The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On an earlier occasion I spoke of the powers that lie dormant in every human being, powers that can be developed and raise man to a higher level of existence.²⁰⁹ Just as the physical world is perceived with physical organs, so can the higher world be perceived with higher organs. At the time I spoke of the means, though only in a fragmentary way, by which human beings can gain higher vision. To take us forward to our theme, let us today consider certain means that are used in inner training.

New instructions have to be followed at every level. The things we are going to talk about today will not be sufficient on their own, but they are part of the process. One instruction given to prospective pupils is that one should develop a particular approach to the higher world, a moral approach. As a first step, we have to realize that just as we are sentient, so are animals sentient. But whilst people have individual souls, genera of animals have group souls. All lions, all sharks, all frogs and so on have a common soul. To put it another way: Whilst humans have their souls as an inner principle animal souls, with soul threads linking them, as it were, extend into the astral world. If you hurt a person, he alone feels the hurt. But if you hurt a lion, the group soul feels it, and this does not live on the physical but in the astral plan.

The aim of training is to find an approach, a feeling relationship to the animal souls on the astral plan. Let me give you an example. In some regions, the ancient Germans venerated the horse. They would put a horse skull at the top of their houses as a symbol. The choice of symbol shows that they had a specific relationship to the horse. Where did this originate? The horse only came into existence at a particular time. This animal genus evolved in the mid-Atlantean period, bit by bit, of course. This coincided with the evolution of cleverness. People may not have been clear in their minds about it, but they felt attracted to the horse the way a lover does to his lass. Arabs have a special relationship to their horses to this day. Mythology can give us some pointers. Thus clever Ulysses thought up a wooden horse. In this sense human beings will develop a feeling for the generic souls of different animals. When this comes to their conscious awareness, the relationship to the astral plan begins to open up.

It is also possible to develop a moral relationship to the plant world in this way. An occultist sees not only the beauty of a plant but senses something of a smiling or a sad face. You gain much from such moral feelings. If you develop such a moral relationship you enter into a relationship with the lower region of the devachan plan.

We can also develop a sensitivity for the dead mineral world. Rocks have a group soul on the devachan plan just as animals have a group soul on the astral plan. The souls of minerals live in the devachan, which is why human beings cannot reach them. Just as a fly running across my hand does not know there is a soul behind it, so do human beings not know that rocks have soul.

Now if stones have souls, you will also see that it is possible to have a moral relationship to them. A human, an animal body has desires, passions and drives. The plant body no longer has desires but it still has drives. The rock body has neither desire nor drive and thus is an ideal for us human beings, the ideal of letting our drives be made spiritual. This will be achieved in the far distant future for humanity. Human beings will then have bodies free from desires or drives. They will be diamond-like, no longer having inner drives, for these will then be controlled from outside.

A rock has this chastity today; it is matter free from desire. The occult pupil must develop such chastity here and now. In this sense, a stone is above animal, plant and man. An ancient Rosicrucian formulation begins with the words: ‘I have put the eternal creator word into the stone.’ Being chaste and virginal, the stone preserves this creator word in the depths of physical existence.

If we are able to enhance this inner response to the stone and make it a spiritual experience, we become clairvoyant in the highest parts of the devachan.

Let me now characterize the mineral world from another point of view. Let us go back to Atlantean times in earth evolution, such as we know it. The atmosphere was full of water vapour. Atlanteans also looked very different from present-day human beings. Even further back in time, on the Lemurian continent, where the temperature was extremely high, human beings were semi-aquatic creatures. All the minerals were also in a different state then. Lead could not possibly be solid then. There was also a time when gold was not yet a solid; this was when sun and earth were still one. When the earth separated from the sun, traces of this more subtle matter were still apparent. It coagulated, like all metals, and then existed as veins of gold in the rocks. Going back still further, we come to the time when precious stones coagulated. At that time coal was still transparent, existing in the form of diamonds. Physical conditions at that early time made this possible. Carnelian came into existence at another time, topaz at yet another time.

Now you need to remember that the human being had a soul at that time, but as yet no physical body. The condition of the earth was such in early times that it would have been quite impossible for a physical body to inhabit it. Human beings only had an ether body at that time. At a particular time, the potential for eyes developed in this ether body. The physical eye was only developed later by means of the ether body. All other organs were first differentiated and created out of the ether body. Every such ether organ development was triggered by desire. The astral body desired to perceive something, to see; it therefore acted on the ether body and out of this created the ether eye; the physical eye only differentiated out later. The etheric counter image arose in the mineral world, and this desire-free counter image is the chrysolite (olivine). Thus there truly is a close link between human vision and chrysolite. Occultists will therefore use stones for specific purposes. They are sentient of a sympathy that exists between vision and chrysolite and know how the stone may be used to influence some eye conditions.

The potential organ of hearing developed earlier than that of vision. In the mineral world, the idea of hearing arose chastely in the onyx. The sense of hearing is most closely related to matter in its purest form. Where sound waves move through space, the most subtle sound ether is present, also known as numbers ether or chemical ether. Other ethers are the warmth, light and life ethers. The subtle sound ether gave rise to the development of hearing and of the potential for the onyx. Let me remind you of the old man with the lamp in Goethe's Tale of the Green Serpent. His lamp changed all wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, the dead pug dog into an onyx.

Carnelian developed with the sense of touch, topaz with the sense of taste, jasper with the sense of smell, beryllium came as the rational mind evolved, and the carbuncle stone when man grew able to form ideas based on images. There is a beautiful legend²¹⁰ about Lucifer losing a precious stone from his diadem when cast down from the heavens—the carbuncle. It is indeed true that this precious stone evolved at the same time as the human ability to form ideas awoke, first of all in images.

The emerald evolved together with the solar plexus, which has to do with the involuntary, unconscious movements in the human body. The potential for the diamond arose at the earliest stage of evolution, when the first beginnings of the human physical body developed. You see how deep relationships go in the world. This is not superstition but wisdom.

Let me give you two facts from the rich field of occult studies. You know that some unions are on the moderate side. One particularly moderate group represents a trade—the printers. The editor of their journal was actually dismissed because he was very moderate. In the printing industry, workers and principals first met. People have no idea of how much they depend on their environment. Printers work with lead—which attacks more than just the lungs—and this affects the soul sphere, creating a particularly sober attitude to life.

Another example. I met someone who eventually became a good theosophist. A particular ability he had caused him concern. He publishes a journal and is able to find analogies quickly. A scholar looking for such analogies may well sit for months and not get anywhere. This person found what he wanted by just picking a book from his bookcase. His thinking had grown so independent that the physical brain no longer impeded it. This does, of course, also hold great dangers. ‘Where do I get this from?’ he asked me. I told him that he might possibly have a lot of contact with copper. And that was indeed the case. He was playing the French horn, an instrument that also contains copper. This was sufficient to produce such a powerful effect. You can see from this that everything in the world around us has a profound influence on the human being, and this is how metals and precious stones relate to the nature of the human being.

Questions and answers

(Question not taken down.)

Looking at plants with an artist's eye the situation is that this does indeed first of all have an effect on the astral body, whilst occult vision influences the ether body. An artist may well get in touch with the archetypes for many of his works, be they sculptures, paintings or melodies; you meet them consciously on the devachan plan.

What is gold?

When earth and sun were still a single mass and still wholly pure ether, everything was dissolved, and the degree of subtlety was like that of sunlight. Minerals could not coagulate then. It was only after the sun had departed and some of the pure sunlight had remained with the earth that this condensed into gold in the earth's veins. Gold is condensed sunbeam and directly connected with the sun.

Sapphire corresponds to the feet in humans. The feet are much more important than is usually thought. There was a time when the feet still had the ability to hold fast by means of a kind of suction, similar to the way a fly does it.

Opal corresponds more to a region from which the lung, too, has evolved.

Ruby has to do with the 'higher organ of the brain', as it is called, the organ of intuition.

Iron causes some excitation of sensual nature in man. When the earth met with Mars, this quality also entered into the blood. An occultist does not like to touch objects made of pure iron.

Question concerning Edward Bulwer's novel The Coming Race²¹¹

Everything that has existed on earth before will return. The vril power is based on something special. Today people can really only make use of the powers that lie in mineral nature. Gravity is mineral, electricity is mineral by nature. We are able to run railways thanks to coal. Something human beings are not yet able to use is the power that lies in plants. The power that makes the tall stems of wheat grow in a field is as yet a latent power. Human beings will make it serve their aims just as they do the energy of coal. And this is vril. It is the power fakirs use, and they live in an atavistic way—characteristic of the ancestral state.

Was Goethe an initiate?

Goethe's initiation took place between the time he lived in Leipzig (1765–1768) and his time in Strasbourg (1770–1771), at a time when he was close to death. He was not conscious of the fact, however. He only became aware of it in 1795. It had come up again in him as early as 1794, but only vaguely. At a moment of enlightenment he then wrote his poem Die Geheimnisse (the secrets), which has remained a fragment. He only truly revealed his beliefs in his Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily. His initiation on the physical plan was done by a particular individual.

• 209. See lectures given in Leipzig in June and July 1906, in Kosmogonie (GA 94), Engl, as ‘Extracts of 12 lectures, Leipzig 28 June–10 July 1906’ in Anthroposophical News Sheet 1946; vol. 14, 39-50.
• 210. Interpretation of the grail found in Albrecht von Scharfenberg's ‘Jüngerer Titure’. See Uehli, Ernst, Eine neue Gralssuche S. 6 & 248; Stuttgart 1921.
• 211. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George, 1st Baron (1803–73). The Coming Race published in 1870. Was translated into German at the suggestion of Rudolf Steiner and Giinther Wachsmuth.

What happened at Golgotha as a germinal event has undergone a slow and gradual development. This mystery built the bridge from the past to the future because the soul life of humanity underwent a profound metamorphosis. This becomes especially clear when one looks at two great individuals who prepared the way for Christianity: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. To understand these two men properly, it will be necessary to look at the old mystery centers where the highest knowledge was taught. Not to do this would make it impossible to gain a thorough understanding of these personalities.

As we know, all nations or peoples in the past had the so-called mystery centers. Here we shall point out only their most basic features and refer to them henceforth as “Mysteries.” First of all, these were institutions in which the church and school were subsumed. They taught first of all the origin of creation and its continuation, but their teaching was not a dull doctrine like the modern doctrine of creation, but rather a body of knowledge that culminated in clairvoyant perception. In the true Mysteries there was no separation between belief and knowledge. They were divided into higher and lower Mysteries, with the latter describing the evolution of the earth in magnificent images, so that everything was permeated by art and beauty. Art, religion, and knowledge all derived from the same source.

The individual who wanted to advance further was given elementary and general exercises. What today we call theosophical knowledge was then only a preparation. This was followed by exercises similar to the ones we have described in recent lectures, although they were conducted in a different manner and were not Christian or Rosicrucian in nature. This is how the astral body was organized for many years. Then the following happened, something that is no longer necessary today because of changed conditions: When the hierophant saw that the astral body of the person to be initiated had matured sufficiently, a death-like state was induced in the subject for a period of three and a half days so that the body was similar to that of Lazarus. This was also the occasion when the etheric body, together with the other two higher bodies, was almost completely removed from the physical body. The disciple during these three and a half days had a vision of the spiritual world and experienced a state of illumination that enabled him to reach into the highest regions and perceive everything that is related to past and future. After the three and a half days, the disciple was awakened and was then able to relate what was happening in the higher spheres. He had been able to see that Christ, the leading Spirit in our evolution, would be lying in the grave for three and a half days. It is this fact that makes the Mysteries historical reality.

The Mystery of Golgotha was the culmination of what was happening in the lower Mysteries because earlier presentiments became fact in it. Whereas the “I” of the disciple had earlier been successful in changing the astral body through exercises of the imagination, the Mystery of Golgotha brought about a metamorphosis of the etheric body. Whatever was changed in the astral body became manas, or spirit self—the actual spirit, the higher “I.” On the other hand, whatever part of the etheric body was changed constituted buddhi, or life spirit. Then the disciple could also try to change his physical body, and this resulted in atma: Atmung,³² so called because in reality the transformation of the physical body was attained through special breathing exercises. Only through the formation of buddhi can the human being recognize and perceive Christ as spiritual essence.

Why was it necessary to remove the astral body first? Had the astral body continued to be tied to the physical body, it would not have had the strength to imprint certain impressions onto the ether body. The Christ has liberated us from this three and a half day test, and it is through Him that the exercises mentioned above have become possible without intercession by the hierophant. We see the first example of this in Saul when he became Paul. What happened to him on his way to Damascus must be interpreted as something similar to an initiation. The reason that he needed only a few minutes for it was that he had attained a certain maturity in the preceding life. The line between the connecting point in the present life and the one in the previous incarnation, in which a certain learning experience took place, may be interrupted by several intermediate incarnations, and it is also possible for such a previous learning experience not to surface until late in the present life. This explains why the conversion of Saul, that is his connecting himself with his previous development, took place at a relatively mature age. In addition, Paul did not have to project himself into higher worlds in order to perceive the Christ, as would have been necessary for other initiates of the pre-Christian era. After all, Christ did remain on earth as He was intimately united with its astral body. Had a clairvoyant observer perceived the events from another star, he would have been able to see the tremendous transformation that the Mystery of Golgotha had brought about.

To gain knowledge in ancient times, everything had to be learned and understood in the Mysteries, but things are different in more modern times, as the lives of St. Augustine and Thomas of Aquinas prove. Before these men lived, it would have been futile to talk about the spiritual hierarchies because one who was not initiated was not able to perceive them. We can attribute this inability to gaze into the spiritual world to the fact that the Mysteries had ceased to exist six hundred years before Christ, and initiations no longer took place after that. The schools of philosophy took the place of the genuine Mysteries, and philosophy itself took the place of the initiation. However, philosophy was not always as abstract a system as it is today; on the contrary, especially in the beginning it was more or less completely reminiscent of the Mysteries. Aristotle³³ was the last from whom we have such a philosophy, but the resonance of the Mysteries was already reduced to a bare minimum in his philosophy. After Aristotle, things went so far as to make people forget that every philosophy must be traced back to the wisdom of the Mysteries. What came later is only an infiltration of abstract terms, similar to the construction of a thatched roof.

The first step forward is characterized by the Mystery of Golgotha. Up to this time the human faculties, for example reason, were little developed. Human beings could not make any progress because their minds were bound to their sense organs, and the time when the mind could develop independently was not yet at hand. What happened at Golgotha could not be grasped just by using one's mind. However, when Christ left the material world, innumerable copies of His etheric and astral body came into being; these were destined to be woven into the bodies of human beings suited to disseminate Christianity. One of them was Augustine, who descended to the physical plane for a new incarnation and wanted to form a new etheric body for himself. It was then that one of the copies of the etheric body of Christ was woven into his own etheric body, and this is how it became possible for him to find in himself the sources of his doctrine about the true form of Christian mysticism. But because he had received only the etheric body of Christ, his ego was subjected to error, and it was possible for him to succumb to his passions. And this is how Augustine developed his ego, but also committed errors and went through all stages of doubt in regard to Christ's teaching. What we see in him is a sort of higher materialism because even in those days people fell into the mistake of wanting to materialize everything. Only the person who frees himself or herself from this tendency will understand spiritual things. When Augustine finally found the spirit of Christianity in the words of John and Paul, the etheric body of Christ began to work in him, for he speaks not of the physical body but of the etheric body, which is the same as what he calls “soma.” In speaking of the “sense,” he refers to the astral body, and he says of the ego that it can rise in him through purification. The transformation of the astral body he calls “laying hold of the truth,” and that of the etheric body he delineates as “being joyful and enjoying spiritual things.” Finally, his term for the highest degree of spiritualization is “the vision.” The writings of Augustine are a good preparation for us because they present the inner development of a mystic. One can clearly recognize the moment in which he enters the spiritual world. Augustine is the best interpreter of Paul's letters.

Now let us look at another great representative of Christianity: Thomas Aquinas. Comparing him with Augustine, we see that he was not caught up in the errors of Augustine and that, beginning with his childhood years, he did not experience doubt or lack of faith. This is not surprising because judgment and conviction reside in the astral body, and Christ's astral body was woven into his own. The implantation of any principle into the human body can take place only when an external event changes the natural course of things. When Thomas was still a child, lightning struck nearby and killed his little sister. This seemingly purely physical event made him suitable to receive into his own astral body that of Christ.

Thomism coincides with the time when the human mind as we know it began to develop. The strongest impulse of this formative process came from Arabism, a truly intellectual science. Whereas before the old sages knew why they were able to gaze directly into the spiritual world, the new philosophy could make good use of Aristotle because he was one of the first great thinkers who preferred intellectual work to the wisdom of the Mysteries. The latter disappeared completely with the purely intellectual speculation of Arabism. Such speculation could at best culminate in a pantheism of rational concepts, but it could not conceive of more than this idea of a unified whole. Now, Thomas adopted the intellectual science accessible to him, but he left revealed knowledge intact and made use of dialectics in order to understand it.

The New Testament contains everything of revealed knowledge, so that Thomas had only to add the finely polished science to the explanations. Scholasticism, which is not much appreciated these days, made this intellectual science possible; but by using progressive dialectics, Thomas also made it possible for human beings to elevate themselves again to the divine idea. Scholasticism comes from the Greek scole and therefore means “paying attention,” but was erroneously translated as scuola, school. The scholastic system was the most perfect web of logic, and it enabled Thomas to think anew the pre-creational divine thoughts, freed from error and delusion as they can be conceived of only in monastic seclusion far away from the noise of the world.

Human beings are eager to comprehend quickly, to adopt an idea and make it their own, and to simplify everything. But the divine is not that simple! With Thomas Aquinas, human thought rises to new heights. Being no less a mystic than a scholastic, Thomas was able to give us such vivid descriptions, similar to those of the seer Dionysius the Areopagite³⁴ because he saw the spiritual hierarchies and thus he was able to solve the most difficult problems during his long nightly meditations in front of the altar. Therefore, we find combined in him the qualities of the mystic and of a brilliant thinker who is not influenced by the senses. No important concepts were added after him, not even the term “evolution,” which, by the way, can already be found in Aristotle's writings and is perhaps even better described there.

We have already stated before that the New Testament contains everything. Specifically, it also contains the seed of mysticism, and we have seen how this seed has ripened and how an infinite number of treasures have been unearthed from the Gospels. Nowadays, we have theosophy; later there will be other spiritual waves, and new treasures will be found in the Gospels. The revelation of John concludes the future of the earth.

Today I have tried to show you how the liberation of the intellect was the first stage of Christianity. This is only one leaf, but others will grow on the mighty plant of Christianity, one after the other. The blossom will be the total beauty of the earth, renewed through Christianity, and the fruit will be the new world for which today's earth is the preparation.

As Christ taught, is still teaching, and will be teaching to the end, He can be found by those who seek Him.

• 32. The German noun forms Atem and Atmung mean breath and breathing, respectively, whereas the verb for “to breathe” is atmen.
• 33. The works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) became the basis of medieval scholasticism and had a decisive influence on Catholic theology.
• 34. Dionysius the Aeropagite is said to have been the first Bishop of Athens, Greece, in the first century A.D. Tradition has made him a martyr and Acts 17:34 tells of his conversion by Paul.

Third Contemplation: Michael's sorrow over the evolution of mankind, before the time of his earthly regency.

[ 1 ] With the further progress of the Age of Consciousness, the possibility more and more ceases of direct connection between Michael and the generality of human kind. Into Man's being enters in triumph the new, humanized power of Intellectuality and out of it vanish those imaginative conceptions of the mind, which shew Man the living forms of the Cosmic Intelligence. For Michael, any possibility of approaching Man does not begin until the last third of the nineteenth century. Before then, approach can only be attempted by such roads as were those of the genuine Rosicrucians.

[ 2 ] Man looks with his fresh opening intellect at Nature; and what he sees is a physical world, an ether-world, in which he himself is not. Through the great ideas of Copernicus and Galileo he gains a picture of the external, non-human world; but he loses the picture of himself. He looks at himself, and he has no possibility of arriving at any insight as to what he is.

[ 3 ] In the depths of his being is awakened that which is ordained to be the bearer of his human intelligence. With this, his I combines. Man bears accordingly within him now a threefold being. First, in his spirit-soul, he bears within him, manifested in physical-etheric form, that being which at the very first—in the Saturn and Sun times, and repeatedly ever since—has given him a place in the realm of divine spirit. This is where Man's being and Michael's being can join company. Secondly, Man bears within him his later physical and etheric being—namely that which became his during the Moon and Earth times. All this is the work and workings of divine spirit; but divine spirit no longer lives in it with present being. [ 4 ] It first becomes present again in living being when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which works spiritually in Man's physical and etheric body, may be found the Christ. Thirdly, Man has in him that part of his spirit and soul which during the Moon and Earth times has acquired a new form of being. In this part, Michael has remained active; whereas in the part turned to the Moon and Earth, he has grown ever more inactive. In the former, it is he who has preserved to Man Man's divine images.

[ 5 ] This Michael could do until the dawn of the Age of Consciousness. And then the entire spirit-and-soul element in Man sank, so to speak, down into the physical and etheric, in order to fetch forth the Spiritual Soul.

[ 6 ] Luminously there arose in Man's consciousness all that his physical body and his ether-body could tell him about the physical and etheric in Nature. There sank from before his vision what astral body and I could tell him about himself.

[ 7 ] A time arises, when amongst mankind there begins to stir a feeling that their insight no longer brings them to themselves. There begins a search after the Knowledge of the Human Being. Men fail to satisfy their seeking by anything which the Present can supply. They go back in history to earlier times. ‘Humanism’ makes its appearance in the evolution of the human mind. Humanism becomes men's ideal object, not because they possess the human being but because they have lost him. So long as they still possessed him, their soul which animated the work of Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worn a very different colour from anything that their Humanism could give it.

[ 8 ] In Faust, later on, as re-discovered by Goethe, is the figure of a man who has utterly lost the human being. [ 9 ] Ever intenser becomes this search after Man. For men have only two alternatives: either completely to blunt themselves to the awakening inner sense of their own being; or else to pursue this longing search for Man, so that this search becomes an inherent element of their soul.

[ 10 ] Until the nineteenth century, in the spiritual life of Europe the best men in every field are engaged in the pursuit of every variety of idea—historic, scientific, philosophic, mystic—all representing the endeavour in the intellectualized aspect of the World to discover Man.

[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual New Birth, Humanism—all are rushing, storming indeed, after spirituality in a direction where spirituality is not to be found. In the direction where it is to be sought, impotence, illusion, bemazement. And everywhere, through it all, the Michael Forces breaking through, in art, in learning, into the life of man, only not as yet into the young, rising forces of the Spiritual Soul. A tottering of all spiritual life; Michael, with all his forces reaching back in cosmic evolution, in order to find strength to keep in balance the Dragon under his feet. Under these powerful exertions of Michael there arise the great works of the Renaissance. Yet these are still a revival, by Michael's power, of the old life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—not yet a working of the new soul-forces.

[ 12 ] One can see Michael, full of anxiety as to whether, after all, he will be in a position to keep the Dragon permanently in check, when he perceives how men are engaged in the one field only, trying to obtain from the picture they have just obtained of Nature a similar picture of Man. Michael sees the way in which men are observing nature and trying, out of what they call Natural Law, to construct an image of Man. He sees how they depict it in their minds: This peculiarity in some animal becomes perfects; that combination of organic functions becomes more nicely adjusted; and so, there ‘arises’ Man. But before the spirit-eye of Michael, what arise is not Man at all. What they think of as growing ever more perfected and more nicely adjusted, is just a thought thing; no one can see it actually growing into fact because the actual facts are otherwise.

[ 13 ] And thus men live with such thoughts of Man in unsubstantial pictures, in illusions that have no being. They pursue an image of Man; they think they possess it; but in truth there is nothing within their range of sight. ‘The power of the Spirit-Sun shines upon their souls; Christ is at work; but as yet they cannot heed Him. The power of the spiritual Soul is strong in their bodies, but into their souls it still will not enter.’ So may one hear the Inspiration which Michael utters in his dire anxiety. May not this force of Illusion in men give the Dragon so much power after all, that it will be an impossibility for him—for Michael himself—to maintain the balance?

[ 14 ] Other individuals again endeavour with more inwardly artistic power to find the union between Nature and Man. Grandly ring the words of Goethe, when describing in a noble book the work of Winkelmann: “When the powers of Man's nature are at work in whole and healthful unison; when he feels himself in the World as in one grand, fair, worshipful and worthy whole; when the well-being of harmonious attunement fills him with a pure and free delight—then would the Universe, were it conscious of itself, shout with joy at the attainment of its goal, and marvellingly acclaim the crown of its own life and being.” The same impulse which inspired the mind of Lessing with flame of fire, which ensouled the world-wide vision of Herder, rings through these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own creative work is like a universal demonstration on all sides of this saying of his. Schiller in his “letters on Aesthetics' has drawn the picture of an Ideal Man—one (as it rings in the words of Goethe) who bears the whole Universe within himself, and realizes it actually in social co-operation with other men. But where is this Picture of a Man drawn from? It shines like the morning sun over the Spring earth. But it has entered into men's feelings from contemplation of ancient Greek Man. Men cherished the picture with all the strong inner impulse of Michael; but they could find no form to give to this impulse, except by turning their soul's gaze back towards a bygone age. Goethe went, as we know, through the severest conflicts with the Spiritual Soul when he tried inwardly to realize Man. He thought that for the first time he really had a glimpse of him, when on his Italian tour he had his first sight into Greek life and being. He hastened away from the Spiritual Soul, striving forward in Spinoza, to what, in the end, was but the dying embers of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul; only that Goethe succeeds in bringing an endless amount of this latter into the Spiritual Soul, in his all-embracing view of Nature.

[ 15 ] Gravely Michael watches these endeavours too to find Man. He sees something, it is true, that is to his own mind, entering here into the evolution of the human spirit. It is that same Man, who once beheld the life-forms of Intelligent Being, in the times when Michael ruled from the Cosmos without. Yet eventually, if it be not grasped by the spiritualized power of the Spiritual Soul, this too must end by falling from Michael's range of action into the dominion of Lucifer. That Lucifer might gain the ascendancy in the rocking of the cosmic balance—this is the other dire anxiety in Michael's life.

[ 16 ] The preparation for Michael's mission at the end of the nineteenth century roll on in cosmic tragedy. Beneath upon earth, there often reigns the profoundest satisfaction over Man's picture of Nature and its effective working; whilst in the region where Michael is at work there is nothing but tragedy over the obstacles which prevent the true picture of Man from finding its way into life.

[ 17 ] There was a time when in the beams of the sun, in the flush of morning skies, in the sparkling of the stars, there lived the keen, clear spirit-love of Michael. The dominant note this love had now taken, was one of sorrow, aroused on gazing on mankind.

[ 18 ] Michael's position in the Cosmos became one of tragic difficulty, but one that was also urging towards a solution, just at the period preceding his mission upon earth. Men could maintain their power of intellect only in the domain of the body, and there only in the domain of the senses. They accordingly admitted nothing into their range of mental vision, except what their senses told them. Nature became a field of sense-revelation—a revelation quite materially conceived. In Nature and all her forms, men no longer saw the work of divine spirit, but something which has come into existence without spirit, and of which they nevertheless assert that the spiritual life which Man leads is born of it. Of the spirit-world, on the other hand, men would only accept so much as was still told of in the historic records. Any real seeing of the creative spirit in the past was as severely taboo'd, as was the seeing of the spirit in the present.

[ 19 ] All that now remained living in men's souls came from that region of the external present world into which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to be standing upon ‘secure’ ground. He fancied the ground secure because he abstained from looking for any Thoughts in Nature, in which he would at once have suspected the unreliability of a spontaneous fancy. But Michael was not glad. He was obliged to remain on the far side, aloof from men, and carry on the war in his own region against Lucifer and Ahriman. Hence came the great and tragic difficulty; for Lucifer can approach Man all the more easily, the more Michael—who is also the preserver of his past—is obliged to keep away from him. And so a stormy contest was being waged on Man's behalf, in the spiritual world next to earth, by Michael against Lucifer and Ahriman: whilst Man himself on earthly territory was busying his soul in opposition to the healing forces of his own evolution.

[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. For Asia it would be necessary to speak differently.

Leading Thoughts

[ 21 ] In the very first period of the spiritual Soul's evolution Man began to feel that the picture of Mankind, of his own Human Being, which had hitherto come of itself, imaginatively, was now lost to him. Powerless to find it as yet in his Spiritual Soul, he seeks for it along the paths of Natural Science of History. He would like to revive once more within him the old picture of Humanity.

[ 22 ] By this road, men do not come to the real fullness of the human being; they come only to empty illusions. But they do not see this; they look on these as things that give mankind substantiation and support.

[ 23 ] And so Michael, in the time preceding his earthly regency, can only look with anxiety and sorrow upon mankind's evolution. For men condemn spiritual contemplation in any direction, and thereby cut themselves off from everything that makes a bond with Michael.

[ 1 ] As the new Age of Consciousness proceeds, it grows less and less possible for Michael to connect himself with the existence of mankind in general. Intellectuality has become human and is now entering humanity. From it the Imaginative conceptions, which could reveal to man the Divine Being and Intelligence in the Cosmos, are vanishing. The possibility for Michael himself to approach man begins only with the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that time it was only possible by those paths which were sought for in the true Rosicrucian sense.

[ 2 ] With his own budding intellectuality, man looks out into Nature. He sees there a physical and etheric world, in which he himself is not contained. Through the great ideas of men such as Copernicus and Galileo, he attains a picture of the world external to man. But he loses the picture of himself. When he gazes on himself he has no possibility of reaching any insight as to what he truly is.

[ 3 ] In the depths of his being, that which is destined to bear and sustain his intelligence is being awakened in him. With this, his Ego becomes united. Thus man now bears a threefold nature within him: first, in his spirit-and-soul being, manifesting as physical-etheric, that which originated once upon a time, in the old Saturn and Sun epochs, and then ever and again placed him within the kingdom of the Divine-Spiritual. It is here that the Human Being and the Michael Being go together. Secondly, man bears within him his later physical and etheric nature, that which evolved in him during the Moon and Earth epochs. All this is the work and active working of the Divine-Spiritual. But the Divine-Spiritual itself is no longer living and present within it. [ 4 ] It only becomes fully living and present once more when Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which is at work spiritually in the physical and etheric body of man, Christ can indeed be found.

Thirdly, man has within him that part of his soul and spirit which received new being in the Moon and Earth epochs. Here Michael has remained active (whereas in the part of man that is inclined towards the Moon and Earth, he has become more and more inactive.) In the former Michael has preserved, for man, his picture of Man and the Gods together.

[ 5 ] He was able to do this until the dawn of the new age of Consciousness—the age of the Spiritual Soul. Then the spirit and soul of man sank down, as it were, entirely in the physical-etheric nature, in order to draw forth from there the Spiritual Soul.

[ 6 ] Radiantly there arose in the consciousness of man what his physical and his etheric body could tell him about the physical and etheric in the world of Nature. And what his astral body and Ego had been able to tell him about himself vanished away from his vision.

[ 7 ] In the age which now began, there arose in man the feeling that with his own insight he could no longer reach himself. Thus there began a search for knowledge of the human being. Man could no longer find satisfaction for this quest in what the present was able to provide. He went back to earlier ages of history. Humanism arose in the evolution of the spiritual life. Humanism became the object of men's striving, not because they had grasped Man in his essential nature, but because they had lost him. As long as they possessed this knowledge, Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worked from a trend of soul quite different from anything that Humanism could give them.

[ 8 ] In Faust, Goethe discovered at a later time a figure representative of the man who had completely lost hold of his essential being.

[ 9 ] This quest of the human being grows more and more intense as time goes on. For man has now no other alternative: he must either make himself blunt and insensitive as regards his own being, or else the longing for it must come forth as an essential element in his soul's life.

[ 10 ] Right into the nineteenth century, the best minds in the spiritual life of Europe evolve ideas in the most varied fields and in the most different ways—ideas historical, scientific, philosophical, mystical, all of which represent the striving to find, in what has now become an intellectualistic world-conception, the human being himself.

[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual re-birth, humanism, are striving restlessly—even tempestuously—for a spiritual element in a direction in which it is not to be found. And, in the direction in which it should be sought, there is impotence, illusion, bewilderment of consciousness. And yet everywhere—in Art, in Knowledge—the Michael-forces are breaking through into the human being, though not as yet into the newly-growing forces of the Spiritual Soul. It is a critical time for the spiritual life. Michael turns all his forces towards the past in cosmic evolution so that he may gain the power to hold the ‘Dragon’ balanced and constrained beneath his feet. It is under these mighty exertions of Michael that the great creations of the Renaissance are born. Yet they still only represent a renewal by Michael of Intellectual or Mind-Soul forces. They are not yet a working of the new soul-forces.

[ 12 ] We can behold Michael filled with anxiety. Will he really be able to master the ‘Dragon’ in the long run? He perceives human beings in one region trying to gain a picture of Man out of the newly-acquired picture of Nature. He sees how they observe Nature and then seek to form a picture of Man from what they call the ‘Laws of Nature.’ He sees them forming their conceptions:—‘This animal quality becomes more perfect, that system of organs more harmonious, and man “arises”!’ But before the spirit-gaze of Michael man does not arise. For in effect, what is thus thought of as being harmonised, perfected, is there only in thought. No one can see it evolving in reality, for nowhere does this happen in actual fact.

[ 13 ] And so, with these their conceptions about Man, men live in empty pictures, in illusions. They are forever running after a picture of Man which they only imagine that they have, while in real truth there is nothing in their field of vision. ‘The power of the spiritual Sun shines upon their souls. Christ Himself is working; but they are not yet able to perceive His presence. The power of the Spiritual Soul holds sway in the body; but it still will not enter into their souls.’ That is approximately the inspiration one can hear of what Michael says in great anxiety. Is it possible that the forces of illusion in man will give the ‘Dragon’ so much power that it will be impossible for Michael to maintain the balance?

[ 14 ] Other persons try with more inward artistic power to feel Nature at one with man. Mighty are the words in which Goethe described Winkelmann's work in a beautiful book: ‘When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole, when harmonious case gives him pure, free delight; then would the Universe, if it were conscious of itself, shout aloud for joy, as having reached its goal, and marvel at the climax of its own development and being.’ That which stimulated Lessing with fiery spirit and ensouled Herder's wide outlook on the world, rings out in these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own work is like a many-sided revelation of these his own words. In his ‘Aesthetic Letters’, Schiller has described an ideal human being who, in the sense described in the above words, bears the Universe within himself and realises it in social intercourse with other human beings. But whence comes this picture of Man? It shines like the morning sun over the Earth in spring. But it has entered into human feeling from study of the ancient Greeks. It arose in men with a strong inward Michael-impulse; but they could give form to this impulse only by turning the mind's eye to days of yore. When Goethe wished to experience ‘Man,’ he felt himself in the greatest conflict with the Spiritual Soul. He sought for Man in Spinoza's philosophy; but only during his tour in Italy, when he studied the nature of Greek art, did he feel that he had a glimpse of him. He went away finally from the Spiritual Soul, which is striving upwards in Spinoza, to the Intellectual Soul or Mind-Soul which was gradually dying out. However, with his far-reaching conception of Nature he was able to carry over an infinite amount from the Intellectual Soul into the Spiritual Soul.

[ 15 ] Michael also looks with earnestness upon this search for Man. What is in accordance with his idea is indeed entering here into the spiritual evolution of man:—it is that human being who once beheld the Divine Being and Intelligence when Michael still ruled it from the Cosmos. But if this were not laid hold of by the spiritualised force of the Spiritual Soul it would in the end inevitably slip away from Michael's control and come under the sway of Lucifer. The other great anxiety in Michael's life is, lest in the oscillation of the cosmic spiritual state of balance Lucifer might gain the upper hand.

[ 16 ] Michael's preparation of his Mission for the end of the nineteenth century flows on in cosmic tragedy. Below, on the Earth, there is often the greatest satisfaction in the working out of the new picture of Nature; whereas in the region where Michael works there is a tragic feeling regarding the hindrances to the coming of the picture of Man.

[ 17 ] Formerly Michael's austere, spiritualised love lived in the sun's rays, in the shimmering dawn, in the sparkling of the stars; this love had now acquired most strongly the note of looking down at humanity with awakening sorrow.

[ 18 ] Michael's situation in the Cosmos became tragically difficult, but it also pressed for a solution just at the period of time which preceded his earthly mission. Men were able to keep intellectuality only in the sphere of the body and there only in the sphere of the senses. On one hand, therefore, they received into their views nothing that the senses did not tell them; Nature became the field of the revelations of the senses, considered quite materially. The forms of Nature were no longer perceived as the work of the Divine-Spiritual but as something devoid of spirit, and yet something of which it is affirmed that it brings forth that spiritual element in which man lives. On the other hand, as regards a Spirit-world, men would now accept only what the historical accounts narrated. Direct vision of the Spirit working in the past was discredited, as was the vision of the Spirit in the present.

[ 19 ] In the soul of man there now lived only that which came from the sphere of the present, which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to stand on ‘sure’ ground. He believed he possessed this because in ‘Nature’ he sought no thoughts, in which he might have had to fear the presence of arbitrary fancies. But Michael was not glad. In his own sphere, beyond man, he had to wage war with Lucifer and Ahriman. This resulted in tragic difficulty, because Lucifer is able to approach man the more easily, the more Michael—who indeed also preserves the past—is obliged to keep himself away from man. And thus a severe battle for man took place between Michael and Ahriman and Lucifer in the spiritual world immediately bordering upon the Earth, while on the Earth itself man kept his soul in action against what was beneficial to his evolution.

[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. We should have to speak differently with respect to that of Asia.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the above Third Study: Michael's suffering over Human Evolution before the Time of his earthly Activity)

[ 21 ] 134. In the very earliest time of the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, man began to feel that he had lost the picture of Humanity—the picture of his own Being—which had formerly been given to him in Imagination. Powerless as yet to find it in the Spiritual Soul, he sought for it by way of Natural Science or of History. He wanted the ancient picture of Humanity to arise in him again.

[ 22 ] 135. Man reaches no fulfilment in this way. Far from becoming filled with the true being of Humanity, he is only led into illusions. But he is unaware that they are so; he thinks they have real power to sustain Humanity.

[ 23 ] 136. Thus, in the time that went before his working upon Earth, Michael had to witness with anxiety and suffering the evolution of mankind. For in this time men eschewed any real contemplation of the Spirit, and thus they severed all the links that connected them with Michael.

The different incarnations of the human individuality are a kind of swinging of the pendulum to and fro until the rhythm is brought to rest and the higher part of man has found in the physical a fitting expression, a suitable instrument. Approximately ever since human beings have reincarnated, the position of sun, moon and earth has existed as it is now. We must understand that man belongs to the great cosmic organism. In the times in which great changes take place in the life of humanity, mighty changes also occur in the cosmos. Earlier than this, before there was reincarnation, sun, moon and earth were not yet separated as now. Kant and Laplace made their observation from the physical plane only, and to this extent their theory is quite correct, but they did not know the connection with spiritual forces. When out of the primal fire-vapour sun, moon and earth came into existence as separate bodies, man also began to incarnate. When human incarnations will have come to an end, the sun also will be re-united with the earth. On the large scale as in the single details, one must bear in mind these relationships of man to the universe.

You will often have heard that man usually incarnates after a period of about two thousand years. One can investigate when people who are alive today had their earlier incarnation. The souls who are now incarnated, one finds as a rule about 300 to 400 years after the birth of Christ. In addition, however, one finds others who are incarnated at various times, some earlier, some later. But there is another way to determine incarnations, a way which leads more certainly to the goal. One can say: Were the human beings who die today to return in a short time they would meet almost the same conditions as now. But man ought to learn as much as possible on the Earth. This can only happen when in the next incarnation he finds something new which is essentially different from the earlier conditions.

Let us for instance imagine ourselves back into the time about 600 to 800 years before Christ; that is about the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey. With the advanced peoples of that time the conditions of life were quite different from what they are now. One would for instance be astonished to see with what curious implements people ate. At that time also people had not yet learnt to write. The great poems were transmitted by word of mouth. When a person of those times is reincarnated today he must as a child learn quite other things. As a child he must learn to write. The stream of culture has meanwhile progressed. One must distinguish between the stream of culture and the development of the individual soul. As a child one must catch up with the civilisation and for this reason one must be born again as a child.

Now we must ask: What causes such utterly different conditions on earth? This is connected with the progression of the spring equinox. About 800 years before Christ the sun in spring entered the constellation of Aries, of the Ram. Every year at the vernal point it shifts a little. Because of this the conditions on the earth are always slightly changing. Eight hundred years before Christ the sun stood in the constellation of Aries. Earlier it stood in the constellation of Taurus, still earlier in Gemini and still earlier in Cancer. Now already for some hundred of years it rises in the constellation of Pisces. After this comes Aquarius. The advance of civilisations is also connected with the progression of the sun from one constellation to the other.

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At the time when the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer the ancient Vedic culture of the Indians, the culture of the Rishis reached its highest point. The Rishis, those still half-divine beings, were the teachers of men. The Atlantean civilisation had met its destruction; a new impulse broke in. In occultism this is called a ‘vortex’ (wirbel). This is also why, in the age in which the sun stood in the constellation of Cancer, the sign was made in this way:

Cancer signifies a breaking in of something new, a ‘vortex’ (a double spiral).

The second cultural epoch is named the constellation of the Twins. At that time the dual nature of the world was understood, the opposing forces of the world, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil. Thus the Persians also speak of the Twins.

The third cultural epoch is that of the Sumerians in Asia Minor and of the Egyptians. The constellation of the Bull corresponds to this epoch. This is why in Asia the Bull was venerated and in Egypt, Apis. At that time in Babylon and Assyria the Sumerian language was the language of wisdom. Then the Bull fell into decadence and the Ram came into the ascendant. The first indication of this is the Saga of the Golden Fleece.

The fourth culture is that of the Ram, or Lamb; Christ stands in the sign of the Ram, or Lamb; hence he calls himself the Lamb of God.

As fifth culture the external materialistic civilisation follows, in the constellation of the Fishes. This developed principally from the 12th century onwards and reached its climax about the year 1800. This is the culture of the Fifth sub-race, the present time.

In the constellation of the Water-Man in the future, the new Christianity will be proclaimed. ‘Water-Man’ is also the one who will bring it, he who has already been here: John the Baptist. Later he will again be the forerunner of Christ, when the Sixth, the spiritual sub-race will be founded. The Theosophical Movement should be the preparation for that time.

In the New Testament the expression ‘on the mountain’ is used on various occasions. ‘On the mountain’ means: in the mystery, in the innermost, in the intimate. Even the Sermon on the Mount is not to be understood as a sermon for the people, but as an intimate teaching for the disciples. The Transfiguration on the Mountain has also to be understood in this sense. Jesus went up into the mountain with the three disciples, Peter, James and John. There, we are told, the disciples were caught up out of themselves; then Moses and Elias appeared on either side of Jesus. For a moment space and time were extinguished and the disciples found themselves with their consciousness on the mental plane. Those who were no longer physically present, Moses and Elias, appeared. In direct revelation they had before them: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ The way = Elias, Moses = the truth, Christ = the life. This appeared here to the disciples in actual form. Jesus once said to them: ‘Elias has come again;²⁹ John was Elias, he has only not been recognised.’ But he said further: ‘Tell it to no man until I come again.’ Christianity was not to teach reincarnation for two thousand years, not for any arbitrary reason, but on educational grounds. People were to know nothing of it for two thousand years. In the gospel of St. John there is an indication of this in the miracle of the wedding at Cana where water is turned into wine. In the old Mysteries only water was distributed, but in the Christian Mysteries wine. For in the priesthood, through the partaking of wine, knowledge of reincarnation was blotted out. Whoever partakes of wine cannot attain to any true knowledge of Manas, Buddhi and Atma. He can never comprehend reincarnation. By his coming again Christ means his reappearance in the Sixth sub-race when he will be proclaimed by the ‘Water-Man’. Theosophy actually carries out the testament of Christianity and works towards this epoch of time.

Every time the sun progresses from one sign of the Zodiac to another incisive changes take place in civilisation. In between there elapses a period of about two thousand six hundred years.³⁰ If we take the moment of time when the sun entered the sign of the Ram or Lamb, about 800 years before Christ and 1800 years after Christ, then we have two thousand six hundred years. About the year 1800 we entered the sign of the Fishes. This is the time when materialistic culture reached its highest point. It was prepared for in the Middle Ages and has now begun to decline. About the year 4,400 mankind enters the sign of spiritual culture, that of the Water-Man. Preparation has also to be made for this.

Thus conditions change also with the constellation. With the progression from one sign to another new conditions also arise, so that rebirth has meaning. The human being is reborn approximately every two thousand six hundred years, but the experiences he makes as man and as woman are so radically different that two such incarnations, as man and as woman, are reckoned as one. About one thousand three hundred years elapse between two incarnations as man or as woman, and about two thousand six hundred years between such double incarnations if one reckons both as one. The human being is only man or woman in regard to the physical body. When the physical body is masculine the etheric body is feminine; and vice versa, when the physical body is feminine the etheric body is masculine. Only the astral body is at the same time masculine and feminine. The human being bears within him the opposite sex as etheric body. Thus in the etheric the man is feminine and in the etheric the woman masculine. The physical woman has therefore many concealed masculine qualities; the physical incarnation is present only exoterically. The human being therefore goes through a constellation every time as man and as woman. This is why the Master said to Sinnett that the human being is incarnated about twice in a sub-race. Occultly both incarnations are reckoned together as one. There must come a time in which the woman actually approaches the culture dominated by the man. The present woman's movement is to be recognized as the preparation for another later and quite different woman's movement. In the future, sex differentiation will be totally overcome.

There was a special reason why, for about two thousand years, the teaching of reincarnation was completely suppressed. The human being was to learn to know and value the importance of the one life. Every slave in Ancient Egypt was still convinced of the fact that he would return, that one day he would be master instead of slave, but that he had to pay his karmic debts. The single life was therefore not so important to him. But the lesson people now had to learn was to gain firm ground under their feet; thus during one life, reincarnation was to remain unknown. Christ therefore expressly forbade any teaching about reincarnation. But from 800 years before Christ until about 1800 years after Christ, the time had elapsed during which nearly everyone had gone through the one life without experiencing anything of reincarnation. The great Masters³¹ have the task not always to impart the whole truth at any one time, but only that part needed by man. This withholding of the consciousness of reincarnation came to poetic expression in this epoch in Dante's Divine Comedy. In monastic esotericism on the other hand, reincarnation was definitely taught when the occasion arose. The Trappists³² had to remain silent throughout one incarnation, so that in the next they might become eloquent speakers. They were intentionally trained in this way to become eloquent speakers, for of these the Church can make good use. When St. Augustine put forward the doctrine of predestination he was entirely consistent.³³ Because in the age of materialism reincarnation was not to be taught, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination had to make its appearance. Only in this way could the differences in people's circumstances be explained.

Connected with this is the deeply materialistic character of traditional Christianity, which lies in the fact that the Beyond is made dependent on one physical existence. This materialistic teaching of Christianity has, so to say, borne its fruit. Today there is no longer any consciousness of the Beyond. Social democracy is the ultimate consequence of traditional Christianity. But now a new impulse must come into the world. When one epoch comes to an end something new breaks in. Christianity worked towards the gradual dawning of the materialistic age. In order to bring about the materialistic civilisation, human beings for a period of one thousand three hundred years had to have such a teaching as was brought by Christianity; namely, that man should make the whole of eternity dependent upon one earthly life. Urban bourgeoisie then became the actual founder of the age of materialism. Already at the time of Christ the spiritual had to be betrayed by the purely material. Judas Iscariot had to betray Christ. One can however say: had there been no Judas there would also have been no Christianity. Judas is the first to attach prime importance to money, that is to say, to materialism. In Judas was incarnated the entire materialistic age. This materialistic age has obscured and darkened the spiritual. Through his death Christ becomes the Redeemer of materialism.

• 29. Matthew, Chapter 17. 12 – 13
• 30. Later Rudolf Steiner indicated these epochs more precisely. According to this the point at which the sun rises on the vernal equinox moves backwards through the 12 constellations of the Zodiac in 12 x 2160 = 25,920 years—the Platonic World Year—generally speaking, re-embodiments are connected with these epochs of 2160 years (though there are exceptions). See: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being (Typescript) 20.25.28.7.1923
• 31. According to Rudolf Steiner these are beings of great significance for the evolution of mankind. ‘These lofty beings have already left behind them the path that the rest of mankind has yet to tread. They work now as the great Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling.’ (Letter to a member 2.1.1905.) See also lecture 13.10.1904.
• 32. Order founded in 1140 in the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe in France. The reform in 1665 imposed strict ascetic practices and silence.
• 33. The teaching of God's eternal decree which results in only a part of humanity being chosen for salvation while the other part is doomed to perdition. Compare lecture 7.10.1917 ‘The Crumbling of the Earth and the Souls and Bodies of Men’ Anthroposophical Quarterly Volume 19 No. 1.

A few weeks ago, I spoke about the principle of Lucifer and his significance in the world. Today, we will discuss the principle in connection with the drama of the same name by Edouard Schuré. I do not want to talk about the work of art itself.

In this work of art, we have something that few works of art have; for it arose out of the theosophical view. Schur took his material from events and occurrences of the fourth century AD and thus artistically shaped the two great currents of human development.

Today I want to talk about the two currents, about what one might call the Luciferic principle and which deals with the deification of man, in contrast to the other principle, the humanization of God, or of the gods. In fact, such two currents meet in man.

In the mysteries, these greatest secrets of world events were spiritually depicted; the passage of God through all the kingdoms of nature, until finally up to man – and the ascent of man through the physical and astral nature up to deification. Edouard Schur€ shows how these two currents crossed.

For us, the most important thing is the so-called Fall of Man, the expulsion from paradise. Today we want to talk freely about this event in the development of man. You know that man has a series of embodiments behind and in front of him. Everything that is and lives on earth is subject to the same law of embodiment; so are the great beings we call planets. The earth was also in a different planetary state in the past; it too has planetary ancestors. The purpose of such transformations is for these beings to ascend to higher levels: humans, animals, plants, and minerals existed earlier, but in a lower form. It would be an incomplete view to assume that the ascending series ends with humans. Huxley says, “When you look at the truths this way, there is nothing to prevent perfection from passing through humans and ascending to God.”

Occultism says about the development of man on the earlier planets: Man was not yet man there; there were other beings. And when the earth merges into another planet, then the present man will stand spiritually as high as those beings, and other beings will stand below him. The predecessors of humanity had a very different form and different activity. Like them, even if not exactly the same in spirit, man will develop.

These beings now also appear in the biblical creation story as Elohim or spirits of light. These beings rose from humans to gods as the former planet progressed. In the next stage, humans become Elohim. The Bible contains theosophical truths. If we want to understand the task that fell to these Elohim, we must first realize that there are initially three types of activity. The first is to perceive, the second to live, and the third to create. Every being must pass through these three stages. The Elohim first attained the stage of life and then proceeded to creation. Man was initially in the stage of beholding, then he came to life, and in a later stage he will create. “In the beginning God created man and blew into him the living breath. Then man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) One of the seven Elohim is Yahweh or Jehovah. His task was to create at the beginning of the earth. We say: Man originated in the third root race, but the present man is quite unlike the Lemurian primeval man.

The mainland of Lemuria was interspersed with mighty masses of fire and perished at that time due to volcanic upheavals. The air circle was not only a mass of water, but filled with substances that had not yet settled.

The land that emerged later, Atlantis, was submerged by floods. With it perished the fourth root race.

The civilization of the fifth root race is spread over Europe, Asia and Africa.

What happened at the beginning of the physical sex? What came over from the earlier planet?

First, the highest humans. And then, between the present-day animal and man, there was a human animal, such as no longer exists today. In the ancient Lemurian times, however, these animals did not walk around, for they were semi-ethereal beings with a touch of matter. Like a breath, they swept over the earth's surface. Opposite them was a sequence of physical beings, very different from minerals, plants and animals; but the latter developed from them. The physical part of the three realms was formed from the earlier planet, and the individuals who were able to evolve were able to lay the foundation and the basis for further development into human beings. This is expressed in the Mosaic creation story with the words: “And God formed man out of the dust of the ground.” (Genesis 2:7)

How did this transformation take place? It was the work of the creative Elohim. These spirits of light transformed the earlier creation; their work was directed towards man, they did not need to create the soul. For that came down from the earlier world as a breath. Thus, in the highest beings of the Lemurian period, there lived a physical being that stood higher than its predecessors on the earlier planet. These beings were tripartite. They had a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. In the new human being, the “I” now also worked and helped to build the physical body. Thus, the new human being had four parts, and the fact that he became “I” was the work of the spirits of light.

This fourfold nature is considered the most important mystery. The threefold nature is being transformed into the fourfold. If you can visualize these structures, you will understand the dual nature of man: the outer shell and the divine. The seven Elohim work here, and Jehovah has the task of transforming the dual-sex nature into a single-sex one. Thus, male and female sex only came into being on Earth. With the creation of Jehovah, with the creation of the single-sex human beings, humanity on earth begins to receive its true task. The earlier planet was the planet of wisdom, the earth is the planet of love, and the attraction of the sexes is the lowest degree of love. What is love today was wisdom in the past. Every part of the human body, when we examine it, the brain, the sense organs, whatever it is, gives us the impression of wise arrangement. This is because man has gone through the world of wisdom. The planet at that time was pulsating with wisdom, the present one is pulsating with love. Every planet has its task. With this love, man was given not only the relationship between the sexes, but all, all the newly acquired earthly goods that man has.

To indicate what the result of this newly emerging love was in ancient times, let us follow man from the point where the dual sex begins. In those days there were small communities of people descended from one couple. Blood relatives married each other. And consanguinity is the only reason that love remains in the same blood, beyond man and woman. Only later did long-distance marriage occur instead of close marriage. This relationship of love as blood relationship can be traced back to the time of ancient Judaism. National love is implanted in sex love. The Jews form one big family, as it were. Jehovah implanted what was inherited; the Jehovah principle is inheritance, and inherited love is connected with that.

We know that in ancient times, blood relatives had a very different memory. Such a person remembered the experiences of previous generations. Personal memory arose from family memory. Adam, Cain, Seth denote a continuous memory. Everything connected with this memory is called the Jehovah Principle. All truth, wisdom, knowledge is connected with it. What man today regards as a phrase was then truth.

I would like to quote a conversation between Rosegger and Anzengruber here. In Rosegger's work, the peasant figures are all carefully studied, and you can feel it in them; in Anzengruber's work, they come to life before us. Rosegger noticed this and said to Anzengruber: “It would be better for you to look at farmers.” Anzengruber replied: “I have never looked at a farmer; but my ancestors were farmers, and that is in the blood!” Such is the last remnant of something that used to be common. It was not just poetic creation, but a way of looking at things. One did not just see the ancestors, one saw the process of the earth itself. What is present as ancient wisdom is not written down in any other way; it is in the blood. Only Rosicrucian theosophy approaches it differently. This is how man has become, how wisdom and love have been implanted in his blood; it “arises” from the love of the two sexes, to use Jakob Böhme's expression. There is an intermediate stage between human beings and those Elohim. In everyday language, I compared it to a student being held back in a school class. Thus, some of the Elohim remained on the planet that preceded the Earth. These are the luciferic spirits, with Lucifer as their leader or most outstanding one. So, above man are Elohim and the retarded. The latter must now make up for what they have missed. What kind of beings are they? A complete being has developed its seven basic parts. A human being has not yet fully developed them. Man, with his four-part entity, is on the way to developing the seven basic parts. The luciferic entities had not developed an Atma; most of them only came to the development of Budhi, the spirit of life. This makes them superior to man, but inferior to the Elohims. The beings that achieved Budhi were in the Venus state. Venus was the sixth basic part or Budhi. They did not fully develop on the planet of wisdom and did not achieve creative love. They could create in the outer wisdom: art, science, but not in what man creates within. The Jehovah principle creates within: love, community, states; everything that works on the outside, such as art and science, has been handed down from the previous planet and works like a second principle. That is why this appears as a kind of enemy. While the Jehovah principle seeks to uplift us to love, this one to wisdom. It makes the ego a wise being. On the previous planet, wisdom had not yet been implanted as an ego, because the ego had not yet been developed. There was no selfish wisdom.

Wisdom and love are two great currents that have been at work as forces within the process of becoming a human being. Then the striving for freedom intruded. The Luciferic principle does not have the struggle for existence as its goal; war is not the purpose; the purpose is freedom, independence, science, knowledge. A change in the interaction of these two principles occurred with the appearance of Christ Jesus. Then a completely new impulse was given to the development of the earth. An ancient saying goes: “Whoever does not leave wife and brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29) Love, linked to blood relationship, must extend to larger communities. Through Jesus Christ, all barriers must cease, and the beginning must be made to love everyone. The Christ principle must be extended to all of humanity, and love must be purified to the highest degree. What began in weakness in the lower sexual instinct could be transformed into love for humanity. And only with that did the Earth become the planet of love. What was grounded in the Jehovah principle was raised to the highest level by the son principle, and from that point on the possibility was gained of contrasting strong love with wisdom.

Since the Christ Principle has been active on Earth, Christ and Lucifer have been standing opposite each other as two poles. The Christ Principle has internalized love and made it the essence of the soul. In the first centuries of Christianity, Hellenism, Greek culture, brought the outer world to its highest level. Whether in sculpture, drama, or the political state, everything the Greeks created was a one-sided external representation of the Jehovah principle.

How did this Greek way of life develop? What happened? Plato was called an Attic Greek-speaking Moses. Plato gave a solid form to the formless ideas of the initiated Moses. If we are broad-minded enough to understand them, wisdom and love breathe towards us in Hellenic culture and present themselves in the god Dionysus. The divine that appears to us has split into individual works of art. Spirit has become form in the Dionysian Greek culture. If the Hellene has become entirely the body of culture, then love in Christ has become entirely the soul of culture. The spirit in the body and in the soul that is inward, occultism represents: female = the soul, male = the body, which is permeated by the spirit. The body filled with spirit is opposed to the soul.

Schuré contrasts Phosphoros, the representative of the Hellenic spirit, the wisdom that creates the outer form, with Kleonis, the Christian soul, which is entirely based on the theosophical spirit.

In all great poetry, the aim is to depict human development, and it is an achievement that we are once again seeing the creation of works of art that have arisen from a theosophical spirit.

In ancient times, there were children of God who proclaimed revelations inherited from above. There were also children of Lucifer who presented themselves as fire spirits and were the teachers of wisdom.

And Jehovah implanted love in them until they matured into the Christ-principle, into a wisdom that can generate love at the same time, and a love that can generate wisdom at the same time. Then the children of God and the children of Lucifer will meet, then the two currents will merge into one. This happens in Christ: He is God become man and man become God.

When the Christian virgin Kleonis united with the pagan spirit Phosphoros, love and wisdom united. The struggle between love and wisdom was present. But when the children of Lucifer and the children of God unite, the medieval idea that the children of Lucifer are opponents of God will fade away. But with that, the great mission of man on earth will be fulfilled.

I. Excerpt from a Dutch brochure

The above was the title of a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Amsterdam on Thursday evening in the “Van het Nut” building.

The speaker, introduced to his audience as the General Secretary (Chairman) of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, began by describing the concept of Theosophy. Theosophy wants to be a movement to deepen our spiritual life. And it is fair to say that Theosophy in our time represents what we perceive as a great movement in the whole cultural world.

The speaker then points out the growing internationalism and the continued disappearance of the walls between people and people, between nations and nations, over the centuries. In the material field, we see the banker, the industrialist, the merchant playing an important role here. But all of this as material phenomena are consequences of the existence of common ideas, the internationalization of ideas.

What we saw in earlier centuries (and even now) in the religious sphere, dividing one person from another and one people from another, is magnificently bridged by Theosophy, and this is only possible because the theosophical spiritual current extends to the deepest foundations of spiritual life.

It is not the theosophical attitude that says, “How is it possible that we have come so wonderfully far,” and looks back with a certain pity at the old “childlike” beliefs.

We in Theosophy have completely turned away from the delusion that we can look down on what humanity has achieved in earlier times.

In order to show the relationship between Goethe, the poet, and Hegel, the philosopher, and the theosophical view of life, the speaker will present the latter in a few basic principles:

The first principle is that this visible world is based on an invisible world; secondly, that man can get to know a supersensible world behind the sensual world. But: the supersensible world cannot be reached with ordinary sensual perception. Theosophy is not concerned with magic, with superstition, with falling back into old fantasies. The one who perceives not only the facts of the material world, but also the spiritual causes of it, becomes aware of a higher faculty within himself.

Dr. Steiner then gives a favorite example of a person who was born blind and underwent an operation. A world of perception opens up for him. An infinity of light and color flows into his eye that now sees, of which the person previously had no concept and could not form an idea. As a citizen of the lower nature kingdoms through his lower nature, the human being belongs on the other hand through his higher nature to the realm of the higher worlds, from which his being is built. And so the human being stands with his inner being between two realms.

Now we see the life of the individual human being playing out externally between birth and death, and we see how he becomes richer and richer in experience through the perception of the external world. And we ask ourselves: What is it and where is it that the human being has taken in during all this time? What we have absorbed is transformed by death into a seed for a different development. The sum of our life experiences has reached our soul, and at the moment of death the fruit of life presents itself as a seed. In a new life, in a new embodiment, the seed unfolds. We can perceive this in the development of a person from the moment of birth.

What we perceive cannot be explained by this one life alone. Just as the plant germ leads us to an earlier plant, so this spiritual soul germ leads us to an earlier spiritual life. This is what is usually called reincarnation.

Each life enriches the soul with the fruits of life, and each life the person enters richer: Everything we have within us, we have acquired in previous lives. And we also know that the thoughts living in this world are the fruit of earlier human development. But we see that both the old fairy tales and myths and what we currently call our science are only forms of human development – and that we will later achieve other and higher forms of this development.

When we survey all this, we are able to build a bridge to the poet Goethe and to the philosopher Hegel. From the very beginning, we find a basis for theosophical feelings in the whole being of Goethe. Even as a boy, Goethe was trying to find his own divine spiritual nature through his spiritual experiences.

The seven-year-old boy cannot recognize the external religious forms of his time as his own, so he builds himself an altar on a lectern and places stones and plants from his father's geological collection on it: natural products that he perceives as expressions of divine life. And then he wants to light a sacrificial fire, and he lets the first rays of the rising sun fall through a burning glass and ignite the sacrificial candle on the altar he has erected himself.

As an artist, too, he seeks nothing but the great life of the supersensible world, for example on his Italian travels. He also says that art is the most worthy interpreter of the spiritual world. One should also look at his letters to Winckelmann, where he describes his view that everything that exists in nature in terms of order, harmony and measure is reflected in man, where it exults to the highest peak of perfection.

Schiller writes to Goethe: “Dearest friend, I have been watching the course of your spirit for a long time, albeit from afar.” — “You are taking a difficult path, but you will surely find it... etc. From the very beginning, Goethe feels that he was born out of the spiritual-cosmic nature.

That Goethe recognized the spiritual in man is shown not only by a poem from the 1790s, “The Mysteries,” in which he speaks of the Rosicrucian symbol: the black cross with the red roses; he gives his creed even more beautifully in the fairy tale of the beautiful lily and the green snake and in his Faust poem. The speaker refers to Goethe's letters to Eckermann, where he says that his Faust can be viewed from two perspectives: firstly, it is something for people in the theater, but then there is also something in it for the initiate who sees the spiritual life behind the sensual life of man. Those who do not have that, the dying and becoming, remain only a dull guest on this dark earth.

Then the speaker points out other things that are so well known to most people, but understood by so few, and certainly not by most commentators on Goethe: in the prologue, where Goethe speaks of the “harmony of the spheres” and the heavenly choirs; in the reappearance of the figure of Helen in the second part, Helen who had already died; and finally on the homunculus, with which he wants to imply nothing other than that which is human, from embodiment to embodiment: the soul: He was all too happy to be embodied.

The speaker is briefer with regard to Hegel, namely because of the already advanced time of the assembly. Hegel is a contemporary and in many respects the student of Goethe. He understood everything about Goethe, except for the theosophical basis. Hegel shows how far one can come who does not know the above-mentioned foundations of Theosophy.

Take a glass of water: you can only draw water from it if it is in it. And man can only draw wisdom from a world that is itself built of wisdom. Hegel strove to prove this.

Hegel recognizes the world of ideas as a coherent spiritual world, independent of nature, and he calls this world pure logic. For Hegel, “logos” has the meaning of: the great original plan of the world, the sum of the ideas that underlie this world.

The speaker then points out the well-known systematics of Hegel and follows how he speaks of the three sides of the ideas: - the idea in itself - the idea in nature, spread out in space and time, where it will become self-aware, descending into different forms, to humans and further - then the idea, returning to its own pure essence, having become self-aware.

But, says the speaker, Hegel carries within himself all the limitations of his time. We must not see the philosophical lines alone, nor consider the “world of ideas” as something absolute. (The speaker seemed to mean: not as a concrete thing).

For Hegel, the scientific view of the world had become an absolute, and one always has the feeling that Hegel means that when man has grasped the world of ideas, humanity has come to its end. Hegel knew nothing of the infinity of forms through which the world of ideas gradually becomes conscious in successive lives, and that man must learn the logos of feeling as well as the logos of idea to live and experience. From Hegel's philosophy, a kind of materialism emerged.

[After speaking] tirelessly for almost two full hours with great mental strength, this extraordinary speaker concluded his lecture with the apt words of Goethe:

If the eye were not solar,
how could the sun delight us?
If the soul were not divine,
how could the divine delight us!

II. Report in the “Algemeen Handelsblad” of March 7, 1908

Theosophy, Goethe and Hegel.

The above topic was discussed yesterday evening at the 'Nutsgebouw' in a large public meeting convened by the Dutch Section of the Theosophical Society, with Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Secretary General of the German Section, as the speaker.

The speaker – an interesting figure: a sharply defined, ascetic thinker with deep, sparkling black eyes and long, matt black hair swept back; on top of that, a talented speaker – began his talk with a summary of the essence of Theosophy and its teachings.

He spoke of the possibility, so familiar and encouraging to those who have immersed themselves in theosophical ideas, but still so shocking, imposing, not to say fearsome, for novices, that man outgrows the physical, sensually perceptible world that surrounds him directly and moves and develops on a supersensible level of existence, thus elevating itself above itself; the possibility that man, not through magic or with the help of all kinds of superstition, but by cultivating the faculties of the soul that lie dormant within him, seeks and finds the spiritual foundations on which his sensual existence is based.

Dr. Steiner went on to speak of the doctrine of reincarnation, according to which the human soul, gathering life experience in a series of lives, grows in abilities, faculties and aspects, unfolding again and again in a new life as an effect, a consequence, a result of previous lives, and then, enriched by new experience, moving back to a state of condensation and concentration to finally fight his way up from the world of unconscious feeling, from which it was born, through the world of ideas or conscious feeling, to that world plan where the unity of knowledge and will will be born from the consciousness of ideas and the human soul will return to the eternal-spiritual core of existence from which the universe emerged.

The boy Goethe was already aware of this eternal spiritual core of existence. He built himself an altar of plants and minerals to glorify all creation, and he lit the incense candle on it in the sun, the eternal greatest manifestation of the eternal God.

Having also reached male puberty, he did not stop searching for the transcendental foundations of all that exists. Traveling in Italy and admiring ancient art treasures, he wrote to his friends in Weimar about his discovery of the “necessity of creativity-God”.

And also: “I suspect that the ancient Greeks created a work of art according to the same laws by which nature also performs its creative work, laws [that] I am on the trail of.”

And later, still in his work on Winckelmann, he wrote: “Everything that nature possesses in terms of order, harmony and measure is summarized in man.

Other great fundamental ideas on which Theosophy is based also dominated Goethe and are expressed in his works.

Thus, his unfinished work “The Mysteries,” dating from 1780, is an apt summary of theosophical ideas, where the doctrine of reincarnation is recognized in this beautiful image: “From the mouth of this pilgrim flows wisdom, as from a child's lips.

And again, in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, but especially in the second part of “Faust,” we find recognition of this teaching and other apt interpretations of Goethe's theosophical ideas.

Without going into detail, we could not follow the speaker in his quotations. We will just mention his surprising explanation of the enigmatic “homunculus figure” from the second part of Faust as a human soul on the path to reincarnation.

Dr. Steiner also sensed the great fundamental thoughts of the world that Goethe had “secreted into the poem” in Hegel's philosophy. He too recognized God, the Logos — this word traced back to its original meaning — in the “original idea of the world”. He saw the sum of ideas underlying the sensually perceptible existence, which thus becomes an image of the “spirit in itself”. And in the isolated subjective spirit of the human being, Hegel saw and honored the macrocosm reflected as microcosm.

But Hegel's absolutism, born of the worldview limitations of his time, prevented him from going further. The continuous development of the human soul as a microcosm until unity with the cosmic core is achieved is not recognized by him. But this does not detract from the greatness – now mostly misunderstood greatness of his basic idea, which was purely theosophical, like Goethe's when he wrote:

If eyes did not see the sun,
How could light delight us then.
If in us were no God's power,
How could divinity delight us then.

With this quotation Dr. Steiner ended his lecture, which was listened to with great interest by the numerous audience of ladies and gentlemen.

It seems well that on resuming our activities in the Berlin Group we should look back for a little at what has passed through our souls since our work began at this time last year.

You will remember that about a year ago on the occasion of the General Conference of the German Section, I lectured on the “Sphere of the Bodhisattvas.” With this lecture we introduced to the world a subject that principally occupied us in our Group-meetings, throughout the following Winter our studies were associated with the Christ-problem, more especially in its connection with the Gospel of Matthew. We have carried these studies further in many ways, particularly in connection with the Gospels of John and of Luke, and when dealing with them we indicated that at some future date we hoped to go more deeply into this Christ-problem in a course of lectures to be associated mainly with the Gospel of Mark.

These studies of the Christ-problem did not consist merely in giving explanations of the Gospels. We spoke most fully, most radically, of what Spiritual Science had to say concerning the events that took place in Palestine. It has to be explained that there are no external, historical records dealing with these events. What is of the deepest importance in the accounts of the Event of Christ is not found in any book or record, but it stands in the eternal spiritual records, and can be deciphered by clairvoyant consciousness in the Akashic Chronicle. We have often made known to you what has been revealed to us there. Our position towards the Gospels is this: we make known what spiritual investigation tells us, and then we compare this with the events related in the Gospels or in other parts of the New Testament. In every case we found that we first learnt to read these documents aright, because before reading them we had penetrated to the secrets connected with the Events of Palestine; that it is precisely because we had investigated these events without having been prejudiced through having previously read any records concerning them, that our appreciation, I may say our reverence, for them was so greatly enhanced.

When we look not only to the nearest, the narrowest and most fleeting interests of our community, but when we recognise that the whole development of modern culture longs for a new understanding of the documents dealing with Christianity, we feel we are summoned by spiritual science not only to satisfy our own understanding regarding the Events of Palestine, but also to translate what we have to say concerning them into present day language for the sake of all humanity. In order to do this it is not enough that we should confine ourselves to what the present century has contributed towards an understanding of the problem and the figure of Christ. If this satisfied present day demands for knowledge there would not be so many who are, incapable of harmonising their desire for truth with what is taught in Christian circles and has been accepted for centuries, but which contradicts in one way or another what has been imparted to us concerning the Events of Palestine. All this shows that a new understanding and new conclusions with regard to Christian truths are necessary to the education of to-day.

Now among many other means that aid us in deciphering Christian truths there is one that is specially fruitful in our field of research. It consists in our being able to extend our vision, and also our world of feeling and perception beyond the horizon which has limited man's view of the spiritual world in past centuries. How our horizon can be extended can he put before you very simply and intimately in a few words.

In Goethe, to take one of the greatest minds of western civilisation, we have, as we all know, the mind of a Titan; and many of our studies have shown us how deeply the spiritual view entered into his personality. These studies have led us to know how we can rise to spiritual heights by sharing in the composition of Goethe's soul. But however well we may know Goethe, however deeply we may enter into what he has to give us, there is one thing we do not find in him, and this we must have if our vision is to he widened in the right way and our horizon expanded to satisfy our most urgent spiritual needs. Nowhere do we find in Goethe any indication that the things we are able to know to-day, dawned in him. These things can become fruitful for us when we accept them. They are ideas concerning man's spiritual development, the reception of which first became possible in the nineteenth century through the liberation of certain spiritual documents containing the fruits (Errungenschaften) of oriental life. From these we receive many ideas that in no way prevent our understanding the problem of Christ, but may, if rightly received, actually lead us to a true and full appreciation of Christ Jesus. Therefore I believe that a study of the Christ-problem cannot be introduced better than by a careful explanation of the mission of those great spiritual individuals who, from time to time, have made a deep impression on evolution, and are described by the name “Bodhisattva,” a name derived from oriental philosophy.

Ideas dealing with the Bodhisattvas have not existed for any length of time in the spiritual life of the West, and it is only when we realise what these beings are that we are able to rise to a true understanding of what the Christ has been, is, and can continue to be to mankind.

From this you see how wide is the circle of spiritual development that has to become fruitful to man before he really understands what it is so necessary he should understand concerning the education, culture, and spiritual life within which he lives. From another point of view it is important that we cast our spiritual eyes, when this is possible, over recent centuries and note the difference between a man at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and one of a century earlier; that we realise how very little was known in Europe a hundred years ago of Buddha and Buddhism. This last, if not actually the aim of our endeavours is the impulse and also the object of our present studies, and gives tone to the feeling that fills our souls when stirred by its great spiritual truths. The thing that matters most is not what one or another desires to know, but the warmth of feeling, the power of perception, the nobility of will that rises within our souls when the great truths of humanity strike these souls. More important in our Group than the words themselves is the tone and the waves of feeling that are present when certain words ring through space. These feelings and perceptions are of many kinds. The most important of them that should rise in our souls is that of reverence; such reverence as must needs develop in us towards the knowledge of great spiritual truths; the feeling that the nature of these great truths is such that we must approach them in humble reverence; that we cannot think to grasp such mighty facts with any hurriedly acquired ideas or with a few quickly won conceptions!

I have often made use of the example that we cannot depict a tree graphically by making a picture of it from one side only, but we must walk around it and draw it from various sides. Only by combining these different pictures do we gain a general impression of what the tree is like. This comparison should impress on our souls the way to approach great spiritual facts. We cannot make progress in any real or apparent knowledge of the highest things if we view them from one side only. Whether absolute truth regarding the appearance of anything can or cannot be reached, we should all the same never lose the humble feeling that all our ideas are acquired from one point of view only. When filled with this emotion we gladly and willingly take into ourselves feelings and perceptions from any side that enables us to illumine the great facts of existence from the most varied directions. The age in which we live makes this necessary, and in our time the need will grow ever greater for observing things from every possible side. Therefore we no longer shut ourselves off from other opinions, other paths leading to the highest things, that may differ from those of our own civilisation. Indeed we have endeavoured in recent years, within what Western cultural development had to offer, to uphold those principles that lead to true humility in respect of knowledge. I have never ventured (and indeed this is deeply impressed on my soul, for audacity was never possible in this connection) to present a system or a survey of those great events comprised within the term—the “Christ-Problem.” I have always said: “We approach this event now from one point of view,” and again, “We approach it now from another point of view,” and have always insisted that the problem is not thereby exhausted, but that our one desire is to carry on the work calmly and patiently.

The reason for studying the different Gospels is that it enables us to consider the Christ-problem from four points of view, and we find in fact that the four Gospels do present us with these four view points, and that in them the maxim is set before us:—Thou shalt not approach this—the mightiest problem—hurriedly, or view it from one side; it must be approached from the four spiritual directions of the heavens at least, and when thou hast approached it from these four heavenly directions which can he named after the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—thou canst then hope it may gradually draw nearer and nearer to thee. And it will approach thee, so that thou needst never say of thyself, thou art cut off from the greatest of all truths without which the human soul, in its inmost depth, cannot live, neither shalt thou say that any one form of truth which thou hast been able to grasp is the whole truth.

Thus all our studies of the past Winter were intended gradually to arouse a feeling of intellectual modesty. In fact, without such a feeling we cannot advance in spiritual life. Incidentally, everything has been done in these studies to impress repeatedly on you the first requirements for progress in spiritual knowledge, and no one who has followed attentively the, lectures given here week by week, can say that we have not constantly pointed out the basic condition of this advance in spiritual knowledge.

Advance in spiritual knowledge is one of the impulses lying at the foundation of our movement. What does advance in spiritual knowledge mean for our souls? It satisfies the deepest, most humanly-worthy longings of our souls, it gives that without which a man who is conscious of his human worth, cannot live. It also gives this knowledge in ways that correspond to the intellectual requirements of the present day. Advance in knowledge brings illumination to us concerning those things which a man cannot investigate with his ordinary senses, but only with those senses which belong to him as a spiritual being, not as a physical being.

The great questions concerning man's position in the physical world and what lies beyond it, the truths concerning life and death: all such questions spring from the deep needs of the human soul. Even if a man from various causes holds aloof from such questions, even if he is able to remain deaf to them for a time, so that he says:—“Science is unable to investigate such matters, the faculties for doing so are wanting in man;” yet the need of finding answers to these questions never leaves him permanently, neither does the true nature of his feelings towards such questions as the following:—

Whence comes that something in a child and in a growing youth, that is capable of education? Where does that go which is hidden within our souls when the bodily nature begins to fall and die? In short, the question as to man's connection with the spiritual world is the great question, and springs from the most human of desires. A man cannot live if these questions remain unanswered, unless he turns a deaf ear to them. But because they spring from so deep a need, because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment if it does not receive an answer to them, it is only natural that he should answer them in a somewhat trivial and comfortable manner. In spite of the fact that these questions (though denied by some) have to-day become burning questions for many, how numerous are the paths they point to us! One can say without exaggeration that of all the paths that open before man to-day when these great and puzzling questions arise within him, the way of spiritual science is the most difficult. Truly, we cannot say otherwise!

There may be many among you who consider some much discussed science difficult; who perhaps do not venture on it because they shrink from all that must be overcome if it is to be gone into thoroughly. It may seem that the path that we call the path of spiritual science is easier than the path leading to mathematics, to botany, or any other branch of natural science. All the same, if followed earnestly, this path is more difficult than that leading to any other science. We say this without any exaggeration. Why is it easier for you? Only because it stimulates the interest of every soul with tremendous force, and because it deals with what lies nearest to each. It is the most difficult of all the paths by which a man can enter the spiritual world to-day, yet one thing we must not forget: this path can lead us to what is highest in the life of the soul! Is it not natural that what leads to the highest should also be the most difficult? Yet: we must never allow ourselves to be frightened by the difficulties of the path, nor hide from our souls the necessity of these difficulties on the path of spiritual science.

Among the many necessities of this path, one is always specially mentioned here: that he who decides to follow this path must, in the first place, accept seriously what spiritual investigation has so far been able to offer concerning the secrets and facts of the spiritual world. We touch here on a very necessary chapter of our spiritual-scientific life. How many say light-heartedly:—“People speak here of a science that is unascertainable, of spiritual facts that one or another investigator, one or another initiate, has been able to elucidate or investigate. Would it not be much better if they simply showed us the way so that we might ourselves quickly enter that region from which one can see into the spiritual world? Why do they always say—‘This is how it looks, this is what one or another has seen!’ Why do they not tell us how we can attain this quickly for ourselves?” It is for very good reasons that the facts investigated concerning the spiritual world are first communicated in a general way before entering into what one might call “the methods of soul-training” which can lead the soul into spiritual regions. For something quite definite is gained by our applying ourselves reverently to the study of what the spiritual investigator has revealed from spiritual worlds. We have often said that the facts of the spiritual world must be sought and found by means of clairvoyant consciousness; but once these facts are discovered, once trained clairvoyance has observed them and communicated them to others, then these communications must be such that everyone, without having passed through any clairvoyant development, can test them, and can recognise the truth of them by his own unprejudiced logic and the feeling for truth that is in every soul. No true investigator of spiritual things, no man endowed with true clairvoyant consciousness, would communicate the facts of the spiritual world except in such a way that those who desired could test them without clairvoyance. But he would have to communicate these facts so that he conveyed the full value and importance of them to the human soul.

What value have the communications and presentations of spiritual facts to a human soul? The value is this; that the man who knows “how things are seen in the spiritual world” can order his life, his thoughts, feelings, and perceptions according to his relationship towards the spiritual world. In this sense every communication of spiritual facts is important—even if he to whom they are communicated, and who receives them, cannot himself investigate them clairvoyantly. Indeed, even for the investigator these facts first acquire “human worth” when he has brought them down into a sphere where he can express them in a form accessible to all. However much a clairvoyant may be able to investigate and see in the spiritual world, what he sees is of no value to him and to others so long as he is unable to bring it down into the ordinary sphere of men, and to express it in thought that can be grasped by sound logic and a natural feeling for truth. The clairvoyant must in fact first understand the matter himself if it is to be of any use to him. Its value begins where the possibility of logical proof begins.

We can prove what has just been said in a double way. Among the many valuable things connected with the spiritual truths and spiritual communications which a man can receive on the physical plane between birth and death, those without doubt are the most important which he can take with him through the gates of death. Or let us put it as a question in this way:—“How much remains to a man of all he has received here, and been able to make his own? What remains of all he has learnt concerning the spiritual world while leading an anthroposophical life?” Just as much remains to him as he has been able to understand, as he has been able to translate into the ordinary language of human consciousness.

Picture to yourselves a man who has perhaps made quite exceptional discoveries in the spiritual world through purely clairvoyant observation, but who has neglected to clothe these observations in language suited to the ordinary sense of truth of any age. Do you know what would happen to him? All his discoveries would be wiped out after death! Just as much of value would remain as it was possible for him to translate or formulate into any language that corresponded to a sound sense for truth.

It is certainly of the greatest importance that there should be clairvoyants capable of bringing over communications from the spiritual world and handing them on to others. This brings blessing to our day, for our age has need of wisdom and cannot advance unless it gets it. Such communications are necessary to the culture of the present time. If not recognised to-day, in fifty or a hundred years it will be the universal conviction of all mankind that culture cannot advance but must perish unless convinced of spiritual wisdom.

One thing is necessary for man if evolution is to advance—this is the acceptance by him of spiritual truth. Even if all spheres were conquered and intercourse with them established, humanity would still be faced with the death of civilisation if no spiritual wisdom had been acquired. This is undoubtedly true. The possibility of looking into the spiritual world must exist.

The facts of spiritual wisdom mean more to the individual after death than human progress upon earth. We must therefore ask in order to form a right conception of this—What has the clairvoyant to tell of the things he has investigated and brought into line with truth and sound logic? What more in the way of fruits does a man possess after death through having been able to look into the spiritual world, than those have whose karma in this incarnation makes it impossible for them to do so, and who therefore have to hear the results of spiritual research from others? How do spiritual truths perceived by an Initiate differ from those heard by a man who has only heard them, and not himself looked into the spiritual world? Does the Initiate understand them better than those to whom they have only been imparted?

As regards mankind in general perception of the spiritual world is of higher worth than non-perception. For one who is able to look into the spiritual world has intercourse with that world, he can teach not only men, but others, spiritual beings, and so further their development. Clairvoyant consciousness has therefore a quite special value, but for individuals knowledge only has value; and in respect of individual worth the clairvoyant does not differ from anyone else who only receives communications, and is himself unable to look into the spiritual world in any particular incarnation. Whatever we have received of spiritual truth is fruitful after death, no matter if we have beheld these truths ourselves or not.

In stating this, one of the greatest moral laws of the spiritual world and one most worthy of reverence is placed before our souls. Our present day morality is perhaps not fine enough fully to understand the ethics of this. Individuals gain no advantage through their Karma having made it possible for them to look into spiritual worlds, thereby gratifying their egoism, Everything we strive to gain for ourselves in our individual life must he gained on the physical plane, and in forms that accord with the physical plane. If a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands higher among the hierarchies of the spiritual world than other human individuals this is because of his having passed through so many and varied incarnations an earth.

What I mean by the higher ethics, the higher moral teaching given out to us from the spiritual world is this:—No one should think for a moment that he gains an advantage over his fellow men through the development of clairvoyance. This is not at all the case. He gains no advantage in any egoistic sense. All that he gains is that he can be better than others. Anything that serves egoism is absolutely excluded from spiritual fields, it is held to be immoral. A man gains nothing for himself through spiritual illumination. What he gains is only as one who serves the world in general, not himself, and only in so far as he gains it also for others.

The position of the spiritual investigator with regard to his fellowmen is this:—If they wish to hear of of the discoveries he has made and to accept them, they can make the same progress through these discoveries as he has made himself, they can advance individually as far as he has advanced, which means:—spiritual things are of value only in the Spirit of humanity as a whole, not in any egoistic spirit.

There is a realm where a man is not moral merely from preference, but because immorality or egoism would not help. In this case it is easy to see something else, namely, that it is dangerous to enter the spiritual realm unprepared. Nothing of an egoistic nature will ever be won for the life after death through leading a spiritual life, but a man might easily desire something egoistic for this life on the physical plane through spiritual development. Although nothing of an egoistic nature can be gained for the spiritual world things can be desired which are in a sense egoistic.

Most of those who pursue a certain higher development will probably say:—“It is self-understood that I should endeavor to overcome egoism before gaining entrance to the spiritual world.” But I beg of you to believe, in no region of human development is deception so great as in that where men say—“I strive against egoism!” It is easy to say it, but whether one can do it, can really accomplish it, is quite another question. It is another question in the first place, because when we begin to practise certain soul activities that can lead us into the spiritual world, we meet ourselves in our true form. There are very few things which are experienced in true form in the outer world. We live interwoven in a net of ideas, will-impulses, moral perceptions, and customary actions that have their rise in the surrounding world, and we seldom ask:—“How would I act, how would I think regarding any matter if I did not feel constrained by my upbringing to think and act in such and such a way?”

If we answered these questions we would see that we are ordinarily very much worse than we suppose. Now, the result of carrying out those exercises that are intended to help us to rise to the spiritual world is that we outgrow all our surroundings, all that custom and education have woven round us. We become more sensitive, more soulful and spiritual, and ever more and more naked. The veils with which we have clothed ourselves, and to which we cling with our ordinary ideas and actions, fall from us. Hence we have the quite ordinary result of which I have often spoken:—Before beginning his spiritual development a man is perhaps a quite decently behaved person, who does not make any very stupid blunders in life. Then his spiritual development begins. While until now he was perhaps quite a modest man he now becomes arrogant, and does all sorts of stupid things. When spiritual development begins he loses his balance and his bearings. The reason for this is best seen by those who are familiar with the spiritual world. Two things are necessary in order to know where we are with regard to what approaches us from the spiritual world so that balance is maintained. We must not be made giddy by what comes to us from the spiritual world. In physical life our organism shields us from giddiness through the “sense of balance of which you have heard in anthroposophical lectures, the static-sense. And just as this gives to physical man power to hold himself upright (for if his organism does not function correctly a man becomes giddy and he falls down) there is something also in spiritual life by which he can regulate his position to the world. This he must be able to do. “Spiritual giddiness” results from the falling away from him of what formerly gave support, those acquired perceptions, all that is brought about in us by the inter-blending activities of the external world. We must now learn to depend on ourselves. It is easy for us to become arrogant when these outer supports fall away. Pride is situated in us naturally; only, till now it was not so apparent. How can we attain spiritual balance so that this giddiness does not occur? By devoting ourselves with patience and perseverance to what spiritual investigation has discovered and succeeded in putting into words that agree with the ordinary formula of logical veracity. It is not from choice that I emphasize again and again the need of studying what we call spiritual science or anthroposophy. I lay stress on it because it is not possible by any other means to acquire the solid supports necessary to a spiritual development. The diligent and earnest acceptance of the results of spiritual science is the antidote to spiritual giddiness and insecurity.

Many a one has fallen into spiritual insecurity through carrying out his development incorrectly; we know that though such a one may seem to have been very diligent, this is because he has failed to acquire certain things that flow from the well-head of spiritual science. This is why the facts of spiritual science should he studied from every side, and why all through last winter, while desiring ultimately to bring home to you the importance of the Event of Christ to man we returned ever and again to deal with the fundamental conditions of spiritual progress. A balanced soul is necessary to a man's progress; but other things are also necessary.

While the soul acquires certainty through the study of spiritual science something else brings us what is equally necessary. This is a certain degree of spiritual strength and courage. The courage necessary to spiritual progress is not required of us in ordinary life for this reason, that in ordinary life our innermost being is embedded in our physical and etheric body from the time we waken until we fall asleep, and in the night we can do nothing, we cannot spoil anything. Supposing an unevolved man were able to be active during sleep he could do a great deal of harm. But the forces active on our physical and etheric bodies, making us conscious—that is thinking and feeling men—are not the only forces at work in us. Other forces are also active there, forces on which divine spiritual Beings have worked all through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and on into our own Earthly period. Here forces from higher realms are continually at work maintaining us. When we waken and draw within the physical and etheric bodies we give ourselves over immediately to these Divine spiritual forces which, for our welfare and blessing, guide and control our physical and etheric bodies from morning till evening. Thus the whole spiritual universe works within us. We can injure it in many ways, but can do very little to improve it.

Now you must realise that all spiritual development depends on our inner being—our astral body and ego—becoming free, that we become able to see, that is learn to become consciously clairvoyant of that which lives unconsciously within us from the time we fall asleep till we waken; and because it lives there unconsciously, can cause no harm. All the strength, all the power that is ours, through our being taken in hand on waking by what is securely bound to our physical and etheric bodies, falls away from us when we become independent of these bodies and begin to be clairvoyantly aware. All the strength and power of the world remains outside us. We have withdrawn from the powers which make us strong and provide us with a shield against the influences of the outer world. We have withdrawn from these supporting powers. The world, however, remains as it is, and because this is so we are faced with the whole power, the whole impact of the surrounding world. The strength we otherwise received directly from our physical body and etheric body must now be within us, so that we can endure and withstand the impact of the world. We must develop this power in our ego and astral body. This is done by following the rules you have received, and which are found in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and how to attain it.” These rules are calculated to give that inner strength which formerly was imparted to us by higher Beings, and which fails when the external supports which enabled us to withstand the impact of the world fail, when we have ourselves discarded the support provided by our physical and etheric bodies.

Those who have not made themselves inwardly strong enough to be able to replace the supports laid aside with their physical and etheric bodies, by carrying out a true and serious soul-training, those, who above all, have not purified themselves from the qualities of the outer world we describe as “immoral,” may certainly acquire faculties which enable them to some extent to see into the spiritual world. But what is the result? They become what is called “hypersensitives,” they become super-sensitive, as if attacked from every side; they cannot endure what approaches them on all hands. One of the most important facts we have to recognise when striving for progress in spiritual knowledge is that we must strengthen ourselves inwardly by developing the noblest qualities of the soul.

What are these qualities of which we have been speaking and towards which we must strive?

As it is impossible to live in the spiritual world under the brand of selfishness, it is only natural that the banishment of egoism—of everything of the nature of “self” that would fain shelter behind what is spiritual—must form the preparation for spiritual life. The more earnestly this maxim is accepted, the better it is for spiritual progress. It cannot be accepted too earnestly.

Anyone concerned with such things often hears it said:—“I have not done this from egoism!” But when these words are about to pass a man's lips he should pause, he should not allow them to pass, he should rather say to himself:—Thou art really not in a position to say thou canst do something without a trace of egoism. This would be better, because more truthful, and truth in respect of self-knowledge is most important. In no domain does falsehood wreck such vengeance as in the domain of spiritual life. It were better for a man there to lay on himself the command to be truthful than speak in a vague way of “not being egoistic!” It would be better to be truthful and say:—“I acknowledge my egoism,” thus showing his desire at least to overcome it.

I can best express what is connected with the idea of spiritual truth in the following way. One might easily be of the opinion:—“There are people who tell of all kinds of things they have seen and experienced in the higher worlds; this is then spread abroad and is known by others. If one realises that these things are not true, ought one not to use every possible means to contradict them?” Certainly, there are points of view from which such contradiction is necessary. But for those, who as spiritual men are only concerned with the truth, there is always another thought, namely this:—Of the things brought from the spiritual world, only those that are true flourish and bear fruits for the world; what is untrue is most certainly unfruitful.

Expressed more trivially we might say:—However much people lie with regard to spiritual matters these lies have very short legs. The people who spread these lies have to acknowledge that nothing really fruitful comes from them. Truth alone bears fruits in the spiritual realm. This is where our individual spiritual development begins, where we realise and acknowledge our true position. That truth alone is fruitful—that it alone has power to affect anything, must dwell as vital impulse in all spiritual, in all occult movements. Truth is proved by its fruitfulness and by the blessings it brings to man. Untruths and lies are unfruitful. They have but one result which I only hint at, but cannot deal further with to-day—they react most powerfully upon those who originate them. We shall deal with the meaning of this important statement some other time.

As I said, I wished to-day to glance backwards over the work done during the past year; to recall the tone which as feeling-content filled and resounded in our souls.

In speaking of the work carried on outside our own group during the past year I may perhaps mention my own share which reached its culmination in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play we produced in Munich, “Die Pforte der Einwerhung,” the “The Portal of Initiation.” We shall speak at our next group-meeting of what was then attempted, at present I only wish to say that it was then possible to express in a more artistic, more individual form, what had otherwise been said in a more general way. When speaking here or elsewhere of the conditions of spiritual life we speak of these as they are right for every soul. But in doing so it is necessary to keep in view that each man is an independent Being, and each soul must be considered individually. This is why we were obliged to depict one soul in “The Portal of Initiation.” Therefore you must look on this Rosicrucian Mystery not as a hook of instruction, but as an artistic presentation of the preparation for initiation of one man.

We are not concerned here with the way this or that man progresses, but with the progress of him who in the play is called “Johannes Thomasius,” that is with the very individual form the preparation for initiation took in a particular man.

Thus, by approaching nearer to truth, we have arrived at two distinct points of view. First, where we described the whole course of progress, and then that where we penetrated to the very core of an individual soul. All the time we were inspired by the thought that we must draw near, and patiently await the truth from many sides, until these different aspects of the truth were linked together into a single perception. This attitude of reserve in respect of knowledge we desire most especially to acquire. Never let it be said that man cannot experience truth. He can experience it! Only he cannot know the whole truth all at once, but only one side of it. This makes one humble. True humility is a feeling that must be developed here within our group, so that from here it may pass out into the general culture of our day, and there make its influence felt. Our age has need of great modesty in all its activities.

In the spirit of this impulse we shall continue the work of explaining the Christ-problem so that here also we may experience how modesty in respect of knowledge (Erkenntnisbescheidenheit) can be attained, and may thereby progress ever further in the experiencing of truth.

A rather difficult task confronts us today but my listeners will be willing to submit to the greater demands made upon them if it is said at the outset that this study will enable us during the next few days to feel firmer ground under our feet. In Spiritual Science, unless we are content to remain with abstractions, we must also listen from time to time to information belonging to the higher regions of spiritual knowledge. It may also be added that our study today will in no way consist of deductions or theoretical inferences, but of matters which have always been known to those who have penetrated more deeply into these subjects. We shall therefore be dealing with knowledge possessed by actual individuals.

We heard yesterday how a man would be able to find his bearings within the inner Organisation of his astral body if he could, on waking, descend consciously into this astral body; and we were able to form an idea of what it means to pass the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. In point of fact, what was said yesterday was rather hypothetical, for actually in normal life the moment never comes when merely through waking a man can penetrate consciously into his inner being. At most he can prepare himself by mystical deepening for conscious entry into his external bodily sheaths. What this means, and the preparation it entails, will only become clear in the course of these lectures. For normal consciousness it may happen—very occasionally—that a man has such moments of conscious awakening as a result of conditions belonging to his previous incarnations. This can and does happen to certain individuals. They wake up with a certain sense of oppression. This sense of oppression is due to the fact that the inner man, who during sleep felt outspread and free in the Macrocosm, returns again into the prison of his body. There may also be another feeling. Under these abnormal conditions a man feels a better being at the moment of waking than during the course of the day; he feels that there is something within him that he might call his better self. Again the reason for this is that on waking a feeling has remained with him that something has streamed into him during sleep from worlds higher than the world of his own sensory experiences. These are feelings that may arise under abnormal conditions even in ordinary life and what has now been said can be regarded as a confirmation of statements made in the lecture yesterday. Nevertheless it is only the genuine mystic to whom the experience can come in its full intensity.

The question now is whether it is possible to go further. What has been experienced in the way described is the inner side of the astral body, of the spiritual part of man. But it is possible to descend still more deeply, into parts of human nature which manifest in ordinary life in a form less purely spiritual. Nevertheless, their foundations are spiritual, for that is true of everything in the outer world. The question is whether it is possible to descend even further, into the physical body, and whether there is anything between the astral body and the physical body. Yes, as is made clear in anthroposophical literature, between the physical and the astral bodies there is the etheric body, so that in descending to that level we should encounter our etheric body and perhaps also traces of our physical body, which otherwise we see only from without but which we can recognise from within when we penetrate into it consciously.

Generally speaking, however, it is not good, nor is it without danger, to take a further step in mystical deepening beyond those mentioned yesterday. Everything spoken of then can be carried out cautiously by one who has acquired some knowledge of what is contained in the book>Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment or in the second part of Occult Science—an Outline.¹ Up to this point a man can progress independently. To go further along the path leading into the inner self, however, is not without danger; moreover it cannot be done at all in the way in which a man of the present day likes to acquire his spiritual knowledge. Accordingly a different path to knowledge is chosen in our time.

In modern civilisation it is no longer right to take the path leading to a deeper descent into the inner being without troubling about any other considerations. The fundamental characteristic of spiritual life today is that man subordinates himself to a certain degree only and wishes to tread his path of knowledge in the fullest possible freedom. We shall see that there is a path into the spiritual world which takes this desire into full account: it is the Rosicrucian path of knowledge. This is the true path of modern times. It did not exist in those Mysteries of antiquity where man was initiated into the deeper secrets of existence. There were Mysteries in which a man was simply led past the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold into his own inner being and there were others in which he was led out into the Macrocosm, necessarily in a kind of ecstasy. These were the two most usual paths in ancient times. The path of descent into the inner self was followed especially in those places of Initiation which are called the Mystery Sanctuaries of Osiris and Isis. And now, in order to explain what man can experience by descending into his inner being, we will speak of the experiences undergone by a pupil of the Osiris and Isis Mysteries. As we shall hear in the next lectures, it is possible today to attain the Initiation which brings knowledge of these Mysteries, but the path leading to that Initiation differs from what it once was.

In ancient Egypt something was necessary against which human nature, as it is today, would rebel. It was necessary in those times that at the point when the candidate for Initiation was to penetrate into the higher worlds—or even shortly before—he should not attempt to progress independently along his own path of knowledge but should entrust himself to an initiated teacher, to a Guru—the term used in oriental philosophy. Otherwise the path was too dangerous. As a general rule, even the steps towards mystical deepening described yesterday were undertaken under the guidance of a Guru.

What was the real purpose of this guidance by an initiated teacher? When we descend in the morning into our bodily nature, our soul is received by three Powers which have been called by names take from ancient terminology—the names of Venus, Mercury and Moon. Man can deal by himself with what is generally understood as the Venus influence when he is descending into his inner being. A certain training in humility and selflessness will enable him to hold his own in face of the Venus power. Before setting out on the path into the unknown realm of his own inner being he must suppress all impulses of egoism and self-love and cultivate selflessness. He must make himself into a being who feels love and sympathy, not for his fellow-men only but for all existence. Then, if need be, be can safely surrender himself in his conscious descent to the power known as that of Venus.

But it would be more dangerous if a man were to leave himself unaided at the mercy of the Mercury powers. In the ancient Egyptian Initiation he was therefore under the guidance of a great teacher whose own earlier experiences made him capable of being a leader because he was fully conscious of the way in which these Mercury powers could be controlled. A candidate for Initiation was therefore guided by a Hermes- or Mercury-priest. This entailed strict submission to whatever demands the teacher made upon the pupil. The pupil was compelled to make the resolve to eliminate his own Ego completely, to submit to no impulses of his own and to carry out meticulously what the Hermes-priest instructed him to do. It was essential for the pupil of the Osiris and Isis Mysteries to submit to this domination which would be repugnant to a man of today and to which, moreover, he need not subject himself. Obedience to the teacher through many years was necessary, not merely in the pupil's outer actions, but in those Mysteries he was compelled to entrust himself to the teacher's guidance even in his thoughts and feelings, in order to be able to descend without danger into a deeper level of his own inner being.

The lecture yesterday described what is meant by acquiring knowledge of the inner nature of the astral body. We will now consider what the pupil of the Osiris and Isis Mysteries was able, with the help of his teacher, to experience in connection with the etheric body. The elimination of his Ego caused him to see with the spiritual eyes of the teacher, to see himself through the teacher's eyes, to think the teacher's thoughts and to become a kind of external object to himself. In this way remarkable experiences came to him. They were experiences in which he felt as if his life were going backwards in time, as if his whole being—which he was now seeing with the spiritual eyes of the Hermes-priest—were spreading out and expanding; and simultaneously he felt as if he were going backwards in time into periods preceding his present life. Gradually he came to feel as if he were going back many, many years, a span of time very much longer than his life since birth. During this experience he saw, through the eyes of the initiated priest, first of all himself, and then, far out beyond, many generations whom he felt to be his forefathers. For a certain time the candidate for this Initiation had the feeling that he was moving backwards along the line of his ancestors—not as if he were identical with them, but as if he were hovering above them—moving backwards to a definite point, to a primeval ancestor. Then the impression faded—the impression of seeing earthly figures with whom his existence was in some way related.

The teacher had now to make clear to the candidate what it was that he had actually seen. Only in the following way can this become intelligible.—When we come into existence, having passed through the spiritual world between death and rebirth, we bear within us not only the characteristics derived from our preceding life but also our inherited traits. We are born into a family, into a people, into a race; we bear the inherited qualities of our ancestors. These qualities are not derived from the last incarnation but have been inherited from generation to generation. Now why is it that a man, with his inborn nature, incarnates in a particular family, in a particular people or race? Why, on descending to birth, does he seek out certain definite, inherited characteristics? He would never do so if he had no relation at all to them. In point of fact he was already connected with these attributes long before his birth. If we were to start from a particular individual and go back to his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on, we should find—if we were able to follow the line with inner vision—the inherited characteristics through a whole series of generations, as far back as one in particular, where all trace of heredity would vanish. The inherited characteristics are still present in their most attenuated form until finally they are lost altogether.

Just as we see the inherited characteristics finally disappearing, so by starting from an individual we can see how the qualities of the son are most similar to those of the father, rather less similar to those of the grandfather, still less similar to those of the great-grandfather, and so on. In the ancient Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris and Isis the priest led the candidate for Initiation back as far as the ancestor who still possessed characteristics which had been transmitted, through heredity, to the pupil himself. It was revealed to the pupil that man is connected in a certain way with his inherited qualities. Thus he established a relationship, spiritually, with that primeval ancestor from whom some quality in himself was derived. It was also revealed to him that the human being spends a long time preparing for himself in the spiritual world the qualities he is ultimately to inherit. Nor does he merely inherit them; in a certain sense he actually inculcates them into his ancestors. He continues to work through the whole series of generations until finally that physical body can be born towards which he feels drawn. Strange as it may seem, we ourselves have worked out of the spiritual world at the physical bodies of our own forefathers, in order gradually to shape and mould the attributes we finally receive at birth as inherited characteristics.

These things are revealed when a man descends into his own etheric body; it then becomes evident to him that the etheric body has a long history behind it. Long, long before entering existence through birth, he was himself working in the spiritual world at the preparation of the etheric body he now bears. He began to work at this etheric body when the most ancient ancestor from whom he still inherits qualities, came to the Earth. When it is said that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and so on, this is merely an indication. The only possibility of learning about it in greater precision is to acquaint ourselves with the information given by those who have themselves descended consciously into their bodily sheaths.

Thus man learns to move in the regions through which he passed before entering physical existence. He comes to know a portion of his life before birth, a portion which comprises centuries; for centuries have elapsed since the time when, between his last death and present birth, he began to form the archetype of his etheric body. It was then that there was laid into his blood the first seed of those special characteristics which were progressively elaborated, until the etheric body had reached the point of being able to absorb these characteristics at birth.-That is one side of the experience. What we inherit is a reconstruction, so to speak, of everything we ourselves have had to do previously in the spiritual world in order to be able to enter into physical existence. Therefore the qualities that are concentrated as it were in the present etheric body and were given their stamp through the foregoing centuries, have always been called the “Upper”—meaning the heavenly or spiritual man. This is the technical expression for the fact that by penetrating into his etheric body man learns to know his “upper” nature. The expression “heavenly” or “spiritual” man was also used because it was realised that these attributes had been formed and fashioned from the spiritual world through which the man had passed during the period between his last death and the present birth.

And now as to the other side of the experience.—When the pupil had been led to a certain stage by the priest of Hermes, he was confronted by something that may at first have seemed strange, but was explained by his teacher as a phenomenon that should not be altogether unknown to him. The pupil soon recognised that he was being confronted with something he himself had left behind, something intimately connected with him, though it now faced him as a foreign entity. What was this? We shall understand it best by considering the moment of death in the light of what spiritual investigation discloses. At that moment a man discards his physical body; his Ego and astral body remain—namely, those members of his being which every night pass into the state of sleep—and also, for a short time, what we are now trying to study from within, namely, the etheric body. For a few days after death man lives in these three members of his being. But then the main part of the etheric body passes away from him like a second corpse. It is always said—and I myself have constantly indicated it—that what then departs as a second corpse is dispersed in the etheric world; the man takes with him only an extract, a seed, of it into the life he is now beginning between death and his next birth. What there passes over as a second corpse into the universal ether needs a considerable time to dissolve; and it is the last traces of the dissolving etheric body of his previous life that the candidate for Initiation finds as a foreign entity when he has passed backwards spiritually to the point where he arrives at the last ancestor from whom he has inherited any quality. There he makes contact with the last remnants of his previous etheric body. And now, if he continues the process of Initiation, he must penetrate as it were into this last etheric body of his, which he has left behind. Then he lives backwards through further years—almost, but not quite as long as the period he previously lived through until he encounters his earliest ancestor. The time is in the ratio of five to seven. The man now lives through a time in which he finds, as it were in ever denser form, what confronts him as the last remnant from his past life; as it becomes more and more definitely formed, its resemblance to his last etheric body grows until he finally recognises the form his etheric body had assumed at the moment of his last death. And now, after this form has still further condensed, has more and more assumed human shape, he is face to face with his last death. At that moment, for one who is initiated, there is no longer any doubt that reincarnation is a truth, for he has actually gone back to his last death. Thus we have now come to know what man finds as a remnant of his last earthly life. In spiritual science this has at all times been called the “Lower” or the “earthly” man. The pupil now connected the “Upper” with the “Lower” man; he followed the “Lower” to the point where he reached his last life on Earth.

Thus during his Initiation the pupil passed through a cycle leading from his last earthly life to his present earthly life. He united himself in an act of spiritual vision with what he had become in his previous incarnation. In spiritual science this process has always been called a “cycle” and it was originally expressed by the symbol of the snake biting its own tail. This same symbol was used in connection with many happenings, among them for the experience just described, the experience undergone by one who was initiated in the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis.

Obviously, therefore, there is much more to be said about the etheric body than merely stating that it is one member of man's being. The essential nature of the etheric body can only become known by descending into our own inner self; we then come to know the two beings who are united in every man, and we also recognise how karma works. We are then able to explain to ourselves how it happens that we enter existence through birth in a quite definite way. We were obliged as it were to wait from the preceding death until the new birth, until the old etheric body had dissolved; only then could a beginning be made with forming the new one. This makes it evident that in fact a man has not completely got rid of the products of his dissolved etheric body. And by descending into his own inner being he may also find the other part which has actually dissolved, because he has retained an extract of it. If this were not the case it would be impossible for him to find any trace of it again.

When these things are communicated gradually, even in public lectures on Spiritual Science, you will realise how well-founded they are. You are now at the point where you can see the reason for the statement made, even in exoteric lectures, that an extract or essence of the etheric body remains. All these data are the result of spiritual investigation and are based upon the deepest imaginable foundations.

Thus a man has gone back as far as his last death, and in following the process we have heard of certain qualities which one who is entering into deeper forms of mystical experience learns to know through his Initiation. Yesterday we heard of astral qualities—the feeling of infinite gratitude on the one side and, on the other, the feeling of greatly enhanced obligation and responsibility experienced by the mystic in his astral body. Today we have beard of the “Upper” and the “Lower” man, the “Above” and the “Below”, experienced by the mystic when he descends into his etheric body.

The further steps on the path of Initiation then lead the pupil to the point where, after having arrived in his spiritual retrospect at his last death, he can go further and come to know his last earthly life. But again this is by no means an easy matter. Under his teacher's guidance the pupil is once again reminded that he must not go further until he has achieved complete forgetfulness of self; for it is impossible to make real progress as long as there remains any shred of personal self-consciousness of this present incarnation, this present life between birth and death. As long as a man still calls anything his own he cannot attain knowledge of his preceding incarnation. In the ordinary, normal life between birth and death he cannot come to know the being who in the preceding incarnation was a completely different personality. He must be capable of regarding himself as some quite different being—that is the important point—and yet not lose hold of himself when obliged to have this experience. He must be capable of transformation to the degree of being able to feel himself slipping as it were into a quite different bodily sheath. Having attained the degree of selflessness where everything to do with the present incarnation is forgotten, and having utterly given himself up to the teacher, the pupil is then able to pass back through the last incarnation from the death to the birth. Then he experiences, not the things that were seen externally during that last incarnation, but what he made of himself by his endeavours during that life. What the eyes saw, the ears heard and what confronted him in the outer world is experienced in a different way. What is now experienced are the efforts he made in the bygone incarnation with the object of advancing a step forward.

Having re-experienced these efforts the pupil is led back again by the teacher to his present incarnation. The step from the previous to the present incarnation is taken rapidly and then the pupil finds his bearings again. He now has a strange feeling of being two personalities, as if he has brought an additional one with him from the spiritual world into his present personality. This gives rise to the feeling of living in the physical body. A man cannot experience himself in the physical body except by feeling that he has entered it with the fruits of a preceding incarnation.

I have repeatedly reminded you that in normal everyday life a man sees the physical body only from outside. Now for the first time he realises what it means to see the physical body from within. To see himself within his own physical body is only possible in the light of the experiences of his preceding incarnation. But that is not enough; only little can be learned from it about the present physical body. When the teacher has brought the pupil to the point of standing consciously within his own being together with his previous personality, he must take him back once again over the path already followed. The pupil now retraces the path from the penultimate birth to the penultimate death; he undergoes again what he experienced in his “Upper” and “Lower” being, and through the penultimate death reaches back to the penultimate incarnation. A single cycle brings him back to the last incarnation only; thereupon the second cycle must be undertaken, bringing him back to the penultimate incarnation. This gives rise to the feeling of being a third personality who is included in the two preceding personalities.

The cycle can be repeated again and again, until the pupil reaches an epoch lying far, far back in the evolution of the Earth, a far distant age of civilisation. Then he finds that as an earlier personality he was incarnated in preceding epochs of culture, for example in the Greco-Latin epoch; earlier still in the Egyptian, in the ancient Persian, in the ancient Indian, and even further back in the Atlantean and the Lemurian epochs. There is then no more possibility of having such experiences as have been described. A man can follow his own course through every conceivable civilisation and race, right back to the beginning of his earthly evolution, to his very first incarnation on the Earth. Then it is found that all the earlier incarnations continue as forces in what may be called the inmost essence of the physical body. So you see, when it is said in exoteric language that man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, this means that he consists of something which, when viewed from within, seems like a number of consecutive incarnations superimposed one above the other. In point of fact, all our incarnations are at work in the inmost nature of our physical body. And when we speak of the etheric body we must bear in mind that, viewed from within, it appears as a cycle running backwards from the present birth to the last death. The qualities and characteristics of the sheaths into which we descend in mystical experience are revealed.

When a man has retraced his course right back to his first incarnation, he experiences a great deal more as well. At this point of his retrospective journey he discovers that in a certain epoch of the Earth's evolution he was in an entirely different environment, that the Earth itself was quite different when he was living in his first incarnation.

When we look out into the world today, three kingdoms of Nature confront us: the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. We also have these three kingdoms within us. We have within us the animal kingdom because we possess an astral body which in a certain way permeates our external, physical body with force and energy; we have within us the plant kingdom because we possess an etheric or life-body, of which something similar may be said; we have the mineral kingdom within us because we take mineral substances into ourselves and let them pass through our organism. When we ascend far enough into the spiritual world to reach our first incarnation while experiencing the physical body from within, we become aware that at that time the Earth has just reached the point of its development when the mineral kingdom in its present form first came into existence and it was therefore possible for us to pass through our first physical embodiment because we were able to take mineral substance into ourselves.

You may say: Yes, but was this mineral kingdom not in existence earlier than the plant and animal kingdoms? Anyone who thinks correctly will realise that ordinary coal is something that has come from the plant; first it was plantlike and then became mineral. Under conditions different from those of today the plant kingdom could exist before there was a mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom was a later formation. Under different conditions the plant kingdom was already in existence before there was any mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom was a product of hardening—hardening of the plant kingdom. And at the time of the formation of the mineral kingdom on our Earth, man had his first earthly incarnation. The mineral kingdom has evolved through long periods of time, during which man has been passing through his earthly incarnations. It was then that he first took the mineral kingdom into himself. Before then his bodily make-up was of a quite different consistency, without mineral substance. For this reason it was at all times said in spiritual science that in its evolution the Earth progressed to the point where the mineral kingdom was formed and at the same time man took the mineral kingdom into himself.

So we see how by descending into his own being deeply enough to have knowledge of his physical body from within, man comes to a point where he emerges, comes forth from, himself. What else could be expected? Through our astral body we are related to the animals, through our etheric body to the plants and through our physical body to the minerals. No wonder that when we descend as far as to the physical body we come upon the mineral kingdom and pass into it. Not indeed into the mineral kingdom as it is now, but as it was at the time when it came into existence in the ancient Lemurian epoch. Our present epoch followed that of Atlantis, and the Lemurian epoch preceded Atlantis. Before the great Atlantean catastrophe the face of the Earth was quite different from what it is today. We lived on a great continent stretching between Europe and Africa on the one side and America on the other. This was the Atlantean epoch. In a still earlier epoch the configuration of the Earth was again different. Human beings-we ourselves in earlier incarnations-lived on a continent stretching between Australia, Africa and Asia. This was ancient Lemuria, the name also used by modern science. That was the time when man passed through his first incarnation and when the mineral kingdom of the Earth took shape. That too was the time when the present Moon in the heavens separated from the Earth.

Thus we have seen that by descending into and acquiring knowledge of our own being through genuine mystical deepening under the guidance of a teacher, we also emerge from ourselves in a certain sense. The path leads us out of ourselves to the Mineral Earth whence we have derived our physical substance.

This is the one path that I wanted to describe to you, the path which could be followed and was indeed followed by many human beings in the ancient Mysteries of Isis and Osiris. It could only be followed under the guidance of a teacher to whom the candidate for Initiation subjected himself entirely. Unless the individual had submitted his Ego entirely to his teacher he would never have been able to tread the path that has been described, for he would have come to know only the very worst sides of his inner being, what he had made of himself through his own self-seeking Ego.

During the next few days we shall describe the other path by speaking of the Northern Mysteries, where man was led, not into himself but out of himself, into the heavens. Then, as well as these two paths which owing to the progressive development of human nature and its consequent insistence on freedom are no longer suitable, we shall study the path that is right for modern humanity: the Rosicrucian path.

It only remains to be said that certain later mystics strove to find help solely in themselves when they had no Guru or teacher to follow so strictly. They were able to find help in a different way and it is interesting that the path they trod can be explained in the light of what has here been described. Think, for example, of Meister Eckhart, the medieval mystic. He was one who had no leader or teacher as did candidates in the ancient Mysteries of Isis and Osiris. The descent into his inner being would have been fraught with great dangers for him had he persisted beyond a certain point in these efforts to achieve inner deepening by his own method. At a certain moment he could scarcely have escaped the claims of his Ego. For the danger on this descent into a man's inner being is that his Ego may assert itself for its own selfish aims. Long speeches may be made about finding the God within. But people who talk in this vein have usually not made much real progress. If they had, they would inevitably discover that the self-seeking Ego asserts itself with terrific force. It may often be found that such people, when following the ordinary conventions of life, are good and decent characters, but directly they practise mystical deepening and ignore influences from outside, their inner self asserts itself. If education has hitherto made them desire to speak the truth it may happen that as soon as their self-seeking Ego asserts its claims, they begin to lie profusely; they become underhand, more intensely selfish than others. Such traits may often be observed in mystics who have been badly guided, who like to speak constantly of the need to find the “higher man” within themselves. In such cases, however, it is not a “higher man” but a being inferior even by conventional standards. It behoves everyone to protect himself from claims made by his own self-seeking Ego. And mystics with good and healthy propensities, such as Meister Eckhart, tried to do so. In the Egyptian Mysteries the candidate for Initiation was guarded in this respect by the priest of Hermes who had taken charge of him. Meister Eckhart had no leader or teacher in that sense of the word; Tauler had one from a certain time in his life onwards. [* See Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, by Rudolf Steiner. The teacher who came to Tauler was known as the ‘Friend of God from the Oberland.’] By what means did Meister Eckhart protect himself against the claims of his own Ego? Like nearly all medieval Christian mystics who had no actual Guru because the time was approaching when human nature would rebel against it, Eckhart protected himself by inducing a feeling of the greatest intensity: Now you are no longer yourself; you have become a different being; a being other than yourself is thinking, feeling and willing within you. Let your whole self be filled with Christ!—Eckhart made the saying of Paul a reality: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’ He was one who had experienced this transformation; he had laid aside his own self. He eliminated his Ego and felt himself filled with a different Ego. The word Entwerdung (as the opposite of “becoming”) was a beautiful expression used by medieval mystics. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart, or the writer of the work known as Theologica Deutsch, let a higher man, a being able to quicken and inspire, speak in them. Hence their constant insistence that their aim was to surrender the self entirely to the being they experienced within them.

From this we see how with the approach of the modern age the medieval Christian mystics put in the place of an external Guru, an inner leader: the Christ.

We shall hear in the next lecture what has now to be done in order that a man rooted in the spiritual life of today may find the path enabling him to maintain intact the character and constitution of his soul. We have spoken of the path taken in the Northern Mysteries in order to experience the Macrocosm into which man enters on going to sleep. We shall begin tomorrow by describing the process of going to sleep and then pass on to speak of the macrocosmic spheres into which man finds his way through methods belonging to the modern path of knowledge leading into the higher worlds.

• 1. Notably Chapter V. Knowledge of Higher Worlds. Concerning Initiation, p. 222 in the 1962-3 edition.

My dear friends!

Let us first remember the protecting spirits of those who are out there in the fields of difficult present decisions:

Guiding spirits of your souls, watchers ever active,
May your wings carry
The love of our souls
To the earthly beings who trust in your protection.
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may helpfully shine
On the souls it lovingly seeks.

And turning to the protecting spirits of those who have already passed through the portals of death:

Spirits of their souls, watchers ever active,
Your wings may bear
Our souls' imploring love
To the sphere-men you guard.
That united with your power, our request may helpfully shine on the souls it lovingly seeks.

And the spirit that we seek to approach through our spiritual science, the spirit that has gone to the salvation of the earth, to the freedom and progress of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your difficult duties.

My dear friends, it must be self-evident that in these difficult times that have befallen humanity, the thoughts of the souls that want to participate in the general destiny that can become human beings, that these thoughts turn to what is currently flowing through our time; what, above all, presents us with such difficult, difficult riddles in our time. For there is no doubt that difficult riddles are to be lived through in our time, which is truly - and this is certainly not a cliché - different from other times that we have not only been able to live through in our lives so far, but that humanity has been able to live through for a long time. When we think of some people with whom we lived before 1914, and who passed through the gate of death before 1914, we might well ask ourselves today: How would these people have related to what they are experiencing today in terms of their feelings and perceptions? Of course, if we think in terms of our spiritual science, how such souls, after they have freed themselves from the body in the spiritual world, look down, it is different. Then, when we understand what is happening from the records of the spiritual world. But it is perhaps still a need to think about how people who lived with us, if they were still alive, would judge the time in which we live.

In the lectures I have given and the reflections I have presented, I have often mentioned the name Herman Grimm. He is a personality who certainly did not stand on the ground of spiritual science, but who, with all his thoughts and ideas, grew out of the great impulses of spiritual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. And it was always interesting to either read or hear what Herman Grimm judged about what was going on in the world around him. If he were still alive today - he died at the beginning of the twentieth century - one cannot imagine how he would judge the violence of the events that surround us today based on his thoughts and feelings. Whenever I mentioned his name up until 1914, and that happened often, it was as if he were standing next to me, representing a different school of thought, but one that was always interesting to listen to. He could be thought of as a contemporary. Since 1914, it is as if he were a personality who could just as well have lived and died centuries ago. The way he thought, the way he related to world events, seems to one - as I said, not when one considers the soul in the spiritual world, but what it would have thought if it were embodied in the body - one cannot form any idea of how he would have expressed himself about current events, based on what he has otherwise judged, how he has formed feelings about them.

We have actually lived through so much in these three years that what we have lived through before must seem to us like a myth, like a legend, centuries behind us. And anyone who experiences our time with a truly feeling heart and a truly moving soul can already realize that in these three years he has lived through something that can otherwise only be lived through in centuries. All scales become different for the judgment of the events. We are confronted with things from the periphery of the world that could make one believe that humanity would not have been up to them at all before they appeared on the horizon of existence.

Of course, these things could be foreseen to a certain extent, my dear attendees, but the fact that they were so little foreseen testifies to how little people wanted to understand what was being pointed out about what was to come. I remind you of one thing today. Again and again, even after public lectures, I was asked how man's repeated lives on earth could be reconciled with the increasing population on earth, with the fact that the population is constantly growing. One would think that if souls were to return again and again, the population would remain constant in a sense. I had to say many things against this prejudice, but I always repeated one thing, as those who heard it will remember: the time could come when people would be horrified to realize that not only an increase in population but also a quite considerable decimation of the population could take place.

Of course, one could not point out the terrible prospect with dry words. But anyone who takes what I said at the time in the Vienna cycle in 1914, and considers it, will see that it points to stages in the development of humanity that make much of what has had to be experienced in the last three years understandable. Only, my dear friends, one could say that in many respects people have not yet really come to their senses. Experience and experience can be very different in the present. In this respect, it happens that people believe they are experiencing the present, but meanwhile they are oversleeping it. And today one can meet a great many people who, in the most important matters, always judge as they did in January 1914, although their hearts should be deeply moved by such terrible trials. But for the person who views the world from a certain spiritual-scientific point of view, what is now taking place within humanity must present not just one, but many, many riddles. The desire to solve these riddles with what are today superficial ideas, which pass through the general consciousness or general education in this way, should actually pass away. One should develop a longing, an urge to seek out the deeper forces that prevail in human development and that make it understandable why humanity has entered into such a crisis.

This evening, my dear friends, we want to occupy ourselves with such a consideration of the deeper developmental impulses of humanity.

We cannot understand the things that are happening in the present because they have far-reaching causes if we only look at the present itself. But over the years we have gathered enough ideas from the spiritual world to be able to gain an understanding from the wider perspective of world observation.

We must start from what we have already considered from different points of view, and what we want to consider today from such a point of view, which is of the greatest possible importance for our immediate present. But first, let us at least make a few comments on the particular way in which many things in the present show us their signature, their special nature. In this present time, I have often thought of an experience that goes back to my early youth and that is so very characteristic, although at first it seems far-fetched. It is so very characteristic of the deeper foundations of our current development.

An old friend of mine was very close to another man. This man was an excellent, fine spirit. He did not write much, did not have much printed, but what he did have printed had an enormously significant weight and would have, if it had penetrated, come to the consciousness of people, could have had a significant effect on people's souls in the second half of the nineteenth century. The man who had the little that was published printed — I will talk about this in more detail in a moment — once fell and broke his leg and died from it. The leg could easily have been set, but he could not be brought through the fall because he was malnourished. So it was said after his death, and rightly so: “You see, that was one of the deepest minds of Central Europe, Deinhardt. He died many decades ago. He remained undernourished because no one was interested in his particular kind of spirituality.

Now, what did he want? Yes, he wanted something that people today cannot even begin to grasp, that has actually been disregarded. And yet, precisely because we cannot grasp it, it is so significant for our time. My dear friends, this man wanted nothing more than to make the tremendous spiritual impulse that lies in Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man pedagogically fruitful for all of humanity. To this end, he wrote a small number of works that are tremendously ingenious. I believe that today they have all been pulped. I don't think that any of these writings can be preserved. And he died of hunger. No one was interested in the fact that something could be drawn from these letters about the aesthetic education of the human being that could raise the entire intellectual level of humanity through an incredibly profound social pedagogy. Of course, by the time the nineteenth century came to an end and the twentieth century began, humanity had absorbed other ideas. Let us also make clear to ourselves by means of an example what ideas humanity has actually absorbed.

You see, one of the leading spirits of France – but since before the war the world was not as divided into nations as it is now, he was also one of the leading spirits of the whole of Europe, and he was listened to in Germany as well as in France – was Maurice Barres. He initially belonged to the free-thinking French youth. As he went further and further in his aspirations, and actually could not befriend the materialism of the nineteenth century, he tried to find his way to a more spiritual direction, but he knew of no other spiritual direction than Catholicism. And so he surrendered to Catholicism, which made him “pious” to such an extent that he became one of the most rabid haters and denigrators of Germans. But let us turn to another side of his nature. Maurice Barres said the following words to justify that today a person who strives for the spiritual must profess Catholicism. I ask you to take these words with the full seriousness, because they are characteristic of the present-day life of ideas. Maurice Barres says:

["It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist! And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us give ourselves to the Church, first of all because she is inextricably linked with the tradition of France. And then, because she formulates with the authority of centuries and great practical experience the rules of that ethics that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society."

Now, my dear friends, in the deepest sense, one cannot imagine a greater frivolity or cynicism than when a person says: Whether there is a hereafter, one can never know; maybe there is none. But let us give ourselves to the Church, not because we are attracted by what it contains, but because it has been able to adapt the generous world view of the Savior to the needs of modern society.

Yes, my dear friends, there is a cynical judgment, but a judgment that lives today in many minds as a feeling; as that feeling that does not know how to take anything very seriously, that does not want to go anywhere into the true depth of reality, because then it would have to penetrate into the spirit, which belongs to reality. But we are not dealing with a light criticism of this time. We have to understand this time. Because only those who understand what is going on can really do their duty in the place where they are. And so we want to try to understand this time by answering the question of how it has developed. As I said, we have to gain a broader perspective and look at the whole time since the great Atlantic catastrophe from a certain point of view.

We have said, my dear friends, immediately after the great Atlantic catastrophe befell the earth, there came the first, the Ur-Indian cultural period; that cultural period of which no historical documents exist. For what is available as documents comes from later times. But the first spiritual culture that could be brought to humanity developed in this post-Atlantic period within the ancient Indian cultural epoch. Life in this time was quite different. And anyone who believes that life on Earth once took a similar course to that of the present time is quite considerably mistaken; they are just too lazy to recognize how humanity has developed through spiritual science. They do not want to recognize how it has developed, and so of course they cannot fully understand what is happening in the present.

Above all, for the people of the first cultural epoch, the ancient Indian cultural epoch, one can say that the whole environment was not yet as it is now. Now the environment for human beings is such that they have air around them; that they have around them what the mineral earth is; that cloud formations rise into the air, which in turn fall down as rain; the water that rises and falls in these cloud formations is contained in the rivers and seas; the air is interspersed with warmth and cold, that is, with the element that was called fire in ancient times. For people today, these are physical things: fire, air, water; physical things that they see in such a way that they ascribe to them the properties that they perceive with their senses. It was not so for the people of the ancient Indian cultural epoch. In those days, people did not yet perceive fire, air and water in the same physical way that today's people perceive fire, air and water in the physical sense. It was an enormous mystery for the people of this first cultural epoch when they saw the flame rise; when they felt the warmth sweeping over the earth with the breeze; when they perceived the air itself in its blowing; when they heard the water rushing; when they saw the water in the air as a cloud or falling as rain. And they had consciousness, these people of the first cultural epoch: just as in a person whom one stands before, not only what one sees with the senses lives in him, but a spiritual-soul life also lives in him , a spiritual soul that belongs to the spiritual worlds, so too does spiritual soul live in the fire that rises with the flame, lives in the blowing air, in the rising and descending water. And that is what they felt, these people: This spiritual-soul aspect belongs to us, belongs to the human being, just as the air, for example, belongs to us as a physical thing; we breathe it in and out. The air that is outside is inside us, then outside again; we are not a separate entity, but what is in us is inside, outside - inside, outside. But for them it was the same with the spiritual aspect of warmth. By sensing warmth, they sensed the spirit of warmth. And so with air and water. In the elements, they felt how spiritual things live in them.

But this feeling asserted itself in a very strange way in a young person during the first cultural period. He felt the elements of fire, air and water as a kind of riddle. But he could not solve this riddle. He had a feeling that it was actually his physicality, his physical corporeality, that prevented him from solving these riddles. He said to himself: “At night, when I sleep, I am outside of my physicality with my real self.” But during his youth he could not really do anything with this sleeping state. Although life in his sleep at that time was infinitely more lively than later or even today. Dreams were not so chaotic, they had some significance. But the physicality with which a person remains connected even outside of their body prevented young people in that first cultural epoch from perceiving the spiritual beings in the elements when they were out of their bodies, sleeping or dreaming.

But this physicality was arranged differently back then. Mankind changes quite a bit over the course of centuries. As strange as it seems, spiritual research shows us that in those days, people remained, one might say, childlike in their developmental capacity for much longer than they do today. Today, people complete the course of their development relatively early. In very early childhood and youth, our mental and spiritual development is quite strongly dependent on our physical development. The child can only scream when it needs something or when it is naughty. But then the structural conditions of the brain change and with the change of the physical, the mental and spiritual also change. And this continues throughout the years. We know that what is spiritual and soul-like is intimately connected with what is physical in development. How the muscles grow stronger, how the metabolism changes, all these things that occur in the human being are expressed in this spiritual and soul-like development. But this stops with increasing age. We will talk later about when it actually stops being important for human development in the present day. For people in the ancient Indian cultural epoch, it did not stop as early as it does now. The human being of the first cultural epoch went through his youth, his growth into his twenties. Then he came to that epoch of life where the human being, as it were, remains static, where he enters middle age, around 35, and enters the descending line. The body sags again, one mineralizes. Today we do not experience any of that. At most, we notice when we reach a certain age that memory declines a bit, but nothing else comes naturally instead. When old people complain that their memory is failing, and we know that this is because the brain and nervous system are becoming mineralized, then nothing else takes its place. It can be the same with the other spiritual powers. It was not so in the first cultural period. Then the soul and spiritual aspects of the human being fully participated in development, even when the human being entered the descending phase of life. Not only did their memory decline, but as their physical bodies decayed, their souls became more and more spiritual and were able to see into the spiritual world. It was precisely when their physical bodies were decaying and mineralizing that they were able to gain what they could not have during the time when their physical bodies were growing, flourishing and thriving. In this case, physical maturation and the strengthening of the imagination are hindered. The change in the physiognomy, in the nerves, holds back the soul and spiritual aspects. Today, we have no means in our external lives to counteract the body's tendency to collapse and mineralize. But in the first cultural epoch, this counteraction was there by itself. The soul still had the strength to draw directly on new forces from beyond the body, but these were spiritual forces. And then man underwent the strongest development, the actual development of maturity, immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe, at about the age of 56. Then it went down to the ages of 55, 54, 53 and so on to the age of 48. And when man had descended to the age of 48, the first, the primeval Indian cultural epoch was over. Therefore, in this leading culture, social life proceeded in such a way that everyone knew: if you ever reach your fiftieth year, you will become enlightened. The development of humanity itself provides the opportunity to live with the elements; to perceive in the fire how it is permeated by the archai, the spirits of personality; how the air is permeated by the archangeloi, the archangels; how the water is permeated by the angeloi, the angelic beings. That is why in those ancient times, the elderly were shown such tremendous respect and honor, because people knew that they were maturing and growing together with the elements. But by becoming so familiar with the elements, the spirit of the elements also took part in everything a person did. And so it came about that in those times, the way the elemental spirits worked on people was naturally specified according to the individual areas of the earth. That which lived in air and water and fire worked differently in India, in Europe, in Africa, and in America. And under the leadership of those who were enlightened in the 1950s, people drew the forces of their lives from their immediate natural surroundings, which were also perceived as spiritual. The land with air and water and fire, that is, its thermal conditions, imposed its peculiarity on those who lived on it. People were differentiated according to this. And just as our body is so differentiated that everyone grows a nose and not an ear, so the earth is such that a certain spiritual culture could only grow in India, and another in Greece, for inner reasons. Thus, out of the elemental nature of the earth, what the spirits of the elements brought into man grew.

If you imagine this, you have the earth itself as a spiritual realm of a very strange kind, which is properly expressed in the face. This gives this first cultural life in the ancient Indian epoch such a strange character. So you can say: the spirits themselves ruled on earth; the spirits. You see, the human ego did not yet have the significance that it had later. Just as little influence does man today have over his breathing, so little influence did he have in those days over what he thought and what he did. For that is what the elemental spirits in him thought.

In the next period, in the second cultural epoch, things were already different. People did not remain capable of development for as long. One could say that the age of general humanity decreased. Just as the second cultural epoch began, people only remained capable of development until the age of 48; then in the further course of time until the age of 46, 45 and so on until the age of 42. Then the second cultural epoch came to an end. So human development lasted well into the forties. Yes, but not everything was perceptible until that time. People would have had to develop well into their fifties if they were to feel and sense all the spirituality of the elemental forces and see it flowing through their beings. They could not do this to the same extent now, because in the 48th year the possibility of growing into it ceased, into that which one can naturally only grow into at the age of 48. The consequence of this was that people became duller in their feelings and perceptions, in their whole thinking and nature, towards the elements of fire, air and water. They did not become as dull as people are today, but they did become duller. One could say that they felt the elements more physically naked. They felt something like this during this time – but only when they reached their forties. Until then, they had to wait, until then they went through the ascending development of youth, went through the middle of life at the age of 35. But then, in their forties, they grew into a certain consciousness, which I could characterize in the following way.

They said to themselves: Yes, wherever there is wind and water and fire, there is also spirit; the bright spirit. When you reach your forties, you grow into this spirit. But the body itself, when it is really growing physically, really thriving physically, prevents one from growing into it. So with the soul one actually belongs to the bright spiritual realm, the spiritual that permeates all elements. The body hinders one, it pulls one back into the darkness again and again. And so, during this period, this struggle in which the human being finds himself between light and darkness was particularly emphasized. In the later Persian period, this became the struggle between the spirit of light, Ormuzd, and the spirit of darkness, Ahriman.

They felt, the people, by waking up, by coming back into the physical body: Yes, there we descend into darkness. And the youth, the young people, they knew: Because we are still in the state of growing, we have to wait until the forties, then we will be enlightened. They were not yet enlightened enough to have a living awareness of the human being's place in the struggle between light and darkness.

But with that, what was on earth ceased to be as strongly differentiated as it used to be. In the past, so to speak, every piece of culture that was above a certain area of the earth was so that it belonged there. But now that people were becoming more indifferent to the elements and were seeing more the light that fights against darkness, now came the time when less was adapted to the elemental forces that developed as culture on a stretch of the earth. There was more commonality across all of humanity. People did not have much in common in the first cultural epoch; they had as little in common as the nose has with the ear. Now the individual groups of people became more and more like one another in their belonging to their group souls.

In the third cultural epoch, things were even more different. There, in the 42nd year, people stopped being capable of development by themselves. They only remained capable of development until the 42nd year, into the 41st year and so on until the 35th year. They became even more dull to life in the elements, in fire, air and water. What lived in the elements became even more alien to them. But something else became more familiar to them. The workings of the great cosmos in light and darkness became familiar to them. Try to realize this clearly: during the day, people woke up, lived in their work, lived in the activities of the day. Then he felt that he was thrust down into the physical with his soul; there he lives in darkness. But when his soul and spirit are free, that is, from falling asleep to waking up, then this soul - in youth one did not know it, but between the ages of 42 and 35 one knew it - then the free soul is given to the spiritual environment. And one no longer felt the spirits of the elements, that is, the archai, archangeloi and angeloi, but one felt their signs shining in the stars, in the constellations, in the planetary constellations in the space in which the soul was when it was free outside the body. And so the person felt: if you descend into the darkness, then you are removed from the star constellations; but with your spiritual soul you are placed in them. There you are exposed to cosmic space; it is a star constellation where you are placed.

But consider, this star constellation is different at every point on earth. And if in the first cultural period one had directly sensed the spirits of the elements, one might say, as they descended into man, now one looked up at the stars in cosmic space and said: hence come the light forces of man. But they come differently to every place on earth. One place on earth is under this star constellation, another place on earth is under that. And it began in this third cultural period, when one became wise between the 42nd and 35th year – after that one had to become wise from the depths of the soul, one had to have what one still wanted to absorb from the stars. But it did not happen by itself, as I have characterized it now, so that one became mature between the ages of 42 and 35, and then knew very well about the dependence of the free soul on the star constellations; then people said to themselves: There are places on Earth that are under this star constellation, other places on Earth under that star constellation. If you look at Greece, you would have to say: Greece is not just this spot on Earth. It is the spot on Earth that is under a particular star constellation at a particular time of the year. Troy is the spot on Earth that is under a very specific star constellation at a particular time.

You see, it was out of these foundations that, in that third cultural period, what you have been taught as the strange struggles developed until the end of this third cultural period, when the Trojan War took place. Because what is told as the legend of Helen and Paris is only the reflection of a star constellation. And by fighting over Troy and Greece, or the Greeks fighting in Troy, and vice versa, they fought for the star constellation. And the wise men between the ages of 42 and 35 said what it meant in Greece or in “Troy to be, to possess Greece or Troy. To speak of the struggle between nations in that time, in this third cultural period, which ends in 747 BC, is to speak of something different than speaking of the struggle between nations today. At that time it meant observing how the souls of the nations fight in their own corner of the earth, how the leaders of the nations go forth to fight for their people, who are now no longer meant to express merely the physiognomy of a particular region of the earth, but something that flows down from the starry worlds, to fight for this piece of earth for this people. That is why I said: It is necessary to imagine how times will change, how something different will always happen.

To speak of the struggles between nations of that time in the same way as one speaks of them today means knowing nothing at all about the development of humanity, since this Trojan War was inspired by what the wise men of that time divined from the constellations that ruled over Greece and Troy. To speak of this war as one does today is to want to engage in fantasy and to want to know nothing of the actual nature and essence of man.

Then came the time when the general age of people had decreased again, the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period. Since one was no longer capable of development beyond the age of 35, the possibility of perceiving spirituality in the elements had disappeared altogether. One simply listed the elements in physical terms: fire, air, water, earth. At most, there was still a hint that something spiritual was in the elements, which the first Greek philosopher Thales said, that water is the origin of everything. That is not just physical water alone, but the spirit of water that lives in everything. This fourth post-Atlantic cultural period begins in 747 BC. But there was one thing that people still knew during this period, and it was still capable of development until well into the thirties. They no longer knew the spirit that ruled out there in the air, in the water, but they knew that there is a spirit within oneself. When you moved your finger, you knew that there was something spiritual living in you. To imagine the body as today's man imagines it, as today's science imagines it, that would not have been possible for the Greek. That was still something absolutely impossible for the Greek. But he perceives what is physical as spiritual and soul at the same time. He perceives that in every movement, in growth, in everything that happens in the body, the spiritual and soul-like prevails. Therefore, during this period, which begins in 747 BC and ends in 1413 AD after the Mystery of Golgotha, the view was developed that the human being consists of body and soul. But something remarkable developed within Greek culture. It is interesting to look at the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example. He reached the pinnacle of wisdom that a Greek could reach. But he was not initiated into the mysteries. This is very important.

Those who were initiated into the mysteries were also able to attain to that which was not given to people by themselves. But Aristotle could only come to what a person without initiation could come to. But there he was at the summit of this wisdom. How did Aristotle imagine immortality? That is characteristic. He said something like this: If I cut off one arm of a human being, it is no longer a complete human being. If I cut off two arms, it is no longer a complete human being at all. And if I take the whole body, then it is of course no longer a complete human being. Therefore, the soul, which Aristotle thought was immortal, in the sense of a Greek, in the sense of Aristotle, is immortal. But this immortal man is, after death, not a complete human being, but an incomplete one. Therefore, Aristotle expresses philosophically what I have often quoted from the Greek Homer, who says: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows,” because man could only be complete in the Greek view if he had body and soul. He is an incomplete human being, even though he is an immortal human being. The soul is no longer a whole human being for him. It is cut off from its surroundings if it has no body with its sense organs, which bring it into relation with the world.

You see, it turns out that what can be called: Man was brought more and more down to his physical nature. He remained incapable of development in the periods in which he could have received illuminations about the spiritual world. Only those initiated into the mysteries received such illuminations. So it came about that, to a certain extent, people lost their connection with the spiritual and were brought down to their physical nature.

This fourth period begins in 747 BC. You see, at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, human beings remained capable of development until about the age of 33. They remained capable of development until the age of 33 at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred! What one can take up by oneself in development up to that point, people took up, but that did not give them the possibility – it can be seen best in Aristotle – to speak of an immortal in man. One could only speak of the fact that man is an imperfect human being when he goes through death; that he is actually no longer a whole human being. Not that this was true, but it was no longer possible through human insight to imagine what lives beyond death.

You can easily say: But why were people not simply initiated into the mysteries, and why did not the mysteries reveal to people the immortality of the human being? Yes, the mysteries were already there. They had to continue to have an effect little by little, because people would have lost their connection to the spiritual world through natural development. So there had to be at least one way into the spiritual world, but precisely because people were increasingly pushed down into the physical, in that the powers of the human being were claimed in order to thrive and prosper, it came down to the fact that one could only learn something [about the spiritual world] from the mysteries. On the one hand, man placed more and more value on the feeling of being in a body; on the other hand, he had to say to himself: Yes, you are connected to the spiritual world, but you can only gain insight into the spiritual world in the mysteries.

So what happened? What happened was that the rulers in the Greco-Latin period, the Roman Caesars, the Roman emperors, forced themselves to be initiated. The first Roman Caesar, Augustus, was an initiate. He had the power, he could force himself to be initiated. He made little misuse of it. You see, my dear friends, what has come about, this prevalence of external power, this placing of man in the development of the earth as a citizen of the Roman Empire - because one first became a “citizen” there - it only became possible when man no longer felt himself a citizen of the spiritual world. Only then did man become involved in everything that comes from the “flesh”. But one could force oneself - if one was the mightiest man in the flesh, if one was Roman emperor - to be initiated into the mysteries. And not only Caesar Augustus had forced himself to be initiated, but also a man like Caligula forced himself to be initiated. And what history reports refers to truths. Because Caligula was able to speak with the spirits of the elements, with the spirits of the moon. He could consciously use the formulas that were used at that time by the initiates. He knew that “man is of divine nature,” so he allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. But for people like Augustus, Caligula and Nero, who were all initiates because they forced initiation, their initiation led to an insistence on power in the physical world, but at the same time to a real contempt for the physical. For this Caligula, when he once heard of a court case in which an innocent man had been convicted, he said: That does not matter, because the innocent man was certainly just as guilty as the guilty man. And another time he said: Well, the judges who condemned the guilty man are just as guilty.

A personality like Nero's can also be understood from such backgrounds. For what did they say when they were as initiated as Nero? He did not understand Christianity. But when you were as initiated as Nero, you said to yourself: natural development no longer provides anything spiritual. The spiritual realm must come into the world in a different way. In a different way, the spirit must come to earth. It must descend in a different form than before, when one grew into what surrounded one as a spirit through natural development. This was wrung out in the insane mind of Nero and showed itself in how he wanted to demand the coming of the spirit. He knew from physics: it no longer gives the spirit, it has peeled itself out of the spiritual. Therefore, he wanted to set Rome on fire and from there ignite the world fire. It was his idea to destroy the earth because it no longer yielded the spirit. Nero was completely convinced that human physicality has now been completely abandoned by the spirit. Only if one does not rely on the body, but only on the spirit and soul, did he want to seek the spiritual realm from a completely different direction. Why then this earth, human flesh, which is in any case only unchaste? Neros called all human flesh, all physical unchaste. When one speaks of psychoanalysis today, one is strongly reminded of Nero. One can say: He was the first psychoanalyst who sought everything in the human flesh. That was the other side.

Briefly, before the time of Nero, the human race was actually only developing up to the age of 33. And now, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ grew up to the age of 33, to this lifetime of man. Human beings had descended in their development from 56 to 33 years of age; the Christ Jesus grew contrary to this age of man. He found death in the 33rd year of life and radiates his impulses into the earth. He merged with the earth's substance.

Imagine this miracle. The human race is getting younger and younger until it is 33 years old. The Christ comes at this time, he develops up to the 33rd year, then passes through the gate of death and radiates his own being there. It is a supreme moment when one contemplates this connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and the development of humanity. This is how the Mystery of Golgotha is part of human development. The 33 years of Christ Jesus are not a coincidence. It had to be so because his ascending age had to coincide with the descent of humanity.

You see, my dear friends: spiritual science does not take us away from an understanding of Christianity; spiritual science leads us more and more into this understanding of Christianity. We get more and more feeling for the great significance of Christianity. From this we can see how crazy it is to accuse spiritual science of not being able to relate to Christ in the right way. And by what kind of people is it accused? By people who want to relate to Christ in a strange way. Take a statement such as the one that was recently made in the magazine 'Die Furche' in 1915. There, in a way that is not actually initially unkind, spiritual science, insofar as it is represented by me, is spoken of, but then it is said:

Therefore, one must not only [call out the following words of Rudolf Steiner to certain aberrations of this spiritual activity, but to all those who are influenced by this movement: “Those who do not want to trust completely dark powers, whose true nature and origin they cannot know, should avoid getting involved in such things.”]

Yes, my dear friends, I am telling you this because otherwise this article is not without favoritism. But that also arises from a feeling that must be counted among the great lies of our time. What do people of this kind actually want? Well, that the Christ has redeemed them, no matter how they behave now; if only they can always speak the name “Lord, Lord” and talk about it.

Of course, spiritual science must relate to Christ Jesus in a different way. It must bear in mind the words of Christ Jesus: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Spiritual science does not want to leave unused the divine power that is in people, but seeks the path to Christ. Out of laziness, out of the great lie of life, that which speaks in such a way as is spoken at the end of this article is asserted. No attention is paid to how, especially in our time, the spiritual forces must flow in such a way that, through spiritual science, they can lead precisely to the secrets of the Christ being. Here again you have a glimpse of the terrible superficiality of the present time, through which humanity must pass. It wants to leave everything to Christ Jesus without making much effort or exerting itself. What a comfortable point of view! But this is the point of view of those today who call themselves Christians and reject spiritual science as un-Christian. True spiritual science, as you can see, dear friends, leads to such a deep understanding that one experiences the harrowing fact that the descent of the ages of humanity grows together with the 33rd year, the 'year of the death of Christ Jesus'. Right down to the last detail, spiritual science proves to open up understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, since 1413, we have been living in the age where humanity is only capable of development on its own, from 1413 to the age of 28. Today we have come down to the age of 27.

From this you can see, my dear friends, that spiritual science did not arise out of an arbitrary whim or out of some principle of agitation, but rather: Man simply cannot develop further in our time through himself than up to the age of 27. What is to develop further, the soul must drive forward through its own inner impulses, which come from the spiritual world. The body can no longer provide it.

And anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has the task of leading souls beyond the development that they can find through the body alone. There you have a secret of our time. Anyone who does not try to understand spiritual science, even if only in a rational, intellectual way – you can understand spiritual science without undergoing an inner development – but this understanding must ignite the connection of the soul with the spiritual world, must feel it. If you don't come into contact with the spiritual world through spiritual science, you won't live past the age of 27. Today, one can only grow older through spiritual development. This is very significant, my dear friends, this is something tremendous. When the riddles of the present weigh heavily on you, when you want to know what has happened and what has to happen, when you are looking for an answer to the question: What is the purpose of spiritual science? How is it challenged by the interests and impulses of the present?

Then we look at the leading, most influential people, for example, of the present time. Going into more detail is not exactly appropriate in our time of non-existent freedom of the press. So one can choose an example, but it is truly not chosen from the chaos created by the war. I have spoken in cycles about what happened before the war, when the feelings that the war had produced were not yet alive in people. But you can see from this that I was already able to see certain personalities at that time as they are happening today. I always had to ask myself again: Which personalities clearly show that people cannot grow older than 27 years if they are not seeking a spiritual impulse? And then I found that a characteristic person of this kind is the President of North America, Woodrow Wilson. He is one of those people who cannot get older than 27 years old – even if they live to be a hundred – because he only takes in what humanity gives of itself. You see, that is why such a person can send great ideas into the world; one can have a spiritual and intellectual pleasure in these ideas, one can lick one's fingers because one feels such pleasure, but they are still only immature ideas. They do not even reach the age of 35, the middle of life, they are 27 years old – yes, they are boyish ideas. Humanity sleeps through these facts, that these ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, because it cannot think things in such a way that the man who sits in one of the most powerful places on earth today solves the mystery for us, why he sends nothing but abstract, nothing but big, resounding words without real reality into the world. Because his ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, therefore they cannot find their way into reality. The man who sits in the most important place today, who therefore says all the tirades in his / gap in the transcript] message, which speak of freedom of peoples and the like. So today people find beautiful words, ideal words. They sound so nice to people that they say: He is an idealist, he has good ideas.

But what matters today, my dear friends, is not that someone has beautiful ideas, but that someone has ideas that can reach into reality, that really have the power to work in reality. What matters is not that someone has ideas to secure peace and then issues a manifesto that in a few weeks creates war in their own country. There is a great difference between the beauty, logic and idealism of ideas and the reality of ideas. That is why I emphasized so strongly in my last book that today we cannot just have beautiful ideas and feel them with a certain voluptuousness, but that we can descend into reality with our ideas, that we have practical ideas for life that can become reality, that can have an effect on reality as a force. Today, beautiful ideas can be precisely those of the most immature people. I would like to give you a trivial example of this. You can hear people saying, “Oh, we are living in a great spiritual change; this war will bring about a completely new era. In the future, it will no longer be as it was before, but the most capable man will be in the right place.” What beautiful ideas! One can lick one's fingers with sheer voluptuousness at having uttered such beautiful ideas. But if the son-in-law or the nephew is “the most capable,” then the whole beautiful idea is worth nothing. These beautiful ideas do not intervene in reality. What matters is not that a person grasps the full reality and regards ideas only as the instrument for immersing themselves in reality, but that they grasp reality. Today, people do not even feel what is meant by such words. They do not feel how far they are from reality because they have become accustomed to listening for beautiful ideas that mean nothing at all. What is at stake is that we ourselves must immerse ourselves in reality with our souls, we must become akin to reality. That is why today, in every field of knowledge, there are only unrealistic ideas. Political economy has only unrealistic ideas. What is now called political science, you can go through it, everywhere at the universities it consists only of unrealistic ideas. Nowhere are the ideas suitable for immersion in reality. Now an excellent man, who is even sympathetic towards my ideas, has published a book – yes, from beginning to end the book is full of abstract ideas. Nowhere can one find the slightest sense of immersion in reality.

But my dear friends, what happens among people depends on what people think and feel. Therefore, it is necessary to realize: we need a wisdom that is related to reality. We must permeate the ideas with which we want to rule the world with the spirit that is taken from reality itself.

And so the task at hand is to become familiar with reality. But this can only be achieved by building on a spiritual-scientific foundation. We have already become very alienated from reality. People can think an awful lot in the present. Some people are so clever. But these clever ideas are all abstract and have no reality value, because the human being has no reality value when it comes to ideas. In the case of man, one speaks only of the dead product in physiology, in biology; of that which has no reality value itself. How can one have anything real in economic ideas, in political science ideas, if the starting points do not contain concepts that have reality.

Try to understand this correctly, my dear friends, and you will realize that this spiritual science must not be taken as many do, as a mystical, nebulous construct that wants to lead people away from the practice of life. The opposite is true. I have often used the example of a horseshoe magnet. You can say, “Well, that's a horseshoe, we'll shoe a horse's hoof with it.” That would be nonsense, of course, because the horseshoe-shaped magnet is to be used as a magnet. The world only sees the horseshoe and shoes a horse's hoof with it. This is what today's humanity does with the world. Namely with the social order of people, because it has no concepts that really grasp what is in reality, as magnetism in the horseshoe magnet.

And here, my dear friends, is what it is all about, because no one who does not understand this understands the deeper reasons for the terrible times in which we live. And as people have moved away from reality, they have also moved further and further away from the true, real understanding of the facts.

Today it can easily happen that, for example, A says to B: Hey, C did this and that. B thinks that because A said that C did this, B actually said: C is a bad guy. A didn't say that, he just listed facts. But B goes to C and says: Hey, A said you were a bad guy.

This is a paradigm for much of what happens today. People no longer know how to distinguish between what they think of things and the facts. Enormous harm is caused by this because people do not look at what arises from such inaccuracies received through thoughts. A sense of fact is what people need. But do they have it? Do they have this sense of fact? An example that could stand for hundreds, for thousands, for millions: There is a magazine called “The Invisible Temple”. A certain Horneffer publishes this magazine.

Many people now say: Oh, “The Invisible Temple”, that is certainly something very deep, something very, very deep. And now you read; you read all kinds of beautiful things; you can have voluptuous sensations from these beautiful things. But, you see, I have the February issue right now. It contains a discussion about monism and theosophy:

[As different as the monists are from the theosophists, and as eagerly as they fight and despise each other, they are strangely similar in one respect: they monopolize the word 'science'. What they do themselves is true, pure science; what other people do is sham and pseudo-science. This can be read in Haeckel and Rudolf Steiner.]

I ask you, where? Open all the things I have written, all the things I have said, and see if I have ever spoken these words! But this is in a magazine that now comes out with the pretension of calling itself “The Invisible Temple”. In the face of this, one must get used to calling a lie a lie. You have to call a lie a lie, because that is a lie. It does not matter whether it is he who lies or they who lie, those who appear with pretension, in the blue freemason magazine under the title “The Invisible Temple” to put forward all sorts of strange chatter, not to say anything worse, who do not want to make a judgment about where lies are present. By alienating oneself from reality with one's concepts and ideas, by saying this or that without having the sense to immerse oneself in reality, one also distances oneself from the sense of the truth. But this is something that must come first: a sense of the truth if salvation is to come for our time.

And so, my dear friends, since we have actually run out of time, I would like to add to this reflection something that really shows how, even in our circles, in the so-called anthroposophical circles, and only recently, what is alienation from the sense of fact plays a role.

I started today's reflection by saying that a person could, so to speak, starve to death by wanting to popularize Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. They are truly not popular. After all, who actually knows them? Who, in particular, understands the tremendously deep meaning of the impulses they contain?

Have we not seen how, in the course of the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, people have increasingly distanced themselves from the spiritual world and increasingly degenerated in their instincts? Schiller raises the big question in one of the first centuries of our time – the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period begins in 1413 – in his letters on aesthetic education: how do instincts find their way back to the spiritual? How do you find your way back? At that time there was still no spiritual science, as Schiller wrote, in the way one could think about these things at that time, how man finds his way back from instincts to spirituality. This is magnificently, powerfully, incomparably stated in these letters. And it was actually a regression in later times that one did not want to pick up the thread into the spirit that Schiller wanted to take.

And basically, within our ranks, little was understood of how everything was actually designed to truly follow the right path of spiritual science dictated by the times. One of the first publications is my lectures on Schiller, which I gave at the Berlin Free University, where we talked about the “Letters on Aesthetic Education” in connection with his spiritual development. This is one of the first publications of the Theosophical Society, which then became the Anthroposophical Society. There were difficult struggles. But, my dear friends, there is still much to come, because today we see the matter as having reached a kind of climax. I do not want to be misunderstood in this. Therefore, allow me to deal with matters in a few moments that only appear to be personal matters.

[In truth, they are really not personal matters for me. And when some members of the Anthroposophical Society, at the time when the terrible battle had to be fought against Annie Besant, withdrew in a noble way and said: we do not want to have anything to do with personal matters, is actually incomprehensible. Because you have to distinguish between who is the attacker and who is the attacked, otherwise things come about as they have now come about.

Let us take a harsh example, so that we can visualize how it is necessary to see with one's whole soul to form an opinion. You see, spiritual science could flourish without a society. If you had a few people in different German cities who organized lectures every winter, spiritual science could flourish for humanity without the Anthroposophical Society. There are two things: the Anthroposophical Society and spiritual science. The Anthroposophical Society must be something in itself, must be a reality in itself in its impulses. Therefore, one must stand within it with full judgment. Now, I have to discuss here things in which the Hanover branch is less involved, but which nevertheless affect the unity of the Society.

Do you see what happened years ago? There was a certain Mr. Grasshoff, who was pushed in by a member. He went from lecture cycle to lecture cycle, from lecture to lecture; he copied everything down, bought all the books, all the cycles? He also copied everything that was privately written down. After a few months, he had everything that had been said in the lectures and that had been written together.

Now you might say, after all that happened later: Why was the man admitted? Yes, you can't turn someone away because of what they will do in the future. That's a dilemma. When a person enters society, you can't tell them — forgive the harsh expression — you can't say: you won't be accepted because you would turn out to be a bastard later. So there is the dilemma. So the man had written down everything he could get his hands on. Except for the title he gave his book – “The Rosicrucian World Conception” – everything else is mine. But he had written a preface. In this book, he not only included what he had found in printed books, so that he had published something in America, but also things that had not yet been published here. But he wrote a preface. And in it he says: Yes, of course he used a lot in this book, included a lot that he had learned from me and my books. But that would not have been enough. Then one day he was called to a master in Transylvania, who then gave him the deepest knowledge, so he could give so much more in his book. But what you find “more” is just copied from cycles and lectures. That's how this book was made.

Now you can say: That's American. Fine. You can forgive a lot under that flag. But that wasn't the only thing that happened. A German publisher was found, but Hugo Vollrath's publishing house had this book translated into German and published it as individual Rosicrucian lesson letters in Germany. And there it had a preface in which it is said: “Some of it has already been said here, that is, in Germany, but much of it was unclean; it first had to be cleansed in the pure air of California.” And so you get so-called Rosicrucian letters in which everything is stolen, everything is theft, but on top of that, theft with defamation.

You see, such an outrage is impossible in the outer literary life, because something like that would become known and be dealt with accordingly. I have discussed this repeatedly, but with us it goes in at one ear and out the other. It is not discussed further. It is not taken into account that such an outrage must be reported and made known, otherwise it will have consequences. It will also be known if one only forms the right judgment about it. It depends on the judgment. Not only that one forms logical judgments, but that one also knows in such things how great the disgrace is that is possible in the world.

You see, things like that have consequences. You know that there was a member – a member until recently – who could not be rejected either. He was a member for a long time. In fact, because we were sympathetic to this member, one of his writings was even published by our publishing house. But then he wanted to publish another writing. In this book, 'Who Was Christ?' the author also makes use of all kinds of things from the cycles. But then he says: 'Dr. Steiner did hint at such things, but he never went into them in detail; one must treat the subject more thoroughly'. Dr. Steiner took offence at that. I myself only said that Dr. Steiner had probably taken offence, but that I had not dealt with it myself. I only read one passage, which was enough to understand that this book had to be rejected. This man had been looking for years to find some kind of field of work in the Anthroposophical Society — as a follower; he was a strange follower, though. You see, the man gets this book rejected and then becomes an opponent; even an enemy, not just an opponent. Yes, then he wrote an article in the so-called “Psychischen Studien” (Psychical Studies). An article in which he wanted to prove alleged contradictions in my writings. But if he had only written about the contradictions, he would not have attracted much attention. Whatever can be said objectively should be said. Yes, let a hundred or a thousand pamphlets appear; spiritual science has no opposition to fear. But objectivity is out of the question in this case. The man in question - it is Privy Councillor Seiling - weaves slander, defamation and lies into his foolish arguments about contradictions. He has adopted the strategy of trying to drive spiritual science into a kind of scandal, and he finds compliant editors who are far too lazy to fight spiritual science objectively; they would have to study it, and they don't want to do that. So they push the whole thing into scandal, defamation, by throwing mud at those who want to represent this spiritual science. Such things are sometimes done in a very subtle way, my dear friends! For example, Hofrat Seiling published an article that followed the article about the so-called contradictions. This article is a perfect example of what a subtle desire for defamation can do. You see, the most harmless thing that can happen is that it is of no concern to anyone – it was our marriage. A scandal arose about it among people who, of course, had no right to do so. It was nobody's business. But the fact that a number of women - not to use any other word - used the opportunity to create a scandal about this matter is characteristic of the way these women see things. This scandal was absolutely none of our business; the others made it. But how does Seiling formulate this matter? He formulates it in such a way that this marriage has led to scandals in Dornach. And so everyone must believe that the marriage itself led to a scandal, while it was these - yes, I am now making points - while it was these... women who made this scandal. - This is how you write sophisticated defamatory articles.

But other things were written as well. Many of our members know that I allowed the cycles to be printed. But I had to make up my mind to do so, firstly because the members wanted it; the transcripts that circulate among the members are often downright terrible. For example, we had to experience that we saw a transcript that was going around saying that I had said that prostitution was set up by great initiates in the sixteenth century. So I really had enough of these private transcripts. But I couldn't see all of these things.

Seiling was one of those people who did not make my life easy. Now he is noble enough to say: If Steiner did not give so many conversations to members, then he could see through the cycles and there would be no need for 'Unseen Postscript'. And Seiling cannot stop grumbling about the Anthroposophical Society and the way members behave. One can think of countless details in such matters. And just with Seiling, one only needs to think of it when he now speaks of how much time was taken for the discussions with members, then one only needs to think of the fact that it was Seiling who, for example, in Munich, saddled me with a completely insane person who did not visit me, whom I, to do Seiling a favor, visited more often. Of course, what the man wanted as advice turned into terrible vindictiveness and hatred for me.

Yes, my dear friends, to look into what happened there is a terrible thing. Therefore, one should not talk about opposing writings that only want to be factual. One must make a strict distinction. If someone has made a judgment that is as dismissive as can be, but remains objective, then I agree with it. You see, our dear, good Ludwig Deinhard – he died recently. He has done almost more than anyone else in recent times for spiritual science. Wherever he could, he published beautiful, significant articles. But he worked hard to get there because he was initially involved in a completely different field. And at the time when I began lecturing, under the influence of Deinhard — one may say this because he was later one of the most loyal and active supporters, and the latter is even more valuable — the following appeared: “The Berlin traveler in spiritual science has arrived!” That's okay. That's an opinion; anyone can take a position on this opinion. It is not a defamation, but an opinion, and one may have opinions. As I said, Deinhard has long since outgrown it, but even if he hadn't, you're allowed to do it; you're allowed to characterize, that's literary license. But you're not allowed to slander; you're not allowed to say things that are simply not true, that are objective untruths. But that is what distinguishes Seiling's attack from such attacks. And that is why it is quite worthless to refute this “discussion of contradictions.” Rather, the world must know: the man started this whole story purely because he was rejected by our publishing house with this brochure “Who Was Christ?” That is the real reason. And it is this real reason that must be pointed out, that is what matters.

Now another case. Many years ago, a man from central Germany wrote to Dr. Schüßler: He did not know what to do, whether to marry into a family or whether to turn to another change in his life. And when she wrote to him that we were not there to give advice on such matters, he gradually became more involved with the Theosophical Society at the time, initially within it in Berlin, albeit in a peculiar way, so that people got the impression – I am not saying that he did it, but that people got the impression, and very credible people – that he would now take care of the marriage for himself in the Society. Then, at a general assembly, without any artistic feeling and without a clue, he unleashed Schiller's Cassandra on the heads of the shocked members. Then he went to Munich. Now we had the misfortune of unsuspecting people approaching us and asking us to let him learn how to paint. But he didn't want to learn to paint, he wanted to be able to paint. He didn't want to become a painter, he wanted to be a painter. We just didn't know how to go about it. We wanted to help him in every way. A great deal has been done for the man, but he could do nothing. He wanted to be a genius, and he was terribly resentful that he could not be made a genius. Just as with what is called development, people resent the fact that they have to work for it. They would actually like me to take care of it: I turn to him, then I have to develop myself – he will do it. – Well, this man was concerned with not learning anything and yet wanting to be something. He went wild over it. That is the reason for his wildness. But now he writes that through the exercises he is supposed to have received – I don't know – he has developed spots on many parts of his body. And now he writes the most incredible articles in all sorts of places, which are as ridiculous on the one hand as they are defamatory on the other.

For example, he writes: The exercise would have particularly harmed him, that he should have thought: What is happening in my environment is good and necessary. — Isn't it, you have to be so ruthless as to give someone such an exercise! It bruised him in many places. But this exercise is actually in Schopenhauer's works. You will find the words in Schopenhauer, who considers it healthy for every human being. So he has not been given anything particularly magical, as you can see, but a very generally human exercise. But today – well, those editors who included the article by Erich Bamler also know Schopenhauer. The truth is that the man wrote these articles. What is in them are objective untruths and even stupidities. The truth is that the man did not become a genius and went wild about it. Yes, that's how it is.

And now we are happy that they have started - and that the story seems to be to be continued - that not only am I being thrown dirt, but they are now no longer stopping at Dr. Steiner - and in a “tone that is not there at all. Nothing like this has been printed yet, the way it is now being printed against what is being done and written here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Yes, for example, there is rambling about the disgracefulness of the exercises that the doctor is said to have given to a young girl. And how did she give these exercises? When the young girl was called to account for how she could claim that, since it is common knowledge that Frau Doktor never gives exercises, when she was asked how she could claim that Frau Doktor had given her exercises that had harmed her, since it is quite untrue, she said, “Yes, she didn't give them to me in such a way that she would have told me.” Yes, but how then, they asked her. Well, the young girl said, I listened to Dr. Steiner's recitations for eurythmists. Poems by Lienhard, poems by Uhland. Of course the poems were only meant for the others, but for me they contained exercises, so she gave me exercises. She didn't consciously receive the exercises, it was said, but she was simply Dr. Steiner's medium.

Yes, these things – that they are insane is not our concern, but that they are invented, that they are objective untruths, that is our concern. The matter has finally come to a head, that in the same article in the “Psychischen Studien” it says - the Anthroposophical Society really had to be found in order to have members who would believe something like this from a magazine - it says something like this: Dr. Steiner wrote about the Lazarus miracle in the book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, and he wanted to perform the Lazarus miracle with me. He wanted to transform me as Christ transformed Lazarus. This is connected with the fact that she burst into my bedroom one morning in a terrible fit of raving madness. She actually wanted to assault Dr. Steiner, but her door was locked. She was then taken to a sanatorium. This does not prevent her from writing these things now. Among other things, she says that it is all because Dr. Steiner sent her chocolate. Dr. Steiner just wanted to do her a kindness and bought her chocolate and other times apples or oranges. They wanted to be kind to her. — Because at the time she was thought to be ill, she was in a sanatorium. Now she writes that this chocolate was sent to her to thicken the blood so that the Lazarus miracle could take place. That's what's in the magazine now, and the editor adds the note:

[These are the kinds of madness that can land a healthy person in the asylum! - Ed.]

That's what really makes it personal. So the treatment consisted of sending the sick girl chocolate to the sanatorium, not to thicken her blood, but to eat, that's the treatment.

These are the kinds of things that are so terribly ridiculous on the one hand, like the Goesch case. It was said: Yes, the Goesch case is yet to come and will be one of the most difficult. The Goesch case is also, on the one hand, so terribly ridiculous and, on the other hand, so defamatory and disparaging, because today the intention is to eliminate spiritual science not by honest debate but by discrediting the person, by telling things that are pure invention and so foolish that people can say, Well, if they go to such lengths to perform a Lazarus miracle, then you can't take this spiritual science seriously. On the other hand, people can say: people go crazy with spiritual science, it is dangerous. It is the best policy to count on people's addiction to scandal; it is the best policy one can adopt to make something impossible. It is written in a tone, in a way that is simply incredible. And the editor makes the comment that one could believe it.

If some defenders now come forward, so we know that there are people in this society who “consider Dr. Steiner to be the Christ”. Yes, my dear friends, anything is possible in this day and age! I recently received a letter from a neighboring town. The letter said that the gentleman had attended a public lecture of mine. I spoke about the repeated incarnations of Christ and made it clear that I am laying claim to the present one. And he noted that he heard this with his own ears and not only he, but also some friends who were sitting with him in this lecture. So today people tell stories that are the crassest nonsense; they swear by them under certain circumstances.

You see, people still have their secondary purposes. What do people want to achieve? The young lady's article was written from the attitude from which all things come. This article is entitled “Anthroposophy: Sexual Magic”. It is interesting that everything leads to the sexual realm.

People who are themselves under the influence of sexuality – well, it is easy to understand that they want to drag everything into this area. But there are other purposes behind it as well. The strange thing is that if you read Goesch's writing today - which has not yet been published, but they are threatening to publish it - if you read this writing, you will find the strange thing that he constantly proves what he says against me by referring to passages from the mystery dramas. He refutes me from books of mine, from lectures, from my writings. It has never happened before that such a method has been used. It is quite a novelty. A person in Dornach writes to Goesch to bring him a little more to reason. He receives the answer from Goesch, which is supposed to make it clear to him that he will not allow himself to be converted: “I only need to remind you of a profound saying - or something like that - that clarifies your situation:

I hear not the friend,
I hear a ghastly creature.

That is actually from the Rosicrucian Mystery. Yes, what people actually want is to get the matter onto a track where everything is made public. Whether they want to urge you to publish everything in a justification, or whether they want to urge you to bring a lawsuit in which everything must be made public. They want to have everything. In today's world, you can no longer keep anything secret from humanity, which is going through a crisis that is clearly evident in these matters.

For those who are familiar with spiritual science, this is not surprising, but the judgment must be brought into the right channels. Those who have to speak about spiritual matters, especially esoteric ones, know very well that if they speak to about 120 people, 70 of them are potential opponents. This is simply because one has to speak to certain depths of the human soul. At most, 50 can remain loyal. The others, if they do not die earlier, will become opponents. But the big difference is whether they become decent opponents. For the time being, we live in a time when most are not decent. One can be satisfied with decent opponents, because spiritual science will only slowly and gradually become part of human development. That goes without saying.

All this that I have explained to you shows the absolute necessity for me to take certain measures. For it is impossible to allow what spiritual science is supposed to achieve to be dragged through the mud. As long as only people like Freimark and the like spread their calumnies about spiritual science, the matter could still be ignored. But now that those who throw mud at everything and do the worst are recruiting from society itself, even if they are resigning, I have to take a measure - together with another one - a measure that means that I have to suspend all private meetings for the near future. It is no longer possible for me to hold private meetings. Those who are honestly seeking esoteric knowledge may be patient; a substitute will be found for these esoteric discussions. Anthroposophy must be brought into the full light of the public, and all private discussions must cease. No one can feel more sorry and wistful than I feel sorry and wistful, because I have enjoyed serving people. But since I have said many things so often in vain, it must now be pointed out by facts that a correct judgment must prevail. It cannot continue like this, that one considers fools to be initiates and the like. So it is impossible to get along. Therefore, all private discussions must stop in the near future. As I said, a replacement will be created for those who continue to strive esoterically honest.

But this measure must be supplemented by another, and anyone who does not say this second measure when saying the first, does not remain with the truth. This second measure is that I allow everyone to say everything that has ever been said to them in these private conversations, if they want to. Nothing need be kept secret that has ever been said in private conversations. For it is precisely about these private conversations that an enormous amount of lies are told. Precisely these private conversations are used to drag spiritual science into the mud, because they cannot be refuted by spiritual science itself. Therefore, these private conversations must cease; one must submit to this necessity; without exception they must cease. And besides, as I said, I authorize anyone to pass on the content of the private conversations if they so desire. This should help to silence those dreadful tongues that are now opening up such a campaign of defamation, if these measures are carried out for a while and if it is seen that not only spiritual science itself but also everything that happens in society does not need to shy away from the light of day.

But there would be a lot to do, because there would still be a lot of this mudslinging that has developed up to now, and there would be a lot to do if one had to deal with everything that has developed from the worst instincts.

You have to get to know people in society. So far, as a rule, it has been done the way a lady in Berlin did it. There were scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach who attacked me and the doctor in the most terrible way. A lady who was related to one of the scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach wrote to the doctor saying that she should do something to bring the scandal-mongering ladies to their senses in a benevolent way. It has become the custom to interpret the first principle of our society as meaning that anyone can commit any disgraceful act, so one must treat them with love and goodwill because one has to apply this principle to all people. The one who is attacked is seen as the sinner. At least we can assure you that there is no kind of impertinence that has not been directed at us in the course of anthroposophical work. I have to take these two measures not only because of the content, but also to make it clear that we must finally take the demand for sound judgment seriously, so that morbid judgments cannot persist. I also pronounced these measures in Munich. Someone said: Why should everyone have to suffer when a few people do such things? I had to answer: Yes, you turn to those who cause such things, and not to those who then have to carry out such measures under duress. If they had wanted to, they could have found a way, maybe not now that the avalanche has started – but they should have found ways and means at the time when it was still just a snowball. But in the future, the only way to help is to take such strict measures.

Please do not take it amiss that I had to add this consideration to the actual spiritual consideration that I wanted to make here.] One would like so much not to have only words at one's disposal to say what needs to be said in today's world, to find one's way to the hearts and souls of people. Language has already become a purely abstract product. And the words, how they are heard, already weak and abstract. I would like to give another example of this.

Just think, people today hear someone say, “He did it pretty well.” Who will think differently today if someone speaks as if they wanted to say “almost well.” “Pretty well” equals “almost well.” But “pretty” has the same root as the word “geziemt,” which means “what befits.” And 'pretty good' does not just mean 'almost good', but, if you feel the word in the right way, then you feel: 'in the way of 'good', so when something is done 'pretty well', that you have done it so that it can please, that it is appropriate, that it is well done. Who listens in this way today? However, spiritual science must speak in this way. Then the Seilingers come along and say: It is bad German. The worse Seiling writes, the worse he finds what is cultivated in my books or cycles as a “German style”, but which is entirely based on spiritual science.

Who today senses in the words “between”, “two”, “doubt”, that which divides? This lies in the doubt that something divides when one is confronted with a division. Who senses this so concretely in the word? Who also senses it in the word “purpose”? - “Zw” - And so with all the words. Language has also become abstract.

My dear friends, when one has to discuss such important contemporary issues as I have today, when one has to speak of the necessity to grasp reality again in a conscious sense, one would like to be able to handle something other than mere words, which have already become abstract today.

Perhaps some of you can still hear in your hearts, as today's abstract words are felt, what was said first about the demands of the time and about the position of spiritual science in humanity.

Think about it a lot, my dear friends; many of the riddles that confront us today in this terrible time find their solution in the development of today's reflection.