The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Like two mighty pillars of the spirit have the annual festivals of Christmas and Easter been placed by the Christian world within the course of the year, itself a symbol of the course of human life. On these spiritual pillars standing before the human soul in its contemplation are inscribed the two great mysteries of mankind's physical existence. We must regard them very differently from the way we regard other events in the course of our physical life.

It is true that a supersensible element reaches into this physical life through our sense observation and our intellectual judgments, through the content of our feeling and will. In certain instances it proclaims itself clearly as supersensible—when, for example, Christian feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of Pentecost. With Christmas and Easter, on the other hand, we must look at two events in earthly life that in external appearance would seem perhaps to be completely physical events; and yet, in contrast to all other physical events, they do not—indeed, they cannot by their very nature—present themselves as simply physical events. We can observe human physical life as we observe nature, perceiving with our senses the external manifestation of the spirit. But we can never observe the two boundary events of human life, not even just their physical occurrence, without confronting through physical perception itself their tremendous riddle, their profound mystery. These are the events of birth and death. In the life of Christ Jesus, and in our thoughts of Christmas and Easter reminding us of it, these two events of man's physical life stand before our soul, addressing the Christian heart.

As we contemplate these two great mysteries in their relation to Christmas and Easter, we find illuminating strength for our thinking, a powerful incentive for our willing, and an uplifting of our whole being. They stand there, these two pillars of the spirit, possessing an eternal value.

In the course of human evolution, however, men's capacities have changed for approaching the sublime conceptions of Christmas and Easter. During the early Christian centuries, when the Event of Golgotha had penetrated and shocked many hearts, men gradually found their way to the thought of a Savior dying on Golgotha. In the Crucified One hanging on the Cross they found the idea of redemption. And they gradually formed the powerful imagination of Christ dying on the Cross. But in later times, especially since our modern age began, Christian feeling has adjusted itself to the materialism rising in human evolution and has turned to the picture of the childlike element entering the world as the newborn Jesus.

One may certainly say that a sensitive person will find European Christianity decidedly materialistic from the way it has concentrated in recent centuries upon the Christmas manger. The desire to fondle the infant Jesus—this is not meant in a bad sense—has become trivial in the course of centuries. And many songs about the Jesus Child that today are still considered beautiful, or—as some people would say—charming, seem to us not serious enough for these grave times.

But the conception of Christmas and the conception of Easter are eternal pillars, eternal monuments of the human heart. One can truly say that this age of new spiritual revelations will cast new light upon Christmas, so that gradually it will be experienced in a glorious, new form. It will be our task to hear the call in present world events for a rejuvenation of many old conceptions, the call for a new revelation of the spirit. It will be our task to understand that a new meaning for Christmas is working its way out of world events for the strengthening and uplifting of the human soul.

The birth and death of a human being, however intently we may observe and analyze them, manifest themselves as events happening on the physical plane but in which a spiritual element prevails. No one who reflects earnestly can possibly deny that they give evidence in the way they occur that man is the citizen of a spiritual world. No physical observation of birth and death will ever find anything in what the senses can perceive and the intellect grasp, other than events in which the spirit is directly manifested in the physical. Only these two earthly events appear in this way to the human heart.

For the event of birth, the Christmas event, the human and Christian heart must develop an ever deeper sense of mystery. One may say that men have seldom looked from a high enough level upon the mysterious nature of birth. Seldom, indeed; but then at such moments its tidings speak to the depths of the human soul.

So it is, for instance, with the images associated with that spiritual genius of fifteenth-century Switzerland, Nikolaus von der Flüe.¹ It is related of him—and he himself told it—that before his birth, before he breathed the outer air, he beheld the physical form that he would have after birth and during the course of his life. Also, he beheld before birth the ceremony of his own christening, with the persons who were present and who were then around him in his early childhood. With the exception of one elderly person whom he did not recognize, he knew all these people because he had seen them before he saw the light of the physical world.

However one may view this story, one cannot but see that it points impressively to the mystery of human birth, which is so magnificently symbolized for world history by the Christmas imagery. The story of von der Flue suggests that there is something connected with our entrance into physical life that only by a very, very thin wall is hidden from our everyday view, a wall so thin that it can be broken through when a karmic situation exists as in the case of Nikolaus von der Flüe. Such moving allusions to the mystery of birth and Christmas still meet us here and there. But one must say that as yet mankind is hardly aware of the fact that birth and death, the two boundary pillars standing there in the physical world, reveal themselves even in their physical appearance as spiritual events that could never occur in the ordinary course of nature, as events in which, on the contrary, divine spiritual Powers actually intervene. This is evident from the fact that both these boundary experiences still remain mysteries, even in their physical manifestation.

The new revelation of the Christ now moves us to contemplate the course of human life—allow me to express it in the following way—as Christ wishes us to contemplate it in the twentieth century. As we try today to grasp the meaning of Christmas, let us recall a saying attributed to Christ Jesus that points truly to the Christmas event: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little children”: this is certainly not encouraging us to strip away all the mystery of the Christmas conception, and to drag it down to the banality of “dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and other songs have done—the folk songs less than the art songs—during the materialistic development of Christianity. This very saying—“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”—impels us to look up to mighty impulses flowing through human evolution. And in our own time, all that is happening in the world can surely be no reason for lapsing into trivial ideas of Christmas, when the human heart is filled with pain, when it must look back upon millions of human beings who have met their death in these last years, must think of countless human beings hungering for food. At this time surely nothing is fitting but to contemplate the mighty thoughts in world history that have impelled and inspired humanity. One can be brought to such thoughts by the saying, “Except ye become as little children.” And one can supplement it by these words: “Unless you live your life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

When a human being enters this world as a child, he has come directly from the spiritual world. What happens in physical life, the procreation and growth of his physical body, is only a covering for the event that cannot be described otherwise than by saying: man's central being leaves the spiritual world. He is born out of the spirit into the body. When the Rosicrucian says “Ex Deo Nascimur,” he is speaking of the human being entering the physical world. What first en-sheathes him, what makes him a complete physical being here on earth: this is what is referred to by the words “Ex Deo Nascimur.” If one would speak of the kernel of the human being, his innermost core of being, one must say: he comes down from the spirit into this physical world. Through what takes place in the physical world—which he is able to observe from spiritual regions before his conception and birth—he is clothed with a physical body, in order that he may have experiences that are only possible in such a body. But he has come, in his central core of being, out of the spiritual world. And he reveals—to one who wants to see things as they really are in this world, who is not blinded by materialistic illusions—he reveals in his very first years by his very nature that he has come out of the spirit. One's experiences with a child, if one has insight, are of such a character that one feels in him the after-effects of his recent life in the spiritual world.

This is the mystery that is indicated by such stories as the one associated with Nikolaus von der Flüe. A trivial view and one strongly influenced by materialistic thinking asserts in its simplicity that a human being develops his ego gradually in the course of his life from birth to death, that his ego becomes more and more clearly manifest and more and more powerful. This is a naive way of thinking! If one observes the true human ego that comes from the spiritual world into its physical sheath through birth, one speaks quite differently about the entire physical development of the human being. For one knows that as the human being grows physically in his physical body, actually his true ego slowly vanishes into the body, becoming continually less and less manifest. One knows that what develops here in the physical world between birth and death is only a mirrored reflection of spiritual happenings, a dead reflection of a higher life. One is expressing it properly if one says, the entire fullness of a man's being gradually disappears into the body; it becomes more and more invisible. He lives his life here on earth by gradually losing himself in his body. At death he finds himself again in the spirit. That is what one says who knows the facts. Someone ignorant of the facts will declare that a child is incomplete, that his ego gradually develops to greater and greater perfection, growing out of vague subconscious levels of human existence. A knowledge of what the spiritual investigator sees, causes one to speak differently about these things than is done from today's sense-consciousness, enmeshed as it is in external illusions and materialistic feelings.

Thus the human being enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily nature while he is a child is still undefined; it has as yet laid small claim to his spiritual nature, which is entering into physical existence as if it were falling asleep. This spiritual nature only seems so empty of content to us because we cannot perceive it in ordinary life, just as we cannot perceive the sleeping ego and astral body when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to accomplish in regard to his physical body: that he shall bury himself in it more and more deeply, in order to acquire faculties that can only be acquired in this way. His soul and spirit being must lose themselves for a while in physical existence. In order that we may always remember our spiritual origin, in order that we may grow strong in the thought that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical world: it is for this reason that the Christmas festival stands there like a mighty pillar of light within the Christian world.

The Christmas imagination must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of humanity. It will then become powerful again for humanity. Human beings will once more be able to draw strength from it for their physical life; it will remind them in the right way of their spiritual origin. Seldom in our present time does it have so powerful an effect upon human hearts as it will have in the future. For it is a strange fact, but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what appears in the world to help mankind forward does not appear at once in its ultimate form. It appears first, as it were, tumultuously, as if it were launched prematurely by unlawful spirits of world evolution. We only understand the historical evolution of humanity properly when we realize that truths are not always to be taken up as they first appear. The right moment must also be considered for their entrance into evolution in their true light.

Among various thoughts that have entered into the evolution of modern humanity—inspired, certainly, by the Christ Impulse but appearing at first in premature form—is that of human equality before God and the world, the equality of all men. This is a profoundly Christian conception capable of ever increasing in depth. But it should not have been presented to human hearts in such vague form as it was given by the French Revolution when it first appeared among mankind so tumultuously. We must realize that human life is involved in a process of evolution from birth to death, and that the chief impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Think how it is with the human being as he enters sense-existence: he is filled with the idea of the equality of human nature in all men. We experience the child nature most intensely when we regard the child as permeated through his whole being by this idea. Nothing that creates inequality among men, nothing that organizes men so that they feel different from other men: nothing of all this enters at first into the child's nature. It is all imparted to him in the course of his physical life. Inequality is created by men's physical existence. They come from the spirit equal before God and the world and their fellowmen. This is proclaimed by the mystery of the child.

This mystery is closely related to our understanding of Christmas, which will be made more profound by new Christian revelations. For these will have to do with the new Trinity: the human being, representing all humanity; the forces of Ahriman; and the forces of Lucifer. As one learns how man is placed in world existence in a situation of balance between Ahriman and Lucifer, one comes to understand the real significance of the human being in external physical life.

Most of all, understanding must come about, Christian understanding, for a certain aspect of human life. Someday Christian thought will announce a fact that has already been put forward by some minds since the middle of the nineteenth century—may I say, in stammering accents, but quite distinctly. When one has first grasped the fact that a child enters his earth life with a consciousness of human equality, then one must go on to the fact that as the child becomes a man, unequal powers develop in him—as if from just the fact of being born—powers that are obviously not of this earth. One is then confronting another great mystery of human existence, one that is in direct contrast to the idea of equality. To see into this mystery will help one to form a true picture of mankind—something that already at this present moment in time has become earnestly necessary for the future evolution of the human soul. One faces the startling fact that human beings begin to differ from one another while they are growing out of childhood, by reason of something that obviously is born in them, something in their blood: that is, their various gifts and capacities.

One meets the question of gifts and capacities that create such inequality among men in connection with the thought of Christmas. Future Christmas festivals will point to the origin of this vast difference throughout the world in human capacities, talents, even genius. A person will only attain balance in his life when he has learnt to know the origin of certain capacities that are distinguishing him from other men. The light of Christmas, of the Christmas candles, must provide an explanation for evolving humanity. It must answer the question: Do individuals suffer injustice between birth and death from the way the universe is ordered? What is the truth about capacities and talents?

Dear friends, many things will be seen in a different light when mankind has become permeated by the new Christian feeling. Particularly, it will be understood why an esoteric knowledge of the Old Testament included special insight into the nature of prophecy. Who were those prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were individuals who had been sanctified by Jahve and authorized by Him to use special spiritual gifts that reached far beyond those of ordinary men. Jahve had first to sanctify those capacities that are born to men through the blood. We know that Jahve influences human beings in the time between their falling asleep and waking; He does not work in their conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said in his heart: The capacities and talents that differentiate men, rising to the level of genius in the case of a prophet, are indeed born with the individual. But they are not used by him beneficently unless he sinks in sleep into the realm where Jahve guides his soul impulses. Jahve, active from the spiritual world, transforms his talents; otherwise they would only be physical, only part of his bodily organism.

We point here to the deep mystery of an Old Testament conception. But this must die away, including the belief in the nature of a prophet. New conceptions must enter the evolution of world history for the salvation of mankind. The talent that the ancient Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve during unconscious sleep must now in this modern age be sanctified by the human being himself when he is awake and in a state of clear consciousness. But he can only do this if he knows that all natural gifts, capacities, talents, even genius, are luciferic endowments, that they work luciferically in the world unless they are permeated and sanctified by all that enters the world as the Christ Impulse. One touches upon a tremendously important mystery in the evolution of modern humanity if one grasps this central fact of the new Christmas thoughts. The Christ must be so felt, so understood that a human being can now stand before Him as a New Testament believer and say: In spite of my childhood sense of equality, I have been endowed with various capacities and gifts. But they can only contribute to the salvation of mankind if I dedicate them to the service of Christ Jesus, if I permeate my whole nature with the Christ, so that they may be freed from the grasp of Lucifer.

A heart permeated by the Christ tears away from Lucifer what otherwise works luciferically in human physical existence. This must be the powerful thought that will pervade the future evolution of the human soul. It is the new Christmas thought, the new annunciation of Christ's activity in our souls, transforming the luciferic influence. Lucifer's power in us is not due to our having come out of the spiritual world, but to the fact that we are clothed by a physical body permeated by blood. We have our talents through heredity. Our individual capacities come to us through the luciferic stream of heredity. They must be mastered and put to use during physical life not through inspirations we receive from Jahve during sleep, but through the Christ Impulse that we can feel working within us in our fully conscious life.

“Oh, Christian,” says the new Christianity, “turn your thoughts to Christmas! lay upon the Christmas altar all the differentiation you have received through your blood! sanctify your capacities, gifts, genius as you behold them illuminated by the light coming from the Christmas tree!”

The new revelation of the spirit must speak a new language, and we must not be dull and unheeding as it addresses us in this extremely serious time. If we remain receptive, then we will find the power that mankind must find for the great tasks that will confront us in this very age. We must experience the meaning of Christmas in all its gravity. Today we must realize in clear waking consciousness what the Christ was really saying when He spoke those words, “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The sense of equality that is natural to a child is not—if we regard him properly—proved false by these words. For the Child Whose birth we commemorate on Christmas Eve reveals ever new thoughts to mankind in the course of our evolution. He now proclaims that we must place all the distinguishing capacities we possess within the light of the Christ who ensouled this Child. All that our different talents achieve must be brought to the altar of this Child.

Perhaps, stirred by the earnestness of this Christmas thought, you will now ask, “How am I to experience the Christ Impulse in my own soul?” This question is often a burden in men's hearts.

Dear friends, what we may call the Christ Impulse does not become rooted in our souls in a moment, suddenly and tempestuously. It has taken root differently at different periods of evolution. In our present time a human being must take up in full, clear waking consciousness the cosmic truths that have been imparted stammeringly by our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. As these truths are made known and as he comes to understand them, they will awaken in him the assurance that a new revelation, the new Christ Impulse for this age, has been brought to him. He will perceive the new Impulse if only he is attentive.

Try—in a truly lively way such as is appropriate for this age—to take into yourselves the spiritual thoughts of the cosmic Powers; try to take them up not merely as a teaching, or a theory, but so that they move your souls to their very depths and warm them, illuminate them, permeate them, so that you carry the thoughts living within you! Try to feel them so intensely that they seem to enter your soul by way of your body and change the body itself. Try to strip away from them all abstractions, all theory. Try to realize that they are true nourishment for the soul; they are not just thoughts, they are spiritual life coming from the spiritual world.

Enter into the most intimate inner union with these truths and you will observe three things. First you will observe that gradually—however they may be expressed—they eradicate from your soul something that usually appears so obviously in human beings in this age of the consciousness soul: self-seeking. When you begin to notice that they kill egotism and disarm self-seeking, then you will have perceived the Christ-permeated character of the thoughts of our anthroposophical spiritual science.

Secondly, observe the moment that untruthfulness approaches you, untruthfulness in any form, either when you yourself are tempted to be careless about the truth or when the falseness approaches you from the outside. If at such a moment you can also observe that immediately there is an impulse moving within you, warning you, pointing to the truth, admonishing you and impelling you to hold fast to the truth, wanting to prevent falsehood from entering your life—in contrast to ordinary present-day life, so much inclined to sham—then you are again experiencing the living Christ Impulse. No one will find it easy to lie, or to be casual about sham and pretence, in the presence of the spiritual thoughts of anthroposophy. A sign pointing the way to a sense for truth—apart from all other aspects of understanding: this you will find in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ. When you have reached the point where you do not seek a merely theoretical understanding of spiritual science, as is sought for any other science, but where the thoughts so penetrate you that you say to yourself, “Now that these thoughts are united with my soul, it is as if a Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, directing me toward the truth”: then you will have found the second aspect of the Christ Impulse.

In the third place, when you feel that something streams from these thoughts even down into your body, but especially into your soul, working to overcome illness, making you healthy and strong, when you sense the rejuvenating, invigorating power of these thoughts, the adversaries of illness: then you will have experienced the third aspect of the Christ Impulse. This is the goal toward which mankind strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit: to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome egotism and the falseness of life, to overcome self-seeking through love, the sham of life through truth, illness through health-giving thoughts that put us into immediate accord with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow from the harmonies of the universe.

Not all these things can be attained at the present time, for man carries an ancient heritage around with him! There is a foolish lack of understanding, for instance, when such a backstairs politician as Christian Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing power of the spirit. Even though, due to our ancient heritage, our thinking is not yet sufficiently powerful to accomplish what we long to accomplish—perhaps from a selfish motive—nevertheless thought does possess healing power. But in regard to such things people's ideas are always distorted. Someone who understands may tell you that certain thoughts give you health, and then he is suddenly stricken with this or that illness. It is indeed due to that ancient heritage that we cannot today be relieved of all illness merely by the power of our thought. But are you able to say what illness you would have had if you had not possessed these thoughts? Can you say that you could have passed your life in your present state of health if you had not had these thoughts? Can you prove that a person who has interested himself in our spiritual science and then has died at forty-five years of age, would without these thoughts not have died at age forty-two or age forty? People think the wrong way around! They concern themselves with what their karma cannot bestow upon them and pay no attention to what their karma does bestow upon them. If—in spite of every contradiction in the external world—you will watch and observe through the power of inner trust that you have gained from an intimate acquaintance with the thoughts of spiritual science, you will perceive the healing power that is penetrating even your physical body, the health-giving, freshening, rejuvenating force that is the third element which Christ the Healer brings with His continuous revelations to the human soul.

We wanted to enter more deeply into the thought of Christmas which is so closely related to the mystery of human birth. We wanted to bring in brief outline what is revealed to us today from the spirit as a continuation of the thought of Christmas. We can feel that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel that it places us, no matter what happens, in the midst of the impulses of cosmic evolution. We can feel ourselves united with those divine impulses; we can understand them and draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought. Humanity is evolving—it would be wrong to deny it. Our only right course is to go forward with this evolution.

And Christ has declared: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” This is not just a phrase, it is truth. Christ has not only revealed Himself in the Gospels; Christ is with us; He reveals Himself continually. We must have ears to hear what He is ever newly revealing in this modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in these new revelations; but strength will be ours if we have such faith.

Strength will indeed come to us if we accept the new revelations, even if they speak to us from life's seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. We journey as individual souls through repeated earth-lives during which our destiny comes to fulfillment. Even this thought, which enables us to sense the spiritual working behind external physical life, even this we can only accept if we take into ourselves in a truly Christian sense the revelations that follow one another. The Christian in this age, the true Christian, when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should begin to work with the strengthening thoughts that can now come to him from the new cosmic revelations, bringing power to his will and illumination to his thinking. And his feeling should support the power and light of his thought in the course of the Christian year, to help him approach that other thought that points to the mystery of death: the Easter thought, which brings the final experience of human earthly existence before our souls as a spiritual experience. We will feel the Christ more and more livingly as we are able to place our own existence in the right relation to His life. The Rosicrucian of the Middle Ages, uniting his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex Deo Nascimur; in Christo Morimur; Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. Out of the Divine we have been born, if we think of ourselves as human beings here on earth. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be awakened again. This all pertains to our life, our individual human life. If we look away from our own life to the life of Christ, then we see our life as mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine we are born; in Christ we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall be awakened again. This saying is true of the Christ living in our midst as our first-born Brother. We can so affirm it that we feel it to be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and reflected in our human nature. Out of the Spirit was He begotten—as it stands in the Gospel of Luke, represented by the symbol of the descending dove—out of the Spirit was He begotten; in the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.

We can only perceive eternal truths in the right way if we see them in their contemporary reflection—not in a single, absolute, abstract form—and if we feel ourselves not as abstract humanity but as live, individual human beings whose duty is to think and act in harmony with the time in which we live. Then we will try to understand the Christ, who is with us “always, even to the end of the world,” to understand Him in His contemporary language as He teaches and enlightens and empowers us through the thought of Christmas. We will want to take the Christ into ourselves in His new language. We must become intimately related to Him. Then we will be able to fulfill in ourselves His true mission on this earth and beyond death. In each epoch human beings must take the Christ into themselves in their own way. This has been people's feeling when they have beheld in the right way the two great pillars of the spirit, Christmas and Easter.
That profound German mystic, Angelus Silesius,² expressed it in this way:

“Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.”

And, contemplating Easter, he wrote:

“The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.”

Truly, the Christ must live within us. We are not human beings in some abstract sense, we are human beings of a definite epoch, and the Christ must be born within us in our epoch in accordance with His words. We must endeavor to bring the Christ to birth within us, for our strengthening, for our illumination. As He has remained with us until now, as He will remain with mankind throughout all ages, even to the end of earthly time, so He wills now to be born in our souls. If we try to experience the birth of Christ within us in this epoch, as it becomes a light and a power in our soul—the eternal Light and eternal Power entering into time—then we perceive in the right way the historical birth of Christ in Bethlehem and its image in our own souls.

“Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.”

As He creates the impulse in our hearts today to contemplate His birth—His birth in the course of human events, His birth in our individual souls—so we deepen the thought of Christmas within us. And so let us look toward that “night of consecration” (Weihenacht), which we should feel is bringing a new strength and a new illumination to mankind, to help them to endure the many evils and sorrows they have had to suffer and will still have to suffer.

“My Kingdom,” Christ said, “is not of this world.” It is a saying that challenges us, if we regard His birth in the right way, to find in our own souls the path to His Kingdom where He will give us strength and light for our darkness and helplessness, through the impulses coming from the world of which He Himself spoke, which His appearance at Christmas will always proclaim. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” But He has brought His Kingdom into this world, so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and hope bestowed upon us in all the circumstances of life, if only we will come to Him, taking His words to heart, words such as these:

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

• 1. Nikolaus von der Flüe: 1417–1487. Urged arbitration as a method for resolving disputes.
• 2. Angelus Silesius: 1624–1677. See Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, GA 7 (Blauvelt, New York, Steinerbooks, 1980).

Let us think of the human etheric body as it is connected with the physical body. We shall sketch it thus:

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representing it entirely diagramatically, and we shall sketch the physical body as a kind of rind of the etheric body, though it must be understood that in reality it interpenetrates the whole human etheric body except the most external part of the latter. Let this then be the etheric and physical body, and there, belonging to them, as is understood, in the whole system of man, his astral body and ego. Let us now recall that the etheric body of man naturally consists of the different kinds of ether which we have learnt to distinguish. We recognise these as consisting of warmth-ether, light-ether, chemical-ether (by which the music of the spheres is communicated) and life-ether.

Let us turn our attention to the light-ether. It is true that the whole etheric body consists of an inner blend—an inwardly organised blend of the four kinds of ether, but we shall only consider today that part of the ether body which is light-ether; and in order to fix our attention on that part of the ether body which we call the light-ether, we have sketched it above. Now I have often said that man really only gains consciousness of things from being actually within them with his ego and soul being. It is in the daytime, when we are awake, that the astral body and ego are within the physical and etheric bodies; one may add, as regards that part of them which is not within things. Keeping this in view we say that we have sense perceptions. The cause of this is that the human ego and astral body first receive a revelation of things, and this revelation which remains unconscious, is then reflected on the instruments of the senses and their nerve extensions in the physical body. This has often been explained.

Now we shall enquire today: How does memory come about? How is it that we have remembrance of many things, of objects and experiences that we have passed through? How does it come to pass that we have memory?

Take this case. We meet a man today, whom we first saw live days ago. We remember that we saw him live days ago, that we spoke with him, that he told us his name. We say: we recognise this man. What is it that really takes place in us when we thus remember a man and our former meeting with him?

This is what occurs; the first thing we have to take into consideration is this, that when we met the man live days ago our etheric body experienced certain movements. It is the fight part of the etheric body that we are now considering; of course, the other members of the etheric body—the heat, chemical and life parts also vibrate in sympathy, but it is the light part that we are considering today; I will speak of it therefore as the light-body. Our etheric body, then, experienced certain movements, for the thoughts evoked by the man whom we met, revealed themselves within our light-body as movements—as inner light-movements; so that apart from our having perceived the man with our senses, we received impressions (not communicated through the senses) that gave rise to movements in our light-body. Thus the whole result of our meeting with the man consisted in our light-body experiencing all kinds of movements. Picture this vividly to yourselves. While you stood before the man and spoke to him, your etheric light-body was in continual movement. What you said to him, what you felt and thought regarding him, is all disclosed in the movements of your light-body. When, several days after, you see this man again, the fresh sight of him stirs your soul, and this movement causes your etheric body, purely because of its laws of continuity, to reproduce the movements it experienced live days before, when you met the man and exchanged thoughts with him. Very well, we encounter this man again after live days. The etheric fight-body, stirred by this meeting, experiences again the same movements which it did at the first meeting; and because man is always with part of his astral body and ego in the outer ether, he feels the movements which stir the outer ether, and thus because of its law of continuity (or persistence) he again becomes aware of what he experienced previously. We have really to picture to ourselves, that during the waking state we are both with our ego and astral body within the outer light-ether; sleep only consists in that part of the astral body and ego, which during the day, when we are awake, is within the physical and etheric body, also withdrawing into the outer ether. Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: this is, to remember.

Suppose for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body made the movements is aware of the other and his light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other’s face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the outer light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether body impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

When the physical body is not there, that is when the body has passed through the gates of death, the ego and astral body are naturally at first far more intensely within the outer ether, till after a few days they leave the outer ether. The inner light-body is then no longer stirred by impacts on the physical body to conceptions that are only possible in the physical body. Therefore the dead see everything that they have experienced, which the etheric body, now freed from the physical body and no longer restrained by it, throws off and allows to pass before it. During the first few days after death man sees everything pass before him; for the etheric has the tendency continually to repeat and to reproduce from within itself all those movements which the experiences of the physical body had at one time aroused in it. The man’s whole life passes before him, set in motion by the vibrations of the ether body. It is seen projected as a mighty picture—one may say that all the etheric movements reflect, as in a panorama, the life just passed on earth.

If it were possible for us always so to control the physical body if we could make ourselves so independent of it—not letting it disturb us—that the etheric body also were set free (as can be done by certain meditations connected with the process described in my book Knowledge, of Higher Worlds) it might be that even in life we might see, not the results of memory—not what arises through the impact of the etheric body on the physical body, but the actual swayings and movements of the etheric body itself. We should be then in the outer ether and look at the movements of our light-body.

Why can we not do this in ordinary life? Why in ordinary life does it happen that when Miss A. meets Mr. B., for example, and recognises him; she remembers him—that is, she recalls the memory-picture of him, but she does not in ordinary circumstances, leaving clairvoyance out of the question, see what she otherwise could: the inner movements of her ether body which would give her the inner experience: ‘Thus has my etheric body always been stirred on meeting Mr. B.’ Light would then perceive light, that is, the outer world perceive the inner—because the astral body and ego of Miss A. would perceive the tendency to continual movement of her own light-body, and would know how to interpret them so as to say: ‘These are the movements my light-body always experiences when I meet Mr. B.’ The phenomenon would then occur, that through dwelling in the ether—which is what we are always doing with a large part of our ego and astral body—through dwelling in the ether, through perceiving the weaving and flowing in the light-ether, we see our own little organised etheric body with its movements. We perceive light by the light, the light that is ourselves. Why can this not be done in ordinary life? Why is it that we first perceive the results of the impacts of the etheric body on the physical body?

It is because Ahriman and Lucifer are bound up with the earthly world, because Ahriman has shackled the physical body so firmly to the whole being of man, that the etheric body cannot easily free itself; because he has so densely compressed the physical body to the etheric body; and because the spirits that serve Ahriman are always present, they bring it to pass that when man is in the light, his light-body with its movements are darkened, so that he cannot behold them. Demons continually keep the fight-body of man in darkness. This is because the organisation of the physical body and etheric body is brought about by Ahriman. We can therefore say (and I shall write this sentence on the blackboard, for it is of great importance): ‘When from out of and by light the human soul is capable of observing what takes place in its own light-body, it has liberated itself from the Ahrimanic forces which otherwise obscure what takes place therein.’

What might a soul wishing to attain this long and pray for? It might thus address certain powers that are in the spiritual world and which it recognises.

‘Oh, ye Powers in the spiritual world, let me in my physical body be conscious in the world of Light, let me be in the Light so as to perceive my own light-body, and let not the power of the Ahrimanic forces be too strong for me, so as to prevent me from beholding what takes place in my light-body.’

Once more I will repeat what a soul by whom these Powers are to some extent recognised in the spiritual world, might say in longing, in a kind of prayer:

‘Oh, ye Powers, let me consciously, in the light, from out of and by the light behold the occurrences within my own light-body; weaken and take away the power of the Ahrimanic forces which obscure them. Let me consciously by the light perceive my own light, and remove the force that hinders me from seeing the light from out of and by the light.’

What I have just repeated to you is not simply an invented prayer, but it was thus that Christ taught those to pray who were able to understand Him after he had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, during that time when He still lingered among His most intimate disciples.‘

This belonged to the understanding, to the Gnostic understanding that such disciples of Christ could still evoke at that time and which, as I have explained to you, disappeared about the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

Those souls which were so intimately associated with the Christ could raise their eyes to this power—who for them was the Christ—and pray Him that it might be possible for them by the light to perceive their own light-essence; pray Him to restrain the opposing Powers of Ahrimanic nature, that their vision might not be obscured and darkened, and that they might see the light-movements of their light-body. These things were learnt by the intimate disciples of Jesus Christ during the time I have indicated. They were well aware how all things I have mentioned were brought about, and were instructed in all these matters during the time that Christ held intercourse with them after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Among the fragments that remain of ancient Gnostic wisdom I have mentioned the Pistis-Sophia script. I shall now read you an extract from it as follows:

‘I will extol thee, O Light, for I desire to come to thee.’
‘I will extol Thee, for Thou art my Saviour.’
‘Leave me not in chaos (when I am withdrawn from the physical body).
‘Leave me not in chaos, O Light of Heaven, for it is Thou whom I have glorified.’

‘Thou hast endowed me with thy Light and saved me; Thou hast led me to the upper Gods of Chaos (consciously, when out of the physical body). May the offspring of evil now be driven out (of Ahriman, but Ahriman is not written there), who follow me, and may they sink down among the lower Gods of Chaos; and let them not come near the upper Gods, that they may behold me. May great darkness cover them and black darkness come over them; and do not let them behold me in the Light of Thy Power, which Thou hast sent me to save me, so that they may not again have power over me. The determination that they have made, to take my strength, let it not take effect nor let them gainsay me to take from me my fight. Take theirs rather than mine. They have desired to take away all my light, and have not been able to do so, for Thy Light-force was with me. Because they decreed, without Thy command, to take away my light, Thou has not allowed them to take it. Because I have believed in the Light I shall not fear. The Light is my Saviour, I shall not be afraid.’

When we fear we must think of Ahriman as we saw him in one of the Mystery Plays.

Look at this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia. Does it not appear as if it had been saved on purpose to enable us to speak somewhat as follows: Behold, you opponents of the new Spiritual Science. Does not this new Spiritual Science say: that by the light the light-movements of the light-body can be seen, when the opposing Ahrimanic demons do not prevent it. There was once a time when this was already known; and the Pistis-Sophia presents a physical evidence of that time. For what I have read to you really speaks of nothing else than that power that I have interpreted for you from the activities of the light-body, and the sojourning of the soul within this light-body. It is not possible to understand this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia unless you understand what I have just explained to you. Therefore those who come across this script of the Pistis-Sophia and attempt to read it have to admit to themselves that they do not understand it at all. They are not humble enough to be able to do so.

This is something, however, that we must possess—this humility, this great modesty as regards the things contained in it, so that we feel constrained to say to ourselves: ' Here is a fragment of the Pistis-Sophia, which says, “I will extol Thee, 0 Light! for I desire to draw near unto Thee. I will extol Thee, O Light, for Thou art my Saviour.” Reading it thus I do not understand it’—but one must have such humility, such modesty, that one will not desire to understand it until one has called forth in one’s self the possibility of understanding it. It is precisely in our age that such humility is hardly to be found. The explorers who discover such writings among ruins and wreckage are frequently the least endowed with this modesty. They either explain what they find in the most trivial way saying, ‘The fight spoken of here is a nebulous conception intended to be taken allegorically.’ Or else they say: ‘Those who wrote this long ago were at a childish stage of human evolution; we have made splendid progress since then I (You will remember what I said of this yesterday) We have indeed made such magnificent progress that it is easy for us to realise that these forefathers of ours with all their wisdom, were but at a childish stage!’ It is not so much a question in our day of not being able to understand, but above all that we cannot so easily come by a certain attitude of soul, which is necessary if spiritual knowledge is really to be attained.

This attitude of soul is that which existed in the Mysteries, and it consisted in a man’s developing within him the feeling that it is not possible for a matter to be understood without first preparing the soul for it—without preparing oneself for the understanding of it. In our day a far more prevalent attitude of soul is that a clever man (and in his own opinion every grown man is very clever today) that the clever man can form an opinion regarding any matter. But the world is profound; and all that is connected with the hidden things of the world is also profound. Because of this belief in his own cleverness which every grown man has today, he simply ignores the most profound problems of the world; and when these mysteries are mentioned or written about they are treated with scorn, are flung aside into the obscurest comer and labelled—fanaticism and superstition, or even worse.

It is needful to see these facts clearly, for it is very important to recognise how at present those who do not desire to understand spread scorn and derision on all that can only be reached by a soul that has first prepared itself with meekness and humility—with meekness and humility as regards knowledge. It is not only the knowledge of spiritual truths that is primarily wanting in our time, but rather that attitude of soul which shows true striving after knowledge.

The world now knows, however, that there are a few men—who will be more and more numerous—who recognise this very clearly, and note carefully and with interest, that therein lies the main driving force of true progress. One must first know what must happen and recognise clearly and without any illusion, that those who have already covered all true effort after knowledge with scorn and ridicule will attempt to interfere with everything that still has to enter into the spiritual development of mankind. It is now sought to fill mankind from childhood with materialistic ideas. This materialistic training lords it even over the tender souls of young children; materialistic schools are forced upon them, which, less through the content of their teaching than through their whole nature, imbue the children’s souls with materialism.

In accordance with the illusion of the times, people veil this domination by saying: This is demanded by the age of liberty and freedom! What people call freedom in the age of materialism is the very opposite of all freedom; but things are so arranged that people hardly notice it. Those who have some insight into how things are do no more than combat this bondage by that which is like to it, only approaching it from the other side. Some say, this or that must be forbidden, others again cast sheep’s eyes at those in power and seize in their grasp everything that ought to be as free as the flowers that grow in the fields.

It is necessary that we should possess that really fine attitude of mind that can only come from Spiritual Science. Then before all else it is clear to us that what should be inculcated during the tender years of childhood into the human soul, is not to be found on the path followed by the methods of thought of the outer materialism of today. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words, this we must understand. Further, it is necessary that we should free ourselves from the whole ‘aura’ of prejudice met with everywhere; that we should feel truly within us that attention of mind which springs from Spiritual Science and frequently ask ourselves what is within our souls from the whole essence of Spiritual Science and what is to be found there merely because we have received those forms of thought prevalent in the world today?

Perhaps as yet we can do nothing in our age to stem the course of the unfree materialistic tone of the day. But at least we must learn to feel it a bondage. Here it is that a beginning must be made. We must not be taken by illusion. For, if the world proceeds in its evolution according to the wishes of this materialistic impulse we shall gradually enter an evolution in which not only will anyone be forbidden to do anything for the health of humanity unless he is certificated, but no one will be allowed to say a word regarding science of any kind, except one who has taken a vow to speak only of such things as are patented with the stamp of the materialistic order of thought. At present the constraint of the things forbidden is not much felt. But a time is coming when, just as every effort for the healing of mankind that is not stamped and certificated will be forbidden, so every word will be forbidden that is said otherwise than in the form patented and guaranteed by the materialistic powers.

If people do not perceive the whole course of what is coming about, they will enter full-sail into this future ‘freedom.’ This will consist in promulgated laws forbidding people to teach differently from what is taught in a recognised school. Everything will be forbidden that recalls in the most distant way what, for instance, is taking place amongst us here. Because people do not see how the course of evolution is tending, they do not realise this.

It is true very little can be done in our day; but in our thoughts we must make a beginning by realising the trend of events—wherever we can, we must make a beginning. No matter how such remarks as these are received, I had to give expression to them at this turning point of the year; for the Festival of the New Year is a kind of sign marking the progress of time generally; and at this season we can best be made aware of what is contained in time as it runs its course. It cannot be sufficiently, or too frequently impressed on you, how dependent man is today on the opinions that whirl around him—that whirl about more especially when they are made permanent with foul printers’ ink in the newspapers, and this printers’ ink possesses infinitely active magical powers as regards all that is believed by people throughout the world. It is interesting to note what takes place when these gentlemen are not quite united among themselves. For then there occurs what overwhelms all thinking souls, things are called into being by this black printers’ ink which work dreadful magic in the masses of mankind today. Naturally there are always some who believe what one paper says, and others again who hold as irrefutable what is scribbled in another paper. They are divided among themselves. It is thus easy to see where the real fault and blame should lie. I will not say much on the subject, myself. You can read in Dr. Ed. Engel’s book on the Psychology of Newspaper Readers what he has to say on this matter. He says: ‘The reader of newspapers is a much muddled person. His countless valuable qualities disappear behind two: He believes everything and he forgets everything. On these two principal qualities, possessed by all newspaper readers, is founded the secret of the daily press as it exists today. Most people read but one paper, and believe what they see there. Their ideas regarding the world in the evening are the creation of what they read in the morning. When they meet other people who have read other papers and who put forward their opinions, they consider them either mad or paradoxical. Newspaper editors thoroughly understand the soul of their readers, they nurse the beliefs of their readers with tender care. A newspaper never brings to the mass of its readers a proof of what it has to communicate; even in the not uncommon case of a false presentation of facts having led to the publication of something completely foolish, they defend themselves, sheltering themselves behind the infallibility of their paper. They are, of course, obliged to publish the truth a few days later. The second quality of their readers, that of forgetfulness, then comes in usefully!’

When we come to think what a power newspapers have in the nineteenth century and the large share the belief in them has had in the decline of our culture, it is quite time the whole wretched business was put clearly before you. What often depresses one is, that the method of communication that we have chosen, and which should be a very different one, has to be preserved by printing. This indeed cannot be otherwise, for the Black Art is present there, and the White Art must of course reckon with this Black Art which finds expression in printed matter. We must have books, and lectures, but we ought to be awake to the fact that care must be taken that things which are now entrusted to print should not be cast abroad in the world in the same way as that which whirls through the minds of mankind on the wings of the newspapers of today.

I wish to make you realise that this is a serious matter. That is why I have permitted myself to join these observations to what I said today and yesterday in connection with great mysteries of existence, such as that of the human Earth-year, and the possibility of beholding the Light of man by the Light.

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Let us think of the human etheric body as it is connected with the physical body. We shall sketch it thus: representing it entirely diagrammatically, and we shall sketch the physical body as a kind of rind of the etheric body, though it must be understood that in reality it interpenetrates the whole human etheric body, except the most external part of the latter. Let this then be the etheric and physical body, and there, belonging to them, as is understood, in the whole system of man, his astral body and ego. Let us now recall that the etheric body of man naturally consists of the different kinds of ether which we have learnt to distinguish.

We recognize these as consisting of:

warmth-outer ether,
light-ether,
chemical-ether [by which the music of the spheres is communicated]
and life-ether.

Let us turn our attention to the light-ether. It is true that the whole etheric body consists of an inner blend—an inwardly organised blend of the four kinds of ether, but we shall only consider today that part of the ether body which is light-ether; and in order to fix our attention on that part of the etheric body which we call the light-ether, we have sketched it above.

Now I have often said that man really only gains consciousness of things from being actually within them with his ego and soul being. It is in the daytime, when we are awake, that the astral body and ego are within the physical and etheric bodies; one may add, as regards that part of them which is not within things. Keeping this in view we say that we have sense perceptions. The cause of this is that the human ego and astral body first receive a revelation of things, and this revelation which remains unconscious, is then reflected on the instruments of the senses and their nerve extensions in the physical body. This has often been explained.

Now we shall inquire today: How does memory come about? How is it that we have remembrance of many things, of objects and experiences that we have passed through? How does it come to pass that we have memory?

Take this case. We meet a man today, whom we first saw five days ago. We remember that we saw him five days ago, that we spoke with him, that he told us his name. We say: we recognize this man. What is it that really takes place in us when we thus remember a man and our former meeting with him?

This is what occurs; the first thing we have to take into consideration is this, that when we met the man five days ago our etheric body experienced certain movements. It is the light part of the etheric body that we are now considering; of course, the other members of the etheric body—the heat, chemical and life parts also vibrate in sympathy, but it is the light part that we are considering today; I will speak of it therefore as the light-body. Our etheric body, then, experienced certain movements, for the thoughts evoked by the man whom we met, revealed themselves within our light-body as movements—as inner light-movements; so that apart from our having perceived the man with our senses, we received impressions [not communicated through the senses] that gave rise to movements in our light-body. Thus the whole result of our meeting with the man consisted in our light-body experiencing all kinds of movements. Picture this vividly to yourselves. While you stood before the man and spoke to him, your etheric light-body was in continual movement. What you said to him, what you felt and thought regarding him, is all disclosed in the movements of your light-body. When, several days after, you see this man again, the fresh sight of him stirs your soul, and this movement causes your etheric body, purely because of its laws of continuity, to reproduce the movements it experienced five days before, when you met the man and exchanged thoughts with him. Very well, we encounter this man again after five days. The etheric light-body, stirred by this meeting, experiences again the same movements which it did at the first meeting; and because man is always with part of his astral body and ego in the outer ether, he feels the movements which stir the outer ether, and thus because of its law of continuity [or persistence] he again becomes aware of what he experienced previously. We have really to picture to ourselves, that during the waking state we are both with our ego and astral body within the outer light-ether; sleep only consists in that part of the astral body and ego, which during the day, when we are awake, is within the physical and etheric body, also withdrawing into the outer ether.

Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: that is, to remember.

Suppose, for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other's face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

When the physical body is not there, that is when the body has passed through the gates of death, the ego and astral body are naturally at first far more intensely within the outer ether, till after a few days they leave the outer ether. The inner light-ether is then no longer stirred by impacts on the physical body to conceptions that are only possible in the physical body. Therefore the dead see everything that they have experienced, which the etheric body, now freed from the physical body and no longer restrained by it, throws off and allows to pass before it. During the first few days after death man sees everything pass before him; for the etheric has the tendency continually to repeat and to reproduce from within itself all those movements which the experiences of the physical body had at one time aroused in it. The man's whole life passes before him, set in motion by the vibrations of the ether body. It is seen projected as a mighty picture—one may say that all the etheric movements reflect, as in a panorama, the life just passed on earth.

If it were possible for us always so to control the physical body as we could make ourselves so independent of it—not letting it disturb us—that the etheric body also were set free, as can be done by certain meditations connected with the process described in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, it might be that even in life we might see, not the results of memory—not what arises through the impact of the etheric body on the physical body, but the actual swayings and movements of the etheric body itself. We should be then in the outer ether and look at the movements of our light-body.

Why can we not do this in ordinary life? Why in ordinary life does it happen that when Miss A meets Mr. B, for example, and recognises him; she remembers him—that is, she recalls the memory-picture of him, but she does not in ordinary circumstances, leaving clairvoyance out of the question, see what she otherwise could: the inner movements of her ether body which would give her the inner experience: ‘Thus has my etheric body always been stirred on meeting Mr. B.’ Light would then perceive light, that is, the outer world perceive the inner—because the astral body and ego of Miss A would perceive the tendency to continual movement of her own light-body, and would know how to interpret them so as to say: ‘These are the movements my light-body always experiences when I meet Mr. B.’ The phenomenon would then occur, that through dwelling in the ether—which is what we are always doing with a large part of our ego and astral body—through dwelling in the ether, through perceiving the weaving and flowing in the light-ether, we see our own little organised etheric body with its movements. We perceive light by the light, the light that is ourselves. Why can this not be done in ordinary life? Why is it that we first perceive the results of the impacts of the etheric body on the physical body?

It is because Ahriman and Lucifer are bound up with the earthly world, because Ahriman has shackled the physical body so firmly to the whole being of man, that the etheric body cannot easily free itself; because he has so densely compressed the physical body to the etheric body; and because the spirits that serve Ahriman are always present, they bring it to pass that when man is in the light, his light-body with its movements are darkened, so that he cannot behold them. Demons continually keep the light-body of man in darkness. This is because the organisation of the physical body and etheric body is brought about by Ahriman. We can therefore say [and I shall write this sentence on the blackboard, for it is of great importance]:

“When from out of and by light the human soul is capable of observing what takes place in its own light-body, it has liberated itself from the Ahrimanic forces which otherwise obscure what takes place therein.”

What might a soul wishing to attain this long and pray for? It might thus address certain powers that are in the spiritual world and which it recognizes.

‘Oh, ye Powers in the spiritual world, let me in my physical body be conscious in the world of Light, let me be in the Light so as to perceive my own light-body, and let not the power of the Ahrimanic forces be too strong for me, so as to prevent me from beholding what takes place in my light-body.’

Once more I will repeat what a soul by whom these Powers are to some extent recognised in the spiritual world, might say in longing, in a kind of prayer:

‘Oh, ye Powers, let me consciously, in the light, from out of and by the light behold the occurrences within my own light-body; weaken and take away the power of the Ahrimanic forces which obscure them. Let me consciously by the light perceive my own light, and remove the force that hinders me from seeing the light from out of and by the light.’

What I have just repeated to you is not simply an invented prayer, but it was thus that Christ taught those to pray who were able to understand Him after He had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, during that time when He still lingered among His most intimate disciples.

This belonged to the understanding, to the Gnostic understanding that such disciples of Christ could still evoke at that time and which, as I have explained to you, disappeared about the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

Those souls which were so intimately associated with the Christ could raise their eyes to this power—who for them was the Christ—and pray Him that it might be possible for them by the light to perceive their own light-essence; pray Him to restrain the opposing Powers of Ahrimanic nature, that their vision might not be obscured and darkened, and that they might see the light-movements of their light-body. These things were learnt by the intimate disciples of Jesus Christ during the time I have indicated. They were well aware how all things I have mentioned were brought about, and were instructed in all these matters during the time that Christ held intercourse with them after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Among the fragments that remain of ancient Gnostic wisdom I have mentioned the Pistis-Sophia script. I shall now read you an extract from it as follows:

‘I will extol thee, O Light, for I desire to come to thee.’

‘I will extol Thee, for Thou art my Saviour.’

‘Leave me not in chaos (when I am withdrawn from the physical body). Leave me not in chaos, O Light of Heaven, for it is Thou whom I have glorified.’

‘Thou hast endowed me with thy Light and saved me; Thou hast led me to the upper Gods of Chaos (consciously, when out of the physical body). May the offspring of evil now be driven out (of Ahriman, but Ahriman is not written there), who follow me, and may they sink down among the lower Gods of Chaos; and let them not come near the upper Gods, that they may behold me. May great darkness cover them and black darkness come over them; and do not let them behold me in the Light of Thy Power, which Thou hast sent me to save me, so that they may not again have power over me. The determination that they have made, to take my strength, let it not take effect nor let them gainsay me to take from me my light. Take theirs rather than mine. They have desired to take away all my light, and have not been able to do so, for Thy Light-force was with me. Because they decreed, without Thy command, to take away my light, Thou has not allowed them to take it. Because I have believed in the Light I shall not fear. The Light is my Saviour, I shall not be afraid.’

When we fear, we must think of Ahriman as we saw him in one of the Mystery Plays.

Look at this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia. Does it not appear as if it had been saved on purpose to enable us to speak somewhat as follows: Behold, you opponents of the new Spiritual Science. Does not this new Spiritual Science say: that by the light, the light-movements of the light-body can be seen, when the opposing Ahrimanic demons do not prevent it. There was once a time when this was already known; and the Pistis-Sophia presents a physical evidence of that time. For what I have read to you really speaks of nothing else than that power that I have interpreted for you from the activities of the light-body, and the sojourning of the soul within this light-body. It is not possible to understand this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia unless you understand what I have just explained to you. Therefore those who come across this script of the Pistis-Sophia and attempt to read it have to admit to themselves that they do not understand it at all. They are not humble enough to be able to do so.

This is something, however, that we must possess—this humility, this great modesty as regards the things contained in it, so that we feel constrained to say to ourselves:

‘Here is a fragment of the Pistis-Sophia, which says, “I will extol Thee, O Light! for I desire to draw near unto Thee. I will extol Thee, O Light, for Thou art my Saviour.” Reading it thus I do not understand it’—but one must have such humility, such modesty, that one will not desire to understand it until one has called forth in one's self the possibility of understanding it. It is precisely in our age that such humility is hardly to be found.

The explorers who discover such writings among ruins and wreckage are frequently the least endowed with this modesty. They either explain what they find in the most trivial way saying, ‘The light spoken of here is a nebulous conception intended to be taken allegorically.’ Or else they say: ‘Those who wrote this long ago were at a childish stage of human evolution; we have made splendid progress since then! [You will remember what I said of this yesterday] We have indeed made such magnificent progress that it is easy for us to realise that these forefathers of ours with all their wisdom, were but at a childish stage.’ It is not so much a question in our day of not being able to understand, but above all that we cannot so easily come by a certain attitude of soul, which is necessary if spiritual knowledge is really to be attained.

This attitude of soul is that which existed in the Mysteries, and it consisted in a man's developing within him the feeling that it is not possible for a matter to be understood without first preparing the soul for it—without preparing ourself for the understanding of it. In our day a far more prevalent attitude of soul is that a clever man [and in his own opinion every grown man is very clever today] that the clever man can form an opinion regarding any matter. But the world is profound; and all that is connected with the hidden things of the world is also profound. Because of this belief in his own cleverness which every grown man has today, he simply ignores the most profound problems of the world; and when these mysteries are mentioned or written about they are treated with scorn, are flung aside into the obscurest corner and labeled—fanaticism and superstition, or even worse.

It is needful to see these facts clearly, for it is very important to recognize how at present those who do not desire to understand, spread scorn and derision on all that can only be reached by a soul that has first prepared itself with meekness and humility—with meekness and humility as regards knowledge. It is not only the knowledge of spiritual truths that is primarily wanting in our time, but rather that attitude of soul which shows true striving after knowledge.

The world now knows, however, that there are a few men—who will be more and more numerous—who recognise this very clearly, and note carefully and with interest, that therein lies the main driving force of true progress. One must first know what must happen and recognise clearly and without any illusion, that those who have already covered all true effort after knowledge with scorn and ridicule will attempt to interfere with everything that still has to enter into the spiritual development of mankind. It is now sought to fill mankind from childhood with materialistic ideas. This materialistic training lords it even over the tender souls of your children; materialistic schools are forced upon them, which, less through the content of their teaching than through their whole nature, imbue the children's souls with materialism.

In accordance with the illusion of the times, people veil this domination by saying: This is demanded by the age of liberty and freedom! What people call freedom in the age of materialism is the very opposite of all freedom; but things are so arranged that people hardly notice it. Those who have some insight into how things are do no more than combat this bondage by that which must be forbidden, others again cast sheep's eyes at those in power and seize in their grasp everything that ought to be as free as the flowers that grow in the fields.

It is necessary that we should possess that really fine attitude of mind that can only come from Spiritual Science. Then before all else, it is clear to us that what should be inculcated during the tender years of childhood into the human soul is not to be found on the path followed by the methods of thought of the outer materialism of today. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words, this we must understand. Further, it is necessary that we should free ourselves from the whole ‘aura’ of prejudice met with everywhere; that we should feel truly within us that attention of mind which springs from Spiritual Science and frequently ask ourselves what is within our souls from the whole essence of Spiritual Science and what is to be found there merely because we have received those forces of thought prevalent in the world today?

Perhaps as yet we can do nothing in our age to stem the course of the unfree materialistic tone of the day. But at least we must learn to feel it a bondage. Here it is that a beginning must be made. We must not be taken by illusion. For, if the world proceeds in its evolution according to the wishes of this materialistic impulse we shall gradually enter an evolution in which not only will anyone be forbidden to do anything for the health of humanity unless he is certificated, but no one will be allowed to say a word regarding science of any kind, except one who has taken a vow to speak only of such things as are patented with the stamp of the materialistic order of thought. At present the constraint of the things forbidden is not much felt. But a time is coming when, just as every effort for the healing of mankind that is not stamped and certificated will be forbidden, so every word will be forbidden that is said otherwise than in the form patented and guaranteed by the materialistic powers.

If people do not perceive the whole course of what is coming about, they will enter full-sail into this future ‘freedom.’ This will consist in promulgated laws forbidding people to teach differently from what is taught in a recognized school. Everything will be forbidden that recalls in the most distant way what, for instance, is taking place amongst us here. Because people do not see how the course of evolution is tending, they do not realize this.

It is true very little can be done in our day; but in our thoughts we must make a beginning by realising the trend of events—wherever we can, we must make a beginning. No matter how such remarks as these are received, I had to give expression to them at this turning point of the year; for the Festival of the New Year is a kind of sign marking the progress of time generally; and at this season we can best be made aware of what is contained in time as it runs its course. It cannot be sufficiently, or too frequently impressed on you, how dependent man is today on the opinions that whirl around him—what whirl about more especially when they are made permanent with foul printers' ink in the newspapers, and this printers' ink possesses infinitely active magical powers as regards all that is believed by people throughout the world. It is interesting to note what takes place when these gentlemen are not quite united among themselves. For then there occurs what overwhelms all thinking souls, things called into being by this black printers' ink which work dreadful magic in the masses of mankind today. Naturally there are always some who believe what one paper says, and others, again, who hold as irrefutable what is scribbled in another paper. They are divided among themselves. It is thus easy to see where the real fault and blame should lie. I will not say much on the subject, myself. You can read in Dr. Ed. Engel's book on the “Psychology of Newspaper Readers”: what he has to say on this matter. He says,

‘The reader of newspapers is a much muddled person. His countless valuable qualities disappear behind two: He believes everything and he forgets everything. On these two principal qualities, possessed by all newspaper readers, is founded the secret of the daily press as it exists today. Most people read but one paper, and believe what they see there. Their ideas regarding the world in the evening are the creation of what they read in the morning. When they meet other people who have read other papers and who put forward their opinions, they consider them either mad or paradoxical. Newspaper editors thoroughly understand the soul of their readers, they nurse the beliefs of their readers with tender care. A newspaper never brings to the mass of its readers a proof of what it has to communicate; even in the not uncommon case of a false presentation of facts having led to the publication of something completely foolish, they defend themselves, sheltering themselves behind the infallibility of their paper. They are, of course, obliged to publish the truth a few days later. The second quality of their readers, that of forgetfulness, then comes in usefully!’

When we come to think what a power newspapers have in the 19th century and the large share the belief in them has had in the decline of our culture, it is quite time the whole wretched business was put clearly before you. What often depresses one is, that the method of communication that we have chosen, and which should be a very different one, has to be preserved by printing. This indeed cannot be otherwise, for the Black Art is present there, and the White Art must of course reckon with this Black Art which finds expression in printed matter. We must have books, and lectures, but we ought to be awake to the fact that care must be taken that things which are now entrusted to print should not be cast abroad in the world in the same way as that which whirls through the minds of mankind on the wings of the newspapers of today.

I wish to make you realise that this is a serious matter. That is why I have permitted myself to join these observations to what I said today and yesterday in connection with great mysteries of existence, such as that of the human Earth-year, and the possibility of beholding the Light by man by the Light.

We must realise clearly how it is that in the depths of winter the Earth, in relation to the cosmos, is a being enclosed within itself. During the winter the Earth is, so to speak, wholly Earth, with a concentrated Earth-nature. In high summer—to add this contrast for the sake of clarity—the Earth is given over to the cosmos, lives with the cosmos. And in between, during spring and autumn, there is always a balance between these extremes.

All this has the deepest significance for the Earth's whole life. Naturally, what I shall be saying applies only to that part of the Earth's surface where a corresponding transition from winter to spring takes place.

Let us start, as we have always done in these lectures, by considering the purely material side. We will look at the salt-deposits which we have had to treat as the most important factor in winter-time. We will study this first in the limestone deposits, which are indeed a phenomenon of the utmost importance for the whole being of the Earth.

You need only go out-of-doors here, where we are surrounded everywhere by the Jura limestone, and you will have before you all that I am going to begin by describing to-day. Ordinary observation is so superficial that for most people limestone is simply limestone, and outwardly there really is no perceptible difference between winter-limestone and spring-limestone. But this failure to distinguish between them comes from the standpoint which yesterday I called the flea-standpoint. The metamorphoses of limestone appear only when we look further out into the cosmos, as it were. Then we find a subtle difference between winter-limestone and spring-limestone, and it is precisely this which makes limestone the most important of all deposits in the soil. After all the various considerations we have gone into here, and since we know that soul and spirit are to be found everywhere, we can allow ourselves to speak of all such substance as vivified, ensouled beings. Thus we can say that winter-limestone is a being content within itself.

If we enter into the being of winter-limestone with Intuition—the Intuition described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—we find it permeated throughout with the most diverse spirituality, made up of the elemental beings who dwell in the Earth. But the limestone is as it were contented, as a human head may be when it has solved an important problem and feels happy to have the thoughts which point to the solution. We perceive—for Intuition always embraces feeling—an inner contentment in the whole neighbourhood of the limestone formations during the winter season.

If we were to swim under water, we should perceive water everywhere; and similarly, if we move spiritually through the process of limestone formation, we perceive this winter contentment on all sides. It expresses itself as an inner permeation of the winter-limestone by mobile, ever-changing forms—living, spiritual forms which appear as Imaginations.

When spring approaches, however, and especially when March comes, the limestone becomes—we may say—dull in respect of its spiritual qualities. It loses them, for, as you know from previous accounts, the elemental beings now take their way, through a kind of cosmic-spiritual breathing-out into the cosmos. The limestone's spiritual thinking qualities are dulled, but the remarkable thing is that it becomes full of eager desire. It develops a kind of inner vitality. A subtle life-energy arises increasingly in the limestone, becoming steadily more active as spring draws on, and even more so towards summer, as the plants shoot up.

These things are naturally not apparent in a crude outward form, but in a subtle, intimate way they do occur. The growing plants draw water and carbonic acid from the limestone in the soil. But this very loss signifies for the limestone an inner access of living activity, and it acquires on this account an extraordinary power of attraction for the Ahrimanic beings. Whenever spring approaches, their hopes revive. Apart from this, they have nothing particular to hope for from the realm of outer nature, because they are really able to pursue their activities only within human beings. But when spring draws near, the impression which the spring-limestone makes on them gives them the idea that after all they will be able to spread their dragon-nature through nature at large. Finding the spring-limestone full of life, they hope to be able to draw in also the astral element from the cosmos in order to ensoul the limestone—to permeate it with soul. So, when March is near, a truly clairvoyant observer of nature can witness a remarkable drama. He sees how everywhere the hopes of the Ahrimanic beings play over the Earth like an astral wind, and how the Ahrimanic beings strive with all their might to call down an astral rain, as it were. If they were to succeed, then in the summer this astral rain would transform the Earth into an ensouled being—or at least partly, as far as the limestone extends. And then, in autumn, the Earth would feel pain at every footfall on its surface.

This endeavour, this illusion, lays hold of the Ahrimanic beings every spring, and every spring it is brought to nothing. From a human standpoint one might say—surely by now the Ahrimanic beings must have become clever enough to give up these hopes. But the world is not just as human beings imagine it to be. The fact is that every spring the Ahrimanic beings have new hope of being able to transform the Earth into an ensouled, living being through an astral rain from above, and every year their illusions are shattered.

But man is not free from danger in the midst of these illusions. He consumes the nature-products which flourish in this atmosphere of hopes and illusions; and it is naïve to suppose that the bread he eats is merely corn, ground and baked. In outer nature these hopes are shattered, but the Ahrimanic beings long all the more to achieve their aim in man, who has a soul already. Thus every spring man is in danger of falling a victim—in subtle, intimate ways—to the Ahrimanic beings. In spring he is much more exposed to all the Ahrimanic workings in the cosmos than he is during other times of the year.

But now, if we direct our gaze upwards, to where the elemental beings of the Earth ascend, where they unite themselves with the cloud-formations and acquire an inner activity which is subject to planetary life, something else can be seen. As March approaches, and down below the Ahrimanic beings are at work, the elemental beings—who are wholly spiritual, immaterial, although they live within the material Earth—are transported up into the region of vapour, air and warmth. And all that goes on up there, among the active elemental beings, is permeated by Luciferic beings. Just as the Ahrimanic beings nourish their hopes and experience their illusions down below, so the Luciferic beings experience their hopes and illusions up above.

If we look more closely at the Ahrimanic beings, we find they are of etheric nature. And it is impossible for these beings, who are really those cast down by Michael, to expand in any other way than by trying to gain domination over the Earth through the life and desire that fill the limestone in spring.

The Luciferic beings up above stream through and permeate all the activities that have risen up from the Earth. They are of a purely astral nature. Through everything that begins to strive upwards in spring, they gain the hope of being able to permeate their astral nature with the etheric, and to call forth from the Earth an etheric sheath in which they could then take up their habitation.

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Hence we can say: The Ahrimanic beings try to ensoul the Earth with astrality (reddish); the Luciferic beings try to take up the etheric into their own being (blue with yellow).

When now in spring the plants begin to sprout, they assimilate and draw in carbonic acid. Hence the carbonic acid is active in a higher region than it is in winter; it rises into the realm of the plants, and there it comes under the attraction of the Luciferic beings. While the Ahrimanic beings strive to ensoul the living limestone with a kind of astral rain, the Luciferic beings try to raise up a sort of carbonic acid mist or vapour from the Earth (blue, yellow). If they were to succeed, human beings on Earth would no longer be able to breathe. The Luciferic beings would draw up all that part of man, his etheric nature, which is not dependent on physical breathing, and by uniting themselves with it they would be able to become etheric beings, whereas they are now only astral beings. And then, with the extinction of all human and animal life on Earth, up above there would be a sheath of etheric angel-beings. That is what the Luciferic spirits strive and hope for, when the end of March comes on. They hope to change the whole Earth into a delicate shell of this kind, wherein they, densified through the etheric nature of man, could carry on their own existence.

If the Ahrimanic beings could realise their hopes, the whole of humanity would gradually be dissolved into the Earth: the Earth would absorb them. Finally there would arise out of the Earth—and that is Ahriman's intention—a single great entity into which all human beings would be merged: they would be united with it. But the transition to this union with the Earth would consist in this: man in his whole organism would become more and more like the living limestone. He would blend the living limestone with his organism and become more and more calcified. In this way he would transmute his bodily form into one that looked quite different—a sclerotic form with something like bat's wings and a head like this. This form would then be able to merge gradually into the earthly element, so that the whole Earth, according to the Ahrimanic idea, would become a living Earth-being.

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If the Luciferic beings, on the other hand, could absorb the etheric nature of man, and thus condense themselves from an astral to an etheric condition, then out of them would arise something like an etheric form, in which the lower parts of the human organism would be more or less absent, with the upper part transformed. The body would be formed of Earth-vapour (blue), developed only as far down as the breast, with an idealised human head (red). And the peculiar thing is that this being would have wings, born as it were out of clouds (yellow). In front, these wings would concentrate into a sort of enlarged larynx; at the sides they would concentrate into ears, organs of hearing, which again would be connected with the larynx.

You see, I tried to represent the sclerotic form through the figure of Ahriman in the painting in the dome of the Goetheanum and plastically in the wood-carving of the Group. Similarly, the Luciferic shape, created out of Earth-vapour and cloud-masses, as it would be if it could take up the etheric from the Earth, is represented there.¹

Thus the two extremes of man are written into the life of the Earth itself: first, the extreme that man would come to if under the influence of Ahriman he were to take up the living limestone and thereby become gradually one with the Earth, dissolved into the whole living, sentient Earth. That is one extreme. The other extreme is what man would come to if the Luciferic beings were to succeed in causing a vapour of carbonic acid to rise from below, so that breathing would be extinguished and physical humanity would disappear, while the etheric bodies of men would be united with the astrality of the Luciferic angel-being up above.

Again we can say: These are the hopes, the illusions, of the Luciferic beings. Anyone who looks out as a seer into the great spaces of the cosmos does not see in the moving clouds, as in Shakespeare's play, a shape which looks first like a camel and then like something else. When March comes, he sees in the clouds the dynamic striving forces of the Luciferic beings, who would like to create out of the Earth a Luciferic sheath. Man sways between these two extremes. The desire of both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings is to blot out humanity as it exists to-day.

These various activities are manifested within the life of the Earth. The hopes of the Luciferic beings are shattered once more every spring, but they work on in man. And in spring-time, while on one hand he is exposed to the Ahrimanic forces, he is also exposed more and more—and right on through the summer—to the Luciferic beings.

These forces, certainly, work in so subtle a way that they are noticed to-day only by someone who is spiritually sensitive and can really live with the course of events in the cosmos round the year. But in earlier times, even in the later Atlantean period, all this had great significance.

In those earlier times, for example, human reproduction was bound up with the seasons. Conception could occur only in the spring, when the forces were active in the way I have described, and births could therefore take place only towards the end of the year. The life of the Earth was thus wholesomely bound up with human life.²

Now a principle of the Luciferic beings is to set free everything on Earth, and among the things that have been freed are conception and birth. The fact that a human being can be born at any time of the year was brought about in earlier times by this Luciferic influence, which tends always to loosen man from the Earth, and it has become an established part of human freedom. Next time I will speak of influences that are still active, but to-day I wished to show you how in earlier times the aims of the Luciferic beings were actually achieved, up to a certain point. Otherwise, human beings could have been born only in winter.

As against this, the Ahrimanic beings try with all their might to draw man back into connection with the Earth. And since the Luciferic beings had this great influence in the past, the Ahrimanic beings have a prospect of at least partly achieving their purpose of binding man to the Earth by merging his mind and disposition with the earthly and turning him into a complete materialist. They would like to make his capacity to think and feel depend entirely on the food he digests. This Ahrimanic influence bears particularly on our own epoch and it will go on getting stronger and stronger.

If, therefore, we look back in time, we come to something accomplished by the Luciferic beings and bequeathed to us. If we look forward towards the end of the Earth, we see man faced with the threatening prospect that the Ahrimanic beings, since they cannot actually dissolve humanity into the Earth, will contrive at least to harden him, so that he becomes a crude materialist, thinking and feeling only what material substance thinks and feels in him.

The Luciferic beings accomplished their work in freeing man from nature, in the way I have described, at a time when man himself had as yet no freedom. Freedom has not arisen through human resolve or in an abstract way, as the usual account suggests, but because natural processes, such as the timing of births, have come under human control. When in earlier times it became obvious that children could be born at any season, this brought a feeling of freedom into the soul and spirit of man. Those are the facts. They depend far more on the cosmos than is commonly imagined.

But now that man has advanced in freedom, he should use his freedom to banish the threatening danger that Ahriman will fetter him to the Earth. For in the perspective of the future this threat stands before him. And here we see how into Earth-evolution there came an objective fact: the Mystery of Golgotha.

Although the Mystery of Golgotha had indeed to enter as a once-for-all event into the history of the Earth, it is in a sense renewed for human beings every year. We can learn to feel how the Luciferic force up above would like to suffocate physical humanity in carbonic vapour, while down below, the Ahrimanic forces would like to vivify the limestone masses of the Earth with an astral rain, so that man himself would be calcified and reduced to limestone. But then, for a person who can see into these things, there arises between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces the figure of Christ; the Christ who, freeing Himself from the weight of matter, has Ahriman under his feet; who wrested Himself free from the Ahrimanic and takes no heed of it, having overcome it, as we have shown here in painting and sculpture. And here is shown also how the Christ overcomes the force that seeks to draw the upper part of man away from the Earth. The head of the Christ-figure, the conqueror of Ahriman, appears with a countenance, a look and a bearing such that the dissolvent forces of Lucifer cannot touch them. The Luciferic power drawn into the earthly and held there—such is the form of the Christ as He appears every year in Spring. That is how we must picture Him: standing on the earthly, which Ahriman seeks to make his own; victorious over death; ascending from the grave as the Risen One to the transfiguration which comes from carrying over the Luciferic into the earthly beauty of the countenance of Christ.

So there appears before our eyes, between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forms, the Risen Christ in his Resurrection form as the Easter picture; the Risen Christ, with Luciferic powers hovering above and the Ahrimanic powers under His feet.

This cosmic Imagination comes before us as the Easter Imagination, just as we had the Virgin and Child as the Christmas Imagination in deep winter, and the Michael Imagination for the end of September. You will see how right it was to portray the Christ in the form you see here—a form born out of cosmic happenings in the course of the year. There is nothing arbitrary about this. Every look, every trait in the countenance, every flowing fold in the garment should be thought of as placing the Christ-figure between the forms of Lucifer and Ahriman as the One who works in human evolution so that man may be wrested from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers at the very time, the time of Easter and Spring, when he could most readily fall victim to them.

Here precisely in the figure of Christ we see again how nothing can be rightly done out of the arbitrary fancies which are favoured in artistic circles to-day. If a man wishes to develop full freedom in the realm of art, he does not bind himself in a slavish, Ahrimanic way to materials and models; he rises freely into spiritual heights and there he freely creates, for it is in spiritual heights that freedom can prevail. Then he will create out of a bluish-violet vapour a kind of breast-form for the Luciferic element, and a form consisting of wings, larynx and ear as though emerging from reddish clouds, so that this form can appear in full reality as an image both of what these beings are in their astral nature and of the etheric guise they threaten to assume.

Place vividly before you these wings of Lucifer, working in the astral and striving towards the etheric. You will find that because these wings are actually feeling about in the cosmic spaces, they are sensitive to all the secrets of force in the cosmos. Through their undulating movement, these wings, with their wave-like formation, are in touch with the mysterious, spiritual wave-activities of the cosmos. And the experience brought by these waves passes through the ear-formation into the inwardness of the Luciferic being and is carried further there. The Luciferic-being grasps through his ear-formation what he has sensed with his wings, and through the larynx—closely connected with the ear—this knowledge becomes the creative word that works and weaves in the forms of living beings.

If you picture a Luciferic being of this kind, with his reddish-yellow formation of wings, ears and larynx, you will see in him the activity which is sensitive to the secrets of the cosmos through his wings, experiences these secrets through the inward continuation of his ear-formation, and utters them as creative word through the larynx, bound up with wings and ears in one organic whole.

So was Lucifer painted in the cupola, and so is he represented in the sculpture-group which was intended to be the central point of our Goetheanum. Thus, in a certain sense, the Easter mystery was to have stood at this central point. But a completion in some form will be necessary, if one is to grasp the whole idea. For all that can be seen as the threatening Luciferic influence and the threatening Ahrimanic influence belongs to the inner being of the Nature-forces and the direction they strive to take in spring and on into summer; and standing over against them is the healing principle that rays out from the Christ. But a living feeling for all this will be attained when the whole architectural scheme is completed and what I have described exists in architectural and sculptured form, and when in the future it will be possible to present in front of the sculpture a living drama with two leading characters—man and Raphael

Within this architecture, and in the presence of the sculpture, there would have to be enacted a kind of Mystery Play, with man and Raphael as chief characters—Raphael with the staff of Mercury and all that belongs to it. In living artistic work everything is a challenge, and fundamentally there is no sculpture and no architecture which—if it is to be inwardly in accord with cosmic truth—does not call for a presentation in the space surrounding it of the artistic action it embodies. At Easter this architecture and sculpture would call for a Mystery Play, showing man taught by Raphael to see how far the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces make him ill, and how through the power of Raphael he can be led to perceive and recognise the healing principle, the great world-therapy, which lives in the Christ-principle. If all this could be done—and the Goetheanum was designed for all of it—then at Easter there would be, amid much else, a certain crowning of all that can flow into mankind from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic secrets.

You see, if we learn to recognise the springtime activity of the Ahrimanic influence in the living limestone, through which a greedy endeavour is being made to take up the cosmic astral element, then we learn also to recognise the healing forces that reside in everything of a salt-like nature. The difference is not apparent in the coarser kind of activities, but it comes out in the healing ones. Thus we learn to know these healing influences by studying the working of the Ahrimanic beings in the salt-deposits of the Earth. For whatever is permeated by Ahrimanic influences during one season of the year—we will go more closely into this next time—is transformed into healing powers at another season. If we know what is going on secretly in the products and beings of nature, we learn to recognise their therapeutic power. It is the same with the Luciferic element: we learn to recognise the healing forces active in volatile substances that rise up from the Earth, and especially those present in carbonic acid. For just as I explained that in all water there is a mercurial, quicksilver element, so in carbonic acid there is always a sulphurous, phosphoric element.

There is no carbonic acid which consists simply—as the chemists say—of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms: no such thing exists. In the carbonic acid we breathe out there is always a phosphoric, sulphurous element. This carbonic acid, CO₂, one atom of carbon and two of oxygen, is merely an abstraction, an intellectual concept formed in the human mind. In reality there is no carbonic acid which does not contain a phosphoric, sulphurous element in an extraordinarily diluted state, and the Luciferic beings strive towards it in the rising vapour.

Again, in this peculiar balance between the sulphur-element that becomes astral and the limestone that becomes living, the forces we can recognise as healing influences are expressed.

And so, among much else that is connected with the Easter Mystery, we should have the Easter Mystery Play enacted in front of the painting and the sculpture, and through it the communications about ways of healing which are given in the course of the year to those willing to listen would reach a climax in a truly living, artistically religious form. They would indeed be crowned by being placed in the whole course of the cosmos and the seasons; and then the Easter festival would embrace something that could be expressed in the words: “The presence of the World-Healer is felt: the Saviour who willed to lift the great evil from the world. His presence is felt.” For in truth He was, as I have often said, the Great Physician in the evolution of mankind. This will be felt, and to Him will sacrifice be offered with all the wisdom about healing influences that man can possess. This would be included in the Easter Mystery, the Easter ritual; and by celebrating the Easter festival in this way we should be placing it quite naturally in the context of the seasonal course of the year.

To begin with, in describing the powerful Imaginations which come before man at Michaelmas and Christmas, I was able to show them to you only as pictures. But in the case of the Easter Imagination, where over against the activities of the Nature-spirits there arises the higher life of the spirit, as this can develop in the neighbourhood of the Christ, I could show how the Imagination can lead directly to a ritual in the earthly realm, a ritual embracing things which must be cherished and preserved on Earth—the health-giving healing forces, and a knowledge of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces which could destroy the human organism. For Ahriman hardens man, while Lucifer wishes to dissolve and evaporate him through his breathing. In all this the forces that make for illness reside.

All that can be learnt in this way under the influence of the great teacher Raphael—who is really Mercury in Christian terminology and in Christian usage should carry the staff of Mercury—can be worthily crowned only in so far as it is received into the mysteries and ritual of Easter. Much else can come into them; of this I will speak in later lectures.

• 1. The central motif (painted from a sketch by Rudolf Steiner) in the small dome of the first Goetheanum, and in Rudolf Steiner's woodcarving of the Representative of Humanity.
• 2. See the lecture entitled Christmas at a Time of Grievous Destiny, given in Basle, 21st December, 1916. Printed in The Festivals and their Meaning, Vol. I: Christmas. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

Reproduction of the content of a Michael School class held by Rudolf Steiner on May 21, 1923 in Kristiania (Oslo) [in Marie Steiner's notebook no. 1 dated “(Kristiania) 18, May 1923”] through notes by Nanna Thorne in the translation by Agnes Steineger and Karl Engquist in a letter dated November 20, 1966 from Karl Engqvist (Mölle, near Helsingborg) to Edwin Froböse (Dornach)

Dear Mr. Froböse!

I was able to do the translation during a week's rest at a health resort (near Helsingborg). It is really, as you said, a historical document. Perhaps you could write me a postcard to confirm receipt?

Best regards,
Karl Engqvist

More or less consciously, every esotericist has the urge to penetrate into the spiritual world. To achieve this, we have decided to take the esoteric path. This decision may be considered the most important one we have made in our lives. Everything else is small in comparison; for the work we do as esotericists, we do in the knowledge that it is not only for ourselves, but for humanity. It extends beyond time, into eternity. Higher knowledge is only attained through practice (training in the Norwegian text). That is why we have been given our exercises and mantras, which must be practiced as intensely and vividly as possible. Without this, one does not reach the goal. They form the gate through which the esotericist must pass if the spiritual world is to open to him.

Equally important as performing the exercises is developing the right attitude towards the spiritual world. We must become aware that everything around and within us we owe to the beings that live there, even our own life and the soul content that flows in during meditation. We must become aware that we are approaching these high, divine beings.

Therefore, the esotericist should approach these beings with deep reverence, and he should try to get a living feeling for who he is now meeting - he must learn to love what flows towards him from them.

Through one's thought life, one reaches connection with the world of the spirit when one handles one's thoughts differently than usual. When they become just as real to him as external things: during intense meditation, you notice that in the inner silence of the thought process, something much higher and more real than the things of the external world is revealed. Thoughts take on life, they themselves come to life. They are never shadowy and abstract: you hear a voice within you, unrecognized beings speak to you in the silence through your thoughts. One listens to an inner word, an inner language.

Meditation is the name given to this life of the soul in thought, which expands more and more into a life in the spirit. And it is the means to all supersensible knowledge.

There is another way to arrive at the inner word. Not only by searching within, but also by searching without.

Everything in the external world has been given a name. People have given names to all things, to every animal, every plant and every mineral. And the name is not just a label; behind the name there is something spiritual that is active. Even feelings and concepts have been given a name. Through the name, through the word, one person can come into more intimate contact with another. Through words, we get to know the soul life of another person, their thoughts and feelings.

But if you want to get to the “inner word” in this way, it is not enough to just get a superficial idea of the soul life of another person; you have to go deeper. And this can only be achieved if, while listening, [...] you get used to suppressing your own feelings and opinions, even if they are completely opposite to those of the other person. Only then will you hear the soul of the other person through the words – you have to listen in.

If you listen to the other person's soul through their words, then the occult organs in the astral body and later in the etheric body develop so that you are able to perceive voices and words from the spiritual world: they are not audible to the outer ear, but the ability to perceive the “inner word” is awakened to life.

In quiet moments, the inner voice speaks to the student, and the spiritual world reveals itself through it. The everyday noise must then be silenced so that it is quiet in the person. The words, the being with the other world, fill his entire soul, and spiritual truths are gradually revealed to him. A strong feeling of happiness accompanies this experience. It is as if an inner light is lit in him, and new life flows towards him from the divine world.

(The acquisition of the ability to perceive the inner word takes different lengths of time.) The ability to grasp the inner word takes a different amount of time to develop in different people; some experience it after a very short time, others only after a succession of years. One must patiently work and wait until this is achieved. Through the ancillary exercises and the special exercises, the ability is developed and this brings one the first step forward on the path to the spiritual world.

When meditation with the intense thought life is finished, one tries to create complete silence within oneself – to live in the soul element. Then, one day, when you have reached a certain point in your development, you feel as if you were surrounded by a great darkness, a void, an empty space, and at the same time you feel as if you were expanding more and more, indeed it is as if you were losing yourself in the dark infinity. You are seized by fear. But at that point, you should say to yourself, “I live,” so as not to slip away completely and lose yourself.

Then you will perceive a light in the silent darkness that comes from within yourself, and with this light you move into infinity. Suddenly it resounds from the great infinite, from the world word: “O man, know thyself.” Mighty, powerful, it resounds (the Norwegian “runger” is almost “tosen”, “thunder”) towards the esotericist.

(In four stages) This word is pronounced in four stages. To the esotericist, it is as if the sun rises in the morning, rises at noon, sets in the evening, and the moon rises and sets again. It becomes morning, and it becomes evening, it becomes midnight and morning again, and in each of these stages one hears a word resounding: O man, know thyself.

And yet the whole experience may last only a few moments, at most a minute or two. It is not the duration of time that matters, but the intensity of the contemplation. In those two minutes, the experience can be so intense when you hear these words that it is as if you are experiencing a whole day and [a whole] night with the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and setting of the moon.

The words come from the world of the spirit and are felt as overwhelming. They thunder (runger) at you. It is something similar to what the ancient Hebrews experienced when pronouncing the word Yahweh. It was as if the cosmos collapsed with a thunderous roar, so powerfully did the sound reverberate. They heard it as one short and one long syllable.

In the same way, the words: “O man, know thyself” will sound to us in short and long syllables. Then the words die away and it becomes very quiet.

But now a voice is heard (which the disciple now understands as coming from an angel), which the disciple now understands as coming from an angel:

"Thus sounds the world word.
You hear it with soul-strength.
You feel it with spirit-strength.

Again there is silence. The student feels himself anxiously and thoughtfully: ‘Who speaks so powerfully?’

The third verse is read.

O man, know thyself!
Thus sounds the world word.
Thou hearest it with the soul's might,
Thou feelest it with the spirit's power.
Who speaks so mightily?
Who speaks so intimately?
Does it work through the radiance of space
In the experience of your mind?
Does it resound through the weaving of the waves of time
In the stream of your life?
Is it you yourself who, in the feeling of space and in the experience of time, Creates the word, Feeling the word to be foreign to you in the spiritual emptiness of space, because you lose the power of thought
in the stream of the destruction of time.

The world of the spirit is close, one feels that, and a wish arises to come into possession of a measuring rod that can show one the greatness (the size) of the spiritual life in comparison to the smallness of everyday life.

We have such a measuring stick in our breath in relation to day and night.

We compare our own breathing with the cosmic breathing. The cosmos breathes us out over the course of a day. We awaken in the morning and live consciously in the physical world – an exhalation of the cosmos. [We fall asleep into the spiritual world – an inhalation – and awaken again in the morning.] A day and a night here is for the cosmos like for us a breath (is for the cosmos as one of our breaths is for us).

Let us consider more carefully what it actually means that our 24 hours are the same for the cosmos as a single breath is for us.

Normally, a person has 18 breaths per minute; children a little more, older people a little less, but on average it is 18 breaths per minute. In one hour it is 18 x 60 = 1080 and in the course of a day and a night 25,920 times. So a person breathes 25,920 times in 24 hours.

Now it is not only the breathing of man that is so much greater in the spiritual world in relation to the cosmic, [but] we have to think of everything magnified 25,920 times. - Small things that we hardly notice here, a small mistake, for example, that we almost overlook, takes on a different sound in the spiritual world. There it has a tremendous influence. Everything in our soul life takes on meaning by being magnified 25,920 times.

But not only the moral life of man has these great dimensions in the spiritual world, but also all the other impressions that the soul receives from things down here are magnified there to the corresponding degree. The impressions of beauty that people receive from all the beautiful things in nature, from flowers, clouds, the sea and mountains, however beautifully it is expressed here, cannot be compared to the impressions of beauty experienced there – they are so sublime, so majestic. Just as the physical breath relates to the soul-spiritual breath, so much more powerful and awe-inspiring is the spiritual world in relation to the physical.

Therefore, the cosmic or heavenly word - the word of the world that sounds to the disciple from the spiritual world and that he gets to know through meditation - is correspondingly greater than the words that people speak or have spoken with the ordinary breath. Before these spiritual-cosmic dimensions, he must figuratively speaking, take off his shoes.

It is good for the esotericist to live into this consciousness in advance, otherwise he would be completely overwhelmed when he consciously experiences the spiritual worlds. He should try to live into this difference as much as possible, even when meditating on the cosmic words:

O man, know thyself.

The experiences discussed here are all on this side of the threshold, but they serve to a high degree to strengthen the esotericist so that he can stand firm when he is to cross the threshold and the immense dimensions of the spiritual world open up to him.

Before this happens, however, he meets the Guardian, who does not let anyone in without certain conditions.

First and foremost, he demands that one leave one's faults, evil desires and passions behind on this side of the threshold: they cannot be taken into the higher worlds.

But who, then, will be allowed in?

If the Guardian were to demand that the esotericist should be free of all faults, he would be asking the impossible. For no one is free of faults. The faults are there. Every person is full [...] of ill-wishes and desires and succumbs to passions. If someone imagines otherwise (if someone imagines that he does not have them), then, if not sooner, he will recognize something completely different before the guardian. There he will see all his faults in their ugliness. Courage and fearlessness are needed to see the truth about oneself. The Guardian forces man to self-knowledge and does not let the disciple in before he admits his faults. This must be. At least to himself he must admit his faults (own) that he is steeped in selfishness and full of evil desires and many other faults. A true, Christian admission that this is so is the first condition the Guardian makes before admitting the esotericist.

But he demands more. Full of faults as he is, the esotericist must not take his evil desires and wishes into the spiritual world. Every time the esoteric meditates, he comes into contact with the higher worlds. But then he must not take his lower nature with him; he pollutes the other world if he weaves personal, selfish thoughts into his meditation, and the result is that it is felt as dark and empty. He can then neither give, hear nor experience anything after meditation. The spiritual world remains closed as long as the esotericist cannot stop brooding over himself and his selfish desires during meditation. During the few minutes of meditation, he should rise above everyday life and detach himself from his lower self, instead devoting himself entirely to the spiritual. If he cannot do this, the spiritual world will remain dark and empty for him despite all meditation. Everything is amplified 25,000 times there; therefore, nothing disharmonious may be allowed in, and for this reason the guardian stands to make sure that the lower self remains this side of the threshold.

The Dweller also takes from the esotericist everything that he has absorbed through his mind and intelligence. All thoughts that revolve around the physical are of no significance in the other world; completely different faculties are needed there. Only thoughts that have helped one to achieve greater and greater self-knowledge may be allowed to enter through the gate. But no one achieves self-knowledge only through the help of the sense organs and intellectual thinking. Spiritual powers must first have sent their light and strength to the esotericist, and the esotericist must have developed an honest will if he is to meet the guardian and have him teach him to cross the threshold.

The second verse is read (“First recognize the earnest...”

First recognize the earnest guardian
Who stands before the gates of the spirit world,
Denying entry to your sensory power
And the power of your mind,
Because in the weaving of your senses
And in the forming of thoughts,
From the space of their own nature,
From the times of their own power,
The truth of their own being,
You must first conquer with strength.

When the guardian allows the esotericist to see and hear in the spiritual world, he feels intensely: “I live.”

It is something quite different from the feeling he has when he says the same words. This too is magnified more than 25,000 times. And what he perceives and sees in the spiritual world is so sublime, so majestic that our mind could never have conceived it. Through it all resounds: “O man, know thyself!”

There are esotericists who believe that they do not want to concern themselves with becoming clairvoyant because there are so many difficulties and dangers associated with it. They recoil. Yes, it is true, there are countless dangers and difficulties that every esotericist encounters before he becomes clairvoyant, and also after he has received [clairvoyance]. Lucifer and Ahriman are always trying to get power over people, but never as strongly (powerfully) as after the attainment of higher knowledge. One must not blind oneself to this and for this reason refrain from doing everything to attain this ability; that is the absolute duty of an esoteric. The development of humanity has now reached the point where basically every person should consciously strive to go the occult way. The spiritual world is now so close to human consciousness, if only people would make an effort to remove the last veil. But if they fail to do so, the development will fail and people will be drowned in everything that pulls them away from the spiritual, in materialism, worship of mammon, self-interest and so on. Therefore, a small number of people must in any case absorb spiritual science, the spiritual, and follow the esoteric path.

And this will be even clearer to us when we remember what the spiritual powers have done for us even before we entered this incarnation. How they have accepted us all at the Michael School in the spiritual world. Michael himself has placed the longing for it within us and given us the opportunity for higher knowledge. We have been chosen for this, so it must be felt as a duty to do everything to achieve it. It should not be felt like a duty, no, far from it, it should rather be felt as a grace so great that we should be filled with the deepest gratitude.

We do not have the right to hold back because of the dangers and difficulties. Lucifer is certainly trying to make the esotericists fanatics and fantasists in order to conquer them for his kingdom, and tempts the esotericists to egoism in all its forms. It is particularly easy to succumb to vanity, ambition and pride.

We also succumb to Ahriman. He tries to turn us into materialists and wants the esoteric knowledge we receive in esoteric practice to become rigid and fossilized into dogmas. He also wants to turn us into a sect. And at the same time, he tries to increase our interest in physical things, so that our thoughts revolve essentially around them and we become lethargic and indifferent to our exercises. And if someone achieves a little clairvoyance, [Ahriman] does everything to awaken false ideas and illusions. This must be clear to every esotericist.

But just as Lucifer and Ahriman fight to gain power over the esotericist and prevent occult development, it is equally certain that good powers always surround the esotericist and are ready to give him strength to resist these enemies in all temptations. But fearlessness and good will are the best allies, and there Michael-Christ is ready to help, so that the evil forces must retreat.

When the esoteric meditates and returns to everyday life, when he has to go among people again, feel their coldness, their selfishness - and his own selfishness - he will notice that meditation has given him a new strength that will become an armor for him during the day: He will more easily become aware of temptations and will more easily overcome difficulties, both within himself and around him. And whatever happens, he must never forget that all esotericists receive a special power from the hierarchies that work to give people a conscious connection with the spiritual world. We must never completely leave this out of our consciousness, it should lie in us like an underground. But there we will never lose heart either, and we will experience that power is sent to us to overcome difficulties and dangers.

Through trust in these powers and through meditation, we will come into ever stronger contact with them. But this connection can also be strengthened by studying nature and the cosmos; by recognizing the laws, essences and forces that operate there, and gradually sensing the spiritual forces that are the driving ones. Here one learns to understand the language of the hierarchies, God's language – thoughts of the cosmos are hidden in it.

In the beginning, it is not easy to understand this language. To say that everything in nature is an expression of divinity is quite easy. But to understand what thoughts and what is hidden behind nature and the cosmos, that is, to fully understand this language, is only learned through occult experiences in the spiritual world. But then it also becomes a living language that makes it clear what thoughts underlie the mineral, the plant, the animal and one's own physical body. Then one understands that a divine power has created all this and has led the soul and the mind of man into the physical world in order to develop strength through life in matter, in order to work out from his own conscious ego an ever stronger connection with the hierarchies and the spiritual worlds.

If the esotericist is to experience this, then he must not escape the duty that the esoteric school imposes on its students to develop clairvoyance; this is the surest way to get a living connection with the higher world.

Every esoteric lesson is meant to help with this. It should be the case that every time we gather for an esoteric lesson, we then have the feeling that we have caught a glimpse, if only for a moment, of the spiritual world, and thus a sacred mood that gives new strength to take on the difficulties of life again.

This mood will then follow us further, in that it will become the determining factor for the thoughts, feelings and actions that life imposes on us.

It is true that no esoteric has the right to give to those outside the school what he learns in an esoteric hour, and the mantras are only for the esoterics, but the fruit of what has been learned should shine over his whole life and show everyone that he draws from an invisible power.

If the esoteric becomes the guiding principle for his life, the light on his path through life, then he has received and experienced the esoteric hour in the right way.

The first verse is read (“I entered this...”).

I entered this world of the senses,
My heritage of thinking with me leading,
A God's power has me introduced.
The death, he stands at the way end.
I want to feel the Christ's being.
It wakes in material dying spirit birth.
In the spirit I find the world so
And recognize me in the world becoming.

Ex Deo Nascimur In Christo Morimur Per] Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

During the time when the construction of our building is proceeding I think it is a very good thing for us to try to grow more and more into its meaning. We have already made a beginning with the two previous lectures and we will try as far as we can, by means of further study, really to become one with what is to be accomplished here.

In the first place I should like to remind you of what I said when we opened the house dedicated to the work of constructing the glass windows. The lecture referred to the evolution of thought and conception underlying the art of building and I will just briefly recapitulate what I was then only able to indicate.

In regard to the Greek Temple, I said that in a certain sense it formed a unity with the whole countryside—the whole countryside was one with it. The Temple stood there as the ‘dwelling place of the God.’ Nothing need be in the Greek Temple save the spiritual presence of the God and his physical image. The essence of the construction of the Temple was the fact that every man engaged in his daily pursuits on the land knew that within the region where he was carrying on his work he was not merely alone with the earth but united with the spiritual world. And the token for the fact that man, as he lived on the earth, was also united with the spiritual world, was the Temple standing there like an altar in the land.

We then saw evidence of progress in architectural thought, in that the Christian art of building separated off the edifice from the land. Everyday life and the mood of exaltation by which man raised himself to the Spirit were separated from each other. The Church of Christendom is no longer actually one with the land; it serves the Spirit, apart from the countryside, and expresses the fact that when man is to rise to the Spirit he must leave the affairs of daily life, repair for a time to a place set apart and there be united with the spirit. The Church of Christendom, therefore, could no longer be what the buildings of Greece and also of Rome were in their real being. The Church of Christendom was in itself a duality, the house of the community and the house set apart for the altar and the priesthood. Man leaves the affairs of everyday life and enters into the precincts where he feels himself gazing upwards to the Spirit which comes to him from the chancel where the altar stands.

This evolution in architectural thought naturally implies the transformation of the ancient Greek form of building (which was derived purely from static and dynamic factors, the factors of space and gravity) into the form corresponding to the conception of the community being set apart.

Passing to the Gothic Cathedral we have a still later form of architectural conception. We have the striving of the community not only to bear their own personalities into the sanctuary but also their individual work, and this is expressed in the forms of Gothic architecture. We feel as if the work performed in the environment has passed into the architectural forms and rises to the Spirit like a prayer, a folding of the hands.

I also said that a real advance in architectural conception must come to pass again in our times and that this is only possible if the nearness to the Spirit which was achieved to an ever-increasing extent from the period of the Greek conception of architecture onwards to that of Gothic building—if this nearness is gradually transformed into a complete union with the Spirit. This means that buildings which should now be dedicated to life in union with the Spirit must in their very form express inner correspondence with the Spiritual. We can indeed say—if we try not to explain the thing in abstractions but to grasp it with the whole of our feeling and soul—‘All that is embodied in our life of soul through Spiritual Science implies an actual penetration into the form that is created. The Spirit is revealed in freedom, having now descended to mankind.’ Whereas the Greek placed the Temple like an altar in the land, the future and, inasmuch as we are working from out of the future in our building, the present, are placing a true expression of the Spirit in the land as the result of what the Spirit expresses in its forms.

A speech which has a message for man of the present day will arise. But all this requires that we endeavour to understand the Spirit in its forms of expression. In order to understand the Greek Temple, we tried, last time, to grasp the purely physical qualities of space and of gravity. But the Spirit does not only work according to the laws of mechanics and dynamics; it does not only reveal itself in conditions of space and energy. The Spirit is living, hence it must be expressed in our building in a living way, a truly living way. We shall not understand this any better by interpreting the Spirit symbolically, but by beginning to feel that the forms are living, that they are organs of speech flowing from the spiritual world.

Is it possible for forms to speak from the spiritual world? It is indeed possible, in many ways. Let us take a thought that is specially near to us because on the one hand it is the expression of the highest, and on the other, in its Luciferic aspect it is submerged in the lowest—let us take the idea of the Ego, of Selfhood.

The mere utterance of the word “I” or “Self” does not as yet evoke much thought in man. Many epochs will have to run their course in human history before a fully conscious idea can arise in the soul when the word “I” or “Self” is uttered. Nevertheless, Selfhood, Ego-hood, can be felt in form, and above all when we pass from a purely mathematical conception of form to a feeling in form we can acquire a perception of Ego-hood, Selfhood, in the perfect circle. If you realise this you will readily understand what follows from it. If the true, living, sentient human being, confronting a circle, senses the feeling of Ego-hood, Selfhood, arising in his soul, or if when he sees a fragment of a circle he feels that it typifies the independent Self, he is learning to live in forms. And the characteristic of really living feeling is the capacity for living in forms. If you keep this in mind you will easily be able to pass on to other things that follow from it.

The first circle I have drawn here has an unbroken line (1).

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This line however can be varied so that it shows these wavy projections (2).

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But we can go further. Let us picture to ourselves a less simple variation (4). The form moves in one direction and becomes action. If we live in this form we have the feeling that it advances, that it moves. In the forms themselves we find the quality of movement. I have here made a simple sketch of something that will appear in a complicated form in the building, but you will find that there is an absolute correspondence. Passing from the entrance at the West and thence towards the smaller structure (at the East) you will find that all the forms in the interior will evoke the feeling that the whole structure is proceeding from the West onwards to the East. This is expressed in the forms. At the West you will feel in thought that you are within a vehicle that is bearing you to the East. The very essence and meaning of these relief variations is that they do not merely appear as dead, dynamic or mechanical forms; we seem to enter a vehicle that bears us onwards. In a spiritual sense we shall not “rest” in our building; we shall be led onwards.

From this you will realise that the basic character of the forms here is quite different from the forms of the three stages of architectural thought which I have described. Up to our time architectural thought has been concerned with the qualities of lifeless, mechanical rest. Now, however architectural thought becomes the thought of speech, of inner movement, of that which draws us along with it. This is what is new in the whole conception, and the basic form must of course correspond to it. In what way does the basic form correspond to it? Now I have said that the most intimate of all impressions is that of the Self, the Ego, as expressed in the circle or sphere. Why is this? It is because the simple circle or sphere is of all forms the most easily perceptible. It is an absolutely simple matter to recognise a circle. All that is necessary is the most trivial thought that everything is equidistant from the central point. As soon as we picture to ourselves points standing at an equal distance from this centre, we have the sphere, or circle. It is the very easiest process that can be carried out in thought. As form, then, the circle is the simplest of all entities. This is also in accordance with external reality, for the Selfhood in every being, from the simplest cell to the complex human being, is the simplest of all impressions, just like the circle or sphere. Behind all this there is something much deeper and I want you now to follow me in a thought that will lead those who really understand it, to great profundities.

Now the form of an ellipse is more complex than that of the circle. I will draw the form of an ordinary ellipse. It need not be exact but merely have the general character of an ellipse. The simplicity of the thought is no longer there when we pass to the ellipse. Although the ellipse is still spherical, we have no longer the nature of equality as in the case of the circle. Here I must ask those who have studied geometry—although for politeness sake we will assume that you all know a little of geometry though you may have forgotten some of it—to try to understand the following ideas. There is also order and regularity in the ellipse. Just as the circle is related to one point, the ellipse is related to two.

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In the case of the circle there is no such feeling of satisfaction, for the circle is so immediately obvious. The ellipse causes us greater joy because there we have to be inwardly active. The more one is inwardly active, the greater joy one has. What is often so difficult to realise is that man, in his inner being, craves for activity. If he wants to be lazy this is merely an affair of his conscious life. The astral body is not only wiser, but also more industrious and would like always to be active.

Now there is another line consisting, of course, always of two portions. Those who have studied geometry will know that the hyperbola consists of two symmetrical curves.

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Man is thus a mathematician in the substrata of his consciousness and by means of subconscious calculation we create for ourselves regularity of form. We add and subtract, but we can also multiply. Here again we have two points. Multiplying the one by the other we again get a line that looks somewhat like the ellipse but is not the same. This line contains an inner process of multiplication.

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This line has something mysterious about it. The circle is a simple entity, the ellipse already more complicated, the hyperbola still more so, for I do not think that the ordinary person sees only one single line in the two curves. The ordinary intellect believes there are two curves. The ordinary intellect believes there are two lines, but in reality this is not so. The other line is mysterious for another reason, for according to what is produced by multiplication the line is changed into this curious form. It is the curve of multiplication, the curve of Cassini, the lemniscate which plays so important a rôle in occult investigations. The line can develop in such a way that it assumes these forms. There are two lines, you see, but in the inner sense there is really one line, and when we feel it as one line in the astral world we know that this form (o-o) is only a specialisation of this form ( ∞ ). But now think—this form ( ∞ ) disappears into the fourth dimension—then appears again and enters the physical world. It is an unity because it ever and again disappears into the fourth dimension. This multiplication process has really three different forms.

We have therefore a line of addition, a line of subtraction, a line of multiplication. Someone may say that there must then be a line of division, the fourth method of calculation.

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We add and get the ellipse.
We subtract and get the hyperbola.
We multiply and get the curves of Cassini, the Lemniscate.
We divide and get the circle.

Now we have something very remarkable indeed. When we really try to penetrate into the depths of nature they appear before the soul in all their wonder. The circle appears to be an utterly simple entity but it is, nevertheless, full of mystery. The circle can also be understood by taking two points and dividing, and inasmuch as the same result is arrived at, we get the circle. The circle is thus something very remarkable. It is the simplest of all entities and yet it is the product of an occult process of division that is brought into consciousness. It is just the same in the case of the self of man: the ordinary self is the simple entity and the higher self the mysterious entity resting in the depths of being—a self that can only be found when we transcend its limits and pay heed to the world with which it is connected. The circle is the same whether we say that it is the simplest of all forms or that the product of division from two points is always the same. Just as we have the same circle, so we have within ourselves a duality: something that belongs to everyday life and is readily perceptible, and something that we only grasp when we go out to the whole universe, conceiving of this entity as the most complicated product of the great cosmic struggle where Ahriman and Lucifer carry out the division and where our own higher self has to maintain itself as the quotient if it is ever to come to expression.

Portions of the ellipse and of the hyperbola and also of the curves of Cassini will be found everywhere in our building, and your astral bodies will have plenty of opportunity to make these calculations! Here I will only mention one instance: when people go into our building and stand in the gallery where the organ and the singers will stand, their souls will be able to carry out this process of multiplication. The soul may not do so consciously but it will feel this process in the depths of its being, because this is the line of the structure around the organ. This line will be found in many places in the building.

After what I have now told you about the twofold meaning of the circle you will be able to realise that when you enter the building from the West and feel yourselves surrounded by the circular structure, by the cupola above, that here is the image of the human self. But the other smaller space in the East is not at first sight so intelligible. The smaller structure will seem to be full of mystery because, although its form is also circular, it must be conceived of as the result of a process of division and it only outwardly resembles the larger space. There are two circles, but the one corresponds to the life of everyday and the other is connected with the whole cosmos. We bear within us a lower self and a higher self. Both again are one. Thus our building had to be a twofold structure. Its form expresses—not in any symbolical sense but in its very being—the dual nature of man. When the curtain in front of the stage is open we shall perceive an image of man not only as he is in everyday life, but as complete man. The forms themselves express a movement from West to East, the path of the lower to the higher Self. All that I have told you can actually be felt in the forms. The erection of a building of this kind reveals how the spiritual form of nature and the higher spiritual world can be expressed. Nobody who begins to think out all kinds of ingenious interpretations will Understand our building. It can only be understood by a living feeling of the development and being of the forms. For this reason I do not want to describe the building pictorially but to speak of the mode of its development, how spiritual being itself has become form and movement and has flowed into it. Suppose anyone were to look at the interior and begin to speculate thus: ‘Yes, two cupolas, two circular structures—lower Self, higher Self; a lower Self, a higher Self—a unity.’ This may be a neat interpretation but it would be of no more value than if it were said that Maria and Johannes Thomasius in the Mystery Plays are really one being. This is a mere speculation, for it results in an abstraction. The unity lies in the living ‘becoming.’ Naturally the living powers of becoming can bring forth both Maria and Thomasius but only as the result of a differentiation. Even in similarity the true occultist will always seek for diversity, for it would be false occultism to desire always to lead back diversity to unity. Hence the example of the circle. The circle is the simplest of all entities, where all points are equidistant from the centre—but it is also the result of division. In the circle we have something that is a unity in the outer world and complex in the spiritual world.

These are some of the remarks I desired to make. On another occasion I shall speak further on these matters. I shall now speak briefly of other things.

Man, as he enters the world, is really a highly complicated being. When he enters the world—as I have often said—he cannot at first stand upright; lie crawls, and at the very beginning of his existence he does not even crawl. Gradually he learns to control the forces which make him able to stand upright.

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The advance from Gothic architecture to that of Spiritual Science may be described as follows: Gothic architecture contains the prayer: ‘O Father of the Universe, may we be united with Thee, in Thy Spirit.’ Those who know what this prayer contains, who really understand the living development of Spiritual Science, will solve the riddle of the evolution of man. And then, when the forms of architectural thought strive to be united with the Spirit—expressing this striving in their very being—man will feel how he has been permeated with the hidden Spirit and can have around him a building which is a direct expression of the living, inner development of his being.

‘We dwell in the land, but the Spirit is among us.’ This is the Greek thought of architecture.

‘We dwell for a season in the sanctuary and the Spirit comes to us.’ This is the thought behind Christian architecture.

‘We dwell for a season in the sanctuary, but we uplift the soul by raising ourselves to the Spirit.’ This is the thought behind Gothic architecture.

‘We enter with reverence into the Spirit in order that we may become one with the Spirit poured out around us in the forms—the Spirit that moves and is active, because behind the Spirits of Form stand the Spirits of Movement.’ This is the thought behind the new architecture.

Existence thus advances through earthly evolution and it is man's task to understand the inner meaning and purport of this existence. He only advances in the wake of true evolution when he endeavours, in every epoch, to experience what the spiritual world bestows in that epoch.

Why do our souls pass through different, successive incarnations? Not in order that we may repeat the same experiences, nor that we may pass through re-birth, re-naissance, again and again, but in order that we may assimilate, ever and again, the new that pours into our souls from out the spiritual worlds. We are standing at a definite point in the evolution of humanity in the sphere of art and in many other spheres of spiritual life—at a point where the Spirit speaks clearly to us of new riddles. And just as in the time of the Renaissance man was destined primarily to orientate himself to the past in order to work his way through to the new, so it is with our own external knowledge and perception of the universe. All that has been produced by the modern age since the sixteenth century is only the preparation for a living experience of the universe in its forms and movements which now stand before us as riddles.

This, then, is all for to-day. In another lecture I will try to approach questions of a still more intimate character—questions relating to the living soul of nature in connection with colour and the art of painting.

I spoke last time about the fact that, had evolution run its intended course, earthly man would not have strayed from his appointed place in the cosmic order. This is well known and is imaginatively expressed in various religions in such symbols as that of original sin and the like. Viewed in the light of spiritual science this aspect of mankind's evolution is directly connected with the fact that man's essential nature—that is, earthly man's essential nature—manifests itself through breathing. I indicated last time that the rhythm of the breath, and with it knowledge, cognition, was predestined to be man's most significant experience during his earth-existence. Last time I summarized briefly things spoken about on earlier occasions, namely that the rhythm of breathing is in wonderful harmony with the cosmos. I mentioned how, in a normal human life, the number of days equals the number of breaths drawn in one day. And I pointed to other numerical relationships which give evidence of the harmonious agreement that exists between our microcosmic breathing process and the great cosmic processes within which we are placed.

It can be shown, not only through the findings of spiritual science, but also through external observation, that the rhythm of breathing, more than anything else, shows man to be a microcosm, a little world. Man's breathing copies the processes of the Great World, the macrocosm. However, in regard to man, far too little attention is paid to slight differences, to individual characteristics. The fact is that there are no two people whose breathing is exactly the same, because each individual sounds, as it were, a different chord within the cosmos. However, in man's present earth-existence everything connected with the rhythm of the breath remains unconscious. Only under abnormal conditions or through some illness does the process of breathing become conscious. Our normal consciousness functions at a level above the process of breathing and is, as a consequence, not so closely bound up with the cosmos. If cognition had been based on the rhythm of breathing instead of processes in the brain our whole relation to, and knowledge of, the world would be different. It is because our cognition is dependent on the brain that we were forced out of what should have been our normal relationship with the macrocosm.

This secret of the breath is indicated in religious records, such as the Old Testament, when it says that the Divine Spiritual Being, concerned with the guidance of mankind, breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul. In the sense of ancient atavistic clairvoyance this is an absolutely true rendering of the facts. As far as his intellect is concerned man has a different relationship to the cosmos before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. This is because the brain and not the breath became the bodily foundation for knowledge.—In order to deepen our understanding we have considered the Mystery of Golgotha from many aspects; today we shall approach it from yet another.

It is true to say that before man was exposed to the influence of Lucifer, his knowledge, indeed his whole relation to the world, was intended to be different. Knowledge was to have been based on the rhythm of the breath. But before the Mystery of Golgotha, due to the Luciferic influence, the process of cognition developed higher up in man's organism and became related to the head and sense organs instead of to the chest and breathing. This is looking at it purely from the point of view of the body but in this connection the body itself has a deeper significance. The difference in man before and after the Mystery of Golgotha is not likely to be perceived or acknowledged by natural science. For although the difference is considerable it can be ascertained only by subtler means Before the Mystery of Golgotha, as Anthroposophy explains, man had as a matter of course a relationship with spiritual beings in the cosmos, with the beings of the higher Hierarchies. But what was the relationship? Among the beings of the Hierarchies we distinguish to begin with, immediately bordering on the human realm, the Angeloi, the Archangeloi and so on. Therefore the nearest beings to whom we look up, when we turn to the spiritual world are the Angeloi. As human beings we have a relationship to the Angeloi and they in turn feel their relationship to man. It is not a matter of indifference to the Angeloi what kind of relationship they have to man. When we turn our attention to this relationship we can begin to understand the difference in human beings before and after the Mystery of Golgotha.

The remarkable fact is that before the Mystery of Golgotha an intimate relation existed between the activity and being of the Angeloi and the human intellect. One could say that before the Mystery of Golgotha the Angeloi dwelt mainly in man's intellect. Man knew nothing of this but as a consequence he had, though in decreasing strength, atavistic, imaginative clairvoyance. When I said that before the Mystery of Golgotha the Angeloi dwelt in man's intellect, this holds good for his life between birth and death. It was different in man's life between death and new birth. Then the Angeloi, and especially the Angels belonging to individual human beings, dwelt in the memory man had of his sense impressions. They dwelt in pictures of what had surrounded man in the world of the senses on earth. The result was that in his life between death and new birth—before the Mystery of Golgotha—man had a vivid knowledge of what took place on earth. In a sense one could say that the Angeloi carried up to man knowledge of what was happening on earth.

This gives an idea of man's relation to the Angeloi before the Mystery of Golgotha. Afterwards this relationship gradually changed. So what relationship does man have now to the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi? Now it is the case that, although we are not conscious of it, the Angeloi dwell in our sense perceptions between birth and death. When we open our eyes and look around at everything that surrounds us affecting our senses we are not aware that our Angel dwells in the sun rays which penetrate our eyes making objects visible. The beings of the Angeloi live in waves of sound, in the rays of light and color and in other sense perceptions. The reason man does not know he is surrounded by the Angeloi is because he transforms his perceptions into mental pictures and into these the Angeloi do not enter. It has often been emphasized in our lectures that the spiritual world must be visualized all around us and not in some far away cloud-cuckoo-land. The spiritual world is literally everywhere about us and it is possible to explain quite concretely in what sense it surrounds us as in this case in regard to the Angeloi. Yet no consciousness of the Angeloi enters our intellect between birth and death. By contrast man is at present very conscious of his relation with the Angeloi between death and new birth because then the Angeloi dwell in his intellect.

What I have just explained has significant consequences for human life. Let us go back for a moment to man as he was before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then the Angeloi, particularly his own Angel dwelt in his intellect; this made his senses in particular accessible to luciferic powers. In ancient times man's consciousness in general was accessible to luciferic influences. This has changed since the Mystery of Golgotha. As I have just explained the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi who weave and move—borne on rays of light and color and on wings of sound—do not penetrate our intellect. As a consequence our intellect is exposed to the attacks of ahrimanic powers during our life between birth and death. Whereas before the Mystery of Golgotha man was exposed essentially to the attacks of Lucifer; since the Mystery of Golgotha the intellect is particularly exposed to the influence of ahrimanic powers. Their main objective is to stifle man's consciousness of his connection with the spiritual world. All the tendencies to materialism that man develops in his life of thought stem from this direct relationship between his intellect and the attacks of Ahriman. And if the materialistic tendencies, which are fully described in these lectures, have the upper hand in our time, we must not forget that they originate in the confusion which Ahriman strives to promote in the human intellect.

What is the real significance of these things? As already mentioned the process of breathing is subconscious, but that to which I have just referred; i.e. man's connection with the Angeloi, is not conscious either. That however lies above our consciousness. What happens in our breathing lies below our consciousness; what happens within us through the interaction with the spiritual world nearest to us lies above our consciousness. Within this process above our consciousness is actively working the force that entered the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas earlier it was the force of Jehovah that worked in man. If we deepen our insight into the spirit—I say expressly into the spirit—of a writing such as the Book of Job, and realize how graphically it depicts the sway of the Jehovah force in human evolution, it gives us a picture of how the force worked which gave man life through the breath. As described there it worked in the forces of heredity down to the third and fourth generations.

In order to discover the corresponding force at work after the Mystery of Golgotha we must turn to the Christ. Just as the force of Jehovah is related to man's process of breathing so is the force of Christ, indeed the whole Mystery of Golgotha, related to that process I have just described as lying above man's consciousness. One could say that man's breathing has been deprived of consciousness through the luciferic influence. In compensation man is given the possibility to attain that higher consciousness of which I spoke; this will mean for man to unite with the Angeloi through the senses and the intellect. To compensate as it were for that which was taken from him; i.e., cognition through the rhythm of the breath, man is to be given, through the impulse flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha, cognition through a higher consciousness. There were people of deeply religious natures in the Orient who strove, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to bring consciousness into their breathing. To imitate this procedure today is harmful. The aim of the breathing exercises, described in Oriental writings, was to irradiate the process of breathing with consciousness. But in regard to certain higher knowledge man's earthly consciousness is doomed to be powerless. These ancient practices are being imitated today because it is not realized that through Lucifer man has been deprived of the possibility to irradiate his breathing with knowledge.

He is instead, since the Mystery of Golgotha, to attain a connection with the spiritual world through the development of a higher consciousness. If we were able to cognize; i.e. attain knowledge through our breath, then with every inhalation we would be conscious, not of inhaling air, but of taking in the force of Jahve; and with every exhalation we would know we exhaled Jahve. In a similar way man is now to become conscious that the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi approach him and retreat from him rhythmically; that the spiritual world flows towards him and again ebbs away as it were. But man will attain this higher consciousness only if the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha influences him more and more.

Fundamental issues can sometimes only be characterized by the use of strange words. In order to describe truth one must not shrink from using appropriate terms. Through Lucifer's influence the process of breathing became dulled as I have just described. True, it is meant pictorially, but if rightly understood one will feel the objective reality in the picture. Jahve's original intention was for man to be conscious of Him in every breath drawn into the body and conscious of His withdrawal with every exhalation. But Lucifer became Jahve's opponent and the consciousness, inherent in the force of Jahve, was shut off from man's consciousness. And now comes the point where one perforce must use strange, severe words in order to give a true description: Jahve had to forget human beings, insofar as their life on earth is concerned, because He could not enter their consciousness. It really did happen that the Being from whom the Jahve-force issued and other spiritual beings within the spiritual world forgot man, just as we may forget something. They forgot man, lost him from their consciousness. The consciousness was rekindled through the Mystery of Golgotha. If from primordial times, up to the Mystery of Golgotha, the tragic words were spoken: And the Gods forgot mankind; then since the Mystery of Golgotha we must say: And it is once more the Gods' will, by and by, to remember mankind. For the sake of human beings the Gods gradually will penetrate with their forces just that from which man otherwise would grasp none of the spirit: the wisdom connected with the human brain, the life of ideation connected with the human nervous system. Heaven wishes to behold the earth, to behold from above what is below. The necessary window was opened when the Being of Christ, through the baptism in the Jordan, entered the personality of Jesus. The words: “This is my beloved Son, this day have I begotten him” denotes the fact that what is above will once more behold what is below, that the forces from above can now stream in and out of that which is below, not however through man's breathing but through his thoughts and ideation. The time, since the Mystery of Golgotha, has been essentially a time of preparation. We are now at the turning point when something else must come, than was previously in the working of the Mystery of Golgotha. That we should become aware of this is of immense importance.

Everything that has taken place so far has been in the nature of preparation. Up till now only exceptional individuals have been able—through spiritual knowledge—to draw near the Mystery of Golgotha. The time has come when a greater part of mankind, through spiritual science, must come to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. Why is this so essential?

Many secrets are connected with an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. People often ask: How can I find a relationship to Christ? Certainly it is a question that is justified. But anyone with insight will know that it is a question that cannot be answered just like that. Let me make a comparison: we see objects by means of our eyes, but the eyes we do not see. For the eyes to be able to see they must be unable to see themselves. They see mirror images but not themselves. That which does the seeing cannot itself be seen. Since the Mystery of Golgotha man must see the spiritual world through the impulse coming from Christ just as he sees external colors through his eyes. We do not see the eyes through which the colors, etc. are seen, nor do we see the Christ impulse through which we see the spiritual world. This is why the Mystery of Golgotha is veiled in mystery and the history of the event is also veiled. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the historical event associated with it cannot be discovered by historic means. To seek for Christ historically like any other event in history would be like trying to induce the eye to see itself. It is inherent in the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ Jesus cannot be found like Plato, Socrates or any other historical personality, through historical documents. It lies in its very nature that accounts of it are not historical, they were given by human beings who were inspired. Accounts of the Mystery of Golgotha can always be proved not to be historical records in the usual sense. We would become spiritually ill in the course of human evolution in the moment it became possible to include the Mystery of Golgotha among other historical events. Nor in that case would we be able to see it rightly; if we saw it historically it would be like an injured eye seeing itself. A healthy eye sees objects but not itself. If a chip has become embedded in the eye it will see a dark space before it and begin to perceive itself; but that is abnormal perception. Similarly an abnormal perception of the Mystery of Golgotha would come about if it did not have an aspect which externally is imperceptible and therefore enables man to perceive spiritually. This is a secret connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. The remarkable thing is that this strange situation did not exist for man before the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times before Christ had descended to the earth man knew, through his atavistic clairvoyance, that Christ was there above in the spiritual world and that He would come. Hence there is remarkable prophetic evidence which shows there were human beings who were conscious, through direct personal experience, of the Christ who was to come. It is a paradox that man could know of Christ as long as He had not yet come to the earth. From the moment He had come man could no longer know of Him in the same way. Just as one experiences the eye when one perceives, so the Christ-event had to be experienced in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, and not known historically.

It is interesting to see how these things, which I am now explaining in the light of spiritual science, are dealt with in the Gospels. But we must leave that to some other occasion.

Thus it was inevitable that from early on, in the development of Christianity, faith was emphasized rather than knowledge. Christians were not to expect knowledge concerning the Mystery of Golgotha but experience it inwardly through faith. Yet the Mystery of Golgotha is meant to illumine our world of concepts, for ideas born of faith are also concepts, are also our mental pictures. Furthermore, that is the realm in which the impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha meets all the attacks of Ahriman. Our intellect is the arena where the impulse of Christ fights the impulse of Ahriman. Man's evolution, his purely external evolution on earth, will take its course and Ahriman will not be as fettered as he is now. The “Thousand Years” will elapse and man will need a different force, he must have something over and above mere faith with which to establish the Christ impulse in his earthly consciousness. What is this different force?

This different force is spiritual knowledge through which man spiritually should make his own what we call the impulse of Christ. It will enable him to find within himself the strong force with which to protect the Christ impulse in his consciousness against the attacks of Ahriman. The Christ impulse is established in the world and Ahriman cannot abolish it. That is beyond his strength. Ahriman cannot alter the fact that Christ came into the world through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But what he can do is so to transform the concept, the mental picture of Christ in the human intellect that man experiences a pretense, instead of the Christ impulse. This means he creates a false picture of Christ. Man is exposed to the danger that while he may talk about Christ his intellectual picture of Christ is inspired by Ahriman. Those who are able to review modern cultural developments in their true forms seldom find any accurate picture of Christ in men's mind; more often than not they are distorted by Ahriman. By no means is it always the real Christ whom the adherents of Christianity call Christ. Ahriman clouds and confuses the human intellect in many ways in order to attain his goal, not least in those places where men are apt to seek religious counsel. There one can encounter peculiar views. Suppose one asks a Catholic theologian about his real opinion concerning the Virgin Mary. Certainly most would only give the reply he had been instructed to give, but let us leave that aside. There are some who have developed theological cognition beyond the level of mere instruction. In such cases one invariably finds a strange similarity between the cosmic picture of the heavenly church and the earthly woman Mary. This view comes about because for the Catholic theologian the Virgin Mary is identical with the symbolic woman in the Apocalypse who has the moon beneath her feet, the sun at her breast and the seven stars above her head. Thus, in order to visualize the meaning of the spiritual concept it is transposed into an earthly reality. Certain passages in Catholic writings demonstrate that Catholic theologians still look upon the Virgin Mary as identical with the woman in the sun with the moon at her feet and the stars above her head. Here the spiritual, the cosmic-spiritual is seen completely in terms of the earthly; and in fact the cosmic aspect is disappearing more and more through Ahrimanic influence. Nowhere does it disappear more thoroughly than from man's conception of Christ. There is very little inclination today to acknowledge Christ as the Great Cosmic Spirit who descended from cosmic heights to dwell in the human body of Jesus of Nazareth. Many people have an aversion to admit it; they believe it truly Christian to bring as little as possible of a cosmic aspect into the concept of Christ. This attitude would have been quite impossible for a theologian in the 14th century. This fact may not be demonstrated by history because external history is itself distorted.

Ahriman's whole interest lies in diverting man away from the spiritual, towards the material. What is material is indeed also spiritual but its spirit lies hidden within the earth. Ahriman does need much cunning and the use of many a trick in order to prevent man from seeing any cosmic aspect in the personality of the Christ. Nevertheless one finds descriptions of Christ which are strikingly ahrimanic; they are bereft of everything supersensible and are deliberately made to appear purely human. Particularly in social-democratic literature is this very common; not to mention painters who have done everything possible to eliminate every suggestion of a cosmic quality from their figure of Christ. Some years ago there was an exhibition here in Berlin of paintings of Christ, a whole series of ahrimanic paintings one after the other. And then there are all the self-appointed preachers who officially or unofficially speak in a sectarian manner about the Christ with no awareness that Ahriman has them by the collar and induces them to present his version of the Christ impulse and not one in which the true impulse of Christ is effective.

The true and therefore effective Christ impulse can in our time be presented by no other means than spiritual science. For spiritual science is concerned with spiritual perception which is attained outside the body and therefore where the possibility exists of beholding again the Christ in His true form. As long as one is within the body the eye can indeed behold colors but it cannot behold itself. When one betakes oneself out of the body in spiritual perception one beholds the impulse of Christ through the Christ impulse itself; just as when one sees oneself from the outside one sees the eye. What man can find in spiritual science he cannot find in any historical account to be a description of Christ in His spiritual form. Just as spiritual science can describe a faculty of sight which is on a level higher than that of the eye, so it can describe the Christ impulse through which the spiritual world becomes visible. It is therefore possible to attain insight into the Christ impulse, but insight does not prevent attacks from Ahriman. They must be met with courage. The reason people do not want to know about the concept of Christ attained through spiritual science is because of a subconscious fear that as soon as the Christ impulse is understood it will arouse Ahriman's opposition. How can this ahrimanic opposition be recognized at the present time?

In the future it will take other forms. Today it comes to expression in the fact that we have a natural science and accounts of history both of which are ahrimanic and they consequently present cultural development and historical events their way. The very nature of concepts developed on this basis excludes the Christ impulse. In these concepts Ahriman must inevitably work because he works in man. With concepts such as these it is indeed possible to evolve a philosophy of life which includes a general concept of God but they can never lead to an understanding of Christ. Christ may be spoken of but is not understood. That is the case even in a philosopher like Lotze.¹² And Harnack,¹³ having no ideas of his own on the subject, mentions the name of Christ only because it appears in religious documents in the Bible and so on. Other theologians fail to speak of the real Christ for similar reasons. Thus Harnack's Christ has no other attributes than those applicable to a universal Godhead; or he may go to the other extreme and simply describe the man Jesus.

To understand Christ through spiritual science it is necessary to grasp the spiritual-scientific concept of Christ in the full awareness that all external knowledge—whether in the form of natural science or history—far from leading to an understanding of the Christ impulse actually opposes it. This opposition is there in anti-Christians today who, in contrast to mere belief, attempt to apply natural-scientific or historical concepts to the Christ event. It is essential to understand that there has to be an inner opposition because here two worlds are in conflict. We must enter courageously into the conflict between Christ and Ahriman. A comprehensive view of life will accept that the conflict exists and expresses itself for example in the fight between Christ and Ahriman.

I have often said that Lucifer acts in partnership with Ahriman. They work together. They both have great interest in deluding man concerning the necessity of this inner conflict. They therefore go all out to eliminate the realm that opposes them. To this end they conjure up in man's mind ideas such as: “In tune, in harmony with the infinite.” Why do such mental pictures arise in man? They do because he is inwardly too much of a coward to face the conflict and much prefers Lucifer-Ahriman to invent “harmony with the infinite” for him. However it is an attitude that is the equivalent of going through life blindfolded, seeking only appeasement. Modern man shrinks from the many-sided battle to attain spiritual insight; this attitude is bound to call up opposing forces just as they appear when something right, which ought to be furthered is left neglected. It is because man, during recent centuries, has endeavoured to avoid the inner battle between powers which must of necessity oppose one another, that this battle assumes such a terrible form in the external world today. This consequence is as inevitable as the expulsion from Paradise was a consequence of the luciferic temptation. We see man today, in all spheres of life, being satisfied with creating a mere semblance of inner peace for himself. It is an inner peace which has a meaning only between birth and death. In so doing he prevents one side of the inner conflict to come to expression, of course that to which he prevents expression is always the Christ impulse. Thus the natural conflict has to find an outlet some other way. Now, when you find in various publications descriptions of the so-called contradictions supposed to exist in my writings you will now be able to view these with deeper insight and recognize the ahrimanic impulse in them.

Instead of overcoming the forces he necessarily must overcome, by facing them, man tries to avoid the conflict. This has all kinds of adverse effects. If one tries to avoid the conflict it will make its appearance in a different form. Nothing pleasant is prepared by those who strive to do away with the conflict. Working with spiritual science one continuously meets people who, out of their deepest needs, ask: Why is there evil, why is there pain in the world? These questions are often asked in an attempt to grasp how it can be that a good God allows evil to exist. In an attempt to answer such questions one may draw attention to the fact that no one will deny that all the good in the world, all that is excellent and full of wisdom is a manifestation of the Godhead. Thus if it is felt that God's goodness must be vindicated then we already stand on the premise that wisdom is to be ascribed to a good God. But why does a good, wise God allow evil to exist? To this the following may be said: Begin by visualizing a minute pain, let us say you cut yourself and feel a slight pain. Every pain arises when something is exposed to any kind of destruction. It is just that it is not always so obvious how the pain first came about. Let us now imagine that it is not a question of a cut by a knife but that a particularly sensitive spot on the body is exposed to very hot sun rays. This may not at once result in actual blisters but the beginning is there. Therefore a change in the tissue has occurred which is felt as a slight pain. If now the heat of the sun acted more strongly on an even more sensitive spot a greater injury would result. And now imagine that two particularly sensitive places in our head were, aeons ago, exposed to the rays of the sun. Man at that time had not the faculty of sight but the two places in his head became painful whenever the sun rose. At these places the tissue was injured and pain arose in consequence. This process went on for long ages and the healing resulted in the formation of the eyes; they came into being as a result of injury. True as it is that the eyes convey to us the beauty of the world of color so is it also true that they could only come into being through injury caused by the heat of the sun to places particularly sensitive to light.

Nothing in the way of joy, happiness, blessedness has come about except through pain. To refuse pain and opposition is to refuse beauty, greatness and goodness. Here one enters a domain where one can no longer think as one pleases; here one is subject to what in the Mysteries was called “iron necessity.” True as it is that great harmony exists in the world, true as it is that the present harmony had of necessity to arise through pain, it is equally true that the Christ impulse cannot be attained through painless, sensuous feelings of well-being such as those conveyed by the idea of being “in tune with the infinite.” The Christ impulse can only be reached by courageously facing the conflict that plays itself out in our intellect—or in our consciousness in general—between the Christ impulse and the ahrimanic impulse. It is a conflict we cannot lightheartedly distance ourselves from by saying “without harmony we remain unfulfilled; in order to attain the Christ impulse we must rise above the conflict in our understanding.” This can be seen quite concretely in the most diverse instances. For example someone may strive to understand the world through natural science; as a consequence he fails to find the Christ impulse. He may later learn to understand the world through spiritual science and as a consequence he now does find the Christ impulse. In such a case it is essential to recognize that one is faced with a contradiction, but in the very contradiction there is also agreement. Contrary to the belief of many it is not a question of adhering solely to one or the other science, nor can one be substituted for the other. Rather could they be compared with the right and left ear; both are necessary for proper hearing for the very reason that the hearing in one ear does not coincide with that of the other ear. What matters is not whether two things can be made to agree but in what sense there is harmony between them.

• 12. Rudolf Lotze 1817–1881 German Physician and Philosopher
• 13. Adolf von Harnack 1851–1930 Professor of Theology

The spiritual and psychic experiences of the characters, sketched in this series of scenic pictures called ‘The Guardian of the Threshold,’ are a continuation of those which appeared before in my life pictures called ‘The Portal of Initiation’ and ‘The Soul's Probation,’ and are supposed to take place about fifteen years later than the occurrences in ‘The Portal of Initiation.’

The three plays together form an organic whole.

In ‘The Guardian of the Threshold’ the following persons and beings appear:

1. REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ELEMENT OF SPIRIT:
   
   1. Benedictus, Leader of the Temple of the Sun and the teacher of a number of people who appear in ‘The Guardian of the Threshold.’
   2. Hilary True-to-God, Grand Master of the Mystic League, represented in a former incarnation in ‘The Soul's Probation’ as the Grand Master of a Mystic Brotherhood.
   3. Johannes Thomasius, a pupil of Benedictus, some-times called Johannes and sometimes Thomasius.


2. REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ELEMENT OF DEVOTION:
   
   4. Magnus Bellicosus, Preceptor of the Mystic League, known as Germanus in ‘The Portal of Initiation.’
   5. Albertus Torquatus, Master of the Ceremonies in the Mystic League, known as Theodosius in ‘The Portal of Initiation.’
   6. Professor Capesius.


3. REPRESENTATIVES OP THE ELEMENT OF WILL:
   
   7. Frederick Trustworthy, Master of the Ceremonies in the Mystic League. The Reincarnation of the Second Master of the Ceremonies of the Spirit-Brotherhood in ‘The Soul's Probation’, and known as ‘Romanus’ in ‘The Portal of Initiation.’
   8. Theodora, a Seeress, in whom the Element of Will is changed into a simple gift of prophecy.
   9. Doctor Strader.


4. THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ELEMENT OF SOUL:
   
   10. Maria, a pupil of Benedictus.
   11. Felix Balde.
   12. Dame Felicia, his wife.


5. BEINGS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD:

   Lucifer.
   Ahriman.

6. BEINGS OF THE ELEMENT OF HUMAN SPIRIT:

   The Double of Thomasius.
   The Soul of Theodora.
   The Guardian of the Threshold.

Philia, Astrid, & Luna, the spiritual beings through whose agency the human soul forces are connected with the Cosmos.

The Other Philia, the spiritual being who hinders the union of the soul-powers with the Cosmos.

The Voice of Conscience.

These spiritual beings are not intended to be allegorical or symbolic, but realities, who to spiritual perception are exactly like physical persons.

The following persons are the reincarnations of the twelve peasants in ‘The Soul's Probation’:

1. Ferdinand Fox.
2. Michael Nobleman.
3. Bernard Straight.
4. Francesca Humble.
5. Mary Steadfast.
6. Louisa Fear-God.
7. Frederick Clear-Mind.
8. Casper Hotspur.
9. George Candid.
10. Mary Dauntless.
11. Erminia Stay-at-Home.
12. Katharine Counsel.

In ‘The Guardian of the Threshold’ the nature of the reincarnation is not to be regarded as a law holding good generally, but as something which can only happen at a turning-point of time. Hence, for example, the incidents of Scene 8 between Strader and the twelve others are only possible at such a period. The spiritual entities taking part in this play are by no means to be considered as merely allegory or symbol. For any one who recognizes the spiritual world as reality, the beings there exist, just as much as physical men in the sense-world, and as such they may be portrayed. Spiritual beings do not have human form, as they are bound to have upon the stage. If the writer of these psychic incidents in pictures considered these beings to be allegories, he would not have represented them in the way he has done.

The systematic arrangement of the characters into groups (3 x 4) is not intentional or in the original plan of the play; it is a result—by way of afterthought—of the incidents, which are sketched out quite independently, and fall naturally into such a division. It would never have occurred to the author to include it in the original plan; but it may be permitted to cite it here as a result.

The scheme of stage decoration is in accordance with the planetary signs shown in Dr. Steiner's Occult Seals and Symbols. In Scene 2, the walls and furniture, etc., are decorated with Dr. Steiner's architectural design for Jupiter. Scene 4 is devoted to Venus. And Dr. Steiner's symbols for the Sun govern the little wooden hut and all its appurtenances in Scene 5. To the other scenes no architectural design is applicable.

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The costumes are as follows:

Except when officiating as Hierophant Benedictus is in black frockcoat and trousers; Hilary, Bellicosus, Torquatus, and Trustworthy are in dark frockcoats, etc., except when acting as officers in the Temple or as leaders in the Mystic League. Johannes is in a dark blue velveteen suit, short coat, breeches, and stockings. Capesius, when he is in the soul, e.g., in scenes 3 and 6, appears quite young, beardless, and in flimsy blue and white robes; at other times in ordinary modern attire.

Theodora, modern with a coloured stole. Strader, modern, short brown jacket; except in Scene 4, where he is in grey lavender.

Maria, modern with stole.

Felix Balde, a blue tunic trimmed with fur.

Felicia Balde, modern with stole.

Lucifer, flowing crimson and gold robes, long golden hair, and crowned when on his throne.

Ahriman in yellow robes.

The Guardian of the Threshold, conventional angel with a flaming sword.

Philia, Astrid, Luna, and the Other Philia, flowing muslin robes of many colours, but Astrid is in white.

The reincarnated male peasants are in frockcoats of very brilliant colour, crimson, chocolate, blue, etc. The trousers, coat and waistcoat are always to match. The women are in modern costumes with stoles; F. Humble in lilac; M. Steadfast in blue; M. Dauntless in green; E. Stay-at-Home in light and dark cherry; K. Counsel in cerise; L. Fear-God in brown; Fox has red hair, and a red-brown suit.

See also the notes on the costumes in the two preceding plays. The brethren of the Mystic League are clad as follows: blue robe long and full, blue belt, a short blue mantle thrown over the back and attached to the front by broad bands of a lighter blue. These bands meet on the breast in a large circular blue band of the same shade, within which are three circular red seals, the one surmounting the other two, and upon each of these there is a black pentagram. The cap is blue, about three inches high, flat at the top, and has six sides.

It will be apparent to you that what I have put forward here and elsewhere about the present social problems has its source in the foundations of Spiritual Science. And further, that there has been an endeavour to let flow into the Appeal I recently read out to you, the practical ideas which must arise from a deeper insight into the existing world situation. We should never tire of bringing before our souls ever and again the most important thing, and that is how ways and means may be found to call up the clearest possible understanding for what must enter into mankind, to promote deeds and actions, when there is right thinking about the essential nature of the social organism. You will have realised how radically different man's whole thinking, feeling and willing have become since the middle of the fifteenth century, and how the whole of our history, if it is to be made fruitful for mankind, must be revised from the standpoint of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch with its fundamental change in man's attitude of soul, The characteristics of the evolution during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch have had the result that in people endowed with a certain will – be it regarded as right or wrong, good or bad – that the thinking underlying these people's will, takes on a definite form. And from this thinking that has a definite form, in essentials the whole of our social movement is built. The social movement has its foundation in those thoughts that people are able to formulate in accordance with the fundamental character of our time.

In the threefold division of which we have often spoken, and which is the subject of the Appeal, the actual political State is really but one department, one member, of the threefold organism, though most people believe it to embrace the whole social organism, confusing it indeed with the social organism. When on the one hand you understand what the threefold social organism amounts to, and on the other hand you try to grasp how in modern life there has been a one-sided tendency to centralise the social organism, to let the State swallow up everything, then putting together these two things you have something important for understanding the matter. And to understand the present social movement from a serious standpoint is today the most vital necessity for man. For a long time people will still be groping in uncertainty as to what is to happen. It cannot be otherwise. The way it must be regarded, however, the way it must be worked for, is by widening the understanding of the social organism, creating the possibility for it really to be understood. From this standpoint it is extraordinarily interesting to observe the kind of thinking of the men who, in some particular direction, are active in social matters. Things must depend more and more upon our observing the way, the form, the structure of men's thinking, and upon our paying less heed to the content. On the most various occasions we have had to emphasise that what people really think matters very much less than how they think, and how their thinking is directed. Finally, it is not of such great importance for what is penetrating and decisive in the present world movement whether anyone is a reactionary in the original sense or liberal, democratic, socialist or bolshevik. What people say is not very important, but what is important is how they think, in what way their thoughts are formed. We can see today how personalities arise whose thought content and programmes are thoroughly socialistic, but who in the form of their thought are not very different from those who, over a large area of the earth, have just been overthrown.

We must therefore look deeper into what lies behind all this. For, as I recently said in Basle, as time goes on very little will depend upon the programmes that go around as if they had been mummified. Much will, depend upon people learning to think differently, to form their thoughts differently. Up to now there is only anthroposophical thinking that can guide men's thinking today in another direction, and for this reason it is regarded by many as something fantastic. It is, however, the people who call it so who themselves are fantastic, even if materialistically fantastic, for all the same they are theorists who cannot face reality. But what is developing will come from the way in which men think. It is just this that I want to dwell upon today.

Whoever pays heed to the ways in which the views of the proletarian movement have gradually been formed and developed up to now, must see how very various these views are. One fact should be of special interest to us today – that by far the greater number among the proletariat wholeheartedly profess Marxism in either its original or its more mature form. It is very characteristic how Karl Marx, having become acquainted with French social Positivism and then, from London, having studied the world of socialism and its development, built up on these foundations his extraordinarily arresting socialist theories which have gradually caught hold of the whole proletarian world. It is actually the Marxist thought that has spread abroad and has flamed up into the conflagration of this last catastrophe, as we have it today, and as it will continue to spread. Many even among the socialists refer to Karl Marx as if they themselves were Marxists. The one maintains that his standpoint is orthodox Marxism, another says that he represents advanced Marxism, and so on but everything goes back to Marx.

Now a statement by Karl Marx himself throws great light on certain aspects of this matter. Speaking of Marxism he once emphasised that he himself was no Marxist. Particularly in these times one should not forget this statement. For it is only by paying dire heed to such things that one notices how everything depends not on what is said but on the way in which thoughts are formed. Especially in our hard times the easy way of just building programmes will never meet human needs. And there is a way, even if a long one, that leads from Marx to Lenin who now regards himself as a true Marxist. To speak of Lenin is not to speak of a single personality but of a movement, which, if you like, is fundamentally open to criticism but from which the impulse is spreading widely. This movement, however, is also extended through certain methods considered by its adherents as actually being true Marxism.

Now the problem we have here is most easily approached when in the centre of our considerations we place the now prevalent one-sidedness that consists in handing over everything to the State, when in reality we have to do with a threefold organism of which the State is only one member. It is indeed interesting to follow up how Karl Marx formed his thoughts, and, quite apart from what he says with regard to their content, to look more at the thought structure. Whoever, for example, goes to his writings and reads them in the hope of finding some conception of how the social organism will be moulded, will be greatly disappointed. Statements such as those imparted by Spiritual Science about the social organism, in Karl Marx will be sought in vain. In the way he develops his thoughts there is nowhere a trace of anything of the kind. If in his writings you follow his national-economic views on the formation of the social order, you come to the conclusion that Karl Marx has thought out nothing new about the social organism. He has done no original thinking whatever about what the future of the world should be. He seeks to discover how those men thought who brought about the age of capitalism, and how the questions of wage, capital, ground-rent, and so on, were matured under the rule of capitalism. He pulls to pieces the national-economy of the capitalist rule. The most important ideas given by Karl Marx to the proletariat can already be found in Ricardo and elsewhere. Karl Marx says: In the capitalistic economic order, gradually built up in recent times, men have held the opinions from which have arisen the modern wage conditions, the modern capital conditions, the modern ground-rent conditions. And now he tries to think further. Not that he tells us what shall be put in place of this social membering that has arisen under capitalism; he only shows that under this capitalist system the proletariat necessarily developed as a special class
of human beings. That is so; that is a reality. He then goes on to show whither the capitalist rule is leading. He proves that it is leading to an absurdity, that having reached its peak it is obliged to change into its opposite. Capital is increasingly gathered into the hands of the individual until it reaches what is most individual, which at the same time is the community. However Marx and Marxists strive against the recognition of the word, according to Marx capital passes over to the control of the State, so that the State becomes the one great capitalist. But this then includes in the representation of the people created by the State, all the human beings taking part in that State.

It is on this statement that the most varied socialistic ideas of recent times have been formed. Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels worked for a long time limiting, modifying, elaborating, the original expression of these thoughts, as must happen with men who do not remain stationary but, in observing the world, develop themselves. And because Karl Marx' thoughts appealed deeply to the souls of the proletariat there now arose on the basis of Marxism a great movement which has taken the most varied forms in the different countries. The socialism that has developed on the foundation of Marxism is of one shade in England, another in France; it finds its most definite expression in Germany, and this has passed on to Russia. But the essential question of principle, the relation of the proletariat to the State, has become more or less nebulous. Thus the people have formed a number of parties within the framework of socialism, and these parties fight each other to the knife because they regard in such different ways this recent historic development, namely, the relation of the proletariat to the State. The most varied streams play their part here, upon which today we do not wish to touch. We will merely indicate the way that leads from Karl Marx to Lenin. For Lenin claims to be the most orthodox Marxist who best understands Marx, whereas numerous other socialists calling themselves Marxists are stigmatised by Lenin as deserters and traitors, and given many other names besides. Many, because of their attitude during the so-called world war, are given the name Social-Chauvinists, and so on.

As I have just said, an essential feature of Karl Marx' thought-structure is the lack of positive ideas on how the matter should develop, the lack in his thought of any solution. Marx only says: you capitalist thinkers have spoken and acted in such a way that it must bring about your undoing. Then the proletariat will be supreme. I do not know what they will do then, nor does anyone, but we shall soon see. What is certain is that you capitalist thinkers, by your own measures and by what you have made of the world, have prepared your own downfall. What will then happen if the proletariat are there, what they will do, neither I nor any of the rest of you know, but it will soon be seen.

If you take all this as I have just been picturing it, you will see the form of the thought. What is showing itself everywhere in the external world is simply being absorbed and thought-out. But when we have come to the end of the thought it nullifies itself, comes to nothing, fades away. This must come as a shock to anyone with feeling for such things. Studying Marxism one always finds that it is all the result of certain thoughts, not however Marx' thoughts but the thoughts of modern times. Then one is driven into an eddying confusion of thoughts leaning to what is destructive, leading to no firm ground. It is most interesting how this thought-structure, really striking even in Marx, in Lenin comes to its highest potency, one might almost say to the point of genius. Lenin points to Marx as if to an absolute opponent of the State, as if Marx had really started out with the idea that when once the suppression of the proletariat ceased, the State, as it has developed historically, would have to came to an end. This is interesting, because it is just those who regard Lenin as opponent who would like to throw everything on to this State in its historically developed form. So that in present-day socialist circles we have this contrast—on the one hand the strict fanatic of the State, wanting everything state-controlled, on the other hand Lenin, the absolute opponent of the State, who sees salvation for mankind not in the abolition—he would consider that a Utopia—but in the gradual dying away of the State. And just by observing how Lenin thought about this, we arrive at the form of the thought living in him. Lenin thinks thus: The proletariat is the only class that can come to the top when the others have arrived at what is absurd and are ripe for their downfall. This proletarian class will bring to its highest perfection what has developed as a bourgeois State.—Please give due heed to the form of the thoughts. For example, Lenin does not say as the anarchists do: Away with the State! That would not occur to him. He is opposed to Anarchism and would consider it pure madness to abolish the State. Rather would he say: Should evolution advance on the lines laid down by the bourgeoisie, then the bourgeoisie will soon come to an end. The proletariat will take over the machinery of the State, and will bring to perfection this State founded by the bourgeoisie as an instrument to suppress the proletariat; they will make of it the most perfect State. But, Lenin now asks, what are the characteristics are of the most perfect State? And he thinks himself a true Marxist in saying: What will be characteristic of the perfect State when it comes into being—and it will be brought into being by the proletariat, as the logical conclusion of what has been set up by the bourgeoisie—is that it will lead to its own decay. The present State can only exist as a State created by the bourgeois class, because it is imperfect; when the proletariat have brought to completion what the bourgeoisie began, then the State will have received an impulse in the right direction, that consists in its bringing about its own end.

That is the particular form of Lenin's thinking. Here you see in greater potency what is to be found already in Marx. The thought when developed comes to nothing. Lenin is, however, a very realistic thinker who, by reason of the historic course of events, has arrived at the conclusion that the State must be brought to fulfillment; so far it has not died because, not having come to full development, it has preserved its life-forces. When the proletariat have perfected it, the ground will have been prepared for its gradual disappearance.

Thus you see a conception that has been formed out of reality, and this conception has the tendency to extend its reality over a great part of eastern Europe. It is no mere conception, it passes over into reality. The proletarian says: You bourgeois have made this State arise; you have used it as an instrument for suppressing the proletariat; it is the State of a privileged class. It serves you for the suppression of the proletarian classes and owes to this its ability to live. Now the proletariat will arise, will do away with class rule and bring the State to full maturity; then the State will no longer be able to live, then it will die.—And something will arise that should arise, but as Lenin says, no one can tell what. Social ignorabimus—this is what comes of this socialism. It is very interesting; for the way of thinking that has grasped the social conception today has developed out of science, and as science from its one-sided standpoint, has justly arrived at its ignorabimus, (we can know nothing) socialistic thinking, too, has come to the socialistic ignorabimus. This connection should be duly recognised. Without all that is being taught at the good bourgeois Universities about the scientific outlook on the world, there would be no socialism. Socialism is a child of the bourgeoisie; so too is bolshevism. There lies the deeper connection that must above all be understood. Now that these forms of thought have been made clear, we are able to refer to important points in the kind of outlook of such a man as Lenin. He lays special weight, for example, on the fact that within the bourgeois State bureaucracy has developed—the military machine, as he calls it. This bureaucratic military machine has arisen because it is needed by the leading classes to suppress the proletarian classes. Bolshevism, the most advanced wing of socialism, is quite clear that it can only realise its aims through an armed proletariat. Without arms there would be no hope of this, as can be seen in the historic example of the French Commune, which could act only so long as those who were in power had arms. The moment they were disarmed they were powerless. That is one thing to be remembered—the organisation of the proletariat as an armed force. And then what should be done with than? To some extent it is happening even, now. It is supposed to teach us that many who have long been sleeping deeply should awake where social matters are concerned. And what should happen? Before all else, the State as a class government is to cease. What the bourgeoisie have founded as a class State is to be taken over by an armed labour force. Again it is interesting that in clear and plain terms those who have developed the form of modern socialistic thought, to a point amounting almost to genius, make evident what, through historical evolution, has been placed in the souls of the proletariat.

Lenin shows, for example, that instead of officials and a military hierarchy there would have to be a kind of managing body composed only of elected members. He further shows that in the present condition of things all the education needed for this State management would be what is given in ordinary schools. Lenin himself uses a remarkable expression which says much. He says that what today is called the State should be transformed into a great factory with public book-keeping. To bring that about, to control it and so on, all that is needed would be the four rules of arithmetic, learnt at any ordinary school.

One should not just make fun of these things but see clearly how such an outlook is nothing but the final consequence of bourgeois evolution. Just as the modern social structure is given up entirely to economics, we have to own that capitalists, those who direct capital, mostly have no more in their heads than what Lenin asks of the modern overseer of labour.

Had there been men to whom the proletarian, as he has recently evolved, could have looked, in whose special capabilities he could have believed, and to whom he could have looked up as to certain justified authority, everything would have taken a different form. But there is no one of the kind to whom he can turn. He can look only to those who, when all is said and done, are no different in spiritual qualities from himself, but have only been before him in acquiring capital. He finds no difference between himself and those who are directing. That becomes evident in Lenin's words in a very theoretical form.

In Lenin's radical formulas it can be seen how things have gone. And this exclamation will undoubtedly be on the tip of your tongues: Yes, but such dreadful things come to light in all this, it is all horrible!—Nevertheless it is our duty to look squarely at the matter and to make a real effort to enter into men's thoughts. When what is happening here or there in the ranks of the more advanced socialists is reported, one may often meet with bourgeois indignation, which in many cases becomes bourgeois cowardice. For the urge to understand is not yet very great.

Now in any case the following must be understood, namely, what is in part already happening and what is still to happen. Lenin, who regards himself as a true Marxist, indicates how already through Marx a definite outlook on the recent and future evolution of the social ordering has been brought about. These people think that actually the new social formation must be accomplished in two phases. The first phase is when the proletariat take over the bourgeois State, which Lenin considers must, when matured, die a natural death. The proletariat will step in and bring to its end what, out of their own outlooks and impulses, they will have been able to make of the bourgeois State. According to Marx himself, it cannot at present lead to any desirable conditions. And in the sense of both Leninism and Marxism where will this first social stage lead? If we express it in a simple fashion, but as the people themselves would express it, it leads to this—that no man can eat who does not work, that everyone has special work to do and by virtue of this work has a claim to the articles essential to support life. The people are, however, quite clear that no possible equality between men would be promoted in this way, but that inequality would continue. Neither would a man receives thus the proceeds of his labour. Both Marx and Lenin have emphasised this. All that is necessary for schooling, for public services, and so on, must be withheld by the community, that is, by the State—or whatever we shall call what remains of the middle-class ordering of the world. According to this kind of socialism, Lasalle's old ideas of right to the full proceeds from labour will naturally have to go by the board. No equality results from this either, for conditions bring it about that even those who do the same work have different claims to make on life. This socialism naturally accepts that, but again inequality is immediately created. In short, these socialists take the view that in the first phase the socialist order simply continues the bourgeois order, only this bourgeois order is run by the proletariat. How outspokenly Lenin expresses himself about it is of great interest. For example, in a passage of his work State and Revolution he says: Something like a bourgeois order, a bourgeois State will arise, but without the bourgeoisie.

From these words of Lenin's, that a bourgeois State will be there without the bourgeoisie, you can see what I am always emphasising and what I regard as particularly important, that is, that those who today are thinking on socialistic lines are only taking over the heritage of the bourgeoisie. Their thoughts are bourgeois thoughts. A man who has such a genius for putting his thoughts into form as Lenin, says that the next phase will be a bourgeois State without the bourgeoisie, who will be either exterminated or made into a caste of servers. This will never bring equality, for it only means the proletariat coming to the fore and being elected instead of being nominated and decorated by something in the nature of a monarchy. The proletariat will govern and at the same time pass laws. It is still, however, the bourgeois State, but with no bourgeoisie.

This by no means produces an ideal condition. If anyone asks what these people will have made of the ordering of human society Lenin will simply answer: we have promised you nothing more than a first phase, in which we shall carry to its final conclusion what you founded as a bourgeois State; but it is we who now run it, we as proletarians. Formerly you did it, now it is for us to do. We, however, shall run this bourgeois State that you have made without the bourgeoisie. Everyone will earn according to his labour, but inequality will still remain.

Lenin says that the bourgeois State without the bourgeoisie will lead to the dying-out of the State. It will be completely extinct when the community has once realised the ordering considered as the ideal, and when an end will have been made of the narrow concept of justice held by the middle-class where, with the hard-heartedness of a Shylock, account is taken as to whether one man has worked a half-hour less or been paid more than another. This narrow outlook will be overcome only at the end of the first phase. Until then the Shylock attitude of the bourgeoisie State will persist and naturally become intensified. Thus it will prevail during the first phase of socialists.

Here you have all that these people promise to begin with: What you made for your caste we will use for the proletariat. It is nonsense to speak of democracy, for democracy would lead merely to the suppression of the minority. The proletariat will do the same as you have done. But by doing so it will bring to an end everything to which you gave a semblance of life. Then only can the second phase come.

Karl Marx already alluded to this second phase; Lenin has done so also but in a remarkable way. I consider it most important to bear this in mind. Marx in the person of Lenin says: We will drive the bourgeois order to its logical conclusion, then what is now the State will die out and the people will have became used to no longer needing a constitutional State, or any form of State; it will just cease. Everything the State has to do will have ceased to be necessary. The age will then be past in which wages are paid in accordance with the principle that whoever does not work may not eat. That is just the first phase of socialism. The time will then come when everyone will be able to live according to his capacities and his needs, and not according to the work he does. That will be the higher stage to which everything now striven for is merely a preparation. When it is no longer asked exactly how long a man has worked, the time will have come when the value of spiritual work and the work of the artist will be rightly assessed; each man will find his right place in the social order, that is in accordance with Nature, each out of his own capacities will not only be able but also willing to work. For through the civilising influence of the first phase men will have become accustomed to regard work not as a mere necessity but as something they feel the urge to do. Thus everyone will receive his livelihood according to his needs. The middle-class ordering of rights in the spirit of Shylock will no longer be needed, nor the question whether a half hour more or less has been worked; it will be seen that whoever has a certain piece of work to do may perhaps need to work two whole hours less. In short, everyone will work according to his capacities and be maintained according to his needs. That is the higher order. The intermediate stages needed at present—because the bourgeois State in order to perish must go on developing—lead to conditions in which people on the one hand say: Ignorabimus, we do not know, and on the other hand affirm that these conditions would bring about a second higher stage of socialism.

What Lenin says about this higher phase of socialism is most interesting. He calls it ignorance to maintain the possibility of people, as they are today, being able to realise a social order in which everyone could live according to his capacities and needs. For it does not occur to anyone who is a socialist to promise that the more highly developed phase of communism is bound to come about. Those times foreseen by the great socialists presuppose a productivity and a race of men far removed from those of today, far removed from present-day man who is calmly capable of stealing underclothing and who cries for the moon. This is extraordinarily significant. We have a first phase—socialism with present-day man, and the logical end of the bourgeois world-order, of the State that dies by reason of its inherent qualities. We have a higher phase with people who will have become quite different from what they are today, in effect a new race.

You see here the ideal in abstraction. First the bourgeois order will come to an end by developing into what is absurd. The State will thus be brought to an end, and through this process a new human race will be bred, the members of which will be accustomed to work according to their capacities and live according to their needs. Then it will be impossible for anyone to steal because, just as today the respectable rebel when some lady is insulted, then, the respectable will rebel of themselves. No military or bureaucratic caste will he needed to interfere, and so on and so forth. And upon what is this belief based? On the superstitious belief in the economic order! Capitalism, for its part, has produced an economic order with only an ideology and no spiritual life as counterbalance. This state of things the socialists want to carry to extremes. Away with everything except the economic life! Then they think this will produce a different race of men.

It is most important to be alive to this superstition where the economic life is concerned. For today, in accordance with all this, a tremendous number of people imagine that when the economic life, in their sense, will have been set up, not only a desirable social order will arise but even a new human race will be bred—a race fitted for this desirable social order.

All this is the modern form of superstition, which is unable to accept the standpoint that behind all external economic and materialistic actuality there lies the spiritual with its impulses. And men must receive this as something spiritual. What I have been referring to is a misunderstanding of the spiritual. If mankind is to be healed, this is possible only by spiritual means, by men receiving into themselves spiritual impulses as spiritual knowledge, as social thinking and social feeling established on the foundations of Spiritual Science. The new man will never be brought forth through economic evolution, but entirely from within outwards. For that, the spiritual life must be free and independent. A spiritual life as developed during recent centuries, formerly chained to the financial State as now to the economic, will never be able really to create the new man.

For this reason, on the one hand freedom in the life of spirit must be striven for by giving this spiritual life its own department. On the other hand there must be an effort to guide the economic life purely as such, so that the State, which has to do only with the relation of man to man, should not be concerned with economy. For the economic life will use up anything that presses into its sphere. In so far as man stands within the economic life he too will be used, and he must continually be rescuing himself from this fate. He will be able to do so when he sets up en appropriate relation between man and man, and that is brought about in a rightly organised State. Unbiased observation of things as they are today, enables us to say that what is fundamental in the impulses developed by the modern social movement is that these impulses are full of a thinking that leads to nothing. Just picture this to yourselves! Anyone properly applying this kind of thought would argue in the following way: I want to think out the most perfect form of modern educational method. I come to see that human beings must be so instructed that they absorb as much as possible of the principle of death, so that when they come to maturity they may begin at once to die. That thought if really grasped would nullify itself. But take Lenin's thoughts about the State—as soon as it is matured it prepares to die. Thus you see that modern thinking can arrive at nothing productive, nothing fruitful, nothing for the spiritual life. For the spiritual life has become a mere ideology, only surrounded by thoughts, or natural laws which are themselves just thoughts, and because of this, because the spiritual life is at the mercy of the economic life or of the political life, it has become unfruitful. This has been made particularly evident by the war catastrophe. Just consider how much depended upon this spiritual life. And everywhere on earth, in the most dreadful way, its fetters have been shown.

And now consider the sphere of the life of the State. The socialists, thinking to their logical conclusion the half-thoughts of the middle-class, think out a State with the peculiar characteristic of bringing about its own death. And in the sphere of economic life everyone indulges in the worn-out superstition that this economic life—that in reality consumes life, for which reason the other two departments are necessary to help the economy too to keep its place—that this economic life will bring forth a new human race.

In no sphere has modern thinking succeeded in arriving at anything capable of producing conditions for a prosperous life. But what is sought on the grounds of Spiritual Science in this domain is to shape conditions worthy of life out of those deserving death. Then, however, it will not be enough—as many hope and as here and there it has already been done—that those who were formerly the underlings should now he supreme, and those formerly supreme the underlings. Those now underlings, when at the top thought in reactionary terms, bourgeois terms; those now supreme think socialistically. But the form of the thoughts is fragmentally the same. For it is not a question of what one thinks but of how one thinks. Once this is understood it gives the initial impulse towards understanding the threef0ld nature of the social organism, which enters right into reality and has to do with all that must develop as a healthy social organism. The most important thing for these times must be produced out of anthroposophical knowledge, and we must guard ourselves from misunderstanding this most deeply serious and significant side of our Anthroposophical Movement. But we do misunderstand it when we allow ourselves, especially in this sphere of Anthroposophy, to be carried away by any kind of sectarianism. Everyone should take counsel with himself concerning the question: How much sectarianism is there still in me? For the modern human Movement must aim at driving out everything sectarian, at not being sectarian, at not being abstract but interested in humanity, at not having a narrow but a broad outlook. In so far as, from a certain side, our Movement has grown out of the Theosophical Movement, it retains the seeds of sectarianism. These seeds must be crushed. What is sectarian must be cast out. Above everything there is need for wide horizons and an unprejudiced contemplation of reality.

I said recently that those who cut off coupons must clearly realise that in the cut-off coupons there lies the labour power of men, and that in so far as human labour power is enslaved by the capitalist economic order, the cutter of coupons is taking part in this enslavement. The answer to this should not be “How shocking”, or anything of that kind, for “how shocking” is dreadfully theoretic and something that can easily land one in modern sectarian tendencies. I have often put this in another way—people hear of Lucifer and Ahriman and say to themselves: keep well out of the way; have nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman; I'll stand fast by God:—To deal with the matter in this abstract manner is to be only the more deeply drawn into the toils of Lucifer and Ahriman. We must have the sincerity and honesty to acknowledge that we are part of the present social process, from which we do not escape by deceiving ourselves. We should instead do our utmost to make it more healthy. At the present stage of mankind's development, the individual cannot help all this; but he can play his part in cooperating with his unfortunate fellowmen. Today it is not a matter of saying: be a good fellow, nor of sitting down to send out thoughts of universal love, and so on. The important thing is that being within this social process, we should come to an understanding with ourselves, and develop the capacity of even being bad with the bad—not that it is a good thing to be bad, but because a social order that is due to be overthrown forces the individual to live thus. We should not wish to live in the illusion that we are good and splendid, priding ourselves that we are better than others, but we should recognise that we are part of the social order and not be deceived about it. The less we give way to illusion, the greater will be the impulse to work for what will lead to the salvation of the social organism, to strive to acquire capacities, and to awake from the deep sleep of present-day humanity. Nothing can help here save the possible recourse to the energetic and penetrating thinking given by Spiritual Science, which may be contrasted with the feeble, lazy and half-hearted thinking of present-day official science.

This makes me think of how, eighteen or nineteen years ago, speaking at the Working Men's Club at Berlin, I said that science today is a bourgeois science and that it must evolve by freeing thinking, freeing knowledge, from the bourgeois element. The leaders of the proletariat today do not understand this, being convinced the bourgeois science they have adopted is something absolute—that what is true is true. Socialists do not consider how it all is connected with bourgeois development. They talk of the impulses, the emotions, of the proletariat, but their thinking is entirely bourgeois. Certainly many of you will say at this point: All the same, what is true is true! Indeed a certain amount of the truths, let us say, of chemistry, physics, mathematics, is of course true and these truths cannot be true either in a bourgeois sense or a proletarian sense. The theorem of Pythagoras is most certainly not true in a bourgeois sense or in a proletarian sense, but simply true. This however is not the point, the point is that the truths enclose a certain field; if one remains in this field what is contained within it can certainly be truths, but they are truths that are useful, convenient and suitable just for middle-class circles, whereas outside are many other truths which can also be known but remain unnoticed by the bourgeoisie. Thus, the point is not that the truths of chemistry and mathematics are true but that there exist besides other truths able to throw on the former the right light, and then a quite different shade of meaning is revealed. Then knowledge is given a wider scientific horizon than is possible for the bourgeoisie to give. It is not whether these matters are true or not but how much truth man wants. And the whole affair is coloured by the quality of the truth. Certainly the Professors of Chemistry at the Universities will not be able to make any remarkable sudden transitions, for in the laboratory it is he who has the knowledge about things and he knows that he is the last to do the thinking, that is done by the method. But as soon as this same thinking passes over into history, or into the history of literature, into all that men rescue from the economic life and bring into a sphere worthy of human beings, it immediately becomes free. History as we now have it is nothing but a middle-class fiction, as are philosophy and the other sciences. People, however, have no idea of this and accept it all as objective knowledge.

A healthy life can only take root when scientific research is given back its autonomy, in short, when the threefold order of which I have so often spoken is established.

I have here to add a small correction. Recently, in drawing your attention to the German Committee formed for our Appeal, I mentioned that Dr. Boos, Herr Molt and Herr Kühn had formed it. I have been notified that in Stuttgart our friend Dr. Unger is working with it in an essential way. This ought not to be forgotten.

Today I have been trying to throw light for you on things of contemporary history. I have it very much at heart that our friends should try to go more deeply into the social problem, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. You have the basis for an understanding of this social problem, and this understanding is what is of most importance. Whoever looks into present-day history will not imagine that we can hope for success in the Appeal and all connected with it, in the course of a few days. The lectures given in Zurich, extended and supplemented by certain definite questions, will shortly appear in book-form, so that the details of what is in the Appeal can be had in a few concise sentences. [ Note 01 ]

The next thing will be for the movements today devouring the social organism to be brought to the point of absurdity. These must first develop, however, into complete helplessness and calamity. But, at the right time, something must be ready which can be grasped when what is old has reached this point. Therefore it is so infinitely important that when once these impulses are taken to your hearts they should not be allowed to cool, but that each of you should help, as far as he is able, to bring about what must of necessity happen.

THE THEME OF THE lecture to-day is of a profoundly occult character, the title—strange as it may seem to begin with—being: “Mephistopheles and Earthquakes”. We shall see that not only does the problem of the figure of Mephistopheles lead us into a deep realm of occultism but that the same applies to the problem of earthquakes if explained from the spiritual point of view. I have already spoken here and in several other places about the interior of the earth and have also referred to the question of earthquakes. We shall now approach the subject of these most tragic happenings on the earth's surface, from yet another side.

The figure of Mephistopheles which will be our starting-point to-day, is familiar to you all from Goethe's Faust. You know that Mephistopheles is a Being—we shall not enter to-day into the question of how far the poetic presentation tallies with the occult facts—a figure who appears in the drama as the seducer and tempter of Faust who, in a certain respect, may be thought of as the representative of man aspiring to reach the heights of existence. In lectures on Goethe I have also indicated what spiritual vistas are revealed in the scene of the “Passage to the Mothers”, where Mephistopheles holds in his hand the key giving access to the dark, nether region where the Mothers dwell. Mephistopheles himself may not enter this region. He merely indicates that in this mysterious realm there is no difference between “below” and “above”:

“Sink then! I might as well say, Mount!
'Tis quite the same.”

We know too that in characterizing this region, Mephistopheles uses the word “Naught”, “Nothingness”. In a certain sense, therefore, he represents the spirit who in this “Naught” would be seeking something that is valueless to him. Faust answers as any true seeker to-day might answer a materialistic thinker: “In thy Naught I hope to find the All”.

Goethean research has made many attempts to find the clue to the figure of Mephistopheles. In other lectures I have said that the explanation of the name Mephistopheles is to be found in the Hebrew language, where “Mephiz” is the word used for one who obstructs, who corrupts, and “topel” for one who lies. We have therefore to think of this name as belonging to a being who brings corruption and hindrances to man and is a spirit of untruth, deception and illusion.

It may occur to those who read the introduction to Faust, the “Prologue in Heaven”, thoughtfully, that it contains words which resound as it were across thousands of years. Goethe has let words spoken between the Lord and Job in the Book of Job re-echo at the beginning of Faust. In the Book of Job we read that Job is a good, upright and pious man and of how the sons of the Lord of Light present themselves before Him. Among them is a certain enemy of the Light. In a conversation between the enemy of the Light and the supreme Lord, this enemy of the Light says that he has “gone to and fro in the earth”, seeking and trying out many things. The Lord asks: “Knowest thou my servant Job?” and the enemy of the Light—for so we will call him—answers the Lord that Job is known to him and that he would assuredly be able to divert him from the Good and bring him to perdition. This spirit has to make two attempts to approach Job and he then lays hold of him through injuring his physical body. He indicates this expressly when he says to the Lord: “Seize his possessions and he will not fall; but touch his bone and his flesh and he will fall!” Who can fail to hear an echo of this in Faust when the Lord calls to Mephistopheles in the “Prologue in Heaven”: “Knowest thou Faust, my servant!” And then, in similar terms, we hear the retort of the spirit who in the Book of Job comes before the Lord, when Mephistopheles asserts that he can lead Faust gently on the way, that he can win him from the paths which lead to the Good. Here, then, we are listening to sounds striking together in unison across the ages.

When you are thinking about the figure of Mephistopheles, you may often have asked yourselves: Who is Mephistopheles, in reality? Grave mistakes are made here, mistakes which admittedly can be corrected only by deeper, occult insight. The name itself suggests that Mephistopheles is associated with the devil, or the idea of the devil, for the word “topel” is the same as “Teufel”—devil. But the other question—and here we come into a realm of serious fallacies which frequently occur in explanations of the figure of Mephistopheles—the other question is: Whether Mephistopheles can be identified with the spirit we know as Lucifer, who during and after the Lemurian epoch approached mankind together with his hosts and entrenched himself as it were in the evolutionary process? The prevailing tendency in Europe is to identify the figure of Mephistopheles as he appears in Goethe's Faust but also in earlier folk-literature (Folk Plays, Puppet Plays and so forth), with Lucifer. Mephistopheles is a familiar character everywhere, and the question is: Are he and his hosts identical with Lucifer and his hosts? In other words: Are the effects of the Mephistophelean influence upon man the same as those of Lucifer?—That is the question before us to-day.

We know when Lucifer approached man. We have studied the course of human evolution on earth through the epoch when the sun with its beings, and subsequently the moon, separated from the earth together with the forces that would have made further development for man impossible. And we have learned that at a time when man was still not ready for his astral body to become independent, Lucifer and his hosts approached him. The effect upon man was twofold. It was towards the end of the Lemurian epoch when, in his astral body, man was actually exposed to the influences issuing from Lucifer. If Lucifer had not approached, man would, it is true, have been protected from certain evils but he would not have attained what must be accounted one of his greatest blessings.

The significance of Lucifer's influence becomes evident when we ask ourselves what would have transpired if since the Lemurian epoch there had been no Luciferic influence, if Lucifer and his hosts had remained separate and apart from man's evolution! Until the middle of the Atlantean epoch man would have evolved as a being who in every impulse of his astral body would have obeyed the influences of certain spiritual Beings of a higher rank than himself; these Beings would have retained their sway over him until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. If that had happened, man's faculties of perception and cognition would not have been directed to the material world until a much later period. During the Lemurian and early Atlantean epochs, no passions, no desires would have arisen from his sense-perceptions; he would have confronted the world of sense as it were in a state of innocence, obedient in his every action to the impulses instilled into him by higher spiritual Beings. The instincts prompting him to action would not have been of exactly the same nature as those of the higher animals to-day, but more spiritual. His every deed on earth would have been prompted, not by mere impulses, but by a kind of spiritual instinct. As things were, under the influence of Lucifer man came earlier to the stage where he said: This delights and attracts me, that is repellent to me! He reached the stage of following his own impulses earlier than would otherwise have been the case; he became an independent being, with a measure of inner freedom. The consequence was that he was detached in a certain way from the spiritual world. To put it concisely, one might say: Without this influence of Lucifer, man would have remained a spiritualized animal—an animal who would gradually have developed a form nobler and more beautiful than could have been developed by man under the influence of Lucifer. Man would have remained far more of an angelic being if Lucifer's influence had not taken effect in the Lemurian epoch; but on the other hand, the higher Beings would have guided him as it were on leading-strings. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch something would have befallen him suddenly: his eyes would have been fully opened, the tapestry of the whole material world of sense would have lain around him—but gazing upon it he would simultaneously have perceived the Divine-Spiritual, a Divine-Spiritual world behind every physical object. If, therefore, in his former state of dependence man had looked back into the bosom of the Divine whence he had proceeded, beholding the Gods of Light sending their radiance into his soul, guiding and leading him, something would have come about for him—this is not a mere picture but corresponds in a high degree with the reality—namely, that the world of sense in its entirety would have been outspread in transparency before him, revealing behind it those other Divine-Spiritual Beings who had taken the place of what had now been lost. One spiritual world would have closed behind him and a new spiritual world opened before him. Man would have remained a child in the hands of higher, Divine-Spiritual Beings; independence would not have been established in the human soul.

It did not happen so, because Lucifer had approached man and made part of the underlying spiritual world invisible to him. The personal instincts, passions and desires which arose in the human astral body spread a cloud of darkness over the spiritual Beings of the world out of which man is born and who would otherwise have remained perpetually visible to him.

Hence in those great centers of the Oracles in ancient Atlantis the Initiates had expressly trained themselves to behold that part of the spiritual world which had been concealed as the result of Lucifer's influence. The aim of all the preparation undergone by the guardians and pupils of the ancient Oracles in the Atlantean Mysteries was to enable them to perceive that part of the spiritual world of light which in consequence of Lucifer's influence upon the astral body of man had withdrawn from his field of vision. And visible too, were those figures seen by man in the various conditions of soul running parallel with initiation, figures which from a world of Light penetrate into our world decked in the raiment provided by the astral world. In the ancient Oracle centers the Atlantean Initiate beheld in the spirit those figures who were in truth spiritual Beings of a higher rank than he—Beings who had not descended into the physical world and who had therefore remained invisible to ordinary sight when man's eyes were opened prematurely. But since Lucifer himself was an opponent of these worlds of Light, it was inevitable that he too should be visible to the initiates; and the hosts of Lucifer were visible to the Atlanteans who in their shadowy, clairvoyant consciousness, in the sleeping state and in conditions midway between sleeping and waking, could be transported into the spiritual world. When part of the world of Light was accessible to these Atlantean men, part of the world opposing the world of Light was also visible; the Luciferic hosts were visible—not Lucifer himself. These noble figures belonging to the world of light were as fascinating and splendid in their astral raiment as those of the opposing world of deception were fearsome and terrible.

Thus it was the influence of Lucifer in the evolution of humanity that made it possible for man to fall into error and evil but also to attain freedom. Had there been no Luciferic influence, the conditions I have been describing to you would have come about in the middle of the Atlantean epoch: the tapestry of the sense-world would have been outspread before man; the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms would have been materially visible to him; also the phenomena of nature and of the heavens, thunder, lightning, clouds, air—all would have been visible to external sight. But behind it all would have been the unmistakable presence of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Because Lucifer's influence had already taken effect in man's astral body, his physical body—at that time still transmutable—had been so prepared ever since the Lemurian epoch and on into the Atlantean, that it could not become the direct instrument for the physical world of sense with the spiritual world visibly behind it. And so man could not immediately behold the physical sense-world in the form in which it would simultaneously have revealed itself to him as a spiritual world. The three lower kingdoms of nature lay around him; the physical world became a veil over the spiritual world. Man could not, nor can he to this day, see directly into the spiritual world.

But because man had passed through this evolution, a different influence was able to assert itself in the middle of the Atlantean epoch—an influence from quite another side and not to be confused with that of Lucifer and his hosts. Although it was Lucifer who first made it possible for man to come under the sway of this other influence, although it was Lucifer who caused the human physical body to become denser than it would otherwise have become, nevertheless it was necessary for yet another influence to approach man in order to bring him completely into the material world of sense, in order to shut him off entirely from the spiritual world so that he was led to the illusion: There is no other world than the world of material existence outspread before me!

From the middle of the Atlantean epoch an opponent quite different in character from Lucifer approached man, namely the Being who casts such mist and darkness around his faculties of perception that he makes no effort nor unfolds any urge to fathom the secrets of the world of sense. If you picture to yourselves that under Lucifer's influence the sense-world became like a veil, through the influence of this second Being the physical world in its totality became like a dense rind, closing off the spiritual world. It was only the Atlantean Initiates who were able, through the preparation they had undergone, to pierce this dense covering of the material, physical world.

The Powers who approached man in order to obscure his vision of the other side of divine existence are brought to our notice for the first time in the teachings given to his followers and pupils by Zarathustra, the great leader of the ancient Persians. The mission of Zarathustra was to instill culture into a people who, unlike the ancient Indians, did not by nature yearn perpetually for the spiritual world. Zarathustra's mission was to impart to his people a culture directed to the world of sense, aiming at mastery of the material world through means dependent upon the efforts and labors of physical man. In the civilization of ancient Persia, therefore, man was less subject to the influence of Lucifer than to the influence of that Being who since the middle of the Atlantean epoch had approached mankind, with the result that many of the Initiates at that time had lapsed into the practice of a form of black magic; having been led astray by this tempter, they misused for the purposes of the physical-material world what was accessible to them from the spiritual world. The mighty influence of the forces of black magic which finally led to the destruction of Atlantis had its origin in the temptations of that Being whom Zarathustra taught his people to know as Ahriman (“Angra Mainyu”), the Being who opposed the God of Light proclaimed by Zarathustra as “Ahura Mazdao”, the “Great Aura”.

These two figures—Lucifer and Ahriman—must be clearly distinguished from each other. For Lucifer is a Being who detached himself from the spiritual hosts of heaven after the separation of the sun, whereas Ahriman had already broken away before the separation of the sun and is an embodiment of quite different powers. The result of Lucifer's influence in the Lemurian epoch was merely the corruption of the faculty, still possessed by man in the Atlantean epoch, to manipulate the forces of air and water. In the book entitled From the Akasha Chronicle you will have read that in Atlantean times the seminal forces in plant and animal were still at man's command and could be drawn forth just as the forces used in the form of steam for propelling machines can be extracted from mineral coal to-day. I have told you that when these forces are drawn forth they are connected in a mysterious way with the nature-forces in wind, weather and the like; and if applied by man for purposes running counter to the divine purposes, these nature-forces are called into action against him.

Here lies the cause of the Atlantean flood and of the devastation wrought by the powers of nature which led to the disappearance of the whole continent of Atlantis. But even before that time, man had lost command over the forces of fire and the power to ally them with certain mysterious forces of the earth. Power over the forces of fire and earth in a certain combination had already been withdrawn from man. But now—through the influence of Ahriman and his accomplices—he again acquired a certain mastery over the forces of fire and earth, with dire consequences. And much that is to be heard about the use of fire in ancient Persia is connected with what I am now telling you. Many forces that are applied in black magic and are connected with it, lead to the result that man lays hold of forces of an entirely different nature and thus gains an influence over fire and earth, with terrible and devastating results. The practice of black magic by the descendants of the Atlanteans in ancient Persia would still have been effective had not the teachings of Zarathustra revealed how Ahriman, as an opposing power, ensnares man and clouds his vision of the spiritual reality behind the world of sense. Thus through Zarathustra and his followers, influence was brought to bear upon a large part of Post-Atlantean civilization; on the one hand men were taught of the workings of the sublime God of Light to whom they may turn, and, on the other, of the malefic power of Ahriman and his hosts.

Ahriman works upon man in countless, infinitely diverse ways.—I have told you that the Event of the Mystery of Golgotha was a moment of supreme importance for the evolution of the world. The Christ appeared in the realm into which man enters after death, where Ahriman's influence was even mightier than in the world around man here on earth between birth and death. In the realm of existence between death and rebirth, Ahriman's influences worked upon man with terrible, overwhelming power. And if nothing else had taken place, utter darkness would gradually have closed in upon man in the ‘realm of Shades’—as it was correctly designated by the ancient Greeks. A condition of complete isolation, leading to the intensification of egoism would have set in between death and rebirth; man would have been born into his new life as a gross and overweening egotist. Hence it is more than a figure of speech to say that after the Event of Golgotha, at the moment when the Blood flowed from the wounds, the Christ appeared in yonder world, in the realm of the Shades, and cast Ahriman into fetters. Although Ahriman's influence remained and is really the origin of all materialistic thinking on the part of man, although this influence can be paralyzed only if men receive into themselves the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, nevertheless they can draw from that Event a power which enables them to find their way once again into the Divine-Spiritual world.

Thus it was to Ahriman that the faculty of human cognition was primarily directed. Ahriman was a Being whose existence was divined by men, a Being of whom they had some knowledge through the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra; and from there the knowledge of Ahriman spread among the other peoples and into their world of ideas. Ahriman with his hosts appears as a figure with the most diverse names among the civilized peoples. And owing to the peculiar conditions obtaining in the souls of the European peoples who had remained farthest in the rear of the migrations from West to East, who had been less affected than the others by what had transpired in the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian and even in the Greco-Latin civilizations—owing to these circumstances there prevailed among the European peoples from whom the Fifth Epoch of culture was to be born, an attitude of soul which regarded Ahriman alone as a figure of dread. And while many different names were adopted—as for example, “Mephistopheles” among the Hebrew people—in Europe the figure of Ahriman became the “Devil” in his various forms.

Obviously, therefore, we are gazing here into a concatenation of happenings in the spiritual worlds and many a man who claims to be above medieval superstitions will do well to remember the words in Faust:

“The little folk ne'er scent the Devil
E'en though he have them by the collar”.

It is precisely because man closes his spiritual eyes to this influence that he succumbs to it so completely. Goethe's “Mephistopheles” is none other than the figure of Ahriman and must not be confused with Lucifer. All the errors cropping up here and there in commentaries on Faust originate from this confusion—although it was indeed Lucifer who first paved the way for Ahriman's influence. In studying Ahriman one is therefore led back to an original influence of Lucifer, the nature of which can only become clear after long preparatory efforts have been made to understand this intimate connection.

The subtle difference between the two Beings must not be overlooked. The essential point is that, fundamentally speaking, Lucifer had brought man under the influence of the powers connected with air and water only; whereas it was Ahriman-Mephistopheles who has subjected him to the influence of far more deadly powers and the civilizations immediately to come will see the appearance of many things connected with Ahriman's influence. Through this influence the seeker for the spirit who does not stand upon firm and sure foundations can readily fall prey to the most terrible illusion and deception. For Ahriman is a spirit who sets out to spread deception as to the true nature of the sense-world, especially as an expression of the spiritual world. When a man has a tendency to abnormal, somnambulistic states or through certain wrongful training awakens occult forces whereby egoism is intensified, then Ahriman or Mephistopheles has a ready influence precisely upon these occult forces, an influence that can soon become overwhelmingly powerful. Whereas Lucifer's influence can only bring it about that what confronts a man from the spiritual world (and this applies also to one who is receiving wrongful training) appears to him as an astral form visible to the astral body, the manifestations due to the influence of Ahriman are brought to light in that the evil influences on the physical body press through into the etheric body and then become visible as phantoms.

In the influences of Ahriman, therefore, we have to do with powers of a much lower nature than the influences of Lucifer. Lucifer's influences can never become as evil as the influences of Ahriman and of those Beings who are connected with the powers of fire. The influence of Ahriman or Mephistopheles can bring it about that in order to attain occult knowledge a man is induced, for example, to undertake certain measures with his physical body. The method that consists in the use and misuse of the physical body is the most evil that can possibly be applied for the purpose of acquiring occult powers. It is a fact that in certain school of black magic such practices are taught in abundance. One of the most terrible perversions to which man may be subject occurs when the forces of the physical body are taken as the starting-point for occult training.

It is not possible here to enter into closer detail than the indication that all machinations consisting in any way of a misuse of the forces of the physical body emanate from the influences of Ahriman; and because the effect of this penetrates into man's etheric body, it works as a world of phantoms that is nothing else than the garment of powers which drag man down to a level below that of true manhood. Nearly every ancient civilization—the Indian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Greco-Latin—had its period of decadence; so too the Mysteries, when the Mystery-traditions were no longer preserved in their purity. During these periods many of those who were either pupils of the Initiates but unable to remain at their level or men to whom the secrets of the Mysteries had been unlawfully betrayed, had fallen into perverse and evil paths. Centers of black magic and its forces originated from these influences and have persisted to this day.

Ahriman is a spirit of lies, a spirit who conjures illusions before men, working together with his confederates in a spiritual world. Ahriman himself is no mirage—far from it! But what is conjured before men's eyes of spirit under his influence—that is mirage, illusion. When a man's desires and passions flow along evil paths and at the same time he lends himself in any way to occult practices, then the occult forces which are awakened penetrate into the etheric body and the most evil powers of corruption appear among the illusory images which may themselves often be majestic, awe-inspiring. Such is the terrible influence of Ahriman upon man.

From what has been said you can gather that through Christ's Coming, Ahriman has been cast into fetters—if this expression may be used—but only, of course, for those who endeavor unceasingly to fathom the Christ-Mystery. And outside the forces streaming from the Christ-Mystery, protection in the world against the influence of Ahriman will steadily diminish. In a certain sense—and many signs proclaim it—our epoch courts these influences of Ahriman. In certain occult teachings the hosts of Ahriman are also called the Asuras. These are of course, the evil Asuras who at a certain time fell away from the evolutionary path of the Asuras who endowed man with personality. It has already been indicated that these are spiritual Beings who detached themselves from the evolution of the earth before the separation of the sun.

Up to now we have been describing merely the terrible influence that Ahriman can exercise upon a certain abnormal process of development, one that proceeds along occult paths. But in a certain respect the whole of mankind came under the influence of Ahriman during the second half of the Atlantean epoch. The whole Post-Atlantean epoch has within it, in a certain sense, the aftermath of Ahriman's influence—in one region of the earth more, in another less. But Ahriman's influence has asserted itself everywhere and all the teachings given to the peoples by the ancient Initiates concerning the Spirits of Light who are the opponents of Ahriman were given primarily in order to draw these peoples away from Ahriman's influence. It was a good, wisely led education of mankind.

But let us not forget that since that time the destiny of Ahriman has been interwoven in a certain sense with the destiny of humanity, and manifold happenings, of which the uninitiated can know nothing, keep the whole karma of humanity in perpetual connection with the karma of Ahriman. To understand what will now be said, we must realize that over and above the karma which belongs to every individual human being, there is at every stage of existence a universal karmic law. All the categories of beings have their karma—the karma of the one differing from that of the other. But karma operates through every realm of existence and there are things in the karma of mankind, in the karma of a people, of a community or other group of human beings, which must be regarded as collective karma, so that in certain circumstances the individual can be drawn into the sway of the collective karma. It will not always be easy for one who cannot penetrate to the root of the matter to discern exactly where the influences of the powers concerned lie in the case of human beings overtaken by such a destiny. An individual within some community may well be entirely guiltless as far as his own karma is concerned; but because he stands within a field of collective karma, calamity may befall him. If, however, he is entirely guiltless, compensation will be made in later incarnations.

In the wider connection we must look not only at the karma of the past but also think of the karma of the future. A terrible fate may befall a whole group of human beings; the reason why just this group should suffer such a destiny is not to be discovered. Someone who might be capable of investigating the karma of an individual will in certain circumstances be unable to find anything at all that could have led to this tragic fate, for the threads of karma are extremely complicated. The cause of such karmic happenings may lie far, far away—but it is connected with these people nevertheless. And it may be that the whole group, while guiltless, has been overtaken by some collective karma which could not overtake those immediately guilty, because circumstances did not make this possible. In such cases the only thing that can be said is this: In the total karma of an individual, everything is ultimately balanced out, including what befalls him without guilt on his part; it is all inscribed in his karma and compensation in the fullest sense will be made in future time.—Therefore in considering the law of karma we must also take into account the karma of the future. Nor must it be forgotten that man is not an isolated being but that every individual has to share jointly in the collective karma of humanity. We must remember, too, that man, together with humanity, is connected with those hierarchies of Beings who have not entered into the physical world and that he is also drawn into the karma of the hierarchies. In the destinies of mankind in the spiritual world a great deal appears the connections of which are not to be sought in the immediate circumstances, but the karmic consequences come to pass inevitably. Since the second half of the Atlantean epoch, Ahriman's karma has been linked with the karma of mankind. Where, then, are the deeds of Ahriman, over and above what is wrought by him in the bodies of men in order to spread phantoms and illusion over the world of sense? Where are these other deeds?

Everything in the world has, as it were, two sides, one pertaining more to man as a spiritual being, the other to what has developed as the kingdoms of nature around him. The earth is the arena of man's existence. To the eye of spirit this earth is revealed as a combination of different layers or strata. The outermost stratum is called the “Mineral Earth” or “Mineral Stratum” because it contains only such substances as are to be found in the ground under our feet. This is the shallowest stratum, relatively speaking. Then begins the “Fluidic Earth”, the material constitution of which is entirely different from that of the “mineral” stratum above it. This second stratum is, as it were, endowed with inner life; and only because the solid, mineral stratum is spread over it are the inner forces of this second stratum held together. If they were released they would instantaneously disperse into cosmic space. This stratum, therefore, lies under tremendous pressure. A third stratum is the “Vapor Earth”. It is not a material vapor such as arises on the earth's surface but in this third stratum the substance itself is imbued with inner forces, comparable only with the passions, the inner urges and impulses of man. Whereas on the earth it is only beings like animals and men who can unfold passions, this third stratum—just as the substances of the earth are permeated by forces of magnetism and warmth—is permeated in a material sense with forces similar to those we know as human and animal passions and impulses. The fourth or “Form Stratum” is so designated because it contains the material and the forces of what are encountered in the mineral part of the earth as entities cast into form. And the characteristic of the fifth stratum, or “Fertility Earth” is that even as material it teems with infinite fertility. If you were to get hold of part of this stratum it would perpetually be sending forth new impulses, new sproutings; rampant fertility is the intrinsic quality of this stratum. Then we come to the sixth stratum, the “Fire Earth”, containing as “substances” within it, forces that can bring about terrible havoc and destruction. It is actually into these forces that the primordial Fire has been banished.

In and from this stratum the realm of Ahriman operates—in a material sense. What manifests in the phenomena of outer nature, in air and water, in cloud formations, in lightning and thunder—all this is, so to speak, a last vestige on the earth's surface, of forces that were already connected with ancient Saturn and separated from the earth together with the sun. By what is working in these forces, the inner fire-forces of the earth are placed in the service of Ahriman. There he has the center of his activity; and whereas his spiritual influences make their way to the souls of men and lead them to error, we see how Ahriman—in a certain respect shackled—has certain foci for his activity in the interior of the earth. Were we to understand the mysterious connections of what has come to pass on the earth under Ahriman's influence and what Ahriman's own karma has become in consequence of this, we should recognize in the quakes and tremors of the earth the connection between such grievous, tragic happenings in nature and the power that holds sway on the earth. These manifestations are something that has remained since ancient times as a reaction on the earth against the good Beings of Light.

Thus forces allied with the Beings who were thrust away from their connection with the earth at the time when the good Beings of light established the beneficent phenomena around the earth-globe, are active, and in a certain sense we can recognize the echoings of these fire-forces which in earlier times were withdrawn from man's control, in what is wrought by fire in such terrible manifestations of nature. Although the karma of Ahriman has been linked with that of humanity since the time of Atlantis, the suggestion should not arise that any guilt is to be attributed to those who are victims of what Ahriman's karma has evoked. Such happenings are connected with the collective karma of humanity in which the individual has also to share. The causes which produce their effects in particular localities as the workings of Ahriman's karma often lie somewhere else entirely. It is however these particular places which afford the necessary opportunity.

There we see a connection which seems to be like a relic of catastrophes undergone by humanity in the far distant past. The power to work upon fire which man had formerly possessed, was withdrawn from him. Hence ancient Lemuria was brought to its destruction by the fire of the passions of men. The same fire that is now below was then above; it receded from the earth's surface and the same fire that issued as a kind of extract from the primordial fire is the inorganic, mineral fire of to-day. So too it was with the forces working through air and water which, again by way of the passions of men, led to the Atlantean catastrophes. These catastrophes were evoked by the collective karma of humanity but a relic has remained and this relic awakens the echoes of those earlier catastrophes. Our volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are nothing else than the echoes of these catastrophes. But it should never so much as occur to anyone to attach an iota of guilt to the victim of such a calamity or to withhold compassion in the fullest measure. It must be absolutely clear to an anthroposophist that the karma of these individuals has nothing to do with the guilt to which the catastrophes are due and it should never occur to him to withhold help from anyone because—to put it trivially—he believes in karma and therefore assumes that this destiny was brought on by the man himself. Karma demands of us that we help human beings because we may be sure that our help means something that is written in their karma and will turn that karma in a more favorable direction. Understanding that is based upon the recognition of karma must necessarily lead to compassion; our compassion for the victims of such catastrophes will be all the greater, for our knowledge tells us that there is a collective karma of humanity from which the individual members have to suffer, that just as such happenings are brought about by humanity as one whole, so too must humanity be answerable for them; we must regard such a destiny as our own and help not only out of a spontaneous impulse but because we know that we are involved in the karma of humanity and share the guilt incurred!

A question was handed to me this morning about earthquake catastrophes. The question runs as follows: “What is the occult explanation of earthquakes? Can they be foreseen? If particular catastrophes can be foreseen, why should it not be possible to give some warning beforehand? Such a warning might possibly be ineffective the first time but certainly not on another occasion.”

You may remember something of what was said at the end of the lecture on the interior of the earth about the possibility of earthquakes. We will not consider that now but enter directly into this question. In reality it has two sides. The one is: Whether from the occult connections which can be discerned, earthquakes can be foreseen? The answer to this is that the knowledge of such matters belongs to the deepest realm of occult science. In respect of a particular event on the earth, an event with roots as deeply laid as those described to-day, and connected with causes extending widely over the earth—in respect of such an event it is absolutely correct to say that even in a particular case an indication of time can be given. It would certainly be possible for the occultist to give such an indication. But the other side of the question is: whether it is permissible for such indications to be given?—For one who confronts the occult secrets from outside it will seem almost a matter of course that the answer will be “Yes!” And yet the truth is that in regard to such events it is actually only twice or three times in any one century—at the very most, twice or three times—that any prediction can be announced from the centers of Initiation. For you must remember that these things are connected with the karma of humanity as a whole and if, for example, they were avoided in one instance they would inevitably occur in some other place and in a different form. The prediction itself would alter nothing. And just think what a terrible encroachment it would be into the karma of the earth as a whole if human measures were adopted to prevent such happenings. The reaction would be so fearful, so violent, that only in very rare and exceptional cases would a high Initiate, foreseeing an earthquake, be able to make use of his knowledge to help himself or those near him. With full knowledge he would have to face his end, as a matter of course! For these things that have been implicit in the karma of humanity for thousands and millions of years cannot be paralyzed by measures adopted during one brief period of evolution.—But there is still more to add.

It has been said already that this very subject is one of the most difficult of all in occult investigation. It is far easier to know something about the astral world, the devachanic world, even about the farthest planets, than about the interior of the earth. Most things one hears are the purest trash, because, as I say, it is one of the most difficult subjects in occultism. The same is true of matters that are connected with these elemental catastrophes. And above all you must realize that clairvoyance is not a matter of just sitting down, inducing a particular condition, and then being able to say what is going on in the whole universe, up to the highest spheres. It is by no means so. To believe any such thing would be as “clever” as to say: “You have the faculty of perception in the physical world; but why was it that when 12 o'clock came and you were sitting in your room, you were neither astonished by nor did you see what happened outside by the River Spree at that hour?” There are hindrances to seership. If the seer in question had gone for a walk at 12 o'clock he would probably have seen what happened. It is not the case that all worlds are immediately disclosed through the mere resolve to induce in oneself the requisite condition. The seer has to find his way to the events and investigate them, and these investigations are of the most difficult kind because the hindrances are greatest.—And perhaps at this point something may be said about these hindrances.

If a man is able to walk about on his two legs, you can deprive him of this faculty not only by amputating his legs but also by shutting him up in a cell; then he can no longer walk about. In the same way there are hindrances to occult investigation and in the domain of which we are speaking they are immensely powerful. I will tell you one of the main hindrances and in doing so introduce you to a mysterious relationship. The greatest hindrance to occult investigation in this domain is constituted by the methods and trend of modern materialistic science. The countless illusions and fallacies accumulating in materialistic science to-day, all the research that is not only futile but is prompted by the vanities of men—these are things which in their effects in the higher worlds make investigation into these manifestations and free vision in the higher world impossible or to say the least, extremely difficult. Free vision is clouded as a result of the materialistic research pursued here on earth. It is by no means easy to get to the root of these things. But only wait for the time when spiritual science has become more widespread and when through its influence the materialistic superstitions prevailing in our world will be swept away! Once the nonsensical analogies and hypotheses leading to all kinds of conjectures about the interior of the earth are cast aside, you will see that when spiritual science has itself been integrated into the karma of humanity, when it finds the way to men's souls and is able from there to overcome the opposing powers and materialistic superstitions, when further research can be made into all that is connected with the bitterest foe of mankind, that Being who fetters man's vision within the world of sense—you will see that it will then be possible, even externally, to influence the karma of humanity in the sense that the dire results of such happenings may be alleviated. The reason why the Initiates must be silent about happenings connected with the great karma of humanity is to be found in the materialistic superstitions of men. Many scientific pursuits are in no way imbued with the Faustian striving for truth but prompted entirely by vanity and ambition. How much scientific research is promoted in the world simply because an individual is seeking for something that will be to his personal advantage! If you sum up all these things you will realize the strength of the force that obstructs vision into the world behind the external phenomena of the material world. Not until this fog has been cleared away will the time come when, in respect of certain mysterious manifestations of nature emanating from the foes of mankind and trespassing deeply into human life, it will be possible for help—and then in no small measure—to be given to mankind. Until that time comes there is no such possibility.

I am well aware that these questions have been given a turn not always in the mind of the one who asks them. But it is often the fate of occult science to be obliged to formulate the questions in the right way before they can be correctly answered. Again do not take this to mean that the mysterious connection between earthquakes and the karma of humanity is a secret that cannot be investigated. It can be investigated but there are reasons why only the most commonplace aspects of such questions can be presented to the world to-day. Let the knowledge reach mankind through spiritual science that there is a connection between the deeds of men and happenings in nature and then the time will come when these things can be answered in the way the question demands. Spiritual science may pass through many destinies; its influence may even be crippled, remaining within narrow and restricted circles. Nevertheless it will make its way through mankind, will be integrated into the karma of humanity, and then the possibility will be created for individuals themselves to have an effect upon the karma of humanity as a whole.