The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Whoever turns to the Gospel of St. Luke will, to begin with, only be able to feel dimly something of what it contains; but an inkling will then dawn on him that whole worlds, vast spiritual worlds, are revealed by this Gospel. After what was said in the last lecture, this will be obvious to us, for as we heard, spiritual research shows how the Buddhistic world-conception, with everything it was able to give to mankind, flowed into the Gospel of St. Luke. It may truly be said that Buddhism radiates from this Gospel, but in a special form, comprehensible to the simplest and most unsophisticated mind.

As could be gathered from the last lecture and will become particularly clear to-day, to understand Buddhism as presented to the world in the teachings of the great Buddha demands the application of lofty conceptions and an ascent to the pure, ethereal heights of the Spirit; a very great deal of preparation is required to grasp the essence of Buddhism. Its spiritual substance is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke in a form that can influence everyone who recognizes concepts and ideas that are essential for humanity. This will be readily understood when we get to the root of the mystery underlying the Gospel of St. Luke. Not only are the spiritual attainments of Buddhism presented to us through this Gospel; they come before us in an even nobler form, as though raised to a level higher than when they were a gift to humanity in India some six hundred years before our era.

In the lecture yesterday we spoke of Buddhism as the purest teaching of compassion and love; from the place in the world where Buddha worked a gospel of love and compassion streamed into the whole spiritual evolution of the Earth. The gospel of love and compassion lives in the true Buddhist when his own heart feels the suffering confronting him in the outer world from all living creatures. There we encounter Buddhistic love and compassion in the fullest sense of the words; but from the Gospel of St. Luke there streams to us something that is more than this all-embracing love and compassion. It might be described as the translation of love and compassion into deed. Compassion in the highest sense of the word is the ideal of the Buddhist; the aim of one who lives according to the message of the Gospel of St. Luke is to unfold love that acts. The true Buddhist can himself share in the sufferings of the sick; from the Gospel of St. Luke comes the call to take active steps to do whatever is possible to bring about healing. Buddhism helps us to understand everything that stirs the human soul; the Gospel of St. Luke calls upon us to abstain from passing judgment, to do more than is done to us, to give more than we receive! Although in this Gospel there is the purest, most genuine Buddhism, love translated into deed must be regarded as a progression, a sublimation, of Buddhism.

This aspect of Christianity—Buddhism raised to a higher level—could be truly described only by one possessed of the heart and disposition of the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. It was eminently possible for him to portray Christ Jesus as the Healer of body and soul because having himself worked as a physician he was able to write in the way that appealed so deeply to the hearts of men. That he recorded what he had to say about Christ Jesus from the standpoint of a physician will become more and more apparent as we penetrate into the depths of the Gospel.

But something else strikes us when we consider what an impression this Gospel can make upon even the most childlike natures. The lofty teachings of Buddhism, to understand which mature intelligence is required, appear to us in the Gospel of St. Luke as though rejuvenated, as though born anew from a fountain of youth. Buddhism is a fruit on the tree of humanity, and when we find it again in this Gospel it seems to be like a rejuvenation of what it had previously been. It is only possible to understand this rejuvenation by paying close attention to the great Buddha's teachings themselves and discerning with spiritual eyes the powers working in Buddha's soul.

In the first place it must be remembered that the Buddha had been a Bodhisattva, that is to say, a very lofty Being able to gaze deeply into the mysteries of existence. As a Bodhisattva, the Buddha had participated in the evolution of humanity throughout the ages. When in the epoch following Atlantis the first post-Atlantean civilization was established and promoted, Buddha was already present as Bodhisattva and, acting as an intermediary, conveyed to man from the spiritual worlds the teachings indicated in the lecture yesterday. He had been present in Atlantean and even in Lemurian times. And because he had reached such a high stage of development, he was also able, during the twenty-nine years of his final existence as Bodhisattva, from his birth to the moment when he became Buddha, to recollect stage by stage all the communities in which he had lived before incarnating for the last time in India. He could look back upon his participation in the labours of humanity, upon his existence in the divine-spiritual worlds in order that he might bring down from there what it was his mission to impart to mankind. It was indicated yesterday that even an Individuality of this lofty rank must live through again, briefly at any rate, what he has already learnt. Thus Buddha describes how while still a Bodhisattva he gradually rose to higher stages of consciousness, how his spiritual vision became ever more perfect and his enlightenment complete.

We are told how he described to his disciples the path his soul had traversed and how he was able by degrees to recollect his experiences in the past. He spoke to them somewhat as follows. ‘There was a time, O ye monks, when an all-pervading light appeared to me from the spiritual world, but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it—neither forms, nor pictures: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to see not only the light, but single pictures, single forms, within the light; but I could not distinguish what these forms and pictures denoted: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to realize that spiritual beings were expressing themselves in these forms and pictures; but again I could not distinguish to what kingdoms of the spiritual world these beings belonged: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I learnt to know to which of the various kingdoms of the spiritual world these several beings belonged; but I could not yet distinguish through what actions they had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, nor what was their condition of soul: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I could discern through what actions these spiritual beings had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, and what was their condition of soul; but I could not yet distinguish with which particular spiritual beings I myself had lived in former times, nor how I was related to them: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I was able to know that I was together with certain beings in particular epochs and was related to them in this way or in that: I knew what my previous lives had been. Now my enlightenment was pure!’

In this way Buddha indicated to his disciples how he had gradually worked his way to knowledge which, although he had already attained it in an earlier epoch, had nevertheless to be freshly acquired in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each successive incarnation. In Buddha's case this knowledge had necessarily to be in a form in keeping with his complete descent into a physical human body. If we enter into these things with the right feeling we shall get an inkling of the greatness and significance of the Individuality who incarnated at that time in the King's son of the family of Sakya. Buddha knew that the world he himself could again experience and behold would be inaccessible to men's ordinary faculty of vision in the immediate present and future. Only ‘Initiates’—and Buddha himself was an Initiate—could gaze into the spiritual world; for normal humanity this was no longer possible. Inherited remains of the old clairvoyance had become increasingly rare. But Buddha had not come to speak to men only of what Initiates had to say; his primary mission was to convey to them knowledge of the forces that must flow out of the human soul itself. Hence he could not speak only of the fruits of his own enlightenment, but he said to himself: ‘I must speak to men of what they can attain through the higher development of their own inner nature and of the faculties belonging to this epoch.

In the course of Earth evolution men will gradually come to recognize the content of Buddha's teaching as something that their own reason, their own soul, tells them. But long, long ages will have to pass before all men are mature enough to produce out of their own souls what Buddha was the first to bring to expression in the form of pure knowledge. For to develop certain faculties in later ages is not the same as to bring them forth for the first time from the depths of the human soul. Let us take another example. To-day, even the young are able to assimiliate the principles of logic and unfold logical thinking. Logical thinking is now one of the general faculties possessed by man and developed from his own inner nature. But it was in Aristotle, the great Greek thinker, that this faculty first arose from a human soul. There is a difference between bringing forth something for the first time from the soul and bringing it forth after it has already been developing for a period in humanity.

Buddha's message to men was among the very greatest of teachings and will remain so for long, long ages. Hence the soul of a Bodhisattva, the soul of one enlightened to such a supreme degree, was needed in order that this teaching should for the first time become a living power in a human being. Only the highest degree of enlightenment could enable the soul to give birth to what was to become a universal endowment of mankind—namely, the lofty doctrine of compassion and love. Buddha's message had to be presented in words familiar to the humanity of that time, especially to the people of his homeland. Reference has already been made to the fact that at the time of Buddha the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies were being taught in India. From them were derived the terminologies and concepts in use at the time. Anyone who brought a new message had necessarily to use current parlance, and Buddha too clothed what was living within him in concepts familiar to his contemporaries. True, he re-cast these concepts into completely new forms but he was obliged to use them. The principle of all evolution must be that the future is based on the past. And so Buddha clothed his sublime wisdom in expressions customary in the Indian teachings of that time.

We must now try to picture what Buddha experienced during the seven-day period of his ‘Enlightenment’ under the Bodhi-tree. This teaching was to become the deepest, most intimate concern of mankind. Let us therefore try to conceive, even if with thoughts only approximately adequate, what profound experiences were undergone by Buddha under the Bodhi-tree and then came to expression in his soul.

He might have said that there were times in the ancient past when many human beings were dimly clairvoyant and that in an even more distant past this was the case with everyone. What does it mean—to be ‘dimly clairvoyant’, or ‘clairvoyant’? To be clairvoyant means to be able to use the organs of the etheric body. When a man is able to use the organs of his astral body only, he can, it is true, inwardly feel and experience profound mysteries, but there can be no actual vision. Clairvoyance cannot arise until what is experienced in the astral body makes its ‘impress’ in the etheric body. Even the old, dim clairvoyance originated from the fact that in the etheric body, which had not yet passed completely into the physical body, there were organs which it was still possible for ancient humanity to use. What, therefore, was it that men lost in the course of time? They lost the capacity to use the organs of the etheric body! They were obliged to make use of the external organs of the physical body only, experiencing in the astral body, in the form of thoughts, feelings and mental pictures, what the physical body transmitted. All this passed through the soul of the great Buddha as the expression of what he experienced. He said to himself: ‘Men have lost the capacity to use the organs of their etheric bodies. They experience in their astral bodies what they learn from the outer world through the instrumentality of their physical bodies.’

Buddha now concerned himself with this significant question: ‘When the eye perceives the colour red, when the ear hears a sound, a tone, when the sense of taste has received some impression, under normal conditions these impressions become concepts and ideas, are inwardly experienced in the astral body. If they were experienced in this way alone, they could not, in normal circumstances, be accompanied by pain and suffering. Were man simply to abandon himself to the impressions of the outer world as the latter with its light, colours, sounds, and so forth, affects his senses, he would pass through the world without experiencing pain and suffering from the impressions made upon him. Only under certain conditions can pain and suffering be experienced by man.’

Hence the great Buddha sought to discover the conditions under which man experiences pain, suffering, cares and afflictions. When and why do the impressions of the outer world become fraught with suffering? Then he said to himself: Looking back into ancient times, it is revealed that in men's earlier incarnations on the Earth certain beings worked into their astral bodies from two sides. In the course of incarnations through the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis, the Luciferic beings penetrated into human nature, and their influences took actual effect in the human astral body. Then, from the Atlantean epoch onwards, man was also worked upon by beings under the leadership of Ahriman. Thus in the course of his earlier incarnations, man was subjected to the influences of both the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Had these beings not worked upon him, he could have acquired neither freedom nor the capacity to distinguish between good and evil, nor free will. From a higher point of view, therefore, it is fortunate that these influences were exercised upon him, although it is true that in a certain respect they led him from divine-spiritual heights more deeply into material existence than he would otherwise have descended.

The great Buddha could therefore say that man bears within himself influences due to the invasion of Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. These influences have remained with him from earlier incarnations. When, with his old clairvoyance, man was still able to gaze into the spiritual world, he perceived the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman and could clearly distinguish them. He could say: This particular influence comes from Lucifer, this other from Ahriman. And inasmuch as with his vision of the astral world he perceived the harmful influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, he could reckon with and protect himself from them. He knew too, how he had come into contact with these Beings. There was a time—so said Buddha—when men knew whence came the influences they had borne within themselves from incarnation to incarnation since bygone ages. But with the loss of the old clairvoyance this knowledge was also lost; man is now ignorant of the influences that have worked upon his soul through the series of incarnations. The earlier clairvoyant knowledge has been replaced by ignorance. Darkness now envelops man; he cannot perceive whence come these influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, but they are there within him! He has within him something of which he knows nothing. It would be folly to deny the reality and effectiveness of something that exists, even though people are ignorant of it. The influences that have penetrated into man from incarnation to incarnation are working in him. They are there and they work through his whole life—only he is unaware of them!

What effect have these influences in man? Although he cannot actually recognize them for what they are, he feels them; there is a power within him that is the expression of what has continued from incarnation to incarnation and has entered into his present form of existence. These forces, the nature of which man cannot recognize, are represented by his desire for external life, for experience in the world, by his thirst and craving for life. Thus the ancient Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences work within man as the thirst, the craving for existence. This ‘thirst for existence’ continues from incarnation to incarnation. This, in effect, is what the great Buddha said. But to his intimate pupils he gave more detailed explanations.

How he presented what he thus felt can be understood only if there has been a certain preparation through Anthroposophy. We know that when a man dies his astral body and his Ego leave the physical and etheric bodies. Then he has before him, for a certain time, the great memory-tableau of his last life in the form of a vast picture. The main part of his etheric body is then cast off as a second corpse and something like an extract or essence of this etheric body remains; he bears this extract with him through the periods of Kamaloka and Devachan and brings it back again into his next incarnation. While he is in Kamaloka there is inscribed into this life-extract everything he has experienced through his deeds, everything that has been incurred in the way of human Karma and for which he has to make compensation. All this unites with the extract of the etheric body which passes on from one incarnation to another and man brings it with him when he again comes into existence through birth. The term in Oriental literature for what we call ‘etheric body’ is ‘Linga Sharira’. Thus it is an extract of Linga Sharira that man takes with him from incarnation to incarnation.

Buddha was able to say: At birth, the human being brings with him, in his Linga Sharira, everything it contains from his former incarnations; it is inscribed there everything of which man, in the present epoch, knows nothing and over which spreads the darkness of ignorance, although it asserts itself as the ‘thirst for existence’, the ‘craving for life’. In what is called the ‘craving for life’, Buddha saw everything that comes from previous incarnations and drives man to long avidly for enjoyment in the world, so that he does not merely move though the world of colours, tones and other impressions, but yearns for this world. This force exists in man from previous incarnations. Buddha's pupils called it ‘Samskara’. Buddha spoke to his intimate pupils to the following effect.—What is characteristic of man is his ignorance, his ‘non-perception’ of something very significant that is in him. Because of this ignorance, this non-perception, everything that confronts man from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings and to which he might otherwise adopt an effective attitude, is transformed into the ‘thirst for existence’, into slumbering forces which rumble darkly within him from previous incarnations. Man's present thinking has developed from ‘Samskara’ and this is why, in the present cycle of human evolution, nobody is able, without further effort, to think objectively.

Mark well the fine distinction made clear by Buddha to his pupils: the distinction between objective thinking which has nothing but the ‘object’ in view, and thinking influenced by the forces arising from the Linga Sharira. Consider how you acquire your ‘opinions’ about things; ask yourselves how much you acquire from these things because they please you and how much because you observe them objectively. Everything acquired as an apparent truth, not as the result of objective thinking, but because old inclinations have been brought from previous incarnations—all this, according to Buddha, forms an ‘inner organ of thought’. This organ of thought comprises the sum-total of what a man thinks because certain experiences in former incarnations remain in his Linga Sharira as a residue. Buddha saw in the inner being of man a kind of inner organ of thought formed from Samskara, and he said: ‘It is this thought-substance that forms in man what is called his ‘present individuality’—in Buddhism, ‘Name and Form’, or ‘Kamarupa’. ‘Ahamkara’ is the term used in another philosophy.

Buddha spoke to his pupils somewhat as follows. In primeval times, when men were still clairvoyant and beheld the world lying behind physical existence, they all, in a certain sense, saw the same, for the objective world is the same for everyone. But when the darkness of ignorance spread over the world, each man brought with him individual capacities which distinguished him from his fellows. This made him into a being best described as having a particular form of soul. Each human being had a name which distinguished him from another—each had an ‘Ahamkara’. What is thus created in man's inner nature under the influence of what he has brought with him from former incarnations and accounts for his ‘Name and Form’, his individuality—this builds in him, from within outwards, Manas and the five sense-organs, the so-called ‘six organs’.

Note well that Buddha did not say: ‘The eye is merely formed from within outwards’; but he said: ‘Something that was in Linga Sharira and has been brought over from previous stages of existence is membered into the eye.’ Hence the eye does not see with pure, unclouded vision; it would look into the world of outer existence quite differently if it were not inwardly permeated with the residue of earlier stages of existence. Hence the ear does not hear with full clarity but everything is dimmed by this residue. The result is that there is mingled into all things the desire to see this or that, to hear this or that, to taste or perceive in one way or another. Into everything man encounters in the present cycle of existence there is insinuated what has remained from earlier incarnations as ‘desire’. If this element of desire were absent—so said Buddha—man would look out into the world as a divine being; he would let the world work upon him and no longer desire anything more than is granted to him, nor wish his knowledge to exceed what was bestowed upon him by the divine Powers; he would make no distinction between himself and the outer world, but would feel himself membered into it. He feels himself separated from the rest of the world only because he craves for more and different enjoyment than the world voluntarily offers him. This leads to the consciousness that he is different from the world. If he were satisfied with what is in the world, he would not distinguish himself from it; he would feel his own existence continuing in the outer world. He would never experience what is called ‘contact’ with the outer world, for, not being separate from it, he could not come into ‘contact’ with it. The forming of the ‘six organs’ was responsible for the gradual establishment of ‘contact with the outer world’; contact gave rise to feeling and feeling to the urge to cling to the outer world. But it is because man tries to cling to the outer world that pain, suffering, cares and afflictions arise.

This is what Buddha taught his pupils regarding the ‘inner man’ as the cause of pain, suffering, cares and afflictions. It was a delicately woven, sublime theory—but a theory that sprang directly from life, for an ‘Enlightened One’ had experienced it as a profound truth concerning the humanity of his time. Having guided humanity as Bodhisattva for thousands and thousands of years in accordance with the principles of love and compassion, there dawned in him when he became Buddha, knowledge of the true nature and the causes of suffering. He was able to know why man suffers, and explained this to his intimate disciples. And when his development was so advanced that he could experience the very essence and meaning of human existence in the present cycle of evolution, he summarized it all in the famous sermon at Benares with which he inaugurated his work as Buddha. There he presented in a popular form what he had previously communicated to his disciples in a more intimate way.

He spoke somewhat as follows.—Whoever knows the causes of human existence, realizes that life, as it is, must be fraught with suffering. The first teaching I have to give you concerns suffering in the world. The second teaching concerns the causes of suffering. Wherein do these causes lie? They lie in the fact that the thirst for existence insinuates itself into man from what has remained in him from previous incarnations. Thirst for existence is the cause of suffering. The third teaching concerns the question: How is suffering eliminated from the world? By eliminating its cause; by extinguishing the thirst for existence proceeding from ignorance! Men have lost their former clairvoyant knowledge, have become ignorant, and it is this ignorance that conceals the spiritual world from them. Ignorance is to blame for the thirst for existence and this in turn is the cause of suffering and pain, cares and afflictions. Thirst for existence must disappear from the world if suffering is to disappear. The old knowledge has passed away from the world; men can no longer use the organs of the etheric body. But a new knowledge is now possible, the knowledge acquired when man immerses himself completely in what his astral body, thanks to its deepest forces, can give him, and with the help of what his outer sense-organs enable him to observe in the external physical world. What is thus kindled in the deepest forces of the astral body and is developed with the co-operation of the physical body—although not actually derived from it—this alone can help man to begin with, and give him knowledge; for this knowledge is at first bestowed upon him as a gift. It was to this effect that Buddha spoke in his great inaugural sermon.

He knew that he must transmit to humanity the kind of knowledge that is attainable through the highest development of the forces of the astral body. Hence he had to teach that through deep and penetrating understanding of the forces of the astral body, man acquires knowledge that is both appropriate and possible for him but is at the same time untouched by influences from earlier incarnations. Buddha wished to impart to men a kind of knowledge that has nothing to do with what slumbers in the darkness of ignorance within the human soul as Samskara. Such knowledge is acquired by waking to life all the forces contained in the astral body in one incarnation. ‘The cause of suffering in the world’—so said Buddha—‘is that something of which man knows nothing has remained behind from earlier incarnations. This legacy from earlier incarnations is the cause of man's ignorance concerning the world; it is the cause of his suffering and pain. But when he becomes conscious of the nature of the forces in his astral body, he can, if he so will, acquire a knowledge that has remained independent of all influences from earlier times—a knowledge that is his very own!’

This was the knowledge that the great Buddha wished to impart to men, and he did so in the form of what is known as the ‘Eightfold Path’. There he indicates the capacities and qualities which man must develop in order to attain, in the present cycle of human evolution, knowledge that is uninfluenced by the ever-recurring births. Thus by the power he had himself acquired, Buddha raised his soul to the heights attainable by means of the strongest forces of the astral body, and in the ‘Eightfold Path’ he showed humanity the way to a kind of knowledge uninfluenced by Samskara. He described the path as follows.—

Man attains this kind of knowledge about the world when he acquires a right view of things, a view that has nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy or preference of any sort. He must strive as best he can to acquire the right view of each thing, purely according to what presents itself to him outwardly. That is the first principle: the right view of things. Secondly, man must become independent of what has remained from earlier incarnations; he must also endeavour to judge in accordance with his right view of a thing and not be swayed by any other influences. Thus right judgment is the second principle. The third is that he must strive to give true expression to what he desires to communicate to the world, having first acquired the right view and right judgment of it; not only his words but every manifestation of his being must express his own right view—that and that alone. This is right speech. The fourth principle is that man must strive to act, not according to his sympathies and antipathies, not according to the dark forces of Samskara within him, but in such a way that he lets his right view, right judgment and right speech become deed. This is right action. The fifth principle, enabling a man to liberate himself from what is within him, is that he should acquire the right vocation and station in the world. We may best understand what Buddha meant by this, if we remember how many people are dissatisfied with the tasks devolving upon them, believing that some other position would be more advantageous. But a man should be able to derive from the situation into which he is born or into which fate has placed him, the best that is possible, i.e. to acquire the right ‘occupation’ or ‘vocation’. Whoever finds no satisfaction in the situation in which he is placed, will not be able to derive from it the power to unfold right activity in the world. This is what Buddha called right vocation. The sixth principle is that a man should make increasing efforts to ensure that what he acquires through right views, right judgment and so forth, shall become habit in him. He is born into the world with certain habits. A child gives evidence of this or that inclination or habit. But man's endeavours should be directed, not towards retaining the habits, proceeding from Samskara but towards acquiring those that gradually become his own as the result of right views, right judgment, right speech, and so on. These are the right habits. The seventh principle is that a man should bring order into his life through not invariably forgetting yesterday when he has to act to-day. He would never accomplish anything if he had to learn his skills anew each time. He must strive to develop recollectedness, mindfulness, regarding everything in his life. He must always turn to account what he has already learnt, he must link the present with the past. Thus along the Eightfold Path man must acquire right mindfulness in the sense of Buddha's teaching. The eighth quality is acquired when, without partiality for one view or another and without being influenced by any element remaining in him from former incarnations, he surrenders himself with pure devotion to the things of the world, immerses himself in them and lets them alone speak to him. This is right contemplation.

This is the Eightfold Path, of which Buddha said to his disciples that if followed it would gradually lead to the extinction of the thirst for existence with its attendant suffering, and impart to the soul something that brings liberation from elements enslaving it from past lives.

We have now been able to grasp something of the spirit and origin of Buddhism. We know too what significance lies in the fact that the Bodhisattva of old became Buddha. The Bodhisattva had always allowed everything connected with his mission to flow into humanity. In very ancient times, before Buddha came into the world, men were not able to apply even their inner forces in such a way that they themselves could have developed the attributes of the Eightfold Path. Influences flowing from the spiritual world were necessary to make this possible, and it was the Bodhisattva of old who enabled these influences to stream down upon mankind. It was therefore an event of unique significance when this Bodhisattva became Buddha and now gave forth in the form of teaching what in earlier times he had caused to flow down upon men from above. He had now brought into the world a physical body able to unfold out of itself, forces that formerly could flow down from higher realms only. The first body of this kind was brought into the world by Gautama Buddha. Everything he had formerly caused to flow down from above became reality in the physical world at that time. It is a happening of great and far-reaching importance for the whole of Earth evolution when forces that have streamed down upon humanity from epoch to epoch are present one day in the bodily nature of a human being on Earth. A power that can pass over into all men is then engendered.

In the body of Gautama Buddha lie the causes enabling men in all ages to develop in their own being the powers of the Eightfold Path. Buddha's existence ensured for men the possibility of right thinking! And whatever comes to pass in the future in this respect, until the principles of the Eightfold Path become reality in the whole of mankind, will all be thanks to that existence. What Buddha bore within himself he surrendered to men for their spiritual nourishment.

Generally speaking, no science to-day perceives these significant facts in the evolution of humanity, but they are often presented in simple fairy-tales and legends. I have emphasized more than once that fairy-tales and legends are often wiser and more truly ‘scientific’ than our objective science itself. In its depths the human soul has always sensed a certain truth connected with the nature of a Being such as a Bodhisattva: that, to begin with, something streams down from above, then becomes by degrees a possession of the soul and thereafter rays back again into the cosmos from the soul itself. Men who were able to feel the significance of this either dimly or clearly said to themselves: like the rays of the sun from the heavens, so did the Bodhisattva once ray down upon the Earth the forces of the doctrine of compassion and love, the forces developed through the principles of the Eightfold Path. But then the Bodhisattva descended into a human body and surrendered to men the power that was once his own possession. This power now lives in humanity and streams back into the cosmos as the rays of the sun are reflected back in the moon's light. This was felt to be of special significance in regions where it was customary to express such a truth in the form of a fairy-tale or legend. Thus the following remarkable legend was narrated in the regions where the Bodhisattva appeared.

Once upon a time the Buddha lived as a hare. It was an age when other creatures of many different species were looking for food, but it had all been consumed. The plant food which the hare itself could eat was not suitable for carnivorous creatures. The hare, who was in reality the Buddha, saw a Brahman passing by and resolved to sacrifice himself in order to provide food. At that moment the God appeared and saw the noble deed. A chasm opened and swallowed the hare. Then the God took a tincture and drew the picture of the hare on the moon. And since that time the picture of Buddha as the hare is to be seen on the face of the moon. In the West we do not speak of the ‘hare in the moon’ but of the ‘man in the moon’.

A Kalmuck fairy-tale expresses this still more cogently. In the moon lives a hare; it came there because once upon a time the Buddha sacrificed himself and the Earth-Spirit drew the picture of the hare on the moon. This expresses the great truth of the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha and sacrificing the substance of his very being to mankind for nourishment, so that his forces now ray out into the world from the hearts of men.

Of a Being such as the Bodhisattva who became Buddha, we said—and this is the teaching of all who know: When a Being passes through this stage he has had his last incarnation on the Earth, for his whole nature is contained within a human body. Such a Being never again incarnates in this sense. Hence when the Buddha became aware of the significance of his present existence, he could say: ‘This is my last incarnation; I shall not again incarnate on the Earth!’—It would however be erroneous to think that such a Being then withdraws altogether from Earth-existence. True, he does not enter directly into a physical body but he assumes another body—of an astral or etheric nature—and so continues to send his influences into the world. The way in which such a Being who has passed through the last incarnation belonging to his own destiny continues to work in the world, may be understood by thinking of the following facts.

An ordinary human being, consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, can be permeated by such a Being. It is possible for a Being of this rank, who no longer descends into a physical body but still has an astral body, to be membered into the astral body of another human being. This man may well become a personality of importance, for the forces of a Being who has already passed through his last incarnation on the Earth are now working in him. Thus an astral Being unites with the astral nature of some individual on the Earth. Such a union may take place in a most complicated way. When the Buddha appeared to the shepherds in the picture of the ‘heavenly host’, he was not in a physical body but in an astral body. He had assumed a body in which he could still send his influences to the Earth. Thus in the case of a Being who has become a Buddha, we distinguish three bodies:

1. The body he has before he attains Buddhahood, when he is still working from above as a Bodhisattva; it is a body that does not contain in itself all the powers at his command; he still lives in spiritual heights and is linked with his earlier mission as was the Bodhisattva before his mission became the Buddha's mission. As long as such a Being is living in a body of this nature, his body is called a ‘Dharmakaya’;

2. The body which such a Being builds as his own and through which he brings to expression, in the physical body, everything he has within him. This body is called the ‘body of perfection’, ‘Sambhogakaya’.

3. The body which such a Being assumes, after he has passed through the stage of perfection and can work from above in the way described. This body is called a Nirmanakaya’.¹

We can therefore say that the ‘Nirmanakaya’ of Buddha appeared to the shepherds in the picture of the angelic host. Buddha appeared in the radiance of his Nirmanakaya and revealed himself in this way to the shepherds. But he was to find further ways of working into the events in Palestine at this crucial point of time.

To understand this we must briefly recall what is known to us from other lectures about the nature of man. Spiritual science speaks of several ‘births’. At what is called ‘physical birth’ the human being strips off, as it were, the maternal physical sheath; at the seventh year he strips off the etheric sheath which envelops him until the change of teeth just as the maternal physical sheath enveloped him until physical birth. At puberty—about the fourteenth or fifteenth year in the modern epoch—the human being strips off the astral sheath that is around him until then. It is not until the seventh year that the human etheric body is born outwardly as a free body; the astral body is born at puberty, when the outer astral sheath is cast off.

Let us now consider what it is that is discarded at puberty. In Palestine and the neighbouring regions this point of time occurs normally at about the twelfth year—rather earlier than in lands farther to the West. In the ordinary way this protective astral sheath is cast off and given over to the outer astral world. In the case of the child who descended from the priestly line of the House of David, however, something different happened. At the age of twelve the astral sheath was cast off but did not dissolve in the universal astral world. Just as it was, as the protective astral sheath of the young boy, with all the vitalising forces that had streamed into it between the change of teeth and puberty, it now united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. The spiritual body that had once appeared to the shepherds as the radiant angelic host united with the astral sheath released from the twelve-year-old Jesus, united with all the forces through which the freshness of youth is maintained during the period between the second dentition and puberty. The Nirmanakaya which shone upon the Nathan Jesus-child from birth onwards united with the astral sheath detached from this child at puberty; it became one with this sheath and was thereby rejuvenated. Through this rejuvenation, what Buddha had formerly given to the world could be manifest again in the Jesus-child. Hence the boy was able to speak with all the simplicity of childhood about the lofty teachings of compassion and love to which we have referred to-day. When Jesus was found in the temple he was speaking in a way that astonished those around him, because he was enveloped by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, refreshed as from a fountain of youth by the boy's astral sheath.

These are facts which can become known to the spiritual investigator and which the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke has indicated in the remarkable scene when a sudden change came over the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. We must grasp what it was that had happened and then we shall understand why the boy no longer spoke as he had formerly been wont to speak. It so happened that at this very time, King Kanisha of Tibet summoned a Synod in India and proclaimed ancient Buddhism to be the orthodox religion. But in the meantime Buddha himself had advanced! He had absorbed the forces of the protective astral sheath of the Jesus-child and was thereby able to speak in a new way to the hearts and souls of men.

The Gospel of St. Luke contains Buddhism in a new form, as though springing from a fountain of youth; hence it expresses the religion of compassion and love in a form comprehensible to the simplest souls. We can read what the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke has woven into the text of his Gospel, but still more is contained in its depths. Only part of what appertains to the scene of Jesus in the temple could be described to-day and even greater depths of this mystery have still to be explained. Light will then be shed upon the earlier as well as upon the later years of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

• 1. Also referred to in Buddhist literature as ‘the Body of Transformation’.

MY FRIENDS, today I would like to talk about difficulties encountered in attempting to enter the spiritual worlds, and I will begin with a specific example. All of you will have heard of the seer Swedenborg. [ Note 1 ] I have often talked about him and have always emphasized that a personality like Swedenborg is not to be dismissed lightly. On the other hand, for those who really want to know what it takes to gain access to the spiritual worlds, visionaries like Swedenborg can serve as an example of how people can still be subject to all kinds of illusions in spite of having entered the spiritual world. The spiritual world is open to them, but that does not mean they are able to break free from the world of illusion.

I said that Swedenborg is not to be taken lightly. He was not one of those seers who lightheartedly give in to their visionary gifts without knowing much about life or about the world. Swedenborg was a profound thinker and an important scholar, certainly one of the greatest of his time, if not the very greatest. His scholarly knowledge encompassed everything the science of his day had to offer. A whole committee of experts has recently been formed to prepare for publication, not what Swedenborg left behind as a seer, but his purely scientific writings—substantial proof indeed of his well-founded scientific approach and striving for the truth. [ Note 2 ]

Swedenborg, then, in his pre-clairvoyant days, before being granted access to the spiritual world, had already accomplished so much that a whole committee of scholars is now needed to edit the great number of manuscripts documenting the sum total of his knowledge. (And in fact, these manuscripts may represent only a portion of what he knew.) This task is beyond the scope of any single expert of today. And we are talking only about his writings that have nothing to do with seership. Swedenborg was already at the peak of a career in academic science when he became clairvoyant—only then did the spiritual worlds become accessible to him. Swedenborg, then, was not simply some ordinary man who one fine day decided to call himself a visionary. On the contrary, he ascended to the level of seership on the basis of an eminently serious and conscientious scientific approach.

However, when we look closely at Swedenborg's clairvoyance, we can see how it is possible for a seer to stop short at a stage that does not yet lead on to the ultimate in knowledge.

This outstanding scholarly and clairvoyant personality clearly illustrates how necessary it is to be extremely conscientious when we talk about entering the spiritual worlds and about what can be brought back from them. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that before his clairvoyance developed, Swedenborg was already an outstanding scholar who had not only absorbed all the knowledge his age had to offer, but also added to it through many scientific discoveries of his own. This fact is already well established, and will undoubtedly become even more apparent once his unpublished works appear in print. He had made some first-class scientific discoveries before becoming a seer.

Swedenborg reported a great variety of information gained through clairvoyant perception. [ Note 3 ] It is interesting to note that when his soul ascended to the heights and he could look into the spiritual worlds, he always felt he was surrounded not only by his own aura, but also by numerous spiritual beings embedded in it. This is very characteristic and quite significant. Whenever Swedenborg's gift of clairvoyance became active, he immediately experienced that he was not alone—he felt his soul expand to embrace his aura and saw in it spiritual elemental beings proceeding from his own organs, as it were. As Swedenborg watched, these beings held counsel among themselves and also with Swedenborg himself, with his own soul.

From the very beginning, then, he was advised by these spiritual beings that are present in each human being. These inner beings were joined by others Swedenborg was able to recognize on the basis of their consultation with the beings that proceeded from within himself. He recognized some of these beings coming toward him as beings of the outer elemental world, and others as beings who have their home on other planets of our solar system.

It so happened that once, after having consulted with his own elemental beings, he recognized certain beings in his surroundings who demonstrated a certain peculiarity. So far, Swedenborg's clairvoyant perception had always allowed him to understand to a certain extent the language of both the elemental beings coming from within himself and the beings coming from Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and so on. He was accustomed to thinking that spirits have an understandable common language—the language of ideas, of the inner weaving of ideas come alive. I have told you about these ideas come alive in several recent lectures. [ Note 4]

Swedenborg was accustomed to understanding this language, which is also our basis for cultivating the art of eurythmy. When someone uses sounds in order to speak, the whole complex of forces that exists in order for speech to be able to resound is concentrated in the larynx and adjacent organs. Thus the human being as a totality is freed from having to “act out” speech. This means that the inner structure of speech becomes unconscious, subconscious—it becomes something totally earthly. Eurythmy is meant to enable us once again to participate with our whole being in speech.

But more on the deeper meaning of eurythmy some other time, my friends. For now I only want to point out that Swedenborg had always been able to understand the language of spiritual beings, until a certain moment when he noticed spirits approaching him who, like the others, spoke to him through all kinds of gestures and movements of their limbs or of their actual form, which is how all spirits speak. As I said, Swedenborg was used to understanding the spirits' gesture-language. This time, however, he could see the spirits making certain movements, but was unable to understand them; their movements conveyed no sense or meaning to his soul. He was surprised by that, as surprised as we would be if we were approached by somebody whose lips were moving in speech, but we could hear nothing.

Swedenborg learned a very significant lesson from this after realizing that these beings he could not understand were inhabitants of Mars—that there were in fact beings from Mars whose speech could not be understood even by someone who usually understood the language of spiritual beings. I am talking here only about Swedenborg's experiences. Because he made a point of studying these things rather than simply interpreting them arbitrarily, he gradually realized why he could not understand these souls from Mars. It was because they belonged to a group of cosmic beings who had developed the ability to conceal all their feelings and intentions, to not let anything of what they were feeling flow into their words. The fact that they were able to conceal their emotions and keep them to themselves made Swedenborg realize that hearing words and seeing gestures is not all there is to understanding language—something of the speaker's emotional state flows over to us as well. Understanding speech is actually based on this flow of emotional content. He realized that because these Mars beings had developed the ability to conceal their feelings, the meaning of their speech was not revealed in spite of the fact that they actually were speaking.

A short time later Swedenborg had another experience that led to an additional insight. He came to the realization that the beings from the hierarchy of the Angeloi did understand these Mars beings. He could not understand them, nor could the spirits proceeding from his own body, but the beings belonging to the class of the Angeloi could understand them. This realization was a very deep and meaningful experience for him. Not being able to understand something that was quite clearly understandable to the hierarchy of the Angeloi made him aware of the limits of his own visionary potential for perceiving the spiritual world.

We must avoid simply glossing over an account like Swedenborg's, because it can actually lead us deep into certain mysteries of the spiritual worlds. In order to understand the connection, let us recall several things I have described before. I explained how authentic seership begins, how good seers have to acquire a totally different relationship to the spiritual world than they have to the physical world. I told you that we perceive external beings and objects out there on the physical plane as existing outside us. We face these objects and take something of them into ourselves in the process of perception. Our I knows about the objects and creates mental images of them. This is the experiential basis of any kind of knowing and perceiving on the physical plane—we make mental images of the objects on the physical plane and recognize them.

I have also told you that this basic experience changes as soon as we ascend to spiritual worlds. There it is replaced with a different fundamental experience, the experience of oneself as object. Our I relates to the beings of higher worlds in the same way that objects formerly related to the I. We no longer perceive, but experience that we are being perceived, that the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies are observing us. This experience of being perceived and observed by the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and other spiritual beings is a total reversal of our former relationship to the physical world. We achieve the awareness that our being has expanded to encompass the sphere of the hierarchies, and that the hierarchies are at work in us and are looking at us just as we used to look at objects on the physical plane.

Without this fundamental experience our whole relationship to the spiritual world is wrong, just as our whole relationship to the physical world would be wrong if we lacked the basic experience of perception and developing mental images. “I am observing” is true of the physical world; ultimately, “I am being observed” is true of the spiritual world.

However, right at the threshold into the spiritual world, we come to a region or current where we still retain the whole structure and essential characteristics of our relationship to the physical world. There, we have not yet rid ourselves of the attitude of “I am observing” and are not yet able to proceed to “I am being observed.” Out of deeply embedded habits, we expect the spiritual world to be essentially a copy of the physical world—a subtler or more refined copy, but a copy nonetheless. And so there are more than a few people who imagine that being at a gathering of spirits would be just like standing here in this room among physical human beings—the spirits would be assembled just like people on the physical plane, but they would be a bit less dense, so you could stick your hand right through them. Because we bring our habits of perception from the physical plane into the spiritual world and retain our underlying mode of experiencing things, we are left with the illusion of being able to “observe the cosmic beings,” and cannot ascend to that other fundamental experience of being observed by them.

As a seer, Swedenborg never freed himself from this illusion, at least not during the incarnation we're talking about. He was never able to ascend to the experience of being observed. If you read everything Swedenborg wrote as a visionary, you will find that he really does describe the higher worlds as if they were nothing more than a misty emanation of the physical world—figures that are very fine and vapor-like but otherwise very similar to those in the physical world.

It's true that Swedenborg describes the world of Imagination very aptly, but he is in no position to assess it because he veils the whole spiritual world in his habits derived from the physical world. That is why all the beings of the spiritual world only reveal to him what they are able and willing to clothe in the form of Imaginations derived from the physical world. In other words, Swedenborg sees only as much of the spiritual world as can be clothed in Imaginations contaminated with habits retained from experience on the physical plane. He sees mighty and important spiritual beings, no doubt, but always in a guise that is not their own, a guise that he himself imposes on them. And when he enters a region where the spirits make every effort to conceal what is within them—like the Mars beings who have learned to conceal their inner life and not reveal it in how they speak—he can no longer understand them; they remain a mystery to him. This lies at the root of all of Swedenborg's very conscientious descriptions, and to understand what Swedenborg's visionary world was like, we need to be aware of it.

Thus, if we really want to enter the spiritual world, we must try to identify our own self with the things around us in such a way that we become accustomed to breaking free of ourselves as we look at higher worlds. I have described this in the last chapter of Theosophy; basically, all the indications are already given there. [ Note 5 ] If we become accustomed to doing this, we will gradually begin to experience things in the other way I described. This is not something we can accomplish purely through our own efforts; all we can do is set out on the right path. The experience of being perceived by spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies comes to us as an act of grace on the part of the spiritual world itself. And it is not simply that higher beings look at us; we become perceptions, concepts, and thoughts for the beings of higher worlds in the same way that objects on the physical plane are for us.

If Swedenborg had been able to get used to being perceived and thought about by the beings of the higher hierarchies, then he would not have experienced the inability to understand the Mars beings while the Angeloi could understand them. He was only capable of applying his own perspective and could not make use of the angelic mode of perception. But that is precisely what we have to be able to do. It is not enough to have concepts; we must become concepts. It is not enough to think; we must become thoughts, thoughts of the beings of the higher hierarchies.

We must learn to stand in the same relationship to the beings of the higher hierarchies as our own thoughts stand in relationship to us. Swedenborg could not do that. If he had been able to do it, he would have known that as long as he remained within himself he would not be able to understand those Mars beings. However, if he had stepped outside of himself and become an object, a thought, an idea for the Angeloi, then, as expanded self, he would have been able to understand both the Angeloi and that category of Mars beings. He would then have had the same understanding of the essential nature of these Mars beings as the Angeloi had. He was unable to reach this stage because he always remained within the limits of his own consciousness and was never able to let the Angeloi observe and experience him, so that he himself would simply be their field of perception. If he had been able to do that, he would have known what the Angeloi know, for our knowledge of higher worlds comes through higher spirits, spirits of the higher hierarchies, knowing in us.

The important thing for us to keep in mind is that at this stage of evolution, the human constitution is such that we can know only about those worlds that are accessible to our organs of perception. If we want to transcend this limitation, we must open ourselves up to the consciousness of spiritual beings above us so that what these beings experience becomes the content of our own consciousness. It is important for us to experience ourselves as being included in the choirs of the spiritual beings. If you read everything I have written on the subject of initiation, you will find that all this has already been described there. [ Note 6 ]

The example of an important personality like Swedenborg shows us that it leads to illusions if we ascend to spiritual worlds without being steeped in the ability to step out of the kind of consciousness we apply on the physical plane. We are met by an illusory world. My friends, if you go through all the available visionary literature and read its descriptions of the spiritual world, what you will find for the most part will be illusions of this sort. It is important not to let yourself be deceived by these illusions, because being deceived by illusions at the threshold to the spiritual world is much worse than it would be to fall prey to illusions in the physical world.

We need to use our anthroposophical literature to gradually and rationally discover how we as human beings are meant to relate to the spiritual world. We are presented with a double opportunity to do so, first of all through the fact that this material is available, and secondly because of the fact that it cannot be read without considerable mental effort. I have always made sure of that, even though it has often been suggested that I make my writing more accessible to the general public. I have always resisted such suggestions because these things are just not meant to be popularized.

If we presented what we have to offer in our spiritual-scientific literature in all kinds of watered-down versions for the sake of popularizing it, we would simply be pandering to people's unwillingness to exert themselves, and asking for trouble at the same time. Attempts at loading up on spirituality in easy and thoughtless ways always lead to trouble. The effort we make in learning to understand something difficult to read is a kind of inner training and contributes to shaping our relationship to the spiritual world in the right way. It is an essential part of our literature, or at least it should be, that you really have to think in the most comprehensive way possible while taking in the information; your thinking has to become active. Everything you have at your disposal as a result of prior reading and experience must be brought into connection with the content of our anthroposophical writings.

At this juncture, I would like to demonstrate a particular train of thought as an example of how anthroposophical material can be studied actively and thoughtfully. I once gave a lecture cycle in Munich on the subject of the history of creation with reference to the Bible, in which the working of the Elohim was discussed. [ Note 7 ] This cycle is read frequently, and many people think that when they have read it and gotten it into their heads after their usual fashion, they have really accomplished something special. But that is not all there is to it. First of all, of course, it is important to accompany the reading of a cycle like this with a certain amount of inner effort. The train of thought could be as follows:

The Elohim, led by the being who later became the Christ, are a category of beings who had a particular task during the stage of planetary existence we call the Sun stage, when the main thrust of their development was taking place. Because of their particular connection to the Sun stage of existence, we must address the Christ, too, as a Sun being. We can give a lot of thought to how truly Sun-related the Elohim are. The whole tone of the lecture cycle shows that the Elohim's relationship to the Sun underlies the whole thing and can be felt throughout.

After thoroughgoing meditation—not in deep sleep!—we realize how we need to conceive of the character of the Elohim. Then, having immersed ourselves patiently in the character of the Elohim, we will experience after some time that a thought occurs to us, coming toward us from nowhere in particular. For example, it might occur to us—and this is just an example—that Jehovah, one of the Elohim, forbade eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and that after the Luciferic temptation, once human beings had in fact eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, they were barred from also eating from the Tree of Life. How strange that the Elohim should speak of trees!

I have often said that the language of a document such as the Bible should not be taken lightly. If trees are spoken of in the Bible, if the Elohim speak of trees, you can be sure it's significant. Something essential is meant by this expression. It has been said of Homer that he declared that each thing has two names, one in the language of the gods and one in the language of ordinary mortals. With this in mind, we might imagine that the gods' referring to trees may have something to do with this divine language. Considering the subject more deeply, we may wonder what the Elohim are actually talking about when they speak of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. What do they mean?

If you consider our teachings in their entirety, my friends, you will realize that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge must have something to do with the essence of the human being. Being forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge means, as you will eventually discover, that the human soul is not to strive for the kind of knowledge bound to the physical body. This has led to the kind of sense-bound perception we know today. “Eating from the Tree of Knowledge” means becoming bound up with the physical body to the extent that the kind of knowledge brought about by Lucifer now prevails, as I described in a recent lecture. [ Note 8 ] Thus, the Elohim were referring to something inherent in human beings when they spoke of the Tree of Knowledge. And they must also have meant something intrinsic to the human being when they spoke of the Tree of Life.

We may wonder why we see as we do today, how it came about that we perceive as we do. It came about because our soul and spirit, permeated with the being of Lucifer, have become embedded in our physical body and are consuming it, although this is not what was originally intended. This physical body is the Tree of Knowledge, and the ether body is the Tree of Life. After having let themselves be seduced by Lucifer into using their physical body for purposes of perception as we know it now, human beings were prevented from also acquiring knowledge through the ether body. That has been denied us. If you are really thinking, my friends, you will arrive at trains of thought like this one.

The next question to be asked, then, is why the physical body is called the Tree of Knowledge in the language of the gods.

Why do they call it a tree, and why do they also call the ether body the Tree of Life? Why are they talking about trees? It is easy to understand what is meant by this if you recall that the gods in question evolved during the Sun period for the most part and thus assumed some essentially Sun-like qualities. For a moment, just reflect on the fact that during the ancient Saturn period, everything was at the mineral level, while during the ancient Sun period, everything was at the evolutionary stage of plants. Since the gods we call the Elohim developed their characteristic way of speaking during the Sun period, it is natural for them not to speak of things that could only be experienced later, during the Moon and Earth stages of evolution, but about what evolved in the universe during the Sun stage, namely plant life. When using their own language, which is the language of the Sun, it is only natural for them to speak of trees.

You see, my friends, this is the kind of thing you can come to simply by taking what is in my books and lecture cycles and thinking it through in the right way. It is not enough to go on reading and reading and reading and putting together things you have read; you need to go further in your own thinking and use the means suggested by the very nature of things themselves to draw connections between them. But in doing that, you are also doing something else: You're making a real effort, and the result of this effort is that your soul becomes independent. However, this takes work, real work. I have to emphasize again and again that it is not through passively giving ourselves up to something, but through using our own soul forces to grapple with it actively, that we begin to separate the spiritual world from the physical world.

Active effort is what counts in attempts to gain access to the spiritual world. If you really want to enter the spiritual world, you cannot shy away from working through what confronts you and bringing it into connection with everything life has given you. Without this effort, all kinds of crazy things can happen—like someone believing he is the reincarnation of Homer but feeling no need to do anything to prove that something of Homer's genius is welling up in him. Since Homer already put in all the effort, the person in question can spend this incarnation comfortably lying on the couch in mystical slumber! If you make an effort to actively work through whatever confronts you, you will not be diverted into all kinds of mystical monkey business. Instead, you will eventually reach the point where you can develop an appropriate sense for the deeper meaning the spiritual world's truths hold for human beings. Then you will realize that you have to make every effort not to allow your habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and perceiving on the physical plane to get mixed up with qualities belonging solely to the spiritual world.

This attitude is crucial, my friends, and once we have really acquired it, it will prevent us from doing anything foolish in our efforts to enter the spiritual world. It doesn't require any particular effort to eat salt for a week in an attempt to descend to subearthly realms, and then eat no salt for a week in an attempt to ascend into higher elemental realms. That takes no effort at all, but there is also nothing to be gained from it except the worst kinds of illusions. Inner work is the only way to really accomplish something in the spiritual world. And inner work, if it is really taking place, will by its very nature lead you to the right thoughts and keep you from getting into trouble with regard to the spiritual world. Without it, however, we are subject to perversions of mystical thinking, and people have every right to laugh at us then.

For example, I once received a letter from a man of sound common sense who said that he had visited a member of an anthroposophical branch and found that people kept all the windows closed although it was terribly hot. I have nothing against closing windows, especially when everything said indoors can be heard outside—that would be a sensible reason for closing them, wouldn't it? But instead of telling him that, people said, “Dr. Steiner has expressly told us to close the windows when lectures are given in our branch, so that the demons can't get in.” This man, who was quite unspoiled by mysticism, wrote to me asking why spirits couldn't get in through closed windows. What kind of an esoteric teacher is that, he wondered, who tells his pupils to close the windows so the demons do not get in? You can see how the physical plane is confused with higher worlds in this kind of careless talk. It is quite true that beings on the physical plane cannot get in through closed windows, unless they break them, but we will hardly be able to keep the spirits out by shutting the windows! We really must develop appropriate and serious concepts to apply to the spiritual and physical worlds.

If we give it some thought, the example of Swedenborg, who was conscientious and energetic and a splendid seer in his own way, can help us correct some fundamental errors in our own way of thinking. More on this subject tomorrow.

I have tried to show how about the middle of last century a radical transformation took place in spiritual life, and how moreover the peculiar configuration of the nineteenth century thought and the spiritual life in general that underwent this transformation can be traced back to another crucial turning point in the west which we have to look for in the fourth century A.D.

Now it might at first sight appear as if we were trying to show too close a connection between two periods that are so very widely separated in point of time. But this very thought will serve to call attention to certain interconnections in the history of humanity. To-day we will begin where we left off yesterday, with the downfall of ancient culture and of the Roman empire. We drew attention to a distinguishing feature of that time. We placed before our souls two representative personalities; one of them was Augustine, who grew entirely out of the South-West; and we compared them with another personality, that of the Gothic translator of the Bible, Wulfila, and with the spiritual stream out of which Wulfila sprang.

We have to be quite clear that Augustine was altogether the child of the conditions which had developed in the south-western parts of the European-African civilization of the day. At that time men who sought a higher culture only found it through contact with the philosophy, literature, art and science which had for a long time been pursued in a certain upper level of society. We even have to think of Greek culture as the possession of an upper class which relegated its more menial work to slaves. And still less can we think of Roman culture without widespread slavery. The life of this culture depended upon its possessors being remote from the thought and feeling prevailing in the masses. But one must not think that there was therefore no spiritual life in the masses. There was an exceptionally strong spiritual life among them. This was of course derived more from the native stock left behind at an earlier stage of evolution than that of the upper class, but it was nevertheless a spiritual life. History knows very little about it, but it was very like what was carried into the southern parts of Europe by the barbarian tribes, forced to migrate by the forward pressure of the Asiatic hordes. We must try to form a concrete idea of it.

Take, for instance, the people who over-ran the Roman Empire—the Goths, the Vandals, the Lombards, the Herules. Before the migrations had begun, thus before the fourth century A.D. which is for us such an important turning-point, these men had spiritual life away in the East which culminated in a certain religious insight, in certain religious ideas, which pervaded everything; and the effects of these experiences influenced every aspect of daily life. Before the migrations began these people have had a long period of settled life. It was while they were thus settled that they first experienced the southern oriental peoples, from whom the Indian, Persian and succeeding cultures sprang, had experienced at a much earlier time; they experienced what we can call a religion which was closely connected with the blood relationships of the people. It is only through spiritual science that this can be observed, but it is also echoed in the sagas and myths I lived in these peoples. What they worshipped were the ancestors of certain families. But these ancestors first began to be worshiped long after they had passed away, and this worship was in no way based upon abstract ideas, but upon what was instinctively experienced as dreamlike clairvoyant ideas, if I can use the expression without causing misunderstanding. For there were certain ideas which arose in quite another way from the way our ideas of to-day are formed. When we have ideas nowadays our soul life comes into play more or less independently of our bodily constitution. We no longer feel the seething of the body. These people had a certain intensive inward sense that in what took place in their bodies all sorts of cosmic mysteries were active. For it is not only in the chemical retorts that cosmic processes work according to law, but in the human body also. And just as to-day, by means of the processes which take place in their retorts chemists seek with their abstract reason to understand the laws of the universe, so these men too tried through what they had experienced inwardly, through their own organism, whose inner processes they felt, to penetrate into the mysteries of the cosmos. It was entirely an inner experience that was still closely bound up with ideas arising in the body. And out of these ideas which were called forth by what we might describe as the inward seething of the organism, there developed the pictorial imaginations which these men connected with their ancestors. It was their ancestors whose voices they heard for centuries in these dream formations. Ancestors were the rulers of people living in quite small communities, in village tribal communities.

These tribes had still this kind of ancestor-worship, which had its life in dreamlike ideas, when they pressed forward from the east of Europe towards the west. And if we look back to the teachers and the priests of these peoples we find that they were advanced spirits whose foremost task was to interpret what the individual saw in his dream-pictures, albeit dream-pictures which he experienced in his awake consciousness. They were interpreters of what the individual experienced. And now the migrations began. During the period of the migrations it was their greatest spiritual consolation that they had this inner clairvoyant life which was interpreted by their priests. This spiritual life was reflected in sagas which have been handed down, notably in the Slav world, and in these sagas you will find confirmation of what I have just briefly outlined.

Now shortly after the end of the fourth century these tribes settled down again. Some of them were absorbed into the peoples who had already for a long time inhabited the southern peninsulas, that is to say they were absorbed into the lower classes of these peoples, for their upper classes had been swept away in the time of Augustine. The Goths were among the tribes absorbed in this way, but mainly those Goths who peopled the countries of middle and western Europe; those who settled in the northern regions of southern Europe maintained their own existence and acquired a permanent home there.

Thus we see that after the fourth century the possession of a fixed dwelling place becomes an essential characteristic of these peoples. And now the whole spiritual life begins to change. It is most remarkable what a radical change now takes place in the spiritual life of these people through their peculiar talent. They were gifted not only with special racial dispositions, but with a much greater freshness as a folk for experiencing spiritual reality in dreams; something which in the southern regions had long since been transformed into other forms of spiritual life.

But now they have become settled, and through their peculiar endowment a new kind of spiritual life developed in them. What in earlier times had expressed itself in ancestor-worship, had conjured before the soul the picture of the revered forefather, now attached itself to the place. Wherever there was some special grove, some mountain which contained let us say, special treasures of metal, wherever there was a place from which one could watch storms and so on, there, with a depth of feeling left to them from their old ancestor-imaginations and dreams, men felt something holy to be connected with the place. And the gods that used to be ancestral became gods of place.

Religious perceptions lost their time a character and took on a spatial character. Those who had been previously the interpreters of dreams, the interpreters of inner soul-experience, now became the guardians what one might call the signs c—the peculiar reflection of the sun in this or that waterfall or other feature of nature, the phenomena of the cloud-drifts in certain valleys and so on—these are now the objects of interpretation, something which then became transformed into the system of Runes cultivated in certain places, where twigs were plucked from trees and thrown down, and the signs read from the special forms into which the twigs fell. Religion underwent a metamorphosis into a religion of space. The entire spiritual life became attached to the place. Thus these tribes became more and more susceptible to the influence which the Roman Catholic Church, since it had become the state church in the fourth century, had been accustomed to exercise over the southern peoples, that is to say over the lower classes which had been left behind after the upper classes have been swept away.

And what was it that the church had done? In these southern regions the period of transition from the time conception to the spatial conception of the world was long since past, and something of extraordinary importance always happens in a period of transition from a time outlook to a spatial outlook, a certain living experience passes over into an experience through symbol and cult. This had already taken place for the lower classes of the people in the southern regions. So long as men continue to live in their time-conceptions, the priests, those who in the sense of ancient times we can call learned men, our interpreters of a corresponding life of the soul. They were engaged in explaining what man experience. They were able to do that because men lived in small village communities, and the interpreter, who was in fact the leader of the whole spiritual life, could address himself to the individual, or to a small group. When the transition takes place from the time-outlook to the space-outlook, then this living element is more or less suppressed. The priest can no longer refer to what the individual has experienced. He can no longer treat of what the individual tells them and explain to him what he has experienced. What is something living is thus transformed into something bound to a place. And thus ritual gradually arises, the pictorial expression of what in earlier times was a direct experience of the super-sensible world.

And at this point development begins again, so to say, from the other side. The human being now sees the symbol, he interprets the symbol. What the Roman Catholic Church built up as cult was built up with exact knowledge of this world-historic course of human evolution. The transition from the ancient celebration of the Last Supper into the sacrifice of the Mass arose, in that the living Last Supper became the symbolic rite. Into this sacrifice of the Mass, it is true, flowed primeval holy mystery usages which had been handed down in the lower classes of the people. These practices were now permeated with the new conceptions Christianity brought. They became, so to say, christianised. The lower classes of the Roman people provided good material for such a birth of ritual, which was now to reveal the super-sensible world in symbol.

And as the northern tribes had also made the transition to a spiritual life associated with place, this ritual could also be implanted among them, for they began to meet it with understanding. This is the bases of one of the streams which start in the fourth century A.D.

The other stream must be characterised differently. I have described how the ancient ancestor-worship lived on, rolling over from the east upon the declining Roman Empire. In the “Our Father” of Wulfila we see that in these nomadic peoples Christianity was absorbed into the ancestral cults and the cults connected with locality. And that constitutes the essence of Arian Christianity. The dogmatic conflict in the background is not so important. The important thing for this Arian Christianity, which traveled with the Goths and the other German tribes from the East towards the West by a path which did not lead through Rome, is that in it Christianity becomes steeped in a living spiritual life which has not yet reached the stage of ritual, that is closely related to the dream experience, to the clairvoyant experience, if you will not misunderstand the expression.

On the other hand the Christianity that Augustine experienced had passed through the culture of the upper classes of the southern peoples, and had to encounter all sorts of oriental cults and religious ideas, which flowed together in a great city of Rome. The heathen Augustine had grown up amidst these religious ideas and had turned from them towards Christianity in the way I have described. He stands within a spiritual stream which was experienced by the individual in quite a different way from the stream I have already mentioned. The latter arose out of the most elemental forces of the folk-soul life. What Augustine experienced was something which had risen into the upper class through many filtrations. And this was now taken over and preserved by the Roman Catholic clergy. Moreover its content is far less important for the progress of history than the whole configuration of soul that constituted first Greco-Roman culture and then, through the adoption of Christianity, the culture of the Catholic clergy. It is essential to see this culture as it was at that time and as it then lived on through the centuries. Our present-day educational system is something which remains over from the real culture of that time.

After one had mastered the first elements of knowledge, which we should to-day call primary education, one entered what was called the grammar class. In the grammar classes one was taught structure of speech; one learned how to use speech properly in accordance with the usages established by the poets and the writers. Then one assimilated all other knowledge that was not kept secret, for even at that time quite a lot of knowledge was kept secret by certain mystery schools. What was not kept secret was imparted through grammar, but through the medium of speech. And if anyone reached a higher stage of culture, as for example Augustine, then he passed on from the study of grammar to the study of rhetoric. There the object was to train the pupil above all in the appropriate use of symbol, how to form his sentences rightly, particularly how to lead his sentences to a certain climax. This was what the people who aspired to culture had to practice.

One must be able to sense what such a training develops in a human being. Through this purely grammatical and rhetorical kind of education he is brought into a certain connection with the surface of his nature, he is within what sounds through his mouth far more than is under the influence of thought. He pays much more attention to the structure of speech and to the connection of thought. And that was the primary characteristic of this ancient culture, that it was not concerned with the inner soul experience, but with structure, the form of speech, with the pleasure it gives. In short, the man became externalised by this culture. And in the fourth century, at that time Augustine was a student, as we should say to-day, we can see clearly this process of externalization, this living in the turn of words, in the form of expression. Grammar and rhetoric were the things that students had to learn. And there was good reason for this. For what we to-day call intelligent thought did not at that time exist. It is a mere superstition very commonly to be found in history to suppose that men have always thought in the way they think today. The entire thought of the Greek epoch right up to the fourth century A.D. was quite different. I have gone into this to a certain extent in my Riddles of Philosophy. Thought was not hatched out of inner soul activity, as is the case to-day, but thought came to the human being of itself like a dream. Particularly was this the case in the East, and the Oriental spiritual life which had animated Greece and still animated Rome was not won through thinking, it came, even when it was thought, as dream pictures come. And the oriental and south-european scholars only differed from those of the north in that the pictures that came to the northerners at first stimulated ideas of their ancestors, and later were associated with particular localities and became more or less ritualistic. The ideas that were formed in Asia, in southern Europe, already had the character of thought, but they were not thoughts won by inner soul activity, inner intelligence, they were inwardly revealed thoughts. One experienced what one called knowledge and elaborated for oneself only the word, the sentence, the discourse. There is no logical activity. Logic arose through Aristotle, when Greece was already decadent. And what lived in beauty of speech, in rhetoric, was essentially Roman culture, and became the culture of Catholic Christianity.

This habit of living not in oneself but in an external element expresses itself in the education that was given, and one can see how in this respect Augustine was a representative of his time. The correspondence between Jerome and Augustine is illuminating in this respect. It shows how differently these people conducted an argument in the fourth or beginning of the fifth century from the way we should do so to-day. When we discuss things to-day we have a feeling that we make use of a certain activity of thought. When these people discussed, one of them would have the feeling—“Well, I have formed my own view about a certain point, but perhaps my organism does not give me the right view. I will hear what the other man has to say; perhaps something else will emerge from his organism.” These men were within a much more real element of inner experience. This difference is seen also in Augustine's attitude in condemning heretics of various sorts. We see people deriving from the life of the common people, people like the priests of Donatism, like Pelagius and some others, specially coming to the fore. These people, although they believe themselves to be entirely Christian, stress the point that man's relation to justice, to sin, must come from the man himself. And thus we see a whole series of people one after the other who cannot believe that it has any sense to baptize children and thereby to bring about forgiveness of sins. We see objections made against the Christianity issuing from Rome, we see how Pelagianism wins adherents, and how Augustine, as a true representative of the Catholic element, attacks it. He rejected a conception of sin connected with human subjectivity. He rejects the view that a relation to the spiritual world or to Christ can come from an individual human impulse. Hence he works to bring about gradually the passing over of the Church into the external institution. The important question is not what is in the child, but what the Church as external ordnance bestows upon it. The point is not that baptism signifies something for the soul's experience, but that there exists an external ordnance of the Church which is fulfilled in baptism. The value of the human soul living in the body matters less than that the universal spirit that lives in the sacrament, so to say an astral sacrament, should be poured out over mankind. The individual plays no part, but the important thing is the web of abstract dogmas and ideas which is spread over humanity. To Augustine it seems particularly dangerous to believe that the human being should first be prepared to receive baptism, for it is not a question of what the human being inwardly wills, but it is a question of admitting into the Kingdom of God which has objective existence. And that is essentially the setting in which Athanasian Christianity lived, in contrast to the other background that originated in the north-east, in which a certain popular element lived. But the Church understood how to clothe the abstract element in the ritualistic form which again arose from below. It was this that made it possible for the Church to spread in this European element, from which the ancient culture had vanished. And above all it attains this expansion through the exclusion of the wide masses of the people from the essential substance of religious culture. It is a matter of tremendous significance that in the centuries which follow this substance is propagated in the Latin language.

And from the fourth century A.D. onward Christianity is propagated in the Latin tongue. It is as it were a stream flowing over the heads of men. That goes on right up to the fifteenth century. For what history usually relates is only the outer form of what went on in the souls of men. Christianity was kept secret by those who taught at right up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in a far deeper sense than the ancient Mysteries were kept secret. For only the outer ritual penetrated the masses. And what was transmitted, which at the same time laid claim to all science coming from the ancient culture and clothed it in the Latin tongue, this was the Church, something which hovered above the essential evolution of humanity.

And the centuries between the fourth and the fourteenth stand under the sign of these two parallel streams. The external history books, even the histories of the mind, only give the traditional description of what leaks out into greater publicity from the Latin ecclesiastical stream. Hence from present-day historical literature we get no idea of what took place among the wide masses of the people.

What took place among the masses was something like this. At first there were only village communities; in the colonization of the whole of middle, western and even of southern Europe the towns played a very small part. The most significant life developed in small village communities; such towns as did exist were really only large villages; in these large village communities there was the Catholic Church, way over the heads of men, but through the ritual working suggestively upon them; however, these men who only saw the symbolic rite, who participated in the cult, who watched something which they could not understand, did nevertheless develop a spiritual life of their own. The very rich spiritual life developed throughout Europe at that time, a spiritual life which stood first and foremost under the influence of human nature itself. It was something quite apart from their participation in the spread of Catholic doctrine. For to associate everything with the personality of Boniface, for instance, is to place things a false light. What went on in these village communities was an inner soul life through which echoed the omens of the divinity or spirituality associated with the place. Everywhere people saw intimations from one or other of these. They developed a magical life. Everywhere human beings had premonitions, and told their fellows about them. These premonitions expressed themselves in sagas, in mysterious hints as to what one or another had experienced spiritually in the course of his work.

But something very remarkable permeated this remains of an ancient prophetic and clairvoyant dream-life, which continued to flourish in the village communities whilst Catholic doctrine passed over their heads, and one can see that everywhere in Europe the organization of the human being was involved in this characteristic spiritual life. Something was at work which indicated a quite special disposition of soul in two respects. When people told of their weightiest premonitions, their most significant dreams (these were always associated with places), when they describe their half-waking, half-sleeping experiences, these dreams are always connected either with events, with questions which were asked them from out of the spiritual world, or with tasks which were imposed upon them, with matters in which their skill played a part. From the whole character of these stories, which were still to be found among the common people in the nineteenth century, one sees that when men began to ponder and to dream and to build up their legendary sagas in their mythologies, of the three members of the human being it was not so much the nerve-system—which is more connected with the outer world—but the rhythmic system which was active; and in that the rhythmic system was drawn forth out of the organism it showed itself in clairvoyant dreams which passed by word of mouth from one to another, and in this way the villagers shared with one another fear and joy, happiness and beauty. In all this there was always an element of delicate questioning which came from the spiritual world. People had to solve riddles half in dreams, had to carry out skillful actions, had to overcome something or other. It was always something of the riddle in this dream life.

That is the physiological basis of the widespread spiritual experience of these men who lived in village communities. Into this, of course, penetrated the deeds of Charlemagne of which history tells you; but those are only surface experiences, though they do of course enter deeply into individual destiny. They are not the main thing. The important thing is what takes place in the village communities, and there, side by side with the economic life, a spiritual life developed such as I have described. And this spiritual life goes on right into the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Of course, something of what has developed in the heads of men in the upper strata of society gradually trickles down into the lower strata, and the ghostly and magical character of the stories men recount gets charmingly mixed with the Christ and His deeds, and what comes from the human being himself is sometimes overlaid with what comes from the Bible or the Gospel. But then we see that it is primarily into social thinking that the Christian element is received. We see it in ‘Der Heliand’ and other poems which arose out of Christianity but always we see something spiritual brought to the people, who meet it with a spirituality of their own.

When we come to the tenth and eleventh centuries we see a change in the external life. Even earlier, but at this time more markedly so, we see life centering itself in the towns. That life of picture-like waking dreams which I have described to you is altogether bound up with the soil. As, therefore, in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries the whole country became covered with larger towns, in these towns another kind of thinking began to develop. Men living in towns had a different kind of thought. They were cut off from the places in which their local cults had developed, their attention was more directed towards what was human.

But the human element which developed of the towns was still under the influence of this earlier state of mind, for some of the people who settled in the towns came from the villages and they with very special spiritual endowment made their own contribution. What they brought with them was an inner personal life which was an echo of what was experienced in the country, but which now manifested itself in a more abstract form. These men were cut off from nature, they no longer participated in the life of nature, and although they still have forms of thought derived from nature, they already began to develop the kind of thinking which was gradually directed towards intelligence. In the towns of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries there developed the first trace of that intelligence which we see arise in the fifteenth century among the leading European peoples. Because life in the towns was more abstract, the abstract ecclesiastical element, clothed in the Latin tongue, became mixed up with what sprang directly out of the people.

Thus we see how this Latin element developed in the towns in a more and more abstract form. Then we see the great outburst of people from below upwards in various countries. There is a great to-do when Dante, assisted by his teacher, makes his way up into the world of culture. But even that is only one instance of many similar outbursts which happened because of the peculiar manner in which the Latin culture came up against the popular element in the towns.

We must not forget that still other streams entered into what was taking place at that time. It is of course true that the main streams of spiritual life, which so to say carried the others, was the one that continued the spiritual tradition in which Augustine had lived; that controlled everything and finally not only gave the towns the bishops, who controlled the spiritual life, if somewhat abstractly and over the heads of the people, but also, little by little, because it took over everything from the constitution of the Roman empire, ended by giving the civil government also, and built up the alliance between Church and State which in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was very close. We see other events light up in this stream, we see crusades arise, which I need not describe to you, because I want to lay the greatest stress upon the things that external history places in a false light; and too little importance is attached to other currents that were present.

First of all there is the commercial traffic which had in fact always existed in Europe between the Danube basin and the East. There was constant trading in both directions particularly in the middle of the middle ages. In this way oriental ideas in an advanced stage of decadence were brought over into Europe. And someone who had probably never been in the east himself but had only traded with men from the east, brought to the householder not only spices, but spiritual life, a spiritual life tinged with Orientalism. This traffic went on throughout the whole of Europe. It had less influence on Latin culture, far more on the wide masses of people who understood no Latin. In the towns and in the surrounding villages there was a living intercourse with the east which was not merely a matter of listening to tales of adventure that which deeply influenced spiritual life. And if you want to understand figures such as Jacob Boehme, who came later, Paracelsus and many others, then you must bear in mind that they sprang from people who had developed without any understanding of the Latin culture which passed over their heads, but who were in a certain way steeped in Orientalism. All that developed as popular alchemy, astrology, fortune telling, had developed out of the union of what I described above as the inner experience of the riddle, told in waking dreams, with what came over from the east as decadent oriental life. Nor within the Latin culture have the will to think been able to make any headway. The logic of Aristotle had appeared, as it were, like a meteor. We see that even Augustine was little influenced by this logic. By the fourth century interest had been withdrawn from Greece, and later the Emperor Justinian had closed the School of Philosophy at Athens. This led to the condemnation for heresy of Origen, who had brought with him into Christianity much of oriental culture, of the earlier spiritual life. And the Greek philosophers were driven out. The teaching that they had from Aristotle was driven into Asia. The Greek philosophers founded centre in Asia, and carried on the Academy of Gondishapur, which had for its main objective the permeation of the old decadent oriental spiritual culture with Aristotelianism, its transformation into an entirely new form. It was the Academy of Gondishapur wherein a logical form of thought developed with giant strides, that saved Aristotelianism. Aristotelianism was not transmitted through Christianity, it came into Latin-ecclesiastical life by way of Africa, Spain and the west of Europe. And thus we see how Gondishapur, this philosophic form of Arabism, which does contain a living world-conception, although it is quite abstract, brings its influence to bear upon the current which we have already described as passing over the heads of men.

I have described to you both these streams, the one at work above, in the heads of men, the other in their hearts. They work together and it is very significant that the ancient culture was transmitted in a dying language. Of course there then flows into all this what came through the Renaissance. But I cannot describe everything to-day. I want to point out some of the main things which are of special interest to us. The two currents existed side-by-side right on into the fifteenth century.

Then something happened of extraordinary importance. The thought of antiquity, inspired thought which was half vision, became gradually clothed in abstract forms of speech, and became Christian philosophy, Christian spiritual life, the Scholastic philosophy, out of which the modern university system developed. In this grammatical-rhetorical atmosphere not thought, but the garment of thought, Romanism lived on. But in the popular stream thinking was born, evoked through subjective activity—for the first time in human evolution. Out of this ghostly-magical element of presentiment, mingled with Orientalism, which above all had its life in the interpretation of natural phenomena, active thinking was born. And this birth of thought out of the dreamlike mystical element took place somewhere about the fifteenth century. But up to that time the system of Roman law, clothed in Latin form, gathers strength side by side with the Roman priesthood. This current over the heads of men had been able to spread everywhere in a most systematic way first in the villages, then in the towns, and now in the new age which dawned in the fifteenth century it joined forces with that other current which now arose. In the towns people were proud of their individualism, of their freedom. One can see this in the portraits painted at that time. But the village communities were shut off from all this. Then the medieval princes rose to power. And those who outside in the villages gradually came to be in opposition to the towns, found in the princes their leaders. And it was from the country, from the villages that the impulse came which drew the towns into the wider administrative structure, into which then came Roman law. There arose the modern state, made up of the country parishes; thus the country conquered the towns again, and became itself permeated by what came out of the Latin element has Roman law. Thus the latter had now become so strong that what was stirring among the common people could find no further outlet; what in the times of unrest, as they were called, had expressed itself among the Russian peasants in the Hussite movement, in Wycliffism, in the Bohemian Brotherhood, such movements could no longer happen; the only thing that could find expression was what merged with the Roman-administrative element.

Thus we see that the folk-element which had won for itself the reality of thought, which held its own in opposition to the Roman-Latin element, remained to begin with a faint glow under the surface. There is a cleavage in the spiritual life. Out of the Latin element develops Nominalism, for which universal concepts are merely names. Just as this was an inevitable development from grammar and rhetoric, so, where there still remained a spark of the folk-element, as was the case with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, there developed Realism, which experienced thought and expression of something real. But at first Nominalism had the victory. All that happened in the historical evolution of humanity is in a sense necessary, and we see that the abstract element becomes all the stronger because it is carried by the dead Latin language right up to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and is then fructified by thought, has to reckon with the birth of thought, but clothes thought in abstractions. And the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are primarily under the influence of thought born from out of the ancient Gothic Germanic way of life, clothed however in Roman formulae, in grammatical, rhetorical formulae. But now that they have been fructified by thought, these formulae can be called logical formulae. That now becomes inward human thinking. Now one could think thoughts, but the thoughts had no content. All the old world-conceptions contained, together with the inward experience, at the same time cosmic mysteries. So that thought still had content right up to the fourth century A.D. Then came the time which as it were bore the future in its womb, the time in which rhetoric, grammar and dialectic developed further and further in a dead language. Then that was fructified by the force of thought which came from below, and men acquired mastery over that, but in itself it had no content. There was a dim perception of Realism but a belief in Nominalism, and with the aid of Nominalism next came the conquest of nature.

Thought as inner soul life brought no content with it. This content had to be sought from without. Thus we see how from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century the conquest of natural law was the achievement of a thinking that was empty of all content, but was born as a capacity out of all that Europe had brought forth as her own. In the middle of the nineteenth century men began to be aware “With your thought you are conquering natural law, you are conquering the external world, but thought itself is making no progress.” And men gradually got into the way of eliminating from their thought everything that did not come from outside. They found their life in religious faith which was supposed to have nothing to do with scientific knowledge, because their thinking has become void of content and had to fill itself only with external facts and natural entities. The content of faith was to be protected because it had to do with the super-sensible. But because this empty thinking had no content, it could apply itself to the sense-perceptible. But this faith in which man lived could only fill itself with old traditions, with the content of the oriental culture of the past, which still lived on.

It was the same with art. If one looks back to earlier times, one finds art closely associated with religion, and religious ideas find their expression in works of art. One sees how their ideas about the Gods find expression in the Greek dramatists or the Greek sculptors. Art is something within the whole structure of the spiritual life. But by the time of the Renaissance Art begins to be taken more externally. Indeed in the nineteenth century we see more and more how men are happy to be offered a pure phantasy in art, something which they need not accept as a reality, something which has nothing to do with reality. And such men as Goethe are like modern hermits. Goethe says “He to whom nature begins to unveil her open secrets feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, art.” Art, says Goethe, is a revelation of nature's secret laws, laws which would never be revealed without her. And it is worthy of note that Goethe has a way of turning to the past, different from that of other men,—he speaks therein for a content, in the age of empty intellect, filled only with the impression of the external world of the senses. He yearns toward Greece. And when in Rome he finds still something of what Greek art has fashioned out of the depths of its philosophy, he writes “That is necessity, that is God.” Art unveiled for him the spirituality of the world which he was trying to experience. But more and more men have a obscure ill-defined feeling “This thinking of ours is all right for the external world, but it is not suited to attain to an inner spiritual content.” And thus we see the second half of the nineteenth century run its course. As I remarked yesterday, the winds of the first half of the nineteenth century, such as Hegel, Saint-Simon or even Spencer, still believed that they could reach a philosophy, even a social philosophy, out of their inner soul experiences. In the second half of the nineteenth century men thought that no longer.

But something of what had given birth to thought out of the unconscious was still at work. Why was it that in the portentous dreams of village populations over the whole of Europe right up to the twelfth century there was always something of this riddle-solving element, this cleverness which expresses itself in all sorts of cunning? It was because thought, reflection, the work of thinking, was born. The foundation of thought was laid. And now we see how in the second half of the nineteenth century there is utter despair. Everywhere we find statements as to the boundaries of knowledge. And with the same rigidity and dogmatism with which once the scholastics had said that reason could not rise to the super-sensible, du Bois-Reymond, for example, said that scientific investigation could not penetrate to the consciousness of matter. I mean that previously the barrier had been set up in relation to this super-sensible; now it referred to what was supposed to hide behind the senses. But in all manner of other spheres we see the same phenomena emerge.

Ranke the historian of the second half of the nineteenth century is very typical in this respect. According to him history has to investigate the external events, even of the time in which Christianity begins to spread; one has to pay attention to what is taking place in the world around one politically and socially and culturally. What however has taken place through Christ in the course of human evolution—that Ranke assigns to the original world (Urwelt), not in the temporal sense, but to the world behind what can be investigated. We have seen that the scientist du Bois-Reymond says ‘ignorabimus’ as regards matter and consciousness. Natural Science can go pretty far; but what is there where matter lurks, what is there where consciousness arises, there du Bois-Reymond formulates his seven universal riddles; they are he pronounces his ‘ignorabimus!’ And Leopold von Ranke, the historian who works in the same spirit says “Upon all the wealth of existing documents historical investigations can pour its light; but behind what is at work as external historical fact there are events which seem to be primeval.” Everything which thus lies at the base of history he calls the ‘Urwelt’, just as does du Bois-Reymond the world lying beyond the limits of natural science. Within that sphere lie the Christian mysteries, the religious mysteries of all peoples. There the historian says ‘ignorabimus’. ‘Ignorabimus’ alike from scientist and historian; that is the mood of the entire spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Wherever you meet the spiritual life, in Wagnerian music, in the cult of Nietzsche, everywhere this mood is to be found. The former is driven to take refuge in certain musical dreams, the latter suffers through what is taking place in the world of ‘ignorabimus’. Agnosticism becomes fashionable, becomes politics, shapes the state. And anyone who wishes to do anything positive but relies not on any kind of gnosticism, but upon agnosticism. The strategy of Marxism builds upon what lies in the instincts, not upon something which it wants to bring forth of super-earthly nature. We see how everywhere spirituality is driven back, how agnosticism becomes the formative reality. It is thus that we have to understand modern spiritual life. We shall only understand it aright if we follow its origin from the fourth century A.D., if we know that in it Nominalism is living, the purely legalistic and logical; and thought has been born in the way I have described. This thought, however, is still only so far born as to be able to make use of formalism, of empty thinking. It slumbers in the depths of civilised humanity. It must be brought out into the open.

We learn how really to study history, if we illuminate with the light of spiritual investigation what has hovered over us since the fourth century. Then we can know what is above. And certainly thought has become fruitful and natural science because it has been fructified by thought born out of human nature in the way I have described. But now in the time of poverty, in the time of need, mankind needs to remember that thought which to begin with could only fructify formalism—empty thought that receives knowledge of nature from outside—has exhausted itself in natural scientific agnosticism, must strengthened itself, must become ripe for vision, must raise itself into the super-sensible world. This thought is there, it has already played a part in natural scientific knowledge, but its essential force still lies deep beneath the consciousness of human evolution. That we must recognize as a historical fact, then we shall develop trust in the inner force of spirituality, then we shall establish a spiritual science, not out of vague mysticism, but out of clarity of thought. And the thoughts of such a spiritual science will pass over into action, they will be able to work into the human social and other institutions. We are constantly saying that history should be our teacher. It cannot be our teacher by putting before us what is past and over, but by making it capable of discovering the new in the depths of existence. What goes forth from this place goes forth in search of such a new vision. And it can find its justification not only in the inculcation of spiritual scientific method, but also by a right treatment of history.

The theosophical world view is for those who need a more solid foundation of their concepts and ideas with regard to the super-sensible world, and for those who strive for such a more profound foundation of the knowledge of soul and mind. Those are really not few in our time.

We see that the cultural scholars made every effort for a long time to investigate the origin of the religions. They search for the origin of the religions with primitive tribes, with the so-called original peoples to recognise how the religious images have developed in the course of time. In these religious images that is included basically which ideas the human being made to himself in the different epochs, ideas of the super-sensible, psychic and spiritual worlds. There we see that—on the one side—the researchers make every effort to trace all religions back to nature worship originating in the simple, childish, naive human beings. On the other side, we see other researchers tracing back the origin of the religions to the fact that the simple, naive human being sees his fellow man stopping to live stopping to breathe, sees him dying, and that he cannot imagine that nothing more should remain. We see that he forms the idea—on account of his different experiences of the super-sensible world, of his dreams, of his spiritual experiences which the primitive human being has to a greater extent than the civilised one—that the forefather, the deceased ancestor, is still there, actually, that he is effective as a soul, holding his hand protectively over his descendants and the like.

So some researchers trace the origin of religions back to the ancestor worship, to the soul cult. We could still state a lot of other similar researches which should teach how religion came into the world. The human being tries to get a solid support for the question: are our images of a life after death, of a yonder realm which is not enclosed within the sensory world, how are our images of an eternal life solidly founded? How does the human being get to such images?—This is one kind how the human being tries today to found these ideas of the super-sensible.

The theosophical world view is not eager to offer this foundation to the present humankind. Whereas the cultural studies come back to the experience of the primitive, simple, naive, childish human being, the theosophical world view asks rather for the religious experience of the most perfect human being, of that who has come to a higher level of the spiritual view what he can develop as his view, as his experience of the super-sensible world. What the human being who has developed his inner life, who has got certain forces, certain abilities which are not yet accessible to the average person of today what such a human being is able to experience of the higher world is the basis of the theosophical world view. It is this higher experience which goes beyond the sensory one, which rests on the so-called self-knowledge of the soul and the mind, and forms the basis of the theosophical world view. What is this higher experience? What does it mean to experience something of the spiritual and astral worlds? Most of the human beings of today understand that fairly hard. This was not the case in former times. Today, however, the human being has moved with his experience to the sensuous world, the world of the external phenomena. In this world of the external phenomena the modern human being is at home. He asks how does this appear to the eye, how does that feel to the touching hand how can one understand this or that with the reason. He only sees the world of the external phenomena. Thus this world of the sensory experience lies before him openly.

Let us have a look once at that which this sensory experience can give us. We want to understand how this sensory experience faces us. We look at something that belongs to these external phenomena. We look at any being, at any thing of the world. We can show that all these things of the world have come into being once; they formed and were not there once. They were built up either by nature or by human hand, and after some time they will have disappeared. This is the quality of all things which belong to the external experience that they come into being and pass. We can say this not only of the lifeless things; we can say this also of all living things, also of the human being. He comes into being and passes if we look at him as an external phenomenon. We can say the same about whole nations. You need only to throw a glance at the world history and you see how peoples which have been setting the tone for centuries which have done big, tremendous actions disappeared from the world history, for example, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. We move on from there to the phenomena which one calls human creations, to that which is regarded as the highest and most marvellous human performances. If we look at a work of Michelangelo or of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), or to something other, to a significant work of technology, you have to say to yourselves: such a work remains for centuries or millennia; and may the human eyes feel contented at the sight of the works of Raphael or Michelangelo, may human hearts be delighted at the sight of such works—but you cannot ignore the thought that that which appears here as an external phenomenon perishes once and disappears in the dust. Nothing remains of the external appearance. Yes, we can still go on. Natural sciences teach us today that our earth that our sun originated in a particular point of the cosmic evolution and the physicist already states that one can almost calculate when that point in time must have happened at which our earth has arrived at the end of its development at which it goes to a state of inflexibility, so that it cannot continue its development. Then the end of the external appearance has come. Then everything sense-perceptible has disappeared. Thus you can study the whole realm of external forms, of external phenomena—you find everywhere in this world: coming into being and passing; or if we go to the realm of the living beings: birth and death. Birth and death hold sway in the realm of the forms, in that realm which is accessible to the sensory experience.

We ask ourselves: is this realm the only one which is to us? We ask ourselves: is the realm, in which birth and death hold sway continually, the only one which is accessible to the human beings? For somebody who only accepts the sensory view who wants to know nothing about self-knowledge of the mind, of abilities which exceed the mere consideration of forms, the consideration of the external phenomena to him it may probably appear in such a way, as if everything is contained in the appearing and disappearing phenomena, in the processes of originating and passing, in birth and death. You can also not get to a higher view if you consider nature and spirit as you gain the external experience. You cannot go far beyond birth and death in the same way, by means of the senses.

You need to become absorbed in higher mental abilities; not in abnormal mental abilities which only particular people have, no, only in those soul forces which are beneath the external superficial layer. If anybody transports himself into that soul region, he is able to obtain another view about the things and beings with deeper consideration. Look at the simplest one: the plant life. There you see birth and death perpetually changing. You see a lily originating from the germ and you see the lily disappearing again, after it has delighted your eye some time and has pleased your heart. If you do no longer see with the eye of your body, but with the eye of your mind, you see even more. You see the lily developing from the germ and becoming a germ after its development again. Then a new lily comes into being which produces a germ again. Look at a seed; there you see how in this world a form comes into being and passes, but any figure already contains the seed and the germ of a new figure. This is the nature of the living; this is the nature of that which one calls force which exceeds the mere form and the mere figure.

There we come to a new realm which we can see only with the eyes of the mind which is as absolutely true for the eye of the mind as the external form for the bodily eye. The forms originate and pass; what appears, however, again and again what is there with every new figure time and again is life itself. For you cannot seize life rationally with natural sciences, with external observation rationally. However, you can see it flowing through the originating and passing figures with your spiritual eye. Which is the character of life? It appears time and again. As well as birth and death are the qualities of the external phenomena and forms, rebirth and perpetual renewal are the qualities of life. The form which we call alive has enclosed in itself the force, the same force which is able to let come into being a new figure in a new birth instead of the old one. Rebirth and once more rebirth is the being, the typical in the realm of the living beings as birth and death is the typical in the realm of the forms, the external figures. If we ascend to the human being if the human being considers himself, takes a look at his soul, then he finds that something exists in him that represents a higher level than life which we have seen with the plant; that this life must have, however, the same quality like the life in the plant, going from figure to figure.

We have said that it is the force which allows the new figure to be reborn from the old one. Look at the little seed; its external appearance is insignificant. What you cannot see, however, is the force, and this force, not the external appearance, is the creator of the new plant. The new lily comes from the insignificant seed because the force of the new lily slumbers in the seed. If you look at a seed, you see something externally insignificant, and of the way, as it has formed life, you can make an idea of the force to yourselves. If you see, however, in your own soul with your spiritual eye, then you are able to perceive the force in yourselves with which this soul works, with which this soul is active in the world of forms.

Which are the forces of the soul? These forces which cannot be compared at all with other forces, but are on a higher level and are not immediately identical to the life-force of the plant, these forces are sympathy and antipathy. The soul is thereby active in life and does actions. Why do I carry out an action? Because any sympathy located in my soul drives me. Why do I feel revulsion? Because I feel a force in myself which one can call antipathy.

If you try to understand this perpetually surging soul-life by means of internal observation, you find these two forces in the soul again and again and you can attribute them to sympathy and antipathy. That must induce the thoughtful soul observer to ask: what about it? Which forces must exist in the soul?—If you asked: where from has the lily originated—and you would say: this lily has originated from nothing, then one did not imagine that it has come from the seed in which already the force was put by the former plant; then one did not assume that from the seed a new figure could originate. The new figure owes its existence to the old, dead figure which has left behind nothing but the force of the creation of a new one. As we never understand how a lily comes into being if not another lily releases the forces to the creation of a new lily, just as little we can understand how the surging soul-life which consists of sympathy and antipathy could be there if we did not want to trace it back to the origin. Just as we must be aware of the question that every plant and its figure must be traced back to a preceding one, we must also realise that the force cannot have originated from nothing.

Just as little the force of the lily can disappear into nothing, just as little the force of the soul can disappear into nothing. It must find its effect, its further shaping in the external reality. We find rebirth in the realm of life, we also find it—considering our soul intimately—in the psychic realm. We only need to pay attention to these thoughts in the right way. We only need to imagine that infinite consequence, and we can easily move from the thought of rebirth or reincarnation on the force which must enliven the soul, without which the soul cannot be thought at all, if one does not want to imagine that a soul has originated from nothing and disappears into nothing.

With it we also come in the psychic life to reincarnation, and we only need to ask ourselves: how must reincarnation be in the psychic life?—The matter here is that you do not keep to the sensory view, but that you develop the view of the spiritual life in yourselves to understand the perpetual change of the figures in connection with the unchanging life. There you only need to take a great German spirit, then you will get an idea how you can look with the spiritual eye at the life flowing from figure to figure. There you only need to take Goethe’s scientific writings, which are written so gracefully, where you have lively considerations of life seen with the spiritual eye and you will recognise how one has to look at life.

If you transfer these considerations to the view of the soul-life, you are led to the fact that our sympathies and antipathies have developed that they have arisen from a germ, as well as the plant has come from a germ with regard to its figure. This is the first primitive mental picture that forms the basis of a main thought of the theosophical world view, the idea of the reincarnation of the psychic life. What we ask from the point of view of the thoughtful reflection is: how have we to imagine the intricate soul-life if we do not want to believe in the reincarnation of the soul?—One may argue: certainly, it would be a psychic miracle; it would be a psychic superstition if I had to admit that my soul-life has originated all at once, and that it has to have its effect, too. One could argue: yes, but the preceding figure of the soul does not need to have been on our earth, and its effect also does not need to be anywhere on this earth.—However, also there you can overcome the apparent cliff with some thoughtful reflection. The soul enters the world; the soul has a sum of dispositions, these are developed and have not originated from nothing. As little the psychic from the physical, as little anything psychic has originated from the material as little an earthworm has come into being from mud. As well as life comes into being only from something living, the soul can have originated only from something psychic.

The origin of the soul must be on our earth. If its abilities came from distant worlds, they would not fit into our world, and then the soul would be not adapted to the life of the world of appearance. As well as any being is adapted to its surroundings, the developing soul is adapted directly to its surroundings. Hence, you have not to search for the preconditions of the present soul-life anywhere in an unknown world, but in this world first of all. With it we have conceived the thought of reincarnation.

Thus everybody can get the idea of the reincarnation of the soul only using pure thoughtful reflection if he wants to become engrossed really. This has forced all the excellent spirits, who understood the living nature, to the idea of transmigration in this sense, in the sense of transmigration from form to form, a transmigration which we call reincarnation, reincarnation or re-embodiment.

I still want to refer to one of the most excellent spirits of the newer time, to Giordano Bruno who expressed the reincarnation of the soul as his creed considering the human being. Bruno died a martyr’s death because he agreed openly as the first to the father of modern natural sciences, Copernicus. Thus you admit that he knew to assess the external figure in its sensory appearance. However, he understood even more. He knew how to look at life flowing from figure to figure, and that is why he was led to the idea of reincarnation by itself.

If we go on, we find this teaching of reincarnation with Lessing in his Education of the Human Race. We find it touched also with Herder. We find it indicated in various forms with Goethe even if Goethe did not express himself very clearly in his careful kind. Jean Paul and countless other writers could still be mentioned. What these modern spirits induced, on whom our whole cultural life is dependent who also have influenced the most important conceptions, is not only the endeavour to satisfy the human being, but that, above all, an image is created by this teaching which makes the world explanation only possible. The soul incarnates perpetually. Sympathy and antipathy have been there and will always be there. The theosophical world view has to tell this about the soul.

We return now to our starting point. We have seen that figure transforms to figure, form to form in our sensory world that everything emerges and disappears, is birth and death. We have seen that also the most wonderful works which are created pass. If we ask ourselves, however: is only the work involved in the work? Is with the creation of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) or Michelangelo or with the simplest, primitive human creations, is nothing else involved there than this work?—Nevertheless, we have to distinguish the work and the activity which the human being has used, the activity which any being has used to achieve a work or something that can be called a creation. The work is given away to the external world of the figures and forms, and in this external form the work is subjected to the destiny of these external figures, to emergence and disappearance.

But the activity which takes place in the being itself, that which took place in the souls of Raphael or Michelangelo in those days when they created their works, this activity is also that which the soul, so to speak, draws back again in its own being. This is the activity which did not flow out into the work. As well as a seal impression remains in the seal, this activity remained in the soul; and with it we get to something that remains in the soul not only for a short time, but that remains as something imperishable in the soul. If we look at Michelangelo some time later, has his activity passed him without a trace?

No! This activity has increased his internal abilities, and he moves up to a new work, he creates not only with that which was before in him, but he creates with the help of that force which has only originated from his activity in former works. His forces are raised, are consolidated, have been enriched on account of his first activity. Thus the activity of the soul creates new abilities which transform again in the work, take action again, withdraw again into the soul and give forces to a new activity. No activity of the soul can get lost. What the soul develops as an activity is always the origin, the cause of a rise of the soul being, of developing a new activity.

This is the activity and life of the soul, this is the imperishable, and this is really formative force, this is not only a figure, not only life, this is a creative force. With my activity I create not only the work, but I cause a new activity, and I always create a new activity through the preceding one.

This forms the basis of all great world views. In a very nice way an old Indian writing tells how one has to imagine this activity inside of a being. It tells how all figures disappear in an endless world of figures how birth and death hold sway in the external world of the forms how the soul is born repeatedly. But even if lily on lily comes into being, a time comes when no new lily originates, a time comes when the soul does no longer live in sympathy or antipathy. The living is born time and again; what does not stop, however, is the activity which always increases which is imperishable.

This third level of existence, the always increasing activity, is characterised by the fact that it does not belong to the transient or to the constantly creative. On the first level our figure is a sensuous being, it is a being born repeatedly as a soul, and it is an imperishable higher being as spirit. The consideration of the spirit itself and its demands shows us that sympathy and antipathy must originate and also pass, even if their time of existence is much longer than that of the external figure. What does the spirit demand from the human being if he immerses himself in this spirit?

This spirit has the quality to remind us energetically and strongly time and again that it can never be content with the soul only, with sympathy and antipathy. This spirit says to us that the one sympathy is justified the other is not. This spirit is the guide of our soul activity. We have the task if we want to develop as human beings to arrange our sympathy and antipathy according to the demands of the cultural life, which should lead us to the heights of development. With it the spirit has the control over the world of mere sympathy and antipathy from the start, over the mere psychic. If the spirit overcomes the world of the unjustified lower sympathy and antipathy again and again, the soul ascends to the spirit. There are initial states of the soul; then it is involved in the figures of the external reality. At that time its sympathy went to external forms. But the higher developed soul listens to the demand of the spirit, and the soul develops from the tendency to the sensuous to the sympathy for the spirit that way.

You can still pursue that in other way. The soul is a demanding being at first. The soul is fulfilled with sympathy and antipathy, with the world of desire. However, the spirit shows the soul after some time that it is not allowed to demand only. If the soul has overcome the desire by the decision of the spirit, it is not inactive, and then love flows from the soul just as desire flows from the undeveloped soul. Desire and love are the opposite forces between which the soul develops. The soul which still clings to sensuousness and external appearance is the demanding soul; the soul which develops its relationship to and harmony with the spirit is that which loves. This leads the soul in its run from reincarnation to reincarnation that it turns from a desiring soul to a loving soul that its works become works of love.

We have shown the third form of the feelings, and we have represented the basic qualities of the spirit at the same time, have shown its effectiveness in the human being and have shown that it is the great educator of the soul from desire to love, and that it pulls up the soul to itself like with magnetic forces. On the one side, we see the world of the figures and forms, on the other side, the world of the imperishable spirit, and both associated with the world of the psychic. In this discussion I have merely taken a thoughtful self-reflection into consideration which every human being—if he finds the necessary rest in himself and is involved not only in external observation—can see with the eye of the spirit. Somebody, however, who has developed the higher spiritual abilities in himself, an occultist, learns something else. He knows not only how to reach these three worlds with the apt consideration, but he has a view of life and spirit, just as the external eye has a view of the external sensory reality.

As the eye distinguishes light and darkness, as the eye distinguishes different colours, the spiritual, the developed, open eye of the occultist distinguishes the higher, brilliant light of the spirit which is no sensory light which is a brighter shining light in higher worlds, in higher spheres, and this radiant light of the spirit is for the occultist also reality as our sunlight is reality for our view. We see that the sunlight is reflected at single things. In the same way the occultist distinguishes the self-illuminating spirit from the peculiar glimmering of the light, which is reflected by the world of figures, as psychic flame. The soul is reflected light of the spirit, spirit is radiating creative light.

These three fields are the spiritual world, the soul-world and the world of figures, because they appear to the occultist that way. Not only are the fields of existence different.—The external figure is for the occultist the emptiness, the darkness, what is basically nothing, and the great, only reality is the sublime, shining light of the spirit. What we feel as a brilliant light, what is put around the figures is the world of the psychic which is born again and again, until it is got by the spirit, until this has completely moved it up to itself and joins with it. This spirit appears in manifold figure in the world, but the figure is the external expression of the spirit only. We have recognised the spirit in its activity, in its always increasing activity, and we have called this activity karma.

What is now the really important and typical aspect of this activity of the spirit? This spirit cannot remain unaffected in its activity by the action which it has done once on the level which it had then. I would like to make clear to you how this activity of the spirit must have its effect. Imagine the following: you have a vessel with water before yourselves and you throw a warm metal ball into this vessel. This ball heats up the water; this is the work of the ball. However, the ball itself has experienced a change while it caused a change.
The change remains as long as a new change happens. If the ball has done this work, then it has the imprint of its work, then it carries this character with it. If you throw the ball into a second vessel, it will not be able to warm up this second water again because of its first activity. Briefly how it works the second time is a result of its first activity. By this simple metaphor one can realise how the spirit works in its activity. If the spirit does a particular work, then not only the work is characterised, but also the activity of the spirit gets the same imprint. As the ball has cooled down and has received something permanent that way, the spirit has got its permanent signature, its character from its action. Whether good deeds whether bad deeds, the deeds do not simply pass what clings to the soul. As well as the action was, the imprint exists which the action has received and which it carries from now on.

That leads us to recognise that—as the great mystic Jacob Böhme says—on any action a sign is imprinted that cannot be taken away from it from now on, only if a new action takes place, so that the old imprint is replaced with a new one. This is the karma which the individual human being experiences. While the soul progresses from rebirth to rebirth, the imprints of its actions remain on it, the signature which it has attained during the actions, and a new experience only results from old experiences. This is the strict teaching of karma developing the concepts of cause and effect which the theosophical world view represents. I am the result of my former actions, and my present actions have their effects in future experiences. With it you have the law of karma. Somebody who wants to consider himself in his actions completely as a spirit must consider himself in this sense, he has to realise that any action has an effect that there is also the law of cause and effect in the moral world as it is in the external sensory world of forms.

These are the three basic laws of the theosophical world view: birth and death hold sway only in the world of forms, reincarnation holds sway in the world of life, and karma, or the perpetually forming and increasing activity, holds sway in the realm of spirit. The form is transient, life bears itself over and over again, and however, the spirit is eternal.

These are the three basic laws of the theosophical world view, and with it you have also received everything that the theosophical world view can introduce in the human life. The spirit educates the desiring soul to love. The spirit is felt by all within the human nature if this human nature is engrossed in its inside. The single figure is only interested in that which belongs to it as a single figure. Hence, this single figure works only for itself, and this working for itself is working in selfishness, is working in egoism. This egoism is all over the world of figures, of the external forms, the principal law. But the soul does not consist only of the single figure; it goes from figure to figure. It is longing for perpetually returning to a new birth. However, the spirit makes every effort to develop the perpetually transforming higher and higher, to form it from the imperfect to the perfect figure. Thus the soul leads in its desire from birth to birth, the spirit educating the soul leads from the undivine to the divine; for the divine is nothing else than the perfect to which the spirit educates the soul.

The education of the soul by the spirit from the undivine to the divine, this is the theosophical world consideration. Thus you also have the ethics of the theosophical world view. As well as the spirit cannot avoid educating the soul to love and to transform desire into love, the theosophical world view has as its first principle to found a human community which is built on love. The moral philosophy of the theosophical world view has got to harmony with the eternal laws of the spirit that way. Nothing else than what the spirit has to recognise as its innermost being, the transformation of desire into love, has led to the foundation of the Theosophical Society encompassing the whole humankind with the soul-fire of love. This ethical world view illuminates the theosophical movement.

We ask ourselves now: does the modern human being find his satisfaction in this world view?—The modern human being is used to no longer believe in external traditions, in external observation and in any authority. The human being rather develops in such a way that he looks for a world view which satisfies his thoughts which satisfies the self-knowledge of his mind. If the modern human being is eager to attain this self-knowledge, then there is for him nothing else than this theosophical view which excludes no confession basically, however, encloses everything. Because this theosophical view really offers to the soul what it looks for. The soul continually puts questions about the human destiny and his dissimilarity to itself. Can a thoughtful soul endure that on one side innocent human beings live in bitterness and misery, and on the other side, people live apparently in happiness who do not deserve it? This is the big question which the human soul has to put to destiny. As long as we consider life only between birth and death, we never find an answer to this riddle.

We never find consolation for the soul. If we look, however, at the law of karma, we know that any bitterness, any misery is the result of causes which were there in former lives. Then we say on one side: what the soul experiences today as its destiny is the effect of former experiences. This cannot be anything else. Consolation becomes this explanation immediately when we look at the future because we say: somebody who experiences something painful or bitterness and grief today can complain of his destiny not only, but he has to say to himself: bitterness, heartache have effect on the future. What is your pain today is for your future life in such a way as the pain of a child if it falls: it learns to go. Thus any grief is the cause of a rise of the soul-life, and the soul finds consolation immediately if it says to itself: nothing is without effect. The life which I experience today must bear its fruit for the future.

I want to mention another phenomenon, the conscience. This phenomenon is inexplicable at first. It becomes immediately clear to us if we look at its development. If we know that every soul shows a particular level of development, then we admit that the urge for figure lives in the undeveloped soul. However, if the spirit has drawn the soul to itself, has united more and more with it, the spirit speaks at any moment of sympathy and antipathy. The human being hears the spirit speaking from his soul; he perceives this as the voice of conscience. This conscience can appear only on a particular level of the human development. We never see the voice of conscience with primitive peoples. Later when the soul has gone through different personalities, the mind speaks to the soul.

These are the main concepts of the theosophical world view, and you have seen how clear this view is for that world of the external forms. Yes, we would never understand this world of forms if we did not understand them from our mind. However, somebody who lives only in the external figure who can be carried away in the world of forms is on the level of the transient, is on that level where he develops selfishness and egoism because our external form only has interest in the form.

But he develops out of selfishness because the spirit becomes more and more speaking. However, we only recognise this spirit, which is the same in any human being, if we bring ourselves to consider the eternally imperishable, the innermost core of the human being. We recognise the human being only in his innermost being if we get to his spirit. If we recognise the innermost core of the human being, we recognise the spirit in ourselves. However, only that who regards the other human being as a brother understands the spirit in the other human being; he understands him only if he completely appreciates brotherliness.

That is why the theosophical movement calls brotherliness the ideal which the spiritual development of humankind wants to achieve under the influence of this world view.

Dear audience, the modern human being finds this in the theosophical movement. Because this movement offers to the modern human being what he looks for, it has spread in the course of 29 years over all the countries of the earth. We find it in India, Australia, America, in all countries of Western Europe. It is to be found everywhere because it brings clear conceptions to this modern human being. Theosophy offers this to the modern human being. It is something that the modern human being looks for, it is something that the modern human being feels, something that any human being has felt clearly who knew how to look with thoughtful look at nature and human life and found what applies itself to this view of the spirit and impresses that which gives satisfaction, consolation, courage and life.

It is the view that the transient that birth and death are not the only one, but that in this transient, passing creative life of the external being the inner being of the spirit enjoys life. Then we safely look at the past and full of courage at the future if this view has become our conviction. Then we say from the deepest soul full of consolation and courage what the poet expressed by full conviction:

Time is a flourishing countryside
And nature a big living being,
Everything is fruit, everything is seed.

Notes:

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Italian Dominican monk, philosopher, mathematician, astrologer and astronomer. c f. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism, chapter on G. B.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German writer, philosopher. Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Education of the Human Race) (1780)

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), German theologian, poet, philosopher

Jean Paul (1763–1825), German writer

Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), German mystic. cf. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism, chapter on J. B. (Anthroposophic Press, 2000)

after the eurythmic-dramatic presentation of the “Easter Vigil”

Among the Easter performances that have just passed before our minds were also those that depict how a soul that is about to pass through the gate of death through its own decision is brought back into the world of earthly life through the Easter message. I believe that, of the many impressions that the Faust story can have on us, this scene must be one of the most profound. Now, after the transformation, I would like to say, after the transformation, ¹ the scene that signifies the world with its evolution, bring that you have absorbed as a prospect within the Faustian poetry into your soul, in connection with what was said here yesterday, so to speak, before the transformation, about that meaningful real vision that can arise in the human soul when it steps before the symbol of Jesus Christ resting in the tomb. Let us bear in mind that yesterday we were able to say that the sight of what is connected with human life through its development on earth in relation to the world of Lucifer and Ahriman is evoked through a corresponding spiritual contemplation or spiritual perception. Let us bear in mind that in the Faust epic we have a soul which announces itself to us immediately at the beginning of the poem as having absorbed Ahrimanic knowledge and insights. And then let us look into this soul as it struggles out of its connection with the Ahrimanic wisdom towards the — we may say from our point of view — Christ-imbued source of life: a momentous moment that is presented to us for a human soul. Let us visualize this human soul! There she stands before us with all the knowledge she has absorbed through observing the external material world and its interrelations, with the insight she has been able to gain through the instruments by which the external naturalist attempts to penetrate the interrelations of nature... And what has this soul come to with all the research that is linked to the various instruments and also to the phial containing the juices that “quickly make one drunk” for earthly life? We feel how an Ahrimanic nature already rules at the side of the Faust soul, and how this Ahrimanic nature is linked to what is earthly death. Do we not see how this human soul, filled with Ahrimanic nature, draws the result of its Ahrimanic insights? And this result of knowledge that Ahriman can give to man on earth is what is summarized in the words:

I greet you, you only vial!
Which I now bring down with devotion,
In you I honor human wit and art.
You epitome of the sweet slumber potions,
You distillation of all deadly subtle powers,
Do show your favor to your master!
I see you, pain is alleviated,
I grasp you, the striving is diminished,
The spirit's flood tide ebbs away little by little.
I am expelled into the high sea,
The mirror tide glistens at my feet,
A new day beckons to new shores.

And already this soul has the vision of coming to the other shore, where it may be able to find that which it must believe it cannot find on this earth because of its ahrimanic entanglement. Already it has the vision of crossing over to the other shore:

A chariot of fire floats, on light wings,
Towards me! I feel ready,
On a new path to penetrate the ether,
To new spheres of pure activity.
This lofty life, this divine bliss!
You, still a worm, and do you deserve them?
Yes, just turn your back resolutely
to the lovely sun of the earth!
Dare to tear open the gates,
before which everyone likes to sneak by.
Here it is time to prove by action
That manly dignity does not give way to the height of the gods,
Not to tremble before that dark cave,
In which the imagination condemns itself to its own torment,
To strive towards that passageway,
Around whose narrow mouth the whole of hell is aflame;
To take this step serenely,
And, even if it means flowing into nothingness,

And now that he has also taken up the other Ahrimanic instrument, he is ready to take the path over to those realms that he learned in Ahriman's school are numberless to the soul as long as it is enclosed in the earthly body. And this soul is torn out of this mood by the sound of the Easter bells and the choir of the Easter song. And so the Faust soul has lived an earthly life to now seek within the earthly body what this human soul, as a result of its seeking in the earthly body, is to carry through the gate of death, so that it can carry it up into the spiritual realm where it needs it for its further development.

What you have heard today from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, and much of what belongs to this part, to this scene of Goethe's “Faust”, first appeared as the completed first part of the poem in 1808. But before that, in 1790, Goethe had already published “Faust, a fragment”, this fragment, which did not yet have the last Gretchen scene. But this fragment did not even have the scene that has brought the events of such significance for Faust's soul to our own soul today. In 1790, Goethe published his fragment without this Easter scene and without the monologue that leads to the deepest depths of human and spiritual experience. And at the end of the 19th century, what Goethe had finished in the 1780s, even as early as the 1770s, was discovered in the 1790s. It was then published under the tasteless title “Urfaust”. In this Urfaust, we do not find, one might say, of course, this Easter scene. Why is it not there? Yes, Goethe, who was a child of his time, had to mature in order to be able to depict the effect of the Christ impulse on Faust's soul in his own way, in accordance with his soul; he first had to mature for this. And Goethe was not ripe for it until 1790. The nineties saw the deepening of Goethe's soul, which found its reflection in the well-known “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. It falls into the time between the moment when “Faust” was published without the Easter scene and the moment when it was published with the Easter scene. Goethe's soul experienced a profound deepening through what it developed in the “Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. And it was only through this experience that Goethe realized how he could allow the Easter experience scene to affect Faust's soul.

Now, let us look into this soul of Faust itself, and try to put ourselves in the place of the beginning of Goethe's “Faust,” which is more or less the same in the various successive publications. We know that it reads:

I now, alas! have philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine,
And unfortunately also theology!
Thoroughly studied, with hot endeavor.
There I stand now, I poor fool!
And am as wise as before;
I am called Magister, even Doktor,
And for ten years now,
Up and down and hither and thither,
I have led my students by the nose –
And I see that we cannot know anything!

So he has been a lecturer for ten years. Let us assume that he entered the teaching career regularly, then we might think that he became a lecturer around the age of thirty. In fact, he has been leading his students by the nose since the age of thirty! Let us recall what I said yesterday. In the thirties, the human being will stand before the image of the Jupiter existence when he visualizes the seduction I spoke of yesterday. And a vision, a prophetic vision of this seduction, is what one has before one when one stands before Christ Jesus lying in the tomb. Do we not have this vision dramatically developed in Faust? Does he not stand before us before the Easter Mystery, and does he not stand before us, one might say, at the end of the 1830s, before the Easter Mystery? May we not assume that in his feelings, what man must feel from the Easter Mystery, rumbles like a premonition of the Jupiter experience with Lucifer and Ahriman? In Goethe's time one could not present it as one can present it now, but Goethe could present the rumbling sensation in the heart towards the Easter Mystery, and it rumbled in Faust's soul. And is it not as if Faust felt, when Mephisto-Ahriman approaches him, how his soul has fallen prey to the Ahrimanic powers? How he has to save himself from something? Yes, but from what? From what must he save himself? Can we not say that Goethe sensed something of this when, as a mature man, as a mature soul, he allowed the spirit of his own Faust to take effect on him again, as he was able to sense it in his time, of the Easter mood that we have been picturing in our minds these days, and that this gave rise to the need to insert the Easter scene into “Faust”, which did not have this Easter scene before? The “Faust” was re-written into Christian verse with the insertion of the Easter scene between the years 1790 and 1800.

So what years did Faust have to live through? Before which years of life did he shudder so much that he wanted to reach for the vial himself? Well, before the second, descending part of life, that part of life of which we have said how man, when he stands before the vision of the Jupiter existence, knows that later on he must carry to Jupiter that which the Christ can give him as provisions for the journey, because otherwise he would have to go without nourishment in the second half of life. What is Faust seeking? He seeks nourishment for the soul for the second half of life. We have all been seeking it since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha has passed over the evolution of our Earth. We are all seeking it. For that which will take physical and psychic form on Jupiter is already living in the depths of our souls, and we must all feel something of this Faustian mood. We need a power that we cannot have through that which, as human beings, only gives us freedom and thus leads us to Ahriman and Lucifer; we need a power for those impulses in us that are connected with the descending half of life. It is the power of Christ, the power of Christ, which the Christ has after he has passed through the gate of death and has not lived through in an earthly body the second half of man's life. Why did he not live through it? Because this power, which must be bestowed upon people in the second half of life, had to flow into the earth aura so that all people can find themselves through the evolution of the earth. Through the Easter mystery, that which we need to enable us to journey through our entire life on earth with our soul is resurrected. And now imagine this profound connection in Goethe's “Faust”. Faust has absorbed within himself — Goethe knew how to absorb this, because he presented it without the Easter mystery when he published his fragment without the Easter mystery — Faust has absorbed within himself what man can absorb through the connection with Lucifer and Ahriman, what gives us the possibility of a free soul. But Faust, who measures the depths of the soul, is aware that he cannot continue to live with him; he needs something else in order to live. And Goethe was ripe to show what Faust needs, what is the impulse of the Easter Mystery. Does not the Easter Mystery stand profoundly before us in what Goethe made of his “Faust” only as a fully mature man, what he could not yet have included in 1790 because he did not yet understand it?

How did the poetic idea for this poem, which takes us to such depths, come about in the young Goethe? We know that the young Goethe was deeply impressed both by the puppet show of Faust, which he saw, where the fate of Faust was simply presented through puppets, and by the folk play of “Doctor Faust”. This thoroughly popular element came before Goethe's soul. What then is this Faust? And Goethe's soul immediately realized: this Faust must be the striving human being in general, who, through his striving, can dive down into all the depths of the human soul and must find the way up to the bright heights of the spirit. That an inner path must be traversed by a human soul, the young Goethe knew that. For what is it, after all, if not a meditation that Faust experiences in his soul as he gazes at the various signs? It is a meditation that ultimately leads him to the vision of the Earth Spirit that flows through and permeates the Earth. The meditation receives the words in response:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I work at the whirring loom of time
And weave the living garment of divinity.

Meditation and counter-meditation! It leads Faust into the depths of life, but how to get out? How to ascend to spiritual heights?

Now that we have placed ourselves before the soul, what a grandiose idea of the striving Faust in Goethe's soul arose from the puppet show and the folk play, and what form this grandiose idea took through the penetration of the Goethean soul into the mystery of the soul, we now ask ourselves: What did Goethe make of Faust throughout his life? After we have realized the magnitude of what Goethe's soul was capable of through the impact of the Faust impulse, we may well ask ourselves: What did these impressions become in artistic and poetic terms? Well, one thing I just said can help us in our quest to understand this 'Faust' in aesthetic and artistic terms as well. Goethe published a fragment that roughly concludes with the cathedral scene in 1790. What makes the “Faust” seem so grandiose to us today is not in it. He added it later, when he was in Rome. In 1787, he added what we now know as the “Witches' Kitchen”. He inserted other scenes into the manuscript at other times. The original manuscript was written and copied by someone else, and at the time the later scenes were added, Schiller himself described it as a “yellowed manuscript”. And when Schiller called upon Goethe at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century to do something to round off Faust, Goethe said that it would be difficult for him to take on the old monster Faust again and to appropriately complete what had been left unfinished for so long. Goethe was afraid of incorporating into this his “Faust” that with which he had later matured, into all that he was and had appeared by the year 1790.

And now let us look at the first part of this “Faust”. Is it not a work that we can clearly see has been patched together from what was created at different times? If people were not attached to traditional judgments, they would see in “Faust” the most magnificent poetic idea that has ever come into the world with regard to the individual human being. At the same time, they would have to admit to themselves that in terms of art and poetry, this “Faust” is the most inconsistent, that it is a thoroughly disharmonious work, into which one could still put many things that are not in it, that has cracks and fissures everywhere, that is artistically far from perfect. Goethe's great genius could only ever complete fragments of what was before his soul. And however much we may admire the magnificent beauty of individual scenes, if we are not merely attached to the traditional judgment that literary historians have passed, but if we are unbiased, we cannot deny that “Faust” as it is is not a harmonious work of art, that it is glued in many places, but shows cracks and fissures everywhere. Why is this so? At a very advanced age, Goethe once again undertook to complete the second part of his Faust, for which he already had individual scenes, to which he added what he could add in his very old age. For example: the beginning of the classical-romantic phantasmagoria, the Helena interlude, was already completed around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, and some parts were completed earlier. And again, we have every reason not to say, as some literary historians say, that one cannot understand the second part of “Faust,” or, as a very clever man, who is by no means stupid, said, that “Faust” is “a cobbled-together, patched-up concoction of old age.” It is not! On the other hand, it is a work whose task was so great that even Goethe's rich life experience was not enough in his time to shape it. One may well have one's own opinion even about the greatest things in the world. But why is that so? Well, I have already indicated on one occasion, in a lecture series held in The Hague, that this Faust is by no means, I would say, so extraordinarily young in world history. Faust, as he lived in the folk play that Goethe saw and as he lived in the puppet show, represents the human being descending into the depths of spiritual life and the human being wanting to rise to the light of the heights; he represents him in such a way that the greatest poet of modern times needed the Easter mystery for the liberation of his soul. As he appears in the folk play, he is a combination of the external physical reality, of the Dr. Georg Faust, who lived in the second half of the Middle Ages and wandered around like a tramp; of whom Trithem of Sponheim as well as other important men who met him report, and who even had a certain respect for him, the respect that one has for a remarkable personality who, through the way he expresses himself emotionally, knows many things and is capable of many things. And it was not for nothing that this real Doctor Faust was called by the name, as I have once stated here:

Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, fons necromanticorum, Magus Secundus, Chiromanticus Aeromanticus, Pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.

That was the name he gave himself. Now, it was common in those days to have many titles, and a long list of similar-sounding titles could be said of Giordano Bruno and many other important minds of the Middle Ages. If today's sophisticated people may find it strange that Trithem von Sponheim and others who knew about the existence of this real Faust thought that he was in contact with demonic powers of the world and the earth and through them was able to accomplish many things, then we must remember that in Luther's time, for example, there was nothing special about telling such a story. We know how Luther himself wrestled with the devil. We know that all this was common practice, the views and stories of that time. But a feeling lived in all this, which helped to shape Faust in the popular consciousness. The feeling lived — I say the feeling and not the concept, not the idea — natural science is coming up, natural science, which brings the Ahrimanic part of real reality before the human soul. And from this arose the feeling that Faust is a personality, and always has been, who has something to do with these Ahrimanic powers. People saw, as it were, the secret spiritual connecting threads that went from the soul of Faust to the Ahrimanic powers. And they found that Faust's destiny was tied to this inclination towards the Ahrimanic powers. That the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic has to do with the entire evolution of the human soul was still sensed and felt from the remnants of ancient clairvoyance and clear-sighted knowledge. And so the Faust figure was linked to this feeling of man's connection with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But at the same time, this intuitive knowledge was already descending into twilight, becoming unclear. And so, one might say, the feeling arose that one could depict the striving human being with all his temptations and dangers for his soul in the figure of Faust. But how this striving of the human being is connected with Lucifer and Ahriman was no longer known exactly. It had become blurred, and that is where the tremendous vagueness came from, which one gets a sense of when one picks up the medieval Faust book, in which all that the folk character is said to have experienced is where everything is thrown together in a grotesque ragout of all kinds of adventures that the human soul experiences in its quest to master all possible demonic and elementary spirits, Ahriman and Lucifer. After they were no longer seen in their full form, after they were shattered and ground into a ragout with all possible elemental spirits of nature, the figure of Doctor Faust was now placed in this ragout in this folk book. It was only Goethe's inspired insight that was able to discern in this gruesome ragout the mighty fundamental idea and to develop it to the point of the Easter Mystery. But it is really quite interesting to observe how, I might say, Lucifer and Ahriman were gradually dismembered into such ragout pieces.

If we go back and search for the figure of Faust in ancient times, we can look in books that were written as popular books at the time and that were in the hands of all those who were dealing with matters related to such things at the time. Augustine's works were very widespread when this book was written, cobbled together, glued together. One has the feeling of a bookseller who wanted to make a book that was as thick as possible, and not as if it were from a writer or even a literary man. But he must have known his Augustine, especially the biography of Augustine. And Augustine presents himself to us in all his development in such a remarkable way. How he at first cannot understand what Christianity is in its essence, how he gradually overcomes the inner resistance that he must bring to bear on Christianity in the development of his soul, first to what can now become known to him from the Manichaean doctrine. And from a great and important man within the Manichaean sect, Augustine receives knowledge from the Manichaean bishop Faustus. And we almost sense who this Faustus senior is, in comparison to whom the Faustus I mentioned earlier calls himself Faustus junior. He is the one whom Augustine once encountered in ancient times, the one who represented something of the Manichaean doctrine as Faustus, as bishop of the Manichaeans.

But what did he represent of the Manichaean doctrine? That which is corroded by Ahriman, that which no longer allows one to see how man, with his soul, is connected to the whole cosmos, to all cosmic, all stellar impulses. One can say: Even in the Manichean Bishop Faustus, the bond of knowledge that leads up to the cosmic insights that show how the human soul is born out of the cosmos, and which one must know if one wants to understand the Easter mystery in truth, is already torn. So it could be that in the person who wrote the folk book about Doctor Faust, precisely through the figure that Augustine describes as the Manichean bishop Faustus, it could emerge in this writer and compiler through the figure of Faustus, who had fallen prey to Ahriman. But since everything had become blurred, he did not understand that it was going against Ahriman. We see the scraps of the Ahrimanic danger shimmering through the stories of the folk play, but we see nothing clear. Yet we can get a clear feeling that Faustus is to be presented as the representative of the striving human being, so that danger threatens him from the Ahrimanic side. And much of what has been added to the Faust figure as it developed up to Goethe has been added by that Manichean Bishop Faustus, Faust senior. Many chapters of the folk tale seem as if they had been copied, but badly copied, only from the book in which Augustine describes his own development and his encounter with Bishop Faustus. We can prove that the Ahrimanic trait in the Faust figure points in this direction, and that when the folk book was written only the last dark urge remained to depict the Ahrimanic elements of human nature in the Faust figure.

And now, what about the Luciferic element? How were the Luciferic elements chopped up into those ragout pieces, which were then cooked into the ragout of elemental spirits and pieces of Lucifer and Ahriman, as I just said? Yes, we have to search if we want to find the connection between Faust and Lucifer. We can also search for it historically, we don't even have to go terribly far, we just have to go to Basel, and we can find clues in Basel as to how Lucifer was chopped up into a ragout. We are told that Erasmus of Rotterdam met with Faust in Basel, where they wanted to have a meal in the college, but could not find the right food. And since Erasmus lacked something that should now taste good to him, he told Faust, who was sitting with him and wanted to eat with him, but they had nothing right. So the Faust saga tells us that Faustus was now able to suddenly bring to the table, cooked and roasted, from somewhere - we don't know where - very strange birds that were not otherwise available in Basel. So we see a scene between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faust, in which Faust is able to present such birds, which could not be bought in Basel at the time, nor far and wide in the surrounding area, to Erasmus. What is it actually? As such, it is not at all comprehensible in the legend, one can say, completely incomprehensible, but it becomes more understandable to us if we go back and bring together what we can gain from the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who himself tells us that he made the acquaintance of a certain Faustus Andrelinus in Paris. This Faustus Andrelinus was an extremely learned man, but also an extremely sensual man. At first, Erasmus became so familiar with this Faustus that he had no real taste for the sensual sides of this Faustus. But again, we hear about a meal that the two are said to have eaten together. Now, however, two learned gentlemen of the time, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faustus Andrelinus – we cannot expect them to serve each other such birds and in such a way, as Faustus of Basel is said to have served them to Erasmus. So it is likely that what has been handed down to us is just a kind of, I would say, joking speech that the two exchanged at the meal. But we do get a little behind this jocular talk when we also hear within this talk that Faust – this time it is probably Faust – was not satisfied with what was served to him, and demanded something else. Faust would now like to eat, in order to particularly torment himself, strange birds and rabbits; yes, strange birds and rabbits. Erasmus initially has the idea that this must mean something. So he behaves exactly like some theosophists who reflect on what things mean. Well, then the other one says, okay, he wants to do without the rabbits. Erasmus said: Could it not mean flies and ants? He wants to do without the rabbits. But the birds really are flies, and he wants to kill himself with flies for a change. Now we are very far. Now the birds have transformed into flies through astral transformation. And in Goethe we have the god of the flies in the figure of Mephisto. All that is needed is the spirit that commands these beings, and it could conjure up these beings. And so we have built the connecting bridge from the incomprehensible Basel legend and the strange birds to the flies that simply come from the devil. And we need not be surprised that the devil presents flies to him whom he invites to the table. But what kind of soul Faustus Andrelinus has, what kind of soul he has, that much becomes clear to us when we follow Erasmus a little further on his journey in Paris. In Paris, Erasmus was not yet quite inclined to engage with this Faustus Andrelinus character. But then he has to make a trip to London. There he writes that he has now learned – truly, Erasmus, think! , that he had manners like a coarse peasant, — that he has now learned to bow and even knows how to move around on the court parquet! And, yes, Erasmus writes it, that he lives in an atmosphere where, as you come and go, you always kiss each other by mistake. One recognizes from this that he wants to meet the tastes of his Parisian friend. He writes: “Come over here.” And if the gout prevents you too much, come over through the air in the spirit chariot. That is an element for you! — One sees that Faustus has a connection with the Luciferic kind of soul tendency.

With Goethe, we then encounter how Faust carries out his seductions by seducing Gretchen and so on. Lucifer has really fallen so far from the surroundings of the Faust figure that one must already do such literary investigations if we want to state the connection of Faust with Lucifer in the Parisian Faust. But we literally see Faust standing there, Lucifer and Ahriman at his side, albeit indistinctly through the confused time, boiled down into a ragout in the folk play. Should we be surprised to find in the folk play and folk drama, and even in Marlowe's Faust, something that is a remnant of ancient beliefs, still rooted in those times when man's connection with Ahriman and Lucifer was recognized through atavistic clairvoyance? But all this has become blurred, and in the literary product of which we have spoken, it is presented in a thoroughly blurred way. Goethe sensed the deep connection. But what could Goethe not do? He could not separate Lucifer and Ahriman from each other. They merged for him into the hybrid figure of Mephisto, in whom one does not really know whether it is the devil, Ahriman, or the real Mephisto. For he has also taken upon himself what Lucifer has. Goethe receives the ragout, as it were; he senses that Ahriman and Lucifer are at work, but he cannot yet sort it out; he devours them in the occult impossibility of the figure of Mephisto, who is a hybrid of Ahriman and Lucifer. One would like to be able to name the time that Goethe looked into by getting to know the Faust book: the last darkening of an old knowledge of this matter, the dying evening twilight of the old knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer. And Goethe's Faust is the first dawn of the as yet unascended knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer, dark and confused in the figure of Mephisto, Ahriman and Lucifer still mixed up. But already with the need to depict what the human soul can have by allowing itself to be affected by what has flowed into the earth's aura through the Christ being having passed through the mystery of Golgotha!

The Easter Mystery appears to us as the dawn of a new era of spiritual life for humanity in Goethe's “Faust”, which, despite its grandiose nature, still has something confused about it, something of a dark, foggy dawn. It appears to us as something within this dark dawn that we can see when we climb a mountain and see the sun rise earlier than we could see it before we stood on the mountain. We feel how one of the greatest of men, in his striving for the renewal of ancient knowledge, turns his soul towards the Paschal Mystery, when we allow Goethe's Faust to take effect on us. And if we allow it to take effect on us in the right way, then we feel what can take place in the heart of one of the greatest of men when this human heart has been touched by the Paschal Mystery, as Goethe himself felt at the same time. There is also something in this intuitive presentiment of Goethe to the Easter Mystery in Goethe's anticipation of it, is something like a hint: Yes, after the dawn, into which the first dark-light rays of the Easter Mystery shine, will come the sun of a new spiritual knowledge. The human soul will rise from the grave of darkened knowledge into which it too must descend. In the course of its development, the human soul will experience the Easter Mystery, the resurrection of that which is the Christ impulse in its deep, grave-like depths, when it unites with the power that emanates from the contemplation of the Christ Easter Mystery.

So, one would like to say, we feel Goethe's call and, after letting the tragedy of the Easter mystery take effect on us, would like to transform it into the call: May spiritual knowledge appropriate to the future rise in human hearts, in human souls! May human hearts and human souls, after sensing the deepest tragedy of the Easter mystery, feel and experience its depth in their innermost being, and may they experience resurrection in themselves through Christ!

May you, today, through the words that I have taken the liberty of speaking to you, absorb something of the feeling in your soul, so that you are united here, in our building dedicated to spiritual research, so that you, through the power of your souls into the future, something of that resurrection impulse which is so powerfully illustrated in the Easter mystery, and from which we could see how the greatest spirits of that time, which has now passed away, longed for it.

Feel in “Faust” something of what the magical sound of the Easter bells can resonate in the spirit of your souls.

• 1. At the words “Christ is Risen,” the black color of the scene transformed into a red one.

Dear Attendees!

Unlike in previous years when I had the honor of speaking here in this city about subjects of spiritual science, last year I did not venture to speak about a subject of spiritual science in the strict sense, but rather about something that is connected with the spiritual development of the German people, who are currently facing one of the most significant events in world history, with world-historical facts that have no equal in the entire developmental history of modern times. And so, honored attendees, may this evening's reflection also be dedicated to such a topic, the reflection of a certain current in German intellectual life, which I believe, however, not out of a vague feeling, but out of real spiritual-scientific conviction that it contains, in the most essential, in the very most essential sense, German intellectual development, the seeds of that spiritual science as it was always meant, when I was allowed to speak about it here in earlier years.

This spiritual science wants, in the best sense of the word, to be a real science, a real, genuine continuation of the scientific world view that has emerged over the past three to four hundred years in the development of humanity. As a spiritual science, it aims to penetrate into the spiritual realm of the world, just as natural science methodically penetrates into the external world through the external senses and through the mind bound to the external senses, into the mind bound to the external senses and its observations, and into the external senses and their observations.

However, spiritual science requires a certain development of the human soul for its research. It is necessary for this research that what can lead to it is first developed from the human soul. To a certain extent - to apply Goethe's often-used words again today - the spiritual eyes and ears that slumber in man himself must first be awakened from the human soul so that he can look and listen into the spiritual world.

Now, however, it might seem from the outset, esteemed attendees, as if, when speaking of science - and that is the opinion of some; some think that one has no right to speak of anything other than such a thing that belongs to all nations. In certain circles, there is the opinion that one is already thinking unscientifically if one allows oneself the opinion that even that which is the scientific study of the world has its origins in the essence of folklore. However, as superficial as this opinion may be, it is superficial when it comes to the deeper objects of spiritual science.

The moon is also common to all peoples of the earth, but how the thoughts and feelings that the individual peoples have attached to the experiences of the moon differ. One could indeed say: that may relate to poetry. But when it comes to penetrating the deeper secrets of the world, then the different predispositions that exist in different ways in the individual peoples speak. And according to these different predispositions, people penetrate more or less deeply into the secrets of existence.

The German does not need to resort to the clay when speaking of the significance and value of the German national character for the development of the world and humanity, as the opponents of Central Europe are currently doing, using our fateful time not only to vilify the German character in the most hateful way possible, but to downright slander it. The German can quite appropriately penetrate into that which has emerged in the course of his intellectual development. And it will be shown that this appropriate consideration leads precisely to placing German essence, German intellectual life, in the right place in the world development of humanity, not through self-assured arrogance, but by letting the facts speak.

When we consider the events that affect us all so deeply today, that claim so many, so many victims from humanity, that fill us with so much definite hope and confidence, when we consider these events, then there is really only one fact that needs to be mentioned – to strike a chord that will resonate again and again in the future history of humanity: Today, around Central Europe, 777 million people stand, in a row, 150 million hostile. The 777 million people have no reason to envy the size of the land on which the other 150 million live in Central Europe; the people of the so-called Entente live on 68 million square kilometers, and the people of Central Europe live on only 6 million square kilometers!

But leading personalities in particular have repeatedly managed, out of the 777 million, to insult and defame even the best and highest intellectual products of the 150 million.

It is therefore particularly appropriate for the German to reflect on his intellectual life in such a way that it may appear to him as rooted in the actual germinating power of his nationality.

And so, esteemed attendees, we are repeatedly and again and again, although this should only be mentioned in the introduction today, repeatedly and again and again referred to the three great figures within the German world view development, which today, unfortunately, may say, unfortunately, no longer considered in the right, deep way, but whose essence nevertheless lives on to this day, and whose essence wants to rise again, [whose essence] must belong to the best impact forces of German spiritual culture in the future. Three figures are pointed out: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, those personalities in the development of the German world view who tried to lift the German people in time onto the scene of the development of thought, of the highest, purest development of thought, in the time when, from the depths of this national life, such minds as Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and all the others who belong to them have worked so that what has come from them after the Greek intellectual blossoming of humanity means a time of the highest intellectual blossoming of humanity for anyone who is unbiased.

And how does Johann Gottlieb Fichte appear in the mind's eye of the human being? That which lived in his soul as feeling made his world view appear to him, who can be called one of the most German of men, as something that he had attained by having something directly in his lonely soul life, something like a kind of dialogue with the German national spirit itself.

This mood of the soul emerged when he delivered his powerful “Discourses to the German Nation,” which sought to reveal all the power and developmental possibilities of German nationality in order to give impetus to the further development of “Germanness,” as Fichte himself put it.

But what is the essence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It can be said that everything that has been striven for in the best sense from the center of the German soul for centuries appears again in Fichte in the most powerful way. Thus it is that Fichte wanted to gain a well-illuminated world view, an energetic understanding of the world through this. What Fichte strove for was to delve into the human soul, to inwardly experience its deepest powers, to experience them in such a way that in this experience he also experiences what the world as a whole is living through and working through as a spiritual, world-creating entity. [What Fichte strove for was to] experience the spiritual, world-creating essence in one's own soul in such a way that, by unfolding one's own soul powers, one experiences what works and lives and dwells in the innermost part of the world. That was what Fichte wanted: to experience the spirit of the world by making it present in one's own soul.

That was for him the true meaning of the word “knowledge”. That was for him also the content of all truth worth striving for by man – the truth that for him was the direct expression of the divine spirituality that lives through the world, that knowledge, as truth, permeates the human soul so that this human soul can grasp it in an inward, powerful experience. But through this, Fichte felt as if the whole world were pulsating and alive and interwoven with the will of the world, with the divine will of the world.

And as man grasps himself in his innermost being, as he becomes in the truest sense an I-conscious being, an imprint arises within this I, a revelation of the world-will pulsating through the world, which is completely imbued of what Fichte calls the “duties”; those duties that could never reveal themselves to one from a merely material world, that penetrate from the world of the spiritual into the human soul, [which] grasp the will of humanity; so that for Fichte, the external sensual, material world becomes that which, like the material-physical, expands before us, in order to be able to live out the dutiful will and the will-imbued duty in anything.

Not that Fichte diverted his approach from the external sense world, not as if he wanted to escape into a one-sided world free of the senses! It is not like that; but it is the case that everything that the eyes can see externally, that the hands can grasp, for Fichte became the tool, the means of the spirit, so that the spirit could present itself, [so that] the spirit, -the spirit permeated by duty, the duty that man can grasp in his soul, can be represented by an external materiality: a world view that Fichte himself, in the very sense of the word, regards as a world view.

One may say, esteemed attendees, while remaining entirely objective: Nothing stands in such contrast to another as this Fichtean world view stands, say, to the world view born of the spirit of the French Romance language, as it was outlined by one of the greatest French philosophers, Cartesius or Descartes, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as an embodiment of the French spirit itself – a philosophical embodiment. Descartes, the Frenchman, the Frenchman who, like Fichte from the Germanic, so from the French national character draws and creates, Descartes starts from the fact that man feels himself a stranger to the outer world, that man must start from doubt in his soul. There can be no doubt for Fichte in the sense that Descartes means it, for his knowledge is an immediate co-experience of that which lives and breathes through the world. Fichte does not place himself outside of the spirit of the world by knowing, but inwardly seeks to unite with the spirit.

Descartes, on the other hand, stands before the world as mere observation, as external observation. What kind of world view emerges from this? One need only mention one thing that appears as a consequence of the French Descartesian world view. As I said, it is really not necessary to develop national biases, but one can remain objective when saying this. What is one consequence of Descartes' view of the world? Well, it is enough to mention that Descartes, in his striving, which also emanates from self-awareness, but from mere rational, intellectual self-awareness, not from the living inner life, like Fichte's self-awareness, this Descartes' view of the world imagines the world as a large machine, as a powerful mechanism. And for Descartes, animals themselves are moving machines, inanimate, moving machines.

Everything that developed as a mechanism in later times, as a mechanistic world view, which also took hold in other nations from France, basically leads back to this starting point of Descartes.

You only have to consider the contrast: On the one hand, the Roman philosopher who turns the world into a machine; on the other hand, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who wants to pour out the soul itself over the whole world from the German folk tradition, so that this soul can experience everything soulful, everything in the world that is pulsating with will – and one has expressed something important about the relationship of the German folk spirit to its western neighbor.

This Descartesian worldview then produced, I might say, one materialistic outgrowth after another. We see how, at the end of the eighteenth century, the worldview that Goethe encountered from France emerged, and of which Goethe, from his German consciousness, said: Oh, how bleak, how desolate! And then the philosopher shows us atoms moving, colliding, pushing each other – a mere mechanism! And all this is supposed to explain the rich abundance of the world in which we live?

It is fair to say – again, entirely objectively: From the abundance and vibrancy of the German mind, Goethe turned away from this merely mechanistic world view, which then, in de La Mettrie's “Man a Machine” at the end of the eighteenth century, had a flowering that of all those who want to build a worldview based on superficial vanity, on that vanity that would be quite satisfied if there were no human soul, but if, like a phonograph, the human mechanical thinking apparatus purred away what man has to say about the world. And well into the nineteenth century, this worldview continued to unfold.

We see it in [gap in transcript], but we also see it in a spirit like – yes, it is still not called French today, but is still called Bergson – like in Bergson, who has found the most shameful thing, again and again, to defame and slander that which wells up from the German soul as a world view. One would like to say: Because he can see nothing else in a world picture that is alive, that is filled with inner life, he believes he can defame it, defames this German world picture as such, which shows - as he repeatedly says in his writings – how the German, from his lofty position at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, has descended and degenerated completely into a mechanistic world mechanism.

It is a pity that this so celebrated Bergson not only drew a picture of the world - I have explained it in detail, not only in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, written before the war - but not only drew a picture of the world that was much more powerful, much more forceful, by a German mind, Preuss, who is rarely mentioned and little known, the German thinker, thinker, for example in his book “Spirit and Matter” 1882 [is presented] - of which Bergson either knows nothing, which is an equally big mistake, or does not want to know anything - but not only this, but it has also been shown that entire pages in the so-praised writings of Bergson are simply copied from Schelling or from Schopenhauer! – That is one way of relating to the intellectual life of Central Europe!

This intellectual life is contrasted with that of Fichte, an intellectual life that does not want to understand the world as dead, but that wants to understand the world as a spiritual-living entity, down to the smallest parts, and for which knowledge is nothing other than the experience of this spiritual vitality of the world. Just as with the French conception of the world, Fichte, with his energetic grasp of the human ego, in which he wants to experience the world, stands in contrast to the English conception of the world, that English conception of the world that took its starting point from Baco of Verul am, and which, one might say, has found its repulsive sides, its repulsive one-sidedness, precisely in the most recent world view that English intellectual life has produced in so-called pragmatism – in Baco von Verulam. As Goethe, for example, very profoundly remarks, one sees everywhere how [Baco von Verulam] actually regards the spiritual life in such a way that what otherwise [lives] in the human spirit as truth is actually only there to summarize and form the diversity of the external materials and forces of the world, which can be seen with the eyes and grasped with the hands, and to again disassemble them and the like. A means of dominating the external physical world is philosophy, based on Baco von Verulam, basically everything that could be called philosophy. And up to our days, this meaning has been preserved.

What actually appears as pragmatism? Within English intellectual life, something highly peculiar appears as pragmatism – Schiller, James and other representatives of this pragmatism. For these representatives of pragmatism, for these pragmatists, truth is not something that man experiences inwardly like an image of gods or spirits, something that – as in the Fichte in the sense of Fichte, enters the human soul from the spirit that pulsates, lives and weaves through the world, but in the sense of this pragmatism, truth is actually only something that man thinks up in order to have a direction in the multiplicity of external phenomena.

For example, the soul - this concept of “soul”, this unified concept of soul - you cannot see the soul: What is it then for pragmatism? For pragmatism, the unifying concept of soul, the unifying concept of the ego, of self-awareness, is nothing more than a means of holding together the manifoldness of the soul life and its expressions in the body, so that they do not fall apart in contemplation; so that one has, as it were, brackets and bindings. Concepts are created for the external material. How far removed this is from Fichte's world view, drawn from the depths of the soul, for which spirit is the most original of the world and reality, the spirit that flows into the individual human soul life. And by feeling this influx, man knows himself one with the spirit of the world. And then the external world becomes, as Fichte put it, a field for the spirit to unfold in. Exactly the opposite!

Here with Fichte: the spirit is supreme, the actual reality, the highest living thing, for the sake of which the external world of the senses exists, so that the spirit can find its means of expression in it. There: the mind is capable of nothing more than creating binders and clamps in its concepts and ideas, so that it - which is the main thing - can place these concepts in the service of external material reality, and can ultimately find itself in external material reality.

It is indeed necessary, most honored attendees, to consider the interrelations in this very light. Only through this does the German come to a real, enlightened realization of what is actually taking place in the depths of his people.

Then, in one of the most difficult times in German development, Fichte tried to express what emerged to him as a power of consciousness from this soul power, which was connected to his inner life of will, in order to inspire, to strengthen, to invigorate his people. He did this in his “Addresses to the German Nation” to the German Nation» that the true man of world-view does not merely live in unworldly contemplation, but that these contemplations can intervene directly in that which the time demands and what mankind – I would like to say – [in fact] needs in order to be strengthened and invigorated in soul.

And at the appropriate moment, a second personality appears before us alongside Fichte – the second personality who tried no less to grasp the innermost part of the world with his own soul. These spirits sought to grasp the whole, great world spirit with their own souls, investing their entire personality.

In the case of Fichte, I probably only needed to tell you a few details of his life so that you could see how truly what he experienced – I would say – on the icy heights of thought, but which were permeated by pure human warmth in his case, was connected to his personality, to his immediate human being. A picture of the very young Fichte: he is a good student, already devoting himself to his duties at school as a six- or seven-year-old. His father rewards the young boy by giving him the book 'The Horned Siegfried' for Christmas when he is seven. Fichte, the young Fichte, the boy, is completely gripped by what comes to life through the human personality that is in a soul like that of “Gehörnte Siegfried”! And so it turns out that he now needs to be admonished because he is no longer as diligent at school as he was before. One day we see the boy in his blue farmer's smock; he is standing by the stream that flows past his father's house: suddenly he throws the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which he was holding in his hand, into the water, and he stands there crying and watches as the book floats away in the waves. His father arrives and is initially indignant that his little boy has thrown the book he had given him into the water. Then he has to learn that in this case what Fichte later made the actual core of his philosophical work – the dutiful will – that this dutiful will already lived in the boy Fichte in such a way that he could not bear, by the distracted attention to the “Horned Siegfried”, no longer fulfill his duty as a learner! And everything he experienced as a boy was probably already connected with the innermost workings and nature of his soul.

And once, when Fichte was nine years old, the estate neighbor from the neighboring village came to Fichte's place of residence. He wanted to hear the sermon; but he was too late. He could no longer hear the pastor preach; the church bells had already rung. So it was suggested that the nine-year-old boy could retell the content of the sermon to the estate neighbor. And they sent for him. Young Fichte entered in his blue peasant's smock; and after he had behaved somewhat awkwardly at first, he approached the public figure and developed the thoughts that he had taken in from the sermon with such intimacy that it was clear: he had not only taken something in externally, but had united with his whole soul what he had listened to.

Thus it was that this personality – one might say – that, if I may use the trivial word, it always absorbed everything that affected it with the whole person, out of its own genius, so effectively that everything that came from this person, on the one hand, bore the deepest human character, and on the other hand, rose again to the highest heights of world-historical contemplation.

One beautiful trait of this most German of German thinkers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, must be emphasized again and again: when Fichte later spoke to his audience as a professor, he did not want to speak like someone else who simply conveyed the content of what he had conquered to his listeners. Someone who knew Fichte well and had often heard him speak said that his words rushed forth like a thunderstorm that discharges in individual sparks; [and he said] that he not only wanted to produce good people, but great people.

And in such a way was also the work-you can not say-set up, the work of this German, because in the thoughts of this German thinker lived something in this lecture, which was much more than presented: He wanted, by mounting the lectern, to carry something up to this lectern, which flowed as a living entity from him into flowed from him into the audience, so that the audience, if they listened attentively and left the lecture hall, took with them not only a content, not only a teaching, but something that was more in their soul than what they had brought into the lecture hall, something that seized their whole humanity, permeated it, inspired it! And truly, Fichte knew how to work in this way, to penetrate so directly to the center of the human soul, that he wanted to bring his listeners, these listeners, in direct contact with his listeners, to revive in themselves what really connected them – one might say – immediately connected them to what the soul could experience of the spiritual that flows and permeates the world.

So, for example, he once said to his listeners: “Imagine the wall.” The listeners turned their eyes to the wall and thought, “That would be easy.” After he had let them think about the wall for a while, he said, “So, now imagine the one who imagined the wall!” At first they were amazed. But now a way had been found to win the hearts and minds of the audience directly for the realization of the secrets of the world, as they can play out in the human soul.

And so, with his whole personality directly immersed in the life of knowledge, was also Johann Wilhelm Schelling, of whom those who saw him – and I certainly knew such people! – who saw and heard him – not only read his books and knew what was in his books – thus they said that something emerged from his sparkling eyes that was like the gaze of knowledge itself!

Schelling, too, wanted to experience directly in his own soul what lives in nature as spirit. For him, the soul was only something like the outer face of a spirit that lives and weaves through the world. And as the human soul approaches nature, it recognizes in nature what it itself is as spirit and soul.

Spirit flows through the world. It forms an external impression by crystallizing nature around itself. In this way, it creates the ground for the spirit itself to appear in the human soul on this ground. Therefore, for Schelling, the spirit of nature and the spirit of soul grew together into a unity. And with such a view, he knew how to rise to wonderful possibilities. He only penetrated them in seemingly dry concepts – incidentally, in concepts and ideas that sometimes rose to the most tremendous, most alert, intuitive glow. He only spoke in seemingly dry terms about nature and about how one can be in harmony with nature and the spiritual world, and how the concepts arise from nature and how one can be in harmony in cognition.

Once he said the word, the word that was certainly one-sided: To recognize nature is to create nature. - Certainly, a one-sided word; one can only recreate nature in the act of recognizing it. But Schelling felt such a close kinship between what takes place in the human soul and what takes place in nature that he could imagine himself to be living as if he were creating natural forces when he believed that the right cognitive drives had been released in the soul. And so, on the one hand, the human form appears to Schelling as the highest natural expression of the natural forces of the spirit and soul, and on the other hand, art [...] that which is the human expression of spiritual striving.

One would like to say: Schelling feels the highest as two halves that only complement each other: what the artist is able to create in art, on the one hand; the human form, on the other hand, as the crown and blossom of nature. And so we see how Schelling developed a world view that is entirely born out of – indeed, itself appears like a rebirth – the rebirth of the human mind. The German mind itself has become the organ of vision in Schelling, to see in nature and in intellectual life that which speaks to the human mind as external sensory objects speak to the human eyes and ears.

But as a result, Schelling has become the one for the German spiritual development who could raise to an enormous height that which, as a spiritual world, could inspire from the Romance world view, for example, Giordano Bruno, but only inspire. How passionately born out of the [Italian] world-feeling the world-picture of Giordano Bruno appears, if we compare it with the world-picture—with the calm world-picture reborn out of the German soul—of Schelling.

And the third is Hegel. Hegel, the third, the philosopher of the Germans who, I might say, lived in the most intimate union with the Goethean Weltanschauung; Hegel, who, I might say, sought on the third of the paths that were possible from the German folk, on the third of the paths to lead the soul to the place where it can directly grasp the spiritual activity and weaving and essence of the world.

In Johann Gottlieb Fichte, it is the will that pulses through the soul and creates expression in duty; in Schelling, it is the feeling, the innermost part of the soul, while a natural will takes hold of it and gives it birth; in Hegel, it is the life of thought - the life of thought that is felt by Hegel in such a way that, as the thoughts that he lets pass through his soul are moved and experienced by this soul, they appear directly as thoughts of the divine-spiritual life of the world itself, which permeates all spaces and all times. So that man, by letting his thoughts live in himself, free from sensuality and without being influenced by the outside world, has the divine-spiritual thinking of the world simultaneously living and revealing itself in him through this experience of thought. Admittedly, this is how Hegel became a spirit who created a world view as if the whole world were built only out of logic – which is one-sided. But he added to what Fichte and Schelling had offered, the third sound from German folk tradition.

It may be said that what makes Hegel appear particularly as a German spirit is that, unlike Descartes, for example - Rosenkranz, a faithful disciple of Hegel, wrote the fine book “Hegel as a German National Philosopher” - what makes Hegel particularly German spirit, is that, unlike Descartes, who also bases everything on thinking but only arrives at a mechanistic view of the world, he does not experience thinking as if thinking were something that arises in the soul and is alien to existence, but rather: the spirit, the world spirit itself thinks itself in man. The world spirit itself sees itself through thinking in man. In his thinking, Hegel feels interwoven with the thoughts of the world spirit.

One can also say that Descartes' one-sided, naked view of the world is given life – if only as a thought – in Hegel's view of the world.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, there is no need to take a dogmatic stand on the views of the three men mentioned. We can go further than that today; to be a partisan or an opponent may perhaps view all that these minds have expressed as one-sided. There is no need to take a dogmatic stand on them; they can be seen as an extension of what lives and weaves in German national character. They are something that has emerged from the flowering of German intellectual life, which will certainly change in many ways over time as it continues to flourish and bear fruit, but which can provide the deepest and most significant insights for anyone striving for spiritual knowledge of the world because a spiritual world knowledge must arise from such a germ within German intellectual life, as was striven for by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and basically arose out of the spirit of Goethe.

What is peculiar about these three personalities is that they basically express three sides, three different shades of something that hovers invisibly over them, that was the common expression of the highest peak of German intellectual life at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, and that in Goethe and others the great fruits emerge in such a way that one always starts not to seek a knowledge of the world in such a way that one simply applies man as he stands in his powers, but that one first tries to awaken the human powers of knowledge that lie deeply dormant in the depths of the soul, and with the opened spiritual eye and spiritual ear - as I said, these are Goethe's words - then wants to look out into the world and life with the opened spiritual eye and spiritual ear.

This is how Goethe did it. That is why Goethe, following Kant, speaks of an intuitive power of judgment, which he ascribed to himself. And truly, from this intuitive power of judgment emerged the blossoms of Goethe's achievements. “Intuitive power of judgment” - what does Goethe mean? The ordinary power of judgment lives in human concepts. With this power of judgment, man faces things, he faces nature; he looks at it with his senses; with his mind he judges what he has seen with his senses. Goethe says to himself: If one can see the spiritual through the power of judgment, just as the eyes see the sensual, then one lives and moves in the spiritual. - And so Goethe wanted to look at plants and animals, so he wanted to look at human life. And so he observed it! And so he even wanted to be active in the field of physics.

There one comes upon a chapter in which it is clearly shown how German folk-life must express something different about the external facts of physical life than, for example, English folk-life. The time has not yet come, however, to see the connections in this area.

For more than thirty years now, I myself have endeavored – I may say this without immodesty, because it is simply a fact – to show what Goethe actually wanted, from a spiritual view of nature, from an judgment, as [he opposed his] theory of colors to Newton's color theory, which is based on atomism and mechanism, as a theory of life.

Today, physics cannot yet understand this. But once German culture in the spiritual realm truly reflects on itself, one will understand how the German spirit in Goethe had to rebel against Newton's purely mechanical scientific view in the field of color theory as well.

And the chapter “Goethe versus Newton” – by that I mean German science versus the mechanical utilitarian English science. This chapter will reappear. And perhaps it is precisely such a chapter that will show the relationship of the German soul in its depth and in its deeper contemplation of knowledge to the other judgments of Europe's striving for knowledge.

And what place the German national soul has come to occupy in the overall development of German intellectual life is only one particular, special aspect; but this particular, this single, special aspect is the expression of the general that lived in the Goethe , and that lives on into our days, albeit – I would like to say – under the stream of consciousness, but nevertheless clearly in all deeper recognition of the spiritual in the German: to seek the spiritual organ of knowledge.

Fichte called it a “higher spiritual sense” when he spoke to his Berlin students from 1811 to 1813. Schelling called it “intellectual intuition.” To arrive at a higher organ of spiritual knowledge – which is uncomfortable, and which a philosophy based merely on utility or mechanism, like the Romance or British philosophy, cannot achieve – to create an organ of knowledge organ that is built out of the spirit and can therefore look into the spirit; [that] does not see the spirit in abstract, dry, empty theoretical concepts, but grasps it as fully as the outer senses grasp the world of the senses.

And because such striving was so powerfully alive in the development of the German spirit, it was possible that even lesser minds that followed the time of Goethe were seized and imbued with what had germinated and sprouted in the great age of German life that has just been discussed, and that these lesser minds could even create something that is more similar to the paths that are actually the real paths to grasp the world spiritual as a human spirit in a living way, to get something that is even more similar to this real path than what appeared in Schelling, Fichte and Hegel. Because there is so much that is fruitful in this Fichte-Schelling-Hegel worldview, it could have such a fertilizing effect even on lesser minds, who - let us say - like Fichte's son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, come to recognize how in what sensually to man as a human-like form – also as a sensual animal form, but there it does not have the same meaning – what lives in the sensual human form as in a finer bodily organization in a coarser bodily organization, as we say in spiritual science: an etheric body alongside the coarse physical body; and how in this etheric body [work] the great cosmic forces that give birth to man out of the eternal, just as the physical forces give birth to him physically out of the physical. That is to say, Hermann Immanuel Fichte is already seeking a way to directly access the external physical, not only through thoughts, not only through abstractions, but by directly grasping in a higher, spiritual-sensual way that lies beyond birth and death in man.

And then we see a remarkable spirit, little known, who also walks this path, undoubtedly not as ingeniously and magnificently conceived as Schelling and Fichte, for example, but advancing further along the actual spiritual-scientific path than they, because he was allowed to live after them. Although he wrote his wonderful book “Glimpses into the Essence of Man” in 1811, we can still say that Troxler – for that is who we mean – is one of those who are truly at home in a forgotten chapter of German intellectual life. Because he lived later, Troxler was able to find true paths into the spiritual world when even his greater – greater than he – his greater predecessors could not.

It is remarkable that Troxler, when he presented his “[Lectures] on Philosophy” in 1835, spoke of the fact that man can develop something in his soul if he only wants to, something that relates to the purely intellectual view of the world, which works in theoretical concepts and, so to speak, only collects individual concepts from observation, how something could develop in the human soul, which he calls Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, an “super-spiritual sense”. “Supra-spiritual sense” - that is a soul power that Troxler refers to as [one that] can only be developed in man, and which does not, I would say, merely grasp things conceptually, not so abstractly as ordinary abstract cognition, but which grasps things so fully, so fully, that they , like the spirit itself, before man; that man thereby beholds a spiritual world, which is not exhausted in concepts, like even Hegel's, but which sees spiritual reality as the senses see sensual reality, so that the world is truly enriched by a new element of its being, by the spiritual. But the spiritual consists of concrete, fully developed entities that stand side by side and interact with each other in such a way that they can be grasped by the senses.

“Supra-sensible meaning” is one soul force. Troxler speaks of the other as the “supra-sensible spirit”. So that one must see in it that which can be developed in the human soul as a special power, so that the soul comes to go beyond the ordinary sensual, and yet not to fall into spiritual emptiness, as for example the mechanical natural science, but [that one comes to a] being filled by the spirit.

“Supersensible spirit”, “superspiritual sense” - for Troxler, these are two faculties in the human soul. He speaks of this in 1835; and one can receive an enormously significant stimulus for that which one can call knowledge of the spirit from these Troxler lectures, which consciously emerged from the depths of German nationality. For it is this German nationality that encourages us not to look at the world merely from the outside, but to really feel again and again, in what the soul can experience most intimately, the flooding through of the soul-spiritual being of the human being and of the whole world itself. Thus this German national character is called upon to develop something that otherwise could not have occurred within a national character in the course of time.

Now let us see how strangely - even if one characterizes quite one-sidedly that which is really in the sense of this national character - can be expressed, and what can be proved about these characterized spirits, let us look at what it is. We must say that we also see mysticism within the spiritual development of France and England, but this mysticism exists alongside other forms of science. It is either condemned to lead a sectarian existence alongside other forms of science or to close itself off as a special spiritual current.

German intellectual life, by rising to something like what Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, Troxler, Immanuel Hermann Fichte have achieved, shows that one can, in the fullest sense can remain in the fullest sense of the word in a scientific spirit and can work precisely out of a scientific spirit, and that which is to be achieved through mysticism, for example, does not stand alongside this scientific current, but can be directly and organically connected to it and can emerge from it.

Therefore, we see how, for example, in Hegel there arises something that lives in the purest clarity of thought – even if many dispute it, it is still so – but there is nothing in the purest clarity of thought that might be just a nebulous mysticism of feeling or what would be a mystic prattling about all kinds of things, but what, with crystal-clear thoughts, at the same time wants to grasp the thinking of the world mystically in its own thinking: we find thought-like mysticism - if the word may be used - in Hegel. And we find this intellectual mysticism spiritualized — because the life of thought is inwardly illuminated by the supersensible spirit, by the supra-spiritual meaning — in such personalities as, for example, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler.

It is interesting to see how Troxler endeavors to reveal what should lead to a world view from the forces of the soul, how what man knows reveals itself from what actually stands behind what man has in ordinary everyday life for the maintenance and orientation of his life. In Troxler's view, man has faith - faith, which, in the realm of religious belief, supports humanity's highest spiritual supports, but which also plays a major role in other areas of human life: faith. Man has this faith in his soul life. I am not just repeating Troxler's words, but speaking as one would have to think if one took in what Troxler said and developed it a little further. This power of belief is something that the outer physical body must have, something that can be grasped by the soul just as it arises directly in the soul, even without the development of higher cognitive powers. But behind this belief lives, hidden in the soul, [a higher organ of knowledge, so that belief is, as it were, for ordinary daily life, the living out of this higher organ of knowledge. Troxler calls what lives behind faith: spiritual hearing, the supersensible, spiritual hearing. So that in Troxler's sense, faith is to be imagined as the beautiful that flows in from an unconscious or subconscious spiritual part of the soul, which drives faith to the surface. But if it is developed itself, it becomes a spiritual ear that would become hearing in the spiritual world. Spiritual hearing means perceiving in the same way as the sensory ear perceives external sounds that live in the air.

Love, a soul power, which we again find as if born out of the soul-spiritual, the most beautiful power of outer human life, love – behind it stands for Troxler – I would like to say: for Troxler's pious mind – a spiritual, a soul power of knowledge. He calls it “soul feeling”, “soul sensing”.

Thus faith is, as it were, the outer expression, the outer image of what lives in the full soul as hearing. Thus love is the outer fruit of what lives in the inner soul as spiritual sensing, as spiritual feeling.

For Troxler, hope is the outer expression of that which lives in the soul as a higher soul power, as a higher soul sense, as a super-spiritual sense in the soul as an inner spiritual eye.

It is a wonderful image, but one that is not born out of fantasy alone, but is based on real facts of the soul life that everyone can develop within themselves. A wonderful image. There stands man within the physical and the spiritual world. There he develops, in relation to what flows through the world as the Divine-Spiritual, and in relation to what flows towards him from people and other beings: faith, hope, love. He develops them because, when he carries within him that which can stand free of the body in relation to the spiritual world, because he carries within him that which hears spiritually, feels spiritually and can see spiritually. And because the human being, that which he is in his soul, has been shrouded for the time between death – or, let us say, until birth with the bodily covering – that which connects him through spiritual hearing to the world-tone harmony , with the spiritual harmony of the world, which connects him to the world, which through grace leans towards him from the spiritual, through spiritual groping, which connects with him through spiritual vision, which wraps itself for him in faith, love, hope. [And so the soul forces that confront us in everyday life and in ordinary soul education are, for Troxler, an expression of a spiritual life that slumbers down there in the soul, that weaves and lives, and that, when developed, can enter into a direct connection with the spiritual-soul life of the whole world that flows around us. In this, the Troxler feels so at home in this, one can say, temporarily forgotten link in German thought and spiritual development.

Beautifully, wonderfully, he expresses this feeling of being at home by expressing himself in connection with other spirits who have striven for something similar. He says:

"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body [or assumed a kind of shell for the spirit in this], a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which was the inner, higher human being for them. This view, even if it is only an explanation, was also held by most of the first great church fathers, such as Origen, Irenaeus, Lactantius, Tertullian, and Augustine. In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire, inward, spiritual man who wears all the limbs of the outward man on his spirit body. Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonnese under-skirt and the Platner-esque soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body rock and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What is the use and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? [Why was I stuck to the dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I should rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings.] “The inner man,” he even says in another place, “this ‘veiled God in nature, is not himself of stone, like these.] In the stony limbs’

of man

“grow and mature according to a way of life unknown to us. We could”

"we could cite a myriad more similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical Apostolic idea, which Paul revealed to the Corinthians, , saying: “A body animated by the soul is sunk, and a body animated by the spirit rises, for as there is a body endowed with a soul, so there is also a body endowed with a spirit.” And in this is] contained the true, only doctrine of the individuality and immortality of man.

Troxler wanted a science that approached the world from all the powers of human nature, not just from the intellect and the ordinary, so-called powers of knowledge, but - but a science, a knowledge that the whole personality contributes to the world, so that in turn the whole human personality, the whole human being, can recreate or relive the world within itself. Not only in poetry, Troxler believes, but also in real knowledge it must become so. Therefore Troxler says the beautiful words in 1835:

"If it is now highly gratifying that the newest philosophy, which [we have long since recognized as the one that founds all living religion and] must reveal itself in every instance of anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history,] is now rising, it cannot be be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with it as absolute spirit or absolute personality."

Thus, Troxler is faced with the idea of an anthroposophy, as he calls it, an anthroposophy that is not, like anthropology, the study of that which can be observed externally in man with the senses and with the mind from which these senses seem to be drawn, but a higher kind of anthropology ology stands before Troxler's eyes, before Troxler's spiritual eye, which wants to develop an organ in man that is basically only the higher man in man, who then, to use this Goethean expression, directly recognizes and experiences that which is also higher than all nature: the higher nature in nature.

Then, when the whole personality presents itself to the world as a cognitive organ, as a super-spiritual sense organ, as a supersensible spiritual organ – as a “super-spiritual sense, as a ‘supersensible spirit’, [as a] spiritual organ, so that the world comes to life in the whole personality, then, in Troxler's view, ‘anthroposophy’ arises!

Thus, as if in a forgotten aspiration of German intellectual development, anthroposophy lives in the germ. Its blossoms and fruits will sprout from this German intellectual life if one correctly understands German intellectual life. And that they are intimately connected with this German intellectual life - I would like to say: every being, every trait of this German intellectual life shows it to us. It is the case in the world, esteemed attendees, that individual things that flourish in the development of humanity must live for a time, I would say, as if under the stream; the rest of the stream shows something else, something superficial; but under the stream, the deeper things live on. And so it is with what can now sound to us as a faded note from German intellectual life.

Or is it not wonderful, absolutely wonderful, when we see how out of this intellectual life - it was in 1858, when a pastor, a simple pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck - Pastor Rocholl, published a little book - yes a truly wonderful booklet, in which he wanted to explain how the human spirit must elevate and strengthen itself in order to be able to join that which, as the spirit of the world, permeates and flows through the world. This wonderful, forgotten little book, which in the most eminent sense is, I would say, a document of the just mentioned faded tone of German spiritual life, is called: “Contributions to German Theosophy”. It was published in 1856 by a simple pastor, in whom his theosophical reflections sprouted from his piety. But it is a little book that must be said to rise to a truly wonderful height of spiritual insight and spiritual feeling about the world, even if it may often seem fantastic in relation to what spiritual science has to say today.

One need not be either a supporter or an opponent of these things, but one can simply face them by saying to oneself: they are an expression of what lives in German national culture. And so I could cite many, many more examples, especially from German intellectual life. Everywhere one would find confirmation that this striving for spiritual science is present in German intellectual life, which today has to present itself as half-forgotten – forgotten! And forgotten in such a way that it must be recognized in the course of time. It does no harm for something like this to be forgotten. Why does it do no harm?

Well, dear attendees, the secrets of the world that are in nature do not impose themselves in such a way that they do not need to be explored first! Why should we believe that the spiritual history of mankind does not also contain such secrets that need to be explored first? Why should we believe that only that which - I want to say - has come to light through the favor of the destiny of the time, that only that is the essence of the progress of humanity? In the subsoil of human development lives that which can only be found by those who come afterwards; but that is how it is in the history of ideas; it is also in the history of nature.

But basically, all these minds were more or less aware that – I have already used this image in relation to Fichte – that which lived in them and which was to lead them in their souls to the spiritual secrets of the world, that this was, so to speak, a dialogue with the German folk spirit itself.

And now let me give you another example. I would also mention the remarkable Karl Christian Planck, from whose posthumous writings the Testament of a German was published not so long ago. Karl Christian Planck, who, proceeding from a truly spiritual point of view, sought to place man in the context of the whole of existence. The time will come when such minds will be recognized, minds that have drawn from the depths of the German soul, when there will be full consciousness of the fact that in order that the German spirit may develop fully can fully develop – also in the realm of knowledge, everything foreign, which sometimes – like Newton's theory of colors – is more readily understood by the superficial human soul than the German, for the understanding of which one must first prepare.

What does the earth look like to a modern mind, which is completely sickened by the Romanesque-British-mechanistic in the scientific view, by the world view that is born entirely of the mind, which Schelling even called a mental power in 1803, what does the earth look like to such a view? Now the earth stands as revealed by external mechanical geology: mineral-mechanical.

Before Planck's soul, this lonely thinker in Germany, who had his first books published in Ulm in the 1860s, speaking out of the most genuine German essence, speaking out of the spiritual, but only being recognized by the better minds, how does the earth stand before his mind, before this consciously German mind? Like a mighty organism! Yes, not just like an organism, but like a blessed, spiritualized organism that has shaped its own spiritual-soul out of its own spirit: the human being himself! For Planck, the human being, with all that lives and moves in him, belongs to the earth. One does not fully understand the earth if one does not see man as the flower of the earth. For Planck, to regard the earth as the mere geologist does would be just as if one were to regard the plant only in its root and not to go to its flower. The earth must be regarded in such a way that the possibility of human development lives in the earth itself; that the earth bears within itself something that, out of its forces, out of its being, demands man as its flower!

Thus Planck's world view goes out into the great from its spirit. And how does he speak himself? In 1864, in his “Foundations of a Science of Nature,” he writes wonderful words about the earth:

“What power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

the author

“He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been afflicted with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parsifal)

written in 1864, before Wagner's Parsifal!

“Finally, in the strength of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what the poem has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which her hero attains, that conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the enduring knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”

It is important to realize that such spirits are rooted in German intellectual life. It is not very helpful to keep pointing this out, but they live unconsciously in the best minds of German intellectual life.

Karl Christian Planck – I referred to him as early as 1900 in the first edition of my Rätsel der Philosophie (Mysteries of Philosophy), which at the time was called Über Welt- und Lebensanschauungen (On World and Life Views); now again in the new edition of Rätsel der Philosophie, to show what he means within the overall development of German intellectual life. One can say, dear honored attendees, in such spirits one can grasp how the German spirit has precisely this special cognitive faculty, to let the soul-spiritual experience flow into it, to let that which weaves and lives in the secrets of the world — I would like to say — in the innermost part of nature and of the spirit.

For years, I would even say, it was not given to those who are now surrounding us like a hostile ring, to recognize this, even in its external outlines, [those who now live] on 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers [within which the German national character develops]. How often the jokes that are heard from everywhere, saturated with hatred and truly defamatory, are cheap in comparison to German intellectual life, which is hated and defamed, and in relation to which one is not aware of the position it must occupy in the world by virtue of its very own strength. One only needs to recall how Emile Boutroux, not long before the war, still traveled around Germany lecturing on the beauty of German intellectual life, on the fraternization of German and Latin intellectual life – and now he repeatedly and repeatedly brings up his so that they can hear again and again that the German spirit is averse to looking at the things of the world; this German spirit imagines that it can carry everything within itself and give birth to the whole world from its own interior.

And in one of his most recent speeches, Emile Boutroux did not disdain to take the following hateful joke into his mouth – and he apparently found listeners – to make the following joke about German intellectual life and its nature. He said: The Frenchman, when he wants to describe animals, goes to a menagerie to look at the animals and then describe them; the Englishman, when he wants to describe animals, travels around the world and describes what he can observe there; the German sits down in his study — he neither travels the world like the Englishman nor goes to the menagerie like the Frenchman — but sits in his study and draws from his own inner being, from what he can experience within himself, the image of the lion and the elephant and so on.

It's just a shame – we are accustomed to the French being a witty people, aren't we? – but it's just a shame that this joke – those who know a little about intellectual history are aware of this – was first made by Heinrich Heine, that even this joke, with which the Frenchman wants to poke fun at German intellectual life, was born on German soil!

And if you wanted to go into the joke: the German would not go to the menagerie or not to the desert, would not observe the animals outside, but would create them from his own inner being. Brehm, if you were to hold Brehm's book with his observations of apes up to such a know-nothing, such a frivolous mocker, he would slander the German people, saying that they create not through world travel but from within. [Let it be said in reply that the greatest work of world travel – which must be recognized by anyone with an open mind as the work that first scientifically discovered America – comes from von Humboldt, the German!

Where it matters to live with nature and observe nature, the German truly does not need the Romance reference. And what this remarkable Frenchman Boutroux, who has become a famous man in France through a few successful sentences, has to say about German inwardness, is truly quite far removed from what this German inwardness turns out to be when you look at it at its core, as we have tried to do today with a few words.

Now, dear attendees, if we try to hear other voices, for example, Eastern voices, the matter becomes even clearer. There one must say: in Eastern Europe, on Russian soil – not only despite the great philosopher Soloviev, but precisely because of the peculiar nature of the great philosopher Soloviev, one can say – in Eastern Europe today there can be no understanding of this peculiar relationship of the human soul to the world-pervading spiritual and living essence; but over there everything is such that there is still no understanding for the experience of the spirit pulsating and permeating the world in one's own inner soul being, that one wants everything to be met halfway, that everything should come only as a revelation, albeit a spiritual revelation from outside. Thus, even the greatest Russian philosophers of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century opposed themselves completely to the actual essence of Central Europe, and by the way, even to Western Europe.

What they repeatedly had to say, great minds of Russian intellectual culture – the German just did not realize this because he simply took – I would like to say – the extraordinarily vivid description of a Tolstoy, a Dostoyevsky – the German did not realize this at all! Within Russian spiritual life, basically, only the view exists. This whole life, as it has been expressed in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, in the other Western European minds, is horrible, is repulsive basically, is an abstract life of thought, something that does not reach the heart and mind of the real human being. All this must be replaced by that which lives in the Russian human being. Whether something is categorized as political or not is not the point. The Testament of Peter the Great contains the whole spiritual philosophy of Russia; in the nineteenth century, philosophers express the same basic tenor, which amounts to regarding Western and Central Europe only as something horrible and obsolete.

Megalomania is the direct consequence of such a world view, which fancies itself as mature, but only fancies itself as mature out of immaturity. And so, for example, one can indeed experience the following. First of all - let me explain this in conclusion - an outstanding Russian spirit of the nineteenth century, Yushakov, turns his gaze towards Asia in 1885, because it is imminent that something must grow out of the same nationality in the East, directly like a great, world-historical mission. But this could never arise from the peoples of Western or Central Europe. And so, in 1885, Jushakow wrote a remarkable book, whose gaze is initially directed towards Asia – a remarkable book!

In this book, the following is expressed: When we look over to Asia, we find an old, wonderful world culture in Asia, which has only just grown old. This world culture wanted to understand itself by juxtaposing two spiritual entities: Ahriman and Ormuzd. Ormuzd is revered by these Asians, especially by the Iranian Asians, to whom, for example, the Indians and the Persians also belong, as the spirit that wins the fruits from the earth; but who also brings spiritual striving into the human soul, elevating it and allowing it to experience the spiritual.

In contrast to this stands Ahriman, who is connected with the spirit of the Iranians, the Turanians, who led the Asians through evil in such a way that the blessed conditions of Ormuzd were thwarted by him. And there we see - says Jushakow - in Asia over there Ormuzd and Ahriman fighting out their battle and man placed in this fight.

In 1885, dear attendees, please note that Yushakov wrote this! And he says: Oh, these poor Asians! What have the selfish, decrepit Europeans done to them? What have they let them become!

Yushakov presents the matter as if the Europeans, out of their selfishness and decrepitude, had taken away from the Asians what Ormuzd had brought to them as a blessing. But the Russians, out of their own philosophy of life, must bring the invigorating element of their world view into all its decrepitude. The Russians must come and help the Asians, they must join forces with the Asians. That is what Jushakow says. As I said, the focus is on Asia.

I am not saying this, Yushakov said it in 1885. And Yushakov said something remarkable: the wonderful, blessed alliance of the peasants – the Russian peasants – and the Cossacks will penetrate into Asia and will join forces with the poor Asians against Ahriman, in order to maintain the blessings of Ormuzd.

And who is Yushakov mainly opposed to? In 1885 – I have to keep emphasizing this – he says: Oh, these Asians, they have suffered terribly at the hands of the horrific Europeans, who only wanted to appropriate, in the most terrible selfishness, what Asian civilization, under Ormuzd's fruitfulness and blessing-bringing, has created for humanity. How did the Europeans view the Asians? And which Europeans does Jushakow have in mind? Jushakow, in 1885, has the English in mind; oddly enough. Let us hear what he says: “These Asian peoples are regarded by the English only as if they existed to clothe themselves in English garments, to clothe themselves in English fabrics, to fight with each other with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels and to play with English baubles.” Then he continues – in 1885:

"England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula. I wish

– says Yushakov – my Russian

"Fatherland nothing similar - I can only rejoice that it is ‘

sufficiently far removed’

from this state of affairs, as brilliant as it is sad,

and has nothing to do with this terrible England. So Yushakov in 1885; so a Russian in 1885 looks over to Asia.

This is probably the reason why the Russians allied themselves with England shortly afterwards, not to help the Asians against Ahriman, but to destroy what, with such deep roots, can represent such a spiritual life – in addition to all the other German qualities – as it was allowed to be described.

And so, from the place where 150 million people have to live with 777 million, there must be a powerful awakening of consciousness of what the German essence has fundamentally meant in the development of humanity.

Among those Germans whose gaze was turned to the German character, there was always an awareness of it - an awareness on both sides of the Erz Mountains, in Styria as well as on the Rhine and in the far east of Germany. And just as that which today is being forged together by the great events in Central Europe - basically, among those who understood it, always wanted to forge together - may show us a beautiful word from an Austrian German, a word written in 1862 by the Austrian German Robert Hamerling.

I may well point to these circumstances on the other side of the Erz Mountains, for the reason that I myself have spent almost thirty years of my life under German Austria as a German Austrian myself, taking part in the discussions and struggles that Germans have to face within Austria.

It is the same Hamerling who expressed his attitude towards Austria and Germany in the beautiful words: “Austria is my fatherland, but Germany is my motherland” – words that every Austrian-German who can see beyond external circumstances lives with in the indeterminable. I need not say anything about Robert Hamerling's other intellectual achievements, I just want to point out that in 1884 it was Robert Hamerling who, from Graz, called out heartfelt words to Germany when it was learned that a statue of the goddess Strasbourg was being erected in Paris and that the German flag was being burned at a festival celebrating the goddess Strasbourg. At that time, it was Robert Hamerling who sent the words from Graz to Germany:

Believe in revenge,
And in the victor's wreath of laurels:
Do not hope to steal back
A piece of German land!
You may rave like ravens Around an Alsatian statue,
Strasbourg you will not have,
Strasbourg nevermore.

In 1862, in one of his earlier poems, “Germanenzug”, the same Robert Hamerling had the ancient Germans, the ancestors of the Germans, passing before his spiritual eyes as they moved across from Asia. He leaves them still encamped in Asia, on the borders of Europe. He beautifully describes the image of the evening, the evening image, how the setting sun is above them, how the moon is rising; then he describes how everything falls asleep among the wandering Germans, how only one watches, with blond curls, with radiant eyes, inspired by the essence of his people: Teut. The genius speaks to Teut, who wants to speak of the future essence of Germanness. The genius of the German people speaks, for example, to Teut, the words to the blond, representative youth of the Germanic peoples:

"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps so faithfully the near as the far?
Where does every earthly and heavenly zone
reflect as in your thinking, O Teuton?

Then Hamerling continues by pointing out that what the Asian sought, and what the ancestors of the Germanic peoples sought in Asia, when they extinguished the human essence and suppressed the ego in order to rise to the spirit of the world, must reappear in a later form. This Asiatic way, which also appears today in Hinduism, can no longer be the present way. Now that the Christ Impulse has entered the world, the human ego must be attached to the world spirituality in a different way. The ego must be elevated, strengthened, as we see in the three - Fichte, Hegel, Schelling - and others; the ego must be strengthened; but in the way it must be, now that the greatest impulse in humanity, as the earth has seen the Christ impulse, as it must be, as the Asian striving must appear on a higher level, so it appeared from the deepest root of the national being. And that is what Robert Hamerling wants to express by also letting the genius speak to the blond Teut, to the blond representative of Germanness.

"But however proudly you may aspire, high above other swarms, you will always retain the ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled drunkenness of God, the blissful warmth of the heart of of the old Asian homeland. This holy ray of calm existence will be devotion that wants to sink into God."

And that is precisely what the German strives for, what rises from all science, from all knowledge: this carrying over of even what can be known, as if to the altar of a divinized world view itself. Spiritual science does not want to be religion, nor does it want to replace it; it wants to place itself as true science alongside religion – it does not want to affect religion in the least, it wants to accept it – like a current that presents itself as true science, which also only wants to support religion, not replace it in any way. But what spiritual science can achieve is offered at the same time – to use Böhme's expression – in order to experience drunkenness of God, that is, to experience the spiritual of the world in one's own soul being.

That is what was felt by the German philosopher, the German mystic Jakob Boehme, and what may appear as a motto, a guiding principle of the German essence itself, when Jakob Boehme says: When you turn to the deep phenomena of the world and gaze at the stars and the earth, you see your God, and in the same you live and strive and walk, and in this God you will be buried.

This is a world view that has been decided upon from German knowledge, a spiritual world view.

And how do you encounter it? Let us just take a very brief look at Russia, to conclude. Russia needs a new delusion today: the delusion of Europe's decrepitude. It needs this new delusion of Europe's decrepitude to prove that this European intellectual life, and especially the Central European intellectual life, is outdated; a new delusion, as Russia always needed a delusion.

France – yes, one would like to remain completely objective, not to do wrong to anyone. The German has no need to join in the tones in which his enemies are indulging today. So perhaps we can listen to a French poet himself, who, not long before the war, created a dramatic portrayal of his people that is quite interesting: the French have become accustomed over the centuries to everyone listening to them. They have recently come to see themselves as the ones who set the tone in all external culture. And so Rostand himself, the Frenchman himself, believes it in this poetic representation. The Frenchman is like a cockerel: when he crows in the morning, the sun rises. And so he gradually comes to believe that because he crows, the sun rises. And he cannot imagine that the sun would rise even if he did not crow.

The Frenchman needs a new belief; he must be able to believe that nothing can happen in the world if he does not crow. He needs a new belief about his own nature. And basically, you only have to let the historical events since 1870 really affect your soul to see how this new belief has gradually emerged and how it has not left the French national spirit. You can also read about it in my little book, Thoughts During the Time of War. For Germans and those who do not believe they have to hate them.

One would not want to do the English an injustice either. But when one hears how one of the leading contemporary English politicians lets it be known to the Germans across the Channel that “might before right” applies to them, and that this would be a German principle – then one must emphasize: The principle of “might before right” as a truly justified one can be found in the works of the English writer Thomas Hobbes, where it is first mentioned. The phrase “might before right” is a specifically English product, and all law is rooted in might. And so one could find many things; one would not want to do wrong, as I said, but I must say the sentence: All these nations, they need something to numb themselves about what they are actually doing in world history, to numb what they are doing, they need something like a fog that shrouds the truth. England needs a new lie – that can be said, without becoming in any way unobjective, from the facts themselves. And Italy? Yes, before the war a not insignificant Italian politician – for there were minds that were not so naive that they would have believed before the war that Italy would ever stand up for the Central European powers, and so I was not particularly struck by this – when a not insignificant Italian politician told me: We need a war in Italy, because our people have become impotent and lazy and careless; only war can reinvigorate them. So we need the war, a new sensation, a new passion, a tremor in the soul of the people, that is why Europe is worried.

As I said, these are the words of an Italian politician. Therefore, one can say: It will seem understandable that Italy, in order to numb itself to the real truth of the situation, would have to appoint a new saint: the sacro egoismo, the holy egoism - a new saint, a strange saint indeed. And even stranger is his hierophant, the high priest Gabriel d'Annunzio.

However much the image that will arise from these circumstances in the world history of humanity is forgotten, the German can also look at these things with calm confidence, as - let it be said again - on this side and on the other side of the Ore Mountains has always done my dear teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer spoke the following words in Austria in 1859:

Let Russia and England wisely deliberate,
It may not be unwelcome,
If we get into a little fight here,
If they take away our good right
[You, German brothers, will not - advise here,
The enemy's attack will only unite us
And among us, every ambition will fade
Before: being one people in word and deed.

And if one among us has erred,
If discord has arisen in a German heart,
There is but one thing that now inspires us:
What we have in common, our joys and our sorrows!
So then let us also have in common:]
A German war, if not a German peace.

1859 – spoken in Austria by someone who felt at one with his soul with what lives and breathes in the German national identity. And then he said, the same person, that

A spirit is rising, a giant to behold
[Who will not long gather all his strength
The German spirit rises up aflame with courage
Wherever you look in all German districts.

He has been called a master in many ways,
In art and knowledge, in building systems,
He can be seen for the first time overall,
then he will be recognized by the world] for real.

I am only reading these sentences so that you can see how what the German can feel about the source and root of German national life was not just created today, as there are enough and sufficient people sitting among the honored audience here who know that I spoke about the German essence for years and years before the war, and also about the relationship to other nations. The German need not fall back on the tone that he can now hear from those who hold him as if in a ring, as if in a great fortress. He may quietly look at what he can gain from an objective observation of the nature of his people. For what he gains in this way presents itself to him where it appears like a pure tone in the development of German intellectual life, first as a germ, as a root, which will later bear flowers and fruit. And so the best that is in German intellectual life, which, as we have seen, is not yet blossom and fruit, but only root and germ, will bear blossom and fruit in the future.

And with his soul, the German turns in the present difficult time of trial, which fills us all with sure hopes and confidence, he turns with these sure hopes and confidence that fill him, to the future, in his whole heart united with the view into this future, to what will develop as the flowering and the fruit of the German national character, of German life and of German strength in general, despite all the hateful and defamatory things that are said today against this German essence – what will develop, what may be addressed by knowledge as that which will develop because it must develop!

I have now to speak once more of the events between death and rebirth, making use of the ideas we have acquired in the previous lectures. As we can only deal briefly with this wide subject, a great deal can be but indicated and much else which perhaps does not follow from this pictorial presentation will have to be worked out later; but that which at present you may find incomplete will be made clear in the further course of our studies in Spiritual Science.

When a person passes the portal of death, he lays aside his physical body. This is consigned to the elements of the earth. In other words we may say of the physical body, that it has withdrawn from the forces and laws proceeding from the true man which permeate it between birth and death and which are different from the mere chemical and physical laws to which, as physical body, it succumbs after death. From the standpoint of the physical plane, a person has naturally the idea that he has left on the physical plane that part of his being which belongs to that plane. What belongs to the physical plane is consigned to the physical plane. For the comprehension of man himself and also for any comprehension of the spiritual world, we have naturally to consider the point of view taken by the dead person when he has passed through the portal of death. To him the leaving of the physical body means an inner process, a soul-process. To those who are left behind, what happens to the physical body after death is an external process, and the inner being of the person who has died, his human soul nature, can no longer express itself in the mortal residue; but to the man himself who has passed through the portal of death, something is connected with this leaving of the body. To him it means an inner experience of the soul; he feels: Thou hast come forth out of thy physical body and art leaving it behind.

From the standpoint of the physical plane, it is extremely difficult to give an accurate description of what here takes place within the soul; for it is an inner process of far reaching importance and immense significance. It is an inner process which lasts but a brief space of time, but it is of universal importance to the whole of human life. Now if the ideas connected with what then takes place in the soul were to be described—these ideas which of course cannot be touched upon at present in a public lecture because they would astonish the public too much, though perhaps the time will also come for this—if we were to describe the external process of ideas (now of course the spiritually external) with which the path of life running between death and rebirth commences, we might say that the person who has passed the portal of death has the feeling: Thou art now in an entirely different relationship to the world from that in which thou wast before; thy former relationship to the world is radically reversed. If we wished to describe the ideas which are then experienced in the soul, we should have to say that up to his death a person has lived on the earth. During this time he has been accustomed to stand on the solid, material earth, to see there the beings belonging to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, to see the mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun and moon; and from his own standpoint and through the powers of his physical body he has become accustomed to conceive of all this as we do to-day. This he does although at the present day we know from the teaching of Copernicus that fundamentally what we see is an illusion. There above us is the blue vault of the heavens, like a bowl, there are the stars, over it pass the sun and moon. Man is within this bowl as it were, he is within this hollow globe, in the centre, on the earth, together with all that the earth reveals to his powers of perception.

We are not at present concerned with the fact that it is an illusion when through the limitation of our capacities, we picture to ourselves this blue circumference, but with the fact that we cannot do otherwise than see it; we see a blue globe as a firmament above us. Now when a person has passed the portal of death, the first idea he has to form in his soul is: ‘Thou art now outside, but as though sunk into a single star.’ At first he is unconscious of the starry world in which he is really outspread, at first he is only aware of what he has left, he is only aware that he has left the sphere of consciousness he possessed in the physical body, he has left all that he was able to see by means of the human capacities developed in his physical body. Something has really happened—but spiritually—similar to what would happen if a chick, which at first is within the egg-shell, were consciously to experience how it breaks through this and afterwards sees the broken egg-shell—the world which had previously surrounded it—from outside, instead of from inside. Naturally this idea, which passes through the human soul at this point is Maya; but it is a necessary Maya or illusion. As we have already said, that which previously gave our consciousness its content has shrunk together as if into a single star, only that from this star radiates what we might call ‘radiating cosmic wisdom.’

This radiating cosmic wisdom is what I dealt with in the last lecture and regarding which I said that we possess it in its fullness. It shines and glitters at first as if from a fiery star. It is now not blue, like the firmament, but fiery, shining, reddish—like a fiery star. And from it streams forth into space the plenitude of wisdom, which in inward motion first presents to us what might be called a memory-tableau of our last earthly life. All the events we have consciously experienced in our soul between birth and death now come before our soul, but in such a manner that we know: There thou seest all, because the star shining before thee is the background which, through its inner activity, is the cause of thy being able to see what is outspread before thee, as a memory tableau. That is expressed more from the standpoint of the imagination. From the standpoint of inwardness the experience is somewhat as follows: The one who has passed the portal of death is entirely filled with the thought: Thou hast left thy body; now in the spiritual world this body is nothing but will. Thy body is a star of will, a star whose substance is will; and this will glows with warmth, and into the expanses of the world into which thou hast now poured thyself, it rays back to thee thy own life between birth and death as a great tableau. To the circumstance of thy sojourn within this star thou owest the privilege that thou art able to draw and absorb from the world what thou hast drawn and absorbed from it while on the physical plane: for this star, this will-star, which now forms the background is the spiritual part of thy physical body, this will-star is the spirit which permeates and strengthens thy physical body. That which streams to thee as wisdom is the activity, the mobility of thy etheric body.

This period passes. The period during which we have the impression that our life is running its course like a memory-tableau really only lasts for some days. Our thoughts, which became our memories during life on earth, unfold once more before our souls in this memory-tableau. We can maintain this tableau as long as we have the power under normal conditions to keep awake in the physical body. It does not depend upon how long we once remained awake in life under abnormal conditions, it depends upon the power we have within us to keep ourselves awake. In one case it may be that a person can scarcely keep awake one night without tiredness overcoming him, in another case it may be that he can hold out longer without becoming tired; but the length of time he needs to finish with this memory-tableau depends upon the degree of this power. We also have the distinct inner consciousness that because this will-star is in the background, there is contained within the memory-tableau what we have gained in our last earthly life, there is contained in it that by which we have become more mature, what we have carried beyond death as a plus quantity as compared with what we had as a minus quantity when at birth we entered into earthly life. This, which we may describe as the fruit of the last life, we feel in such a way as if it would not remain as it appeared during the memory-tableau, but as if it withdrew, as if it went away into the future and disappeared in those future ages.

In this lecture I shall speak principally of the condition in the life between death and rebirth of those who have reached the normal length of life and have died under normal conditions. Exceptional cases will be dealt with in the next lecture.

Thus the fruit of our life, if we have gained such fruit, withdraws to a distance and we know within our soul:—This fruit exists somewhere, but we have been left behind by it. We have the consciousness that we have remained at an earlier period of time, the fruit of our life hurries forward, it arrives before us at a later period of time and we have to follow after it. We must grasp correctly what I have just said, this idea of the inward experience of the fruit of our life being in the universe; because it is this inward experience which forms the basis of our consciousness, the beginning of our consciousness after death.

Our consciousness must always be aroused by something. When we awake in the morning our consciousness is enkindled anew through our entering into the physical body and thereby confronting outer objects, through something affecting us from outside, while during sleep we are unconscious. In the state immediately after death, this consciousness is enkindled by our inward feeling and experience of the fruits of our last life, experience of what we have gained. These fruits exist, but outside us. Our consciousness is first enkindled after death through this feeling and experience of our inmost earthly nature being outside us. By this our consciousness is quickened. Then begins the period during which it is necessary for us to develop soul-forces which had really to remain undeveloped during our life on the physical plane, because they were used to organise the physical body and all appertaining to it—soul-forces which during physical life have to be changed into something else. These forces have to awaken gradually after death. Even in the days during which we experienced the memory-tableau we notice this awakening of soul-capacities. This happens when the memory-tableau gradually fades away and grows dim, because it is during these days that we actually develop the forces lying at the foundation of the faculty of remembrance, but not acting consciously during physical life. The reason these forces do not act consciously during physical life is because during this physical life we have to transform them in order to be able to form memories. The last great memory which we have after death in the form of the tableau must first fade away, must gradually grow dim. Then out of the darkness develops that which we could not consciously possess before death; for if we had had it consciously before death we could never have formed the forces of memory. The forces which now develop in the soul during the fading of the remembrance of the tableau of life were, during life, transformed into the power by which we remember: they now emerge, because the power to remember earthly thoughts in the ordinary way is overcome and this spiritually transformed memory-force is awakened within us as the first spiritual soul-force which comes forth from the human soul after death, just as the soul-forces come forth in a growing child in the first weeks of its life. As this soul-force grows it is revealed to us that behind our thoughts, which while we were on the physical plane were but shadows, something lives; there is life and movement in the world of thought. We become aware that the thought pictures in our physical body were but a shadow and that in them there really lives and expands a vast number of elemental beings. Our memories grow dim and in their place we see emerge a vast number of elemental beings out of the universal cosmos of wisdom.

You might ask, ‘Is it not a great loss when after death the power of memory is overcome and we have something else in its place?’ We do not miss it, because we then have a very good substitute for it. Instead of remembering our thoughts as we do in life, we notice after death that these thoughts, which we had in life as memory-thoughts, only seem to be memories. This treasure of memory which is ours during life becomes something much more than merely a treasure of memory. When we are out of our physical body, we see all this treasure of memory as a living presence; it exists. Every thought is alive, is a living being. Now we know: During physical life thou didst think, thy thoughts appeared to thee; but while thou wast under the delusion that thou wast forming thoughts, thou wast producing nothing but elemental beings. That is the new thing thou hast added to the whole cosmos. Something new exists, to which thou gavest birth in the spirit; that which thy thoughts really were now stands before thee. We now first learn by direct vision what elemental beings are, because this is the first time we come to know the elemental beings we have ourselves produced. This memory-tableau is the very important impression we receive in the first period after death; but this begins to live, really to live, and as it begins to live we perceive it as nothing but elemental beings. It now shows its true face, as it were and its disappearance merely signifies its change into something different. If, for example, we died at the age of sixty or eighty, we do not need the power of memory to remember a thought we had, say, at the age of twenty, because it is there as a living elemental being, it has waited and we do not need to remember it; then if we died, for example, at the age of forty the thought would only be twenty years old and we should see it clearly. These elemental beings themselves tell us how long it is since they were formed. Time becomes space: it stands before us, because the living beings reveal their own time-signature. Under these conditions time becomes the immediate present.

From these, our own elemental beings, which surrounded us during life and which we see at death, we learn the nature of the elemental world and thereby prepare ourselves gradually to understand the elemental beings in the outer world not produced by us, but existing apart from us in the spiritual cosmos. Through our own elemental creations we learn to know the others. Think how very different this life between death and rebirth really is from our earthly life. The main thing is that after physical birth we are not aware of ourselves. What we experience as a baby, those around us experience with us; we are born, and others, our parents, look upon this which has been born. Neither are we aware of ourselves at first after death, but we see as an outer world that to which we have given birth. We ourselves look upon that which is outside, that to which we have given birth at the moment of death. When at our physical birth we enter into existence, we have an incomprehensible world before us, and to those around us we are indeed a being who only sprawls and cries and laughs; but after death, after our birth into the spiritual world—which to the physical world is death—we enter at once into an environment to which we ourselves have given birth, which we have ourselves organised, for we have ourselves given birth to it. There, we have given birth to a world, whereas, when we are born physically, this world gives birth to us. Such are the conditions with respect to thought and also to that which springs from thought as our store of memory.

It is different as regards what belongs to our feeling and our will. In the first lecture I mentioned that all that belongs to the spheres of our feeling and our will is not yet born in us, that in a certain respect will and feeling are something which is not fully born. This can be seen clearly after death; for will and feeling, as they pervade the physical body, still exist after death. So that after a time, after the will-star has withdrawn with the fruits of our last earthly life, we live in an elemental world which forms our environment to which we ourselves give the fundamental tone through our transformed memories. We live in such a manner in this world, which really is ourselves, in the sense I have just explained, that we know: Thy feeling and thy will are still in thee. They have still a sort of remembrance, a sort of connection with thy last earthly life. This condition lasts for decades. When we are in earthly life between birth and death, we enjoy and suffer, we live in our passions and we develop impulses of the will through having the feeling and willing soul in our body; but it is never the case that all the forces contained in feeling and will are really able to find an outlet through the body. Even though we may die in very old age, we still could have enjoyed more, suffered more, we still could have developed more impulses of the will. All the possibilities of feeling and will that yet remain in the soul must, however, be overcome. As long as these are not fully overcome we still have a connection of desire with our last earthly life. We look back, as it were, at this last earthly life. It is, as I have often expressed by a trivial word, a sort of weaning from the connection with the physical earthly life. Anyone who is but to a slight degree a true spiritual investigator soon penetrates into the nature of the force which we have now to overcome, and this overcoming takes decades to accomplish: but it is revealed comparatively easily to spiritual investigation.

Each day when we fall asleep and when we experience the interval between sleeping and waking, we are in our soul and spiritual nature outside our body. We return, because in our soul and spirit nature we have the impulse to return, because we really have a desire for our body. We absolutely long for our body. And one who can consciously experience awaking, knows: you want to awaken and you must will to waken. In the spirit and soul-nature there is indeed a force of attraction to the body. This must gradually decline, it must be entirely overcome and this takes decades to accomplish. This is the period in which we gradually overcome our connection with our last earthly life and this is why, in the period which is occupied in the manner I have just described, we really have to experience in a reversed direction everything that took place in our earthly life.

Now that the previous lectures have been given, I am in a position to describe various conditions more minutely than before, when only a general outline could be given; for before this could be done, it was necessary that certain ideas should first be brought forward.

Let us suppose that we have passed the portal of death and that we have left someone behind on the earth. We are now in the period when we have gained the power of beholding elemental beings and of having the inward feeling that the fruits of our earthly life have withdrawn; but that we are still connected with this last earthly life. Let us suppose, that when we have passed the portal of death we have left behind one whom we have loved very much. Now, when after death we have become accustomed to our elemental creations, we gradually attain to seeing the elemental beings of others; it is possible for us now to see the thoughts of others as elemental beings. We see the thoughts that live in the soul of the person we have left behind, for they are expressed in living elementals which appear before our soul as mighty Imaginations. In this way we can now have a much more intimate connection with the inner life of this person than we had with him in the physical world; for while we ourselves were in the physical body we could not indeed see the thoughts of the other, whereas now we can. But we have need of the feeling-memory—please note the word—the feeling-memory, the connection of feeling with our own last earthly life. We must feel, just as we felt in the body, and this feeling must echo in us. Then, when the thoughts of the other appear to us, the whole condition, which otherwise would only be as a picture, receives life. Thus, by the route of our feeling, we gain a living connection with our friend: it is really so with everyone.

You see, it is a development of a condition which may be described thus: There is a period during which we still have to draw from our last earthly life the forces enabling us to enter into living relationship with the surrounding spiritual world; we have still to be connected with this earthly life. We love the souls we have left behind, the contents of whose souls appear to us as thoughts, as elemental beings. But we love them because we ourselves are still living in the love we developed for them during our earthly life. The expression is not a happy one, but some of you will understand me when I say that earth-life—not the thought-life but the earth-life whose soul-contents are filled with feeling and permeated with the impulse of will—this earth-life, with which we are still connected, becomes like a sort of electric switch connecting our own individuality with what goes on around us spiritually; we perceive everything in a roundabout way through our last earthly life, but we only perceive what appertains to us in the spiritual world, through the feeling and will that were ours in our last earthly life. It is now really the case that we feel ourselves living on further into time, as a sort of comet of time. Our earthly life is still there like the kernel of the comet, but the kernel sends out a sort of tail into the near future through which we live. We are still connected with our earthly life in so far as this is filled with feeling and will, and from this experience something must be born within our soul as I have described, something that is not directly feeling and will. The soul-powers we develop here in the physical world, which include the power of feeling as we have it here in the physical world and the power of the will as we have it here in the physical world, these soul-powers we possess in this form, because we are living in the physical body. When the soul no longer lives in the physical body, it has to develop other qualities which only slumber during physical life. Because the echoes of feeling and will reverberate in it for years, the soul has to mature something from them which it can also use for the spiritual world in this respect, namely a force which I might describe as something like a feeling-desire or a desiring-feeling. In respect of our feeling and our will, we know that these dwell within our soul; but after death we do not, on the whole, possess such feeling and desire, they must gradually fade and die down, and they do this after some years.

But during this dying down and fading away, something has to develop from feeling and will which can be ours after death. Our thoughts live outside us as elemental beings; of inward feeling and will we should have nothing in this spiritual world which we ourselves are, and which is there, outside us. We have gradually to develop a will—and this we really do—which streams forth from us, which pours forth from us, as it were, and undulates and moves to where our living thoughts are. These it penetrates, because then upon the waves of will floats the feeling which in physical life is within us and not outside. Feeling then returns to us floating on the waves of will. There, outside surges and billows the ocean of our will and upon this swims our feeling. When the will strikes against an elemental thought-being, the contact produces an up-glimmering of feeling and we perceive this ‘ricochet’ of our will as an absolute reality of the spiritual world. Let us suppose there is an elemental being in the outer spiritual world. When we have gradually worked out of the condition we must first pass through, our will going forth from us breaks against this elemental being. When it strikes against the elemental being it is thrown back. It does not now return as will, but as feeling, which floats back to us on the waves of will. Our own being which is poured out into the cosmos lives as feeling which comes back to us on the waves of will. The elemental beings thereby become real to us and we gradually perceive that which exists outside us as the outer spiritual world.

Still another soul-force has to come forth from us, which slumbers in a much deeper layer of the soul than the feeling-will or the willing-feeling. It is creative soul-force, which is like an inner soul-light that must shine forth over the spiritual world, in order that we may not only see the living, active, objective thought-beings floating back to us on the waves of feeling in the ocean of our will, but that we may also illumine this spiritual world with spiritual light. Creative, spiritual illuminating power must go forth from our soul into the spiritual world. This awakens gradually.

You see, that while living in physical life we have at least differentiated within us the pair of brothers—feeling and will, from feeling-will or willing-feeling: we possess these as a duality whereas when we have passed the portal of death they are unity. The creative soul-force which we radiate as soul-light into spiritual space (if I may use the word ‘space’ here, for in reality it is not space, but we have to try to make these conditions comprehensible by expressing them pictorially), this soul-light slumbers so deep down within us because it is connected with something regarding which we neither may nor can know anything during life. That which is liberated as light and which then illumines and brightens the spiritual world slumbers very deep down within us during our life on the physical plane. What then rays forth from us, has to be transformed during our physical life and used in such a way that our body shall really live and that consciousness shall dwell in it. Entirely below the threshold of consciousness works this spiritual illuminating power in our physical body, as the power which organises life and consciousness. We dare not bring it into our earthly consciousness, for we should then rob our physical body of the power which has to organise it. But when we have no body to take care of, it becomes spiritual illuminating power, and streams through, shines and glitters through everything: these words signify actual realities.

Thus we gradually work our way onwards to where we become at home in the spiritual world and experience it as a reality, just as here we experience the physical world as a reality. We gradually arrive at really having the souls of those who have passed the portal of death as our companions in the spiritual world, in so far as these really live in the spiritual world. We then live among souls, just as here in the physical body we live among bodies. As we enter more and more into the true spirit of Spiritual Science, the assertion that after death we do not meet again all those with whom we have lived here, would be, to one who goes more deeply into the matter, as foolish as if someone were to say, with respect to the physical plane, that when we enter upon the earth at birth we find no human beings there. Human beings are all about us.—To one who knows spiritual life it is exactly the same as if someone were to say: the child comes into the physical world, but it sees no one there. That, obviously, is nonsense. In the same way it is nonsense when people say: when we enter into the spiritual world we do not find again all the souls with whom we have been associated, neither do we find the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, whom we recognise in their order, as here upon the earth we recognise minerals, plants and animals! But there is this difference, here in the physical world we know that when we see and hear objects and beings, the possibility for doing so comes through our senses, from the outer world. In the spiritual world we know that this possibility comes from ourselves, because what we may call the soul-light streams forth from our souls illuminating everything about us.

Thus do we live in the period which may be called the first half of our life between death and rebirth. While we are living in this period we go through the two conditions I have already described:—one, a condition lasting for years, in which, through the illuminating power proceeding from our soul, we are connected with the spiritual world and are thus enabled to perceive spirits and souls about us. This then grows dim and we have the feeling: thou canst develop thy soul-illuminating power, thy soul-light less and less, thou art obliged to let it become dimmer and darker in a spiritual sense. Thereby thou canst see spiritual beings less and less. It becomes increasingly the case that we enter alternating periods in which we have a feeling which we may express thus: Beings surround thee on all sides but thou art becoming more and more solitary, thou art aware only of the contents of thine own soul and these contents grow richer to the same extent that thou ceasest to be able to illuminate the beings without.—There are periods of spiritual companionship, and again, periods of spiritual solitude during which we live over again in our soul, what we experienced in the periods of spiritual companionship. These conditions alternate. Such is our life in the spiritual world: spiritual companionship, and again spiritual solitude. In periods of spiritual solitude we know: what thou didst experience in the spiritual world around thee was indeed there, thou knewest about all that; but now there remains only the echo of it within thee. One might say, that what we experience in the periods of spiritual solitude, are memories; but these words do not express it exactly. I must therefore try to describe it to you from another aspect. It is not as if in the period of spiritual darkness, when one has no companions, one were to remember what one had previously experienced in the spiritual world, but as if one had to produce this afresh every moment: it is a continual inward creation. One is inwardly aware: While there, outside thee the outer world exists; thou must remain alone and create and create. What thou createst is the world which surges around thee beyond the shores of thine own being.

As we thus live on further during the first half of our life between death and rebirth and approach the middle of the period between death and rebirth, we feel the solitary life grow richer and richer and at the same time the vision of our spiritual environment becomes dimmer and more restricted. This continues until we arrive at the middle of the period between death and rebirth, which in my last Mystery Drama, The Soul's Awakening, I have endeavoured to describe as the Midnight of the World. That is the period when we have the strongest inward life, but we no longer have within us the creative soul-force enabling us to illumine our spiritual environment. Here, one might say, infinite worlds fill us inwardly, spiritually, but we are unable to know anything about any other being except our own. That is the central point in our experience between death and rebirth, it is the Midnight of the World.

Now the time begins when there develops within us the longing for a positive creative power; for although we have an infinite inner life, there awakens within us the longing to have an outer world again. And so different are the conditions of the spiritual world from those of the physical world, that whereas in the physical world longing is the most passive force (when there is something for which we long, this something is what determines us), the reverse is the case in the spiritual world. There, longing is a creative force; it transforms itself into something which, as a new kind of soul-light, is able to give us an outer world, an outer world which is yet an inner world, inasmuch as it reveals to us a vision of our previous earthly incarnations. These now lie outspread before us, illumined by the light that is born of our longing. In the spiritual cosmos there is a power which comes from longing, which can illumine this backward survey and enable us to experience ourselves.

But to this end one thing is necessary in our present age. I have said that during the whole of the first half of our life between death and rebirth we alternate between inner life and outer life, between solitude and spiritual companionship. At first the conditions in the spiritual world are such, that each time we return to our solitude in the spiritual world, to our inner activity, we call up before our soul again and again what we have experienced in the outer world. Thereby a consciousness is aroused which expands over the whole of the spiritual world; with the swing of the pendulum this again contracts during the period of solitude.

There is one thing, however, which exists there and which we must retain, no matter whether we expand into the great spiritual world, or withdraw into ourselves. Before the Mystery of Golgotha took place, it was possible, through the forces connecting man with primeval times, to preserve a connection with that which gave him the feeling of ‘I’. It was possible not to lose this connection, for he could preserve a clear remembrance of one thing in the previous earthly life, namely, that in this life on the earth he had lived as an ‘I’; and this remembrance continued both through the periods of solitude and of companionship. Before the Mystery of Golgotha the forces of inheritance took care of this. Now, it can only be accomplished through the fact that the soul-content, which we may have through Christ having entered into the earth aura, remains connected with that which we have released from us as the treasure we have brought from the earth, which we perceived withdraw immediately after leaving the physical body. This is the permeation with the Christ-substance, which after death gives us the power to maintain the remembrance of our ‘I’ up to the time of the world-midnight, in spite of all expansion and in spite of all the contraction into solitude. Thus far does the impulse proceeding from the power of Christ extend, that through it we do not lose ourselves. Then from our longing must spring a new spiritual power, a power that only exists in spiritual life and by which, through our longing a new light may be kindled.

In the physical world there is Nature and the Divinity which pervades Nature, from which we are born into the physical world. There is the Christ-impulse which is present in the earth's aura, that is, in the aura of physical nature. But the power which draws near to us in the Midnight of the World, through which our longing is enabled to illumine the whole of our past, this power exists only in the spiritual world where nobody can live. When the Christ-impulse has brought us as far as to the Midnight of the World, and when the Midnight of the World is experienced by the soul in spiritual loneliness, because the soul-light cannot yet stream forth from us, when world-darkness has come upon us, when Christ has led us thus far, then in the Midnight of the World there emerges something spiritual from our desire, creating a new world-light which illuminates our being and by means of which we enter anew into worldly existence. We learn to know the Spirit of the spiritual world which awakens us, because out of the Midnight of the World a new light shines, the light which illuminates the whole of our human past.

In Christ we have died; through the Spirit, through the bodiless Spirit for which the technical expression Holy Ghost is used, i.e., the Spirit that lives without a body—(for this is meant by the word Holy, namely, a spirit without the weakness of one that lives in the body)—through this Spirit we are reawakened at the Midnight of the World. At the World-Midnight we are awakened by the Holy Ghost:

PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS

Hamburg, March 14, 1909

Dear attendees! Not so long ago, only 300 years, not only laymen but also learned naturalists believed that lower animals, worms, even fish could arise from inanimate river mud. And it was a great advance in human thinking when the Italian naturalist Redi first stated that, under our present-day conditions, living things could only arise from a living germ. Today, anyone who still wanted to claim that earthworms or fish can simply form from ordinary sand or mud would be considered a fool or an ignorant person. Indeed, the vast majority of today's thinking people are hardly aware that these three hundred years ago, people still believed that such a thing was possible! What is taken for granted today by laypeople and by science, that under our present conditions, living things can only arise from living things, is something that humanity had to gain for its thinking only over the course of centuries, and so it is, honored attendees, for many achievements of human knowledge. Today, spiritual science or theosophy has a very similar truth to implement and introduce into human consciousness. That this truth will become part of human consciousness in the future depends solely on whether people will just as naturally accept what many people today consider to be folly, a reverie or a fantasy: that the spiritual and soul can only arise from the spiritual and soul. Basically, all that is needed to understand all the things that will form today's topic is a thorough living through of this simple sentence. Nevertheless, much, much water will flow into the Elbe before the advocates of this sentence will no longer be regarded as fools, dreamers or fantasists.

The sentence that living things can only arise from living germs was not easily accepted either, and Redi only narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today, those who bring something similar together are no longer condemned to death by fire, that has gone out of fashion. But they are condemned to the other death, which burns less, but which is therefore still equivalent to the way in which uncomfortable truth seekers were eliminated from the world in the past. Today they are condemned as dreamers, fantasists, fools or the like. But the time will come, and it is not so far away, when it will seem self-evident that the spiritual and the soul can only arise from the spiritual and the soul. And the whole question at issue today, the question of such immeasurable importance for people, the question of the supersensible worlds and the destiny of the human soul in the supersensible worlds, the question of the riddles of human death and life, the question that is not just a theoretical, but a practical question in the most eminent sense, because the one who is able to solve it for his own soul draws certainty and strength for life from the answer, hope and confidence for his work, in short, everything that allows people to stand upright in the most difficult struggles of fate, in all that life brings.

Today we will approach the question of the destiny of man in life and in death from two sides. One approach will bring this question before the court of facts, the other before the court of common sense. If we want to speak of facts, then we must first form an idea of what we actually have to understand as facts. We speak so easily of proving. We shall see that these things are taken very superficially in the wide circle of humanity. The fate of the human soul in the supersensible world will be the subject.

Now, dear audience, when I was still a little boy, I often listened to conversations of very simple people about that mysterious land where man comes after death. There were religious people who, out of their faith, gave certain answers about fate, but there were also free-spirited people among the simple folk, unbelievers. One sentence always worked to beat the others. That was the sentence: No one can know anything about that country from which no wanderer has yet returned. It was said more simply: Have you seen one who has told of the events after death?

That was something that was taken by many as something striking. Now, honored attendees, people would not attach so much importance to such words if they wanted to reflect more thoroughly on the ordinary events of the day that happen to every human being in 24 hours. In the ordinary course of daily life, a person clearly experiences different states. In 24 hours, you go through two states of consciousness: waking and sleeping. Of course, the most ordinary and everyday things are the least thought about; but the riddles of the world are present in the everyday. It should seem mysterious to man that what he experiences within himself from morning to evening, the whole world of surging and swaying sensations, perceptions and thoughts, lust and suffering, joy and pain, drives and desires and passions, that he sees this whole world of the evening sinking into an indeterminate darkness. Everything that a person perceives through his eyes from morning till evening, which awakens desires, lust and suffering in him, etc., descends into the darkness of consciousness like the setting sun. In the morning, the person wakes up again; what he left behind for his consciousness yesterday dawns again out of the darkness. All the familiar images, thoughts, impressions come to consciousness just as the sun rises over the horizon. All the pains and sufferings that had been forgotten come back up like the sun rising over the horizon.

Would it not be foolish to claim that every evening the sum of perceptions, sensations and perceptions, pleasure and pain, pain and joy, that they disappear and merge into an indeterminate nothing and are recreated tomorrow? Anyone who thinks thoroughly says: It would be the greatest folly to claim such a disappearance of mental life and a new creation. The soul is there, it is present, it is real, anything else is contrary to common sense. What distinguishes the sleeping soul from the waking soul? Only that the sleeping soul cannot perceive, it has no consciousness of what fills its field of vision during the day as its experiences. States of consciousness change in every person in 24 hours.

Now, honored attendees, when the world of facts is to be explored, that which can be called clairvoyant human consciousness comes into play. With this word, I have expressed what may seem like something fantastic or foolish to the very enlightened of the present, especially at first. What is this clairvoyant human consciousness? First, let us clarify this consciousness through a comparison. You imagine, honored attendees, you are leading a person born blind into this hall. For you, these lamps shine, these doors appear brown. For the man born blind, this hall does not appear in this way; the lights and colors are not there for him. If you were to succeed in operating on this man born blind here, what would enter his field of vision is what was there before, but what he did not see. What was there before has now become perceptible to him.

What this man born blind can experience through the operation can be experienced in relation to the spiritual abilities of the soul. Just as in this man, whom you operated on, the ability to see was dormant, so in every human soul there is something dormant of higher abilities that can likewise be brought out of the human soul through an operation. What Goethe, for example, referred to as spiritual eyes, slumbers in the soul of every human being. And then, when these spiritual eyes are awakened in the soul of a person, it is just as much on a higher level as it is for a person born blind on a lower level whose physical eye has been operated on. A new world invades him, the world that is always around us, the spiritual world. But man's soul is also in this world during the state of sleep, during the night.

Why can't the human soul see this spiritual world in its normal state? It is easy to see why. Imagine that you were standing here with your body alive, but you lost your sight and could see nothing. If you also lost your hearing and other senses, the world would be imperceptible to you. So how can we know that a world exists for us? Only on the fact that we have organs for this world. When a person is in the spiritual world at night while sleeping, then in his normal present state he has no organs for this world, he has no spiritual eyes. But when a person develops what are called these spiritual eyes, then it is not dark and gloomy around him, but then he lives in the sleeping state so that he perceives: There is a world, I have left the physical world; I have entered another world. Now another world has become visible, a fact, as the world of physical colors and lights for the blind man who has undergone an operation.

What is described here as opening the spiritual eyes is called awakening or initiation. Such initiated people, who had developed their spiritual abilities, have always existed. Because they had developed their spiritual abilities, they could see into the spiritual world, into the world of which they now had to say: When a person falls asleep, what we call his outer physical body remains in bed, and a spiritual-soul entity leaves this physical body. This being really does leave the physical body when we fall asleep. During sleep it is in another world. In the morning, the soul once again enters the physical body. It then uses the eyes and ears again and perceives the physical world. What is the difference between the unawakened person and the awakened person? The difference is that in that part of his being that goes out at night, there are no spiritual eyes; but in the awakened person, spiritual eyes have developed. Those who want to study these questions more deeply and thoroughly will see that what has been said is not something plucked out of the blue, but something definite and real. Of course you can ask the question: Yes, but how does one achieve this awakening? The answer to this question is also given. There are certain methods and certain practices that a person must apply to his soul, and then he draws out of his inner being the dormant spiritual eyes, the slumbering soul abilities. It can only be hinted at that by allowing very specific inner soul experiences, which have been established for thousands of years in what is called concentration, meditation, or inner contemplation, to take effect on his soul, man can change his soul and develop spiritual eyes as a result. Then man becomes clairvoyant in a world that is otherwise closed to him.

If you look through the little booklet on initiation and mysteries, you will see that there is a very specific way of making the soul clairvoyant, just as there are methods for making microscopes. Certain ideas have an effect on this soul, and then it transforms, and then abilities arise, which you can call hallucinations or visions if you like, but they change very quickly so that they become the mediators of the spiritual worlds that are around us. In this development, one very soon learns to distinguish from one another what a vision is and what corresponds to reality in the spiritual world. Just as in the physical world you can only come to distinguish between ideas and reality through experience and living, the same applies to the spiritual world.

Someone may say: I believe in Schopenhauer that the world is my idea. We say: Very well, just imagine a piece of burning iron or glowing steel. It does not burn you, but now, if you touch it, you will very soon realize the difference between your idea and reality; the imagined glowing steel does not burn, but the real one does. You will have the same experience as you develop your spiritual powers and abilities.

When I said this once in southern Germany, someone said: But you can evoke the ideas in your mind so vividly that they even have a physical effect; so someone could have hallucinations through contemplation and other exercises that they mistake for reality. You can also, he said, make your mouth water when you imagine lemon juice. “Then I said that he should try to quench his thirst with imagined lemon juice. You can only do that with real lemon juice, and you notice the difference. It is the same in the spiritual world. Those who are spiritually awakened and have developed their spiritual senses know from experience where the boundary is between imagination and spiritual reality.

These are the facts on which spiritual research is based. When someone comes and says: Yes, these people claim not only the physical body, but what they – oh, these fantasists and fools – call the astral body, these awakened ones claim that. They should just prove it and list all the facts. Well, ladies and gentlemen, firstly, the person who makes such a speech has not thoroughly informed himself about the nature of proof. I would like to advise him to think about the proof that the horse has its head in front and its tail behind. Just because people always see normal horses, that is why they take such a thing for granted. Proofs, which are to be based on facts, must be based on these facts. The spiritual researcher is on no different ground than the natural scientist. If someone comes and says, “There are natural scientists who say that plants consist of cells.” “I have never seen cells, only leaves and flowers.” What I have not seen, I do not believe. — Then the natural scientist will say to him: You must get a microscope and learn to work scientifically, then you will see the cells as facts. Only if you take the appropriate precautions will you see them.

But the methods by which the invisible, supersensible aspects of human nature can be seen are accessible to everyone. If he undergoes the methods that the initiate has to undergo, if he develops clairvoyance, then he undergoes something similar in the spiritual life to what the person working with the microscope undergoes in the physical life. The analogy of the facts is complete, at most the matter is more uncomfortable in the spiritual life. It is more uncomfortable in the spiritual life because a microscope can be fabricated. But what the spiritual microscope is, everyone must develop in their own soul; they must transform themselves if they want to see for themselves. But there have always been such initiates who knew what message to bring from these spiritual worlds.

And now let us present to our soul what these initiates have to say about the cycle of man through the different worlds. It is presented in much the same way as if someone were to tell you that he has seen this or that through the microscope. The spiritual researcher speaks from his research: What you call the human being is by no means as simple as you imagine. This human being consists of many, many parts; he has visible, tangible parts, but in addition he also has invisible, supersensible parts. The first part is the physical human body. This physical human body he has in common with all other inanimate beings, with crystals, rocks, with mineral beings. In addition, he has an invisible part that is a loyal fighter in the physical body. This second link, which only a clairvoyant can see, is the etheric or life body. This permeates the human being. If one did not have it, the human body would be in every moment what it becomes with death: a corpse. A crystal follows its own physical and chemical laws. The human body cannot follow its own chemical and physical laws during its lifetime. If it did follow them, then what it is as a corpse would show up, it would dissolve. But the etheric body is a faithful fighter against decay. The human being has the etheric or life body in common with all plants.

The third link of the human being is the astral body; it is the carrier of desire and suffering, joy and pain, of all the feelings and passions that arise and ebb away in the waking consciousness, etc. This astral body is just as real and true for the spiritual researcher as the physical body, indeed even more real. If someone objects: You are not going to imagine that such astral bodies can fly around in the air, then the spiritual researcher answers: I can imagine it very well; not only imagine it, but to the spiritual researcher the astral body shows itself as an independent part of the human being.

Today, such an awareness would be considered fantasy; but the real fantasy lies on the other side. A healthy understanding of human nature will say: Here I see the person, the tear rolls out of his eyes. Therefore, I assume that he is sad. The grief is an experience of the soul or the astral body. This experience has a physical effect, it presses tears out of the eyes. Here we see how physical effects arise from experiences of the soul. Some schools of philosophy say that this is a mistake. They say that when a person cries, a secret effect occurs that is mediated by material things, and this secret effect presses tears out of the eyes and when the person notices this, then he becomes sad. So the person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.

The third part of human nature, the astral body, is shared by humans and all animals. Then there is a fourth element, which is the carrier of self-awareness, the carrier of our ego. Through this element, humans rise above all the beings that surround them in the sensory world. He towers above his fellow creatures, he is the greatest of earthly creation. In spiritual research, we speak of the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body in animals. In the case of humans, we speak of four members: the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I-vehicle.

What is sleep for spiritual research? When a person falls asleep, his physical body and ether body remain in bed, while the astral body and the I-bearing body separate out for the clairvoyant. In the sleeping person we have a separation of the four limbs. Because in today's normal consciousness the I and the astral body have no organs of their own, but only in clairvoyant consciousness, these organs are dark and there is darkness around the person. In the morning he plunges into his physical and etheric bodies. Throughout life between birth and death, except in states of emergency, the physical body is firmly connected to the etheric body. The astral body goes out at night.

After death, something very special happens. The mere physical body remains behind and the connection between these three invisible members, ether body, astral body and I, goes out. And from that time on, the physical body begins to be a mere physical body, that is, it follows its physical and chemical laws; it dissolves; it is a member of the mineral world.

But then, when spiritual research follows what emerges from the physical body, it shows that the person remains connected to their etheric body for a while. After death, there occurs for a time what could be called a review of the whole past life. You will already have heard that people who are close to death in abnormal conditions – for example, when drowning – review their whole life like a panorama. This gives the person a shock because the entire etheric body is detached from the physical body. The entire life is written in the etheric body, it is the carrier of memory, and only the physical body prevents it from showing this. But it immediately shows this memory of past life when it is freed from the physical body for a moment.

The same is also evident after death. Man then has a review of the past life. Then comes the second cadaverization. After a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the actual inner core of the being, just as the physical body detached itself earlier. What remains is an extract of this etheric body, and the etheric body dissolves into the general etheric matter just as the physical body dissolves into the physical matter. After the human being has freed himself from his etheric body, he now consists of the ego, the astral body and an extract of the etheric body. This extract represents the fruit of the last life, what we have experienced in the last life. You can say to yourself: when you have grown older, you have experienced more than you did earlier. The whole of life consists of becoming more and more attuned to the spiritual; that is not lost, it is written into your etheric body, and you take it with you as a fruit.

After death, something very special happens. What I am about to say is a fact for clairvoyant research, but it can also be grasped by common sense. We have seen: the physical body has fallen away, we will leave the etheric body out of consideration for the time being, but what has lived in man, lust and suffering, joy and pain, that has not only existed as an effect in the physical body, but we must consider that as reality, and then we can say: what is the reason why the desires should immediately fall away when the physical body falls away? There is no reason for it. Spiritual research now shows that the astral body remains present after death with the desires.

An example: a person was a gourmet in life, he had desires for these or those delicious foods. This desire does not depend on the physical body - minerals have no desires - but it depends on the astral body. Now the physical body is dead, the craving has remained, and now the person is in a special situation: in life he satisfies it by eating the food in question, but for that he needs the palate and tongue, organs of the physical body. After death, he still has the craving, but he lacks the organs to satisfy it. The human being is in the same situation as someone who suffers from thirst in solitude and finds no water or beer far and wide. It is the same after death with everything that lives in the human being's astral body and that can only be satisfied through connection with the physical body. After death, spiritual research can confirm that the human being gradually weans from everything that can only be satisfied by the organs of the physical body. This state lasts until the person has given up all impulses in life that require physical organs. This period, which varies in length in different individuals, is called in spiritual science the time of man's passage through the world of souls or Kamaloka; what is meant is a state. After death, man has to go through this state. Certain religions call it purgatory, a time of trial, purification, cleansing. Then the parts of the astral body that contain only what can be satisfied by the physical body fall away from the person like scales. Then the soul is able to make something out of what it has taken with it as an extract, out of what it has taken with it as the fruit of life.

And now the time of the actual spiritual life begins, the time in which man lives in increasingly spiritual worlds, which first begins with man reversing his activity from the physical world. What does that mean? What man does first among many other things, we can understand, honored attendees, if we look at the light with common sense. It is true that if man had no eyes, he would not see the light. But for those who always claim that without eyes there would be no world of light, the other side, the other side, must also be asserted. Where do eyes come from? Goethe speaks from a deep knowledge of the world when he says, “The eye is formed by light for light.” That is to say, if there were no light, if the sun did not give off light, there would be no eye. Light has formed and shaped the eye out of indifferent organs.

The organs that we have as human beings have been formed gradually, after undergoing very imperfect states. So how could an eye come into being? Because there was light around the human being. If you look at certain animals that live outside in the world, they have eyes. When such animals change their way of life and come into dark caves, their eyes wither, they recede, they lose their sight because there is no light in their environment. As the missing light takes the eyes, so the light has also given them. But in the same way, what we encounter as a person's soul with these or those abilities can only be built up by the surrounding spiritual world. But in this world is the human being after Kamaloka, and in this spiritual world he has the fruit of his last life. From this spiritual world he begins to build up his spiritual organs with what he has learned in the last life, what he has experienced. Bit by bit, he now builds up his spiritual organism with the experiences he has had in the last life. It is true that the human being builds up this spiritual organism bit by bit. Just as he builds his destiny in the physical world according to the experiences he has in the physical world, so he directs his actions in the spiritual world according to the spiritual experiences around him. And he is busy, among many others in the spiritual world, creating a kind of archetype, spiritual model for his spiritual organs.

When this spiritual organism is now created out of the materials of the spiritual world, then the human being experiences the longing to realize in the physical world what he has built spiritually, to descend again into the physical world. So those bodies that he had previously discarded are built up again piece by piece around this spiritual organism according to the conditions of the physical world. For what the human being has taken from the physical world has been prepared for him in the physical world. That which is in the physical and etheric bodies must be given back to him from a world to which he had given it back; his parents give it to him. The physical and etheric bodies are brought up to him by his parents from a world from which he has only just departed, and what has taken shape as an archetype in the spiritual world is connected with him. And we can see how this archetype works on the formation of the physical body.

Physical science is not a counter-proof of this. Once the facts of natural science are properly examined, then natural science will correctly find the fact of spiritual life. Look at the child after it is born. The child has developed certain parts of its brain that can be said to be sensory centers, nerve pathways; these are already developed in the first week after birth. On the other hand, if you examine the brain at the end of the first month, you see that almost two-thirds of the brain is only formed during the last four weeks after birth. Bit by bit, the inner two-thirds of the cerebral cortex are permeated with nerve marrow, which transmits one sensory impression to another. The child sees colors and hears sounds, but cannot connect them. The nerve cords that transmit the impressions of the senses are built up bit by bit. Those who insist that these nerve cords build themselves can cling to their superstition; but they should also claim that some complicated apparatus also assembles itself.

We take on board what science says. We see the physical body and its mechanism, but we also make the comparison: No mechanism can be built without intelligence. No machine is made in the world by itself. That which is formed in the human brain does not do itself. What works on it? The archetype, which for the clairvoyant consciousness comes from that spiritual organism, works on this brain. And when this brain is worked through more and more, the fruits of life are woven into it. Man had, after all, taken the fruits of life into the spiritual world. He transforms his brain into this archetype. Depending on how he has used this life, his brain is now transformed by this archetype. For example, someone who has lived in dullness will think nothing of what happens when he sees a church lamp burning and swinging. But for the one who has used life in a different way, it works in such a way that he discovers the influential laws of the pendulum and gives them to humanity, like Galilei, who first saw the laws of the pendulum vibrations in the church lamp in the cathedral of Pisa. Indeed, with him the archetype worked differently than with the thousands upon thousands who also saw that lamp and who did not notice anything. Here we have a tangible example of how the spiritual works on the physical.

Those who do not admit this can be said to be beyond help, not admitting obvious facts. They cannot demand: prove your case, but rather it is a matter of the other person creating conditions to produce evidence. Those who look deeper will realize that the best evidence requires recognition.

Thus we see how man, passing through the gate of death, enters into other worlds: first into a preparatory world, then into the world of spiritual creation, where he prepares a new life. Then, through conception and birth, he enters into a new life. After birth, the human being still works on his brain. Either say: it all takes care of itself —, or there is no other possibility than that the human being is accepted with such a spiritual life.

Now one could say: Of course I will admit a soul that exists before conception; but I will not admit that the soul owes its working capacity and form to a previous life; rather, it descends from the spiritual world anew each time. — Under today's conditions, such a soul that descends anew would not fit well into the present world. That is another necessary assumption of common sense, that one turns one's attention to the harmony and fit between what descends and what is brought in the line of inheritance. Only such a soul can come into harmony with the conditions in the physical world that has acquired the prerequisites for a life in the present conditions in a previous life.

This is how we move from the present life to a previous one. When the soul descends again and develops in the body in this life, it is exactly the same as in the previous one, except that the person has woven in the fruits of the earlier existence. Thus enriched, the person lives again between birth and death, and so it goes on.

Thus man passed through the cycle from the sensual world through the world of the mere soul, the world of purification, to the spiritual world, and then again he descended into the sensual world, and so on. He goes through this cycle again and again, and therein lies, honored attendees, the guarantee of an ever-higher development of man. This teaching, which shows us the causes of our present life in previous lives, is not a bleak one. One can only say: if you build up this life in an inadequate way, then the cause lies in a previous life. But one can also point to the future and say: use your life well and you will carry the fruits of this life over into the following one; then confidence and energy follow from such a realization.

For those present, who approach this sentence with common sense, the facts of clairvoyant consciousness cannot, of course, be proven externally, but they can understand them. They can say to themselves: If I accept the facts, then life becomes understandable to me. Facts cannot be proven; I would like to see someone prove that there is a whale when no one has seen it. But by creating the appropriate organs, one can come to see the facts of spiritual life. Only connections can be proven, never facts.

Now, dear audience, common sense may want to object to some things and say: If you tell me that the human being descends from spiritual heights and connects with the physical, I don't believe it, because I don't see it.

Today, certain abilities are attributed to heredity. In the radical case of genius, people today try to present a genius and say: Now we go peddling and see if we can find the qualities that the genius has in the father or mother or up to aunt-like ancestors, and so the genius should be the last link in the line of inheritance. The fact that genius always appears at the end of the line of inheritance is cited as proof that genius arises through inheritance. For those who want to think in a thoroughly materialistic way, this sounds reasonable; but there is no logic behind it at all. For the doctrine would really be proven if the ancestor had the genius and this had inherited its properties to the descendants. But that is not the case. Those who take a closer look at human life will know that certain traits are inherited. We know that there are 29 musicians of varying ability in the Bach family. There is nothing miraculous about that. To become a proficient musician, one needs not only mental and spiritual qualities, but if the soul descends and meets no parents who can give it a developed ear, then it cannot become a musician. So just as the soul's qualities come from past lives, so the inner physiognomy of the ear depends on the ancestors. But when man becomes a closer observer of life, when he, as a thinking educator, sees this human soul developing in its manifold individualities, then he sees how the spiritual abilities by no means develop out of the physical human being, but he gets the feeling that something is working its way in that has lived in the spiritual world before. One then notices that the human being has often existed in this world, that he has adapted to this world in his various stages of existence.

Today we know that an earthworm can only develop from an earthworm germ, that it cannot grow from river mud, which all natural scientists believed 300 years ago. Today, people think that the wonderful human soul can arise without being transmitted from the spiritual and soul realm. Living things can only arise from living things, and spiritual and soul qualities only from spiritual and soul qualities. If one leads the spiritual-mental, which works in from a dark background, back to earlier spiritual-mental, and one is clear that the consequence of the spiritual-mental lies again in the spiritual-mental, that it goes beyond our present life, and that these different lives have nothing to do with what is called the line of inheritance.

A worldview like this will give courage and strength. The more materialistic people have become, the more they have become afraid of things. What is more widespread today than the fear of hereditary burden? The view has changed, and the result of this view, which is based on materialistic ideas, is fear of people, and this has an enormously paralyzing effect on life. If people live their soul unused and do not want to be filled with spiritual content, then what they inherit is indeed fatal for them. For they are weak in their soul.

The soul, like the body, wants to be nourished. It wants to be nourished with truths and insights. If a person trains himself in soul knowledge, he becomes strong and can control and overcome the laws of inheritance. Of course, today's materialists do not believe this. When the soul becomes desolate, then life remains unused, then what is called heredity carries a great deal of weight. It is therefore up to man to make his soul strong and powerful. A world view is not without practical consequences. He who has no idea that the soul really exists, lets his soul become desolate. The materialistic world view brings with it a desolation of the soul's feelings and emotional life. And it is true that such a soul has more to fear than a soul that strengthens itself with spiritual content. Here we see how the spiritual worldview provides enlightenment and security for life. At any time, so to speak, the two things interlock: the facts that arise in the clairvoyant consciousness about the fate of the soul, and the common sense that can say: I can understand life. And so the soul works its way through the individual lives to ever greater perfection. There is for the human soul, apart from the sensual life, a soul life and still another spiritual one. The soul passes through these lives, only to undergo a new one.

Even if life in the material world sometimes appears to be in decline, in general, life on earth and the intervening lives in the spiritual worlds are a continuous ascent. This worldview offers a wonderful perspective on the goal of life. This goal is becoming more and more spiritual in nature, both physically and spiritually. Indeed, we can say “spiritualization”, because the human being will increasingly recognize the foundations of physical life. More and more, he will work from the spiritual world. Ultimately, his own act will be his deliverance from the sensual world.

Thus man progresses towards his perfection in a way that is completely comprehensible to us. Those who extend the law of cause and effect, which is a scientific fact in the physical world, to the spiritual world, say to themselves: “Let people call you a dreamer and a fantasist – the time will come when the sentence: spiritual-mental can only come from spiritual-mental, will be recognized, where the realization will come of man's passage through all worlds, through many lives, and of man's perfection. When one comprehends the human development in this way, then one has certain concepts not only for the physical, sensual world, but also for the soul and spiritual world. These are not fantastic ideas, but concepts with which one connects something, just as man connects these or those concepts with ordinary sensual things.

And so today we can say: Yes, of course, the things that are facts for the initiate, such as the cycle of life through the different worlds, are still little recognized; but they will be recognized, and they will become a fact of the inner soul life for people. Humanity is moving from progress to progress, and it will also have to accept this progress. And those in particular who today still do not want to recognize these facts will have to recognize this progress, which solves the riddles of life, from the mystery of death.

Then people will understand that at first they can believe that what the initiates say is a reality, just as they believe when a microscopist says that a plant consists of cells. If we are willing to think through the analogy correctly, we will gain the courage to develop our own spiritual abilities, our spiritual eyes and ears, as Goethe says, and to learn to recognize what can give us a truly new religious religious consciousness, a religious consciousness that already lies in what we know as the truth of Christianity, which shows us that life in the world of the senses also has value for eternal, heavenly and spiritual life. With Christianity, a religious consciousness has entered into people that sees redemption not only in the spiritual world, but also in the taking over of the fruits of physical life, of what one has learned here.

Finally, let us visualize two images. The progress in our religious life goes from Buddha to Christ. We can only express our admiration for the great figure of Buddha to those who can understand the depth of the Buddha's soul. What Buddha expresses as the great truths of life is infinitely profound. It seems like a legend when Buddha, emerging from wealth and the king's environment, finds a corpse outside, a poor, miserable, sick man. He looks deep into the depths of life and speaks his great truths: life is suffering, death is suffering, illness is suffering, old age is suffering; being separated from what one loves is suffering; being connected to what one does not love is suffering. Desire for what cannot be obtained is suffering. The teaching of Buddha is that the thirst for existence, for re-embodiment and for new life must be quenched and mankind must be released from this sensual existence, which is called Nirvana. Buddha proclaims the fourfold suffering. Liberation from the suffering of this world, that is, ascending to the Buddha's teaching. And then Christ came into the world, that was a strange advance. Those who understand the essence of Christianity, who understood it in the first century, for example, had a different feeling about the name Christ. They had a feeling for how the spiritual life is clothed with the sensual existence, the material for which is supplied by the physical, sensual world. But we do not say with Buddha: We only want liberation and salvation from the sensual world. We say: This earth is worthy and dignified, because the body of Christ is also taken from the material of this earth. The earth over which Christ walked gives fruit for eternal life. And so, for those who recognized him, the existence of Christ became a certainty that from life to life, man takes the fruits of his existence into the spiritual world. And now the teaching of the Buddha changed. In the schools of spiritual science, it has always been expressed that the truth of life through Christ has changed. Birth, that is, entering life, is not just suffering, because we enter a life in which Christ has lived. Illness is not just suffering, because by connecting with Christ's powers we become master over illnesses. In the future, people will learn how to work externally on physical illnesses; the conqueror of illnesses is Christ in the human breast. And old age is not suffering, because as a person ages and the physical body declines, he will carry the fruits he receives in the physical body over into the spiritual world. And death is certainly not suffering, because it is a wonderful image of contrast: Buddha goes out of his royal castle and sees the corpse and there he comes to the great truth: death is suffering. And in the first centuries of Christianity, we gradually see people turning their eyes to the wood of the cross and seeing the corpse. And this is the guarantee of eternal life, of glorious eternal life, of the victory of eternal life. This corpse is not the proof that life is suffering, but that life is victory over all suffering.

The one who comprehends Christianity knows that he cannot be separated from what he loves, because the spiritual bond is woven from soul to soul. It is impossible not to be connected in a spiritual sense to what one loves, because one learns to embrace the whole universe and to purify one's desires.

The full meaning of Christianity will only be revealed by research, which we call spiritual science, not from any documents, but from the clairvoyant consciousness, independently of all records. Then Christianity will show itself as something that has not yet by a long way brought its deepest impulses to the surface. But not just a dead observation of the course of development of Christianity, but a deepening into the spiritual world and a bringing forth of these living germs from Christianity will mean the progress of Christianity. Spiritual science does not seek the Christ where he walked the earth, but is a faithful follower of the words:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Therefore, we rediscover the Christ every day, and we find him, if we want to seek him today, through spiritual science, which, independently of all documents, looks into the spiritual world and sees the Christ as a guide to ever higher progress in it. This is how the cycle presents itself, and this is how it will always present itself to those who will understand spiritual people.

That everyone will experience this one day was the profound realization expressed by Goethe at an early age. He confirmed that he recognized a spiritual world to which the human being belongs just as he now belongs to the physical world. Yes, it was from the depths of his discerning soul that he spoke when he pointed out what can be renewed again and again in the human soul, what can constitute the happiness and blessing and blessedness of the human soul, which this spiritual world recognizes, which Goethe also recognized when he said:

The spiritual world is not closed;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead.
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted,

The earthly breast at dawn!

I would like to finish the course of these winter talks today with a consideration about the significance of the spiritual science for the human life.

I have pointed many a time to the fact that spiritual science does not want to be only a theory of the world that one accepts or refuses like other theories. No, spiritual science hopes to be able to be a real new element of life, something that can penetrate into the whole human being, and that the human being thereby gets a real treasure for life. What I have suggested in this respect already at the suitable places of the single talks I do summarise not only today, but I will also explain it somewhat more in detail.

In the course of these talks, I have pointed repeatedly to the fact that spiritual research is based on something quite different from any other research in our time. I have mentioned that with any other research it matters, above all, that the human being unfolds his faculty of judgement, his willpower, as well as he has them, and that he applies them immediately. If we face life, we are forced to appeal to our judgement immediately to make a decision in this or that sense. On the other hand, we face life in such a way that our will should be used, we can only seek to apply that willpower which we have unfolded with our normal education.

Briefly, we are forced at any moment of the usual life, but also in the usual science, to accept ourselves as we are anyway.

On the other hand, the position of spiritual science is quite different, actually. Just this fact brings it adversaries and opponents in abundance. The spiritual researcher cannot take himself in such a way as he is. With the portrayal of the life between death and a new birth, I have especially emphasised this. What we apply, otherwise, in life directly to the outer world the spiritual researchers uses it first as preparation for the level of knowledge which he should attain only after this preparation. The maturity of judgment and willpower are not applied to the outside, not in such a way that we make decisions directly or put acts of volition in scene. Nevertheless, they are applied in a spiritual process so that the spiritual researcher uses the techniques, the inner handling of the faculty of judgement to further his soul to make it riper and riper. The will is practiced in such a way that a development of the soul from another viewpoint is possible than that he has already.

That is why one could say: what one applies usually directly to the world—one applies in spiritual research for the preparation of that what one should only attain after this preparation. That is the point that the soul transforms itself into another instrument of knowledge and willing than it is at first. Hence, that mood also comes which the spiritual researcher has compared with knowledge that he has, actually, always the feeling: what you have applied usually directly to judge the things—now you must withdraw it from the outer world to further yourself; now you must wait, until your soul has become ripe to let the knowledge of truth approach you. What flows out, otherwise, from our soul is used first to the work on the soul. However, thereby the human being experiences a mood of inner activity, not that mood of simply accepting the world.

Then we have realised that all outer sense perceptions or thoughts and mental pictures, bound to the brain, cannot supply any cognitive force to spiritual research, but that it must appeal to the stimulation of forces that are slumbering, otherwise, in the soul. I draw your attention to the fact that the real clairvoyant knowledge is based on the fact that at every moment the spiritual-scientific researcher must submerge in the processes and things which he wants to recognise, and that that which he wants to perceive and recognise is extinguished at once if he does not submerge with his whole active soul. We abandon ourselves to an outer colour or an outer tone passively; they have an effect on us. We have to be active if we want to recognise anything in the spiritual world. If we faced the things and beings passively in the spiritual world, the recognised would be extinguished or would change into hallucinations or illusions if it is still there. No moment the soul is allowed to rest in the spiritual world.

If we consider that the soul can ascend to the levels of Imaginative, Inspirative, and Intuitive knowledge only, while it is internally active continuously, then we realise that the spiritual-scientific research can deliver knowledge to the human beings only, which also necessitates a particular kind of understanding. I have pointed already repeatedly to the fact that one has not to be a spiritual researcher to understand what the spiritual researcher explores in the spiritual worlds. Since there is in every soul an immediate, secret language by which it can understand, what the spiritual researcher says, even if it cannot be active spiritual-scientifically, as one can understand a picture, even if one is not a painter. However, the human being of the present has also to fight for it; since nothing is more obvious to him to say: truth must get at me; I must behave passively to it, it has to be given to me! One feels insecure if one shall do anything if one shall first develop the soul to recognise truth. Hence, one can object to the spiritual researcher very easily: you put up concepts of truth which are not in such a way, as the concepts of truth of the outer life or the outer science; and these truth concepts say: I believe what is confirmed to me by facts what can be revealed, so to speak, by facts.

Many years ago, I called this attitude concerning knowledge and life facts fanaticism, on one side. On the other side, one dedicates himself to a certain dogmatism of facts. It signifies the same like any other dogmatism for the soul. One feels, so to speak, that one has no inner power to grasp truth if one is no longer kept to the apron strings of the outer facts or the outer science. However, spiritual science necessitates—because it has to speak about matters and processes which do not belong to the field of usual life—that you bring yourself to an understanding that is not kept tied to the apron strings of the outer facts and that also does not submit to any dogmatism of facts, but feels the light of truth shining in an inner, mental experience. The modern human being must get used only to the inner conception of the living truth. One can almost say, the modern soul is not able to bring itself to develop those strong inner forces that are necessary not to let dictate the truth, but to experience it immediately. However, this feeling is necessary if the human beings should check and understand the spiritual-scientific results. If one brings himself to experience truth in such a way, spiritual science is clear for any soul immediately. Since that does not speak against spiritual science what some people argue that anywhere in the field of the natural sciences or history anything would be that could persuade anybody that the so-called spiritual-scientific truths would be errors or pipe dreams.

Not a single scientific or historical truth contradicts the knowledge of spiritual science. I have often emphasised this in these talks. Nevertheless, those who get used to the scientific thinking at first absorb prejudice with it that one only must overcome. The opposition does not arise from the judgements of science, but from the prejudice against spiritual science. Spiritual science creates cognitive forces that have to become active if the soul wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. Therefore, one understands spiritual science only if the human beings get used gradually to bringing up the active forces from their soul depths that must be animated as free inner activities in the soul.

I have almost avoided out of this attitude using illustrations or photos for these talks. The modern human being is inclined very much to look at something passively. However, one has to grasp internally what spiritual science brings to light; one has to think, to feel, and often to want with it. While spiritual science appeals to this what exists, indeed, in any soul, but slumbers in the souls, it calls forces in the soul for the spiritual life which—if they are used for it—represent a high treasure for life which the human beings need more and more.

Only somebody who is short-sighted can deny that this human life becomes more and more complex, that our development runs in such a way that inner forces of orientation will be more and more necessary to cope with life in any direction. Except various other reasons that speak for the emergence of spiritual science in the present culture, it is also valid above all that the human souls must use these stronger forces to orientate themselves in the outer life, the more we settle in the future. Life itself requires these stronger forces from the human souls.

Of course, we cannot bring everything forward in a short talk that spiritual science—I do not say spiritual research now—has to offer as treasures for life by the living understanding of that what spiritual research brings to light. We can only characterise the single categories, overall. There I would like to start from that what is connected directly with the single human being.

I have repeatedly pointed in other contexts to the rhythmical change that happens in the human life in the course of 24 hours, waking and sleeping. I have partly mentioned in the various talks what is one can say about it from the spiritual-scientific point of view. I want only to suggest today that the human being has the sleep as a means of recovery of particular kind beside that what he has for his immediate mood from sleep and can feel immediately subjectively. Today you have only to listen to the outer medical science; it is of the opinion that the healthy sleep is a remedy. Since sleep unfolds such forces in the human being which compensate a certain daily consumption of forces. Whereas the awake life weakens the body in a way, we are mainly concerned with the development of the forces of recovery. In sleep, healthy forces have an effect on the human being. One of the best remedies for some illnesses is that one causes a healthy sleep. I cannot speak, of course, in this talk how one causes a healthy sleep. I explain on a separate occasion whether spiritual science has to say anything particular about that.

Now the human being can recover by that what develops in sleep only what we have consumed. In sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; the spiritual-mental is in its own world, in the spiritual world. This different relation of the soul to the body when it is awake is connected with the stimulation of recovering forces. Now spiritual research appeals—as we have seen—the spiritual-mental of the human being to become free from the bodily, from the physical—for one cannot investigate the spiritual-mental in another way. Everything that the spiritual researcher investigates he investigates outside of his physical body. If he expresses the investigated in concepts and words, and if the human soul attains an understanding of this what he has to say, then that makes a particular influence on this human being who is no spiritual researcher, but only faces the communications with understanding. This soul takes care to develop understanding forces for the results of spiritual research. These forces are more or less independent of the physical body. While we understand that what the senses and the reason offer, we remain dependent with this understanding on our physical body, we wear out it, let our activity run in the whole sphere from which diseases come. If we put ourselves with our lively understanding in that what spiritual science offers, we live in the sphere of the healthy forces.

One can deny this easily, saying that one knows many people who deal with the results of spiritual science and do not at all make such an impression, as if they live in the field of the recovering forces. This may be completely entitled. However, if one deals with the results of spiritual science in the same way, as one deals with other sciences or the usual life, one does not penetrate into it. What I have called “Homunculism” in the last talk, one can unfold as well as in other sciences in spiritual science.

If one wants to understand spiritual science in the same way as one wants to understand the results of the usual sciences, then one is not correctly related to it. Spiritual science comes from spiritual research, from the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher, from a perpetual activity; and the understanding, which it gets, appeals at least to tiring the physical body, that means to what the common cognitive forces of the usual life appeal.

However, truth itself must thereby become something like a living being for the spiritual researcher as well as for the supporter of spiritual science. It will also become this. While one receives the truth, otherwise, like a sum of judgements, like something that one just thinks only, one receives spiritual science like something that pulsates through the soul like spiritual blood that animates it internally. One receives the truth like a sum of spiritual living beings; one feels penetrated with living existence by spiritual science if one meets it with understanding. Then, however, it has a recovering effect up into the physical body. As sleep, during which the soul is also beyond the physical body, is a remedy against some illnesses in the true sense of the word, spiritual science can also be such a remedy. However, only those can regard it as a remedy who want to understand the following important matter. It is comprehensible that one approaches spiritual science as one approaches the outer medicine or art because one maintains the same habitual ways of thinking. If one wants to penetrate into it, one often asks, which remedy do you have for this illness, which for that? The information of remedies is often demanded from spiritual science. Indeed, spiritual science will also give real concrete remedies; but one has to understand that it wants to give not only this or that remedy, but that it presents itself, above all. Nevertheless, one does not always accept it with understanding. Spiritual science can answer if one asks for a remedial method, take me, and then you feel my curative forces! However, this is uncomfortable for some people who often look for something completely different.

Of course, it is trivial to object that spiritual science could not help somebody who dealt with spiritual science and died early or fell ill by this or that disease. Since one would have to issue a rebuttal first whether somebody who has survived with the help of spiritual science up to his forty-fifth year had become without it maybe thirty-five or forty years old only. The methods of disproof are not often so simple.

Above all, I must draw your attention to the fact that sleep can compensate only what is used in the physical body, can take forces only from the spiritual worlds as far as the borders of the spiritual predisposition reach which the human being brings by birth in his existence. Spiritual science gets its forces from that world with which the human being is connected spiritually. Therefore, one can say that sleep is a remedy in this respect that it can compensate spent forces. Spiritual science supplies forces to the human being, which he has not yet in himself, either by what it is as such, or by what it can give. It opens a higher source of recovery for the human being as the usual life can also supply to him with the best sleep. One can compare what can work recovering from the soul by lively acceptance of spiritual science with that of which usual medical art is capable. Since also the usual medical art is able only to call those healing forces for the recovery of the human being that are already in him that are only suppressed by opposing forces. Spiritual science, however, brings new forces in the human being to effectiveness, which only develop, which are not innate. It appeals not only to the human being as a microcosm but also to the connection of the human being as a microcosm with the big spiritual world.

In order to make this clearer, I would like to point to something that already is on the border of physical and spiritual. Although it is correct that spiritual science gives the human being a treasure for life by which he can prevent illnesses in a certain respect, a much more important treasure for life strikes us for the life of the soul itself; I mean the memory. Who has not to complain of decline in memory when he becomes older? The forces with which we are equipped for our memory become exhausted. One could live ever so healthily, nevertheless, they become exhausted; even if with some outer means something may be improved, the innate forces become exhausted.

However, if one grasps spiritual science internally and if one appropriates habitual ways of thinking and imagining that are quite different from the usual ones, one notes that, indeed, the retentive power decreases that it is substituted, however, with something that is a much better memory. This appears gradually from the spiritual undergrounds of the soul what one can call retrospect of events. As we look, otherwise, at the things in space, we learn gradually to look at the things in time. The forces which memory does not develop, otherwise, because it has a reserve usually in the bodily which remain hidden, until this slumbering retentiveness is brought out of the soul and becomes retrospective forces of the past. With correctly settling in spiritual science, we instil something in the course of life that continues our usual, instilled memory by which a human being, who grasps spiritual science vividly, can survey the past much longer than someone who does not want to get involved with spiritual science. These forces become also forces directing to the future. Someone who goes into such things and their subtler differentiations notes that memory becomes something different, but something that works more reliably than that memory which is innate by the bodily forces.

This shows us with a careful observation of life how refreshing and strengthening the treasures for life are which spiritual science can give beside other things. Of course, spiritual science cannot heal spiritually what is destroyed physically in the body. Spiritual science never turns in a fanatical opposition against the outer scientific medicine as it happens with similar directions in these fields sometimes; it draws attention to the fact that that what one has to cure physically one has to cure physically. What the forces of a reinforced spiritual life can pour into us gives an inexhaustible treasure for life.

How has that become gradually mere dry knowledge with the materialistic attitude what is good for health or furthers life! Not in order to prove something, but only in order to explain something, I would like to show how we can observe the remedial instincts with animals. However, we can find the tendency with the human being to leave the healthy life more and more, and thereby he would want to change everything that is good for him into outer, dry knowledge. Today one already sees people who can no longer develop their instincts completely which say to them while eating: now you have enough. Beside their plate are scales and now they weigh how much the piece of meat weighs they eat. I expressed that only somewhat radically; but he who pursues the things realises that the sensations of life change slowly more and more into abstract knowledge. This also expresses itself in the fact that people cannot act out of their feeling concerning health or illness, but like to hand over the care for it to others.

In this respect spiritual science will be an exceptionally significant treasure for life, while it strives for penetrating a world from which the human being, indeed, only seems to be descended in which he stands, however, still inside. Since in truth his mental and physical being have arisen from the spirit. While someone goes away from the life instincts with that part of his being that is bound to the brain and nervous system, he approaches the active life again by understanding settling in spiritual science. Therefore, he does not return, indeed, to the animal desires. He will penetrate them from the mind in such a way that an abstract knowledge cannot dictate what he has to eat and to drink, how long he has to walk, to do gymnastics and so on. However, it will happen that he spiritualises his desires immediately that he lets the spiritual treasure he got from spiritual science flow into his desires and thereby knows: you should do this so and so in life. One could almost say, the human being has gone away from life by that knowledge which is bound to the brain and nervous system; however, he penetrates life again with new contents by spiritual science, and thereby he knows again immediately what is good for him, what is advantageous to him, what is not good for him. He will go with certainty through life; he will firmly stand in life because he builds a bridge between the deepest grounds of life and his existence. This will apply not only to health and illness, but also to the whole life.

It is necessary if we want to be healthy to appeal to spiritual forces that are active that ascend in lively direction. If we judge, otherwise, in life, it happens in the way that we make our judgement dependent on that what we have seen; we remain quite passive with our own soul. Just the usual science is proud if it should make judgements without taking the forces of judging from the own soul. This is the one treasure for life that spiritual science enlivens the forces of truth, of judgement. The soul has to get used more and more not to accepting judgements but to judging actively, to opening an inner source of judging. Thereby it attains skill of judging, inner freedom to handle the power of judgement, presence of mind that arises directly from the soul if it has to orientate itself in the world or to deal with the world. One could foresee a treasure for life of spiritual science that one can characterise in the following way.

Let us suppose that we have to educate, and we perform the development of the young human being spiritual-scientifically. The human being thereby grows up in such a way that he is inclined more and more to appeal to the power of inner judgement, to develop presence of mind, to experience truth. The human beings who were educated in the sense of spiritual science stand up in life quite different from those who have experienced another education. They feel instinctively because their thinking will not be an abstract one, but goes into the feelings that it is good to begin this or that. How some people stand there today within our materialistic civilisation with their lives, with their thinking and judgments and do not know what they are good for and what they should do. This will happen less and less if the souls known with spiritual science come in situations where they must decide. They will feel in such a way that their spiritualised instincts give pleasure to them. This pleasure will not deceive them; it will be the right one, and they properly familiarise themselves with life.

Somebody who represents spiritual science today relates to it in another way than one relates to another spiritual current. However, thereby one does not have the right attitude to it that one is inspired by the results of spiritual science subjectively, and that one feels the urge to inform these results to his fellow. There many a man would maybe restrain with this or that today, because it does not belong to the conveniences of life to represent spiritual science, if one arrived at the aims of spiritual science in such a way as one arrives at the aims of other sciences. However, one arrives at that what induces one to talk about the knowledge of spiritual science if one recognises that a civilisation which has become materialistic penetrates into the souls and makes them more and more passive and that spiritual science is necessary for the progressive life while the human being learns more and more to orient himself in life. If one recognises that those forces must die down, which put the human beings firmly in life in natural way, then one is urged to proclaim the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Then one would like to have more than the human language—unmanageable in certain respects—offers to show how necessary the treasure for life is in the further human progress which spiritual science can only give in our time.

If one notes less what it means to be completely subject to a dogmatism of facts, to the specialisation in science caused by fact fanaticism, one maybe understands why spiritual science can only induce that human being to become internally free and to get inner mobility who can put himself in life in such a way that he understands the basic source of life, because his soul is connected with the primordial forces of existence. More and more humanity will need to develop inner elasticity of the power of judgement in subtle activity. Spiritual science has to bring this as a treasure for life to humanity. A thinking that bears the force of truth in itself that the human being needs in the more complex future is a treasure for life which spiritual science can give humanity.

One will have to get used to developing understanding for what one can grasp only internally, because one allies with the internally living truth by spiritual science that cannot be forced to judging from the outside. As the organism is invigorated with the living force of blood and breathes in the right relation to the outside world, spiritual science invigorates us with the internally living truth. It is like a spiritual-mental heart that breathes in the surroundings where one has to inhale something spiritual to make the soul healthy so that it can oppose the inner breathing air what it makes a free inner organic force.

One would like to say that one cannot believe in this spiritual breathing today. In the future one will be able to believe in the inner heart of spiritual breathing. The soul thereby develops human freedom. As the human being can develop as a living being only because he can inhale not only the breathing air vividly, but transforms it vividly and develops a separate living physical organism in a subtle way, he will spiritually develop inner mental blood more and more which enlivens him and makes him a really free being, while he is active and transforms the outer knowledge.

If we go from knowledge to will, we have to remember that spiritual science brings the human beings mental pictures,, concepts, ideas, and results of spiritual research which live as it were so freely in the soul that they are independent of the mental, of the externally bodily, also of desires and outer impressions.

How does the human being act under usual circumstances? He acts based on outer impressions or impulses. Spiritual science is not concerned with that what is connected with the outer organism. It fulfils the human being with that what only lives in the organism what comes from the spiritual world and not directly from the organism. More and more the possibility is omitted for the human being to act from outer impulses and sensations; but what comes up to him from spiritual science supplies inner forces to him, so that he comes to action from the inside. This gives a significant impact for the human life.

Which force comes up to action if the outer world does not supply the impulses? Which impulses can work then?

One will realise by a simple consideration that it must be a comprehensive impulse, so that it fulfils the soul with a comprehensively working force. This is the impulse of love which pours out of the soul directly, but only if it is driven by inner impulses. Spiritual science supplies a treasure for life to the human being that is of unlimited value: a freer and freer incline to his action what can invigorate the power of action if the impulses are spiritual and with it to the power of love.

I have pronounced in these talks more often that spiritual science is the big school of love for life. That does not mean that spiritual science wants to talk about love at every opportunity. This talking of love reminds of a saying of Schopenhauer: “preaching morality is easy, founding morality is hard,” but still of something else. If one always hears talking love, love, love, then it is similar as with the good Gothamites who wanted to catch the light in bags and to empty them in their houses. One cannot empty love in the soul that way. It is with the human soul similar as with an oven that one has not to persuade to make the room warm, because this is its task as an oven. It does it by itself if we put wood into it and kindle it. Somebody maybe could say that the wood does not look at all that it delivers warmth. Nevertheless, there is warmth! While we put the quite different looking wood into the oven and kindle it, we bring warmth in our house. While we get used to the spiritual-scientific concepts, we get used to a free judgement, to a free orientation in the world. While we thereby fertilise our memory, we bring the impulses of the human ability of love in our souls and we get used to them. As certain it is that warmth originates in a house if the wood is properly used, it is as certain that active love that can really help is kindled by those impulses, which enter with spiritual science in the souls. Spiritual-scientific concepts are the heating material of the soul for love.

Indeed, one can also object much. Above all, it one could object that some do not find enough love with those who deal with spiritual science. However, the human being has to finally manage to regard something that seems to be unloving there or there is perhaps rather loving. For example, if anybody causes this or that less nice thing from a wrong instinct or from pure egoism, and one bawls him out of a healthy instinct, that can be a better activity of love than some words which could be quite “loving” at such moment, but would aggravate the condition from which the person concerned made this or that mistake.—The right, true experience will show that nobody who penetrates himself with spiritual science remains without its influence concerning the development of love.

Spiritual science will work as a strange treasure for life just in moral fields. It will not work like outer means, which should deter from doing this or that. It will work quietly in the soul of any human being, so that he finds the right ways of the activity of love. Spiritual science works as the inner voice of conscience which does not punish outwardly but is a more certain leader of the soul. Someone who settles in the spiritual-scientific concepts experiences that where he does wrong spiritual science has put a force in him which works like a strengthening of conscience, like correcting, giving life a direction. Thus, spiritual science will not work best by programs and outer associations in moral fields; but it will work, while it incorporates itself in the civilisation, as the moral conscience developing in humanity. With the increase of moral conscientiousness, a treasure for life is given to the modern civilisation if spiritual science finds understanding.

If one considers it in such a way, one can get a concept of that what it can be for the physical and moral healthy stimulation of the human soul. One will no longer deny that it can be an unlimited treasure for life in physical and moral respect. It can be a treasure for life which one needs very much in the future which can invigorate the human being because it wants to be recognised because it does not approach the human being from without but unites internally with his soul. Internally,one realises this: spiritual science arouses hostility much less. Today one can still understand if people come with their materialistically coloured knowledge and say that one attains knowledge which invigorates the human being also if one looks at the outside world; there one attains right knowledge. This is indeed right. However, we look once, now not only in theory, but lively, and we realise that spiritual science just gives lively knowledge everywhere; and we compare that with what a materialistically coloured worldview gives the human being.

Those persons who still build up such materialistic atomistic world edifice who are still, so to speak, at its origin are still active with theirsouls. Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834-1919, German naturalist) himself, Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1854-1932, chemist, philosopher), his next pupils and others, they are still involved actively; they can still develop inner forces, and one could still compare that what they work with their science internally with that what spiritual science attains appealing to the inner soul forces.

With those, however, who are not in the first row with the realisation of the materialistic worldviews, or where one absorbs such a worldview passively the materialistic worldview corresponds to a food that one does not digest which cannot develop the forces for what the soul really starve. One can expel hunger, without eating really. It is possible. However, what the hunger indicates cannot be expelled for the outer organism without food. Thus, one can also suppress the hunger of the soul for the spiritual treasure for life, while one ruins the appetite for the spiritual life by a materialistic worldview. Nevertheless, the human does not stand that in the long run.

I would not like to speak here about truth and error of spiritualism. Indeed, it contains some grains of truth, not only error or fraud and the like. I would only like to point out that those who stand on the ground of a materialistic worldview do not approve spiritualism apparently. If one thinks about it with a thinking that does not invigorate itself internally, one can only say that the materialistic worldview is the same far away from spiritualism as from spiritual science. However, if one really looks into the becoming of the world, one knows something quite different. Then one knows that the hunger of the soul for a spiritual treasure for life cannot be suppressed, and that the materialists themselves produce spiritualism! One fights from materialistic side against spiritual science. However, one will realise that everywhere where spiritual science does not succeed spiritualistic associations and circles form. The representatives of a materialist worldview are the fathers of spiritualism. With an abstract thinking, one does not figure this connection out. There one makes the same error in reasoning as that who says, I plan to build up a rather good son from the child that has been born now; I prepare everything for it. However, the son does not always turn out as the father has supposed; he may become possibly a rather bad brat. That has nothing to do with lively life which ideas the materialists have of the world connections. Thus, it can happen that they produce the “son,” the brat, which they do not recognise as their son. For spiritualism is the son of materialism. Why that? Because the appetite of the soul cannot satisfy the hunger for spiritual life, and it finally happens as the physicist or chemist does that the outer events of life are demonstrated where the “spirit” is presented without inner cooperation. This is more comfortable than to have to exert oneself internally at every moment when one should climb up to the spirit. Nevertheless, this is also nothing but searching for the same worldview which materialism produces.

I want to bring in this only as an example how an abstract thinking positions itself in life. Such thinking will regard it as natural that materialism cannot produce spiritualism. How should it do it! However, a thinking that has inner power in the sphere of truth will figure the world out in quite different sense, and with such thinking the human being can position himself quite different than with an abstract, dead thinking which is “Homunculism” too.

Thus, we can regard spiritual science as a sum of life goods. Indeed, someone does not regard the said as especially valuable who thinks that life consists of outer goods only. Indeed, someone who knows that even the outer goods are dependent on the inner sense of direction in the world and on the recovering forces of the soul does not regard the idea as bold—with reference to all social conditions and what is today an occasion for so many “cures”—that such conditions can be seen correctly and that one can find the right remedies only if the human beings soar up towards spiritual science. One must really say that something is included in all that what pushes the words onto the lips of someone speaking about spiritual science.

Spiritual science finds much opposition still today. I have repeatedly pointed in the course of this winter to the fact that there must be such opponents. Their reasons are apparently striking because one can find them so easily, and because they are so extremely evident. One can understand any opponent of spiritual science very well, and, besides, he does not say something wrong; he may even say something completely right. Let me mention finally that he may say something right.

Suppose that a quite clever human being says, a spiritual researcher comes here and talks about all kinds of wrong stuff that Kant disproved for a long time, because Kant proved that the faculty of the human being is not sufficient to penetrate into the spiritual world. If this spiritual researcher had studied Kant, he would soon be quiet about that.

It is not quite wrong what the clever man says. It can be quite right. If anybody said in the time when there was not yet a microscope so that one could find macroscopic things only because the human eye cannot look into smaller things, this was quite astute. Nevertheless, what does it benefit the further progress of human thinking and life? Although it is right that the human eye cannot see down into the cells of organisms because the eyesight is limited, the human beings constructed the microscope, and the telescope and see now where the eyesight of the human eye does not reach.

As it can be very astute that somebody proves that the human eye can see no cells and the like, it can be very right what those human beings argue who speak of the limitations of the human cognitive faculties. However, does it matter whether it is right or not? As it is right that the human eye can see no cells, but that civilisation led to sharpening the eye, there are spiritual methods that strengthen the soul life, so that the human being can behold into the spiritual world. One has to understand this and other things that somebody states as an opponent of spiritual.

Actually not to boast but to inform something, I would like to mention that, nevertheless, more and more human beings note the fertile impulse of spiritual science also in the present. One can prove this by the fact that we are able to build a college of spiritual science in Dornach near Basel. One does not intend to concentrate spiritual science upon one place; I would like to stress this. However, we want to prove that we can show how spiritual science can be creative in the fields of architecture, sculpture, and painting. With this building, only a model should be given that spiritual science is able to deal with life directly. The fact that friends of spiritual science were found who donated the relatively big means that were necessary to create this college building is already a proof that this spiritual science is partly rooted in the souls of the present.

Only by the way, I would like to mention that about this building for spiritual science in Dornach all possible fairy tales are put in the world. For example, in the newest fairy tale that was put to me on the table you can read that the college that should be once built, indeed, in Munich, could not be built because we would have been rejected there. In truth, we were not rejected but certain circles in Munich, which must be asked, could not cope with their expert judgement. They let us wait for ten years; however, we could not wait with the building for ten years!

Another fairy tale tells that because of the building among various cities a kind of competition had originated, and that these would have triumphed over Munich. I would not like to say anything against the artistic Munich. Even if the inhabitants of Munich regret that the college of spiritual science is built now somewhere else, nevertheless, not so many cities scrambled to get it! Besides, the concerning newspaper is not informed especially well if it writes that Basel seems to emerge as the most favourable city from this competition.

I want to mention this only because now also more opponents appear due to this building. For it can be an outer sign that spiritual science finds already understanding that the building can be started, that such an artistic landmark can show the significance of spiritual science in the world. The opponents always ask, who are these supporters of spiritual science? They must be people without judgement, people who easily listen in good faith! However, usually those who talk in such a way would prefer that one listens to their authority or to that what they regard as authority. Those people are opponents because the supporters of spiritual science do not do this and have advanced to be unbiased in a way. However, being unbiased of a materialistically coloured or any dogmatic worldview is necessary if one wants to understand spiritual science. With this understanding one calls the life goods in the soul—as I have suggested it today—with those who get involved with spiritual science more intimately.

Someone who notes and understands their lively life, realises more and more, that this spiritual science is connected with that what must give the necessary new spiritual life blood to the future of humanity. Even if that what is connected with spiritual science may cause some childhood diseases, not everything should be justified that appears where one believes that it works correctly. I allow myself to express something just today at the end. Something that could entice us from the outside that could induce us internally in the same way to present spiritual science does not exist. But it is solely the knowledge that with spiritual science the true and fertile life goods for which any soul must be hungry enter in this human soul, and that this soul, even if it does not know it today, craves these life goods if it should not become empty. This sensation forces itself on the representative of spiritual science that lives in him, while he represents it. With this confession, I would like to close these winter talks:

This science faces the representative of spiritual science as if the real of a fertile future culture demands from him that he represents it. What gives him hope and confidence for life and for the salutary of spiritual science in future crowds together in a sensation of something real. He must develop the confidence that comes from true knowledge, which also knows in a certain respect that spiritual science has to work, even if so many opponents arise; it must be victorious. As it appears to the supporter who has a real attitude, it is the real of the future development of humanity.

I finish these winter talks expressing confidence in spiritual science.

The world appears in bewildering variety to the human being looking around at first, both the external nature and the human life. He directs his look up to the starry heaven and tries to fathom the sense of the marvellous, but at first mysterious variety of the stars of the luminous sky. The thoughtful human being will probably try to recognize the sense of the ways of the stars and the elements working during the day.

If we look down at our earth,

If we try to understand our mountains with their coloured variety of rocks, woods and vegetation,

If we try to understand the things that surround us as plants, animals, and human beings, and try to see in the phenomena of nature that approach us more or less dark, briefly,

If we try to see reason and sense in everything,

Then we probably feel a kind of faint at first towards all bewildering, which faces us. However, the most bewildering is that for us which faces us in the real life of the human being, in the historical development of the human being since millennia. Science, religion, and other human striving, feeling, intellect, and reason have always tried to introduce sense and coherence into the coloured variety of the stars, into life and into the activities of the beings on our earth.

Who could deny that the human mind has brought it so far in this respect and that it can hope to go farther and farther. However, also a legitimate sense, a kind of spiritual coherence is included in it what we call human development in history. Nevertheless, this seems to somebody rather doubtful, if he looks at the course of destiny with all misery which single human beings, tribes and peoples experience undeservedly, with all luck which meets the single or also many apparently undeservedly, with all sequences of historical experiences of the single peoples, races and nations. If we look into all that, then it probably appears to us as the pure chaos sometimes. There some people probably believe to look in vain for sense or coherence, believe to be unable to understand all that.

Great, astute spirits never doubted that the human mind is able to find sense and reason, lawful necessity also in the course of the historical events. I need to draw your attention only to the fact that our great German poet and thinker, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781), in the testament of his life, in his last work, explained this human development as an education of the human race. He represented the antiquity as the childhood of humanity with the Old Testament as the first elementary book, the following age as a kind of youth from which we have the possibility to look at the future that should bring us something mature and male. I would still like to remind you that another great German thinker whom, admittedly, only a few know, even those who are destined to study him, the great German philosopher Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770-1831) called history an education of the human being to become conscious of freedom. We could still add a hundred examples, and we would see everywhere that those human beings who look ingeniously into this activity, in this bewildering, apparently chaotic activity never doubted that there is also a lawful necessity, above all a higher order than outdoors in nature, in the world of the stars, plants, animals and physical beings generally.

If we let our eyes wander over the development of humanity, one thing faces us that is no longer felt with that liveliness with which it should be felt: a duality, a drastic division in two parts. It is this apparently something quite trivial that it seems so trivial, however, because the human beings are used to it. We reckon with the long period before Christ's birth and with the long period after Christ's birth. One no longer feels this as anything significant because humanity is used to it. However, is it not anything significant in the highest sense that our whole history was split after this sole event in two parts? That anything must have worked so incredibly as a strength that it was recognised by a big part of humanity? The fact that this could happen shows us that something of the consciousness of the unique, immense significance of the action of Christ Jesus is deeply hidden in the human breast. Who could deny, however, that today this significance has become somewhat questionable to many people, so that few of those who count themselves to the most sophisticated persons can really account to themselves why this is in such a way from which infinite depth, actually, humanity was induced to this division of history?

This question should occupy us today, the Christian doctrine of wisdom from the point of view of a detailed spiritual worldview. Among other things, the theosophical movement that spreads out more and more since thirty years in the educated world also tries to deepen the Christian doctrine of wisdom. Those who have already occupied themselves a little bit with the anthroposophic spiritual science know that the second principle of the spiritual-scientific movement is to search for the core of wisdom in all great religions. Just concerning the anthroposophic view of Christianity there are the conceivably biggest misunderstandings, and among those who are called to teach and explain Christianity are just only a very few who show real understanding of the anthroposophic striving. One said repeatedly, anthroposophy wants to transplant some Eastern teachings, a new Buddhism to Europe. This would be the most un-anthroposophic that one can imagine. If we mean it sincerely with the principle of searching for the core of wisdom in all religions, then we must be aware that we have to search for this core of wisdom in Christianity above all, in the religion by which the whole culture of Europe was created and from which the noblest currents of the West originated.

Who does not understand Christianity today, does not understand himself, and if Christianity has to perform anything great for Europe in the future, it has to be deepened. If spiritual science shall have a share of this big achievement, it has the task to penetrate into the depths of Christianity and to search there for those springs which are able to flow in the future which are able to wake cultural hopes for the future.

When I spoke in a city of South Germany some time ago (Colmar, 21st November 1905, no transcript) about the teaching of wisdom of Christianity, about our subject today, also various Protestant pastors and Catholic priests were there. After the talk, the Catholic priests said to me, what you have said to us is the choicest Christianity, but it is only for the choice ones who want to have Christianity in such detailed way. However, we announce Christianity in a form in which everybody understands it and which it is accessible to all.—There I said, if you were right, you could be sure that it would never have occurred to me to speak about the core of wisdom of Christianity, because I would consider it as superfluous in the world. If you were right, could then there be a human being who felt compelled to secede from the way you teach? Then the number of those people could not increase with every day who find no satisfaction with the way you teach. Indeed, there are many for whom you can speak today. However, the fact that it is possible that numerous human beings do no longer find their satisfaction with you proves that there are human beings to whom one has to speak differently. It does not depend on the fact that we imagine that we find the way to everybody. We can do this easily and mean that we communicate in such a way that we find the way to everybody. However, it does not depend on it which opinions we have about what we regard as the right way. It depends not on our imaginations, but on the facts. If you observe this and let not speak what you put as your subjective confession, then you realise that you do no longer speak to many people. To those one has to speak in a new form. They are those to whom the spiritual scientist speaks.

However, spiritual science has not only to speak to those. It will also speak to those who remain in full Christian devoutness in old Christian traditions, and to those it will be a deepening, a spiritualisation of the truthful teachings of Christianity. The spiritual-scientific saying, nothing is higher than truth, is surely often misunderstood by such like the priest whom I have quoted. One believes, it is sufficient if one only has the belief that something is true. No, that is not enough that we have the subjective conviction and imagine we would have the right way. Just the spiritual-scientific world movement should overcome this. Truth is not in our opinion, but in the facts. The observation of the facts must be higher for us than our belief. This is the sense of the saying. What we believe is our personal affair. Transpersonal is that which speaks to us by the world of the facts. We have to submit to it, we have to follow it.

Indeed, it is true that the human development was split by the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and, hence, we have to look a little deeper into this way of the human development. Who penetrates only somewhat into a spiritual investigation of existence will soon recognize how vapid and superficial any materialist worldview is, that any material is only the expression of the spiritual, that the spiritual is the origin and spring of any external sensuous existence.

The earthly human being as this sensuous being, who developed since the times about which history, the human thinking generally reports, is only the expression of a supernatural spiritual being. I do not have the time today to explain these great thoughts in a complete, possibly scientific way. This has oftener happened here in these talks. Today I can show it only figuratively, and Christian and pre-Christian thinkers showed it always figuratively in such a way that the supersensible human being who was not yet touched by the matter descended and embodied himself in the sensuousness. We consider that human being who comes from other spiritual worlds into this sensuous world as the Adam Kadmon of the Jewish secret doctrine, the kabbalah. This coming in is called “fall.” However, you must not misunderstand this. Great Christian authors understood this as a fall, and the action of Christ Jesus was understood as a rise from this fall to a new spiritual height. We shall still see how Paul's remark that Christ Jesus is the reverse Adam has a deep spiritual sense (1 Corinthians 15:44ff). If we understand the human being quasi—I ask you not to tip the scales at the word “quasi” because it should be only an indication of the true relation—quasi descended from spiritual heights and embodied in the sensory world, then we also understand which task the human being had initially in the first times of historical development.

What had the human being to do on this earthly scene in the first times of historical and prehistoric development? His sensuous members were the tools whose use he had to learn in the first times. Now the high spiritual human being was embodied in the sensory world. He learnt there in the first epoch of his existence, which I would like to call the instinctive epoch of human development, to use his own tools. This was the first task of the first quarter of human development—we do not want to go back to the very old times.

The human being gradually learnt to use his hands and the remaining limbs; he learnt to fit into the world and nature surrounding him. He needed no intellect for that; this was an instinctive empathising and settling in existence. When humanity learnt to control itself and acquired the use of the limbs as tools, it lived in the tribal history. The people were that within which the human being lived. It was a natural coherence, which was given by blood relationship. A sort of an animal instinct kept humanity together. Only the great masters were beyond the instinctive life. In the most different way, the human beings learnt to use their limbs, according to the state of the countries, regions, and times in which the peoples lived. The development generated a big variety in the human structure. That which was given to the human being developed most diversely. We can go back everywhere: we find this instinctive epoch of development with all peoples.

Then we find the second epoch. There the human being learns something that the Bible and other worldviews comprise with a certain word, with a word that is exceptionally important to understand properly. We understand this word properly if we realise what the first period of human development preferably had to produce. The instinct had taught the human beings most diversely to use their limbs, in one area in this way, in the other that way. People developed in the hot zone with a rampant plant growth where without effort the food was supplied, another developed in a cold, inhospitable area where it had to produce his food and create the conditions of existence with big trouble and that is why the human being had to form his limbs with big trouble. Because the human beings had so little intellect, they faced each other as it resulted from the different instinctive development. Something new took place due to the law, which the intellect created. The instincts of the peoples are different, the intellect is the same, and at the moment, when the uniform intellect was applied to the human living together, that appeared in the world which also the Bible calls the law.

The human being learnt to control his whole body as his tool first. Then the lawful period occurred where the human being tried to harmonise and order his community where he tried to compensate the instincts in the mutual action where he wanted to create conditions on this earth as they correspond to the intellect. The intellect was introduced by the way how the human being lived together. Thus, humanity developed in the first two quarters of existence. However, humanity was there not without guidance. The instinct developed to bigger and bigger brightness, until the law took on the form of the intellect widespread in the farthest circles.

Where from did all that come? Humanity would never have come so far without such brothers who were way ahead of their fellow men. At all times, always and everywhere there have been human beings, who developed the stages of existence faster to be able to lead the other human beings. Spiritual science calls such personalities, such individualities the guardians of wisdom, the guardians of human progress. There were always such guardians of human progress. Even today, there are some. These great persons, these personalities who have arrived at a stage of existence today where the majority of humanity will come only in a very distant future existed also in the pre-Christian times, in the first two quarters of human development.

They led the world; they were the shepherds of humanity and introduced order and coherence into humanity. Where from did those leaders of the human race get their knowledge, their wisdom? What did this wisdom consist of?—One led the visible by the invisible, the sensory by the extrasensory. One led the material connections by that which slumbers invisibly in the material. Does it slumber invisibly in the material? A simple reflection can convince you. Look up at the cloud. It appears bright and dark to you. It announces a thunderstorm. Moreover, while you are still looking upwards, the flash streaks through the cloud, the thunder rumbles. Where was the flash, where was the thunder? They slumbered; they slept as concealed material forces. As well as flash and thunder slumbered, a lot of concealed forces slumber in the visible as something invisible, in the sensory as something extrasensory. As well as our external civilisation has reached its present state, because the human being has learnt to wake up forces and abilities slumbering in the matter, the great spiritual culture comes from the fact that the guardians of humanity are able to wake up the supersensible forces slumbering in the sensuous and to control the lower by the higher.

As well as the master builder uses the force of gravity to lay the beam on the column, so using a force slumbering in the matter to erect our buildings by the different combination of columns and beams,

As the electrician controls our engines and other electric apparatuses with the invisible electric power,

The guardians of wisdom and human progress control the earthly forces by that which is not perceptible by the senses.

The visible is controlled not by the visible, but by the invisible. None is unworldly who rises by the invisible above the visible, but someone who is stuck in the visible. The true realist is that who controls the world by that which slumbers in him, so that he forms and builds up reality and introduces it into the service of human progress. As well as the master builder and the electrician use the forces slumbering in the matter to build houses, to create mechanical civilisation, the great guardians of wisdom and human progress use the forces existing in humanity to lead the human beings to their aim to order that which whirls chaotically in the outside world and to give it significance. Never was the advancement sensory from the instinctive, then lawful periods up to ours.

However, the wise guardians of humanity had to find out and to experience this at first; they had to be steeped in it completely, not due to blind faith, not due to vague convictions, but due to spiritual experience. They had to be clear in their mind

That there is something extrasensory, something extrasensory inside and outside the human being

That that which happens between birth and death is only one side of our existence and

That an essence outreaches birth and death

That there is something in the human being that is more comprehensive than all sensuous and is the creator of the form and the preserver of everything sensuous, and this not based on a supposition, but based on the immediate extrasensory, everlasting view.

Out of this view, the guardians of humanity had to act, then out of the knowledge that death is to be defeated, that a consciousness is to be gained that there is something that lets death appear as an event like other events of life. Only from such an experience the force arises to the human being to control the sensory from the extrasensory, the visible from the invisible. Had I to say with few words what the big secret of the great guardians of humanity is, I would say, these guardians of wisdom and human progress knew that there is something in the human being that defeats death.

They had to go behind the scenery of existence, to look behind the regions of existence, which the human being enters after death. What exists behind the sensuous had to be accessible to the students by experience. They learnt to know that in the temples of initiation of the ancient Egyptian priests and teachers of occultism, in the Eleusinian and other Greek schools or temples of initiation. Those who were mature to acquire these convictions were initiated into these secrets. Only with few words—I explain the other matters in the next talks—I can indicate what was imparted to the human beings in these temples of initiation, in these high schools of spiritual life.

There the human being went through death at first; he already experienced within this life that rise which takes place in the human being if he passes the gate of death. If he passes the gate, which leads to the other world with his natural death, he enters another land, the land on the other side of existence. One can enter it also already during this life, one can enter it by another state of consciousness, awakening the abilities which slumber in the human breast, which enable us not only to experience the unconscious state during sleep in the spiritual environment, but to enter the beyond using the spiritual qualities, to be a citizen of the spiritual world. One called this death, resurrection, and ascension.

They experienced the great initiates. If I may express myself in such a way, they experienced death with the living body, for three and a half days, they were dead, so to speak, they came out of their physical bodies and experienced the facts of a higher world, a spiritual world, that world to which the human being belongs according to his deeper nature. This happens to that part of the human being that enters the extrasensory existence. After the human being had passed this higher world, those who were already initiates recalled him to his earthly existence. Then he was a new human being whom one called a risen one. As a symbol of it, he got a new name that had a deeper meaning. Such a human being who had come into the mysteries and the temples of initiation to behold spoke a new language, and in his words, the spiritual world sounded which he had experienced during his initiation. He was a messenger of higher worlds, his words had wings because of the experiences in the spiritual world, and he spoke another language. He was one of those who talk the language of the gods, as one said, he talks the wisdom which the gods know. This is fundamentally theosophy, the divine wisdom.

One called such a human being a blessed (German: selig) one if one translates the word in German. The words have a deep meaning if one understands them in the right sense; they did not originate by chance. About such a man, who felt sympathy for the spiritual world because he had beheld it, one said, he is blessed. Those who know something about that great bliss, about those marvellous experiences of another world tell about it, even if they write profane writings about it. The most important of these matters was never written down and can never be written down.

However, those who tell and write down something of it write about it in tones that sound quite different from those who say something about a sensuous existence. Those who knew something of initiation speak of a renewal of the whole human being. One of them said, that only has become a human being in the true sense of the word who was blessed with his everlasting essence in the mysteries, while the others have still to wait, until they also get this mercy.—Plato, the unique Greek philosopher, says: those walk in the mud who got to know nothing of the divine of initiation.

Thus, we could still state many voices of antiquity and of the pre-Christian time, which emphasise the holiness, the power, and greatness of initiation, so that it resonates in our souls. Only a few, choicest ones could be blessed with the higher spiritual life in such a way, immediately beholding. The crowd received nothing but the announcements of such initiates.

Then Christianity appeared and changed these conditions completely. The depth of this change of humanity is expressed in a powerful saying, and that is: “Happy (Blessed) are they who find faith without seeing me” (John 20:29). The secret of Christianity is contained in this saying, and we understand it only if we take it as literal as possible. What does it mean? We know that somebody who had experienced initiation in the temple knew that he defeated death that he took part in the entombment and was blessed by the vision. Now a great individuality came who carried out this great event on the external plane of history in front of all, as far as they wanted to see it or could take up it by faith, by the union with the unique personality. That happened once on the historical plane, which had often happened to the initiates in the deep darkness of the mystery temples. This event took place in Palestine in the year 33.

What was received and protected till then more or less symbolically in the depths of the temples had become historical truth, historical reality on the big stage of life. One must understand this, because this is important. I entitled my small writing about Christianity really with full care not Mysticism of Christianity but Christianity as Mystical Fact (CW 8). I wanted to show not the mysticism of Christianity, but Christianity itself should be understood as a mystical fact. It should be understood that the event in Palestine is a fact of deep symbolism and at the same time something that is actual reality, actual truth. We should understand each other just concerning this point, because it belongs to the most important points of the knowledge of Christianity. If one speaks of the fact that in Palestine the event of death, resurrection, entombment and ascension took place as a historical event in 33 and says that this event has happened also before so and so often in the mystery temples, then one does not regard that as something real, then one does not believe in the real Christ. On the other side, other people who believe in Christ think that death, entombment, and resurrection are profound symbols. It is hard to understand that something can be fact and symbol at the same time.

Somebody never understands who explains history “really” and considers it indifferently that a fact also has deep symbolic significance. He has never grasped that there are high and low mountains in history, high mountains that outreach the high that they are facts and symbols at the same time. That is the point. Now we have put an event before all human beings, which pronounces before them that death can be defeated and that there is a spiritual life, which outreaches death, because the only One had defeated death. In front of all human beings, he had experienced what the initiates experienced in the mysteries. Now, one did no longer need to go into the mysteries to behold, now, one could believe and feel connected with Him who experienced the great event of the victory of life over death in the physical world. Now, one could believe even if one did not behold. That understands the religious books correctly who brings himself to a literal understanding again. Beholding means literally the beholding in the mysteries, and faith is the faith in the fact that death was defeated by Christ's life. Hence, we are allowed to say that the greatest teaching of wisdom of Christianity is that the teachings of wisdom of the various religions became fact in Christianity.

What were the teachings of wisdom of the various religions? Deepening really in the spiritual-scientific teachings you can convince yourselves that the religions comply with each other concerning their teachings. Take the teachings of Hermes, Pythagoras, and Zarathustra or also of other religious founders: in that which they expressed and taught one can find a deep consistent core of wisdom. All teachers who announced the great teachings of wisdom could say, I am the way and the truth.—For truth flowed out of their mouths; that truth which they had experienced in the mystery temples, they had become messengers of the divine truth. With Christ Jesus, it was another matter.

He could say more of himself. He became that which is expressed in the great and beautiful saying: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He taught that in front of everybody, which the other religious founders said, living concealed to the rest of humanity in the twilight of the mysteries. The life by which experience was won inside of the mystery was invisible. It became visible because of the event in Palestine.

Thus, Christianity outranks the old pre-Christian religions. That wisdom which was won by the concealed life of the initiate came out to the public, and we have in the newer time in Christianity the truth that became person, life, and existence. Hence, it does often not depend with the old religions on telling how the religious founders lived. We do not hear telling, how the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Rishis, how Zarathustra, how Buddha lived. If we receive the teachings and raise our hearts and our senses in them, the blessing flows from them to us. However, if we want to understand Christianity, we have to consider that Christ did not speak only that way, but also that he went his own way. Hence, no book by him, but only books about him are preserved. The good news, the Gospels, is not the wise language of Jesus. They are the stories of the life of Jesus. Others spoke about him. If the disciples of Buddha and Hermes spoke, they would say, we have heard this, these are his holy words, and we want to echo them to you.—However, if the disciples of Jesus moved into the world, they emphasised that He was there that they were connected with Him that they were His companions. They attempted to keep up the tradition, to reproduce it from generation to generation: we ourselves heard the word on the holy mountain together with Him; we laid our hands in His wounds.—It was the truth element of the living together that should transfer the liveliness to the future generations. This is somewhat different from that which existed before in the other religions. This is new.

If we want to imagine the whole significance of this new, we have to realise the difference that existed between the first quarter of human evolution and what happened now. What happens now? What does Christianity prepare humanity for, actually? Why had somebody to experience the great event in such a way that the human beings could look at him, could look up at him as evidence of the victory of life over death? One needed such evidence because now another historical epoch of humanity began, because now the intellect, the strength of mind was used for something different for centuries, even for millennia. With the propagation of Christianity, that approximately begins which we can call the triumphal procession of humanity about our material world. Christianity had to prepare for it first. In the middle of the Middle Ages, the material victory of humanity begins, the laws become more and more perfect with which the human beings found it. The human being becomes the master of nature by the perfection of his mechanisms, establishes a big system of, traffic and trade. The human intellect wins over our earth.

That did not exist in the pre-Christian times. Try to realise how our science begins in the times when also Christianity arises. You know that Thales (~624-~547 B.C.) was the first philosopher. Then Christianity prepares the ground for the use of the human strength to control the external nature. It was necessary that the conviction of a spiritual life comes from quite a different side so that humanity is not completely isolated from spiritual life. Now the efficient personality had to be used to conquer the globe in a material respect. Hence, science had to separate from the feeling, from faith. It was the characteristic feature of those who were initiated into the mysteries that science and faith, feeling and faith were one. For that who comes out of the material there is no separation between faith and knowledge, between truth and feeling. The forms in which the stars were arranged were the letterings of the godhead with the Chaldean initiates. This had to change in the new time. At first, the human being directed his look up at the starry heaven, and a science divested of divine feelings encompassed the skies and the earthly existence in all its phenomena. The knowledge of the world could no longer go the same way as faith and wisdom.

Because both had to separate, an event had to take place that guaranteed faith that founded such a firm feeling in humanity that faith could found itself besides the material science and that faith lived on throughout the material time. Thus, we have the firmly founded faith and science side by side, which does not have faith, but looks at the personality, at Christ. A personal relationship to the only One establishes itself besides the material striving. Thus, that which was put in Palestine in 33 was the bulwark to preserve the everlasting, the consciousness of the spiritual during the development of humanity towards materiality. Those had to be blessed who could believe in the only One, while they had to use their looking for the achievement of the material life. Thus, the second epoch of antiquity points prophetically to Christ Jesus. Not without good reason the teachings of the Old Testament are interpreted as predictions of Christ Jesus. Any initiation was such a prediction. What the initiate experienced, he experienced it spiritually first, then symbolically, then it was there in the world. Then it was a fulfilment, the fulfilment of the Old Testament was the New Testament. In addition, this word appears to us in its full significance if we grasp it in its depth. Thus, I have described three epochs of human evolution that go side by side, of faith, knowledge, and wisdom.

Let us carry our mind back to the times in which the poor Egyptian slaves dragged the big, massive boulders and worked themselves to blood on huge stone giants. The modern worker cannot imagine that labour. Bliss and contentment were the feelings, which penetrated the soul of the wretched slave. However, this slave knew one thing. He knew that the life that he lived in such a hard work was one life of many. The initiate often said it to him to make humanity aware of the fact that the human being embodies himself repeatedly and that he experiences that which he prepared himself, and that he is recompensed in future lives. Thus, the riddle of human destiny is solved for him really. Among the hard working slaves, bliss and religious feeling prevailed. The slave said to himself, he who commands me today was once as I am and I become once, as he is if I carry out all that now.—The prudent men who conquered the material world later, who dealt with the merely material science would not be able to achieve this, as overwhelming the teachings of Galilei and Copernicus, the teachings of the modern investigation of the sensory material existence may be.

Indeed, nothing should be said against these teachings and nobody can estimate its greatness and power more than I do. Nevertheless, it is true and one has to say also that the materialistic researchers could not find those fiery words, that spirit which opens the souls which gives the human being hope forever which gives the human beings the certainty of the mental-spiritual life. However, this certainty came from the personal connection with the unique Christ. The external science was also gradually deepened again. Science became wisdom bit by bit again, and the result of the fact is that this external science claimed to appear again as founder of a religion. What then are the enlighteners, the freethinkers? What do they want? They are, actually, religious natures. They want to found a religion; they want to conjure up such a religion from the modern science. In particular, Moleschott (Jacob M., 1822-1893, Dutch physiologist and philosopher), Haeckel and others with their books which founded a kind of materialistic Gospel for many are nothing else than founders of a materialistic religion. Because the worldly-sensuous has won such an immense strength and authority that the human being wants to gain the highest by science and its wisdom, the scientists have turned away from Christ Jesus, also those who feel only a bit of the power of science and have something to inform of the greatness and the power of science. Thus, we have the separation of science. However, Jesus spoke a word, a word that we cannot grasp deeply enough, and this is, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20).

We do not need to borrow this wisdom only from traditions and books, but if we rise into the higher worlds, we have the greatest experience in ourselves again, which can be experienced only in the higher worlds beyond the gate of death. Then He speaks again to us, then He shows us that He is there today that we can hear Him immediately in the present. Hence, we need such a deepening of humanity again that the human being has the experience of Christ in himself and that the human being can find out something similar like the initiates in the ancient mysteries again in himself. At least a reflection of the great, significant experience of the mystery temples should be delivered gradually to those who turn to anthroposophy. They enter the spiritual region, the other side of life already here during this life. Thus, they can experience what Goethe expressed significantly in his poem, which begins: “Tell nobody except the wise, because the mob is immediately scornful,” and closes: “And so long as you don't have it, this “Die and be transformed!,” you will only be a gloomy guest on the dark earth.”

Today it concerns this passing away and becoming. There are methods of spiritual development with which we can wake the inner divine essence in ourselves, with which we can outgrow into the spiritual world. Our eyes are opened there for the spiritual world; our ears become active, so that we hear something higher speaking. We are able to become citizens of a higher world; we find that Christ is with us to the end of the world. Then we can also hear that language again, which spoke to the disciples on the mountain. This is indicated in the deepest mystery of Christianity.

Let us consider this great mystery at the end. Christ had initiated pupils too; he also led them away from the crowd. When he wanted to explain what he had said to the crowd in parables, he led his three initiated disciples: Peter, James, and John on the Mount Tabor. They beheld the transfiguration there (Matthew 17). Who understands the transfiguration recognizes the deepest mystery of Christianity. The disciples are translated from the sensuous existence. What faces them? Elijah and Moses. Elijah is the word meaning way or aim, Moses is simply the esoteric word meaning truth, and Jesus is life. While eternity appeared to them in temporality, while those who are dead long since appeared to them, before their spiritual eyes, it means that they had ascended to the spiritual world. Peter says to Jesus, it is good that we are here. Would you like me to make three shelters...? You can read the expression “make shelters” where a pupil attains the second stage of chelahood. One says of him that he makes shelters in the beyond.

The great truth in the religious documents is recognized everywhere by that who recognizes the so-called key words. The saying “I am the way, the truth and the life” faces you there. When they descended from the mountain, Jesus forbade them to tell anyone about the vision, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. They questioned themselves: what is “rising” from the dead?—They said to Jesus, the scribes say that Elijah must come first.—He answered, Elijah is to come and set everything right.—The disciples, in the most intimate sanctum, speak here about reincarnation as about something that is a matter of course to them. The Lord Himself spoke about it like about a matter of course, saying, Elijah has already come, John the Baptist is Elijah, but they failed to recognise him.—This is the testament on the mountain. “Mountain” is the key word for initiation. Where initiation is concerned, the term “on the mountain” is applied. What means: do not tell anybody that I come again? That is, until I speak again to you, until you yourselves are there again in such figure that humanity can again perceive the word of truth. Christ Jesus was as a deputy on earth. Looking at his death, humanity should feel the victory of life over death. The faith by which even the Egyptian slave knew of the beyond should be substituted by the faith that the everlasting is in the essence, which passes through the physical. Now they had to start the triumphal procession through the world. Nothing material remains to us of that which is wisdom, immediate knowledge of the beyond. Nothing of reincarnation should be taught to humanity during the following two millennia. Jesus determined this as his testament. Not before the human beings have gone through the third epoch of development, they have gained this material victory over the globe; they will have applied intellect and reason to the external civilisation. Then only a new epoch is permitted to begin, then wisdom can understand that again which lived uniquely. Then Christ appears again on earth, so that He can be grasped immediately.

Then the human being does no longer need the life on Tabor, and then he experiences the initiation in himself, finds the divine human being in himself. Then he will look up again at the divine life that was common property of humanity in the pre-Christian times. The anthroposophic teaching has introduced this new epoch. What Christ left on the mountain Tabor, the spiritual-scientifically striving human beings feel this as their mission, as their vocation. Christian mystics of the Middle Ages already indicated this. You find it expressed by Angelus Silesius, the great Silesian initiate: “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you still are lost forever.” As the blind person experiences the awakening of light, somebody who arrives at the new condition can experience the apparition like that on Tabor. This is the future. Thus, we had a Christianity of faith in the third epoch of humanity, and we shall have a Christianity of wisdom in the fourth epoch. What did humanity perform in the third epoch? The instinctive period is the pre-Christian time. We have had the period of the external material civilisation, and now we enter the fourth period of human development.

The human being has encompassed the world with industry and trade; without distinction of nation and race industry and trade work. The machine prepares the same goods in Japan, Brazil, and Europe. The same railways cross the globe in all areas without distinction of race, nation, and class. The differences within humanity have fallen in our civilisation. The cheque, which is written here in Berlin, can be redeemed in Tokyo. Everything in our civilisation has taken place in such a way that we can put up as a principle of the third period what no one could have put up as a principle in the starting point of our civilisation: we want to found a civilisation that encompasses the globe, without distinction of race, gender, occupation, and confession. This material civilisation has encompassed the world under this motto. This civilisation must receive soul. It is the task of the fourth epoch of humanity; it is the task of anthroposophy and of our lifestyle to introduce this cultural soul into humanity. We have a material civilisation, and we need a spiritual culture with the same qualities. The human beings are strong where they founded the moral connection. The Japanese trader understands the traders of all other countries. The human beings must understand each other in their souls.

This will be if these achievements are also made fruitful for the human science. The cultural body has three epochs. It needs a soul. The fourth epoch has to bring cultural spirit. This is the great basic idea, the big aim, which the big cultural movement must have, if it wants to be something else than a mere play for those who deal with nothing but brooding over mystic thoughts. If the Theosophical Society continues to exist, it manages this. Hence, it has to understand Christianity in its deepness. It has to understand its deepest teachings of wisdom and must also have the strength to practice these teachings of wisdom not in old traditional form, but to reshape them so that they live on usefully at all times. With it, Christianity is not anything past, but has the living strength to work on future more and more. Thus, anthroposophy, the anthroposophically understood Christianity is no doctrine, no dogma, no sectarianism, but it is something else. It is something that makes hearts leap for joy in the best sense of the word; it is something that raises the soul to the biggest tasks of the present because the biggest tasks can only correspond to the beneficial hope for the future.

Then we have understood Christianity if it gives us life for the future. Then we understand the high spirits correctly if they become our future teachers. We are their right pupils if we do not want to reproduce authoritatively what they themselves had said, but if their words, their actions have become the energy for the new that we create. This is the great secret, the big lawfulness and necessity that shall fulfil us in the progress of human evolution and that shall constitute our life in the highest sense of the word. This is the true education of humanity that we receive the strength of creating in the future and the hope for a beneficial effect in the future from a real knowledge of the great actions of our ancestors.