The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Conditions

[ 1 ] There slumber in every human being faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds. Mystics, Gnostics, Theosophists—all speak of a world of soul and spirit which for them is just as real as the world we see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands. At every moment the listener may say to himself: that, of which they speak, I too can learn, if I develop within myself certain powers which today still slumber within me. There remains only one question—how to set to work to develop such faculties. For this purpose, they only can give advice who already possess such powers. As long as the human race has existed there has always been a method of training, in the course of which individuals possessing these higher faculties gave instruction to others who were in search of them. Such a training is called occult (esoteric) training, and the instruction received therefrom is called occult (esoteric) teaching, or spiritual science. This designation naturally awakens misunderstanding. The one who hears it may very easily be misled into the belief that this training is the concern of a special, privileged class, withholding its knowledge arbitrarily from its fellow-creatures. He may even think that nothing of real importance lies behind such knowledge, for if it were a true knowledge—he is tempted to think—there would be no need of making a secret of it; it might be publicly imparted and its advantages made accessible to all. [ 2 ] Those who have been initiated into the nature of this higher knowledge are not in the least surprised that the uninitiated should so think, for the secret of initiation can only be understood by those who have to a certain degree experienced this initiation into the higher knowledge of existence. The question may be raised: how, then, under these circumstances, are the uninitiated to develop any human interest in this so-called esoteric knowledge? How and why are they to seek for something of whose nature they can form no idea? Such a question is based upon an entirely erroneous conception of the real nature of esoteric knowledge. There is, in truth, no difference between esoteric knowledge and all the rest of man's knowledge and proficiency. This esoteric knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for those who have never learned it. And just as all can learn to write who choose the correct method, so, too, can all who seek the right way become esoteric students and even teachers. In one respect only do the conditions here differ from those that apply to external knowledge and proficiency. The possibility of acquiring the art of writing may be withheld from someone through poverty, or through the conditions of civilization into which he is born; but for the attainment of knowledge and proficiency in the higher worlds, there is no obstacle for those who earnestly seek them.

[ 3 ] Many believe that they must seek, at one place or another, the masters of higher knowledge in order to receive enlightenment. Now in the first place, whoever strives earnestly after higher knowledge will shun no exertion and fear no obstacle in his search for an initiate who can lead him to the higher knowledge of the world. On the other hand, everyone may be certain that initiation will find him under all circumstances if he gives proof of an earnest and worthy endeavor to attain this knowledge. It is a natural law among all initiates to withhold from no man the knowledge that is due him but there is an equally natural law which lays down that no word of esoteric knowledge shall be imparted to anyone not qualified to receive it. And the more strictly he observes these laws, the more perfect is an initiate. The bond of union embracing all initiates is spiritual and not external, but the two laws here mentioned form, as it were, strong clasps by which the component parts of this bond are held together. You may live in intimate friendship with an initiate, and yet a gap severs you from his essential self, so long as you have not become an initiate yourself. You may enjoy in the fullest sense the heart, the love of an initiate, yet he will only confide his knowledge to you when you are ripe for it. You may flatter him; you may torture him; nothing can induce him to betray anything to you as long as you, at the present stage of your evolution, are not competent to receive it into your soul in the right way.

[ 4 ] The methods by which a student is prepared for the reception of higher knowledge are minutely prescribed. The direction he is to take is traced with unfading, everlasting letters in the worlds of the spirit where the initiates guard the higher secrets. In ancient times, anterior to our history, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them.

[ 5 ] Only within his own soul can a man find the means to unseal the lips of an initiate. He must develop within himself certain faculties to a definite degree, and then the highest treasures of the spirit can become his own.

[ 6 ] He must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of soul. In spiritual science this fundamental attitude is called the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. Without this attitude no one can become a student. The disposition shown in their childhood by subsequent students of higher knowledge is well known to the experienced in these matters. There are children who look up with religious awe to those whom they venerate. For such people they have a respect which forbids them, even in the deepest recess of their heart, to harbor any thought of criticism or opposition. Such children grow up into young men and women who feel happy when they are able to look up to anything that fills them with veneration. From the ranks of such children are recruited many students of higher knowledge. Have you ever paused outside the door of some venerated person, and have you, on this your first visit, felt a religious awe as you pressed on the handle to enter the room which for you is a holy place? If so, a feeling has been manifested within you which may be the germ of your future adherence to the path of knowledge. It is a blessing for every human being in process of development to have such feelings upon which to build. Only it must not be thought that this disposition leads to submissiveness and slavery. What was once a childlike veneration for persons becomes, later, a veneration for truth and knowledge. Experience teaches that they can best hold their heads erect who have learnt to venerate where veneration is due; and veneration is always fitting when it flows from the depths of the heart.

[ 7 ] If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to something higher. The initiate has only acquired the strength to lift his head to the heights of knowledge by guiding his heart to the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learnt to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right. There are laws in the spiritual life, as in the physical life. Rub a glass rod with an appropriate material and it will become electric, that is, it will receive the power of attracting small bodies. This is in keeping with a law of nature. It is known to all who have learnt a little physics. Similarly, acquaintance with the first principles of spiritual science shows that every feeling of true devotion harbored in the soul develops a power which may, sooner or later, lead further on the path of knowledge.

[ 8 ] The student who is gifted with this feeling, or who is fortunate enough to have had it inculcated in a suitable education, brings a great deal along with him when, later in life, he seeks admittance to higher knowledge. Failing such preparation, he will encounter difficulties at the very first step, unless he undertakes, by rigorous self-education, to create within himself this inner life of devotion. In our time it is especially important that full attention be paid to this point. Our civilization tends more toward critical judgment and condemnation than toward devotion and selfless veneration. Our children already criticize far more than they worship. But every criticism, every adverse judgment passed, disperses the powers of the soul for the attainment of higher knowledge in the same measure that all veneration and reverence develops them. In this we do not wish to say anything against our civilization. There is no question here of leveling criticism against it. To this critical faculty, this self-conscious human judgment, this “test all things and hold fast what is best,” we owe the greatness of our civilization. Man could never have attained to the science, the industry, the commerce, the rights relationships of our time, had he not applied to all things the standard of his critical judgment. But what we have thereby gained in external culture we have had to pay for with a corresponding loss of higher knowledge of spiritual life. It must be emphasized that higher knowledge is not concerned with the veneration of persons but the veneration of truth and knowledge.

[ 9 ] Now, the one thing that everyone must acknowledge is the difficulty for those involved in the external civilization of our time to advance to the knowledge of the higher worlds. They can only do so if they work energetically at themselves. At a time when the conditions of material life were simpler, the attainment of spiritual knowledge was also easier. Objects of veneration and worship stood out in clearer relief from the ordinary things of the world. In an epoch of criticism ideals are lowered; other feelings take the place of veneration, respect, adoration, and wonder. Our own age thrusts these feelings further and further into the background, so that they can only be conveyed to man through his every-day life in a very small degree. Whoever seeks higher knowledge must create it for himself. He must instill it into his soul. It cannot be done by study; it can only be done through life. Whoever, therefore, wishes to become a student of higher knowledge must assiduously cultivate this inner life of devotion. Everywhere in his environment and his experiences he must seek motives of admiration and homage. If I meet a man and blame him for his shortcomings, I rob myself of power to attain higher knowledge; but if I try to enter lovingly into his merits, I gather such power. The student must continually be intent upon following this advice. The spiritually experienced know how much they owe to the circumstance that in face of all things they ever again turn to the good, and withhold adverse judgement. But this must not remain an external rule of life; rather it must take possession of our innermost soul. Man has it in his power to perfect himself and, in time, completely to transform himself. But this transformation must take place in his innermost self, in his thought-life. It is not enough that I show respect only in my outward bearing; I must have this respect in my thoughts. The student must begin by absorbing this devotion into this thought-life. He must be wary of thoughts of disrespect, of adverse criticism, existing in his consciousness, and he must endeavor straightaway to cultivate thoughts of devotion.

[ 10 ] Every moment that we set ourselves to discover in our consciousness whatever there remains in it of adverse, disparaging and critical judgement of the world and of life; every such moment brings us nearer to higher knowledge. And we rise rapidly when we fill our consciousness in such moments with thoughts evoking in us admiration, respect and veneration for the world and for life. It is well known to those experienced in these matters that in every such moment powers are awakened which otherwise remain dormant. In this way the spiritual eyes of man are opened. He begins to see things around him which he could not have seen before. He begins to understand that hitherto he had only seen a part of the world around him. A human being standing before him now presents a new and different aspect. Of course, this rule of life alone will not yet enable him to see, for instance, what is described as the human aura, because for this still higher training is necessary. But he can rise to this higher training if he has previously undergone a rigorous training in devotion. (In the last chapter of his book Theosophy, the author describes fully the Path of Knowledge; here it is intended to give some practical details.)

[ 11 ] Noiseless and unnoticed by the outer world is the treading of the Path of Knowledge. No change need be noticed in the student. He performs his duties as hitherto; he attends to his business as before. The transformation goes on only in the inner part of the soul hidden from outward sight. At first his entire inner life is flooded by this basic feeling of devotion for everything which is truly venerable. His entire soul-life finds in this fundamental feeling its pivot. Just as the sun's rays vivify everything living, so does reverence in the student vivify all feelings of the soul.

[ 12 ] It is not easy, at first, to believe that feelings like reverence and respect have anything to do with cognition. This is due to the fact that we are inclined to set cognition aside as a faculty by itself—one that stands in no relation to what otherwise occurs in the soul. In so thinking we do not bear in mind that it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread, its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition. For the spiritually experienced this fact is visible in the aura. A soul which harbors feelings of reverence and devotion produces a change in its aura. Certain spiritual colorings, as they may be called, yellow-red and brown-red in tone, vanish and are replaced by blue-red tints. Thereby the cognitional faculty is ripened; it receives intelligence of facts in its environment of which it had hitherto no idea. Reverence awakens in the soul a sympathetic power through which we attract qualities in the beings around us, which would otherwise remain concealed.

[ 13 ] The power obtained through devotion can be rendered still more effective when the life of feeling is enriched by yet another quality. This consists in giving oneself up less and less to impressions of the outer world, and to develop instead a vivid inner life. A person who darts from one impression of the outer world to another, who constantly seeks distraction, cannot find the way to higher knowledge. The student must not blunt himself to the outer world, but while lending himself to its impressions, he should be directed by his rich inner life. When passing through a beautiful mountain district, the traveler with depth of soul and wealth of feeling has different experiences from one who is poor in feeling. Only what we experience within ourselves unlocks for us the beauties of the outer world. One person sails across the ocean, and only a few inward experiences pass through his soul; another will hear the eternal language of the cosmic spirit; for him are unveiled the mysterious riddles of existence. We must learn to remain in touch with our own feelings and ideas if we wish to develop any intimate relationship with the outer world. The outer world with all its phenomena is filled with splendor, but we must have experienced the divine within ourselves before we can hope to discover it in our environment.

The student is told to set apart moments in his daily life in which to withdraw into himself, quietly and alone. He is not to occupy himself at such moments with the affairs of his own ego. This would result in the contrary of what is intended. He should rather let his experiences and the messages from the outer world re-echo within his own completely silent self. At such silent moments every flower, every animal, every action will unveil to him secrets undreamt of. And thus he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the outer world through quite different eyes. The desire to enjoy impression after impression merely blunts the faculty of cognition; the latter, however, is nurtured and cultivated if the enjoyment once experienced is allowed to reveal its message. Thus the student must accustom himself not merely to let the enjoyment reverberate, as it were, but rather to renounce any further enjoyment, and work upon the past experience. The peril here is very great. Instead of working inwardly, it is very easy to fall into the opposite habit of trying to exploit the enjoyment. Let no one underestimate the fact that immense sources of error here confront the student. He must pass through a host of tempters of his soul. They would all harden his ego and imprison it within itself. He should rather open it wide to all the world. It is necessary that he should seek enjoyment, for only through enjoyment can the outer world reach him. If he blunts himself to enjoyment he is like a plant which cannot any longer draw nourishment from its environment. Yet if he stops short at the enjoyment he shuts himself up within himself. He will only be something to himself and nothing to the world. However much he may live within himself, however intensely he may cultivate his ego—the world will reject him. To the world he is dead. The student of higher knowledge considers enjoyment only as a means of ennobling himself for the world. Enjoyment is to him like a scout informing him about the world; but once instructed by enjoyment, he passes on to work. He does not learn in order to accumulate learning as his own treasure, but in order that he may devote his learning to the service of the world.

[ 15 ] In all spiritual science there is a fundamental principle which cannot be transgressed without sacrificing success, and it should be impressed on the student in every form of esoteric training. It runs as follows: All knowledge pursued merely for the enrichment of personal learning and the accumulation of personal treasure leads you away from the path; but all knowledge pursued for growth to ripeness within the process of human ennoblement and cosmic development brings you a step forward. This law must be strictly observed, and no student is genuine until he has adopted it as a guide for his whole life. This truth can be expressed in the following short sentence: Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces.

Inner Tranquility

[ 15 ] At the very beginning of his course, the student is directed to the path of veneration and the development of the inner life. Spiritual science now also gives him practical rules by observing which he may tread that path and develop that inner life. These practical rules have no arbitrary origin. They rest upon ancient experience and ancient wisdom, and are given out in the same manner, wheresoever the ways to higher knowledge are indicated. All true teachers of the spiritual life are in agreement as to the substance of these rules, even though they do not always clothe them in the same words. This difference, which is of a minor character and is more apparent than real, is due to circumstances which need not be dwelt upon here.

[ 16 ] No teacher of the spiritual life wishes to establish a mastery over other persons by means of such rules. He would not tamper with anyone's independence. Indeed, none respect and cherish human independence more than the spiritually experienced. It was stated in the preceding pages that the bond of union embracing all initiates is spiritual, and that two laws form, as it were, clasps by which the component parts of this bond are held together. Whenever the initiate leaves his enclosed spiritual sphere and steps forth before the world, he must immediately take a third law into account. It is this: Adapt each one of your actions, and frame each one of your words in such a way that you infringe upon no one's free-will.

[ 17 ] The recognition that all true teachers of the spiritual life are permeated through and through with this principle will convince all who follow the practical rules proffered to them that they need sacrifice none of their independence.

[ 18 ] One of the first of these rules can be expressed somewhat in the following words of our language: Provide for yourself moments of inner tranquility, and in these moments learn to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential. It is said advisedly: “expressed in the words of our language.” Originally all rules and teachings of spiritual science were expressed in a symbolical sign-language, some understanding of which must be acquired before its whole meaning and scope can be realized. This understanding is dependent on the first steps toward higher knowledge, and these steps result from the exact observation of such rules as are here given. For all who earnestly will, the path stands open to tread.

[ 19 ] Simple, in truth, is the above rule concerning moments of inner tranquility; equally simple is its observation. But it only achieves its purpose when it is observed in as earnest and strict a manner as it is, in itself, simple. How this rule is to be observed will, therefore, be explained without digression.

[ 20 ] The student must set aside a small part of his daily life in which to concern himself with something quite different from the objects of his daily occupation. The way, also, in which he occupies himself at such a time must differ entirely from the way in which he performs the rest of his daily duties. But this does not mean that what he does in the time thus set apart has no connection with his daily work. On the contrary, he will soon find that just these secluded moments, when sought in the right way, give him full power to perform his daily task[s]. Nor must it be supposed that the observance of this rule will really encroach upon the time needed for the performance of his duties. Should anyone really have no more time at his disposal, five minutes a day will suffice. It all depends on the manner in which these five minutes are spent.

[ 21 ] During these periods the student should wrest himself entirely free from his work-a-day life. His thoughts and feelings should take on a different coloring. His joys and sorrows, his cares, experiences and actions must pass in review before his soul; and he must adopt such a position that he may regard all his sundry experiences from a higher point of view.

We need only bear in mind how, in ordinary life, we regard the experiences and actions of others quite differently from our own. This cannot be otherwise, for we are interwoven with our own actions and experiences, whereas those of others we only contemplate. Our aim in these moments of seclusion must be so to contemplate and judge our own actions and experiences as though they applied not to ourselves but to some other person. Suppose, for example, a heavy misfortune befalls us. How different would be our attitude toward a similar misfortune had it befallen our neighbor. This attitude cannot be blamed as unjustifiable; it is part of human nature, and applies equally to exceptional circumstances and to the daily affairs of life. The student must seek the power of confronting himself, at certain times, as a stranger. He must stand before himself with the inner tranquility of a judge. When this is attained, our own experiences present themselves in a new light. As long as we are interwoven with them and stand, as it were, within them, we cling to the non-essential just as much as to the essential. If we attain the calm inner survey, the essential is severed from the non-essential. Sorrow and joy, every thought, every resolve, appear different when we confront ourselves in this way. It is as though we had spent the whole day in a place where we beheld the smallest objects at the same close range as the largest, and in the evening climbed a neighboring hill and surveyed the whole scene at a glance. Then the various parts appear related to each other in different proportions from those they bore when seen from within. This exercise will not and need not succeed with present occurrences of destiny, but it should be attempted by the student in connection with the events of destiny already experienced in the past. The value of such inner tranquil self-contemplation depends far less on what is actually contemplated than on our finding within ourselves the power which such inner tranquility develops.

[ 22 ] For every human being bears a higher man within himself besides what we may call the work-a-day man. This higher man remains hidden until he is awakened. And each human being can himself alone awaken this higher being within himself. As long as this higher being is not awakened, the higher faculties slumbering in every human being, and leading to supersensible knowledge, will remain concealed. [ 23 ] The student must resolve to persevere in the strict and earnest observation of the rule here given, so long as he does not feel within himself the fruits of this inner tranquility. To all who thus persevere the day will come when spiritual light will envelop them, and a new world will be revealed to an organ of sight of whose presence within them they were never aware.

[ 24 ] And no change need take place in the outward life of the student in consequence of this new rule. He performs his duties and, at first, feels the same joys, sorrows, and experiences as before. In no way can it estrange him from life; he can rather devote himself the more thoroughly to this life for the remainder of the day, having gained a higher life in the moments set apart. Little by little this higher life will make its influence felt on his ordinary life. The tranquility of the moments set apart will also affect everyday existence. In his whole being he will grow calmer; he will attain firm assurance in all his actions, and cease to be put out of countenance by all manner of incidents. By thus advancing he will gradually become more and more his own guide, and allow himself less and less to be led by circumstances and external influences. He will soon discover how great a source of strength is available to him in these moments thus set apart. He will begin no longer to get angry at things which formerly annoyed him; countless things he formerly feared cease to alarm him. He acquires a new outlook on life. Formerly he may have approached some occupation in a fainthearted way. He would say: “Oh, I lack the power to do this as well as I could wish.” Now this thought does not occur to him, but rather a quite different thought. Henceforth he says to himself: “I will summon all my strength to do my work as well as I possibly can.” And he suppresses the thought which makes him faint-hearted; for he knows that this very thought might be the cause of a worse performance on his part, and that in any case it cannot contribute to the improvement of his work. And thus thought after thought, each fraught with advantage to his whole life, flows into the student's outlook. They take the place of those that had a hampering, weakening effect. He begins to steer his own ship on a secure course through the waves of life, whereas it was formerly battered to and fro by these waves.

[ 25 ] This calm and serenity react on the whole being. They assist the growth of the inner man, and, with the inner man, those faculties also grow which lead to higher knowledge. For it is by his progress in this direction that the student gradually reaches the point where he himself determines the manner in which the impressions of the outer world shall affect him. Thus he may hear a word spoken with the object of wounding or vexing him. Formerly it would indeed have wounded or vexed him, but now that he treads the path to higher knowledge, he is able—before the word has found its way to his inner self—to take from it the sting which gives it the power to wound or vex. Take another example. We easily become impatient when we are kept waiting, but—if we tread the path to higher knowledge—we so steep ourselves in our moments of calm with the feeling of the uselessness of impatience that henceforth, on every occasion of impatience, this feeling is immediately present within us. The impatience that was about to make itself felt vanishes, and an interval which would otherwise have been wasted in expressions of impatience will be filled by useful observations, which can be made while waiting.

[ 26 ] Now, the scope and significance of these facts must be realized. We must bear in mind that the higher man within us is in constant development. But only the state of calm and serenity here described renders an orderly development possible. The waves of outward life constrain the inner man from all sides if, instead of mastering this outward life, it masters him. Such a man is like a plant which tries to expand in a cleft in the rock and is stunted in growth until new space is given it. No outward forces can supply space to the inner man. It can only be supplied by the inner calm which man himself gives to his soul. Outward circumstances can only alter the course of his outward life; they can never awaken the inner spiritual man. The student must himself give birth to a new and higher man within himself.

[ 27 ] This higher man now becomes the inner ruler who directs the circumstances of the outer man with sure guidance. As long as the outer man has the upper hand and control, this inner man is his slave and therefore cannot unfold his powers. If it depends on something other than myself whether I should get angry or not, I am not master of myself, or, to put it better, I have not yet found the ruler within myself. I must develop the faculty of letting the impressions of the outer world approach me only in the way in which I myself determine; then only do I become in the real sense a student. And only in as far as the student earnestly seeks this power can he reach the goal. It is of no importance how far anyone can go in a given time; the point is that he should earnestly seek. Many have striven for years without noticing any appreciable progress; but many of those who did not despair, but remained unshaken, have then quite suddenly achieved the inner victory.

[ 28 ] No doubt a great effort is required in many stations of life to provide these moments of inner calm; but the greater the effort needed, the more important is the achievement. In spiritual science everything depends upon energy, inward truthfulness, and uncompromising sincerity with which we confront our own selves, with all our deeds and actions, as a complete stranger.

[ 29 ] But only one side of the student's inner activity is characterized by this birth of his own higher being. Something else is needed in addition. Even if he confronts himself as a stranger it is only himself that he contemplates; he looks on those experiences and actions with which he is connected through his particular station of life. He must now disengage himself from it and rise beyond to a purely human level, which no longer has anything to do with his own special situation. He must pass on to the contemplation of those things which would concern him as a human being, even if he lived under quite different circumstances and in quite a different situation. In this way something begins to live within him which ranges above the purely personal. His gaze is directed to worlds higher than those with which every-day life connects him. And thus he begins to feel and realize, as an inner experience, that he belongs to those higher worlds. These are worlds concerning which his senses and his daily occupation can tell him nothing. Thus he now shifts the central point of his being to the inner part of his nature. He listens to the voices within him which speak to him in his moments of tranquility; he cultivates an intercourse with the spiritual world. He is removed from the every-day world. Its noise is silenced. All around him there is silence. He puts away everything that reminds him of such impressions from without. Calm inward contemplation and converse with the purely spiritual world fill his soul.—Such tranquil contemplation must become a natural necessity in the life of the student. He is now plunged in a world of thought. He must develop a living feeling for this silent thought-activity. He must learn to love what the spirit pours into him. He will soon cease to feel that this thought-world is less real than the every-day things which surround him. He begins to deal with his thoughts as with things in space, and the moment approaches when he begins to feel that which reveals itself in the silent inward thought-work to be much higher, much more real, than the things in space. He discovers that something living expresses itself in this thought-world. He sees that his thoughts do not merely harbor shadow-pictures, but that through them hidden beings speak to him. Out of the silence, speech becomes audible to him. Formerly sound only reached him through his ear; now it resounds through his soul. An inner language, an inner word is revealed to him. This moment, when first experienced, is one of greatest rapture for the student. An inner light is shed over the whole external world, and a second life begins for him. Through his being there pours a divine stream from a world of divine rapture.

[ 30 ] This life of the soul in thought, which gradually widens into a life in spiritual being, is called by Gnosis, and by Spiritual Science, Meditation (contemplative reflection). This meditation is the means to supersensible knowledge. But the student in such moments must not merely indulge in feelings; he must not have indefinite sensations in his soul. That would only hinder him from reaching true spiritual knowledge. His thoughts must be clear, sharp and definite, and he will be helped in this if he does not cling blindly to the thoughts that rise within him. Rather must he permeate himself with the lofty thoughts by which men already advanced and possessed of the spirit were inspired at such moments. He should start with the writings which themselves had their origin in just such revelation during meditation. In the mystic, gnostic and spiritual scientific literature of today the student will find such writings, and in them the material for his meditation. The seekers of the spirit have themselves set down in such writings the thoughts of the divine science which the Spirit has directed his messengers to proclaim to the world.

[ 31 ] Through such meditation a complete transformation takes place in the student. He begins to form quite new conceptions of reality. All things acquire a fresh value for him. It cannot be repeated too often that this transformation does not alienate him from the world. He will in no way be estranged from his daily tasks and duties, for he comes to realize that the most insignificant action he has to accomplish, the most insignificant experience which offers itself to him, stands in connection with cosmic beings and cosmic events. When once this connection is revealed to him in his moments of contemplation, he comes to his daily activities with a new, fuller power. For now he knows that his labor and his suffering are given and endured for the sake of a great, spiritual, cosmic whole. Not weariness, but strength to live springs from meditation.

[ 32 ] With firm step the student passes through life. No matter what it may bring him, he goes forward erect. In the past he knew not why he labored and suffered, but now he knows. It is obvious that such meditation leads more surely to the goal if conducted under the direction of experienced persons who know of themselves how everything may best be done; and their advice and guidance should be sought. Truly, no one loses his freedom thereby. What would otherwise be mere uncertain groping in the dark becomes under this direction purposeful work. All who apply to those possessing knowledge and experience in these matters will never apply in vain, only they must realize that what they seek is the advice of a friend, not the domination of a would-be ruler. It will always be found that they who really know are the most modest of men, and that nothing is further from their nature than what is called the lust for power.

[ 33 ] When, by means of meditation, a man rises to union with the spirit, he brings to life the eternal in him, which is limited by neither birth nor death. The existence of this eternal being can only be doubted by those who have not themselves experienced it. Thus meditation is the way which also leads man to the knowledge, to the contemplation of his eternal, indestructible, essential being; and it is only through meditation that man can attain to such knowledge. Gnosis and Spiritual Science tell of the eternal nature of this being and of its reincarnation. The question is often asked: Why does a man know nothing of his experiences beyond the borders of life and death? Not thus should we ask, but rather: How can we attain such knowledge? In right meditation the path is opened. This alone can revive the memory of experiences beyond the border of life and death. Everyone can attain this knowledge; in each one of us lies the faculty of recognizing and contemplating for ourselves what genuine Mysticism, Spiritual Science, Anthroposophy, and Gnosis teach. Only the right means must be chosen. Only a being with ears and eyes can apprehend sounds and colors; nor can the eye perceive if the light which makes things visible is wanting. Spiritual Science gives the means of developing the spiritual ears and eyes, and of kindling the spiritual light; and this method of spiritual training: (1) Preparation; this develops the spiritual senses. (2) Enlightenment; this kindles the spiritual light. (3) Initiation; this establishes intercourse with the higher spiritual beings.

When the spiritual scientific movement began its activity some thirty years ago, its aim was not to satisfy curiosity about the spiritual worlds, but to make spiritual knowledge available to a wider public, and provide insight that will help to solve not only spiritual but also everyday practical problems. One such problem is the subject of today's lecture. It belongs to everyday life and must be of interest to everyone. Knowledge of human nature and problems of education are intimately connected. No aspect of social life can benefit more from spiritual research than education, because it is possible to provide practical guidelines in this realm through supersensible knowledge.

In order to deal with this subject we must look once more at the nature of human beings. That aspect of their being that is grasped by the intellect is for spiritual science only part of their nature. The physical, bodily aspect that we can see and touch a person has in common with the rest of the natural world. The spiritual investigator's research is not based on speculation, but on what is discovered through the higher sense of clairvoyant sight. This reveals the ether body as the second member of a person's being. It is a spiritual organism that is considerably more delicate and refined than the physical body. It has nothing to do with physical ether, and is best described as a sum of forces or currents of energy rather than as substance.

The ether body is the architect of the physical body. The latter has crystallized out of the ether body much as ice crystallizes out of water. We must therefore regard everything that constitutes the physical aspect of a person's being as having evolved out of the ether body. Human being's have this member in common with all beings endowed with life, that is, with the vegetable and animal kingdoms. In shape and size the ether body coincides with the physical body except for the lower part, which differs in shape from the physical. In animals the ether body extends far beyond the physical. For someone who has developed the spiritual faculties that slumber in every human being, there is nothing fantastic about this description of the ether body, just as it is not fantastic for a person who can see to describe colors to a blind person as blue or red.

The third member of a person's being, the astral body, is the bearer of all kinds of passions, lower as well as higher, and also of joys and sorrows, pleasure and pain, cravings and desires. Our ordinary thoughts and will-impulses are also contained in the astral body. Like the ether body, it becomes visible when the higher senses are developed. The astral body permeates the physical and ether bodies and surrounds humans like a kind of cloud. We have it in common with the animal kingdom; it is in continuous movement, mirroring every shade of feeling. But why the name “astral?”

The physical substances of which the physical body is composed connect it with the whole earth; in like manner is the astral body connected with the world of stars. The forces that permeate it and condition a person's destiny and character were given the name “astral” by those who were able to look deeply into their mysterious connection with the astral world that surrounds the earth.

The fourth member of a person's being, the power that enables him or her to say “I,” makes the human being the crown of creation. This name can only be applied to himself; it expresses the fact that what speaks is the soul's primordial divine spark. The designations of everything else we share with others; they can reach a person's ear from outside, but not the name that refers to what is god-like in each individual human soul. That is why in Hebrew esoteric schools it was called the “inexpressible name of God—Jahve,” the “I am the I am.” Even the priest could utter it only with a shudder. This “I am the I am” the soul ascribes to itself.

The human physical body is related to the mineral kingdom, the ether body to the vegetable kingdom and the astral body to the animal kingdom. The “I” humans have in common with no other earthly being; the “I” makes a person the crown of creation. This fourfold entity has always been known in esoteric schools as the “quaternity of man's nature.”

These four bodies develop in each individual in a particular way from childhood till old age. That is why, if we are to understand a person, we must always consider each human being individually. A person's characteristics are indicated already in the embryo. However, humans are not isolated beings; they develop within a certain environment, and can thrive only when surrounded by all the beings of the universe. During embryonic life they must be enveloped by the maternal organism, from which they become independent only when a certain stage of maturity is reached. During further development, the child goes through more events of a similar nature. Just as the physical body while still at the embryonic stage must be enveloped by the maternal organism, so is it surrounded after birth by spiritual sheaths related to spiritual realms. The child is enveloped by an etheric and an astral sheath; the child reposes in them as he did in the womb before birth.

At the time of the change of teeth an etheric covering loosens itself from the ether body, as did the physical covering at physical birth. That means that the ether body is born and becomes free in all directions. Up to then an entity of like nature to itself was attached to it, from which spiritual currents flowed through it as physical currents flowed from the maternal covering through the child before birth. Thus, the child is born for a second time when the ether body is born. Meanwhile the astral body is still surrounded by its protective sheath, a covering that strengthens and invigorates it up to the time of puberty. Then that too withdraws; the birth of the astral body takes place; and the child is born for the third time.

The fact that a threefold birth takes place indicates that the three entities must be considered separately. While it is impossible for external light to reach and harm the eyes of the unborn child, it is not impossible, but certainly highly damaging to the soul, if influences foreign to it are brought to bear on the ether body before it has become completely independent. The same applies to the astral body before puberty. We should, according to spiritual science, avoid all education and training before the change of teeth, except such that have a bearing on the child's physical body; we should in fact influence the ether body as little as we influence the child's physical body before it is born. However, just as the mother must be cared for, because her health influences the development of the embryo, so one should now respect the inviolability of the ether body for the sake of the child's healthy development. This is so important because before the change of teeth only the physical body is ready to be influenced by the external world; all training should therefore be restricted to what concerns the physical body. Any external influence of the ether body during this period is a violation of laws according to which human beings develop.

The human ether body is different from that of the plant world because in a person it becomes the bearer of his enduring traits such as habit, character, conscience and memory, and also temperament. The astral body is the seat of the life of feelings already mentioned, and also of the ability to discern, to judge.

These facts indicate when it becomes right to exert influence on the natural tendencies. In the period up to the seventh year, the child's bodily faculties develop; they become independent and self-contained. The same applies between the seventh and the fourteenth years to habits, memory, temperament and so on; between the fourteenth and the twentieth or twenty-second years is the time when the faculty of the critical intellect develops, and an independent relation to the surrounding world is attained. All these things indicate that different principles of education are required in the various life periods. Special care must be taken up to the seventh year with everything that affects the physical body. This encompasses a great many things. It is a time when all the essential physical organs are gradually developing and the effect on the child's senses is of immense importance. It matters greatly what it sees and hears and generally absorbs. The faculty most prominent at this time is imitation. The Greek philosopher Aristotle¹ remarked that human beings are the most imitative of all animals. This is especially true of the child before the change of teeth. Everything is imitated during this time, and as whatever enters the child through its senses as light and sound works formatively on the organs, it is of utmost importance that what surrounds the child should act beneficially.

At this age nothing is achieved by admonition; commands and prohibitions have no effect whatever. But of the greatest significance is the example. What the child sees, what happens around him, he feels must be imitated. For instance: the parents of a well-behaved child were astonished to discover that he had taken money from a cashbox; greatly disturbed, they thought the child had inclinations to steal. Questioning brought to light that the child had simply imitated what he had seen his parents do every day.

It is important that the examples the child sees and imitates are of a kind that awaken its inner forces. Exhortations have no effect, but the way a person behaves in the child's presence matters greatly. It is far more important to refrain from doing what the child is not permitted to do than to forbid the child to imitate it.

Thus, it is vital that during these years the educator is an exemplary example, that he or she only does what is worthy of imitation. Education should consist of example and imitation. The truth of this is recognized when insight is attained into the nature of human beings and confirmed by the results of education based upon it. Thus, because the ability to understand what things mean is a faculty of the ether body, the child should not learn the significance of the letters of the alphabet before the change of teeth; before then, he or she should do no more than trace their form with paint.

Spiritual research makes all these subtleties understandable and throws light even on details of what should be done. Everything the child perceives, also in a moral sense, acts on the formation of its physical organs. It makes a difference whether the child is surrounded by pain and sorrow or happiness and joy. Happiness and joy build sound organs, and lay the foundation for future health. The opposite can create a disposition towards illness. Everything that surrounds the child should breathe an atmosphere of happiness and joy, even down to objects and colors of clothing and wallpaper. The educator must ensure that it does so, while also taking into account the child's particular disposition.

If a child is inclined to be too earnest and too quiet, it will benefit from having in its surroundings rather sombre, bluish, greenish colors, while the lively, too active child should have yellow, reddish colors. This may seem like a contradiction, but the fact is that through its inherent nature the sense of sight calls up the opposite colors. The bluish shades have an invigorating effect, while in the lively child the yellow-reddish shades call up the opposite colors.

Thus, you see that spiritual investigation throws light even on practical details. The developing organs must be treated in ways that promote their health and inner forces. The child should not be given toys that are too finished and perfect, such as building blocks or perfect dolls. A doll made out of an old table napkin on which eyes, nose and mouth are indicated is far better. Every child will see such a homemade doll as a lady attired in beautiful finery. Why? Because it stirs its imagination, and that induces movement in the inner organs and produces in the child a feeling of well-being. Notice in what a lively and interested manner such a child plays, throwing itself body and soul into what the imagination conjures up, while the child with the perfect doll just sits, unexcited and unamused. It has no possibility to add anything through imagination, so its inner organs are condemned to remain inactive. The child has an extraordinarily sound instinct for what is good for it, as long as only the physical body has become free to interact with the external world, and as long as it is in the process of development. The child will indicate what is beneficial for himself. However, if from early on this instinct is disregarded, it will disappear. Education should be based on happiness, on joy and the child's natural cravings. To practice asceticism at this age would be synonymous with undermining its healthy development.

When the child approaches the seventh year and the milk teeth are gradually being replaced, the covering of the ether body loosens and it becomes free, as did the physical body at physical birth. Now the educator must bring to bear everything that will further the development of the ether body. However, the teacher must guard against placing too much emphasis on developing the child's reason and intellect. Between the seventh and twelfth years, it is mainly a question of authority, confidence, trust and reverence. Character and habit are special qualities of the ether body and must be fostered; but it is harmful to exert any influence on the reasoning faculty before puberty.

The development of the ether body occurs in the period from the seventh to the sixteenth year (in girls to the fourteenth). It is important for the rest of a person's life that during this period feelings of respect and veneration are fostered. Such feelings can be awakened in the following way: by means of information and narration, the lives of significant people are depicted to the child, not only from history, but from the child's own circle, perhaps that of a revered relative. Awe and reverence are awakened in the child, which forbid him to harbor any critical thoughts or opposition against the venerated person. The child lives in solemn expectation of the moment he will be permitted to meet this person. At last the day arrives and the child stands before the door filled with awe and veneration; he turns the handle, enters the room that for him, is a holy place. Such moments of veneration become forces of strength in later life. It is immensely important that the educator, the teacher, is at this time a respected authority for the child. A child's faith and confidence must be awakened, not in axioms, but in human beings.

People around the child with whom he has contact must be his ideals; the child must also choose such ideals from history and literature: "Everyone must choose the hero whose path to Olympus he will follow," is a true saying. The materialistic view that opposes authority and undervalues respect and reverence is utterly wrong. It regards the child as being already self-reliant, but its healthy development is impaired if demands are made upon the reasoning faculty before the astral body is born. What is important at this time is that memory is developed. This is best done in purely mechanical fashion. However, calculators should not be used; tables of multiplication, poems and so on should be committed to memory in quite a parrot fashion. It is simply materialistic prejudice that maintains that at this age such things should be inwardly felt and understood.

In the old days educators knew better. At the ages between one and seven all kinds of songs were sung to the children, like the good old nursery rhymes and children's songs. What mattered was not sense and meaning but sound; the children were made aware of harmony and consonance; we often find words inserted purely for the sake of their sound. Often the rhymes were meaningless. For example: “Fly beetle fly, your father is away; your mother is in Pommerland, Pommerland, fly beetle fly.” Incidentally, in the idiom of children “Pommerland” meant motherland. The expression stemmed from a time when it was still believed that human beings were spiritual beings and had come down to earth from a spiritual world. Pommerland was the Land of spiritual origin. Yet it was not the meaning in such rhymes that was important, but the sound; hence, the many children's songs had no particular sense.

This is the age when memory, habit and character must be established, and this is achieved through authority. If the foundation of these traits is not laid during this period, it will result in behavioral shortcomings later. Just because axioms and rules of conduct have no place in education until the astral body is born, it is important that the pre-puberty child, if he is to be properly educated, can Look up to authority. The child is able to sense a person's innermost being, and that is what it reveres in those with authority. Whatever flows from the educator to the child forms and develops conscience, character and even the temperament—its lasting disposition. During these years allegories and symbols act formatively on the ether body of the child because they make manifest the world-spirit. Fairy tales, legends and descriptions of heroes are a true blessing.

During this period, the ether body must receive as much care as the physical body. During the earlier period it was happiness and joy that influenced the forming of the Organs; from seven to fourteen (in this case boys to sixteen), the emphasis must be on everything that promotes feelings of health and vigor. Hence, the value of gymnastics. However, the desired effect will not be attained if the instructor aims at movements that solely benefit the physical body. It is important that the teacher be able to intuitively enter into how the child inwardly senses himself, and in this way to know which movements will promote inner sensations of health, strength, well-being, and pleasure in the bodily constitution. Only when gymnastic exercises induce feelings of growing strength are they of real value. Not only the external aspect of the bodily nature benefits from correct gymnastic exercises, but also the way a person inwardly experiences the self.

Everything artistic has a strong influence on the ether, as well as the astral body. Music of excellence, both vocal and instrumental, is particularly important, especially for the ether body. And there should be many objects of true artistic beauty in the child's environment.

Most important of all is religious instruction. Images of things supersensible are deeply imprinted in the ether body. What is important here is not the pupil's ability to have an opinion about religious faith, but that he receives descriptions of the supersensible, of what extends beyond the temporal. All religious subjects must be presented pictorially.

Great care must be taken that what is taught is brought to life. Much is spoiled in the child if it is burdened with too much that is dull and lifeless. What is taught in a lively interesting manner benefits the child's ether body. There should be much activity and doing; this has a quickening effect on the spirit. That is true also when it comes to play. The old kind of picture books have a stimulating effect because they contain figures that can be pulled by strings and suggest movement and inner life. Nothing has a more deadening effect on the child's spirit than putting together and fixing some structure, using finished geometrical shapes. That is why building blocks should not be used; the child should create everything from the beginning and learn to bring to life what he forms out of the lifeless. Our materialistic age extinguishes life through mass-produced lifeless objects. Much dies in the young developing brain when the child has to do meaningless things like, for example, braiding. Talents are stifled and much that is unhealthy in our modern society can be traced back to the nursery. Inartistic lifeless toys do not foster trust in spiritual life. A fundamental connection exists between today's lack of religious belief and the way young children are taught.

Once puberty is reached, the astral covering falls away; the astral body becomes independent. With the awakening feelings for the opposite sex, the ability to judge, to form personal opinion, also awakens. Only now should appeal be made to the reasoning faculty, to the approval or disapproval of the critical intellect. That is not to say that the moment the human being has reached this age he is capable of forming independent judgment, let alone do so earlier. It is absurd for such young people to judge issues or to have a say in cultural life. A young person under the age of twenty has an as yet undeveloped astral body, and can no more make sound judgments than a baby still in the womb can hear or see. Each life period requires a corresponding influence. In the first, it is a model to imitate; in the second an authority to emulate; the third requires rules of conduct, principles, and axioms. What is of utmost significance for the young person at this time is the teacher, the personality that will guide the student's eagerness for learning and his desire for independence in the right directions.

Thus, the spiritual scientific world conception provides an abundance of basic principles that help the teacher's task of developing and educating the young generations. We have shown that spiritual science is applicable to everyday life and capable of practical intervention in important issues. We must understand all the members of the human being, and the way they are interrelated in order to know when to influence which member in a truly beneficial way. The embryo will be affected if the expectant mother is not properly nourished; for its sake the mother must be cared for. Similarly, what later still surrounds and protects the child must also be cared for, as that in turn will benefit the child. This holds good on both physical and spiritual levels. Thus, as long as the child still slumbers as if within an etheric womb and is still rooted in the astral covering, it matters greatly what happens in the environment. The child is affected by every thought, every feeling, every sentiment motivating those around him, even if not expressed. Here a person cannot maintain that one's thoughts and feelings do not matter as long as nothing is said.

Even in the innermost recesses of their hearts, those around the child cannot permit themselves ignoble thoughts or feelings. Words affect only the external senses, whereas thoughts and feelings reach the protecting sheaths of the ether and astral bodies and pass over to the child. Therefore, as long as these protective coverings envelop the child, they must be cared for. Impure thoughts and passions harm them just as unsuitable substances harm the mother's body.

Thus, even subtle aspects are illumined by spiritual science. Through knowledge of the human being the educator gains the insight needed. Spiritual science does not aim to persuade; it is not a theory, it is practical knowledge applicable to life. Its effect is beneficial, for it makes human beings healthier both physically and spiritually. It provides effective truth that must flow into every aspect of life. There is no better way for spiritual science to serve humanity than fostering social impulses in the young during the formative years. What takes place in human beings during the time they grow up and mature is one of life's greatest riddles; those who find practical solutions will prove true educators.

• 1. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers of his time.

Dear attendees! The things I will talk about today and tomorrow are the object of knowledge and longing that fills every human soul. On the other hand, however, they are currently the subject of of a discussion in which the pros and cons are raised in the most forceful way, and in which just as much misunderstood scientific knowledge prevails on the one hand as disembodied, but often well-intentioned dilettantism on the other. My task today is to show you that a scientific approach to the study of the human mind and soul is entirely possible, and at the same time to point out the pitfalls of dilettantism, amateurism and the like in this particular field. We will see, my dear audience, that in the field of real spiritual research, as it is meant here, it is a matter of striving for a completely new kind of knowledge, not just another field of knowledge, a kind of knowledge that neither the ordinary science of the present nor the layman has a proper concept of, but a kind of knowledge But a way of knowing that, on the other hand, is already prepared to the furthest extent in the instincts, in the unconscious impulses of the souls of our time, and of which one will most certainly - like the one who is imbued with this kind of spiritual science - in the not too distant future have a very different view than in the present.

The subject I will be speaking about today and tomorrow is, however, often dismissed as dreamy, fantastic or even worse. Anyone who wants to work their way scientifically towards this kind of knowledge, which is what I want to talk about, must, however, have experienced two prerequisites, and I am talking about experiences. One cannot approach the science in question here in the way that, as a young person, one can approach any other science after the usual preparation. If one wants to apply this science in practice, one must strive for total human knowledge using different methods. One must have fully experienced certain experiences and events.

One experience is to be undergone with that which is rightly admired today in the widest circles and by those people who understand something of the matter, because it has been brought infinitely far by people, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and in the present day. That is the scientific realization; and anyone who wants to penetrate to the spiritual science meant here must know what can be experienced in relation to the great riddle of humanity precisely from the scientific way of knowing. One must have experienced again and again, in inner struggle, how far one can come with this scientific way of knowing in relation to the highest questions of the life of the spirit and soul. And one must not, as is the case with many people, have only reached a certain limit in this field in theory. Rather, one must have reached this limit through an inner spiritual practice. Man must have reached that limit in the same way that science is limited. In its own way and method, science has achieved its results in its field, in which it has achieved such brilliant things, precisely because it has proceeded so conscientiously and precisely, so appropriately to the objects, in its method, as is always the case.

Thus, a person must have gone through all of this: how to conduct scientific research, how to penetrate the secrets of the world through the natural sciences, and how far one can go with this scientific research. But, as Bois-Reymond, the [physiologist] who was famous in the 1870s and is unfortunately much too r forgotten, rightly emphasized, he cannot arrive at purely theoretical conclusions in the study of the soul, for he must not only go through the process of research in this field logically and exactly scientifically in his innermost being, but he must also experience in his soul what is penetrating into human consciousness in this process. He must not only work his way into the field of this science from a purely scientific point of view.

And here it becomes clear – I want to describe the matter today from the point of view of the experience – that precisely when one remains firmly on the ground of natural science, one must come to certain concepts and ideas in the face of which one is repeatedly forced to admit: There one cannot go further, one cannot get through. There people's courage fails, there one stands at the boundary of experience. But it does not have to be that way. Rather, it turns out that concepts with which one brings the forces of nature to one's understanding cannot be penetrated by the scientific mode of knowledge, but remain standing and ultimately shape themselves into a spiritual reality. This spiritual reality remains standing, it does not dissolve in the human interior, it remains as a residue with which one cannot penetrate into this human interior.

I will only hint at the fact that in wrestling with these borderline conceptions, one proceeds as if, figuratively speaking, one saw again, as in a mirror, what one does and develops in scientific learning. It is indeed such a struggle when one develops one's own concepts; but one develops them in relation to the external world, just as a person standing before a mirror develops his own image by forming it through the mirror. And if one tries to penetrate further, then it is as if – to stick with the image – one were to smash the mirror. If the mirror is smashed, you no longer see anything, and so nothing remains if one tries to add to these primary concepts in the same way.

So, if you don't proceed in the right way, it is impossible to arrive at anything other than a realization where you have to stop. This occurs precisely when you don't proceed in the right way, because then you have to break the mirror, that is, the spiritual researcher must not stop at this realization. He must go further and ask himself: What is the inner experience actually like? What is it that our scientific knowledge breaks, that it is as if we wanted to break the mirror when we push further? And when the spiritual researcher then really gets involved in looking at these scientific concepts in relation to the human soul life, when he asks himself the hypothetical question: what would the human being be like if he were to make further scientific discoveries here, if he were to succeed in achieving equally brilliant results in this field, results that he could use over others, and if he were to penetrate beyond this boundary too? - then one must say: human beings would have to be organized differently, have different kinds of cognitive abilities.

But what would that mean? This last question has no bearing on present-day science. From the standpoint of its world view, the question is not asked: What would people have to be like who would penetrate into the fields in a scientific way, into which people want to penetrate in accordance with what they feel as a serious purpose in life, as a longing? We will have to go into this matter in more detail later, but for now I will just state it from the point of view of knowledge and say, quite hypothetically: If the scientific borderline conceptions could be mastered with the means by which they cannot be mastered, then either things would be such that scientific method could penetrate them, or man would be organized in such a way that he could submerge himself in this world, and then man would not be capable of developing a certain power that is closely connected with human life as it is on earth. Man would not be capable, if he were so organized, of developing love for any being or even for his fellow human beings. A person who could see through the world scientifically would be a loveless being in whom the power of love would never take hold. Man would therefore have to be different; love in its various stages up to the highest enthusiasm would be absent at all levels of human existence if, scientifically speaking, these limits did not exist.

This is experienced by the fact that, as a spiritual researcher, one is able to observe human beings so closely that one can say what a person would be like if one or other faculty were missing, if something were to be lost from the entire human organization. Therefore, it can be said that a person who could penetrate to the highest questions in the natural sciences would be a person without love, and thus a very different being from the human being on earth. Not many people today hold this view, because it is the result of many years of scientific research, but many people have an instinct for it. If I may use a paradoxical expression, I would like to say that many people have unconscious knowledge of it. Many people today already say to themselves: That which is called science today cannot bring us satisfaction; that must be sought in other ways. And these other paths are often the stomping ground of such amateur theoretical endeavors by people who say to themselves: Science cannot give me what I am seriously looking for; and they come to make progress towards the solution of these highest human questions by the path of what is often called mysticism in life. But this ordinary mysticism and all that is hidden under different names such as occultism, transcendentalism, and so on, is just as unsuitable for penetrating into the depths of human existence in true reality.

Spiritual science must, on the one hand, have the experiences at the boundary of natural science behind it and, on the other hand, the realization of the inadequacy of ordinary mysticism. And all talk about how what cannot be achieved in the usual way, in a scientific way, must be achieved by trying to experience the spiritual, the comprehensive nature of the world through inner deepening and concentration, does not change this. The one who approaches these things without prejudice, without a ridiculous layman's attitude, will soon realize in his experience that this repeated immersion in the soul, on which mysticism pins so many hopes, contributes just as little to true reality as today's knowledge of nature.

For he who has trained his mind in the natural sciences also knows how to live through what is called mystical contemplation, and knows how to look at it in the right way. He has to go through all these self-experiments, he can do them and can also look at them by doing them, and knows that he will not get any further in this way than to the form of the image of reality. But in this image there is still a great deal of human will and so much that cannot be excluded, what one has experienced so far, and other things that the subconscious holds in the depths of the soul, that mere immersion in the inner self can never provide certainty of knowledge, so that one must say to oneself: Mysticism can help you to delve into yourself to a certain degree, but not to the point of reaching the core of your own humanity, where you can grasp being itself and no longer the mere image that you feel and live.

These two ways of experiencing must be left behind, you have to have stood at these two limits - in relation to the experience of nature and ordinary mystical contemplation - and be able to say to yourself: Outer reality never fully reveals itself, because if it did, we would smash the mirror; reality does not flow into us. And with ordinary mysticism, we do not get close to reality; we remain with the image, we remain with what appears in reality, but we do not dive into it, and an abyss opens up between what outer knowledge of nature is and what mysticism reveals. Only an image remains, only the vapor of a true reality of the soul, which wells up out of reality in the light of the soul. But we cannot cross the abyss, and when we look at reality, it remains completely foreign to us. In this area in particular, the scientific method will never be able to grasp knowledge in practical experience and lead us across this abyss.

I will prove the correctness of my assertion by means of an example taken from literature. The example shows how helpless a natural scientist feels when approaching the inner life of man. This example is described in a collection that deals with these two borderline issues, in the so-called Wiesbaden Collection, Waldstein, and from this example it is quite clear what a helpless situation a natural scientist of the present day is in when he wants to penetrate into the depths of the soul using this method. The author of this writing about the unconscious self recounts: He was once standing in front of a bookshop; he is a naturalist, there are many books in the bookshop, and his eye falls on a book entitled 'On Molluscs'. This may interest the naturalist, since in this case it touches on his area of expertise, and as he looks at the title of the book 'On Molluscs', Waldstein suddenly feels compelled to smile.

Now he is himself amazed at why he has to smile, because a serious naturalist cannot be moved to smile, and looking at something as serious as the book “On Molluscs” is no reason to smile. He wants to find out why this book about mollusks seems to make him smile, and he does so very ingeniously by closing his eyes and trying to just listen. And then he hears a very distant organ grinder that he hadn't heard while he was focusing on the book about mollusks. And the organ was playing a melody that he learned to dance to ten years ago. He also didn't pay much attention to the melody when he was learning to dance, because, as he says, he paid much more attention to his steps and to his partner, but not to the melody; so at that time he didn't pay attention to the melody , now his attention was completely diverted and only a faint sound resonates in his soul, which also only faintly sounded ten years ago, and yet - this faintly dawning experience awakened in him the impression that he begins to smile in front of the solemn mollusc beech.

You can see what the person who faces this solemn thing has to say to himself: What he brings up there and out of his soul, which cannot be explained at all. The naturalist Waldstein only noticed the matter by closing his eyes and investigating, and one must say: the person who reflects on this must realize that this human memory is something quite remarkable. We have a general grasp of our ordinary powers of recollection and we can usually say what our memories relate to – for this is based on our powers of imagination. However, we can never guarantee that unconscious extraneous elements are not mixed in. Nevertheless, what is entrusted to our memory forms part of the best of our soul life. ... [Gap]

When a spiritual researcher encounters an observation like the Waldsteins', he realizes that he needs to look again in his inner experience and ask himself: How is it that ordinary mysticism, this immersion in one's own mind, cannot possibly approach a reality? Anyone who has become acquainted with the scientific conscientiousness in contemporary natural science repeatedly and intensely asks such questions and will in many cases be able to indicate how people who believe that they can draw a mighty and powerful Being into their soul through mystical contemplation are actually unconsciously repeating the sounds of a once-heard barrel organ. They say he has immersed himself in the divine being, but that is not true; a youthful impression has emerged in him and is reflected in him.

True science must be as critical as possible; but if you force yourself to truly and truly observe yourself, you will be able to tell yourself why you cannot get to the place where our being is rooted through the path of ordinary mysticism. And you come to realize that in the ordinary life of a person, you cannot aspire to reach the point where the human soul plunges into reality, because you would lack what you need to be human in this life. If you want to penetrate into the depths of reality with your ordinary life of ideas, you do something other than penetrating into your own being, and that is that you either develop your perception and what you experience, whether it be as self-awareness or as fate, or you practice mysticism and reshape what becomes memory in the depths. We would have no memory if we could penetrate to the sources of our being. And so the work we wanted to do on our way into the depths of our souls is stopped, so that what we experience spiritually can later be brought up again through memory. We must not penetrate into our selves, otherwise we would know nothing. We cannot penetrate into what our being is because we have to stop earlier.

Therefore, it is not surprising that we do not delve into it spiritually, but are stopped by our memory, and so it comes to pass that we stand before the abyss of knowledge for two reasons: because man would have to be a completely different being if he could penetrate into the knowledge of nature; he would be a being devoid of love; and the other reason is that If a person in their normal consciousness were to delve into their own inner being and immerse themselves in their own reality, they would have no memory or recall, and you know what it would mean for a healthy human life if a person had no memory. For millennia, the health of our soul life has consisted in our ability to remember.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I had to say first, because those who want to become true spiritual researchers must have these experiences behind them. One can begin with spiritual science, but not with spiritual research, without building it on the great disappointments, on the disappointments of life, which consist in the realization that one cannot solve the riddle of life by scientific means and that one cannot cross the boundary within through ordinary mysticism... [Gap] But on the spiritual side, it – spiritual science – can only build in the same way that natural science does in the external physical realm. Spiritual science must change consciousness if it is to penetrate to the depths of human existence. Just as one does not leave water as it is when one wants to do chemical experiments, but has to change it, break it down into hydrogen and oxygen using special devices, in order to arrive at what can be scientifically investigated, so in real spiritual research one must make changes to one's inner being, one must make a make a ruthless confession of life, the earnest confession that one cannot get behind the riddles of humanity with the cognitive abilities one has in life, but that one must shape and form them until one can penetrate through them into the depths where ordinary consciousness does not penetrate.

And because that is the case, because you really don't need to develop knowledge of nature on the one hand and mystical knowledge on the other in order to penetrate the human mystery through experiments, but because you have to strive for a different knowledge, you have to make our soul different from what it usually is, this path is still widely avoided, and what this science is supposed to achieve. It is shunned just as much as Copernicanism was shunned in its time, when people still had different ways of thinking. And just as the habits of thought of that time were overcome in the course of time, and as even the opposing communities had to decide to accept Copernicanism, so the time will come when all opposition will accept what is being sought here as spiritual research, but which can only be created through the transformation of the life of the soul.

This transformation of human life is described in detail in my books, in which it is characterized in principle from a few points of view, about which those who have heard my earlier Vienna lectures are better informed. There I also said that it is not a matter of somehow transforming the ordinary everyday life of a person and making it unhealthy, but of making progress in the field of the inner experience of human existence, and that through this the soul must become something different through inner exercises and activities in a very specific direction than it reveals itself in ordinary consciousness. This can only be the case when one wants to be a spiritual researcher.

Many people believe that with this method one can transform the whole person into something else. But one cannot, one cannot be a spiritual researcher from awakening to falling asleep, because otherwise one would fill the whole person with what can lead us straight into the spiritual realm of existence. On the one hand, the human being would be shaped in such a way that his ability to remember would not function properly, and on the other hand, his ability to love would take a wrong turn. But if the soul is practised in the right way, which is what we are talking about in principle, then what I have described as a danger does not occur, but rather a strengthening of the human being occurs, because it must be emphasized again and again that everything that spiritual research can give can only be gained through spiritual research, but that one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to have the ability to understand what has been researched.

Just as not everyone can be a chemist and yet chemical knowledge rules in life, so not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher who, through their common sense, understands how the results of spiritual research are based on truth, because it is possible for everyone to become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent and to test for themselves whether everything that spiritual research claims is possible.

The essential thing is that the soul life transforms itself in such a way that it accomplishes inner tasks that would otherwise not be possible. How to do that is explained in the books I have mentioned, but in principle I wanted to discuss it here. One can awaken the ability to detach oneself from all impressions of everyday life, an ability that one must learn, however, just as one must learn to do physical experiments, and in the same way one must be able to extinguish all impressions of the outside world for the spiritual and soul. One must be able to induce such a state of mind through inner experiments, which one otherwise induces when one is in a dreamless sleep.

But when we put ourselves in a position to sleep in this way, we must not completely abandon consciousness. Instead, our inner soul life is strengthened in such a way that when we return to our ordinary life, the full waking consciousness can be maintained, although we do not have to rely on external impressions to spark this consciousness. Supersensible awareness is a full awareness of our inner soul life, which we achieve by developing an inner activity that is purely soul-spiritual and does not play into our everyday life. The activities have to be spiritual-soul activities, and we see the inner soul life that would otherwise be used to absorb external impressions. We save the strength that would otherwise be used for perception. This is how thinking and imagining come to life, and thinking and imagining flow together.

It is a coming together within a life in which the inner self becomes conscious through having a picture in front of you that is formed by arbitrarily combining shapes, which cannot be interpreted in a bad mystical sense. But one must also be aware that the inner life of the soul will be strengthened in this way, that it will become more intense, that a different self-awareness will be evoked by imagining just as vividly as one perceives. One achieves this by practising one's soul, by completely grasping something new, by processing its image in the soul, which makes no claim to represent itself in energetic thinking and soul life. At first one senses only an inner strengthening of self-awareness. This is one side of the feeling that the human soul must unite with itself. But one also recognizes that which one has previously developed more or less unconsciously in one's inner depths, but it does not lead to making something permanent.

If nothing else were added, such an inner soul life would be completely forgotten; it would only be an experience in the immediate present, because it does not cling to the power of remembrance. Those who object to the methods of real spiritual research and science on the grounds that they too can only unconsciously call upon the power of remembrance should admit that it is precisely the power of remembrance that is excluded and does not participate. Everything that one experiences anew and that has so strengthened one's consciousness does not go down into the region of the powers of remembrance. It is something that forms inwardly but is not suitable for a person to keep within. What is experienced through spiritual research is not suitable for waking remembrance and lives only in that inner life that is awakened by the distant sounds of the barrel organ.

What I have explained here leads first to a strengthening of the inner life of the soul, to a strengthening of self-awareness. The person who practices this comes to say to himself: I can do it this way and I now know where it comes from. I have the high feeling that with my soul, when I have changed it, I can recognize the sources of life and the physical basis for it. I think that those are right who consider the ordinary life of the soul as bound to the body; I know that if one wants to arrive at this self-consciousness, which recognizes itself in this way, one must say: I do not recognize through my body. But one must first have gone through what I have described.

But one must go one step further. The one who practices the exercise I have been talking about for years of his life notices that he enters into a strange way of further exploring this self-transformation. He comes to a way of experiencing in which these images overwhelm him to a certain degree; he acquires in his soul a certain ability for pictorial representation. This is heightened fantasy, this is heightened imaginative experience. One attains imaginative experience, but one must continue to shape the soul through ever more advanced voluntary self-education. Through ever greater strengthening of the inner will, one must learn to master the inner images when they begin to want to master him. Otherwise, one would only ever see one's own images. But if you succeed in mastering them, you will also be able not only to shape these images, but also to remove them.

You also have to have this power, and you acquire it through the exercises I have described, through which you gain control over your inner formative activity. But then the soul feels different when you have really gone through these inner processes and increased your self-awareness by forming images, and when you can now erase these images. Then you are in a world that is different from the world of ordinary reality; now you are in a spiritual reality through the transformed soul life.

This can be compared to the natural development of the senses; one must see what one has developed like an inner, spiritual eye. But this is initially like a physical eye whose cornea is still cloudy. By erasing the image, one must first heal the eye before it is able to see the image. While in the past it was possible to strengthen self-awareness, now the imagination may look into another world, which cannot be revealed in any other way than this.

But one must have courage to go through such an experience of the soul if one wants to penetrate into the reality of the spiritual world. And then the following occurs: one feels as if awakened in a new world. This awakening in a new world is an experience, it is like waking up from dream-life into ordinary life, and one now knows: in dream-life one had no reality before one, but in waking-life one has the happenings of reality before one. Thus one can awaken out of the world of physical reality into the spiritual reality.

But there must also be something from the other side. In our ordinary life, there are not only perceptions and perceptions, but also feeling forces that have a certain direction in each person. They have perceptions and perceptions that need to be transformed, and the feeling powers must also be withdrawn from the external world. Through the inner concentration of life, man must be able to bring about his calmness towards the external world for all feelings and the willing life. The soul life must not be stimulated by anything that stimulates it from the external world. The will must not be directed towards anything external. Nothing external must be allowed to cause a change. The spirit must be uninvolved in the external world at the moment when it approaches spiritual research.

Then a remarkable transformation takes place in the soul of the human being; one makes the discovery that previously, in ordinary consciousness, all perceptions and ideas were delimited by our feelings. Now that memory is eliminated, now that we are outwardly calm, the feelings and will of life can penetrate into the soul, into that which we have developed; and as the soul has awakened, that which is formed in the inner soul through the repressed feelings that still slumber within, flows into it. Now an inner complement of thinking, feeling and willing arises, which are no longer the same as they are in ordinary consciousness. One has not only awakened, because in the awakening of the soul life, the outer mind also lives and reveals itself as it reveals itself through the senses in ordinary reality.

Through the transformation of the inner soul forces, through feeling and will, one can approach the things of the spiritual world. New abilities show up that would otherwise remain dormant in the soul. What I have described gives the soul the opportunity to develop such powers with which it can penetrate into the spiritual world, but only for the time in which it is doing spiritual research.

But these powers are different from the powers of ordinary consciousness, and misunderstandings arise because people do not distinguish between the soul's attitude when it is doing spiritual research and ordinary consciousness. To explore the realities of the spirit, the soul must apply what is described to itself. And people only resist this because they avoid seriously acquiring the powers that can only penetrate when applied in the right way. Then they would also see how different these abilities are from those we have in ordinary life and which we need for a healthy life. What the soul experiences, it experiences through these supersensible soul powers, not through the ordinary ones, as with the outer sense effects or mental images, which do not come about other than as remembering. What is experienced in the spirit is not a mere process of imagination, not mere fantasy, and what the spirit experiences in this way is not transformed into the ability to remember. One does not simply remember, but one must approach the experience again, and that is how this process differs from fantasy, that is how one recognizes it as the expression of real spiritual activity.

You will allow me to tie in with personal matters; but in this area there is much that has to tie in with personal matters, because spiritual research is tied to the person. I can look back with complete clarity to the moment in my life – it was many years ago – when I was able to see for the first time how, in the clouds and the sky, in short, in the external world, forces are at work that do not come from this life or from what we have inherited from father and mother, but such forces that one can say come from a life in a spiritual world that preceded our earthly life, before we connected with the forces generated by father and mother. During this life of the soul, powers are perceived and other powers, which come from previous lives, are active in the perception. One comes to such direct insight, but the most important thing is that one experiences this insight and knows that the spiritual world is also active in the ordinary consciousness, in the will and in all true perceptions. But it would be in vain to try to recall such an experience later, to bring it back to mind, if one has not done something quickly enough to be able to bring it back into one's memory later. What one must do must be done with complete clarity of consciousness, because remembering is impossible. Memory is excluded for the spiritual experience of the soul, and one only remembers something else when one is back in the ordinary life of the soul. And one can only see the experience with reversed memory and one can say to oneself: How did I come to have such a spiritual experience, what did I do, what did the soul think and feel before that it came about? How did this experience come about? One can remember that, not the experience itself, but how one came to it. One must remember that, one must go to this experience of the spiritual world by not recreating the experience, but recreating the conditions of the experience.

And when I speak to you about the conception of a lecture like today's, which is about spiritual matters, I must also say: You cannot do it as you would with ordinary lectures. I often give such lectures, but I have to say that it is extremely difficult for me to be able to hold on to such a lecture through ordinary memory. One can only prepare for it by creating the conditions under which one originally came to it, and that is what I want to tell the listeners. One wants to speak to the spiritual world and to do that one has to create the conditions. But because that is the case, it turns out that one can never count on retaining a spiritual experience in mere memory. But one can look into the spiritual world and then what one has to say comes to the fore. Those who want to see into the spiritual world must renounce the memory of the spiritual world.

This is indeed a disappointment for some. One can train oneself by practicing the powers to see into the experiences and processes of the spiritual world, but one does not remember them and is disappointed because the spiritual experiences dissolve into nothing, and that is precisely the disappointment of all beginners. But by re-establishing the conditions, one also awakens the memory in an artificial way, which is not imagination, and what was seen spiritually then remains, as a dream remains in the memory, and one sees what one has seen in the spiritual life. It comes to looking, one sees how that which itself seems to fade out and pass away, remains, one sees back into the past, but in a sense one cannot remember it.

Another thing comes up that also leads to certain disappointments for the beginner. It is the contrast to ordinary healthy earthly life, where one can develop powers that, like skill and habit, for example, are increased by certain repeated actions, and one can strengthen these powers in ordinary sensory life through repetition. In ordinary sensory life it is like that, but in the experience of the spirit it is the opposite. As paradoxical and absurd as it may sound, the more often one has a spiritual experience, the more difficult it is to bring it about again. And if you want to have the spiritual experience again and again, you have to make ever greater efforts to have it again. So you experience things in the opposite way to sensory experiences and realize that, in order to finally experience, you have to look at such experiences as quickly as possible. Because the experiences of the soul have the peculiarity of passing by as quickly as possible, they pass by unnoticed for those who have only done a few exercises and do not have the necessary presence of mind to really hold such experiences.

Many more people would have spiritual experiences if they had the necessary presence of mind. We live in the midst of spiritual life. But people do not have the presence of mind to really grasp them; and when they decide to turn their attention to them, the experience is over. Therefore, a thorough exercise is necessary, and in my books you will find how to prepare for this presence of mind, so that you are able to quickly decide in ordinary life situations, to quickly make these decisions. One must get into the habit of making the first decision definitively, and those people who unnecessarily turn every thing around in all directions and keep changing their minds, these loners of life, who muddle around even in ordinary life, they can never make quick decisions and observe mental experiences. They refrain from applying the intended exercises to such experiences. But they have to be there, because only then do the abilities arise in the soul that make the soul suitable for observing such processes. And then it will be able to give itself the answer as to why one cannot approach this mystery by the way of natural knowledge and ordinary mysticism, because this soul life between birth and death is bound to the living body, and one must look at something else that is not bound to ordinary life.

The moment one has acquired the ability to look at spiritual events that are not retained in memory – because this is bound to the body – the question that intrudes into human life and forms the human riddle is also answered. The first question is a philosophical issue, but we cannot get to the bottom of it because we only have it as an ordinary experience; yes, even if the sounds of a street organ suddenly play into our ordinary soul life and we , we can never be sure what drives them up. There is one thing that arises in our ordinary mental life and to which we must relate differently than to all the other ideas and thoughts present in this mental life. It is [...] logical and, so to speak, pure thinking, apart from such impressions of the sounds of the street organ; we can tell right from wrong. Logic is often written only for schools. But these questions cannot be answered with this school logic. If, however, we engage with these things with real logic, then we will also be able to tell, in a certain sense, what is right and what is wrong, quite apart from what is conscious and what is unconscious, what is sympathetic and what is antipathetic.

If we reach into the life of the soul in this way and ask ourselves why this is so, we only experience the answer when we observe with the described and transformed life of the soul, and only then do we realize that forces are at play in our soul that impel us to these considerations, forces that reach into our life from the life we led earlier, before our parents had produced us, forces that we acquired from the spiritual life before birth or before conception. But the one who cannot look into the thinking activity cannot think correctly about the eternal spirit that presents itself in him. Therefore, one can also say what many have already said: the transformation of the soul life happens in such a way that, so to speak, the whole soul life is transformed as if mystically, but this in a higher sense. For what would a musical melody be if memory did not play an effective role in the tones heard?

But it is not memory that plays a part in this soul life, but past reality itself. What has already passed lives again in the present of our soul life. And so, in our pure thinking, mixed with our ordinary soul life, lives the spiritual soul that was already there before we connected with matter. And when we then consider these perceptions and can make them transparent and look at the spirit through the powers of the soul, then we find the earlier earth life looking back, which can be perceived and experienced. We think human experiences that were previously limited in themselves; we see that we can look back to the eternal spirits through spiritual research.

These are the fundamental, the source points of human knowledge, which this kind of knowledge opens up to the one who searches for it, and therein lies the freedom of the human soul. The spiritual researcher who wants to talk about freedom has made the question of human freedom his main subject for decades. Decades ago I wrote a book about human freedom; in this book I showed that one has to ascend from physical strength to pure spiritual strength. This is the second question, which, like the first, is linked to thinking, the question of freedom, which is an experience for everyone but cannot be scientifically investigated. Whatever is bound to natural science will never be able to occur in freedom.

Yet everyone knows what actions are free. I have already said which actions in human life can be called free. Only certain types of actions are free: for example, when we have a being beside us that we love, for what is love in true reality of the soul? Love has different types; it can be selfish, an egoism because it is pleasant to love what is pleasant to love; but even this love can change, it can spiritualize, it can look at other beings, and then selfishness towards the beloved being is completely excluded.

Yes, I was right a quarter of a century ago when I contradicted the commonly held saying “love is blind”. That is completely wrong, because in reality it should be: “love gives sight”. Of course, only those who are able to exclude themselves, who merge with the being they love, who are capable of pursuing the various phases of love to the highest degree, only they can grasp what free actions are. We do many things out of selfishness in life, but it happens that we also perform actions for which we stand just as we do when we are with a beloved being who is sympathetic to us. We will not want to perform actions that we consider wrong before pure thinking and devotion; these actions must be done out of love. We ourselves will only act correctly if we love the spirit.

Freedom and love for action are concepts that cannot be separated, and one cannot ask: Is a person free or unfree? No, because a person is unfree in his will for actions out of necessity, out of instincts, out of the subconscious of his soul life, but he becomes free by being able to hate and love what he considers necessary to do for himself and the world. When one correctly reveals through the transformed soul powers what is needed in love and real freedom by people as a motive for their will, then one can penetrate not through mysticism, but through this transformation of soul powers into spiritual reality, and one discovers that a mysterious power dwells in man, like the germ in the plant for the next plant.

This germ also lives in the human soul; however, it is covered and the person does not have the opportunity to see it; but he has acquired the ability to look back at his intentions and desires. Then one also sees what is going on in a person when he performs acts out of love. In the life of the soul, spiritually and mentally conditioned free acts are at work. Just as a person is rooted in the present life and can perceive what he thinks correctly and incorrectly, so in the future one's earthly life will become something like it was in the past, as we pass through the gate of death and the seed planted for the future remains in us, covered by the life of feeling and willing. We see... [gap], how the germs that we planted in past earthly lives must come to life when we lay down our lives; and we will also glimpse the life before birth. We perceive life in the spirit before birth and after death by looking beyond what is bound to the organism through feeling and willing. We also see that spiritual research is not something mystical, not something that can be brought in comfortably, but it strives in those areas that are the longing areas of all people who want to awaken to life.

There is an unbridgeable abyss between what we call the life of memory and what natural phenomena have built up before us for the first time. By evoking such forces to destroy the image and retain the powers of memory, we plunge into that which must not be plunged into in ordinary life; but in so doing we gain the possibility of plunging into that world which is not intended for ordinary life. This leads us to real spiritual research; it will one day be a science, just as Copernicanism became a science when it broke with the old soul life.

It is understandable that this research is misunderstood from various sides and that it faces hostility. To the mystic it does not appear suitable because spiritual research does not do enough mysticism for him; and others believe that they must rely on natural science alone. But it will come one day, and they will see that spiritual research is a pure science. There is also fear that superstition will revive and that amateurism will occur in serious research. But that is not the case either.

I could only establish the principles, only describe the beginning of these things. But everyone has the opportunity to discover for themselves the areas that are important in practical life and certain human experiences, especially with regard to the present day, that confirm my explanations. I just wanted to say what spiritual research has to do to unlock such areas. It will be misunderstood from left and right, because for this spiritual research it is not necessary to penetrate into new areas, but to penetrate into these areas in a new way, to develop new concepts for the new reality, which are unfamiliar to most people today. But they are not completely foreign to them, because in this spiritual research there are forces that today lie dormant in the human soul, that today awaken in real human life in these difficult times. When they are brought into contact with many things that seem to come from ancient times, when old experiences are awakened in us from time to time, then those concerned know that they must long for something different from what people have offered so far.

The development of humanity must continue. The needs for this are present, we have advanced to a new science, but people do not yet know about it. But they are present, and also the further surroundings, who still deny them today, dream of them and strive in constant longing for this spiritual science, which is not a program and not an arbitrariness, because the spiritual science is only that what people actually want, what they long for, what lies dormant deep in the subconscious, and I am convinced that what spiritual science has to offer is nothing other than the satisfaction of what people long for. And neither people of the present nor people of the future can do without it.

So what does the gentleman say? He says: What you can grasp with your hands is science. The rest is a figment of the imagination. Everyone can imagine things and have them imagined, because you can't know anything about all that. And if people take comfort in all kinds of supernatural things, well, you don't have to take that away from them.

It is absolutely terrible to see the confusion in which this matter has ended up. But now I would like to show you that these gentlemen have completely forgotten how to think when it comes to this science. I would like to show you this with another passage from this book. For what does the gentleman do, who pushes everything that cannot be grasped with his hands into the realm of belief? He says: To speak of an ego, which should actually dwell in man as an eternal ego, is actually scientific nonsense, because the ego is, after all, only the sum of all that is otherwise in us. We are accustomed to summarizing everything we imagine, everything we feel, from beginning to end, into a whole. And then, when we have summarized it into a whole, we say “I.” – So says the Lord.

Now, however, he wants to make this clear. He wants to make it clear that the word 'I' really only summarizes everything that one experiences. Because then the 'I' is just a mere word if one only summarizes in this way. So he makes a comparison. He compares everything that a person experiences with a mass of soldiers, with a company of soldiers. So what I experienced as a child, what I played as a child, what I felt in the game, that is one troop of soldiers; what I experienced a little later is the other troop of soldiers, and so on; to this day, I summarize all of this as the individual soldiers are combined into a company, and I say “I.” So he says. So he compares all the individual experiences of the soul with a company of soldiers, and he summarizes them as one summarizes, and does not say, Miller and Lehmann and so on, but says: The company 12 and so on. So he summarizes everything that one experiences in the soul as I, into a company of soldiers. Then he continues: “On the other hand, a word must be said here about the ego, insofar as one can also understand by it the circumstance that from the period of life when consciousness is somewhat developed, man always feels as the same personality, as the same ego.” He says, then: Man must finally be weaned of the idea that he feels as an ego, he must be accustomed to the idea that it is only as if one were a company of soldiers.

"This fact, viewed from our standpoint, should have nothing particularly surprising about it. First of all, if we want to get to the bottom of this matter, we must be clear about what we actually mean by the individual personality in relation to the external world.” So at first he gives a nice admonition that we have to form an idea. He answers: ”It is the result of all kinds of individual ideas, but especially of those that summarize the direct interactions of the organism with the external world into a more or less compact whole. In our view, the idea of the self is nothing more than an abstract idea, and indeed of the highest order, built on the sum of all the ideas, feelings and desires of an individual, but in particular of all the ideas of the interrelations between one's own body and the outside world. The concept encompasses all of this, just as the concept of the plant kingdom encompasses the infinite sum of all plants. The word 'I' – now this is where it gets interesting! “is the representative of all these ideas, much as the military leader is the representative of all the individual soldiers. Just as one can say of the deeds of a military leader that he always forms the more or less obscure unconscious background for the ideas of the individual soldiers and army detachments, in exactly the same way the mass of individual concrete ideas and feelings forms the background of the concept of the ego."

Now, gentlemen, look at how the man thinks. Now, the book is very learned, that must be assumed, it is at the cutting edge of science. The man says: You have a company of soldiers and the commander. But you only summarize the soldiers; the commander is merely their representative. It is the same with the ideas and feelings. You summarize all the ideas and feelings and the ego is merely their representative.

Yes, but if the ego is the representative, just the word, then with the company of soldiers you must also see the army commander only as a word. Have you ever discovered that the army commander leading a company of soldiers is just a word composed of all the individuals? Now, you could imagine that the army commander is not particularly clever. Sometimes the ego is not particularly clever either. But to imagine that the army commander is nothing but a mere word - and that is what he needs as a comparison for how the ego relates to ideas - proves that when the cleverest people start talking about the supernatural, they become very stupid. Because, right, you can prove to them that when they make a comparison, it is without any logic. There is not the slightest logic in it.

After Mr. Erbsmehl has made this fine comparison, he continues: “From this it follows that the respective concept of the self is entirely dependent on the underlying idea. This is most clearly evident in the way it gradually develops in a child. But every adult thinking person can also account for how they feel in every respect as a different self today than ten years ago.

Now I ask Mr. Erbsmehl or Mr. Burle whether they feel like a completely different person than ten years before! Surely you can distinguish whether you are now a completely different person than ten years ago! But you come across passages like that in books at every turn today. The most ordinary facts of life are turned upside down. Of course it is mere nonsense when someone says that he feels he is a completely different person today than he was ten years ago. But that is what these gentlemen say. But the moment you start thinking about the self, whether it is the same today as it was ten years ago, you no longer get the chance to say: the self dies when the corpse dies. — Why is that?

I have already explained to you, gentlemen, that you cut your nails, skin flakes off and so on; all this happens in seven to eight years. You no longer have any of the material that you had ten years ago. Just as your skin flakes off, your insides are constantly moving away from your body. You see, your body is like this: it sheds its upper layer; then the next layer moves forward, then that layer sheds itself; then the next layer moves forward, sheds itself again, and after seven to eight years everything has shed itself. Where is that? Where is the body you had ten years ago? Yes, it has undergone the same process, only in a somewhat more complicated way, that the corpse undergoes when it is placed in the grave. The corpse dissolves into the earth. If you were to break the body down into such small pieces as the scales that are constantly falling off you, or as the nails you cut off when you cut them into such small pieces, you would not even notice that the body is going anywhere. You could blow it away. And so, over a period of seven to eight years, the physical body dissolves into the external world.

But if you still feel like an ego today, and the physical body died two to three years ago, then the ego has nothing to do with the physical body as you have it there. So you could say. But you see, it has so much to do with it that if, for example, you take a piece of chalk, you will say: I took the chalk. Every person says that. I had a schoolmate – I think I have told you this before – who, when he was nineteen or twenty years old, was on the way to becoming a real materialist. We often went for walks together, and he always said: It is quite obvious to me that we have no self, we only have a brain; the brain thinks. I always told him: Yes, look, you say: I walk, you even say: I think; why are you lying? If you really tell the truth, you would have to say: My brain thinks! — You don't even have to say “my” because “my” already points to an ego; there must already be an ego if you say “my”. People never say: My brain thinks, my brain walks, my brain takes the chalk. It doesn't occur to them at all, because in life a person cannot be a materialist. He would immediately say nonsense if he were a materialist.

But in theory, people make materialism their own and do not consider that real science knows that we no longer have the body we had eight to ten years ago, that the ego has remained. And in the same way you can remember back to your early childhood, to the second, third, fourth, fifth year. It would never occur to you to say that it is not the same self that used to run around as a boy back then. But let us assume that you have now reached the age of forty; by the age of thirty-three you have lost one body, by the age of twenty-six you have lost the second body, by the age of nineteen you have lost the third body, by the age of twelve you have lost the fourth body, by the age of five you have lost the fifth body. You have lost five bodies and your self has always remained the same. So this self is preserved throughout your entire life on earth.

But this self can also do something with your body. The body it loses, the ego can direct continuously. You see, when I walk, my legs, although they are old, are in reality only six to seven years old at most. But I direct them with the old ego that was already there when I walked around as a boy. The ego is still walking around. The ego directs the body during life on earth.

Now I have told you that during the period of time that you no longer remember, the child learns to walk, to speak and to think. Of course, you can no longer remember the time when you could not yet think. So you learn to walk, to move in general, to use your body, to speak and to think. You learn that. And to do that, you have to direct your body as well. You cannot, as a child still crawling on all fours, straighten up the body without your will. When you move your hand, the I says: I move the hand - the I with its will. But in the same way, the will also causes the child to straighten up. The child learns to speak with the will. The child learns to think with the will. So we have to ask: where does it come from that the child learns all this? And here we come to the fact that through the “whole of earthly life, despite the fact that the body is continually being replaced, the I always remains the same, that this I is still the same in the time when we have learned to think, to speak and to walk. This I was already active in the body.

If you cut off the tip of your nose — it only needs to be a small piece, right, because a lot of it is not healthy, but you can cut off so much that it does you no harm — and look at it under the microscope, you will again see such a wonderful body with a structure that is very beautifully built. Yes, gentlemen, you have no idea how beautiful the tiniest part of your nose is! Admirably beautiful! And so it is with every part of the human body. It is beautifully constructed, beautifully arranged. The best sculptor could not do better.

There is only one structure in the human organism where everything must be destroyed and only mere matter must be present – I already drew your attention to this last time – and that is the egg from which a human being develops. And at fertilization, the last act takes place; everything of the matter that has been formed is removed.

So that one can say: the bone is beautiful; everything in the material is beautiful. The tip of the nose is no longer as beautiful as the bone, but it is still beautiful. But the egg, from which a person will later develop, contains only a completely disordered material, because everything is fragmented in it. There is no atom, there is no formation at all. Why?

A human soul cannot simply enter a bone. Superstitious people sometimes believe that there is a little devil sitting somewhere in their bones or limbs. Well, sometimes this is the case in a somewhat figurative sense, but a human being cannot enter such a bone. Nor can a person enter the tip of your nose.

I knew a lady who claimed to have a little ghost in her left index finger, and she would ask it anything she wanted to know. If she should go for a walk, she would ask it, and so on. But of course that is nonsense, a superstition. What we have to say to ourselves is: into such a well-formed bone, or even into the tip of our nose, no human being, no human soul, no human spirit can enter directly. The thing is this: The human soul-spiritual, the actual I, can only enter the egg germ because there the substance is only dust, world dust. There the soul now works the world dust with the powers it has brought with it from the spiritual world.

If people believe that what a person is comes simply through ordinary inheritance from father and mother, then one must assume that the human being is already a little human being. But that is contrary to science. Science says that the protein is completely pulverized. And it is from this pulverized protein that the soul, which comes from the spiritual, from the supersensible world, actually builds the human body.

Now you may ask: But why does the child resemble the mother or the father? Yes, gentlemen, the reason for this is that the child always imitates. The one who says: This child is the spitting image of his father – could actually say something else. You see, if we wait a little while with the child, we have a child that looks very much like, say, its father or mother, although this is not at all how it is expressed. But such things are not the concern of the learned gentlemen. But, you see, let's wait a little, let's not judge already when the child is eight or fourteen days or a month old, let's wait until the child is three or four years old. That's when the child started speaking. Then someone comes along and says: Gosh, the father is German, so the child has also started speaking German. It must have inherited it from the father, because the father is German. That is quite remarkable! Since the child came out of the egg, the language must have been in the egg. It is just wonderful that the child, when it came out of the egg, out of the mother's body, could not yet speak! But, of course, the child did not inherit the ability to speak; the child acquired it through imitation. The language is similar to that of the father and mother. But it would not occur to anyone to say that the child inherited the language.

Likewise, the face is similar. But why is the face similar? Yes, because the soul, when it allows itself to be born through a mother or to be begotten through a father who is Mr. Miller, makes the face similar to the father or mother, just as the child later makes the language similar to the language of the father and mother. You just have to consider that. In speech, the child works out the sounds and words by making itself similar to its parents or educators. But even earlier, the soul unconsciously works on the face or even the gait, like a sculptor. And because the child is born into the family and makes itself similar, when it has no consciousness yet, the similarity arises in the same way as the similarity of speech arises.

You see, gentlemen, in this way one comes to the conclusion that man actually comes from the spiritual, from the supersensible world, and builds his body with all its similarities himself. Now just take a look at the little child. The little child is born. When children are born, sometimes, despite the fact that all mothers find them very beautiful, one cannot easily distinguish them from little animals. Isn't it true that human beings are such little animals when they are born – in relation to later, of course. They really are quite unsightly, these little children. But gradually the soul works inside and makes everything more and more similar to a human being, until the moment comes when the child learns to walk; that is, as I told you last time, it finds itself in the equilibrium position of the earth. Then the child learns to speak. It learns to use the organs in its chest, because these organs are located in the chest. Then the child learns to think, that is, it learns to use the organs in its head.

Now, let us think about this. The child learns to walk, that is, to keep his balance and to move. What does he learn when he walks? Well, he learns to use his limbs while walking. But you cannot use your limbs without using your metabolism at the same time. When you use your limbs, something of us is always burned. Substances are burned. Even when you just move an arm, substances are being burned inside it. Metabolism is connected to the limbs. Walking, keeping one's balance, moving has to do with metabolism and with the limbs.

Then the child learns to speak. What has that got to do with? Speaking has to do with the chest organs, with breathing. The child can already breathe when it is very small. But connecting words with the expelled air is what the child learns with the chest organs. So: keeping balance is connected with the limbs, speaking with the chest, and thinking with the head, the nerves.

But now, we have three parts of the human being. Note that there are only three. First, we have the limbs and metabolism; second, we have the chest; third, we have thinking, the head. We have three parts of the human being.

Now let us take a look at the child. When a child is born, it is not only outwardly dissimilar to an adult human being. The cheeks are dissimilar, the whole shape; it is dissimilar at the forehead; isn't it, the child is dissimilar on the outside. But on the inside it is even more dissimilar. The brain matter of a child is more like a brain pulp. And by the age of seven, by the time the child gets its second teeth, this pulp, this brain pulp, is beautifully formed. From the age of seven, the human brain has a truly wonderful structure. The soul, the spirit within it, has made it, the soul-spiritual within it.

But you see, gentlemen, we as children could not develop this brain so wonderfully up to the age of seven if we were not constantly in contact with the world. If, for example, you have a child who is born blind, you can immediately see that the optic nerves and thus a whole piece of the brain remain a kind of pulp. It is not beautifully developed. If a person is born deaf, the auditory nerves, which go from the ear and cross here (it is drawn), and then go over there, remain a piece of brain mush along the way. So we can only properly develop our brain in the first seven years of life because we have the senses.

But the things you can grasp with your hands outside, the brain does not train that. You could, for all I care, stuff tangible substances through the nostrils into the brain – you would ruin the brain, but it would not be educated. So all tangible matter is of no use to you in building up the brain in the first seven years. Only the finest matter that lives in the light comes into consideration, for example. Only ether comes into consideration.

You see, that is very important. We absorb the ether through all our senses. So what works from our head? It is not the physical body that works from the head into the child, and into the rest of the organism. The physical body does not work in the child while the child is developing its brain so wonderfully, but the etheric body does. The etheric body, which, as I have already mentioned, we continue to possess for two or three days after death, is at work in the child, and it is this that causes the human brain to develop perfectly, thereby making the child a thinking human being. So we can say: the etheric body is at work in the thinking.

There we have found the first supersensible element of the human being: the etheric body. A child could not develop its brain, it could not have a human brain inside it, if it could not work with the ether all around. Later, by straining the muscles, you can make the muscles stronger through the physical. But, let's say, for example, the left parietal lobe in the brain, you can't make it stronger with something physically tangible. If you want to make the muscle stronger, you can do that by attaching a weight to it and lifting it again and again, thus overcoming the heaviness. But you have to make the muscle stronger through the tangible. Just as you have the muscle here, the biceps, and can make it stronger by lifting and lowering weights, so, if you look at your head from the front, you have a lobe of the brain here. It hangs over here like the arm hangs here. You can't attach any weight to it. And yet, what happens in the arm muscle during training cannot be compared to what happens in this lobe of the brain! At the beginning, when we are born, it is a pulp; when we are seven years old, it is wonderfully developed. Just as the arm muscle becomes stronger through lifting and lowering the weight, that is, from something tangible, from something visible, so the brain becomes stronger through what is in the ether. Just as the human being is connected to the environment through his physical body, so he is also connected to the environment through his etheric body. And from that he has the thinking. Through that he forms the inside of his head in the first seven years.

Once the human being has developed thinking, then, I would like to say, he returns to speech. Learning to speak is something completely different than learning to think. Learning to think is precisely what works on the formation of our body. This makes us, so to speak, sculptural, I would say, this thinking. It works in us so that we truly become a complete human being by the age of seven. During this time, we also learn to speak. But you see, it is not possible for us to learn to speak in the same way as we learn to think. For when we speak, what happens then? Yes, gentlemen, you see, when you lift a heavy weight or strike with your arm with terrible force, your arm hurts. To hurt means to have a feeling. We really have a feeling when we exert any limb too much and somehow hurt it. Whenever we feel pain, we have hurt something, even if only very slightly. We have a feeling. But, gentlemen, all language comes from feeling. If you listen to the child, you can hear how language comes from feeling. The child will learn: “Ei, ei” in its language. What does it want to express when it says “Ei, ei”? It nestles up. It likes the person to whom it says “Ei, ei”. It lays its little head down when it says “Ei, ei”. And so it is with all words; it is the same with everything that is spoken: a feeling underlies it. Yes, the feeling does not come from the brain, and the feeling does not come from what the brain develops from.

You see, if there were no sunlight shining through our eyes, the ether around us would not be able to work on us. We could not live properly for the first seven years. During the first seven years, the child also has more feeling. It learns language by imitation. But feeling is at work in this imitation. And we have to say: light cannot evoke feeling. When we learn language through feeling, something else is present in us. That which then works in language, whereby the human being can speak, is not just the etheric body, it is then the human being's astral body. So that we can say: secondly, to learn to speak, we have the astral body – that is just an expression, I could just as easily say differently – we have the astral body, which works primarily in the chest, in breathing, which then transforms into speaking.

You see, it is always the belief that man, with his physical body, has, let us say, hunger and thirst. But that is nonsense. Imagine a machine that is driven by water. You have to give the machine water. All right, then it will work, and if you don't give it water, it will stop working. What does that mean: the machine stops working? It means that you have to give it water again, you have to let it drink. But the machine is not thirsty beforehand. The machine is not thirsty; it may stop working, but it is not thirsty beforehand, otherwise it would cry out. It does not do that. It is not thirsty.

What is the connection in humans? When a child is thirsty, it does not behave like a machine. It does not just stop moving. On the contrary, a child starts screaming when it is thirsty. What is the connection between thirst and screaming? Screaming is not in the substance, but it is also not in the ether. The ether can form the structure; it can thus form that which is our form. But the ether does not cause us to scream. If the ether were to cause us to scream, there would be a terrible, perhaps not a roar, but a continuous hissing in the world. Because if we look, it is the ether that, together with our eye, causes us to see. The ether is constantly entering our eye. That is why we see. Yes, but when the ether enters our eye, it does not start in the eye: s-s-s-e-] —, no, that is not the etheric body of the human being; it does not lisp. Just imagine if, just because we are looking, there were a constant whispering in a room, that would be a nice story! So the etheric body does not scream or whisper. There is something else there. That is the astral body. And when a child is thirsty and cries out, there is a feeling of thirst in the astral body. And this crying out is what brings the child's feeling to our ears.

But all that I have described to you now could not yet lead to my walking. Because, you see, if I form my body from the head through the etheric body, I could remain like a statue my whole life. My body could be formed, I could roar like a lion; my roar could still be formed from the astral body. But when I want to come into balance as a child, when I want to apply the will to walk, to grasp, to come into balance, where I always say: I walk, I grasp, I come into balance - there it is still the I that comes into it, which is something other than the etheric body and the astral body. And this I lives in the limbs and in the metabolism. When you move your limbs, it is the I that moves them. So you have three parts of the human being in addition to the physical body: you have the etheric body, the astral body and the I (diagram on page 138).

And you see, these three parts of the body can also be perceived if one only trains to do so. But modern science does not want this training. And now I will tell you how modern science actually behaves when it does not want this.

You have all dreamt before. While dreaming, you believe that it is all real. Sometimes you wake up with a terrible fear, for example when you are standing at the edge of an abyss and feel dizzy and about to fall. Now you wake up, completely drenched in sweat. Why? Well, because you thought the abyss was real. You are lying quietly in bed, it is not dangerous at all, but you wake up from the danger that you saw in the image. Imagine if you slept your whole life – that would be a nice story for some. There are those who sleep their whole life.

Once upon a time, there was someone who had learned the Copernican theory and was a terribly lazy fellow. Now, he was lying in the ditch. Another one came by and said, “Why are you lying there?” “Because I have so much to do!” “Well, you guy, you're lying there, you're not doing anything.” So he said, “I have to go around the sun with the earth, and I want to stay behind! It's uncomfortable for me, it's too much work!"

Not true, some people would not even want to go around the sun with the earth! But we do our whole waking life with. You see, if we only dreamt our whole life, then we in Europe could lie in bed, someone could take our body, maybe even our bed, so as not to wake us, and take it on a ship to America – of course, angels would have to do it, because people couldn't do it so quietly – but we could be shipped to America. We continued to dream there, all that could be done to us, we don't know anything about ourselves. If we were dreaming, we would never know how the nose touches, how the left hand touches the right hand. And yet, gentlemen, we would have a whole life. If you dreamt your whole life through, it would be something else – we would be able to fly in our dreams, for example. You can't fly on earth; in your dreams you fly. We would think of ourselves as completely different beings, and so on.

But consider, a world would be around us if we were to dream the whole of life. And we wake up. Let us say: I wake up and dreamt that during the night – let me take a very telling example – I was hanged, or beheaded. Let us assume that one dreams that one has been beheaded. Well, gentlemen, if you dreamt your whole life, you would naturally always believe that you had been beheaded. It wouldn't bother you as much as it does here. You would perhaps experience it more often, dreaming that you were being beheaded, and you would believe that it wouldn't bother you. Now you wake up – and lo and behold, you've taken a book with you into bed. While tossing and turning, it came to rest at the back. Now you are lying on it with your head on the edge of the book, and the fact that you are lying uncomfortably seems to you in your dream as if you had been beheaded. When you have woken up, you realize what the dream means; after awakening, you can explain to yourself where the dream came from.

So you have to wake up first. It's waking up that matters. People who dream their whole lives would think that the dream world is their only reality. We only start to think of the dream world as a fantasy world when we wake up.

Now, gentlemen, in bed, a person wakes up of his own accord and through the surrounding world, which shakes him up. But we only wake up from the life in which we are immersed, which we believe is only the tangible, when we make an effort. And how one awakens from it, I have just described in the book: “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Just as one wakes from a dream and knows that the dream is a world brought about by waking, so one wakes from waking through higher knowledge and then knows that our ordinary world comes from what one now perceives of the higher waking. One knows this.

Therefore, the future science must not just dream away in the world, always just trying: How do you do it in the laboratory, in the physics cabinet? but it must guide people to wake up now. Then one will no longer say: Man is only a physical, material body, but then one will say: Man consists of physical matter, of the etheric body, astral body and I. And of these one can then say: One now knows what wakes up from the corpse when one dies. Because the etheric body had to approach the physical body first and shape the physical body through the head. The astral body had to approach first, had to dig itself into the chest a little, then the person learned to speak. And the I had to approach the physical body and had to bring it into balance in the outer world. Through this, he learned to move his limbs and to adapt his metabolism to the movements. So the human being brings his etheric body, his astral body and the ego from the spiritual world, and he shapes the chaotic substance, which is pulverized, into an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. And what he brings with him when he comes into the world, he carries out again through death. I have already indicated to you how that is. It is so that if one really considers this higher science of waking up, one can speak about life after death and before earthly life in the same way as one speaks about this earthly life. We will do that next time. Then the question of how a person looks without a body, namely before fertilization, will be fully answered.

The next lecture will be on Monday at nine o'clock. It is a bit difficult now, of course, but that doesn't matter. The fact that it is difficult is only because people are never prepared for these things in their youth. If they were prepared, it would not be difficult for them at all. Today, I might say, people have to struggle so that they can learn later what is not prepared for people in their youth. But when you see that people today only manage to say: the commander is only the summary of a company of soldiers, then you will also see that today's science already needs to be improved. And that is what really leads to an understanding of the supernatural.

The times themselves speak clearly enough, demanding that we should apply to the conditions and activities of these times those feelings and modes of thinking which we have acquired from our studies of Spiritual Science. Not only do outward circumstances speak clearly, but our conceptions of Spiritual Science also justify us in a certain way, especially in what we have to say today. In many of our basic ways of looking at the world, we have started from one fundamental fact of human evolution, from the fact that this evolution is accomplished by successive stages of which the most important and most related to us began with the great Atlantean Catastrophe, namely this Post-Atlantean Epoch. Four periods of it have passed by, while we are now living in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Period. This period of development, which began in the 15th century of our Christian era, is the one which we can designate as the period of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul. Other soul forces have been especially evolved in other periods of civilization. In our civilization which has followed the Greco-Latin civilization from the first half of the 15th century, humanity must gradually develop the Spiritual Soul. The preceding period, which commenced in the 8th century B.C. and finished in the 15th century A.D., was pre-eminently the period in which humanity developed the Intellectual or Mind Soul.

Now we need not give a full description of these cultural stages, but we will particularly look at what is a peculiarity of our age—this age which has comparatively few centuries behind it. Each age lasts on average about 2000 years. Therefore much remains to be done in this period of the Spiritual Soul. The task of humanity—of civilized humanity in this age of the Spiritual Soul—will be that of laying hold of the whole human being and making him entirely dependent on himself, of lifting into the full light of consciousness much of that which in earlier periods man felt instinctively and judged instinctively.

Many present difficulties and much that is chaotic around us in our era, become quite explicable when one knows that the task of our era is to raise that which is instinctive to the plane of consciousness. What is instinctive in us happens to a certain degree by itself, but to achieve a conscious result one must make an inward effort, above all, to begin to think truly with one's whole being. Man tries to avoid this, he does not willingly take a conscious part in the shaping of world conditions. Here is a point over which many are indeed deceived today. Men today think the following: Well, today we live in the period of the development of thought. People are proud of the fact that there is more thinking nowadays than in the past. But this is an illusion—one of the many illusions in which humanity lives today. This comprehension on which people pride themselves today is mainly instinctive. Only when the instinctive nature which has appeared in the evolution of humanity and which so proudly speaks of thought—only when this instinctive nature becomes instead an active element, when the intellect does not depend merely on the brain but springs from the whole man, when it is separated from rationalism and is lifted to the plane of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition—only then will that gradually emerge which seeks to emerge in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Period, the period of the Spiritual Soul. That which meets man today and which is clearly indicated even in the worldly thought of the present epoch is something which one continuously needs to mention the appearance of the so-called Social Question.

But he who has earnestly studied our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science will easily perceive that the essential impulse in the shaping of the social order (whether belonging to the State or not) must come from that which human beings can develop out of themselves, as it is this which regulates the relationship between people. Everything which the human being develops out of himself naturally corresponds to certain impulses which are ultimately found in our soul and spirit life. If one looks at the matter this way, one is able to ask: Must attention not then be directed above all to the social impulses or to the social instincts, movements or forces emerging in human nature? We can, if you like, call these social impulses, social drives; but we must keep in mind that they should not only be thought of as mere unconscious instincts since when we speak of social instincts today, we must take into account that we live in the age of the Consciousness Soul and that these drives seek to press up into consciousness.

Now, if these things are to count for us, then we must find social impulses which seek to become reality. But in so doing we must recognize the terrible one-sidedness of our age, which should not of course be deplored, but which should be looked at calmly because it has to be overcome. Man has such a great inclination in our day to look at things one-sidedly. But a pendulum cannot swing from the central point out to one side without also swinging back to the other. Just as little as a pendulum can swing to one side only, can social impulses of men be expressed by only one side. This is because the social impulses are quite naturally opposed by anti-social impulses in the human being. Precisely because one finds social impulses or drives in human nature, one also finds the opposite. This fact must above all be considered.

The social leaders and agitators, for example, live in the illusion that they need only spread certain ideas or need only appeal to a class of man who is willing and disposed (provided ideas are there) to help forward the social impulse. It is an illusion to act in this way, for in so doing one forgets that if social forces are working, then anti-social forces are also present. What we must be able to do today is to look these things straight in the face without illusion. It is only from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science that they can be looked at straightly without illusion. One is tempted to say that people are sleeping through the most important thing of all in life when they do not begin to look at life from the viewpoint of Spiritual Science.

We must ask ourselves: What is the relation between people with regard to social and anti-social forces? We need to see that the relationship between people is fundamentally a complicated matter. When one person meets another, I would say we must look into the situation radically. Meetings of course point to differences which vary according to specific circumstances; but we must fix our eyes on the common characteristics, we must clearly see the common elements in the meeting, in the confrontation between one person and another. We must ask ourselves: What really happens then, not merely in that which presents itself to the senses, but in the total situation, when one person stands opposite another, when one person meets another? Nothing less than that a certain force works from one person to the other. The meeting of one with another leads to the working of a certain force between them. We cannot confront another person in life with indifference, not even in mere thoughts and feelings, even though we may be separated from them by distance. If we have any kind of relation to other people, or any communication with them, then a force flows between us creating a bond. It is this fact which lies at the basis of social life and which, when broadened, is really the foundation for the social structure of humanity.

One sees this phenomenon most clearly when one thinks of the direct interchange between two people. The impression which one person makes on the other has the effect of lulling the other to sleep. Thus we frequently find in social life that one person gets lulled to sleepiness by the other with whom he has interchange. As a physicist might say: a “latent tendency” is always there for one man to lull another to sleep in social relationships.

Why is this so? Well, we must see that this rests on a very important arrangement of man's total being. It rests on the fact that what we call social impulses, fundamentally speaking are only present in people of our present day consciousness during sleep. You are, in so far as you have not yet attained clairvoyance, really only penetrated by social forces when you are asleep, and only that which continues to work out of sleeping into waking conditions works into ordinary waking consciousness as a social impulse. When you know this, you do not need to be surprised when your social being seeks to lull you to sleep in your relationship with others. In the relationship between people the social impulse ought to develop. Yet it can only develop during sleep. Therefore in the relationship between people a tendency is shown for one person to dull the consciousness of the other so that a social relation may be established between them. This striking fact is evident to one who studies the realities of life. Above all things, our interchange with one another leads to dulling the consciousness of one another, in the interests of a social impulse between people. Of course you cannot go about continually asleep in life. Yet the tendency to establish social impulses consists in, and expresses itself by, an inclination to sleep. That of which I speak goes on subconsciously of course, but it nevertheless actually penetrates our life continuously. Thus there exists a permanent disposition to fall asleep precisely for the building up of the social structure of humanity.

On the other hand, something else is also working. A perpetual struggle and opposition to falling asleep in social relationships is also present. If you meet a person you are continuously standing in a conflict situation in the following way: Because you meet him, the tendency to sleep always develops in you so that you may experience your relationship to him in sleep. But, at the same time, there is aroused in you the counter-force to keep yourself awake. This always happens in the meeting between people—a tendency to fall asleep, a tendency to keep awake. In this situation a tendency to keep awake has an anti-social character, the assertion of one's individuality, of one's personality, in opposition to the social structure of society. Simply because we are human beings, our soul-life swings to and fro between the social and the antisocial. And that which lives in us as these two forces, which may be observed between people communicating, can from an occult perspective be seen to govern our life. When we meet social arrangements and structures in society, even if these arrangements seem far-fetched from the seemingly wise consciousness of the present, they are still a manifestation of this pendulum between social and anti-social forces. The national economist may reflect upon what credit, capital and interest are. Yet even these things which make for regularity in social transactions are only outward swings of the pendulum between social and anti-social forces. The person who seeks to find healing remedies for these times must intelligently and scientifically connect with these facts. For how is it that social demands arise in our time? Well, we live in the age of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul in which man must become independent. But on what does this depend? It depends on people's ability during our Fifth Post-Atlantean Period to become self-assertive, to not allow themselves to be put to sleep. It is the anti-social forces which require development in this time, for consciousness to be present. It would not be possible for mankind in the present to accomplish its task if just these anti-social forces did not become ever more powerful; they are indeed the pillars on which personal independence rests. At present, humanity has no idea how much more powerful anti-social impulses must become, right on until the 30th century. For men to progress properly, anti-social forces must develop

In earlier periods the development of the anti-social forces was not the spiritual bread of humanity's evolution. There was therefore no need to establish a counter-force. Indeed none was set. In our day, when a person on his own account, for his individual self, must evolve antisocial forces, which are evolving because man is now subjected to this evolution against which nothing will prevail, there must also come about that with which man resists them: a social structure which will balance this anti-social evolutionary tendency. The anti-social forces must work inwardly so that human beings may reach the height of their development. Outwardly, in social life, structures must work so that people do not totally lose their outer connections in life. Hence the social demands of the present. They can in a certain sense be seen as the demand for a justified outer balance to the inward, essentially anti-social evolutionary tendency of humanity in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch.

From this you can see that nothing is accomplished by seeing things in a one-sided way. As men live nowadays, certain words (I will not say ideas or feelings), certain words have certain values. The word “anti-social” arouses a degree of antipathy. It is considered as something evil. Very well; we perhaps need not trouble ourselves whether it is considered good or bad, since it is quite necessary. Be it good or bad, it is connected with the necessary tendencies of evolution in our time. It is simply sheer nonsense to say that the anti-social impulses must be resisted, for they cannot be resisted. One must grasp the essential inner development of mankind in our time, understand the evolutionary tendency. It is not a matter of finding prescriptions for resisting the anti-social forces; but of so shaping, of so arranging the social order, the structure, the organization of that which lies outside of the individual, that a counter-balance is present to that which works as anti-social force within human beings. Therefore it is vital for our time that the individual achieves independence, but that social forms provide a balance to this independence. Otherwise neither the individual nor society can develop properly.

In earlier periods there were tribes and classes. Our age strives against this. Our age is no longer able to divide people into classes but must consider them in their totality and create social structures which take this totality into account. I said yesterday in my public lecture that slavery could exist in the Greco-Latin Period; one was the master, the other the slave. Then men were divided. Today we have as a remnant just that which disturbs the working-man so much, namely that his power to work is sold; in this way something belonging to him is organized from outside. This must go; it is only possible to organize socially what does not integrally belong to the human being, such as his position or the function to which he is appointed, in short, something which is not an inner part of the individual. All this which we acknowledge with regard to the necessary development of social democracy is really so, and must be so understood.

Just as no man can claim to do arithmetic if he has never learned his multiplication tables, so too he cannot claim to discuss social reforms and the like when he has never learned those things which we have just explained: namely, that socialism and anti-socialism exist quite concretely in the way described. People in some of the most important positions in society, when they begin talking about present social demands, often appear to those who know, as individuals who wish to begin building a bridge over a rushing stream without having the most elementary knowledge of mechanics. They may well be able to put up a bridge, but it will collapse at the first opportunity. It seems with social leaders or with those who look after social institutions, that their plans will be shown to be impossible; for the things of reality demand that we work with them, and not against them. It is therefore tremendously important that those things which form the backbone of our anthroposophical thought and consciousness should one day be taken seriously.

One of the impulses which ensoul us in the sphere of our anthroposophical movement is that we, in a sense, carry into the whole of man's life that which most people apply only to youth. We sit on the “school-bench” of life long after we have become grey. This is one of the differences between us and others, who believe that at the age of 25, or sometimes 26, when they have finished lazying about with their education, that they are ready for the rest of life—at most there may still be some amusing additions to one's education.

But when we approach the very nerve of Spiritual Science, we feel that the human being really must continue to learn throughout his whole life if he wishes to tackle the tasks of life. It is vital that we should be permeated with this feeling. If we do not get rid of the belief that people can master everything with the faculties they have developed up to their 20th or 25th year, that then one only has to meet in Parliament or some other forum to decide all affairs—as long as we do not get rid of this view, we shall never be able to establish healthy conditions in the social structure of mankind.

The study of the reciprocal relation between the social and the anti-social is extremely significant for our time. Just this anti-social tendency is of the utmost importance to understand because it must make itself felt and must be developed in us. This anti-social spirit can only be held in balance by the social. But the social must be nursed, must be consciously cared for. And in our day this becomes truly more and more difficult because the anti-social forces are really in accord with our natural development.

The social element is essential; it must be cherished. We shall see that in this Fifth Post-Atlantean Period there is a tendency to take no notice of the social in merely acting naturally. Rather it must be acquired consciously in working with one's soul forces, while formerly it was felt instinctively in man. What is necessary and must be actively acquired is the interest of man in man. This is indeed the backbone of all social life.

It almost sounds paradoxical to say today that no clear conception of the so-called difficult ideas of economics can be gained if the interest of one for another does not increase, if people do not begin to compare the illusions which have sway in social life with present realities. One who really thinks about it recognizes the fact that simply by being a member of society one is in a complicated relation to others. Imagine that you have a $5 note in your pocket, and you make use of this $5 note by going shopping one morning, and you spend the full $5. What does it mean that you go out with a $5 note in your pocket? The $5 note is really an illusion—it is worth nothing in reality (even if it is metal money. At this point I do not want to discuss the theories of the Metalists and the Nominalists with regard to money; but even if it is metal money, it is still an illusion and of no real worth). Money is namely only a ‘go-between’. And only because in our day a certain social order exists, an order belonging purely to the State, therefore this $5 note which you have spent in the morning for different items is nothing else than an equivalent for so many days of labour of so many men. A number of men must have completed so many days of work, so much human labour must have flowed into the social order—must have crystallized itself into merchandise—in order for the apparent worth of the bank note to have any real value, but only at the command of the social order. The bank note only gives you the power to call into your service so much labour, or to put it another way, to command its worth in work. You can picture it in your mind: There I have a bank note, which assigns to me, according to my social position, the power over so many men. If you now see these workmen selling their labour hour by hour, as the equivalent value of that which you have in your purse as the $5 note, then you begin to get a picture of the real facts.

Our relationships have become so complicated that we no longer pay attention to these things, especially if they do not concern us closely. I have an example which easily clarifies this. In the more difficult considerations of economics, in the areas of capital and interest and credit, things are quite complicated; so that even university professors and political economists, whose position should mean possession of adequate insight, really have no knowledge. Thus you can see that it is necessary to look at things correctly in these areas. Of course we cannot immediately take in hand the reform of the national economy, which has been forced into such a helpless condition by what is nowadays taught as political economy. But we can at least ask with respect to national education and other such matters: What must be done so that social life and forms are consciously established in opposition to anti-social forces? What is really required? I said that it would be difficult in our time for people to develop sufficient interest in each other. You do not have sufficient interest if you think that you can buy yourself something with a $5 note and do not remember the fact that this brings about a social relationship with certain other human beings and their labour-power. You only have an adequate interest when in your picture you are able to substitute for each apparent transaction (such as the exchange of goods for a $5 note) the real transaction which is linked with it.

Now, I would say that the mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving our fellow-men and acting upon this love at the first opportunity, that this does not constitute social life. This sort of love is, for the most part, terribly egoistic. Many a man is supported by what he has first gained through robbing his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal fashion, in order to create for himself an object for his self-love, so that he can then feel nice and warm with the thought, “You are doing this, you are doing that” One does not easily discover that a large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love. Therefore, the main consideration is not merely to think of what lies nearest to hand, thereby enhancing our self-love, but to feel it our duty to look carefully at the many-sided social structures in which we are placed. We must at first lay the foundations for such understanding. Yet few today are disposed to do so.

I would like to discuss one question from the viewpoint of general education, namely: How can we consciously establish social impulses to balance those anti-social forces which are developing naturally within us? How can we cultivate the social element, this interest of man in man, so that it springs up in us—going ever further and deeper, and leaving us no rest? How can we enkindle this interest which has disappeared so pitiably in our age, the age of the Spiritual Soul? In our age true chasms have already been created between people. Men have no idea about the manner in which they pass one another by without in the least comprehending each other. The desire to understand the other in all his or her uniqueness is very weak today. On the one hand, we have the cry for social union; and on the other, the ever-increasing spread of purely anti-social principles. The blindness of people toward each other can be seen in the many clubs and societies which people form. They do not provide any opportunity for people to get to know one another. It is possible for men to meet one another for years and not to know each other better at the end than they did at the beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought to meet the antisocial in a systematic way. For this there are various inner soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has done.

We shall see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to forget ourselves, that in reality we find that almost everything which forms part of us could not be there at all unless this or that person had affected our lives, helping us on or teaching us something. When we look back on the years in the more distant past to people with whom we are no longer in contact and about whom it is easier to be objective, then we shall see how the soul-substance of our life has been created by the people and circumstances of the past. Our gaze then extends over a multitude of people whom we have known in the course of time. If we try to develop a sense of the debt we owe to this or that person—if we try to see ourselves in the mirror of those who have influenced us in the course of time, and who have been associated with us—then we shall be able to experience the opening-up of a new sense in our souls, a sense which enables us to gain a picture of the people whom we meet even in the present, with whom we stand face to face today. This is because we have practiced developing an objective picture of our indebtedness to people in the past. It is tremendously important that the impulse should awaken in us, not merely to feel sympathy or antipathy towards the people we meet, not merely to hate or love something connected with the person, but to awaken a true picture of the other in us, free from love or hate.

Perhaps you will not feel that what I am saying now is extremely important—but it is. For this ability to picture the other in oneself without love or hate, to allow the other individual to appear again within our soul, this is a faculty which is decreasing week by week in the evolution of humanity. It is something which men are, by degrees, completely losing. They pass one another by without arousing any interest in each other. Yet this ability to develop an imaginative faculty for the other is something that must enter into pedagogy and the education of children. For we can really develop this imaginative faculty in us if, instead of striving after the immediate sensations of life as is often done today, we are not afraid to look back quietly in our soul and see our relationships to other human beings. Then we shall be in a position to relate ourselves imaginatively to those whom we meet in the present. In this way we awaken the social instinct in us against the anti-social which quite unconsciously and of necessity continues to develop. This is one side of the picture.

The other is something that can be linked up with this review of our relations to others. It is when we try to become more and more objective about ourselves. Here we must also go back to our earlier years. Then we can directly, so to speak, go to the facts themselves. Suppose you are 30 or 40 years of age. You think, “How was it with me when I was ten years old? I will imagine myself entirely into the situation of that time. I will picture myself as another boy or girl of ten years old. I will try to forget that I was that; I will really take pains to objectify myself.” This objectifying of oneself, this freeing of oneself in the present from one's own past, this shelling-out of the Ego from its experiences, must be specially striven for in our present time. For the present has the tendency towards linking up the Ego more and more with its experiences.

Nowadays man wants to be instinctively that which his experiences make him. For this reason it is so very difficult to acquire the activity which Spiritual Science gives. The spirit must make a fresh effort each time. According to true occult science, nothing can be done by comfortably remaining in one's position. One forgets things and must always be cultivating them afresh. This is just as it should be because fresh efforts need to continually be made. He who has already made some progress in the realm of Spiritual Science attempts the most elementary things every day; others are ashamed to pay attention to the basics. For Spiritual Science, nothing should depend on remembering, but on man's immediate experience in the present. It is therefore a question of training ourselves in this faculty—through making ourselves objective—that we picture this boy or girl as if he or she were a stranger at an earlier time in our lives; of bestirring ourselves more and more, of getting free of events, and of being less haunted at 30 by the impulses of a 10 year old. Detachment from the past does not mean denial of the past. We gain it in another way again, and that is what is so important. On the one hand, we cultivate the social instinct and impulses in us by looking back upon those who have been connected with us in the past and regarding our souls as the products of these persons. In this way we acquire the imagination for meeting people in the present. On the other hand, through objectifying ourselves we gain possibilities of developing imagination directly. This objectifying of our earlier years is fruitful insofar as it does not work in us unconsciously. Think for a moment: If the 10 year old child works on unconsciously in you, then you are the 30 or 40 year old augmented by the 10 year old. It is just the same with the 11, the 12 year old child and so on. Egoism has tremendous power, but its power is lessened when you separate the earlier years from yourself and when you make them objective. This is the important point on which we must fix our attention.

The following pre-condition for social activity must be made clear to those people who raise social claims in unreasonable and illusory fashion: Understanding about how man can develop himself as a socially creative being must first be present in this period, when anti-social forces are growing ever stronger as part of human evolution.

What will then have been achieved? You will discover the whole meaning of what I have now explained if you consider the following: In 1848 there appeared a social document which continues to work into the present day in radical socialism, and in Bolshevism. It was the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx, which contains ideas which rule the thoughts and feelings of many working men. Karl Marx was able to dominate the labour world for the simple reason that he wrote and said what the working man thinks and understands, as a working man. This Communist Manifesto the contents of which I do not need to explain to you, appeared in 1848. It was the first document, the first seed in what has now borne fruit, after the recent destruction of opposing movements. This document contains one slogan, one sentence which you will often find quoted today by most socialist writers: “Workers of the world, unite!” It is a sentence which has run through many socialist groups. What does it express? It expresses the most unnatural thing that could possibly be thought today. It expresses an impulse for socializing, for uniting a certain mass of people. On what is this uniting, this union, to be built? Upon its opposite, upon the hatred of all those who are not members of the working class. This associating, this banding together of people is to be brought about through splitting up and separating mankind into classes. You must ponder this, you must think about the reality of this principle which is a genuine illusion, if I can use this expression, and which has been adopted in Russia, now in Germany and the Austrian countries, and which will eat its way further and further into the world. It is so unnatural precisely because, on the one hand, it shows the necessity of socializing, but on the other it builds this socialization out of the anti-social instinct of class hatred, and class opposition.

However, these things need to be considered from a higher perspective, otherwise we shall not get very far; above all, we shall not be able to participate in the healthy development of mankind in the present. Nowadays Spiritual Science is the only means of seeing things truly in their totality; it is the only means for understanding our time. Just as one is adverse to entering into the spirit and soul foundations of man's physical constitution, so one also avoids, out of fear and lack of courage, studying those things in social life which can only be understood out of the Spirit. People are afraid, cover their eyes and put their heads in the sand like ostriches when they are confronted by real and important things. Of what does human interchange in fact consist? As we have seen, it consists of one person trying to put the other to sleep, while the other tries to resist and stay awake. This is the archetypal phenomenon of social science in Goethe's sense. This archetypal phenomenon points to something which mere material thinking cannot grasp; it points to that which can only be understood when one knows that in human life one is not only asleep during sleep—when we slumber along for hours, oblivious to the world—but the same applies to daily waking life, where the same forces which lead to sleep and wakefulness also play into the social and anti-social forces of man. All thinking about social forms can bear no fruit if we do not make the effort to take these things into account.

With this in mind, we must not be blind to the events taking place in the world, but must carefully watch what is coming to pass. What, for example, does the socialist of today think? He thinks that he can invent socialist slogans and call to men from all countries—“Workers of the world, unite!” and by so doing, establish a sort of international Paradise.

This indeed is one of the greatest and most fatal illusions. People are not abstract, but concrete. Fundamentally, the human being is individual. I have tried to make this clear in my Philosophy of Freedom, in contrast to the relativism of Neo-Kantianism and socialism. Men are also different according to their groupings over the world. We will discuss one of these differences so that we may see that it is not possible to simply say:—“You begin in the West, and carry out a certain social system, then you go to the East and then home again, as if taking a world tour.” But the attitude of taking a world journey lives in those who wish to spread socialism over the whole earth. They look upon the earth as a globe on which they, by starting in the West, can eventually arrive in the East. But people on the earth are different—and exactly in this difference dwells an impulse which is the motive force of progress.

You can see how, in this way, provision is made for the Consciousness Soul through birth and heredity. This actually comes to expression in the English-speaking people of today. They are organized for the Consciousness Soul through their blood, their birthright, and their inherited faculties. Because the English-speaking peoples have been especially prepared for the cultivation of the Consciousness Soul they are, in a way, representatives of the fifth Post-Atlantean period. People are thus differentiated according to where they live and how they are constituted.

The Eastern peoples must effect and represent the true development of humanity in another way. Beginning with the Russian people, and passing on to the people of the Asiatic countries—one finds an opposition, a revolt against the instinctive elements natural to the evolution of the Consciousness Soul. The people of the East wish to save the soul treasure of intellectuality of the present age for the future. They do not want it to be mixed with experience, but wish to liberate and preserve it for the next period. During this period, a true union can take place between the human being and the evolved Spirit Self. Thus, if the characteristic force of our present period is in the West, and can indeed be best cultivated as a quality among the English-speaking peoples, the people of the east, out of their national inheritance, seek to prevent the coming-to-pass in their souls of that which is most characteristic of the present period—so that it may develop in them as a germ for the following period, which begins with the 30th century. From this we can see the fact that certain laws prevail in human life, and in human evolution. In the realm of nature people are not surprised that they cannot burn ice, that a regular law underlies this phenomenon. But with the social structures of humanity, people fancy that the same social form, based on the same social principles, can, for example, be made to work in Russia, as in England, Scotland, or America. This is impossible, for the whole world is organized by underlying principles so that one cannot simply create identical forms at will all over the globe. This is a point which we must not forget.

In the Central European countries there is a middle condition of affairs. There, it is as if one were in a balanced condition, between the extremes of the East and the West. Looked at in this way, we see the Earth population divided into three parts. You cannot say: “Workers of the world, unite!” For the workers are of three sorts, are three varieties of people. Let us look at the people of the West again. We find a special disposition, a special mission for all who speak English by nature (single cases may be different)—a disposition for the cultivation of the Consciousness Soul. This disposition expresses itself in not detaching from the soul its characteristic quality of intelligence, but connecting this intelligence naturally, instinctively, with events in the world. To naturally, even instinctively, place oneself in the life of the world as a consciousness soul individual is the task of the English-speaking people. The expanse and greatness of the British Empire rests on this quality. Indeed herein lies the original phenomenon behind the expansion of the British Empire—that which is hidden in the impulses of its people exactly coincided with the inner impulses of the age. In my lectures on the European folk souls, you will find what is essential in this matter. Much is contained in this series of lectures which were given long before the war, but which provide material for judging this war-catastrophe objectively.¹

Now, the very capacities connected with the evolution of the Consciousness Soul give the English-speaking peoples a special genius for political life. One can study how the political art of dividing society and creating social structure has spread from England to those countries where things have remained backward, where the remnants of the fourth Post-Atlantean period have remained. This influence has spread even to the division of Hungarian society, to this Turanian member of the European peoples. It is only from the English heritage that a foundation for the political thinking of the fifth Post-Atlantean period can come. The English are specially suited to the realm of politics. It is of no use to pronounce a judgment on these things, the necessities of the case alone do so. One may feel sympathy or the opposite—that is a private affair. Objective necessity determines the affairs of the world. It is important that these objective necessities shall be clearly placed before us at this time.

Goethe, in his Legend of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, has treated the forces of the human soul as three members, or forces; Power, Appearance, and Knowledge or Wisdom—or, as the Bronze King, the Silver King and the Golden King. Many remarkable things are spoken of in this legend, regarding the governing relationships which are being prepared for the present and which will live into the future. We can point out that what Goethe symbolizes by the Bronze king, the force of Power, is that which spreads over the world through the English-speaking peoples. This is necessary because the culture of the Consciousness Soul coincides with the special qualities of the British and American peoples.

In the Central European countries, which are now in such a state of chaos, there is an unmistakable equilibrium between the Leaning of the intellect toward the Consciousness Soul, and the desire to be free from it; there, sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other. None of the Central European nations is really suited for political life. When they desire to be political, they are disposed to lose contact with reality. Whereas the political thinking of the Anglo-American nations is firmly anchored in the soul, in the Central European countries, it is not, for the second soul force dominates—Semblance and Appearance. However, the people of the Central European countries manifest an intellectuality of special brilliance. Compare anything that the English-speaking people have to say about the nature of thinking—and you will find the thoughts strongly linked to solid earth-realities. But if you take the brilliant feats of the German mind—you will find that they are more an aesthetic shaping of thoughts, even if the aesthetic shaping has a logical form. It is especially noticeable how one thought leads to another so that thoughts of value appear in dialectical form, shaped by an aesthetic will. If one wishes to apply this to solid earth-realities—if one wishes by this means to become a politician—then one easily becomes untrue; one easily falls into a so-called dreamy idealism which seeks to establish united kingdoms, with decade-long calls for unity—but in the end sets up a mighty State by force. Never before has there been such a contrast in political life as the one between the dream of unity in 1848 and that which was really established in 1871.² There you see the swing of the pendulum, the shift from that which really strives for aesthetic form, which can become untrue, an illusion, a dreamy picture when one wishes to apply it to politics. Here, there is simply no disposition for politics. When the Central European people become politicians they either dream or they lie. I should add that these things must not be discussed with sympathy or antipathy in order to accuse or to acquit. Rather, they must be said, because on the one hand they correspond with a need, and on the other with a tragedy. These are things that we must heed.

And if we then look to the East, things are quite different again. We have seen that the German, if he wants to be political, falls into a dreamy idealism or, at its worst, into untruth. The Russian on the other hand becomes ill or actually suffers a death if he desires to be political. This may seem strange, yet a Russian person has a constitution which creates a disposition towards disease, towards death, with intensive political involvement. The Russian Folk Soul has absolutely no affinity with that quality in the English and American Folk Soul which creates a political capacity. But because of this, the East has the task of carrying the intellect separated from its natural connection with the world of sense experience into the future age of the Spirit-Self.

One must therefore know how different abilities are spread among the people of the earth. This becomes visible in many areas. You have, for example, heard about the super-sensible experience called “The Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold”. There are marked differences in this meeting with the Guardian. Where this meeting, this initiation, is effected entirely independent of nationality, then it is objective and complete. But when this initiation occurs through special groups or societies connected with a particular people or nation, then it is one-sided. The English-speaking peoples are those who, when not guided by higher spiritual leaders but by their own Folk Soul, are especially suited for bringing to the Threshold those spiritual beings who surround and accompany us in this world of Ahrimanic spirits, and whom we take with us when we approach the super-sensible world, if they have developed a certain liking for us. They then lead us primarily to an experience of the power of sickness and death. You will therefore hear it said by the greater number of Anglo-Americans initiated into the super-sensible Mysteries, that the first more important event in their cognition of the super-sensible world is the encounter with those powers expressing sickness and death. They learn to know this as an external, outward experience.

If you turn to the Central European people what will you find, when those who are being initiated are not taken out of their nation and raised to universal humanity, but when the Folk Spirit co-operates with them? Then the first important experience which comes to our notice is a conflict between those spiritual beings who belong to higher worlds, to the other side of the Threshold, and certain other beings who are here in the physical world, on this side of the Threshold but who are invisible to ordinary consciousness. The Central Europeans will first become aware of this conflict. The experience of this conflict makes itself felt to the genuine seeker after truth in the Central European countries as a being penetrated with the powers of doubt. One becomes acquainted with all the powers of “many-sidedness”. In Western countries, there is a stronger inclination to be satisfied with exact truth; whereas in the Central European countries there is a tendency to immediately see the other side of the question. There, in the searching for truth, one trembles in the balance. Everything has two sides. One is regarded as a Philistine in Central Europe if one ventures a one-sided opinion. But this causes tragic suffering when nearing the Threshold. We must pay attention to this struggle which takes place at the Threshold, between spirits which belong only to the spirit world, and those belonging to the world of sense—this struggle which conditions all that calls forth doubt in man, this vacillation with regard to the truth. It is this experience of doubt which creates the European need to be trained in the truth—in philosophy—so as not to fall prey so easily to the generally recognized impulses of truth in society.

When you turn to the Eastern countries—and the Folk Soul acts as sponsor at the initiation—then one primarily experiences the spirits that work upon human egotism. One sees all that gives rise to human selfishness. The Westerner who approaches the Threshold does not see this. Instead, he sees the spirits that permeate the world and humanity with sickness and death in the broadest sense, as injurious, destructive and degrading for humanity. The Neophyte of the East, however, sees all that comes forward to tempt man as selfishness. Therefore, the ideal which proceeds from Western initiation is making men healthy and keeping them healthy, and giving mankind the possibility of healthy development. In the East, on the other hand, there springs up, as instinctive knowledge in connection to a religious orientation toward initiation, a feeling of one's own insignificance when faced with the sublime powers of the spiritual world. The man of the East, when meeting the spiritual world, is shown how selfishness may be cured, and egotism destroyed because of its dangers. This is even expressed in the external character of people from the East. Much of the Eastern character which is inexplicable to people from the West arises precisely from what is expressed at the Threshold of the spiritual world.

So we can see the differences in human qualities when we look at the inner development, the inner shaping of the psycho-spiritual development of humanity. It is important to keep this clearly in mind. In certain occult circles of the English-speaking people who were under the guardianship of the Folk Spirits, prophetic sayings could be found during the second half of the 19th century which referred to the things we have been discussing, things which are happening today. Think of what could have happened if the people of Europe, with the exception of those speaking English, had not stopped up their ears and blindfolded their eyes, so that their attention was directed from the truth of these things. I will tell you of a formula which was frequently repeated during the second half of the 19th century. The following was said:—“The State must be abolished in Russia, so that the Russian people may develop, for in Russia social experiments must be carried out, which could never be done in Western countries”. This might seem unsympathetic to non-English ears, but it contains a high degree of wisdom and insight. And he who can connect himself with these things so that he can believe in their efficacy as impulses in whose realization he can take part, this person is truly of the present age.³ Those who do not see the reality of these forces set themselves against the time.

These matters must be clearly understood. It was, of course, the inevitable lot of Central and Eastern Europe to block their ears and blindfold their eyes to occult facts; to give no heed to them, to work on lines of mysticism, abstract teaching, and abstract intellectualism. But we are now in a time when this must cease. Pessimism and despair must not be created by such contemplations as these. Rather force, courage, and the will to help is needed. In this sense we should always remember that we do not work against, but rather with the issues of our time—out of the spiritual scientific impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement. Let us see to it that we do not sleep away our opportunities. Spiritual Science can lead us to the conscious cultivation of social faculties. It can, for example, show us the forces at work in the human being when he is free from the body, what he is experiencing between going to sleep and awaking. But more importantly it can give us a direction in conscious waking life for developing social capacities. We of course cultivate the powers most necessary for our age when we are consciously thinking about those things which can only forcefully penetrate into our soul during waking hours. We could not develop, we would be powerless, if we only had to evolve during sleep. It is for our waking life that the following is therefore important.

Two powers are working in the present. One is the power which since the Mystery of Golgotha has worked in different metamorphoses through the ensuing periods of earth evolution as the Christ Impulse. We have often said that just in our age a reappearance of the Etheric Christ will take place. This reappearance of the Christ is indeed not far off. That He is coming again is no cause for pessimism, nor should it give rise to a nebulous longing and a desire for soul-warming, self-seeking, theosophical theories. The Christ Impulse has various forms, but in His present form He wishes to help humanity realize that spiritual wisdom now being revealed by the spiritual world. This wisdom wants to be realized and the Christ Impulse will be a help in this realization. It is on this realization that all depends. At this critical moment humanity is faced with a momentous decision. On the one side stands the Christ Being, calling us of our own free will to do what we have been speaking about today, to consciously and freely receive the social impulses which can heal and help humanity. Freely, to receive them. Therefore, we do not unite ourselves on those levels where hatred forms a foundation for love as in the cry, “Workers of the world, unite!” But we unite by striving to realize the Christ Impulse, by doing those things which are the will of Christ for this age.

Opposed to this will stands the adversary who is called in the Bible “the unrighteous Prince of this World”. He makes his presence known in various ways. One of these ways is to take those forces which allow us as free beings to serve that which we have been talking about today, to take this force of free will and to place it at the service of the physical. This adversary, the Prince of this world, has various instruments; for example, hunger and social chaos. By this means, through external compulsion, and physical measures, the force of free will is subverted to the service of apparent necessity. See how humanity today shows that it will not of its own free will turn to a truly social life, and to a recognition of true progress for mankind. It wishes to be compelled. And yet, this compulsion has not even led people to make the basic distinction between the Spirit of the super-sensible world, the Christ Spirit and the adversary, the unrighteous Prince of this world. Look at this situation and see if this does not explain why in so many places today men oppose and struggle against the acceptance of any true spiritual teaching, against true spiritual deeds, and against Spiritual Science. They are possessed by the unrighteous Prince of this world.

Now think for a moment; think how you of your own free will turn to spiritual life; think humbly of yourselves, but also earnestly and strongly as the missionaries of the Christ-Spirit today, who have to combat the unrighteous Prince of this world, who lays hold of all those who unconsciously allow themselves to use forces out of the future to realize their own aims. If you think of yourselves in this light there is no room for pessimism—indeed it leaves you no time for a pessimistic view of the world. It will of course not shut your eyes and ears to that which has happened, sometimes in a terrible manner—and which is tragic to behold in its true form. But you will preeminently keep the following before your souls—“I am, in any case, called to look at everything without illusion; I must be neither pessimistic nor optimistic, so that forces may awaken in my soul which give me the power to aid the free development of the human being, to contribute to human progress in the place and situation where I am”. Even if the faults and tragedies of the age are very visible to Spiritual Science this should not be an incitement to pessimism or optimism, but rather a call to an inner awakening so that independent work and the cultivation of right thinking will result. For above all things, adequate insight is necessary. If only a sufficient number of people today were motivated to say, “We absolutely must have a better understanding of things”; then everything else would follow. It is just in regard to social questions that there is a need to consciously strive for insight and understanding. The development of the will activity is planned for, it is coming. If we in daily life would only wish to educate ourselves about social issues, and develop new social ideas, then (according to an occult law), each of us would be able to take another human being along. Each one of us can therefore work for two if we have the will. We could achieve much if we had an earnest desire to acquire insight at once. The rest would follow. It is not so bad that not many people can do much about the situation of society today, but it is incredibly sad if people cannot at least make up their minds to become acquainted with the social laws of Spiritual Science. The rest would follow if serious study would take place.

This is what I have desired to communicate to you today regarding the importance of knowing and recognizing certain things about the social situation of the present, and how such a recognition can lead to a life impulse for the future. I hope we will again have the opportunity of speaking together about the more intimate aspects of Spiritual Science.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner The Mission of Folk-Souls. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1970.
• 2. The reference is to the distinction between the dreams of the German revolution of 1848 and the creation of the German Empire of 1871 by the Prussian State.
• 3. Here and in other references to Russia in this lecture, Rudolf Steiner appears to be referring to the political attitudes and behaviour of Germany and Austria toward Russia during the time of the Russian revolution when the actions of the central powers certainly strengthened the hands of the Bolsheviks against more moderate social democratic forces.

If you board the tram here at Aeschenplatz in Basel and travel to Dornach, then take the small path through Dornach, you will come to a hill on which stands the Goetheanum, which is to become a School of Spiritual Science. Although it has been encouraging to note that an extraordinarily large number of visitors have been coming to see this building day after day, it must be said that, whenever the outside world world, for instance in newspaper articles, answers are given to the question of what is actually to be done inside this building once it is finished, these answers generally present the opposite of the truth, with a few exceptions of course. All sorts of things are said about what is to be done there in the past or present in this Dornach building. In any case, the answers given to the questioners are very far removed from what those involved in the spiritual current on which the Dornach building is based actually set as their goal. For this goal emerges from a careful consideration and observation of what I would call the cultural conditions for humanity in the present and future. And out of all the various presuppositions, which I shall venture to speak about this evening, this spiritual movement, which is to find expression in the Dornach building, is based on the conviction that the longings of wide circles of people today contain the realization that a complete recovery, a healthy further development of our human culture must come from the soul of the human being, from that which the human being can grasp in his soul as his connection with the spiritual world. It is based on the conviction that, in the face of the demands and difficulties that arise in our social life, we must try to find the impulses that correspond to the longings of a large number of people – and this number is growing ever larger and larger – from the spirit and soul.

Now, one can see – I would just like to mention in passing that now on Sundays and other days quite a few people come from Basel and the surrounding area to see what we call our eurythmy performances in the provisional hall of our carpentry workshop, where we have to hold these events for the time being until we can open the Goetheanum itself. , and it is reasonable to believe that a large number of those who have already made the pilgrimage to Dornach for these eurythmy performances have come to the conclusion that, in this particular area, too, an attempt is being made to spiritualize something, to raise something into the sphere of the spirit, which, under the influence of materialism of the last centuries, is still practised today by our culture in a more or less materialistic, physiological and similar way.

In this eurythmy, there is an art of movement of the human organism itself, which is taken from the organizational structures of the whole human being, the whole human being, who encompasses body, soul and spirit. And quite apart from the fact that this eurythmy aspires to a special new art form that cannot really be compared with what are often perceived as neighboring arts, it can also be said that these efforts to the spirit is based on what I would call the inspiration of the human organism's possibilities of movement, which, for example, in gymnastics, are understood only in an external physiological way, in a purely material way. The human being is meant to carry out movements, and that is why this eurythmy will also have a spiritual-educational value at some point. In addition to artistic movements, the human being should carry out movements that are not merely taken from anatomy and physiology, as in gymnastics, but that are taken from what can live in the moving human being: spirit and soul.

Now, it is difficult not to be misunderstood when you go out into the world with a thorough spiritual or soul current today. One would like to say that misunderstandings are coming from all sides. And so it may happen that in some places some misunderstandings regarding spiritual science itself have already been cleared away, to the extent that this spiritual science is even allowed to speak on social issues. But we have committed what we believe to be the right thing to do, but what others have thought of as ineptitude: in some places where I have had to speak about spiritual science and social issues, I have also given eurythmy performances at the same time. And lo and behold, the judgment was immediately made: how can a spiritual endeavor be of any value that also includes dance performances?

Well, I could easily add to the list of misunderstandings that come from all quarters, because the world still judges in many ways today as if everything that is to be done in the Dornach building is something obscure, something dark and mystical. So often today, when spiritual endeavors are mentioned, one hears that all sorts of mystical things are being done here or there, even in many places. The fact that the movement that is to be linked to the Dornach building has nothing to do with such obscure mystical movements could be taught to those who seek to see clearly and truthfully in such matters by the fact that one who stands before you and speaks to you about his cause, the cause of this building at Dornach, this Goetheanum, can point to a book written as early as 1894, The Philosophy of Freedom. And if anyone reads this 'Philosophy of Freedom', I think they will not get the impression that this 'Philosophy of Freedom' is intended to bring anything of obscure mysticism, enthusiasm or the like into the world. And I may say that, after all, everything that is to form the main content, the main impulse of this spiritual scientific movement, of which I am speaking, is permeated by that longing of present-day humanity, which expresses itself in the urge for such a way of life within which the individual human being can, on the one hand, fulfill his social duties, but on the other hand, can still be a free being as an individual human being.

I would like to begin by pointing out a phenomenon that is connected to something that is very familiar to you. And although I take as my starting point in today's reflections a politician, you should not think that I am going to devote myself even remotely to the political culture of the present day. I would like to speak about the cultural conditions of the present and the future in a much broader sense; but I would like to mention a characteristic that can show us how the call for freedom is, so to speak, emerging from the cultural aspirations and ideals of the present, only emerging in such a way that it is truly not taken deeply enough. And to take it deeply enough, to deepen what humanity's longing for freedom is, that is intimately connected with the view that spiritual science has of the cultural conditions of the present and future.

Those who have heard my lectures this year and in previous years, this visitors who remember how I spoke at that time, when Woodrow Wilson was, one might say, seen as a man honored throughout the world, to whom people looked up and to whom they attached great hopes for the future, these honored visitors will not hold it against me if I, who in the days when this man had many supporters freely expressed my opposition from a certain point of view, if I today take as my starting point the special conception of freedom, the special call for freedom, that resounds from the political world view of Woodrow Wilson. One must believe that the strong, otherwise, in my opinion, quite incomprehensible impression that Woodrow Wilson has made on the world so far, where the matter stops, is based precisely on the fact that all the program points, everything that has come from this man into the world, is ultimately based in a certain way on the impulse of human freedom. Let us see what this man did before he became President of the United States, let us see what made him great as President of the United States. We will find that it is his conception of a possible social organization of human coexistence in which man can have his freedom in a democratic way. Woodrow Wilson saw how, in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century, large accumulations of capital had come to be concentrated in the hands of a few people in the course of the life of America. He saw how trusts and the like had been formed. And he saw how a few wealthy people had gained control over other people as a result. This is where he began his reflection and his work. He first of all asserted the impulse of freedom. He demanded a complete democratization of human political life in the face of the accumulation of economic and political power in the hands of a few. He wanted every single person to have the opportunity to make use of their abilities in human coexistence. He did not want those who had established themselves in any branch of industry or trade to be able to have monopolies that the legitimate abilities of the weak could not compete against. He wanted us to look for the causes of what happens in social life in every single human situation, even the simplest. And he often expressed this. And it is characteristic of him that he has based his political aspirations on precisely this goal of freedom.

We need only consider his extraordinarily significant writing “The New Freedom”. One might say that on every page one finds the truth of what I have just said. I will quote just one of his most remarkable sayings. He said: There is only one way to create a free life, and that is to ensure that under every garment beats a free and hopeful heart. I truly believe that what had such a strong effect was this call for freedom.

Now, this call for freedom always resonated in the practical political and social effectiveness. The writing “The New Freedom” is actually just a collection of election speeches. There is no talk of a freedom that is only philosophically speculated, there is no talk of any abstract mere freedom of consciousness, there is talk of a freedom that is to be realized and realized in life .

Now, I also tried to grasp such a freedom, which should be realized and actualized in life, through my book “The Philosophy of Freedom,” which I wrote at the beginning of the 1990s. But now, after much hesitation, I have published a new edition of this book, and I can now openly express the belief that freedom can only be truly and practically lived out if we seek it not only in the outer social and political life, but if we seek it in the depths of the human soul itself. And it is in the depths of the human soul itself that freedom should be sought through my “Philosophy of Freedom.” If one stops at the surface of mere social and political life or of external social life, one will very soon see that the realization of freedom is not at all possible if one grasps it only in that sense. For freedom is something that must arise from the individual human being, something that cannot exist if individuals are not able to realize it, if individuals do not first pour it into the social life that they lead together. But if we wish to appreciate the full significance of what is suggested here for the culture of the present day, then we must overlook much of the mere phraseology of the present, and we must try for once to speak seriously and honestly and truthfully about many things. The call for freedom is, I would say, present throughout the entire educated world. Today it is there for those who want to hear it, for the American, the European, and the Asian world. And the only question is: how can the awareness of freedom be realized in the life of the present?

To answer this question, we must take a closer look at how a man inspired by the impulse of freedom, such as Woodrow Wilson, talks about freedom today, and how others talk about freedom today. It will sound strange to you, and I must confess that I hesitated for a long time about expressing the truth I have to say here as bluntly as I will, because such things still shock many people today, because people still take such things far too much at face value, far too little in terms of what is actually behind them. Read Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. Listen to how he talks about the social conditions in America and, ultimately, about the social conditions of contemporary civilization in general. What do you find in it? Actually, only criticism, criticism of how this freedom is not realized within today's civilization, how one must strive to realize this freedom within today's culture and civilization. There are sharp words in this direction of criticism in Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. And if you stop at the criticism - and there is not much else in this book except criticism - and now really seriously and honestly ask yourself: How does this criticism of freedom or social criticism by Woodrow Wilson relate to the criticism that is asserted from another side? you come to a strange result. For example, I have tried to examine Lenin's and Tyotzki's criticism of freedom in terms of how this criticism of freedom and social conditions relates to Woodrow Wilson's criticism in The New Freedom, and I believe that anyone who makes such a comparison honestly and truthfully can say nothing other than: With regard to the criticism of social conditions and the realization of freedom in them today, Woodrow Wilson agrees with Lenin and Trotsky, however different the conclusions they draw.

One must be able to admit such a truth to oneself, even if one finds it quite understandable that despite this criticism, Woodrow Wilson naturally comes to the opposite conclusions from Lenin and Trotsky. And even if one, like the person standing before you, is convinced that Lenin and Trotsky are the gravediggers, not the founders, of a social life, that hardly anything worse could happen to humanity than if the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky were to be realized - but an important, an important fact is expressed in what must be set apart right now; the fact is expressed that from the most opposing party standpoints, from the most opposing social passions, people today come to similar criticisms of the existing cultural conditions and finally also to the abstract call for freedom. Only they understand this freedom in very, very different senses.

If one penetrates to the fact that ultimately the true impulse of freedom can only come from the depths of the human soul itself, then one may well also ask: Why is it that despite all the politicking and calling for freedom in his book, and in his other books as well, there is so much that one must say are abstract, impractical truths that can never penetrate into reality? I believe that precisely what Woodrow Wilson thinks of as freedom is precisely what prevents him from being a truly practical person for the spiritual life of the present. It is very characteristic how Woodrow Wilson explains freedom. He explains it, one might say, as if he had absorbed the whole sum of his concepts from the art of machines. For example, he says: A ship moves freely when it is so equipped that its apparatus is precisely adapted to the movements of the wind and waves, when it experiences no obstacles or hindrances from the movements of the wind and waves, when it is, as it were, carried along freely, without resisting what carries it. And so a person would be free in the sense of Woodrow Wilson, who would be so adapted to the external social conditions that nothing in him would give rise to obstacles and inhibitions, so that he would feel nowhere, as it were, dependent, constrained, disturbed in any direction. If we take seriously only one sentence, we shall see what significance this statement by Woodrow Wilson has for the concept of freedom. If we compare seriously and honestly the human being who is to act freely from the innermost impulse of his soul in some humane social order with a ship that offers as little resistance as possible to the forces of wind and waves, then we completely ignore the fact that the ship must be held still by another force must be held still against wind and waves, cannot hold itself still, but that if man is to be free, he should certainly not be carried along by social forces, but that under certain circumstances he must be able to stop and also to oppose the forces that affect him. The opposite of this would have been the result for a real idea of freedom, which is found as a kind of definition of freedom in Woodrow Wilson. And we will find that the vague call for freedom sits in many human souls today, but that what they consciously connect with the impulse of freedom is different from what they unconsciously really strive for. This was already before my soul's eye when I conceived my “Philosophy of Freedom” out of the human spirit in the 1880s. I saw how the question, “Can man be inwardly free or unfree at all?” occupied philosophy and worldviews and religious convictions throughout the entire civilized development of mankind. If man is a being, a natural being, that is driven purely by natural causes, then he is not free. Or does a being live in man that possesses and uses what he is as an external physical being only like an apparatus out of his own innermost impulses? If he were that, then it could be said that he, this man, is a truly free being. Is man free or is he not free? Is he one or the other by virtue of his nature and being? These questions were before me. And anyone within today's scientific community who wants to tackle these questions must, however, give an account of how he deals with the various views that have been expressed here and there in the whole of civilized human development on the question of freedom

Now it seemed to me that the main thing was that the question is usually asked quite wrongly: the question is, “Is man by his own nature and essence a free being or is he not?” It is wrongly formulated. And as a wrongly formulated question, it can never be answered with a simple yes or no. And so you will find that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' is based on putting the whole question on a different footing. However, what I am going to explain now lies more than the foundation under what is presented in my 'Philosophy of Freedom' itself. The way modern man is, in whom the true consciousness of freedom has actually only awakened, is the way this modern man has developed out of earlier states of the human being. Today, far too little consideration is given to the fact that one should seriously and honestly apply the principle of development to humanity. Although it is thought that in the very, very distant past, man was once a kind of ape-like creature; then it is said: It is not yet scientifically time to talk about how today's man has become from this ape-like creature, from this animal-like ape that once climbed around in the trees. One leaves a long, wide desert between the ape-like man and today's man. But even if this is not admitted, essentially one does have the idea that once man has become man, his soul and spirit have not changed particularly radically. I know that this is a debatable statement. But anyone who allows the history of the development of humanity, as it is usually viewed, to take effect on them, will find this statement justified. And anyone who delves more deeply into this history of human development will find that, as man has developed, consciousness of freedom has awakened in him, so that from the depths of human souls the call wells up: First of all, you must be able to act freely out of your own passions, emotions, sensations and feelings; you must live in a social condition in which you can be free. But on the other hand, this call actually exists only as such. Today, there is also no human consciousness that would allow this call to come to its full meaning in man himself. That is to say, man does not find enough of his own being within himself, so that he could say of this within himself: yes, there is something in me that is a free being. In the course of human development, we have advanced to a magnificent development of scientific knowledge, and the last one will be the one who represents the spiritual science meant here, who - as I have often discussed here - would somehow like to deny the magnificent scientific progress or would like to object to the justified scientific views. But the way in which we have developed natural science in modern times means that the human being of modern times, of the last three to four centuries, can actually only understand himself as a physical being. From the depths of the human being, from the human consciousness that is given according to nature, it does not rise at all: you are just as much a real soul, you are just as much a real spirit – as it rises from the depths of the human being: there you have your arm, there you have your hand, they are made of flesh and blood and bone.

This is not just, I would say, a carelessness of worldview. One completely misunderstands what is actually at the root of it if one merely criticizes what I have just said and sees only a carelessness of world view in it, if one merely says: People today are so comfortable that they believe that the human being is only a material being, and that nothing of the soul and spirit is expressed in him. No, my dear audience, with such a criticism one does not get anywhere. One must rather recognize that, as man has developed, he is initially forced to see himself only as a material being if he takes in nothing into his soul but what today's external view of nature and external natural science and the consciousness of the times can offer. In other words, if we allow contemporary culture, which particularly loves time, to be what contemporary culture produces as time, as science, as art, as religious conviction, and also allows it to influence schools, if we allow this to influence today's man to such an extent that he is permeated by it, then, if he is honest, he will have to become a materialist. That is a harsh word. But I believe it is a true word. Today, in a certain respect, one can be dishonest, can say out of some prejudice: “I do believe in spirit and soul.” Then one is not serious about what has actually been produced by the consciousness of the times and by scientific convictions. And if you take these convictions seriously, there is no other option than for man to feel like a material being. He once developed in such a way that if he merely abandons himself to the conditions of life he has created for himself today, he can only come to believe that he is a physical being. A physical being, no more than any other natural being, can be a free being. Therefore, one can say: If the present consciousness is taken seriously, then nowhere does something like the impulse of freedom arise from this present consciousness. One can sound the call for freedom out of subconscious instincts, as Woodrow Wilson does. But if you become absorbed in the time consciousness of the present, you will arrive at false concepts of freedom, at a definition of freedom that says nothing about freedom and a free being, as Woodrow Wilson does. You have to have the courage to step outside of this time consciousness, which has taken hold of the widest circles, which has become popular. And one can say that, especially at the time when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” one could feel quite alone within contemporary culture with such ideas, no matter where one lived on earth. One can understand that Woodrow Wilson's particular views grew out of America's young life in terms of world history. And when I look at my “Philosophy of Freedom” today - I may also speak frankly about it - I know how justified those criticisms are that may strike today's reader of this “Philosophy of Freedom”. I know very well that if anyone reads the first thirty or forty pages of this book today, they will say: Well, this clearly bears the eggshells of German philosophy, professorial concepts, university concepts, school concepts.

Nevertheless, I have to stick to the form of this book and appeal to the present in such a way that I say: Just as one should not take the essence of man from his clothing, so one should not take my philosophy from its clothing in concepts, which had to serve as such a clothing for it for reasons of time and education, for reasons of the intellectual life within which this philosophy originated. Rather, something else seems important to me, which, I would say, has symbolically confronted me during the elaboration of my “Philosophy of Freedom”. At that time, while working on this philosophy, I was also working at the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar. For some time, an American scholar worked with me there. He was preparing a literary-historical treatise on Goethe's “Faust”. It was very interesting to talk with him, and anyone who can see reality in symptoms had American intellectual life in the midst of Central European intellectual life, so to speak, in the form of the excellent American literary historian Calvin Thomas. But you see, I felt as if I were working in a typical Central European office in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive, with all kinds of scholars, including American scholars. I could only use my leisure time to work on my “Philosophy of Freedom” after office hours. But I often had to ask myself: How close is what is in Calvin Thomas's mind American knowledge, American insight, to what European scholars are writing on the same subject, and how alone one is in the face of this cultural formation, in the face of the whole world, with what can be conceived as a real idea of freedom from an independent intellectual life. To a certain extent, one also felt isolated when it came to what could be derived from the young sense of freedom in America, in terms of world history, in terms of an idea about the impulse of freedom. And at that time it was important to me to put the whole question of freedom, as I said, on a different footing. I had to say to myself: the way man is, if he leaves himself to himself, if he only takes what can first fill his soul out of the consciousness of the time, then he cannot know himself as a free being. Therefore, I put the question differently. And this other way of posing the question permeates what I recognize as the idea of freedom. I cannot ask: Is man free or is he not free? but rather: Can man, in the depths of his soul, after he has gone through what arises from himself, as it were, from nature and from his being, continue to develop his soul by taking his soul's development into his own hands, and can he then awaken something in him that is dormant in such a way that this actually deeper being in him comes into its own, so that only through this awakening of a second man in him does he become a free being? Can man educate himself to freedom, or cannot he? Can man become a free being or not? How does he become a free being? That was the new question that had to be raised.

But this pointed out that the present-day human being, if he wants to come at all to the consciousness of the full human being, must not stop at what arises of its own accord in the human being in his development, but that he must take his development into his own hands. Admittedly, this is a point of view that is highly inconvenient for a great many people today. For in order to make it plausible, one must say the following to people: Take a look at a five-year-old child. Let us imagine that this five-year-old child is standing in front of a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. This five-year-old child standing in front of the volume of Goethe's lyric poems will do something with this volume of lyric poems; he will tear it up, perhaps bite it, or something else, but one cannot assume that this five-year-old child will do the right thing with the volume of Goethe's lyric poems. But the child can develop, the child can be educated so that later he will learn to do the right thing with this volume of Goethe's lyric poems. Now, what would it be like if we were to say to people today: Just surrender to what time consciousness itself gives you, and then you will relate to the actual secrets of nature, to the actual secrets of the world around you, as the five-year-old child relates to Goethe's lyrisches Band. It has the whole of Goethe's Iyrisches Band before it like a fully understanding human being, but of course it does not penetrate into that which one can penetrate into as a fully understanding human being. It must first be educated. Now the call for freedom actually presupposes that the human being has the great intellectual modesty to say to himself: perhaps I stand before nature, before the essence of the world, as the five-year-old child stands before the first volume of Goethe's lyrische Gedichte. I must first take the development of my soul into my own hands, and then, just as Goethe's volume of lyric poetry will mean something completely different to a five-year-old child after five or seven years, so the world will mean something completely different to me. While before, when I just leave myself to what comes naturally, I am a fettered being, a different person awakens in me when I take my development into my own hands. And as this other man glows through me, warms me, permeates me, I become a free being.

Yes, that was the foundation of a human conception of freedom in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” and it was not intended merely as a philosophical truth, but to show that through what man awakens in himself by advancing himself – as if he only achieves what is given to him of its own accord – by developing himself in this way, he develops, as it were, a previously dormant, hidden reality within himself. He creates something in himself that brings him to freedom. As long as one theorizes, as long as one thinks up abstract ideas, these will be a matter for the human mind. They will not particularly take hold of the whole person. Anyone who has dealt with such things could actually know how shadowy the most beautiful, the most ideal abstract ideas live in people. It is different when not abstract ideas but life itself is to be awakened in the human being, when the human being is to go through something vividly, through which something awakens in him that was not there before. This is something alive that takes hold of the whole human being, that is not just a matter of the head, that is a matter of the soul and spirit of the whole human being. Here all feelings and impulses, the whole human life of will, are brought together; freedom becomes a real force in the human being, freedom becomes something that is experienced. But then, when it becomes something experienced, then the human being also wants to develop it in the external life together, then, by living with other people, he comes from his experience of freedom to an idea of such a social structure of human life together, in which only can be realized.

Therefore, in the second part of my philosophy, I tried to establish a moral teaching for people, to establish a social outlook that, I would say, must then naturally arise from the awakened sense of freedom. If we take the impulse of freedom as something that is vividly grasped in the deepest essence of man, then freedom is not an abstract idea, then the philosophy of freedom is not a mere philosophy, then what is expressed by such a view of freedom is something that merges into all of man's actions, into all of man's objectives. Then it contains something that others long for when they speak of freedom, but that can only be found by those who, if they want to understand freedom, do not stop at the world views of the present, but ascend to what lies dormant in man and can be awakened. What I would call a language of freedom that can be spoken to humanity in such a way that it is intimately connected with the cultural conditions of the present and future human being, still needed another thing in its further development.

And here is the reason why we had to move on from the foundation of a philosophy of freedom to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Take one of the main books of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. There you will find a detailed description of the paths that a person must take inwardly, in soul and spirit, in order to awaken in him the consciousness of the other person, of the truly free person. There you will find how it is possible for a person to truly come to such an understanding of his own being that the true form of thinking and also of willing appears before his soul. And here I may refer to something I already mentioned in one of the last lectures I gave here: thinking and willing becomes something different for the human being than it is for ordinary consciousness, which, as described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', penetrates the human being. By thinking one learns to recognize how the being, which one then grasps as the higher human being, was already there before man entered into physical existence through birth or conception. By thinking one learns to recognize the true form of the human will, how man carries his nature through the gate of death into the spiritual world. One learns to recognize by truly rising, by developing to the truer essence of man, to the eternal in man.

But this only properly sketches out the paths that lead people to, I would like to say, regard the “Philosophy of Freedom” as something self-evident; the paths to finding the truly free human being. But at the same time, this serves the deeper cultural conditions of the present and the future, which express themselves precisely in such calls for freedom as I characterized in the introduction to my lecture today.

What does a human being need when he feels intensely about a dignified existence, what does a human being need for the content of his innermost human consciousness? What I want to say here can perhaps be best illustrated by referring you back to the starting point of spiritual human culture in the last three to four centuries. For it was a great thing when, at the dawn of the newer development of humanity, minds such as Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and so on appeared. What did they do, basically? They broke with the knowledge and worldviews of the old days and directed human attention to the unbiased observation of the external world. They wanted to dispel prejudices. They wanted to make clear what man can gain by observing the external world. But little by little something else has occurred, something that I have already partially characterized. What has occurred is that an old awareness of what man is in his innermost being has been destroyed by more recent observation. If today, in accordance with our newer natural science, we look at the starry sky, what is this starry sky? Something that we want to understand through mathematics and mechanics, something that we only feel related to – this abstract product of our minds, mathematics and mechanics. And if we compare this with the consciousness that people in older times had when they looked up at the starry sky, He did not have the abstract scientific consciousness: up there the stars revolve according to mathematical-mechanical laws, but you, earthworm, stand here on this earth, are born with birth and perish with death, and that which you are has nothing to do with the course of the stars. If we go back to the earlier stages of human consciousness, we find that this earlier human consciousness held the view that you, human being, as you stand here on this earth, you are not merely attached to this earth; that which lives and works in you is connected with that which circles up there in the stars. And when you perfect your knowledge, when you become aware of yourself as a complete human being, then you know yourself as being related to the animals and plants and stones of the earth, and thus to the entire cosmic space of the stars. We have paid for what we have learned mathematically and mechanically about the stars by cutting ourselves off from the cosmos, from the world. If one now walks the path to higher knowledge in the way I have described, and comes to recognize that human being that did not begin with birth or conception, but that was there in spiritual worlds before birth and conception, and that also lives in us now and which penetrates through the portal of death into the spiritual world, then one does indeed learn anew, with this human being, only in a new form, not in an old, worn-out form, one's kinship with the whole cosmos; then the human being is again imbued with world consciousness. His mere earthly consciousness is transformed into world consciousness. But then man has something that he needs precisely as a cultural condition of the spirit in the present and for the future. Humanity could never experience the moment without the deepest damage to its essence, where reference would be made to new external observations, and the old spiritual life would gradually be extinguished. Man needs faith, the reference to the realization of a permanent, that can withstand, as well as the outer observation of the world expands.

Thus it is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that shows man himself in such a way that he can in turn tie his world consciousness to the whole cosmos, that he in turn knows himself in connection with the world spirit. This is not just a theoretical idea, but something that comes to life in the whole human being, and what makes him, this human being, a different being. In the present and in the future, there will be much speculation about what social institutions are needed so that people can find a dignified existence within them. In recent times, people have even deluded themselves into believing that such institutions can be invented. We shall only arrive at institutions that give man a dignified existence when man is able to create such institutions from his deepest spiritual and soul life. But for that we do not need to dream of a transformation of the external social conditions; for that we need to seriously tackle a new spiritual culture, to awaken that which slumbers and sleeps in the human soul, and which must first be awakened so that man may know of himself that he is a free being. Today we completely overlook the deep rift in our spiritual culture. For many centuries, certain social powers have ensured that external science does not speak of the spiritual and the soul. That should be the concern of dogmatism. One was to experience it through mere belief, to let mere authorities dictate what one should think about spirit and soul; because certain social powers claimed a monopoly on dictating what should be recognized about spirit and soul, science was pushed aside to the merely material. It makes a very peculiar impression on the one who looks deeper into the development of humanity when he hears today how official science believes that it is pursuing the truths without prejudice and that through this unprejudiced pursuit of the truths it will find something that is today called science and that basically only wants to deal with sensual facts. In truth, it has become a developmental process, in truth, it is human research that has capitulated to the monopoly of certain social circles that alone wanted to deal with what people have to think about spirit and soul. A science such as I have characterized, such as leads to freedom, it leads at the same time to man not only being able to investigate the physical, his bodily nature, it leads to man also learning to investigate the spiritual and the soul. And when he learns to investigate the spiritual and the soul, he absorbs stronger, more realistic concepts than those he absorbs when he has to limit himself to mere external material. And so they have tried to allow only that into social thinking which arises out of the present-day consciousness. And from this point of view they believe that human ideas cannot actually penetrate into social conditions, or they fashion for themselves most perverted social ideas. In my book Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the Soul) — one of the last that I wrote and which, like the others, is only a continuation of what you will find in my book The Philosophy of Freedom — in this book Von Seelenrätseln, I have shown how truly anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not only capable of speaking abstractly about all kinds of spiritual and psychological phenomena, but that by grasping the reality of the spirit it is at the same time able to comprehend the human being, which is body, soul and spirit, in its wholeness. And so, for example, in these “Puzzles of the Soul” I was able to point out how it is a great error in present-day scientific physiology to speak of the fact that man has sensitive nerves that go from the sensory organ to the central organ, while the motor nerves go from the central organ to the muscles. An abstract science that speaks only abstractly of spirit and soul will never dare, and will never find the method, to say anything about the senses that cannot be proven merely by the senses. One can prove by stating that there is only one kind of nerve, that there is no difference between sensitive and motor nerves, that such phenomena as tabes dorsalis, which are cited in support of the opinion that motor nerves exist, actually prove the opposite proves the opposite of what is believed to be proven by them.

Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, something is created that in turn penetrates all of nature, that has enough impact to penetrate all of nature. But this also allows this spiritual science to penetrate into that which must be of particular interest to contemporary culture. This spiritual science is allowed to penetrate into the structure of social life. And it is only through those experiences that people have with the higher human being that truly social concepts can be gained. That is why we live in such a confusing time today, why we live in such confusion and such chaos today, because people who deal with the solutions of various social issues are not able to dig deep enough into the human being itself to find the ideas that can truly govern social life. And so we are at a loss when faced with the most pressing and burning questions of the present day, and we are left standing before these most searing and burning questions in such a way that no answer comes from the depths of human nature as an echo.

We have seen how great transformations have taken place in the course of human history. Or was not one of the greatest transformations that have taken place in the course of human development that through which Christianity arose? Christianity, which has given the evolution of the earth its true meaning, has emerged through a mighty transformation. It left many things behind. Not all people recognized the truths of Christianity; but on the whole, Christianity was the one thing that worked transformatively in the old cultural element, and basically brought forth the whole of European civilization with its American civilization appendix. Later, something like the French Revolution was experienced. While Christianity was a purely spiritual transformation and has achieved its goal to the greatest extent, it can be said of the French Revolution, which was a political one, that it has achieved some of its political goals, but that important and essential things have been left behind, which have not been achieved of the goals that were set. And now in our time we are experiencing the longing of many people for a new transformation, for new revolutions. And we already see these revolutions at work in many ways. Mankind has had sad experiences. If it wants to be unbiased enough, it should also recognize this in proletarian circles. Mankind has had sad experiences with the extreme social revolutions in Eastern Europe, in Hungary, and a great lesson of world history should be the failure of these social revolutions. And an even greater lesson could be learned if people are at all capable of learning from world-historical events, namely the sad fate of the German revolution of November 9, 1918, a revolution that fizzled out. And if we take a comprehensive view of all that follows from such facts, from the failed revolutions in Hungary and Eastern Europe, from the sadly abortive German Revolution, then we see: spiritual transformations, such as those brought about by Christianity, can take place in the course of the development of humanity; political revolutions, such as the French Revolution, only in part; economic revolutions, such as are being attempted now, are doomed to failure, can only destroy, can bring forth nothing new, if they do not transform themselves into spiritual impulses for progress. One of the most important and essential cultural conditions of the present time is that, out of the correctly grasped impulses of freedom, people come to realize that all the questions that are being addressed today must be considered in the context of the whole spiritual development of humanity, with a renewal of the human spiritual life. And mankind must realize this clearly before the sad and terrible lesson of necessity can occur, which would occur if what is happening to the downfall of human culture in the east of Europe, what has happened in Hungary under such sad circumstances, what is happening in Germany, if what is happening in the way it is grasped by those , who have no conception of the real impulse of the spirit, takes its course, which is now regarded by many as appropriate for the times.

Even what is done economically is only done correctly out of the human spirit, and we live in an age where the old concepts no longer suffice, where we must find new concepts that can create a new economic culture for the present and for the future. Woodrow Wilson is right when he says: We have new economic conditions, people could not shut themselves out from the new economic institutions; but we think about this economic life with the old legal concepts, with the old traditional spiritual ideas. But then, nothing will sprout from that which is rooted in the soul that could now master the new economic life.

What is sought here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in what is communicated here, will on the one hand reach up to the highest heights of human spiritual and soul life, but on the other hand will also be strong enough to reach down to where the most everyday aspects of life need to be grasped. What is the situation today? Intellectual life has gradually taken on a very abstract character. Think about how the religious, aesthetic, artistic, and ideological convictions of, say, a merchant or an industrialist or a civil servant are formed. This is a matter for himself, which he experiences in his soul. It has nothing to do with the account book or with what he does in his office. In the realm where he generates his spiritual ideas, the ideas and impulses that are then expressed in his account book are not created at the same time. At most, it says “With God”; but that is also all that connects the activity that is expressed there with what he carries through the world as an abstract spiritual and soul life. But that is why it was said when people with good social ideas arose in modern times, such as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier: These are good moral ideas, but good ideas alone will not transform social conditions. This can be heard everywhere today where the socialist point of view is discussed. And they are right. With such social ideas as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier and so on had, you do not transform social life, because they arose from the consciousness of people that, when you think and reflect on the spiritual, this spiritual is a thing in itself, that should not grasp the world at the same time. In the end, all spiritual life has become abstract. On the one hand, man takes the upward surge religiously or artistically or ideologically to spiritual heights, if he takes it at all. On the other hand, he abandons himself, I might say, to the hazards of life; in natural science, by working in laboratories, in the observatory and the like, and what he brings out of it, whether in the social or in the scientific field, has no connection with the abstract spiritual life. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to pour out a unity of spiritual and material life over all of human civilization. And from that which is developed in the human being, through beholding the higher human being within himself, ascending to the eternal, the possibility should follow of grasping that which lies beyond birth and death for the human being, but at the same time to make the ideas so strong that they can intervene in everyday life. For it is not the person who speaks of the spirit who is serious and true about the spirit, but the person who is serious and true about the spirit who pursues the spirit to its last involvement in material existence, for whom nothing at all remains of spiritless matter even in the practical conception of life. That is what could be called the cultural conditions of the present and the future, that such spiritual and mental consciousness should be in people.

Then people who are imbued with such consciousness will also create social and political conditions that are desired by people like Woodrow Wilson. Today, however, the situation is such that people only criticize, that productive ideas are not yet there, because they do not want to descend to the spirit or want to ascend. Today we see how, starting from America – we have given the example of Woodrow Wilson himself, certainly a decisive personality – how, starting from America, there is criticism of contemporary social life, and the call for freedom is heard. But one does not want to decide to properly ascend to the real impulse of freedom. And we have seen how truly beautiful, ingenious ideas about freedom and social conditions have emerged in Europe. But it is characteristic of us in European civilization that we are incapable of bringing down from the abstractions, from the philosophical heights, what we conceive and feel so beautifully and introducing it into direct life. And we still do not understand it when there is talk of such an introduction of real, not merely imagined ideas into political life. And when we look across to Asia, we are confronted with a different civilization that criticizes the social and freedom life of the present just as aptly as America and Europe. One only has to read the beautiful arguments of Rabindranath Tagore to see how far the one who stands at the forefront of Asian culture can go in criticism. He does not achieve this in the productive sphere because he is not able to say to himself: if we are to speak of spiritual life again, we must strive for something new. He wants to preserve an old spiritual life, but only to be effective in it.

Now, unfortunately, we have seen in Europe that people have finally lost the direct connection between what they strive for in spirit and what everyday life, so that we now see numerous societies engaged in shaping Europe according to purely external economic aspects and trying to satisfy the needs of the soul, since the Christian religion no longer satisfies one in Europe, from Asia, through all sorts of theories and so on. Such relationships are not suitable for bringing about a new spiritual life; they are the last decadent shadows of an old one.

What is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science takes all this into account. It is pretty much the opposite of what is said about it. And the building in Dornach, which is so often said to be symbolic, does not have a single symbol. Rather, it is said to be built, I would say, purely naturally, in such a way that it is envisaged that one day this and that will be , just as one learns to recognize the nut within its shell, and when one looks at the shell around the nut, one finds that it is naturally shaped to fit the nut. In the same way, we wanted to create a new shell for a new spiritual life, in architectural, artistic and pictorial terms. The building was not constructed out of abstract ideas or out of a complicated aesthetic view. I have often used a rather trivial comparison to try to express what I actually mean by this Dornach building. I am sure many of you know that in Germany, Austria or here, certain cakes are called Gugelhupf, and then the form in which the Gugelhupf is baked is called the Gugelhupf pan. Now, I said, if we imagine that what is to be done in this building is a Gugelhupf, a cake, then, if the cake is to be right, the Gugelhupf pan must be right. In the same way, the spiritual life that is to be cultivated there must have the right shell, just as the nut in the nut shell has the right shell. Except for this basic principle of the building, everything is still fundamentally misunderstood in wide circles today.

Now, as in other numerous lectures that I have already given here at the same place, I wanted to point out once again how the things that are really involved in the Dornach building and what is to be done in it for the civilized development of humanity, in contrast to the numerous misunderstandings that arise, that must arise very naturally. Perhaps it is possible to see from the few suggestions I have been able to make, but which are intimately connected with the most important human longings for the renewal of culture in the present and for the future, what is meant and wanted by this building and its purpose. When the call for freedom rings out from America, as I characterized it with Woodrow Wilson: the goal is to find humanity, a dignified existence, through a spiritual and soulful understanding that can meet this call as its realization, as the right answer to the question that is being asked. Some people today still avoid it. Out of dark, vague feelings, demands are made. The answers must be given out of a clear spiritual insight. I have to think how right Woodrow Wilson is in a certain respect when he points out that secret consortia should not decide on the affairs of the people, of humanity. Woodrow Wilson wants decisions to be made in every family home, be it in the country or in the city, but he wants people to come together in the schoolhouse in particular. It is a beautiful idea that the place of nurturing the spirit should be the place of origin for the formation of contemporary ideas. And it is a beautiful saying of Woodrow Wilson's when he says: Our goal is the reality of freedom. We want to work towards preventing private capital accumulation by law and to make the system by which private capital accumulation was created legally impossible. And another very nice saying is: Inside the country, on the farms, in the shops, in the villages, in the apartments of the big city, in the school buildings, everywhere where people meet and are true to each other , that is where the streams and rivers rise from their source, to form the mighty force of that stream that carries and drives all human endeavors on its journey to the great common sea of humanity. It is a fine idea to call people together in such a way that the stream can form from all the individual sources for the liberation of humanity, and it is a fine idea to let the goals that are to carry humanity forward be set precisely in the places where the spirit is cultivated, in the school buildings.

But if you take what I have tried to explain today, then perhaps Woodrow Wilson's call for schoolhouses will have to be different after all. For I believe that only when a cultural life is cultivated in these school buildings, permeated by a realistic, humane understanding of the free human spirit and the human soul, only then will the right current of human freedom come from the school building. Until we can implant in the human soul a correct understanding of freedom, we may gather in schools, but they will hardly find realistic goals there either. These will only be found when we have the courage to bring into the schools a spiritual, realistic worldview, an artistic outlook, and a religious confession. For what will come out of the schools for the future of humanity will be more important than what people in general decide on the basis of what they have learned at school.

Yesterday we had to speak of the path pursued by man between death and a new birth; and the whole gist of my remarks will have shown you that every night during sleep we must return to the starting-point of our earth-life.

We can indeed gain insight into these significant matters if we realize that on sinking into slumber we do not stand still at the date reached in the course of our earthly existence (as was already explained in the previous lectures), but that we actually go back to our starting-point. Every time, during sleep, we are carried back to our childhood, and even to the state before our childhood, before our arrival on earth. Hence, while we are asleep, our ego and our astral body return to the spiritual world, to the world of our origin which we left in order to become earth men.

At this point of our discourse, it becomes necessary to let pass before our soul in greater detail what the human being undergoes while asleep; undergoes unconsciously, but, nonetheless, most vividly.

The duration of our sleep does not really matter. Although it is difficult for our ordinary consciousness to conceive of the fact that time and space conditions are utterly different in the spiritual world, we must learn to form conceptions of such a kind.

I have already said that the human being, when suddenly awakened after he has fallen asleep and hence lost consciousness, experiences during that brief moment whatever he would have experienced, had his sleep continued for a long time. In measuring the length of our sleep according to its physical duration, we take into account only our physical body and our etheric body. Utterly different time-conditions prevail for that which is undergone by our ego and astral body. Hence the things that I shall presently explain to you are valid for either a long or a short sleep.

When the human personality enters the realm of sleep with his soul, the first state experienced by him—all this takes place in the unconscious, yet with great vividness—engenders a feeling in him of dwelling, as it were, in a general world ether. (In speaking of feeling, I mean an unconscious feeling. It is impossible to express these matters otherwise than by terms used in ordinary conscious life.) The person feels himself, as it were, disseminated into the whole cosmos. We cease to have the definite perceptions, which formerly connected us with all the things surrounding us in our earthly existence. At first, we take part in the general weaving and surging of the cosmos. And this is accompanied by the feeling that our souls have their being in a bottomless element. Hence the soul, while existing in this bottomless element, has an ardent desire for divine support. Thus we experience every evening, when falling asleep, the religious need of having the whole world permeated by an all-encompassing divine-spiritual element. This is our real experience when falling asleep.

Our whole constitution as human beings enables us to transfer this desire for the divine into our waking life. Day in and day out, we are indebted to our nightly experiences for renewing our religious needs.

Thus only a contemplation of our entire being enables us to gain insight into the various life-experiences undergone by us. Fundamentally, we live very thoughtlessly if we take into account only the conscious life passed between morning and evening; for many night experiences are interwoven with this. The human being does not always realize whence he derives his living religious need. He derives it from the general experiences undergone by him every night just after having fallen asleep—and also, although perhaps less intensively, during an afternoon nap.

Then, in our sleep, another stage sets in—all this, as was said before, being passed through unconsciously, but nonetheless vividly. Now it does not seem to the sleeper that his soul is, as it were, disseminated into the general cosmos, but it seems as if the single parts of his entity were divided. Were our experiences to become conscious, we would feel as though we were being disjointed. And, from the bottom of our soul, an unconscious fear rises up. Every night, while asleep, we experience the fear of being divided up into the whole universe.

Now you might say: What does all this matter, as long as we know nothing about it? Well, it matters a great deal. I should like to explain, by means of a comparison, how much it matters.

Suppose that we become frightened in ordinary daily life. We turn pale. The emotion of fear is consciously felt by the soul. A definite change in our organism makes us turn pale. The blood streams back into the body's interior. This is an objective process. We can describe the emotion of fear in connection with an objective process taking place, in daily conscious life, within the physical body. What we experience in our soul is, as it were, a mirrored image reflecting this streaming away of the blood from the body's surface to its inner parts. Thus an objective process corresponds, in the waking state, to the emotion of fear. When we are asleep, a similar objective process, wholly independent of our consciousness, occurs in our astral body.

Anyone able to form imaginative and inspired conceptions will experience this objective process in the astral body as an emotion of fear. The objective element in fear, however, is actually experienced by man every night, because he feels himself being divided into parts inside his soul. And how is he being divided? Every night he is divided among the universe of stars. One part of his soul substance is striving towards Mercury, another part towards Jupiter, and so forth. Yet this process can only be correctly characterized by saying: During ordinary sleep, we do not actually penetrate the worlds of stars, as is the case on the path between death and a new birth. What we really undergo every night is not an actual division among the stars, but only among the counterparts of the stars which we carry within us during our entire earth life. While asleep, we are divided among the counterparts of Mercury, Venus, Moon, Sun, and so forth. Thus we are concerned here not with the original stars themselves, but with their counterparts in us.

This emotion of fear, experienced by us relatively soon after falling asleep, can be removed only from that human being who feels a genuine kinship to the Christ. At this point, we become aware how much the human being needs this kinship with the Christ. In speaking of this kinship, it is necessary to envisage man's evolution on earth. Mankind's evolution on earth can be comprehended only by someone having real insight into the significant turning point brought to human evolution by the Mystery of Golgotha. It is a fact that the human beings before the Mystery of Golgotha were different with regard to soul and spirit from the human beings after the Mystery of Golgotha had occurred on earth. This must be taken into account, if man's soul is to be viewed in its true light.

When the human beings who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha—and these human beings were actually we ourselves in a former life—fell asleep and experienced the fear of which I have just spoken, then the counterpart of the Christ in the world of stars existed for the human beings of that time as much as did the counterparts of the other heavenly bodies. And as the Christ approached the sleeping human being, He came as a helper to dissipate fear, to destroy fear. People of earlier ages, still gifted with instinctive clairvoyance, remembered after awaking, in a dream-like consciousness, that the Christ had been with them in their sleep. Only they did not call Him the Christ. They called Him the Sun-spirit. Yet these people, who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, avowed from their innermost depth that the great Sun-spirit was also the great guide and helper of the human being, who approached him every night in sleep and relieved him of the fear of being disseminated into the universe. The Christ appeared as a spirit strengthening mankind and consolidating its inner life.

Who binds together man's forces during his life? asked the followers of ancient religions. It is the great Sun-spirit, who firmly binds together man's single elements and combines them into one personality. And this avowal was uttered by the followers of ancient religions, because their consciousness was pervaded by the memory that the Christ approached man every night.

We do not need to be amazed at these things. In those ancient times when the human being was still capable of instinctive clairvoyance, he could look back at significant moments of his life into the period passed through by him before his soul and spirit descended to earth and was clothed in a physical body. Thus it seemed quite natural to the human being that he could look upward into a pre-earthly existence.

But is it not a fact that—as we explained before—every period of sleep carries us back into pre-earthly existence, into an existence preceding the stage before we became a truly conscious child? This question must be answered in the affirmative. And just as human beings knew that they had been together, in their pre-earthly existence, with the exalted Sun-spirit who had given them the strength to pass through death as immortal beings, so they also consciously remembered after every sleep that the exalted Sun-spirit had stood at their side, helping them to become real human beings, integrated personalities.

The human soul, while acquainting itself with the world of planets, passes through this stage during sleep. It is as if the soul were first dispersed among the counterparts of the planets, and then united and held together by the Christ.

Consider that this whole soul-experience during sleep has changed, with regard to the human being, since the Mystery of Golgotha. For the Mystery of Golgotha has originated the unfolding of a vigorous human ego-consciousness. This ego-consciousness, pervading human culture only gradually after the Mystery of Golgotha, became especially apparent after the first third of the fifteenth century. And the same vigorous ego-consciousness, which enables the human being to place himself as a free, fully self-conscious being into the sense world, this same consciousness—as though trying to maintain equilibrium—also darkens his retrospect into pre-earthly existence; darkens his conscious memory of the helping Christ, Who stood at his side during sleep.

It is remarkable that, since the Mystery of Golgotha, human evolution has taken the following course: On the one hand, man acquired a vigorous ego-consciousness in his waking state; on the other hand, utter darkness gradually overlaid that which had formerly radiated out of sleep-consciousness. Therefore human beings are obliged, since the Mystery of Golgotha, to establish a conscious relationship to Christ Jesus while they are awake. They must acquire, in a conscious way, a comprehension of what the Mystery of Golgotha really signifies: That, by means of the Mystery of Golgotha, the exalted Sun-spirit, Christ, descended to earth, became a human being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, passed through earth-life and death, and, after death, still taught His disciples who were permitted to behold Him in His etheric body after death.

Those personalities who acquire, in the time following the Mystery of Golgotha, a waking consciousness of their kinship with the Christ, and gain a living conception of what took place through the Mystery of Golgotha: to these the possibility will be given of being helped by the Christ impulse, as it is carried from their waking state into their sleep.

This shows us how differently human sleep was constituted before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ invariably appeared as Helper while the human being slept. Man could remember even after awaking that the Christ had been with him during his sleep. After the Mystery of Golgotha, however, he would be utterly bereft of the Christ's help, if he were not to establish a conscious relation with the Christ during the day while awake and carry its echo, its after-effect, into his sleep. Only in this way can the Christ help him to maintain his personality while asleep.

What the human being had received unconsciously from the wide heavenly reaches before the Mystery of Golgotha: the help of the Christ, the human soul must now acquire gradually by establishing a conscious relation with the Mystery of Golgotha. This inner soul-responsibility has been laid upon the human being since the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus we are unable to study the nature of human sleep, unless we are able to envisage the immense transformation undergone by human sleep since the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we enter the realm of sleep, our whole world becomes different from that experienced in the waking state. How do we live as physical men while awake? We are confined, through our physical body, by natural laws. The laws working outside in nature are also working within us. That which we recognize as moral responsibilities and impulses, as moral world order, stands like an abstract world amidst the laws of nature. And because present-day natural science takes into account only the waking world, it is completely ignorant of the moral world.

Thus natural science tells us—although hypothetically, yet in conformity with its principles—that the Kant-Laplace primeval fog marked the starting-point of world evolution; and that this world evolution will be terminated through a state of heat which will kill all living things and bury them, as it were, in a huge cosmic cemetery. (These conceptions have been modified, but still prevail among natural scientists.) Natural science, in describing the evolution of the cosmos, begins and ends with a physical state. Here the moral world order appears as a stranger. The human being, however, would not be aware of his dignity, would not even experience himself as a human being, unless he experienced himself as a moral being. But what moral impulses could be found in the Kant-Laplace primeval fog? Here were nothing but physical laws. Will there be moral impulses when the earth shall perish from heat? Then, also, nothing but physical laws will prevail. Thus speaks natural science. And out of the natural process germinate all living things, and out of living things the human soul-element. The human being forms certain conceptions: One should act in a certain way; or one should not act in that way. He experiences a moral world order. But this cannot be nurtured by natural law. To the waking human being, the moral world order appears like a merely abstract world amidst the rigid, massive world of natural laws.

It is entirely different when imaginative, inspirative, and intuitive consciousness passes through that which the human being, between falling asleep and awaking, experiences in his ego and astral body. Here the moral world order appears real, whereas the natural order below appears like something abstract, something dream-like. Although it is difficult to conceive of these things, they are nonetheless true. The whole world has been turned upside down. To the sleeper acquiring clairvoyance in his sleep, the moral world order would seem something real, something secure; and the physical world order of natural laws would seem to sink below, not rise above, the moral world order. And if the sleeper possessed consciousness, he would not place the Kant-Laplace theory at the starting-point of world evolution, and the death through heat at its end. At the starting-point, he would recognize the world of spiritual hierarchies—all the spirit and soul beings who lead man into existence. At the end of world evolution, he would again recognize the spirit and soul beings who extend to man who has passed through the course of evolution a welcome to enter their community. And below, as an illusion, the abstract physical world order would have its welling and streaming existence. If you were gifted with clairvoyance in the very midst between falling asleep and awaking, you would view all the natural laws of which you have learned during the day as a mirage of dreams, dreamed by the earth. And it would be the moral world order which would give you a firm ground. And this moral world order could be experienced by us if we worked our way—after having received the help of the Christ—into the peace of the fixed stars in the firmament, seen by us again, during nightly sleep, in the form of their counterparts. Soaring upward to the fixed stars, to their counterparts, we look down into the physical realm of natural law.

This is the wholly divergent form of the experiences undergone by the human being between falling asleep and awaking, and leading his soul every night into the image of the cosmos. And just as the human being is led at a certain moment between death and a new birth, as I explained yesterday, by the moon forces into earthly existence and is beset by a sort of longing for earthly existence, so is he beset by the longing, after experiencing heavenly existence in his sleep, to immerse himself again into his physical body and etheric body.

While we get accustomed to earth-life after our birth, we live in a sort of sleep and dream state. If we, disregarding our dreams, look back in the morning, after being awake for an hour, to the moment of awaking, our consciousness is halted abruptly and we see behind us the darkness of slumber. It is similar when we look back into our childhood. In our fourth or the fifth year, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, our consciousness comes to a stop. Beyond the last stage that we can still remember lies something which is as deeply immersed in the darkness of the sleep and dream life of early childhood as is the life of the human soul immersed every night in the darkness of sleep. Yet the child is not wholly asleep, but is wrapt in a sort of waking dream. During this waking dream occur the three important phases of human life which I indicated yesterday. As they occur in the sequence characterized by me, we can see in them echoes and after-effects of the life between death and a new birth. First the child learns, out of a life wrapt in dream and sleep, what we call simply learning how to walk.

Something all-encompassing happens when a child learns how to walk, something which appears as a grandiose and overwhelming process to anyone able to perceive how the subtlest parts of the human body are changed at this time. The child, by adapting himself to the relationships of gravity, learns how to attain equilibrium. The child no longer falls down. By unfolding inner forces, he conforms to spatial directions.

What if we had to do all this consciously: overcome the lack of equilibrium that pulled us to the ground, adapt our organism to a firm state of equilibrium with regard to the three spatial directions, and even maintain this state of equilibrium by swinging our legs like pendulums as we learn how to walk? The child, in performing such a grandiose mechanical task, performs it as an echo of what he experienced while dwelling among spirits between death and a new birth. Here we encounter something so comprehensive, so marvelous, that the most eminent engineer, with all his earthly scientific equipment, could not calculate how the child's human forces adapt themselves to the world's spatial connections. What we, as a child, attain unconsciously is the most miraculous unfolding of mathematical-mechanical, physical forces. We call it simply learning how to walk. Yet in this learning how to walk lies an element of utmost grandeur.

Simultaneously, the correct use of arms and hands is attained. And by placing himself, as physical being, within the three spatial directions, the human being receives the foundation for all that is called learning how to talk.

The only thing known to physiology about the connection between man's dynamics of walking and standing and the faculty of speech is the fact that the speech-center of right-handed persons lies in the left portion of the brain. The gestures of the right hand, vigorously executed by means of man's willpower, are led, by some mysterious process, into the interior of the brain whence the faculty of speech is brought to the human being.

More, however, exists than this connection between the right hand and the third convolution at the left, the so-called Broca cerebral convolution. The whole mobility of arms and fingers; the human being's whole ability to move and maintain equilibrium reaches up into the brain, becomes part of the brain, and thence reaches down into the larynx. Language develops out of walking, out of the grasping of objects, out of gestures flowing from the organs of movement.

Anyone viewing these things correctly will know that a child with the tendency to walk on his toes speaks differently from a child walking on his heels; employs different shadings of sound. The organism of speaking develops from the organism of walking and moving. And speech is again a counterpart of that which I described yesterday as the outpouring of revelation upon the human being passing through the stage between death and a new birth. The child, when learning how to speak, does not grasp the words with his thoughts, but alone with his emotions. He lives in the language as if it were an emotional element; and a child of normal development learns conceptual thinking only after acquiring the faculty of speech. A child's thoughts actually develop out of the words. Just as walking and the grasping of objects, the gestures of legs and hands, reach up into the speech organism, so all that lives in the speech organism and is gained through adaptation to the language of the surrounding world, reaches up into the thought-organs. In the third stage, the child learns how to think.

While encompassed by this dream and sleep state, the child passes through three stages: walking, speaking, and thinking. These are the three terrestrial counterparts of that which we experienced between death and a new birth: living contact with the spiritual world, revelation of the spiritual world, and the gathering of the world ether in order to form our etheric body.

The child's development during these three stages can be correctly estimated only by someone observing the adult human being during his sleep. Here we can observe how we, when sleep puts a stop to our thoughts—for our thoughts are silenced by sleep—let our thought-forces be nurtured, between falling asleep and awaking, by those beings known to us as angels, as Angeloi. These beings, approaching us during sleep, nurture our thought-forces while we cannot do so ourselves.

During sleep, the human being also ceases to talk. Only in abnormal cases, which could be explained, does he talk in his sleep. At present, however, we may disregard these things. The normal human being ceases to talk after going to sleep. Would it not be altogether too dreadful, did people keep on chattering while asleep? Hence speech ceases at that time. And what makes us speak is nurtured during the time between falling asleep and awaking by beings belonging to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

If we disregard the sleep-walker, who is also in an abnormal condition, human beings are quiet while asleep. They do not walk, they grasp no objects, they do not move. That which pertains to man's waking life as forces which call forth the movements out of his will is nurtured, between going to sleep and awaking, by beings belonging to the hierarchy of the Archai.

By comprehending the manner in which the hierarchical beings above the human kingdom—Angels, Archangels, Archai—approach the ego and astral body, approach the entire human being during sleep, we can also understand how the little child masters the three activities of walking, speaking, and thinking. We recognize how it is the work of the Archai that brings to the little child, as he masters the dynamics of life, as he masters the faculty of walking and handling objects, what the human being has experienced, between death and a new birth, by coming into contact with spirit and soul beings. Now, the counterpart of these experiences comes forth with the learning to walk of the little child. It is the Archai, the primeval powers, who transmit to the child that learns how to walk the counterpart of all the spiritual movements emanating, between death and a new birth, from spirit and soul beings.

And it is the Archangels that transmit what the human being experiences, between death and a new birth, by means of revelation; they are at work when the child masters speech. And the Angels carry down the forces developed by the human being when, out of the whole world ether, he gathered the substance for his etheric body. The angels, bringing down these forces, mold their counterparts within the thought-organs, which are plastically formed in order that the child may learn thinking by means of language.

You must keep in mind that Anthroposophy does more than look at the physical world and say: It is based on something spiritual. This would be much too easy. By such a way of thinking, we could acquire no real conception of the spiritual world. Someone who is determined to repeat in philosophic terms that the physical world rests on a spiritual foundation, would be like a man who when walking across a meadow is told by his companion: Look, this flower is a dandelion, these are daisies, and so forth. The first man, however, might reply: Indeed, I am not interested in these names. Here I see flowers, just flowers in the abstract. Such a person would be like a philosopher who recognizes only the pantheistic-spiritual element, but refuses to discuss the concrete facts, the particular formations of the spiritual.

What we are given by Anthroposophy shows us how the divine spiritual dwells everywhere in life's single formations. We look at the way in which the child passes from the clumsy stage of crawling to that of walking. Looking in admiration and reverence at this grandiose world phenomenon, we see in it the work of the Archai, who are active when the experiences we undergo between death and a new birth are transformed into their earthly shape.

We follow the process through which the child produces speech out of his inner self; we follow the activity of the Archangels; and, when the child begins to think, the activity of the Angels. And all this has a deeply significant, practical side. In our materialistic age, many people have ceased to regard words as something genuinely spiritual. More and more, people use words only for the purpose of naming physical objects in the outer world. Think how many people in the world are unable to form the slightest conception of spiritual things; this is because the words have no spiritual significance for them and are used merely in connection with physical objects.

For many people, speech itself has assumed a materialistic character. It can be used only in connection with physical things. Undeniably, we live within a civilization making language, more and more, into an instrument of materialism. And what will be the consequence?

The consequence will become apparent to us if we look, with regard to language, at the connection between the waking and the sleeping state. While we remain awake during the day, we talk with others. We make the air vibrate. The way in which the air vibrates transmits the soul content which we wish to convey. The soul impulses of our words, however, live in our inner being. Every word corresponds to a soul impulse, which is the more powerful, the more our words are imbued with idealism; the more we are conscious of the spiritual significance contained in our words. Anyone aware of these facts will clearly recognize what lies behind them. Think of a person who uses words in a merely materialistic sense. During the day, he will not differ greatly from others whose words contain an idealistic, spiritual element, who know that words must be given wings by the spirit. At night, however, the human being takes the soul and spirit element of language, together with his ego and astral body, into the spiritual world. He returns again to his spiritual origin.

Those possessing only a materialistic speech cannot establish a connection with the world of the Archangels. Those still possessing an idealistic speech are able to establish this connection with the world of the Archangels.

The tragedy inherent in a civilization whose materialism is expressed even by its language has the consequence that the human being, by letting his language become wholly materialistic, may lose the nightly connection with the world of the Archangels. For the genuine spiritual scientist, there lies indeed something heart-breaking in present-day civilization. People who forget more and more to invest their words with a spiritual content lose their rightful connection with the spiritual world; with the Archangels. And this terrifying fact can be perceived only by someone envisaging the true nature of the sleeping state.

It is impossible to become a real anthroposophist without rising above mere theory. We may remain perfectly indifferent while developing theories on June bugs, earth worms, and cells. Such theories shall certainly break nobody's heart. For the way in which June bugs and earthworms grow out of a cell is not apt to break our heart. But if we acquire anthroposophical knowledge in all its fullness, we look into the depths of man's being, of man's evolution, of man's destiny. Thus our heart will ever be interlinked with this knowledge. The sum of this knowledge will be deposited in the life of our feelings, our emotions. Hence we partake of the whole world's feelings, and also of the whole world's volition.

The essence of Anthroposophy consists in the fact that it grasps not only the human intellect but the whole human being. Thereby it illuminates, with the forces of feeling and sentiment, the destinies of culture and civilization, as well as the destinies of single persons.

We cannot take part genuinely in human experiences on earth, unless looking also at the other side, the spiritual side, as it is unveiled to us through our knowledge of the sleeping state that leads us back into the spiritual world. Thus spiritual science can be truly at one with human life, understood in its spiritual and ultimately its social, religious, and ethical significance.

This spiritual science is to become real science which leads to wisdom. Such life giving science is greatly needed by mankind, lest it fall into deeper and deeper decline, instead of making a new beginning.

We have been studying how the living form of man, his soul and his spirit, are related to the cosmos. The various aspects of this subject presented in recent lectures may be summarized in somewhat the following way:—

In the deep foundations of man's being lies the will. In many respects the will is the most mysterious and secret element in human nature. It is obvious that aberrations, inclinations that often run counter to the world's well-being surge up from fathomless depths of the moral life; everything experienced by the soul in the form of pricks of conscience or self-reproach streams up from the deep ground of the will.

The reason why the will is so mysterious and secret is that in many respects it is a highly indeterminate force; there is in it an instinctive element over which we have little control and which drives us hither and thither on the turbulent waves of life often without our being able to claim that any conscious impulses are racing effect. In another respect too, namely in respect of our knowledge of the operations of the will, it has again and again been emphasized that these operations of the will are as withdrawn from human consciousness as the experiences of deep, dreamless sleep; so that in this respect too, the will is an indeterminate, mysterious element.

But when we think of man's spiritual nature we cannot conceive that this spirituality is active in him only during his waking hours or in his conscious mental life; the fact is that this spirituality is at work in him during sleep too, within that part of his being where his will lies and which, like the experiences of deep sleep, is wrapt in unconsciousness.

Spirit is therefore also present and at work in the sleeping human being. Two aspects of the will can be distinguished.—There is first of all the will which—unless we are out-and-out idlers—spurs us to activity from the time of waking until that of falling asleep. True, we cannot perceive the will in actual operation, but the effects rise into our consciousness inasmuch as we can form mental concepts and images of them. We do not know how the will-impulse works in us when we are walking; but we can see ourselves stepping forward. We form mental images of the workings of our will and in this sense are conscious of its effects. That is one aspect of the will.

The other aspect is that the will is also active in us while we sleep; for then inner processes are taking place, processes that are also operations of the will, only we are not aware of them—precisely because we are asleep. But just as the sun also shines during the night on the other side of the earth where we are not living, so does will stream through our being while we are asleep, although we have no consciousness of it.

Thus two kinds of will can be distinguished: an inner will and an outer will. The workings of the outer will are made manifest to us while we are awake; those of the inner will take effect while we are asleep. Strictly speaking, the inner will is not revealed to us; nevertheless when we look back, its effects can be apprehended afterwards, as having been part of the condition of sleep.

The will is present as it were in ocean depths of the soul. It surges upwards in waves. But just because we must admit that the will is at work during sleep, when the bodily part of our being is engaged in purely organic activity, neither pervaded with soul nor illumined by spirit, it follows that the will as such has to do with this organic activity. The will that is working while we are asleep has to do with organic activity, inasmuch as organic processes, life-processes take place in us. These processes are essentially connected with the will.

But during waking activity too, that is to say when our will is in flow, life-processes are taking place. The will takes effect in the processes of internal metabolism. So that here again we can point to organic activity.

Out of the ocean-depths of will in the human being, waves which come to expression in the form of feeling, surge upwards. We know that feeling is a dimly apprehended experience, that so far as actual consciousness is concerned it has really only the intensity of a dream. But at any rate it is clearer than the workings of will. It raises into greater clarity what lies in the ocean-depths of man's being. Feeling brings a certain light into, intensifies, consciousness; the two poles of the will rise into this intensified consciousness and in it both the inner will and the outer will are made manifest.

Thus we distinguish two kinds of feeling, as we did in the case of the will: an inner will in the sleeping state, an outer will in the waking state. One kind of feeling surges upwards from the will that is connected with man's sleeping condition. This kind of feeling lives itself out in the antipathies—taking the word in the widest sense—unfolded by the human being. This is feeling which tends towards antipathy. Whereas the will that is involved in outer activity and therefore leads man into the external world, manifests in all those experiences of feeling which have in them the quality of sympathy. The dreamlike experience of feeling which comes to expression in sympathies and antipathies aroused by different forms of life, by forms of art or of nature, or in sympathies and antipathies connected more with the organs and arising in us through smell or taste or through a sense of well-being or comfort—all this weaving activity belongs to the soul. Will therefore reveals itself in organic activity, feeling in activity of the soul.

If the life of soul is studied from this point of view, great illumination will be shed upon it. Waking life arouses in us sympathy with the surrounding world. Our antipathies really come from more unconscious realms. They press upwards from the sleeping will. It is as though our sympathies lie more on the surface, whereas antipathies rise up through them from unplumbed depths. Antipathies repel; antipathies draw us away from the surrounding world; we isolate ourselves, shut ourselves within our own being. Inwardly up-streaming antipathies are the antecedents of human egotism. The greater a man's egotism, the more strongly is the element of antipathy working in him. He wants to isolate himself, to feel enclosed within his own being.

In normal life we do not notice the constant interplay of sympathies and antipathies in the life of soul. But we become aware of it when our connection with the outer world becomes abnormal, and when the antipathetic element that derives from sleep also works in an abnormal way. This happens when our breathing, for example, functions irregularly during sleep and we have nightmares. In a nightmare, the soul is putting up an antipathetic defence against something that is trying to penetrate into us, preventing us from full experience of our egohood.

We are gazing here into deep secrets of human experience. If a man unfolds the element of antipathy in his life of feeling so strongly that it plays into his waking life, his whole being is permeated with antipathy which then lays hold of his astral body; his astral body is steeped in the element of antipathy; antipathy streams out from him like an abnormal aura. It may then happen that he begins to feel antipathy to people to whom his attitude was otherwise neutral, or indeed even to those he loved or knew intimately. These conditions can give rise to persecution mania in all its forms. When feelings of antipathy not to be explained by outer circumstances are experienced, this is due to the overflowing antipathies in the soul, that is to say, to an abnormal intensification of the one pole in the life of soul which forces its way upwards out of sleep. If this antipathy gets the upper hand in a human being, he becomes a world-hater, and such hatred can assume incredible proportions. The aim of all education and all social endeavor should be to prevent human beings from becoming world-haters.

But think of it.—If what surges up from the ocean-depths of man's being can promote overweening egotism when it gets the upper hand—and persecution mania in all forms is nothing but superabundant, excessive egotism—if all this is possible, what is there to be said of the inner will itself, which a beneficent creation conceals by means of sleep? We have no knowledge at all of how this inner will permeates our limbs, our entire organism. The most that can be said is that now and then, through strange dreams, something comes up into the consciousness of what lies in the will that works in our organism during sleep. What lives in this will lies—and rightly so for the ordinary consciousness—on yonder side of the Threshold. He who comes to know it, learns to know the force by which the human being can be led to uttermost evil. The deepest secret of human life is that we have the counterbalance of our organic activity in the very forces which, were they to gain control in the conscious life of a man, would make him into a criminal.

Let it be remembered that nothing in the world is in itself evil or good. What is radically evil when it breaks into our conscious life, is the counterbalance for our spent life-forces when it take effect in its right place, namely as the regulator of organic activity during the sleeping state.

If you ask: What is the nature of the forces which make compensation for the spent life-forces?—the answer is: They are the forces of evil. Evil has its mission—and it is here. If this becomes known to anyone through spiritual training, it is for him as it was for earlier seers, something of which they said: Of its essential nature it is not lawful to speak, for sinful is the mouth that speaks of it, and sinful the ear that hears of it.—Nevertheless man must realize that life is a process fraught with danger and that evil lies in its deep foundations as a necessary force.

Now these waves of the will surge even higher—into the conceptual life, the mental life. The sleeping will lights up in feeling, and when it surge upwards into mental life, it becomes still clearer but at the same time denuded qualitatively—it becomes abstract. In feeling fraught with antipathy there is still a certain lively intensity. When this element of antipathetic feeling surges into the conceptual life, it comes to expression in the form of negative judgments, judgments of rejection or denial. Everything we negate in life, everything the logician calls “negation”, negative judgment, is the uprush of antipathetic feeling, or of the inner will, into the conceptual life.

And when sympathetic feeling—which has its origin in the will of waking life, in the outer will—rises up into the conceptual life, our judgments are affirmative. We have arrived at something which, as you see, lives in us as abstraction only. In feeling, inasmuch as we unfold sympathies and antipathies, there is still intensity of life. Whereas in acts of judgment—which are a mental, conceptual activity—we are, as it were, immobile, contemplative observers of the world. We affirm and negate. We do not come to the point of actual antipathy; we merely negate. It is an abstract process. We do not rouse ourselves to antipathy: we merely say, no. In the same way we do not rouse ourselves to sympathy: we merely say, yes. We are raised above our relation to the outer world—to the level of abstract judgment.

This, then, is a purely mental, concept-forming activity, which can be called spiritual activity. But will, feeling and conceptual activity can surge even higher—into the domain of the senses. When negative judgment surges into the domain of the senses, what is the result? The condition wherein we perceive nothing. If we think of it in relation to the most obvious process of perception, we can say: It is the experience of darkness—where we see nothing. On the other hand, affirmative judgment becomes experience of light. The same could be said with regard to the experience of silence, or of tone and sound. To all the twelve senses it would be correct to apply what has here been said in connection with the experiences of light and of darkness.

And now let us ask: What, in reality, is this activity in the domain of the senses? I We have spoken of organic activity, activity of the life of soul, spiritual activity. Spiritual activity is merely a concept-forming activity but it is still our own. What takes place between the senses and the outer world is in truth no longer our own activity, for there the world is playing into us. It would be quite correct to depict the eye as an independent entity; what takes place in the eye is that the outer world penetrates into the organism as it were through a gulf. We are no longer standing in the world with our own activity, but this is divine activity. This divine activity weaves through the world surrounding us. Darkness inclines in the direction of negation, light in the direction of affirmation.

The influence of this divine activity upon man in his relationship to the world was an especially vivid experience in the wisdom of the second Post-Atlantean epoch.—God in the Light—that is to say, the Divine with a Luciferic quality; God in the Darkness—the Divine with an Ahrimanic quality.—Thus did the ancient Persians experience the world. And to them the sun was the representative of the outer world. The sun as the divine source of Light—so it was experienced in the second Post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand in the third Post-Atlantean epoch (Egypto-Chaldean) men experienced more strongly the sphere lying between judgment and feeling. At that time they did not feel so intensely that the Divine in the outer world is experienced in light or darkness, but rather in the impact between conceptual activity and feeling. Experience of divine activity among the Egyptians and Chaldeans caused men to bring an element of antipathy into negative judgments and sympathy into affirmative judgments. And only when we are able to decipher and understand the pictorial or other records of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch shall we realize that all were created and shaped out of sympathetic affirmation or antipathetic negation. When you look at Egyptian statues, figures on tombs, and so forth, you can still feel that their forms give expression to sympathetic affirmation or antipathetic negation. It is simply not possible to create a sphinx without bringing into it sympathies and antipathies inhering in the conceptual life. Men did not experience merely light and darkness but something of the element of life that is present in sympathies and antipathies. In that epoch the sun was experienced as the divine source of Life.

And now we come to the Greco-Latin epoch when man's experience of direct communion with the outer world was largely lost. In my book Riddles of Philosophy, I have shown that although in that age man still felt his thoughts as we today feel sense-impressions, he was already approaching the condition in which we live at the present time, when owing to the development of the ego we no longer feel any really living connection with the external world, when with our ego we are practically asleep within the body, are in a state of slumber. This condition was not so pronounced in the Greeks, but to some extent it was certainly present. To understand the Greek nature we must realize that the Greek had already begun to live very intensely in his body—not as intensely as we do, but nevertheless intensely.—Not so the ancient Persians. The wise men among them did not believe that they were living enclosed within their skins but rather that they were borne on the waves of the light through the whole universe. In the Greek, this experience of cosmic life was already losing intensity, falling into slumber within the body. When we ourselves are asleep, the ego and astral body are outside the physical body; but our waking, in comparison with that of the ancient Persians, really amounts to sleep. When the Persians woke from sleep—I am speaking of course of the ancient Persians as described in my An Outline of Occult Science, it was as though the light actually penetrated into them, into their senses.

We no longer feel that at the moment of waking from sleep we summon the light into our eyes. For us the light is outside, phantomlike. Nor could the Greeks any longer see in the sun the actual source of Life; they felt that the sun was something that pervaded them inwardly. They felt the element in which the sun lives within the human being as the element of Eros—the element of Love. Thus: the sun as the divine source of Love. Eros—the sun-nature within the human being—this was what the Greek experienced. Then, from about the fourth century A.D. onwards, came the time when, fundamentally speaking, the sun was no longer regarded as anything but a physical orb in space, when the sun was darkened for man. To the ancient Persians the sun was the actual reflector of the Light weaving through space. To the Egyptians and Chaldeans the sun was the Life surging and pulsating through the universe. The Greeks felt the sun as that which infused Love into the living organism, guiding Eros through the waves of sentient existence.

This experience of the sun sank more and more deeply into man's being and gradually vanished into the ocean-depths of the soul. And it is in the ocean-depths of the soul that man bears the sun-nature today. It is beyond his reach, because the Guardian of the Threshold stands before it; it lies in the depths of being as a mystery of which the ancient teachings said: Let it not be uttered—for sinful is the mouth that speaks of it and sinful the ear that hears of it.

In the fourth century A.D. there were schools which taught that the sun-mystery must remain untold, that a civilization knowing nothing of the sun-mystery must now arise. Behind everything that takes place in the external world lie forces and powers which give guidance from the universe. One of the instruments of these guiding powers was the Roman Emperor Constantine. It was under him that Christianity assumed the form which denies the sun.

Living in that same century was one whose ardor for what he had learnt in the Mysteries as the last remnants of the ancient, instinctive wisdom, caused him to attach little importance to the development of contemporary civilization. This was Julian the Apostate. He fell by the hand of a murderer because he was intent upon passing on this ancient tradition of the threefold Mystery of the Sun. And the world would have none of it.

Today, of course, it must be realized that the old instinctive wisdom must become conscious wisdom, that what has sunk into the subconsciousness, into purely organic activity and even into sub-organic activity, must once again be lifted into the light of consciousness. We must re-discover the Sun-Mystery.

But just as when the Sun-Mystery had been lost, bitter enemies rose up against the one who wished this mystery to be proclaimed to the world, and brought about his death, so again enemies are working against the new Sun-Mysteries which must be brought to the world by spiritual science. We are living now at the other pole of historical evolution. In the fourth century A.D. there was sunset; now there must be sunrise.

In this sense Constantine and Julian the Apostate are two symbols of historical evolution. Julian the Apostate stands as it were upon the ruins of olden times, intent upon building again out of these ruins the forms of the ancient wisdom, upon preserving for humanity those ancient memorials which Christianity, assuming a material form for the first time in the days of Constantine, had destroyed. Countless treasures were destroyed, countless works of art, countless scripts and records of the ancient wisdom. Everything that could in any possible way have given men an inkling of the ancient Sun-Mystery was destroyed.

It is true that in order to reach inner freedom, it was necessary for men to pass through the stage of believing that a globe of gas is moving through universal space—but the fact is that physicists would be very astonished if they could take a journey in space; they would discover that the sun is not a globe of gas giving out light—that is nonsense—but that it is a mere reflector which cannot itself radiate light but at most throw it back. The truth is that in the spiritual sense, light streams out from Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and the Moon.

Physically it appears as though the sun gives the planets light, but in reality it is the planets that radiate light to the sun and the sun is the reflector. As such it was recognized by the wise men of ancient Persia with their instinctive wisdom, and in this sense the sun was regarded as the earthly source of Light—not indeed as the source itself, but as the reflector of the Light. Then, among the Egyptians and Chaldeans, the sun became the reflector of Life and among the Greeks, the reflector of Love.

This was the conception that Julian the Apostate wanted to preserve—and he was done away with. In order to reach freedom it was indeed necessary that men should hold for a time to the superstition of the sun as a globe of gas in space, giving out light—a superstition enunciated as a categorical truth in every book of physics today. But our task must be to penetrate to the reality.

In truth, Julian the Apostate and Constantine stand before us as two symbols ... Julian the Apostate was bent upon preserving those ancient memorials of the world which could, in a certain way, have made it possible for the true Sun-Mystery to find its way to men. Indeed during the first centuries of Christendom, Christ was still a Sun-Figure—an Apollo.

This Sun-Mystery was felt to be the greatest spiritual treasure possessed by mankind. And it was symbolized by what was known as the Palladium. It was said that the Palladium had once been in Troy and that the priests of the Mysteries there saw in it the means whereby, in sacred ritual and cult, they revealed to the people the true nature of the sun. Then the Palladium was taken to Rome, and its presence there was a secret known to the initiate in Rome. The initiated priests of the Romans, and even the first Emperors—Augustus, for example—worked in the world out of a direct consciousness that the greatest of all treasures was represented in Rome, at all events in an outer symbol, inasmuch as beneath the foundations of the most venerated Roman temple, lay the Palladium, its existence known only to those who were initiated into the deepest secrets of Roman existence and destiny. But in a spiritual sense it had become known to those whose task it was to bring Christianity to the world. And out of the knowledge that the Palladium was guarded in Rome, the early Christians made their way thither. A spiritual reality lay behind these journeys.

But when, under Constantine, Christianity was secularized, the Palladium was taken away from Rome. Constantine founded Constantinople, and he caused the Palladium to be buried in the earth under a pillar erected there by his orders. Thus it transpired that in its further development Roman Christianity was deprived of the knowledge of the Sun-Mystery by the very Emperor who established Christianity in Rome in its rigid, mechanical forms. In the secularization of Christianity brought about by Constantine, the cosmic wisdom was lost to Christianity—and this comes to expression in the removal of the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople.

In certain Slavonic regions—people always interpret things according to their own conditions—a belief reigned for centuries, lasting indeed until the beginning of the twentieth century, that in a none too distant future the Palladium will be removed from Constantinople to another place—to a Slavonic town, as the people believed. At all events the Palladium is waiting, expecting to be removed from the darkening influence shed upon it by Constantinople to that locality which, by its very nature, will bring it into complete darkness. Yes, the Palladium goes to the East, where the decadence of the ancient wisdom still survives but is passing into darkness. And in the further evolution of the world, everything depends upon whether—just as the sun is the reflector of the light bestowed upon it from the universe—the Palladium-treasure is illumined by a wisdom born from the riches of the knowledge living in the West. The Palladium, the ancient heritage brought from Troy to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, and which, as it is said, will be carried still farther into the darkness of the East—this Sun-treasure must wait until it is redeemed spiritually in the West, released from the dark shadows of a purely external knowledge of nature. Thus the task of the future is bound up with the holiest traditions of European development.

Legends are still extant, even today, among; those who are initiated into these things—often they are quite simple people going about here and there in the world. These legends tell of the removal of the Palladium, the treasure of wisdom, from Troy to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople when Roman Christianity was secularized; they tell of its future removal to the East when the East, denuded of the ancient wisdom, will have fallen into utter decadence; and they tell of the necessity for this sun-treasure to receive new light from the West.

The Sun-Mystery has disappeared into the nether regions of human existence. Through spiritual-scientific development we must find it again. The Sun-Mystery must be found again—otherwise the Palladium will vanish into the darkness of the East. It is wrongful today to utter a saying as untrue as Ex Oriente Lux. The light can no longer come from the East, for the East is in decadence. Nevertheless the East waits—for it will possess the sun-treasure, even though it be in darkness—it waits for the light of the West. But today men are groping in darkness, arranging conferences in the darkness, are looking expectantly towards—Washington! Only those “Washingtons” that speak with the tones of the spiritual world—not conferences looking for the darkness that surrounds the Palladium, for an open door for trade in China—only those conferences will bring salvation which are conducted in the West in such a way that the Palladium can be kindled once again to light. For like a fluorescent body, the Palladium, in itself, is dark; if it is suffused with light, then it becomes radiant. And so it will be with the wisdom of the East: dark in itself, it will light up, will become fluorescent when it is permeated by the wisdom of the West, by the spiritual light of the West.

But this the West does not understand. Only when the Palladium legend is brought into the clear light of consciousness, only when men can again feel true compassion for one like Julian the Apostate who felt constrained to ignore the age in which the light of freedom could germinate in the darkness, who longed to preserve the old instinctive wisdom and therefore met with his death—only when men realize that Constantine, in giving an externalized form of Christianity to the Romans, took from them the light, the wisdom, and sent Christianity into the darkness—only when men realize that the light whereby the Palladium can again be made to shine must be born out of modern nature-knowledge in the best sense—only then will an important chapter of world-history be brought to fulfillment. For only then will that which became Western when the Greeks see Troy on fire, become Western-Eastern. The light that flamed from Troy is present even to-day; it is present but it is shrouded in darkness. It must drawn forth from the darkness; the Palladium must again be illumined.

If our hearts are in the right place, knowledge of the course of history can fire us with enthusiasm; and this same enthusiasm will give us the right feeling for the impulses which spiritual science would fain impart.

In viewing the soul of man, we find its inner element composed of thinking or forming of mental representations, feeling, and willing. You know that these three soul-activities have been often discussed by me. Nevertheless, I should like to say a few words today about this threefold constitution of the human soul, inasmuch as it is in especial connection with the present cycle.

Life in the waking state is essentially concerned with our mental activity. Of what we are thinking we are fully conscious in the waking state. If you ask yourself: Are we as conscious of the feelings that we experience in the waking state as we are of the mental representations? the answer would have to be in the negative. In a certain sense, feelings are apprehended but dimly and vaguely by waking consciousness. And if you compare the experiences of your world of feelings with those confronting you in the manifold imagery of the dream-world, you will find the same degree of consciousness in the world of feelings that you do in the world of dreams. In the world of feelings, we dream in a different way; yet also in that world it is still only dreaming.

We may be easily misled regarding the character of this world of feeling by translating that which is felt into mental representations. We make a mental image of our feelings. In this way, the feelings are raised into waking consciousness. Yet the feelings, as such, are no more conscious than dreams.

What remains still more unconscious—it might be said, wholly unconscious—are man's will-impulses. Try to visualize what you know of the faculty generally called willing. Suppose that you stretch out your hand in order to grasp something. First, you have a mental image of the fact that you are going to stretch out your hand. This is what you intend to do. But how this intention streams down into your whole organism; how it is imparted to the muscles, the bones, so that your hand be enabled to grasp an object: of all this you know as little as you know, in your ordinary consciousness, of what happens to your ego during sleep. Only after grasping the object, you become aware—again by means of a mental image—of having carried out a movement.

What lies between the mental image forming the intention and the image engendered within you after this intention has been acted upon externally, what happens within your organism between these two stages is hidden by a sleep which takes possession of you even in the waking state. Willing is a matter of sleeping, feeling a matter of dreaming. And only mental activity, thinking, is a matter of real waking.

Here we have, even in the waking state, the threefold human soul: the waking soul that forms mental images; the dreaming soul that feels; and the willing soul that sleeps. Hence man can never know, out of his ordinary consciousness, what goes on in those regions where the will is weaving and living.

If, however, we illuminate by the methods of anthroposophical research the regions where the will is pulsating, we discover the following: The intention of carrying out a will-impulse is primarily a thought, a mental image. At the moment when this intention streams down into the organism, something is produced which might be called a process of inner combustion. Invariably, this combustion is kindled in the organism along the entire path followed by the will-impulse. The combustion of metabolic products existing within you brings forth the movement used by the arm in order to carry out a will-impulse. Hence someone who wills an action undergoes, in a physical sense, a burning-up and consuming of his metabolic products. The metabolic products must be renewed for the reason that they are being constantly burned up, consumed by the will-impulse.

It is different in mental activity. Here a constant depositing of salt-like particles takes place. Earthy, salt-like, ash-like particles are excreted from the organism. Thus, in a physical sense, thinking or mental activity is a depositing of salt. Willing is a combustion. To the spiritual view, human life appears as a continuous depositing of salt from above, and a combustion from below. This combustion has the effect of preventing by the fire within our body—if I may express it in this way—our perceiving, by means of our ordinary consciousness, the real nature of will. This combustion puts us to sleep in regard to our will, or will-impulses.

And what becomes invisible to our ordinary consciousness while we are asleep? If by the methods of spiritual research, we illuminate the organic fire constantly being kindled through the will, we perceive that this fire contains the effects of our moral behavior during previous earth-lives. What lives in this fire may be designated as human destiny, human karma.

It is actually true that a certain fact may assume an entirely different significance if looked at from a correct, spiritual viewpoint instead of an external, sensible-intellectual one.

For instance, a man may become acquainted, in a certain year of his life, with another man. This is generally considered as accidental. And it really seems as if the two persons had been led together by the accidents of life and become acquainted at a chance moment. Things, however, happen otherwise. If we use the methods of spiritual research and look into the whole connection of human life, if we look into everything made invisible by the previously mentioned process of combustion, we then find that an acquaintance made in a man's thirty-fifth year has been longed for and striven for by this man during his entire life according to a definite plan. If we follow someone's life from his thirty-fifth year back into his early childhood, we may uncover and reveal what paths were pursued in order to arrive at the point where the other man was encountered. All this has been carried out in accordance with a plan harbored in the unconscious.

If we look at a human being's destiny in this way, it is remarkable to discover what wiles were occasionally employed by this person in order to arrive at a certain place, in a certain year, and to encounter a certain person. Anyone having real insight into human life cannot help but say that, if someone is undergoing an experience, he himself has sought it, with all the force at his command, during his entire earth-life.

And why do we seek a particular experience? Because this seeking has been poured into our soul out of former lives. These former earth-lives, however, do not show their effect inside our waking thought-consciousness. They show their effect in that state of consciousness constantly lulled to sleep by the process of combustion. Although striving unconsciously, we are nonetheless striving for the attainment of our earthly experiences.

Now, if something of this kind is said, various objections may arise in our thoughts. First of all, the following argument might be raised: If all this be true, then our whole life is determined by destiny; we have no freedom. But do we lose our freedom through the fact that our hair is blond and not black? This, too, is predestined. We are nevertheless free, even if our hair is blond instead of black—although we might possibly prefer black hair; we are nevertheless free, even if we cannot pull down the moon, as we might have longed to do as children. We are nevertheless free, even though we have sought certain experiences since the beginning of our earth-life. For not all of human life is composed of such destined experiences; these experiences are always joined to freely chosen experiences.

And these freely chosen experiences joined to the others are found by spiritual science in a different place.

I have often spoken of the three stages of spiritual knowledge: Imagination, when we first view a world of images; inspiration, when this world of images is penetrated by spiritual reality and essence; intuition, when we stand amid spiritual reality and essence.

If the human being, in the course of his spiritual research, attains imagination and hence sees before him the tableau of his life, something else always becomes visible at the same time. One cannot be attained without the other. We cannot attain imagination, real spiritual knowledge of the life lived by us heretofore on earth, without seeing emerge, in a strange, memory-like manner, the experiences undergone by us during sleep between going to sleep and awaking. I have told you of what these experiences consist.

When attaining imagination on the one hand, we attain, on the other, by means of the inner silence enveloping our soul, an especially profound view of what the human being experiences during sleep. I have already described to you many things experienced by us during the sleeping state. What, however, is mainly set before our inner eye in sleep concerns destiny, as it forms itself anew.

If we illuminate the sleep that encompasses our will even in the waking state, we can see at work the karma resulting from previous earth-lives.

And, if we see in their true light the experiences undergone by us between going to sleep and awaking, we recognize how the karma that will be realized in our next earth-life is being woven out of the free deeds performed by us in the present earth-life.

You might believe that those able to fathom the realm of sleep might be perturbed when saying to themselves: Your own moral conduct during the present earth-life is preparing your karma. Yet this fact is no more perturbing than the knowledge that the sun has risen, climbed to its highest position at noon, sunk in the evening below the horizon, and will repeat the same course on the morrow. The lawfulness rising from the depth of slumber does not perturb us; because through freedom all that has been formed in the sleeping state of the present earth-life can, in the most manifold ways, be brought forth during the next earth-life.

And, when we envisage that which begins to weave itself in sleep, hidden from our ordinary consciousness, as new karma, we can clearly see karma at work in the subconscious states of our will—clearly see karma being spun anew.

We can also see how the past is being interwoven in the human being with the future; we can see how that which is veiled to the waking human being by sleep in the day-time, that is to say, the inner secrets of his will, is being spun together with that which is veiled to him by sleep at night: namely, the inner secrets of his ego and astral body as they have separated themselves from the physical and etheric bodies and are taking part in weaving the future karma.

Consider that the things thought by man in his ordinary waking state are mostly concerned with outer matters. These outer things thought by us remain fixed, by means of our soul-life's ordinary content, in our memory.

All this, however, represents only the surface of our soul-life. Beyond this thought-level lies a soul-life of much greater profoundness. Whatever we experience during the waking state as our thinking, we experience in the etheric body, the formative-force body. All that happens at a deeper level in the astral body and the ego can be experienced only by consciously penetrating the events passed through by the astral body and the ego when they have separated themselves from the physical and etheric bodies and fallen asleep. Then the future karma is being spun.

In the day-time, this future karma is veiled to us by the outward thoughts contained in the etheric body. In the depth of the soul, however, it is being woven together, also during the day, with that which dwells in unconscious, sleeping will as the karma emerging from the past. Hence the karma of the human being can be accurately divulged.

Here we find several interesting facts. The age of the human being's earliest childhood is especially revealing for the observation of karmic connections. The resolutions of children appear to us as utterly arbitrary; and yet they are not at all arbitrary.

It is indeed true that the child's actions imitate what goes on in the child's surroundings. I have indicated in my public lecture how the child, completely at one with his sense-organism, inwardly experiences every gesture, every movement made by the people around him. But he experiences every gesture, every movement, in its moral significance. Hence a child who is confronted with a choleric father experiences the immoral element connected with a choleric temperament. And the child experiences, through the subtlest movements of the people around him, the thoughts that these people harbor. Hence we should never permit ourselves to have impure, immoral thoughts in a child's presence and say: Such thoughts are permissible, because the child knows nothing about them. This is not true. Whenever we think, our nerve-fibers are always vibrating in one way or another. And this vibration is perceived by the child, especially during his earliest years. The child is a subtle observer and imitator of his surroundings.

The strangest and—it might be said—the most interesting fact, in an exalted sense, is the following: The child does not imitate everything, but takes his choice. And this choosing is done in a very complicated manner.

Let us assume that the child has before him a hot-headed, choleric father who does many things that are not right. The child, wholly one with his sense-organism, must absorb all these things. Since his eye cannot protect itself, it must perceive what takes place in the child's surroundings.

What the child absorbs, however, is absorbed only in the waking state. Eventually the child goes to sleep. Children sleep a great deal. And during sleep the child is able to choose: What he wants to absorb is sent out of his soul into his body, his physical organism; what he does not want to absorb is ejected during sleep into the etheric world. Thus the child takes into his bodily organism only those things that have been predestined for him by his destiny, his Karma. The working of destiny is seen with especial vividness in the child's very first years.

A person with a merely intellectual bent often feels that he is tremendously clever and the child tremendously stupid. After acquiring insight into the world, we discard this opinion and begin to realize how stupid we have become since our childhood. Our present cleverness, as opposed to that of childhood, is a conscious one. Yet far, far greater than all the wisdom given to us in later years is the wisdom with which the child, as was previously described, chooses between that which, according to the destiny resulting from former earth-lives, he must incorporate into himself, and that which he may eject into the general etheric world. And what is brought by man from former earth-lives into his present one becomes especially visible during the first years, when the question of freedom does not matter as yet. At the age when the consciousness of freedom arises, we have already brought into the present earth-life most of what had been destined to be garnered from previous earth-lives. And if someone has a certain experience at the age of thirty-five, he has blazed a trail towards this experience since his first childhood years. The first steps of life are the most important and essential for all that is determined by destiny.

I have tried to point out how wise we were as children and how, fundamentally, we become less and less wise as life continues. Our consciousness expands: hence we value conscious rationalism, and do not value the child's unconscious wisdom. Only by acquiring the science of initiation are we taught how to value this wisdom.

I have called attention to these things in the very first chapter of my booklet: Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity [Anthroposophic Press, New York.] Official philosophy has taken me severely to task on this score. It is important, nevertheless, that we are capable of looking at the first years of childhood in the right way.

People, once they have understood these things, will attain a sounder judgment on something that is mentioned today again and again, but not understood in the least: the question of inherited qualities.

In present-day literature and science the tendency is to base everything on qualities that have been inherited from the parents. If we once realize how the child, in a karmic sense, gathers from previous earth-lives whatever his wisdom urges him to select, we shall comprehend the correct relation between that which is determined by destiny and that which represents external inheritance and garb. For this inheritance is nothing but an external garb. That the latter exists will not seem strange to those comprehending in the right way how the human beings connect themselves, at a certain point between death and a new birth, with the sequence of generations. Turning their glance from the Beyond to the earthly realm, they are able to foresee who their parents are going to be. From the Beyond, we help to determine the qualities that our parents will have. Hence it is no wonder that we inherit these qualities. Yet—as was previously described—we make our choice concerning the qualities that we inherit.

To observe the human being during his first childhood years is a study as interesting as it is exalted. I must use this expression again and again. You will remember that I called your attention to the three things learned by the child in his first years: walking, which includes so many things that were discussed yesterday, speaking, and thinking. These three faculties are attained by the child.

Now let us observe correctly how the child takes his first steps. He may put down his little legs and feet firmly or gently; advance courageously or timidly; bend his knee vigorously or with less vigor; use his index finger or his little finger more frequently. Those who have the right insight into what is connected with walking, what is connected with the sense of equilibrium through which the child orientates himself in the three spatial directions—all those will recognize that the child's karma is symbolically expressed in his attempts at walking. We see a certain child, as he learns how to walk, put down his little feet with firmness. This shows us that he has proved himself as brave and courageous in various situations belonging to previous earth-lives. This brave and courageous quality coming from previous earth-lives is expressed, in a sensible image, by the firm manner in which the child plants his little feet on the ground. Thus we may observe just in the child's first attempts at walking a miraculous image of human karma. A man's personal karma is especially expressed by the manner in which he learns how to walk.

In the second place, we learn how to speak. We imitate what is spoken around us. Every child does this in his own way; yet all human beings who learn how to speak their mother tongue within a lingual province imitate just this one language. Hence we find that the human being's folk destiny is expressed by the way in which the child adapts himself to the imitation of sounds. The child, when learning how to walk, expresses his individual destiny; when learning how to speak, his folk destiny. And, when learning how to think, he expresses the destiny of universal mankind living in a certain period all over the globe. Thus a threefold destiny is interwoven in man.

It is true that we clothe our thoughts with diverse languages. Yet, when penetrating across language to the thoughts, we assume that these can be understood by every person anywhere in the world. A Chinese and a Norwegian language exist; nonetheless there is no difference—except an individual one—between Chinese and Norwegian thoughts. For it must be admitted that thoughts as such, with regard to their truth or untruth, are the same everywhere. They are differently colored for the sole reason that human beings express themselves through language and individual traits. The thought-content, however—not the form—is alike for all men. By adjusting himself to thought-life in his third stage, the child adjusts himself, at a certain point, to all of mankind. Through language, he adjusts himself to the folk destiny; through his orientation in three spatial directions (by learning how to walk, how to handle objects, and so forth) he adjusts himself to his personal, individual destiny.

In order to understand man's being in the right way, these things must be viewed from all sides. Now I should like to explain to you by means of another fact how the whole of human life is constituted.

Let us go back to the sleeping state; to those experiences undergone by us between falling asleep and awaking. Here we go back, with our ego and astral body, into the spiritual world; we go back to the starting-point of our life. Yet the ego and astral body are weaving our future destiny.

When the ego and astral body return again to the physical body, then destiny has been woven anew night by night. Man's ordinary consciousness, however, does not yet know anything of this destiny. He enters again into his physical and etheric bodies. In the etheric body, he had left behind his thoughts. We only assume that we do not think while lying in bed. We think unceasingly, but unbeknown to ourselves, because our ego and astral body dwell outside our thoughts. Thinking is an activity of the etheric body. You can easily observe this fact even in every-day life. For instance: you have heard, for the first time, a symphony that excited you greatly. If you are inclined to wake up during the night, you will do so again and again, always finding yourself amid this symphony's sounds, which continue to vibrate within your etheric body. These vibrations do not cease. It is not necessary that your ego be present while the symphony reverberates within you. If your ego were present, you would be aware only of the etheric body's vibrations. It is the same with other thoughts. You are thinking all night long while lying in bed; since your ego is away, however, you do not know that you think.

I can even disclose to you that waking life often spoils our thinking. Generally, our thoughts are much keener when our ego is away at night. This is true, whether you believe it or not. Most people's judgment on life is much sounder at night than in the day-time. If the etheric body, which is in harmony with the laws of the universe, thinks by itself and man does not ruin these thoughts, then man's thinking, no longer muddled up by the ego (as happens so often in the day-time) becomes much sounder.

While our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric bodies, we are engaged in weaving our future karma. What as ego and astral body lives and weaves outside us between falling asleep and awaking must pass through the portal of death; it must enter and pass through the super-sensible world. It is true that the astral element is subsequently merged with the ego, which thus undergoes a change of substance and must continue its way alone. Yet all that which has been weaving, in the sleeping state, outside the physical and etheric bodies must pass through the portal of death and must, between death and a new birth, pursue its path across the stages described by me during the recent days. My description has shown you how the ego passes through a stage where it works in unison with the beings of the higher Hierarchies, in order to prepare the spiritual germ of a future physical body.

This work necessitates the experiencing of profound wisdom between death and a new birth—an experience that can be undergone only if sharing a spiritual activity with beings of the higher Hierarchies.

Many other things must be merged with the karma, as it is woven between falling asleep and awaking, in order to unite all the elements into a future physical body. For you must consider what kind of path has to be pursued. All that is being woven as karma dwells in the ego and astral body. It must descend into those regions possessed by us, in the next earth-life, as the unconscious will-regions. All these elements must be thoroughly blended with our entire bodily organism. During the ordinary sleeping state, the ego and astral body have as yet but little of what they must attain during their transition between death and a new birth.

From the sleeping state, the ego and astral body must return to the physical body; and, when they wake up, they do not quite understand how to deal with this physical body. For, having received this body as the result of a previous earth-life, they do not know how to immerse themselves into it in the right way.

Because the astral body and ego can form the physical and etheric bodies only in the next earth-life, working on them in childhood during the first and second seven-year period and because the ego and astral body will only then encompass all that can work in the right way on the physical body: therefore now, when the ego—on falling asleep—has just absorbed the human being's moral conduct and karma has just begun to weave itself, this ego, on awaking, does not rightly understand all the things contained in the physical body.

The ego, when again immersing itself in the physical body, is utterly unconscious. Yet, as it passes through the region of mental activity, confused dream-images arise. What do these signify? Why do they correspond, in many cases, so little to life? Because the ego and astral body try to immerse themselves in the physical and etheric bodies, but find it difficult to do so. This discrepancy between that which the ego cannot do, but which it should do according to the wise principles of the physical and etheric bodies—this discrepancy is expressed by the confused images dreamed by us just before awaking. These dreams show us pictorially how the ego tries to bring what it has not yet attained into a certain harmony with the physical body and etheric body. And only when the ego, suppressing consciousness in regard to the will, immerses itself in subconscious regions, and hence no longer relies upon its own wisdom, can it enter again into the physical body without producing confused mental images.

If the ego, on awaking, plunged into the physical body when fully conscious, or half conscious as in dreams, then the most terrifying dreams would arise from man's entire physical body. Only the circumstance that we plunge, at the right moment, into the unconscious will subdues the fleeting dream-images and lets us sink down as proper egos and proper astral bodies into the regions of the unconscious will.

It is quite clear to anyone looking at these things without prejudice that every dream can show us the disharmony existing in the present life between what the ego and astral body have acquired in this present life and the fully developed physical and etheric bodies. First that which has been woven as moral element must unite itself, during the transition between death and a new birth, with the spiritual germ of the physical body. Then, whatever has been woven in the present life between falling asleep and awaking, becomes so powerful that it is really able to sink down during the next childhood life, during this dreamy, half asleep childhood life, into the physical and etheric bodies, using them as tools for earth-life.

We carry within us the result of preceding earth-lives. Only all that we carry below in our will-organism as forces of the preceding earth-life is concealed by an inner fire which consumes our physical substance and products. Yet these forces, although consumed by fire, are nonetheless active. We pursue our path across the world by means of our karma. There exists an especial path for every single experience. By choosing, from childhood on, what we want to imitate from the surrounding world, and by so doing, initiating an event that may not occur until our fiftieth year, and at the same time by exerting our will for the purpose of bringing about this experience, we undergo within ourselves a combustion of that which is bodily substance. And, because the fire renders us unconscious with regard to our life-path, our inner perception transposes what is really a continuous course of destiny into something appearing to us like momentary desires, instincts, urges, varieties of temperament, and so forth. Below courses the life-path determined by destiny. The fires are always flaming forth anew. We, however, can only see the fires' surface. And on this surface, out of the seething flames, as it were, there comes to life what dwells in our souls as passions, desires, instincts. Here is only the outer semblance, the outer revelation of that which weaves in the depths as human destiny.

What men observe are the single passions, the single instincts, the single desires, momentary likes and dislikes, deeds carried out or not carried out because of momentary sympathy or antipathy. In making such observations, however, we behave like someone who has a sentence before him and says: “Here I see g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s,t,h,e,w,o,r,l,d.” All he can do is to spell the single letters. Then another person comes and says: “The letters spelled by you mean God rules the world.” Just as spelling differs from reading, so does ordinary science differ from spiritual science.

Ordinary psychology is able to spell. By looking at a human life, it finds certain instincts and urges in the child. The scientist, who only knows how to spell, registers these things, and thus it continues during the human being's entire existence on earth.

Those understanding spiritual science are able to read. Looking beyond the fire's surface, they see what is below: man's destiny-determined life-path.

Between ordinary psychology, such as it is still practiced today, and genuine knowledge of human soul-life there is a difference akin to that between spelling and reading.

We could make ourselves understood with less difficulty, if we could only tell the others that they are wrong. But, if someone spells g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s, it is impossible to tell him: “What you say is wrong.” For it is perfectly correct. Only the other, lacking the knowledge that the letters can be combined and read, will say to us: “You are a crazy fellow. All that I can see is g,o,d, and so forth. It would be utterly foolish to combine the letters.” He cannot understand that we are not only able to spell but also to read.

This fact makes our position very difficult. The anthroposophist could easily reach an understanding with the others; he does not have to refute them. Neither is he entangled into polemics against external science. If this science, however, begins to call him a crazy fellow—then, naturally, he is forced to state that this is wide of the mark and point out his willingness to consider as valid what the others want to consider as valid. Only he would have to exclude the following principle: Whatever this or that person does not see is non-existent. For this principle is no criterion of truth. And those persons who hold to it should first ascertain whether others can see what they themselves cannot see.

In view of these things, those standing on anthroposophical ground must be able to fathom this difficult relationship between Anthroposophy and other world views. At most, we could come to the conclusion that the one tolerating nothing but g,o,d,r,u,l,e,s, should be considered as semi-illiterate. Likewise, we might possibly say to the one who could not wean himself of the habit to spell out the single instincts, urges, passions, temperaments, and so forth: “You are a semi-Philistine, a semi-blockhead. The trouble with you is that you cannot soar.” We could not tell him, however, that he was wrong.

The issue between Anthroposophy and other world views is of such nature that no understanding can be reached until those, who know only how to spell, will have a mind to learn how to read. Otherwise no mutual comprehension is possible; and for this reason all the customary debates lead to no result whatsoever. This fact is noticed by very few opponents of Anthroposophy. In my opinion, it is essential that these things should be known to you.

The opponents of Anthroposophy increase with every month. Yet they are unable to find a foothold. For, since Anthroposophy always agrees with them, but they refuse to agree with Anthroposophy, they cannot attack very well what the Anthroposophist says. And for this reason they attack his personality: defame it, tell lies about it. Unfortunately, polemics tend more and more towards such a form. This must be envisaged by those standing on anthroposophical ground.

You must consider that a very odd assortment of antagonistic books exists now-a-days. Many of their authors, who have read anthroposophical literature, may have found out that I myself, in certain passages of my own books, mention all the objections that could be raised. I engage in polemics against myself, in order to show how that which I affirm could be blotted out. Hence all possible objections against Anthroposophy can be found in my own books. Consequently, many of my opponents busy themselves with copying the arguments which I myself, in my own books, have cited against Anthroposophy. They then distribute these writings to others in order to attack Anthroposophy. Thus you can find hostile writings plagiarizing my own books and simply copying my words when I say: this or that objection could be raised. The fact that the anthroposophist himself has to point out all the arguments that can be advanced against him makes his opponents' task rather easy.

I mention these things not for the purpose of harrowing my opponents, but in order to characterize how one must progress if one desires to read life-experiences (with regard to the will-impulses) instead of merely spelling them out. Spelling only shows us what momentarily wells up in the form of urges, of animal life expressed by desires, passions and wishes. Those able to combine these letters and read them will penetrate every individual human destiny. This human destiny is working at the source of life; and, by means of this destiny, the human being joins himself to the ever continuing course of mankind's whole evolution. And only by comprehending in this way a single human being's entire life are we able to comprehend human history. During the following days, we shall contemplate mankind's history; contemplate it as the life of mankind in its destiny before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. And we shall also see how the Mystery of Golgotha has influenced mankind's development on earth.

First, however, I had to erect a foundation and show what is at work within the human being. Only thus can it be recognized in the right way how the gods and the Mystery of Golgotha are at work within the individual man, within his entire destiny.

In recent years it has been possible to speak in Swiss places about a highly significant topic in spiritual science, a topic that is fundamentally the highest for spiritual science: the Christ-problem. And if many people of the present time, who are quite outside the spiritual science movement, believe that this is basically the simplest topic that can be discussed, then from their point of view these people of the present time are right. What is greatest for the development of the earth and of humanity, the power of Christ, the Christ impulse, has certainly worked in such a way that the simplest, most naive mind can somehow understand it. But on the other hand, this impulse has worked in such a way that no earthly wisdom is sufficient to truly understand what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era, what happened for humanity and, in fact, for the whole world.

Now, in recent years, the Christ problem has been discussed, and perhaps I may point out in a few words that the German Section has just completed its first seven-year cycle. It was founded seven years ago; at that time there were few branches, hardly ten. Now the number has grown to over forty. The number seven is so often mentioned when we speak of anthroposophical wisdom and world view, and a certain lawfulness is also expressed in it, so that this development is taking place in seven successive cycles of time. We need only recall what we have already touched on here, the development of our earth; it is passing through seven planetary states. The law of seven also applies on a smaller scale, to every single fact of world evolution as well as to a movement such as the development of spiritual science. Those who look more deeply into our movement can see that in a certain respect this seven-year cycle has unfolded quite regularly, and that we are at a decisive point where what was laid seven years ago is repeated at a higher level and at the same time returns to itself in a cycle; but this could only happen because we really worked in a spiritual sense, that we did not work arbitrarily and randomly, but according to the law.

Then you remember that we distinguish seven aspects to the human being: first the physical body, then the etheric body, the astral body and the I; then, when the I reworks the astral body, the spirit self or manas arises; when it reworks the etheric body, the life spirit or buddhi arises; when it finally reworks the physical body, the highest link, the spirit man or atma, arises, so that we first distinguish four links and then three more, which arise as a transformation from the first three.

If you now want to implement something in the world so that a spiritual law is embodied in it, then this great law must be followed everywhere. If you, as a young branch, so to speak, want to enter into spiritual life in the appropriate way, it is good to see how the organization of the whole work has progressed. For the young branch will recognize that it is necessary to catch up on this process of development on its part, to follow it. We have followed this process exactly in the German movement: in the first four years we gathered together everything necessary to gain a concept of the world from which spiritual science begins. First of all, we presented the sevenfold nature of the human being, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, the great cosmic laws, the evolution of Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the laws of the individual course of life, so that this is available in our literature and in various branch works. This was done in the first four years.

In the last three years, we have basically gained nothing new in any systematic way, but have instead planted the higher wisdoms in what has been achieved in the first four years, and have then ascended to the comprehension of the highest individuality that has walked our earth, the individuality of Christ Jesus - which we would not have been able to do if it had to be done with nothing but unknown ideas. We could only speak about Christ after we had spoken about the nature of man in general. We could only comprehend how this Christ event occurred if we understood human nature and its entire sequence of stages. Those who heard the lectures on the Gospel of Luke in Basel, and also the others who heard something here and there, know that very complicated processes took place. But how could it have been understood that, for example, something significant happened to one of the Jesus-boys in the twelfth year of his life if we had not known what actually takes place between the ages of twelve and fifteen? We prepared systematically and then, in deep reverence for the greatest truths of our earthly cycle, we tried to grasp what is associated with the name of Christ Jesus. It was like ascending to ever greater heights. Thus it came about that one could contemplate the Christ Jesus in connection with the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke. Even then in Basel it was emphasized that no one should believe that, having heard all the truths in connection with these two Gospels, he then knew what the nature and essence of that high spiritual entity is. He has learned this only from one side. One should not believe that it is unnecessary, or only like a renewal, to hear the truth from another side as well. The gospels are images of this great event, each evangelist presenting from a certain point of view what happened in Palestine.

Now, the day before yesterday in Bern, I demonstrated what is now happening in various branches. For very specific reasons, I tried to sketch out a reference to Christ in connection with the Gospel of Matthew. There are very specific reasons for this. Spiritual science should be a way of looking at life, not a theory or a doctrine; it should transform our innermost soul life. We are to learn to look at the world in a new way. And there is a quality that we must acquire, that man acquires more and more, learns more and more, precisely through the wisdom of anthroposophy. There is no single word in any language that properly describes this quality, but spiritual science will still find the word for this new feeling of the heart. And until then we can only use the word that is there for this quality: humble modesty is what is to take ever deeper root in our soul, especially with regard to those documents that, as gospels, bring us tidings of that most significant event in the evolution of the earth. For there we learn that basically we can only approach very slowly the truths and wisdoms that are necessary to fathom the Christ-problem. We learn to develop a completely different feeling in us than that which today's people have, who are so quickly finished with their judgment of the event. We learn to be careful in presenting the truth, and we know that when we have considered it from any one side, we only perceive one side, never the whole at once.

This is connected with the fact – and only gradually will we gain an understanding of it – why there are four Gospels at all. Today, the fact of the matter is that even theology is intellectual, materialistic, and that the intellect, when applied merely to the four documents, will compare them externally. And that is when contradictions are perceived. First of all, the Gospel of John was examined. What it presents to the intellect, they say, is so contrary to the other three Gospels that the best way to understand this Gospel is to say that the writer did not want to describe real events, but wanted to present a kind of hymn, a kind of confession, a rendering of his feelings. In the Gospel of John, one sees a great, comprehensive poem, and thus it is dismissed as having no documentary value. But only the external, materialistic mind does this. Then the other three Gospels are considered. Certain contradictions are also found there; but these are explained by the fact that the Gospels were written at different times. In short, people today are well on the way to picking these documents about the great event apart, so that they no longer mean anything to humanity. But spiritual science is called upon to show why we have four different documents about the event in Palestine and to reconquer these documents for spiritual science. Why are there four documents?

People have not always thought as they do today. There were times when the Gospels were not in the hands of everyone, but only of very few people, precisely those who were in charge of spiritual life in the first centuries of Christianity. Why do people today not ask themselves: Were these people not complete fools that they did not see that the Gospels contradict each other? Or were they so benighted that they did not see these contradictions? The best of their age accepted these documents in such a way that they looked up humbly and were glad that we have four gospels, of which today's people say they cannot be documents because they contradict each other!

Now, without dwelling on this any longer, we want to draw attention to how the Gospels were received in the first centuries of Christianity, and how they must be received. They were received in those times in such a way that one can compare it to this: If we take a photograph of the bouquet of flowers standing here from four sides, we get four photographs. If we look at them individually, they differ from each other, but if you look at a photograph like this, you can get an idea of the bouquet. Now someone comes along and takes a photograph from a different side. You compare the two pictures and find: Yes, these are two completely different pictures ; they cannot represent the same thing. And yet, one will then have a more complete picture of it; and only when one has taken pictures of the bouquet from four sides and compares all four pictures with each other, will one obtain a complete picture of the real bouquet. — So one has to take the four Gospels as characterizing the same fact from four different sides.

Why is the same fact now characterized from four different sides? Because it was known that each of the writers of these Gospels was imbued with a great, modest humility, a humility that told him: This is the greatest event of earthly evolution; you dare not fully describe it, but you may only describe the side that you, according to your knowledge, are able to describe. In humble modesty, the writer of the Gospel of Luke refrained from describing any other side than the one that was close to him because of his special spiritual education, which told him that Christ Jesus was the one individuality in whom the greatest development of love lived, a love to the point of sacrifice. How does this love reveal itself? The writer of the Gospel of Luke describes it, saying to himself: I am unable to describe the whole event; therefore I will limit myself to describing only this aspect, this love.

We can only understand this limitation of the Gospel writers to a particular area if we gain a little insight into the initiation process of the ancient mystery service. Only from this point of view can we understand the attitude of the Evangelists. They know that initiation is the leading of human beings to the higher, supersensible worlds, the living into the higher, supersensible worlds, the awakening of the soul powers, the awakening of those powers and abilities that otherwise remain hidden and slumber in the soul. Such initiations have always existed. In pre-Christian times, the ancient mysteries of the Egyptians and Chaldeans existed, in which people who were ready were led up into the higher worlds. Only there the work was done in a very special way, in a way that can no longer be fully carried out today. Today, as you know, human beings have three soul powers: thinking, feeling and willing. In everyday life, the human being applies these three soul forces in such a way that they are all three active, so to speak, in his dealings with the outside world.

An example will make clear how these three soul powers are active. You are walking across a meadow. You see a flower. You form an idea about it: you think. You like the flower: you feel that the flower is beautiful; feeling has joined with thinking. And then you desire to pick the flower: you thus activate the will. Thus thinking, feeling and willing were active in your soul. And now survey the whole life of man: insofar as it is soul life, it is a confusion of thinking, feeling and willing. And man gets through life by these three forces interacting. The soul lives in thinking, feeling and willing.

When a person is led up into the higher worlds, this is an expression of these three powers as they are in ordinary life. One can develop thinking higher, so that it becomes vision. And in this way one can also raise feeling and willing into the spiritual world. This is what initiation consists of.

Those who have looked around a bit in “How to Know Higher Worlds” will have read about what happens when a person develops thinking, feeling and willing up into the spiritual worlds. What is called “splitting of the personality” occurs. The three forces are usually organically connected: a person thinks, feels and wills in one personality. But in the process of evolution upward into the higher worlds, these three powers are torn apart. While they are otherwise powers, they now become independent entities when man evolves upward into the higher worlds. Three independent entities arise: a thinking, a feeling and a willing entity. This is what is meant by the danger that man's soul life could be torn apart. If a person does not proceed in the right way when treading the path of higher knowledge, it may happen that he raises his thinking to the higher regions. Then he may indeed see into the higher worlds, but he stops there; he can kill the will, or it can take quite different paths. Today it happens that the I rises above itself, that the I can become a ruler, that it can reign as king over the three soul powers, namely over thinking, feeling and willing.

In ancient times this was not the case. In the pre-Christian mystery schools, the principle of division of labor prevailed. For example, a person was accepted into the initiation sites and it was said: This person is particularly suited to develop the power of thinking. - Then his thinking was developed, raised to a higher level; he was made a sage who sees through the spiritual connections that lie behind all sensual events. That was one category of initiates from the ancient mystery sites: the sages.

Other people were trained in the mystery schools in such a way that the forces of feeling slumbering in them were developed higher, while thinking and willing were left at their original level. Feeling was thus elevated. When a person's feeling is particularly developed, he acquires special qualities. There is an essential difference between a person whose feeling had been developed in an ancient mystery center and a person of today. The influence of such a developed person, the soul-psychic influence, was much stronger than it is today. This development of the powers of feeling meant that the soul of such a person could exert a powerful influence on the souls of those around him. Thus those who had particularly developed the sphere of feeling became the healers of their fellow human beings. By developing their feeling through the sacrificial service, they were called upon to have a healing effect on other people.

The third level of initiates were those in whom the will had been developed. These were the magicians. Thus there were three types of initiates: the magicians, the healers and the wise. These were people who received their training in the mystery schools of antiquity. Today it would no longer be possible to develop one of these qualities in a one-sided way because today it is no longer possible to achieve such a high degree of harmony between individuals as was possible in the mystery schools of antiquity. Those who were wise in the ancient mystery schools, so to speak, renounced it. That is how it is. Those who were healers carried out the instructions of the wise with the greatest obedience, renounced higher wisdom, and used their powers of feeling as directed by the wise.

Besides these, there was still a fourth category of people in the mystery temples. These were necessary. There were cases in these temples where it was not possible for the three categories of initiates to have the right effect in the outside world. Some things could not be done by the initiate of one of these three categories, but only by the presence of a fourth category of people. This consisted in admitting certain individuals who were suitable for it into the mystery centres and saying to themselves: those high degrees of initiation that can be developed in the wise men, healers and magicians cannot be developed in the people of this fourth category. But one could go so far with them that one could raise each individual ability of the other three categories to a certain degree. No ability was as strongly developed as in the one-sidedly developed initiates who were sages, healers or magicians; but in return, a certain harmony of all three qualities was present in this fourth. Such an initiate represents in himself the harmony of the other three initiates. And now it is necessary for certain tasks to abandon all sense of one's own individuality and to rely entirely on the word of someone who is in a certain respect inferior to oneself. So there were cases in the ancient mystery schools where neither the wise nor the healers nor the magicians made the decisions, but they simply placed their powers at the service of those who were not as advanced as they were. Nevertheless, they placed their powers at the service of this fourth initiate. It always turned out that world evolution progressed better when the higher one obeyed the lower one in such cases.

This was the case in the Oriental mystery centers, where those of higher station applied their powers as the fourth one directed, whom they obeyed blindly. In the mystery centers of Europe there were colleges of twelve who were initiated, and at the head of them was a thirteenth who was not initiated; they obeyed him. Whatever should happen, he should indicate. He relied on his instinctive will and the others, who were higher than he, carried out what he indicated. You can only understand this if you look back to those times when there was still great trust in a being in the world that was not bound to human thinking and willing. Today man considers himself to be the cleverest being in the world. But it was not always so. There were times when man said to himself: Yes, it is actually true that I can develop to a high level. I have the ability to do so, but I must not assume that just now I am already the creature in the world that has progressed furthest in its development.

We can see from a simple example that this is a truth. Let us remember that it was only in the course of historical development that people gradually invented paper, namely, that activity by which certain substances are formed into paper. The wasp has been able to do this for a long time! Now man would have to say to himself: I had to acquire my knowledge only at a relatively late time. The wasp could not have learned its art from man; divine art rules in its ability. In what the wasp does, it is interwoven with divine wisdom.

Similar feelings inspired such initiates, who came together in groups of twelve in pre-Christian times. They said to themselves: “We have certainly developed great powers within us, but with all our powers and abilities we achieve only that which is prescribed at a lower level in less developed individualities by higher divine beings.” They look to a thirteenth, who, in comparison to them, had remained at a childlike, naive level. They said: He does not have human wisdom within him as we do, but he is still imbued with divine wisdom. The oriental wise men, healers and magicians also said: We follow the one who is not as far along as we are, but who is at a stage where he still has divine wisdom within him. This renunciation spread like a magic breath over the ancient mysteries that had known this. And now you will remember Goethe's poem “The Mysteries”, where a thirteenth member is introduced into the circle of important men, Brother Mark. Here we have an apparition that is deeply rooted in human nature, even if it is far removed from today's man, consisting in the fact that an initiate of the fourth category, who does not reach such a high level through the development of his own powers as the others do, is nevertheless so respected that he leads the other twelve.

We therefore have four types of initiates: healers, sages, magicians and the fourth type, which was called “human being” in a special sense. Four such initiates set out to describe the greatest event in the evolution of the earth: a sage, a healer, a magician and a human being in the sense of the initiates of the fourth category. One described it from the standpoint of the ordinary man, one is the magician who had a special understanding of the willpower of the Christ and enshrined it in his Gospel, and one is the healer who wrote the Gospel of Luke. That is why you find the tradition in which Luke is seen as a physician, and that also corresponds to the facts that Luke stands by his fellow human beings in sacrificial love. Then there is a wise man who has written what constitutes the wisdom of the nature of Christ.

These are the four initiates who, renouncing to describe the whole, said to themselves: We can only describe what is close to our soul. Indeed, the humble modesty of these four people, who refrained from giving the whole picture of Christ, but only what they could see, could perceive according to their particular individuality, appears as something lofty and powerful compared to the consciousness of today's man, who does not doubt that he can grasp even the highest things with his intellect in every respect.

Having already examined two sides of this momentous event in Basel in the lectures on the Gospels of Luke and John, today I would like to say a few words about the Gospel of Matthew. We could just as easily link to the Gospel of Mark. But there are certain reasons why I have chosen to describe this great event from a spiritual point of view after taking over, and why I have now chosen the Gospel of Matthew after the Gospels of Luke and John. The reason for this is that one should develop a feeling for how to approach the understanding of this world event in humble modesty. We learn great truths in the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of John. But what we encounter in the Gospel of Mark is so harrowing in part that if one has not yet heard the various things that tie in with the Gospel of Matthew, one would, so to speak, believe that there are profound contradictions between the Gospel of Mark and the other Gospels. One would not be able to cope with the Gospel of Mark, because it is in this gospel that the greatest, the most harrowing truths of the world are communicated; not the highest, these are contained in the Gospel of John. Therefore, today I will speak about the Gospel of Matthew.

In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we saw that the most diverse spiritual currents in the world merged to form a common stream at the time of the Christ event. It has been shown how, on the one hand, the teaching of compassion and love from the Buddha flows into Christianity; and on the other hand, it has been shown how the teaching of Zarathustra has flowed into Christianity. But all pre-Christian spiritual currents have also flowed into this significant event. And the Gospel of Matthew shows particularly how the ancient Hebrew spiritual current, the spiritual current of ancient Judaism, has flowed into it, so that in order to understand the Gospel of Matthew, one must speak of the actual mission of the ancient Jewish people.

As you know, spiritual research draws not only from the Gospels, but also from the spiritual world, from the imperishable Akasha Chronicle. If all the Gospels had been lost due to some cataclysm on earth, what spiritual research has to say about the events in Palestine could still be said from the pure sources available to spiritual research. When we have this from the pure sources available to spiritual research, we compare it with the great records, the Gospels, and then that wonderful agreement appears, which instills in us a great reverence for the Gospels, to which we look, and from which it becomes clear to us what high source they must come from. For the writers of the Gospels tell us what we can only understand if we are schooled in the way spiritual science gives us to look.

What is the mission of the Hebrew people? To understand this, we must look back a little on the course of human development. You know that human abilities have developed. Only materialistic science, which sees no further than the tip of its nose, believes that these human abilities have developed by themselves. At the most, it still believes that humanity has developed from animality, but it is not able to go back to real soul abilities. Spiritual science, however, knows that the soul abilities thousands of years ago were different from today. Thus, in ancient times, people had what is called a dull, dim clairvoyance. It was only in later times that today's consciousness gradually emerged from this clairvoyance; and this development began at a very specific point in time, when this kind of imagination began to affect humanity.

If we look back to ancient Indian culture, we find a kind of clairvoyance there. Today's man must look at the things around him if he wants to get to know them. The ancient Indian did not get to know things in the way he looks at them now. There was no science like the one taught to children today. A wise man in ancient India received his knowledge through inner inspiration when he turned his inner self completely away from the outer world, when he rested in himself or in his higher being. He called this his union with Brahma. He thus received the knowledge through inner inspiration. It was knowledge based entirely on clairvoyant inspiration. External knowledge, on the other hand, was maya for him.

But this clairvoyance increasingly receded. Even in the ancient Persian culture there was a strong admixture of external observation, even if inner knowledge still prevailed. Similarly, in the third cultural epoch, inner inspiration was still present, even though people had already progressed in grasping external things. In ancient Chaldea, there was what is called astrology today; it was a kind of star science. Today, in the outer sciences, no one knows anything about the essence of astrology. Today, no matter how closely you examine the stone records, you know nothing about the actual essence of astrology. No one today can evoke the feeling that astrology evoked for the ancient Chaldeans. It was not knowledge born of observation of the starry heavens. The Chaldean did not study the physical planet Mars by turning his gaze up to it, but what was known of it by inwardly allowing the clairvoyantly inspired knowledge to shine forth. This is not an external process of combining, and there is no full awareness of what this knowledge reveals about the outer space of the heavens. In the ancient places of initiation, only the first concepts of knowledge of the world of the stars arose. In what is communicated there about the evolution of the Earth and the connections between the Earth and Mars, and so on, we still have knowledge born out of the inner being. Similarly, Egyptian geometry was knowledge born out of the inner being and applied only to the measurement of the outer field. It was only through the development of other powers that the ancient Chaldeans were able to arrive at external knowledge. This mission of bringing humanity to an external, combining knowledge was assigned by the spiritual leaders of world evolution to the Hebrew people. All the knowledge of the Indians, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, however significant it was, did not require a physical brain. This knowledge was stored in the etheric body, which is not bound to the physical brain and functions freely. When man works freely in the etheric body, the picture arises that constitutes the knowledge of those ancient peoples; just as even today all clairvoyant knowledge arises when man is able to lift the etheric body out of the physical body, not to use his physical brain.

Mankind should acquire the ability to perceive through its brain. For this purpose, the personality had to be chosen that had the most suitable brain, that was least predisposed to clairvoyant inspiration, but that could use the brain. Here we have another point where reading the Akasha Chronicle confirms the facts of the Bible. What is written in the Bible is correct to the letter. Indeed, a personality had been chosen who, by virtue of her physical organization, had the most suitable brain to establish what made spiritual work possible through the brain. This personality was Abraham. He was chosen to fulfill that mission which was to enable people to perceive the outside world through their physical brain. It was a personality that was least likely to have any kind of inspiration, but who logically explored the external phenomena in terms of measure, number and weight. An older tradition regards Abraham as the inventor of mathematics, and it has more right than today's outer world-sense.

Now it is important that this mission be properly introduced into the world. Let us consider how a mission was transmitted in the past. How was it propagated in humanity? It was transmitted from teacher to pupil. He who had an inspiration transmitted it to his successor. But that which was transmitted to the ancient Hebrew people was bound to a physical tool that could not simply be passed on to descendants if they did not have the appropriate brain. Therefore, it had to be bound to physical inheritance, had to be inherited through generations. It was not a group of disciples that followed Abraham, but a people to whom this brain could be inherited through generations. Therefore, Abraham became the progenitor of his people.

It is wonderful to see from the Bible how the leading spiritual powers entrusted this mission to Abraham. What was to be given to humanity through the mission of Abraham? What had been known earlier through inspiration was to be rediscovered; it was now to be achieved again through mere combination on a different level. Through this, what had been found through combination had to be modeled according to the law. Therefore, Yahweh said: This mission should be an image of the highest lawfulness that we know. He said: Your descendants shall be organized as the number of stars in the sky. It is a complete misunderstanding to translate this passage from the Bible as if Yahweh had said that Abraham's descendants should be as numerous as the stars in the sky, but that they should reproduce in a lawful manner, so that the lawfulness is expressed as the lawfulness of the firmament.

Abraham had a son Isaac and a grandson Jacob. We see how the twelve tribes of the Jewish people descended from him. These twelve tribes are a reproduction of the lawfulness of the twelve signs of the zodiac. A new organization of the people was to be ordered in Abraham like the stars in the sky. So we see how spiritual science extracts the real meaning from the documents of the Bible, and there we get a correct idea of this deepest document of humanity. What is old clairvoyance should be renounced. No longer should existence take place in such a way that one keeps one's gaze averted from the outer world, but man's gaze should penetrate and search the outer world. But this mission was a gift that was to come to mankind from outside. Abraham had the mission to pass on the ability of the brain to his descendants. It was to be a gift, and so we see that Abraham receives all the Jewish people as a gift. What could a spiritual power have given to Zarathustra? A teaching, something one-sidedly spiritual; but to Abraham there had to be a gift of his people, a real gift based on the reproduction of the physical brain. How were these people given to him? By his willingness to sacrifice his son. If he had done that, there would have been no Jewish people. By receiving his son back, he received the entire Jewish people as a gift from outside. In the moment when Abraham receives back Isaac, whom he was supposed to sacrifice, he receives the entire Jewish people, his descendants, back as a gift. This is a gift from Yahweh to Abraham. And so the last of the gifts of clairvoyance was also given. The individual gifts of clairvoyance are divided into twelve, and they are represented by the twelve constellations, for they are gifts of heaven. The last of these gifts of clairvoyance was sacrificed by Abraham in order to receive the people of Israel. The ram that Abraham sacrificed in place of his son is the image of the last of the gifts of clairvoyance. Thus the Jewish people received the mission to develop the ability to combine, to get to know world phenomena through their own abilities, which are contained in the brain, to a certain unity, which is presented as Jahve. And this mission is so exacting that everything inherited from the earlier form of perception is eliminated from the Jewish people, namely, the old form of clairvoyance. Joseph still had dreams of the old clairvoyant kind. He still used the old form of clairvoyance; but he was cast out of the community because the Jewish people had the mission to eliminate this old ability of clairvoyance from its development. And so Joseph is sent away. But this makes him the mediator between the Jewish people and that which they must accept in order to fulfill their cultural mission. Abraham's sons had renounced the inspiration that comes from within; so they had to receive from without what would otherwise have come to them as inspiration, as a message from within. When they are led to Egypt, they receive it through Moses, they who are now the missionaries of external physical thinking. What the other peoples have received through inspiration, they now receive from outside as law. It is indeed the case that what we call the Ten Commandments is the same as what other people have received through inner inspiration. From Egypt, through Moses, the Jews received from outside as commandments what should actually have been heavenly inspirations.

After receiving the inspirations from Egypt, this people settled in Palestine. This nation was destined to give birth to the one bearer of the Christ out of its own ranks. These qualities, handed down from generation to generation, were to produce the physical body of Jesus; therefore all the abilities that were present in Abraham in the first instance must add up. The entire Jewish nation had to mature and develop to such an extent that what was present in Abraham as an inclination was brought to its highest peak in one descendant. To understand this, we must draw a comparison with the development of an individual human being. During the first seven years, it is mainly the physical body that develops. From the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year, i.e. in the second cycle of life, it is the etheric body that develops, then the astral body; only then does the I emerge. What is present first as a predisposition only comes out when these three bodies have developed. This also applies to an entire nation. The Abraham predisposition first had to be incorporated into the physical, etheric and astral bodies before it could be taken up by the ego. We have to divide the development of the Jewish people into three epochs. What takes seven years in the development of an individual human being is spread over seven generations in the development of a nation. Or, as you know, in inherited traits a son does not resemble his father so much as his grandfather. Therefore, two times seven, or fourteen generations, are actually necessary to allow a people to mature, which unfolds in an individual human being between birth and the change of teeth. Fourteen generations developed the qualities that were present in Abraham in his physical body; fourteen more generations in the etheric body and fourteen more in the astral body. Only then was it possible to allow such a human being to mature as was needed by the Christ-being.

This is described by Matthew in the first chapter of his Gospel, where he says that from Abraham to David fourteen generations passed, from David to the Babylonian captivity fourteen more generations, and from there to Jesus fourteen further generations, thus three times fourteen or six times seven generations had to pass. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew based his book on this profound wisdom. That which was Abraham's specific mission was also to flow into the body of Christ Jesus; but this could only happen through the succession of generations in a lawful manner. Then this child Jesus, who derived from Abraham through forty-two generations, was able to complete the mission of the patriarch. Matthew describes to us the wonderful lawfulness with which this happened.

When a cycle of development is complete, a brief repetition of the earlier facts at a higher level must take place, and indeed we find this repetition wonderfully described in the Gospel of Matthew. Abraham comes from Ur in Chaldea, migrates to Canaan, then goes to Egypt and back to Canaan again. That is his journey. The reborn Zarathustra was incarnated six centuries before our era as a great teacher of the Chaldean mystery schools under the name Zarathos. That was his last incarnation before he was reborn in Jesus. Now he walks the same path that Abraham came by. He starts from roughly the same place that Abraham began his journey. And in the spiritual world he also follows the route that Abraham took, all the way to Bethlehem. So the path that Abraham covered physically is taken spiritually by Zarathustra. And the successors of those who were his students six hundred years ago follow him again in the star that shows them the way to Bethlehem. They retrace the steps of Zarathustra as he takes incarnation. Then he arrives there and is reborn in Canaan.

In the Old Testament, we see Joseph being led to Egypt as a result of a dream; now we see another Joseph being led to Egypt physically as a result of a dream. And so the boy is physically led back to where the Jewish people await the Redeemer. The ancient Jewish people also received food from Joseph during the famine in Egypt. If you draw on a map the same route taken by the Magi, and further compare the route that Joseph, the son of Jacob, was led to Egypt with that traveled by the Solomonic Christ Child, you will find that the corresponding routes are almost exactly the same. There are some slight deviations, but these are due to different circumstances. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew describes the route so precisely.

It is precisely from such facts, which we can know even if all the written Gospels were to be lost, that we get the great reverence for the Gospels. Mankind could come to ever higher truths and achieve ever greater wisdom, of which perhaps very little is suspected even today; and when, after millions of years, we know much, much more about the mighty event, we can also draw this wisdom from the Gospels. This, again, is a piece that can lead us further to an understanding of the Christ event. Just as the teaching of Buddha and of Zarathustra, so also the nature of the Hebrew people has been incorporated into the nature of Christ Jesus. All that had appeared on earth before was reborn in a higher form through Christianity. All that was previously on earth in the way of spiritual culture came to earth through the great leader of earthly development, 'Christ, who sent to earth those to whom he had first given the mission of preparing on earth what he had to do. He was still in the heights of heaven and sent the messengers down. And they, the great founders of religions, had to prepare people for his coming. The last of these messengers was the Buddha, who brought the teaching of compassion and love. But there were other Bodhisattvas before, and after Christ there will be other Bodhisattvas who will have to expand what came to earth through Christ Jesus.

It will be good if people listen to the Bodhisattvas who come afterwards, because they are his servants. Every time a Bodhisattva appears in the future, for example after three thousand years, people will understand the Christ, who outshines everything, a little better. Christ is the one who is the deepest essence, and the others are there so that Christ may be better understood. Therefore, we say that Christ has sent the bodhisattvas before to prepare humanity for him; and he sends them after so that the greatest act of earth evolution can be better and better understood. We are only at the beginning of our comprehension of this Entity, and the more Sages and Bodhisattvas come to earth, the better we shall understand the Christ. Through all this wisdom that is pouring down upon the earth, we shall be able to recognize the Christ more fully.

So we stand on earth as seeking human beings. We have begun to struggle to understand the Christ. We have applied what we have recognized about him and will apply everything the bodhisattvas teach in the future to better understand the Master of all bodhisattvas, the center of our system. In this way, humanity will become ever wiser and will come to know the Christ ever better. However, it will only understand him fully when the last of the Bodhisattvas has done his duty and brought the teaching that is necessary to enable us to grasp the deepest essence of earthly existence, the Christ Jesus.