the age of freedom. Decidedly we cannot say so. Nevertheless a sufficient number of human beings have passed through incarnations in which the power of the Mysteries was felt less than in former ages. And though the fruits of these incarnations are not yet ripe today, though the harvest is not yet, nevertheless it is there within the human being, it is latent in their souls.

If, as we have often said, a more spiritual age is now approaching once again, human beings will indeed evolve in time what in their dim consciousness they have not yet evolved today. But this above all will be necessary, that the knowledge, the vision, the conscious experience of the Spiritual that can arise from present-day Initiation shall be met out of the very freedom which men have gained with reverence and true respect. For if we do not revere, if we do not treasure it, true knowledge or indeed any spiritual life of mankind is in reality impossible. And in this sense we shall rightly use the times of the sacred festivals, we shall use them by trying to plant, however little, into our souls all this reverence for the spiritual life that has evolved in the course of human history. We shall learn to look as intimately as we can and see how the outer historical events signify facts and carry the spiritual life from one age into another.

We know in the first place that human individuals themselves return to the Earth again and again in their repeated earthly lives. Thus they carry with them experiences of former epochs into later ones. The human beings themselves are the most important factor in the progressive evolution of all that has taken place in human history. But the human beings of every age live in a particular environment. And the environment created by the Mysteries is among the most important. Thus it is a most important factor in the progress of mankind to carry from one age into another what human beings experienced in the Mysteries and what they then experience again, be it once more in sacred Mysteries working forth into mankind, or be it in some other forms of knowledge. Today it has to be in other forms of knowledge. For the real life of the Mysteries has more or less receded so far as the outer world is concerned and has not yet emerged again.

It is indeed the case that when that spiritual impulse which has gone forth from here, from the Goetheanum through the Christmas Foundation meeting, really finds its way into the life of the Anthroposophical Society—(the Society leading on to the Classes partially begun)—this Anthroposophical Society will provide the foundation for the Mysteries of the future. The future life of the Mysteries must consciously and deliberately be planted by this Anthroposophical Society. For this Anthroposophical Society has ever before it an event which can be turned to good account in future evolution even as a similar event was turned to good account once upon a time, namely, the burning of the Temple of Ephesus. Then and now, a great and deep wrong was done. Yet on the different planes of life these things appear in different ways and it lies in the freedom of mankind to turn to good account that which on one plane is a dreadful wrong, for it is just through these terrible events that a real progress of mankind can be achieved.

Now to enter into these things with sympathetic understanding we must grasp them, as I already said, as intimately as possible. How did the spiritual life of the world live in the Mysteries? I showed yesterday how the fixing of the yearly Easter Festival proceeds from the constellations of the Sun and Moon considered in a spiritual sense. I showed how the other planets are seen from the standpoint of the Moon. According to what is there experienced in beholding the other planets, man as he descends from his pre-earthly life into his earthly life is guided and instructed in the forming of his light-ether body.

We want to gain a true and vivid conception of how this light-ether body is created through the Moon forces, through the observation if I may put it so, in the spiritual Moon observatory. We want to understand how these ethereal forces are transmitted to the human being. To this end we may either observe it, as we have tried to do, out of the Cosmos directly, where these things are inscribed, where they exist as a real fact; but it is also important to let our hearts and minds be impressed by the part which human beings took in such a truth as this in different ages.

Never did human hearts and minds partake so intimately in this descent from the pre-earthly into the earthly life with regard to the final stage, the investment of man with his etheric body, never did they partake in this fact so intimately and deeply as in the Mysteries of Ephesus.

In the Mysteries of Ephesus the whole service that was devoted to her who is exoterically known as Diana or Artemis, the Goddess of Ephesus, was calculated to enable man to experience and enter into the spiritual life and movement within the ether of the Cosmos. We may say indeed that when the adherents of the Mystery of Ephesus approached the image of the Goddess they had a feeling, a sensation which grew into a spiritual listening and may be thus expressed. It was as though the Goddess spoke: “I delight in all things fruitful and creative in the far cosmic ether.”

A deep impression was made on those present when the Temple Goddess thus expressed her joy in all things growing, springing, sprouting in the far-spread ether of the world. And there was a feeling deeply akin to the springing and sprouting of life, a feeling that was wafted through the spiritual atmosphere of the Ephesian Sanctuary as a magic breath. For the Mystery was so arranged and instituted that we may truly say, nowhere have men lived with the growth of the plant life, with the springing and sprouting of the Earth into the plants, as they did in Ephesus.

And as a consequence a certain instruction could be given with great clearness in these Ephesian Mysteries, an instruction, if I may call it so, whose aim was to bring specially near to the heart and mind of those who belonged to Ephesus the secret of the Moon of which I told you yesterday.

This was something that every one of them had as his own experience. He knew what it was to feel himself as a form of light, for this process of receiving one's form of light through the Moon was made alive and vivid to the Ephesian pupils and Initiates. And there was a certain institution in the Ephesian Mysteries such that he who could let it work upon him in the sanctuary was altogether transplanted into this creating of one's being out of the Sunlight that wove around the Moon. And then there sounded forth towards him as though it were sounding from the Sun: J O A. (I O A).

He knew that this J O A calls to life his “I” and his astral body. J O—“I”, astral body; and then the approach of the light-ether body in the A—J O A. Now, as the J O A vibrated within him he felt himself as Ego, as astral body, as ether body.

And then it was as though there sounded forth and upward from the Earth—for man himself was transported into cosmic regions—it was as though there sounded to him upward from the Earth that which should permeate the J O A: eh-v. These were the forces of the Earth rising upwards in the eh-v.—J eh O v A.

And now in the JehOvA he felt the entire human being. He felt a premonition of the physical body which he would only have on Earth in the consonants belonging to the vowels; while the latter indicate, in the J O A, the “I”, the astral body, the etheric body. It was through this living penetration into the JehOvA that the Ephesian disciple could experience the final steps of man in his descent out of the spiritual world.

And in this feeling of the J O A one felt oneself as the very sound J O A within the light. Then one was truly MAN - resounding “I”, resounding astral body, clothed in the light-radiant etheric body. One was sound within the light. And so indeed one is as cosmic man, and as such one is able to perceive what is seen in the surrounding Cosmos just as here on Earth one is able to perceive through the eye what takes place within the physical horizon of the Earth.

And when the Ephesian pupil bore within him this J O A, when he bore this within him, he really felt himself as though transported into the Moon sphere; he partook in all that could be observed from the standpoint of the Moon.

At this stage the human being was still human being in the widest sense. Only at his descent to Earth did he become man and woman. But the disciple felt himself transported up into this region of the pre-earthly life which we pass through as we approach the Earth once more. It was in Ephesus that it became most intimately possible thus to arise into the Moon sphere, and then the disciples bore in their hearts and souls what they had witnessed and experienced, and it resounded in them somewhat as follows: [e.Ed: The original German is printed at the end of this lecture.]

 Offspring of all the Worlds! Thou Form of Light, Firm framéd by the Sun, with Luna's might, Endow'd with sounding Mars' life-stirring song, And swift-wing'd Mercury's motion in thy limbs, Illum'd with royal Jupiter's all-wisdom And grace-bestowing Venus' loveliness—That ghostly Saturn's ancient memoried devoutness Unto the world of Space and Time thee hallow! 

Every Ephesian was permeated by this experience which he felt among the greatest things that pulsated through his human being.

 Offspring of all the Worlds! Thou Form of Light, Firm framéd by the Sun, with Luna's might, Endow'd with sounding Mars' life-stirring song, And swift-wing'd Mercury's motion in thy limbs. Illum'd with royal Jupiter's all-wisdom And grace-bestowing Venus' loveliness—That ghostly Saturn's ancient memoried devoutness Unto the world of Space and Time thee hallow! 

It was indeed an experience in which the adherent of the Ephesian Mysteries felt himself as man fully and intensely, when there resounded in his ears that which lies hidden in these verses. For he felt: Now it has dawned upon me how I am connected with the planetary system in the forces of my etheric body. Pregnantly he brought this to expression, for these words are addressed to the etheric body by the great universe:

 Offspring of all the Worlds! Thou Form of Light, Firm framéd by the Sun, with Luna's might. 

Here man is feeling himself within the power of the Moonlight.

 Endow'd with sounding Mars' life-stirring song. 

The sound which has an active, a creative, quality sounded forth to him from Mars. And then came that which fills the limbs of man with strength so that he becomes a mobile being:

 And swift-wing'd Mercury's motion in thy limbs. 

And from Jupiter the light pours forth:

 Illum'd with royal Jupiter's all-wisdom, 

And from Venus:

 And grace-bestowing Venus' loveliness—

So at length Saturn may gather it all up, rounding man off both inwardly and outwardly, preparing him to descend to the Earth and clothe himself in a physical body that he may live on, on Earth, as this being who in a physical garment bears the God within him:

 That ghostly Saturn's ancient memoried devoutness Unto the world of Space and Time thee hallow! 

From all that I have here described, you will see that the spiritual life in Ephesus was filled with radiant light and colour. In this life of inner light and colour there was contained all that they knew of the true dignity of man throughout the Cosmos gathered together in the Easter thought. Many of the wanderers of whom I told you yesterday, who went from Mystery to Mystery that they might experience the life of the Mysteries in its totality, many of them declared ever and again with inner light and intimate joy how the harmony of the spheres had sounded forth to them in Ephesus when they had gazed into the Cosmos from the standpoint of the Moon, how the radiant astral light of the world had shone forth for them, how they had felt it in the Sunlight quivering around the Moon, the Sunlight filled with the spirit of the astral light, even as man himself is filled with living soul. In other places they had not experienced it thus, not at any rate with such joy and gladness and inner artistic understanding.

Now all these things were bound up with the Temple Sanctuary which then went up in the flames lit by the hand of a criminal or of a madman; but as I told you during the Christmas Foundation Meeting, [e.Ed: See: World History in the Light of Anthroposophy. (Eight lectures given at Dornach, 24^th – 31^st December, 1923. Obtainable from Rudolf Steiner Press.)] two Initiates of the Ephesian Mysteries were reincarnated in Aristotle and in Alexander. And these Individualities then came near what was still to be felt of these things in their time in the Mysteries of Samothrace.

At this point a seemingly chance event is of great spiritual significance in the evolution of the world. We have already mentioned it in our circle, indeed we mentioned it many years ago. When the Temple of Ephesus was burning it was the hour of Alexander's birth. But as the Temple burned something was really taking place.

How infinitely much had happened in the course of centuries for those who had belonged to this Temple. How much of spiritual light and wisdom had passed through these Temple spaces! Now that the flames broke forth from the Temple, all that had gone on in these Temple spaces was communicated to the cosmic ether. Thus we may truly say: The continuous Easter Festival at Ephesus which had been contained within these Temple spaces has since been written—albeit in letters less clearly visible—written in the great orb of the heavens inasmuch as the heavens are ethereal.

And it is so with many things. Very much of what is now human wisdom was in ancient times enclosed in Temple walls. It escaped the Temple walls, it is written in the cosmic ether and is visible there as soon as a man rises to spiritual Imagination. Spiritual Imagination is, as it were, the interpreter of the secret of the stars. Thus we may say, into the cosmic ether are written what were once upon a time the secrets of the Temples and we can read them imaginatively.

But we can also put it differently and it still remains the same. We can also say: I rise in the starlit night and look up to the heavens and give myself up to the impression of it all. And if I have the necessary faculty, all that is contained in the forms of the constellations and in the movements of the planets is transformed as it were into a great cosmic script.—And when we read the cosmic script a real content emerges of the kind which I described yesterday for the secret of the Moon. These things are really to be read in the cosmic writing, when the stars mean more to us than something merely to be calculated mechanically, mathematically, namely when they become for us the letters of the cosmic script.

To develop this idea still further, I must now refer to the following. In the time when the ancient Mysteries were already receding, the Mysteries of the Kabiri at Samothrace still existed. At the time of Alexander, Samothrace was still there as a place of remembrance, nay more, as a place for the active cultivation of the Mysteries, while as a general rule the life of the Mysteries was in its decline.

And there came the moment when through the influence of the Mysteries of the Kabiri there arose for Alexander and Aristotle something like a memory of the old Ephesian time which both of them had lived through during a certain century. And once more the J O A resounded and once again the words resounded:

 Offspring of all the Worlds! Thou Form of Light, Firm framéd by the Sun, with Luna's might, Endow'd with sounding Mars' life-stirring song And swift-wing'd Mercury's motion in thy limbs, Illum'd with royal Jupiter's all-wisdom And grace-bestowing Venus' loveliness—That ghostly Saturn's ancient memoried devoutness Unto the world of Space and Time thee hallow! 

But in this remembrance, in this historic remembrance of an ancient time, there lay a certain power to create something new. And from that moment there went forth the power to create a new thing, yet a strange new thing which has been little noticed by mankind. You must come to understand what was the real character of the new creation that went forth from the working together of Alexander and Aristotle.

Take any great work of poetry or any other work. Take the most beautiful works written in German if you like, take a German translation of the Bhagavad Gita, take Goethe's Faust, or Iphigenia, or anything you value highly. Think of the rich and imposing content, let us say, of Goethe's Faust, and now think, my dear friends, through what is this great content transmitted to you? Let us assume that it is transmitted to you as it is to most people. At some time in your life you read Goethe's Faust. What is it that meets you on the physical plane? What is there on the paper? Nothing else but combinations of abcdef, and so forth. The whole mighty content of Faust dawns upon you simply by using combinations of the letters of the alphabet. There is nothing there on the paper that does not coincide with one or other of its twenty or so letters. From these twenty letters there is conjured on to the paper that which awakens for you, if you can read, the abundant content of Goethe's Faust. Nay more, you are free to say that this perpetual repetition of abcdef is a dreadful bore, it is the most abstract thing imaginable. And yet these most abstract things rightly combined give us the whole of Faust.

Now when the cosmic sounding in the Moon was there again and Aristotle and Alexander recognised what the fire at Ephesus had signified, when they saw how this fire had carried forth into the far ether of the world the content of the Mysteries of Ephesus, then it was that there arose in these two the inspiration to found the Cosmic Script. Only the Cosmic Script is not founded on abcdef. As our book writing is founded on letters, so is the Cosmic Writing founded on thoughts. Now there arose the letters of the Cosmic Writing.

If I now write them down before you they are as abstract as abcd:

 Quantity Quality Relation Space Time Position Activity (or Action) Passivity (or Suffering) 

There you have so many concepts. Take these concepts which Aristotle first expounded to Alexander and learn to do the same with them as you have learnt to do with abcd. Then with Quantity, Quality, Relation, Space, Time, Position, Activity, Passivity, you will learn to read in the Cosmos.

But in the age of the abstract a strange thing happened in the logic of the schools. Imagine a school in which it was the custom not to teach people to read, but if you will, to manufacture books in which they have to learn abcd etc., again and again, in all manner of combinations, ac, ab, be, and so on. And suppose they never came to the point of using these letters in order to place before the soul rich and abundant contents. That would be the very thing which the world has done with Aristotle's Logic. In the textbooks of Logic these Categories, as they call them, are introduced. We learn them off by heart but do not know what to do with them. It is just as though we learn abcd off by heart and do not know what to do with the letters. Just as the content of Faust can be resolved into something as simple as the letters abcd and so forth, so the reading in the Cosmic Script resolves itself into these simple things which we must only learn to deal with. And fundamentally speaking, all that Anthroposophy has brought forth, and all that it can ever bring forth, is experienced from out of these concepts just as what you read in Faust is experienced from out of the letters. For in these simple concepts as the Cosmic Alphabet, all secrets of the spiritual and physical worlds are contained.

This was what happened in the further evolution of the world. Formerly there had been immediate spiritual experience for which the realities of Ephesus were still most characteristic. But now another thing came to take its place. It takes its start in the time of Alexander, but it was only in later times, throughout the Middle Ages, that it evolved in its peculiar form. It is a doubly hidden, double esoteric thing. Doubly esoteric is the meaning that dwells within these eight or nine concepts (for we may also extend the number to nine). Indeed we learn ever more and more to live in these simple concepts, and to experience them in our souls as vividly as we experience the abcd when we have before us the rich and manifold spiritual content of a book.

Thus you see, what was a mighty revelation of instinctive wisdom through thousands and thousands of years flowed at length into concepts whose inner force of life and strength must once more be revealed in time to come. In very truth the time will come when man will find again what is truly resting as in a grave, namely the cosmic wisdom and the cosmic light. Man will learn to read once more in the great universe. He will experience the resurrection of what lay hidden in the intervening time of human evolution between the two spiritual epochs.

And we, my dear friends, are here to make manifest once more the things that are hidden. We are here to create an Easter Festival as an experience of all mankind. And as on other occasions we could say: “Anthroposophy is a Christmas experience”—so we may say today: “Anthroposophy itself, in all its working, is an Easter experience, an experience of resurrection bound up with the experience of the grave.” It is important just at this present Easter Gathering for us to feel, if I may so describe it, the full festivity of the Anthroposophical striving. For we must feel that today we may go to some Spiritual Being who may perhaps be near to us immediately behind the threshold, and in face of him we say: “Ah! once upon a time mankind was blessed with a divine-spiritual revelation whose light still shone most radiantly in Ephesus. But now all this lies buried. How shall I dig out of the grave what thus lies buried? For surely one would imagine that that which has been can still be found in some historic way, can be found lying in the grave.” And then the Being will answer us as in a similar case once upon a time the corresponding Being answered: “That which ye seek is no longer here; it is in your hearts, if only ye open your hearts in the true way.”

Anthroposophy is there indeed; it lies at rest in human hearts, only these human hearts must be able to open themselves in the true way. This is what we must feel. Then in full consciousness, not instinctively as in ancient time, we shall be led back again into that wisdom which lived and shed its light in the ancient Mysteries.

This is what I would fain bring to your hearts at the present Easter time. For to permeate ourselves with this sacred, solemn feeling which can arise from Anthroposophy—this too will play its part and carry us upward into the spiritual world. This too must be united with the Christmas impulse which was given to us at Dornach. For the Christmas impulse must not remain a merely intellectual, theoretic and abstract one. It must be an impulse of the heart, it must not be dry and matter-of-fact. It must be sacred, solemn, joyful, not in sentimentality but out of the reality of the thing itself. Then even as Aristotle and Alexander used the fire of Ephesus when it flamed forth anew in their hearts, when it flamed forth in the Cosmic ether and bore down to them anew the secrets that were afterwards gathered up into the very simple concepts—then even as they could use the fire of Ephesus, so will it be our part to use what has also been carried out into the ether—for we may say so in all humility—in the names of the Goetheanum; namely all that has been intended and that shall be intended with Anthroposophy. But what does this imply? at the annual festival of mourning, at the time of Christmas and New Year, the very time in which our misfortune came upon us, it was granted us to send forth a new impulse from the Goetheanum. Why was it so? Because we may rightly feel that what hitherto was more or less an earthly thing, what was achieved and won and founded as an earthly thing, was carried forth with the names into the cosmic spaces. Just because this misfortune came upon us, when we recognise and know the consequence of it, we may justly say: henceforth we understand that we can no longer merely represent an earthly concern, but we represent a concern of the wide ethereal universe wherein the Spirit lives. For the concern of the Goetheanum is indeed a concern of the far and wide ether wherein there dwells the spirit-filled wisdom of the world. It has been carried forth and we may now fill ourselves with the Goetheanum impulses as with impulses coming in towards us from the Cosmos.

Take this as we will, take it as a picture. The picture signifies the deepest truth and this deep truth is expressed in simple words when we say: Since the Christmas Foundation impulse anthroposophical work shall be permeated with an esoteric character. This esoteric character is here because what was once earthly rayed forth into the cosmic spaces through the astral light that played its part in the physical fire, and because this returns again as a living power into the impulses of the Anthroposophical Movement if only we are able to receive them.

Then, when we can do this, we shall feel as one part of all that lives in Anthroposophy the Anthroposophical Easter mood which can never, never think that the spirit dies, but that it rises again and again. And Anthroposophy must hold to this Spirit that arises ever again out of eternal foundations.

Let us receive this as an Easter thought and as an Easter feeling into our hearts. Then, my dear friends, we shall carry with us from this Gathering feelings that will give us courage and strength to work when we stand once more in our different places when this Easter visit is over.

 (Original of verse in this lecture): Weltentsprossenes Wesen, du in Lichtgestalt, Von der Sonne erkraftet in der Mondgewalt, Dich beschenket des Mars erschaffendes Klingen Und Merkurs gliedbewegendes Schwingen, Dich erleuchtet Jupiters erstrahlende Weisheit Und der Venus liebetragende Schönheit—Dass Saturn's weltenalte Geist-Innigkeit Dich dem Raumessein und Zeitenwerden weihe! 

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards.—Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self-chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are I in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out of the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards. -Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy, might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self -chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

(Continued in Lecture 5).

We will remind ourselves of some of the things we have been considering during the last few days. I have spoken of the significant facts that within the compass of the story of the Mystery of Golgotha we have, on the one hand, the proclamation to the simple shepherds and on the other to the Magi from the East, men who according to the ideas prevailing in those times had reached the highest wisdom that it was possible to attain. The Mystery proclaimed itself to the Magi out of the stars and the secrets which were read from the stars. The same was revealed to the unlearned, simple shepherds out of the kind of clairvoyance which could arise in those times in men of piety of heart. I said that these powers were the last remnants of faculties of vision which in much earlier times were normal in humanity and which in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha still existed in their final phase among exceptional men, both learned and unlearned. It may therefore be said: At the time when the last remnants of ancient faculties of vision still existed in individual man, faculties capable of grasping the super-sensible aspect of the Event of Golgotha, that Event actually took place on the earth.

Once again let us describe these forms of knowledge. On the one side we have the shepherds. They experience through their naive, instinctive visions, what is happening in the world of men. Such inner visions were due, as I told you, to the forces of the earth which work into the human being. These forces of the earth do not only work into the lower kingdoms but also within the human being. Modern men, especially those living at the present time, no longer have direct inner experiences of these earthly forces which rise as it were out of the earth and then appear as inner visions. But the further we go back in evolution the more we find these inner visions, visions which in their whole configuration and form differ according to the varying climatic conditions, the different regions of the earth, and so forth. What can be discovered externally in this connection is, however, in many ways deceptive, for the men of olden times were wanderers. The faculties of inner knowledge coming to them from the forces of the earth, developed in some region or territory and then, because of the migrations of the peoples and stocks to other territories, were propagated through heredity. It cannot always be said, therefore, that these inner visions were connected directly with the territory where they appeared in men. Just as the animal world has a certain form in a specific part of the earth—in the animals this is expressed more in the outer growth and shape, in the mode of life, etc.—so, when human beings were still closely connected with the forces of nature, they were united in their inner characteristics with the inner forces of the earth. These inner forces of the earth are not, of course, completely independent of the forces of the universe. During his life between birth and death, the human being is given over to these forces of the earth, that is to say, he is given over to them in his physical body and etheric body, not in his astral body and Ego. In his physical body and etheric body man is given over to the forces that are active in the earth kingdoms below him. And as in olden times man was much more dependent upon the physical and etheric bodies than he is today, the workings of the earth within him expressed themselves more in his consciousness and there was within him a certain instinctive activity in his understanding of the world of human beings, of the planet earth and especially of the animal world. In those olden days men had a definite picture, a definite Imagination of every species of animal. Of this Imagination we ourselves have retained only the abstract notion of the ‘species.’ We speak of the wolf-species, the tiger-species, and so forth, and this is the last, abstract remnant of the living pictures that were present in olden times in instinctive vision and perception. Nor was man's relationship to his fellow-men the abstract feeling that it is today when we pass them by without really getting to know and understand them. Through the forces living within him and through his common karma, a definite picture, a definite perception of his fellow-man arose in a man as a concrete, naive Imagination.

Within this ancient humanity there was also living perception of what concerned the earth as a whole planet or—at least it was so among many peoples—the territories on which they dwelt. It was an inward perception of the planet earth, of happenings in the world of men as they expressed themselves in the social life, and also of happenings in the animal world. Our ordinary sense-perception then developed out of this inner faculty. This inward perception, these visionary pictures have in the modern age come entirely to the surface of the senses. They have become the mode of perception that is idolised in natural science where men are only willing to believe what the intellect combines out of the sense-perceptions. This sense-perception with which we view the material world is the descendant of what we find when we study ancient times in human evolution with real insight, undeluded by the phantasmagoria of modern psychology or anthropology. The old inner vision has become our external perception of today.

The other kind of knowledge, represented by the wisdom of the Magi from the East, has become abstract. It has gone the opposite way. Inner vision went to the surface and became our sense-perception. The faculty of outward perception, expressed in the imaginative, instinctive knowledge of the world of the stars and its secrets, in the ancient astronomy which also reckoned with numbers and—to use the platonic term—‘geometrised’ with figures, this form of perception which saw a living mathematics being fulfilled in the cosmos and to which every star was a spiritual reality has gone the opposite way. The other kind of perception went to the surface of the senses and became what we call our empirical knowledge. The external perception of olden times withdrew inwards, into the human being, and became abstract mathematics, abstract mechanics or phoronomy—the mathematical-mechanistic knowledge that arises from within us.

Thus in perception based on the senses and in our mathematical view of the world we have the abstract legacies of old, instinctive visions of mankind. Since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the last remnants of these ancient visions have disappeared, unintelligible as this fact will be to ordinary anthropology. Among the majority of peoples on the earth they had already disappeared much earlier; for we must go back many thousands of years, to very, very early times before what became the Egypto-Chaldean and Greek cultures proceeded from the Turanian highlands, if we want really to understand the nature of these primeval faculties of vision in man. Yet their last remnants still exist in Christian tradition as in the vision of the shepherds, who, through instinctive, imaginative clairvoyance came to know of a mighty event, and in the vision of the wise men from the East whose wisdom of the stars revealed the same thing. The very last remnants of these ancient modes of perception are given us as a wonderful landmark in our study of evolution. Since the Mystery of Golgotha there has been an increasingly general growth of the modern mode of perception which was already being prepared for in Greek culture; for the one does not pass abruptly into the other, these things are prepared for and die down again. What became intensive only in the modern age, revealing itself since the middle of the 15th century and reaching its zenith in the 19th, although it was last clearly present in the 18th century, especially in the West of Europe—this was prepared for in Greek culture. The ancient spirit-filled vision of the heavens has become abstract mathematics and mechanics. We look at the heavens in the sense of Galileo and Kepler, as if they were intelligible as a mere object of mathematics and mechanics, and what we call perceptions are limited to what the senses alone transmit to us. The power of perception born of the whole being of man which was instinctive in primeval times has become inactive.

It has often been said that humanity must become able once again to unfold real visions.. The mathematical and mechanical knowledge which arise in the inner being must once again be developed to Imagination. The sense-world which becomes the object of speculation and gives rise to all kinds of theories about the sense-processes, wave-vibrations and the like, must again be filled with the perceptions of Inspiration. Thereby men will find the link with their own origin, with the spiritual which is their own true being. We have evolved mathematical conceptions and external sense-perception as the final remnants of these ancient times. And what has come about in the evolution of humanity as a result of this?

Let us think of the 18th century, and of the English philosopher Locke who has had such an influence upon the development of the sciences. Locke speaks of the only form of knowledge that is valid—the knowledge that is transmitted, at the outset, by the senses. It is only a question of combining sense-perception mathematically because in the West—although the East has always resisted this—man has retained only this external sense perception, and inner vision has become purely abstract and mathematical.

And in France, in the 18th century, we find efforts being made to understand the human being, to answer the question: What is the human being in reality? Efforts were made to understand man through the power of knowledge he himself manifests; and we find such a work as Man as Machine by De la Mettrie. This was not the outcome of a sudden idea of one man but of a world-historical necessity of evolution. The corresponding phenomenon in ancient times would have been that the human being would have been understood by means of all the astronomical knowledge to be gained about the heavens—he would have been understood in the light of the whole macrocosm, by means of that ‘qualitative mathematics’ which is none other than ancient astronomy or, if you like, astrology. There would have been a concrete conception of the human being, not indeed gained with our conscious faculties of knowledge, but with the instinctive faculties of men in those times. And what has remained of this? Mathematical lines and forces spread in pure abstraction over the cosmos. The picture of the human being was that of a machine. An ingenious book which pictures man as a network of mathematical and mechanical forces cropped up in the 19th century and deluged all scientific views. Such objections as were raised were, at most, theoretical. People said: “It cannot really be so, something else must, after all, be working in man,” But although it was admitted theoretically that things could not be as they were pictured in Man as Machine, no other power was applied for understanding the human being than the powers used for understanding machines. Men were obliged to pass through this development of the spirit—of the spirit which is supremely abstract here and is able therefore only to grasp what is mathematical. Only so has the consciousness of freedom come to man. Tumultuous as was the urge for freedom in the west of Europe in the 18th century, there is an inner connection between the meagre knowledge of the human being which comes to expression in Man as Machine and the urge for human freedom which became manifest in the French Revolution. On the one side there was the worst possible decadence of knowledge arising from inner powers and, on the other, the insistent demand for recognition of the dignity of man by giving him freedom.

The vision that once arose within man was driven outwards to the senses, faded into external sense-perception. Nothing remained of what had once brought men together with vision: a mere feeling remained as a motivation in social life. And in the 19th century, particularly in Central Europe, in the West already in the 18th century, we find men like Dupuis in the West and Ludwig Feuerbach and others in Central Europe who, with the strange mentality which was then brought to bear on these things, reminded themselves that in the course of development humanity had once seen the spiritual in the macrocosm, had seen Gods or, ultimately, God. But then there arose this strong instinct: “Looking into the external world I have only the tapestry of material life, only what is revealed to sense-perception.” These men said to themselves: “These traditions, all that was once seen shining from the stars which are also things of sense, the spiritual in the world of minerals and plants—all this was fantasy, it was anthropomorphism; with this fantasy men imposed it into the external world. It was not the Gods who created man, but man who, out of his life of soul, created the Gods.” This was what was placed before man in the middle of the 19th century, first by Dupuis and then by Ludwig Feuerbach.

And then men like Darwin and others of similar mentality lent tremendous weight to the idea that man has only the external perceptions of the senses. They founded teachings based entirely on this kind of perception. But then it became apparent that the human being cannot be understood through these teachings. In a marvellous edifice of ideas we have a theory of evolution from the simplest up to the most highly complicated organisms and man is placed at the summit of the animal world. What was understood of the human being? That which could be externally seen through sense-perception.

In France, in the 18th century, man was conceived as a machine; in the 19th century he was seen only from outside and his inner nature was not reached. Only the sheath around man was there. This sheath does stand at the summit of the animal world. But what this sheath surrounds comes from quite different worlds into which there was no longer any insight, because all that remained was the sense-perception into which the ancient clairvoyance had developed, and the mathematics and mechanics into which the old spiritual science of astronomy had developed. Through the science arising from within, man could only be conceived of as a machine; and with the science relating to the external world, man could not be conceived at all, but only his sheath. Nor is there any realisation today of the extent to which the human being himself has been lost. Men study the anatomy and physiology of the animals and with certain modifications transfer this knowledge to the human being. But in the modern striving for knowledge there is no real understanding of the human being. From science—the highest authority recognised today—no conscious understanding of the human being is to be gained. Man as machine, comprehension of the material world in which the human being is not to be found—these have been the forerunners of our scientific mentality.

In one of the most recent books (another has since appeared, for the brochures aiming at refuting Anthroposophy are growing now into whole volumes)—in a fairly big book, we find it said that much in Anthroposophy is reminiscent of ancient mythologies. This is because the author simply does not understand Anthroposophy. He is a Licentiate of Theology, a very learned gentleman ... they are all learned gentlemen. This can be said as a refrain, thinking of the famous speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: “So are they all honourable men ...” They are all learned men and this particular one, because he does not understand Anthroposophy at all, finds in it something similar to ancient mythologies.

You know that in Anthroposophy it is a question of a fully conscious understanding of the world, an understanding with a consciousness that otherwise occurs only in mathematics with its inner penetration of the realities, so that it is certainly not a matter of mythological poetry. Nevertheless it is precisely through Anthroposophy that we are often deeply and inwardly stimulated to realise the meaning of ancient mythologies and ancient mythological pictures. These ancient mythologies are not ‘poetry’ in the sense in which we think of poetry today; they are the outcome of naive Imaginations of a certain content of the world. This content of the world, however, was expressed in pictures. And if we let the deep significance of these pictures work upon us we find a wonderful sureness of knowledge in them. Let me remind you today of a poem of ancient India addressed to the God Varuna:

Varuna is the motive power in all beings.
Varuna is he who has spread the air through the forests.
Varuna is he who gives the swift-footed animals their swiftness.
Varuna is he who produces milk in the milk-bearing cows.
Varuna is he who quickens the Will in the heart of man.
Varuna is he who kindles the lightning in the oceans of clouds.
Varuna is he who causes the light of the sun to shine in the vault of heaven.
Varuna is he who produces the Soma-drink on the mountains.

In wonderful language this poem to Varuna contains what I described to you yesterday. Think of what enters from the inner forces of the earth into man's physical and etheric bodies; these forces played into the consciousness and produced, in those ancient times, powers of inner vision. And then think of this poem and of the deep meaning in the indication that it is Varuna, the God of changes, who causes the air to blow through the forests (the earth with her covering). This same power-giving Being, working from the earth through the animals, causes the swiftness of horses, the life-substance in creatures who bear milk, stimulating in the heart of man the will-impulse from whence came the ancient, inner clairvoyance. In these indications we have something that make intelligible the kind of vision possessed by the shepherds in the field. And then from what follows, we can understand the kind of vision living in the wise men from the East. For it is Varuna who kindles the fire of lightning in the oceans of clouds—we look out into the macrocosm and there find the forces which are understood with the knowledge possessed by the Magi. It is Varuna who causes the light of the sun to shine in the heavens and who produces the Soma-drink on the mountain—these are the forces which enable man to have vision of the world.

An observation must, however, here be made. The poem comes from an epoch when the primeval, purest form of vision of the outer world was no longer present, when vision of the cosmic spaces was no longer, as in the earliest times, achieved by purely spiritual manipulations of the breathing or by drawing these visions from the inbreathing. The poem comes from a time when, as was very usual in the later Mysteries, a certain drink prepared from plants was taken to stimulate vision of the outer world, just as later on, when inner vision was lost, man attempted to stimulate inner powers by the taking of certain substances. In the East, men tried to quicken vision of the macrocosm by drinking certain juices from plants; in the West, certain substances were taken. In the East, again by external means, by the taking of substance which they called Soma-drink, men tried to quicken the faculty which appeared, in its last remnant, in the Magi. In the West, up to the late Middle Ages and even on into modern times, what was taken inwardly in order to attain the wisdom that evokes inner perception was called the Philosopher's Stone.

In books attempting to explain oriental life you will find many indications about the Soma-drink, the Soma-juice. All kinds of ingenious explanations are given because real Initiation-wisdom never tells what the substance of the Soma-drink really is. Many books will tell you that it is not known what the substance of the Philosopher's Stone is. Neither do I myself propose to speak about these two substances. I only want to indicate the humour of the statement made by scholarship that one cannot know what Soma-juice really is, although a large number of people drink this Soma-juice by the litre. As the poem to Varuna says, it grows on mountains. It is also said that the Philosopher's Stone is a certain substance in existence but that it is not really known what the learned alchemists meant by the Philosopher's Stone. But there are people in modern times who consume this Philosopher's Stone by the kilo. It is only a matter of seeing things in the right light.

It is remarkable that something very familiar should be presented as being quite unknown because people do not understand the connection of their present mode of vision with that of times, relatively speaking, not very long ago.

But it must be realised that today we see the world through very faulty spectacles and in spite of our scientific development do not understand what is nearest at hand; we do not know the workings of many substances we use in everyday life. We stand within these workings and experience them. Modern scholarship does not know what the Soma-drink is, or the Philosopher's Stone, although there are very few people who are not quite familiar with these substances (they simply do not know what they are). Equally can it be said: People of today realise that a great deal goes on in the intercourse between the banks and industrial undertakings and most men tear off their coupons from the papers they receive, but they know as little about what this means in the complex of social life as they know about the substances mentioned above. Our mode of perception is of a kind that it befogs us, misleads us with spectacles; we have our everyday arrangements without knowing anything real about the inner connections of the world.

It is strange that people try to keep to these concepts that are so superficial, that they do not want to get down to a new inner knowledge on the one side and strive for a new outer knowledge on the other. Sometimes, out of dark emotions, that which most men really want in their conscious being struggles to make itself felt, but they are afraid to raise this will into consciousness.

A friend recently gave me a copy of the Rheinische Musik und Theater Zeitung. The first article is based on the experiences of a musician. He writes out of immediate experience in particular circumstances and what he says is extremely interesting. I will read a few sentences:

“With the general social and economic upheaval there was added to the inner problems of music, the outer problem—that of the new public that is coming to art practically unprepared. Which of the arts has permanent value and how are art and the people to be brought together? These are questions of particular importance at the moment”

Most people are still unaware of the weight of these questions: there their weight has been felt, for they are there as a terrible burden in the world.

“Many, very many problems would be better and more easily solved if the musical profession were organised. But we are still without any Music Chamber which could represent the common interests of all professional musicians; even individual groups of interests are not yet really united with each other.”

The writer now proceeds to think about a suitable organisation. He says:

“Hardly any of the associations include all the members of the profession. The best are, perhaps, the German Musicians' Union which includes particularly the orchestra players, and the Union of Music Traders where there is a common basis because of their economic objects. After a big gap come the various groups of academic and nonacademic music teachers, of singing teachers in music schools, organists, directors and critics, as well as composers and executant musicians. Self-seeking interests and rivalry have put off many people from joining these associations. As a whole, workers in cultural professions are very far from realising the need of union. Thus it has come about that in the world of music those at the head of its public affairs are not experts who are cognisant of the real needs. In the great State arrangements as in the narrower, provincial bodies, dilettantes have the authority and also, according to the strength of the parties, politicians to whom art is only a secondary interest and who, though they often have good-will, usually lack the necessary expert knowledge and freedom from bias. And so it has come about that the State has almost completely failed to meet the justified demands of music. This does not concern music alone; it is typical in all cultural affairs. In the realisation too that the economic problems of a people cannot properly be handled by the politically-minded representatives who have held positions up to now, a new ‘Economic Council’ was recently formed. Out of about 400 seats, 3 were included for the Arts—such is the estimate of its importance. And when we know that one or two votes are incapable of representing the interests of the German Musicians' Union even in purely economic and financial questions, we cannot help asking: Where then are the cultural interests of the people to be considered? Parliamentary debates are out of the question. There is not a single expert of our profession in the Reichstag and even if there were ten or twenty, they could do nothing at all in a place where people speak and vote according to party points of view.

“There is only one way that is logical and clear and it will therefore be adopted one day for the well-being of our people. Beside the Political Parliament administering the equitable position of the individual vis-à-vis the whole, and of the people vis-à-vis the international world, and beside the Economic Council to deal with the material foundations of the people's life, we need a Cultural Council for the promotion of spiritual affairs.

“The idea of this Threefoldness is not new. It was however formulated in precise terms by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and is now being worked at by a league for the ‘Threefold Social Organism,’ Champignystrasse 17, Stuttgart, where further information can be obtained.

“It will be difficult for anyone who goes into this, to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and such a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring health to the whole of our people's life.”

I have read you this because it shows the longing for the Threefold Organism in one single profession. Then there are opinions which we must reject, opinions of those who have merely a political education and think that this Threefold Social Organism is a Utopia. It is not by any means a Utopia; it grows from the innermost experience of every single profession. The writer of this article is the editor of the paper and it is seldom that editors write in such a way. Every single individual in any profession can feel that the most practical conception of life leads him finally to say to himself: “It will be difficult for anyone who goes into this to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and such a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring health to the whole of our people's life.”

This ‘Cultural Council’ was founded a year ago this May and it has already faded out, is forgotten. Those who understood it least of all were the people in official positions and having authority in science and art. What must be emphasised over and over again is the need there is today for things to be taken with deep seriousness. This goes against the grain. People choose to believe that things will continue in the same way. No, they will not. If life continues without the stimuli that come from the spiritual world, industry can go on, banks can be in existence and universities where all the sciences are taught, other professions can be developed—but everything will lead to decadence, to barbarism, to the fall of civilisation. Those who are not willing to apply in practical life what can come out of Spiritual Science are working, not for ascent but for decline. And the majority of people today want decline and simply delude themselves into the belief that an ascent can still come out of it.

That is what I wanted to stress on the occasion of this Christmas festival. Let others go on, if they so will, along the old, familiar path that is like a great lie in modern life. I confronted this lie when I was a young man. In respect of the truths and realities of life I was very much at home in an international atmosphere and in things that have nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy for any particular race, for I taught in a house belonging to a Jewish family for many years. Every year, when Christmas was near, all the relatives, distant and near, set about buying Christmas presents and a Christmas tree—and all of them were members of the Jewish religion. They did everything the same as people who call themselves Christians, in honour of Him of whom it is said: “The Saviour is born unto us this day.” Things have become phrases to this extent, my dear friends. But people will not admit it, will not admit that these things have lost all meaning. It is all one and the same today, and it has been so for a very long time, whether a man whose heart is livingly united with the Saviour lays presents under the Christmas tree or whether this is done by someone who adheres to a way of thinking which rejects the Saviour. It is such things which show us the lie in humanity that has become reality, the phrase that has become reality within our civilisation. These things must be seen in all seriousness, my dear friends. It is meaningless today to say that one should not be radical in these matters ... for not to be radical means to take part in the advance towards decline.

This is what I wanted to voice at this Christmas festival, at a place where nothing in the old style is to be found. In our architecture at the Goetheanum there are no traces of ancient architectural styles. Neither do other things at the Goetheanum contain anything connected with old-fashioned customs. It is just because there is nothing of old customs at the Goetheanum that such hatred of it prevails in many quarters. Neither should there be old customs, because there must be at least one place today—however much it is hated and however intensely its ruin is desired—where attention is called to what is necessary for mankind in our time.

The Goetheanum contains nothing of the old. The Goethean science cultivated here obviously contains hardly anything that is old. And if we establish anything in practical life ... the reaction to it shows quite clearly that it is not in the old style. Whether in the habits of all anthroposophical friends everything of the old style has been overcome ... on that point the lecturer will be silent for the sake of politeness. But he would express the hope that our habits, down to the very way we handle our children, will tend more and more to what we recognise as a necessity for the evolution of mankind.

The year we are beginning with this Christmas festival will be no easy one for our anthroposophical development. On the contrary, it will be a difficult year. The opposition against us will not diminish but increase in strength. For the powers which have an interest in ruining Anthroposophy are very active, very alert, as I have often said. And one thing particularly I would like to call to mind today. When the ‘Futurum Company’ was founded here in Dornach, our good friend Herr Molt spoke of all that should enter and be applied in the affairs of practical life. He was right in everything that he said. When I was speaking afterwards I said that I was not anxious about the incorporation of anthroposophical thoughts and ideas in practical institutions—but what did cause me anxiety was whether we should find a sufficiently large number of human beings capable and energetic enough to carry these things through.

What is so very necessary, my dear friends, is that we should always be trying to bring together those human beings who are sufficiently energetic and capable to make Anthroposophy really practical, as well. Recent centuries have not only dulled human knowledge, they have also actually suppressed the practical capacities of men. And it is essential that people should try to unfold these powers out of the deepest foundations of their being—for the powers that are needed lie in every individual. We need a renewal also of the external, practical capacities of man, out of his deepest foundations. This birth should hover before us—the birth of an energy that can be brought forth within to confront the lack of energy to be met with in the outer world today. This birth should hover before us in everything that we feel to be connected with Christmas.

Think, too, of science. A young medical student was with me a few days ago and was talking to me about his studies. All that I could say was that the very worst thing that is happening nowadays in the most important sciences is that the thinking powers of men are not being unfolded. Take any modern book on therapy or pathology—so often we find heart, lung, digestive organs and so forth, represented according to purely material observations and with as much elimination of the thought element as possible. And when some real thinking is offered we find, as in the book written by Kurt Leese, the Licentiate of Theology, that it is said: this is unbearable, irritating; for here is someone speaking about the threefold being of man and we are expected to believe that the three members are not side by side, but intermingled. So much jugglery of thought ... Such is the opinion of this Licentiate of Theology, Kurt Leese.

To be a Licentiate of Theology at our universities means that thinking is fundamentally exterminated by the studies. When a man is challenged to think, this is unbearable, irritating, unpleasant in the extreme. It has come to the point where things that come from the innermost being, truthfulness among them, appear in the form they do, even among the leaders of Christianity. For example there is this clergyman who does not say that some drunkard told him of a statue of Christ being made with Luciferic traits above and animal characteristics below ... but who gives this out as something that he knows with certainty. He puts an objective lie into a book in which he sets out to describe Anthroposophy. And people accept such things without criticism or censure. Do you think for a moment that any healing of social life is possible when such things happen? If you have any such belief, it is a false hope. What is necessary is to develop a sane outlook on a positive evil in moral life. The point is not whether Anthroposophy is attacked or not but that a book has appeared containing a whole number of similar untruths. A man who writes such lies in this book will naturally include them in other writings. This is habit. The same thing exists in teachings given to the young. We must not fail to face these things, my dear friends.

The Child in the crib says to us that the deepest things in man need a health-bringing renewal. What we need is a new proclamation of what was given to the shepherds in the field and to the Wise Men from the East; from its very foundations we must understand what it is that will bring healing into the development of mankind. Then and then only are we worthy to say: The Saviour has been born unto us.

These are the things I wanted to say before we have to make a short pause in the lectures here.