The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Yesterday we considered the Building from the outside, from different aspects. To-day we will approach it from the inside and will try to bring before our mind the idea of the inside architecture. This idea of the inside architecture might be described something in this way. When one approaches the Building as it appears at present from the outside, the idea called up through the impression that one gets, is, that here is an enclosure that in a way is cut off from the rest of the world, and containing an idea in itself which has to be introduced into the present evolution of humanity; something that has a new element to be brought into the evolution of humanity. The outward forms point to this something that is new in the contemplation of the universe. They aim at a new style. If the Goetheanum had been built in the old style of architecture, it would not have been possible to receive this particular impression that I have to emphasise. This inner architecture is now to be shown in contrast to the outer.

[ 2 ] When we come from the terrace through the main entrance and step into the first Hall, turn round and then towards the West side, we see this picture. We have before our view that which shuts off the space above, the first two pillars to the left and the right. As we go a step further we see here the capital of the first column to the right and left, and above that the architrave. If you will notice that which is essential you will mark the progressive development in the configuration in the capitals of the columns as well as in the architrave over the capitals.

[ 3 ] Yesterday I told you that the chief thing about this Building is that everything is felt to be in its place by reason of an inner necessity, exactly as a limb of an organic body is felt to be in the place determined by an inner necessity of the organism. You can see that everything that is included within the Building is an attempt to express the idea which has inspired the Building, so that it does not appear as a habitation constructed with walls in which something arbitrary here and there is placed. No, everything included in the Building itself is in organic union with its spiritual idea, You can be sure when you look at the next picture (1A) that it is in vital in connection with the one that has gone before. This is the organ left (photographed as you see from the model) which will show that also here the organ is built in full harmony with the rest of the architecture, so that you have not the feeling that it has been added but that it is a part of the whole form, as if the organ had actually grown out of the architecture. That is the fundamental principle upon which the whole Building is carried out.

[ 4 ] In the next picture (31) you see the first pillar and I want to call your special attention to the way in which the motive of every pillar develops out of the one that has gone before in a living metamorphosis. In order to do this we must look at the next picture (32) where the second pillar develops out of the first and where also the architrave motive is transformed in a developing metamorphosis, every succeeding form springing after its own law from the form which precedes it. You see here how the second pillar develops itself out of the first—that is to say when you take the forms which reach up from below and those which reach down from above, and when you picture to yourself how each succeeding leaf of a plant issues through metamorphosis out of the foregoing leaf, then you will realise how the form of the second pillar develops out of the form of the first pillar. The whole of it is to be found in continuing metamorphosis.

[ 5 ] If you would really get an understanding of what is meant, then you will of course be wrong if you attach exaggerated importance to the nomenclature which as a matter of fact only—relates to exterior conditions.

The first pillar has been called Saturn, the second pillar Sun and so forth. Well, that is conceivable and that nomenclature is from a certain standpoint justifiable. But to abide by such nomenclature would of course be most inartistic. The essential thing is the relation of the second pillar to the first and the first to the second pillar. The essential thing is the change from one form into another for it is just in this change from one form into the other that the laws of world order are to be found, and ordain the change from Saturn formation into the Sun formation. I do not mean to say that these pillars are symbolic of Saturn and Sun, I simply mean that the law of change from Saturn to Sun is an inward law whose workings can be seen. This inner law whose workings can be seen has been expressed here in the sequence of the form.

We will now see the second pillar by itself.

In the next picture we show the second and third pillars together with their particular architraves.

[ 6 ] You see how in the first place the capitals are pictured in progressive metamorphosis and also how the architrave motif progresses, each form building itself up out, of the form that has gone before. Whenever you see a curve or a turn you must realise that this is not to be considered only as regards its own form but always in relation with the form that has gone before and that which is to come after. Through the entire development here neither a capital nor an architrave motif can be understood by itself. They exist as a sequence. They exist in their relationship one to the other. That is what we chew here. That is the truth which expresses the life element. Now we shall see the third pillar by itself.

[ 7 ] Now then, we will see the third and fourth pillars together with their architraves. We shall see as we continue that things become more and more complicated. That is in accordance with the nature of evolution. Evolution proceeds from the simple forms to the more complicated. You see here that the fourth motif is really very complicated in relation to the one that has gone before and especially the architrave motif is becoming more and more complicated.

We will now see the fourth pillar by itself.

[ 8 ] As I have said before this pillar and this motif must be seen in their relation to all the rest. That is the essential thing in all the ideas expressed in this Building. Whereas elsewhere one finds repetition, here one has a progressive evolution. This is really the essential new element that has been brought into the idea of this Building. Whereas elsewhere the dynamics of Geometry are put before us in repetition so that like balances like here one is concerned with the growth of the one out of the other. Look at them again - this pillar and the following one—together with their own architraves. Here we see how the moss complicated motif will be found in the capital of the 5th pillar and how the architrave motif becomes extremely complicated as it develops from the simple form which was there at the beginning to these very complicated forms.

We will now look at the 5th capital by itself.

[ 9 ] Perhaps the form of this capital suggests to you the staff of Mercury wound about with snakes but you must not regard it as though it stood by itself - you must look at it as though it were veritably a living metamorphosis from that which precedes it—as a composition that has not come into being as an isolated idea.

You will see if you once again change this form according to law and also according to the principle of progressive change the next form will develop out of this one.

We will now see this with the next once more and the contents of its capital. [ 10 ] You have only to notice how certain lines which wind themselves about this Mercury motifs branch out from one another, how the Mercury motif with its small top and its points directed downwards appears to be growing larger, and notice how that which you see there at the edge grows to meet what is underneath it and is united with the Mercury motif. Then you will understand how forms which are in living movement grow through and grow out of each other, and that the succeeding motive is developed from that which has gone before.

[ 11 ] But I must draw your attention to one thing. Just now when we have passed the middle point and we look at the next motive and compare it with the one that has gone before you might be inclined to say that this is more simple than the previous one. This is a point which must be quite clearly stated. If you follow the idea merely intellectually it may seem to you as if evolution consists in the fact that beginning from the most simple forms it proceeds to more and more complicated forms so that the last form will be a perfection of complexity. That is however not the case. A wholly false idea of evolution has come into being in modern times owing to this mistake. It is just when we follow the idea of evolution in Art asp I had to do in order to model these capitals and architraves one from another that VT identify ourselves with the real principle of evolution in nature and indeed in the world. You have then to model things after the pattern of evolution in the world and in nature, then you get an inner vision of what evolution really is. The marvellous and significant thing is that this trend at first is towards the more complicated forms but just about at the centre, just when you have what is most complicated, this trend is reversed. and turns again towards the simple.

Thus it has been shown in an artistic manner out of its own nature that when the most complicated stage has been achieved there come; a return to the simple and the complicated has to appear again in its most simple manifestations

[ 12 ] I should like very specially to explain to you this principle of evolution. Granted we had to follow the course of evolution through any form of metamorphosis we should say this here is a simple form (see drawing 1st form) Now we go a little further and see how a subsequent form can grow out of this one. Now let us understand how the following form grows out of this one. Here we have an illustration of the complicated which has grown out of the simple (the second form).

[ 13 ] The next still more complicated form could be moulded in this way (see 3rd form). Now you have the third form having grown out of the previous one. Follow the development further so that it becomes apparent to you what is organic and growing and in this way you will feel yourself forced from a certain point onward. Through this relationship (or connection) in which you come with the living principle of evolution you feel yourself forced onward to mould not something apparently more complicated but something like this (see drawing 4th form and the next you would feel obliged to mould in this way (see 3th form); that is if you are really immersed in that which in nature is the origin of the principle of evolution and the power of evolution. Then you would get a development which is really modelled from nature—that is, from the simple to the complicated, then again to the simple. [ 14 ] But this simple form which one now achieves has a certain quality It is indeed apparently simple but if you compare this simple form with the simplicity of the first form you will say to yourself “here is a simple roughly drawn line” (referring to the first one) “but here is a change” and one has the feeling that one can see in it what has gone before so that in a certain sense what has gone before is actually included in it and so you feel that out of the complicated comes the simple, in so far as this simple form builds itself up on a mysteriously complicated element (see the red line). So that the later evolution develops its simplicity out of the complicated.

[ 15 ] It is marvellous how if one traces evolution through Art we identify ourselves with what evolution really is in nature. You see how we are led in this way to something that I have often pointed out If we follow the principles of evolution merely intellectually, then it is easy to believe that humanity is the most perfect result in the development of the organic creation and that it is also the most complicated. This is not true. If we contemplate a human organ—say the eye—we find that the human eye as seen from outside is certainly not the most complicated eye. The eyes of certain lower organisms are much more complicated. They grow organs like the sword appendix; the fan of lower organic beings which if; like the continuation of the blood vessels in the eye.

In man these organs have apparently entirely disappeared and the human eye has returned to a simpler form, but simpler according to the principle of that which I have here shown in Art.

[ 16 ] Now as I have said, if one contemplates this simplicity which develops out of the complicated—one has the feeling that this. line has to be completed in thought (dotted line). Simplicity is created from concealed complexity. Simplicity is what is seen outwardly, that is actually to in nature. Man has no appendix in the eye, and apparently no fan but if one could add to the physical eye the etheric, then there should be added that which in the lower organic beings is developed physically. Just in the same way as (see drawing) I had to add, the dotted line here, just as I had to build up that which is externally visible on the foundation of this by the dotted line, so the human eye in its simplicity, in its physical; simplicity is formed out of a complicated etheric eye-formation: the apparently simple physical out of the complicated etheric.

[ 17 ] This is a proof to you that when we really grow into the inner form in the way that the metamorphosis of forms demands, we grow into the creative principle of nature herself. For then we understand for the first time how evolution progresses in nature, and here, dear friend; you can see how necessary it is in order to understand a certain inward power of development that we must learn to know nature not only in intellectual ideas but to grasp her forms with the imagination of the artist. This is the thing that you must realise as most important in every sense of the word. If one is to try in the way that science till now has done to get at nature with ideas and conceptions of an intellectual kind one will never grasp nature in her fullness of evolution. One will, only grasp nature in her fullness of evolution when one has built up in pictures and in imaginations what are otherwise intellectual ideas and so-called natural laws, for nature creates not in intellectual ideas but in pictures and in imaginations. [ 18 ] This is the main impression produced by our Building that it indicates to what kind, of representation we must progress if we would come to a satisfactory view of the world especially, in relation to the social future of mankind. The old world beliefs were developed from imaginations. You know the root of world beliefs is not to be found in intellectual ideas hut in pictures, in legends, in myths, and through pictures and images man sought to understand the forces which work in human life. And pictures and images were transformed into social impulses. All that originally came from the old pictures is to-day in a process of transformation and has to-day changed into intellectual conceptions; and intellectual conceptions cannot suffice for life. From this comes the present conception of the world with its dead element, with its destructive element containing within it the seed of death. And the conceptions of the world which appear new and young make nothing but sentimental and vogue claims.

[ 19 ] Nothing fruitful for the future can develop out of that which today appears in the form of social ideas. Anything fruitful for the future must be born out of an imaginative conception of the forces of growth. These must ever be comprehended in their actual inner reality by means of such simple forms. In this Building the principle that lives and works creatively in nature can be realised from within. It will be seen then from the moulding of isolated forms that so far as this Building is concerned you have before you that which you really need in order to build up a vies of the world and a social life for the future.

[ 20 ] It was of course a drawback that in the beginning the sectarian feelings of a great many people have given a false meaning to that which this building is meant to express, through over much symbolizing; and there have been people who consider it highly important that we should any that this is the Venus column, that the Saturn etc. These things that have a mystical flavour with which the mind can act a pretty play had to come to an end. In our time the task-of humanity is really something quite different from a mystical playing with ideas. And the main thing is that we deal with the clearest conceptions, and act with fullest consciousness—that is with that which transcends everyday consciousness—what I may call the super-consciousness, but which never descends to sub-consciousness. We must overcome all that pertains to day-dreaming, we must overcome all false and deadening mysticism. For higher than this mysticism, my dear friends, stands the everyday consciousness. For example while a raster Eckhardt or a John Tauler were in harmony with their particular time, to-day anyone who turned to this same consciousness which John Tauler or raster Eckhardt had would be entirely out of place in our world order. For the task of to-day is to get further, to awaken, not to go to sleep. There is much too pronounced an attitude among men for the pseudo-mystical, even among those who believe that they are on a better path But they only believe it. But there is still much too much of the idea that if we want to attain to spiritual truth, we can go to sleep a bit, we can dream a little, one can be a sentimental mystic. That is what is most injurious to the culture of our time. Instead of sinking from every-day consciousness into dreams we cannot sufficiently strive to climb out of the everyday consciousness to the more clear, to the super-consciousness.

[ 21 ] For this reason this Building precisely through its artistic side had to make certain claims. Men to-day when they are confronted with Art tend to become a little dreamy and where possible avoid thinking, which is so very exhausting, when we are following our everyday concerns, cooking or tending machines or planning architecture or anything of the kind, and we think we will rest a little when we are enjoying Art; we think we can sleep a little. This Building is not for that kind of sleeping consciousness. People with this kind of sleeping consciousness come into this Building and they say “we do not understand this.” We understand it in the moment we follow with the eye every turn, every curve—where we with the eye of the soul follow the physical eye—where we do not concern ourselves with all the rubbish about names, Saturn or or Sun, Mercury pillar etc.—where we follow the forms and see how one grows out of the other, how everything lives and interweaves, when we leave our false mysticism behind and really exert ourselves to follow these forms.

[ 22 ] We see that everything is not calculated to induce sleep but is for the purpose of awakening, for a shaking-up and not less for a becoming more aware than in ordinary life. This is the thing for instance, which pains me most. It is when I see again and again that people so love sleep even here in the Anthroposophical Society. They would like to pour out rest over everything and this is really the satisfaction of a selfish desire for sleep. Well, here the thing with which we are concerned is to become wider awake than we are in ordinary life. This Building can only be perceived in its Art form - in its inner artistic mobility when as we enter it we allow ourselves to be profoundly stirred and become more awake and aware than we are in everyday conditions. In ordinary life we sleep a great deal to-day, and it is from this sleep that our principle misfortunes come. [ 23 ] That is why every single form must be conceived actively. We must be able to set ourselves inside these forms and this Building is a living protest against all morbid mysticism. The worst of it is that even from well-intentioned people a certain mystical fog has spread itself around this Building through gossip and chatter, so that other people are able to repeat it: If only we could deal with the objections of our enemies with the reply that those who love this Building are concerned with supremely active life' But we must have a desire for this supremely active life. [ 24 ] We must seek here not soul-spiritual indulgence but soul-spiritual activity.

We must grow and not let ourselves be lulled in dreams. This is the thing which I specially wish to say with regard to this Building. If with the whole soul we actively identify ourselves with the living movement, with every single form which has been built into the whole, then we shall see that while this Building gives the impression from the outside, “here within is something which wants to reveal itself to the world,” in the moment when we enter it the forms will so work that the walls themselves in a certain sense will disappear. That is a new thing, viz, the way in which walls have been conceived in regard to this Building. Up to the present time, walls have always been built in such a way that they form an enclosure. The Art principle in these walls is that they roll themselves up so that we have the feeling the walls do not enclose us, the pillars do not stand there in order to define a limit. But the thing that is expressed in the pillars, the thing that is expressed in the walls break through the walls and leads us into living touch with the whole universe.

The Building is shaped out of the universe. Just as the world itself in its living interweaving life, in its spheric harmony, so is this building intended. That is the thing we aspire to in our eurhythmics. Not to allow that kind of sleep to enter into our eurhythmic forms but that a greater awareness shall take place in the action of eurhythmics than takes place in ordinary life, which we never could express in ordinary life. The performer of Eurhythmics should not be overcome in the struggle he has to wage continually against sleepiness in life.

[ 25 ] We will now continue further with the pictures. This is then the pillar by itself in which you can see how when man comes to this perfection he comes outwardly to the perfection of simplicity.

[ 26 ] Now here you see the last two pillars with their architraves. Everything has become simple although it has arrived at perfection. You see the marvellous thing about this is that through the harmony between nature and creative Art other harmonies now manifest themselves that have not been noticed before. If you take the capital of the first pillar you can place that which was convex into the concave form of the last pillar and vice versa. This was not intentional. This is something which has been born out of itself. The convexity of the first Pillar fit into the concavity of the seventh. The convexity of the third pillar in the concavity of the fifth, and the centre pillar with its capital stands quite independently alone. These are things which are born, just as in nature certain realities are born in progressive metamorphosis which do not need to be foreseen at all but seem like a kind of crux of the experiment which one discovers only at last when one has been creating in the same way as nature herself creates.

Here you see also the most perfect, and apparently also the most simple pillar of all.

[ 27 ] We will now let the seven pillars follow one after another so that we can see how one forms. as a metamorphosis emerges out of the other form—from the simple, the imperfect to the most complicated middle one, then back again to the most simple and the most perfect.

[ 28 ] The first pillar. You have only to imagine the principle of growth transforming this pillar and you will get the next, the second pillar, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and then the last.

[ 29 ] Now for the next picture. Here you see the last pillar and the point where the great cupola impinges upon the small cupola. So that you have a glimpse here of the meeting point of the two cupolas, where the architrave of the big cupola impinges upon the architrave of the small cupola, only separated by the aperture in which.the curtain will drop. The little cupola is supported in the same way with pillars and architraves of which I can show you only a little. We have not been able to get good photographs of the others, but this juncture we shall see again in the next picture.

We see here another aspect of this juncture where one cupola impinges on the other.

Here we have another aspect of the pillars and architraves of the little cupola. And now you will see a bit of that part which represents an architrave space to the East in the middle of the small cupola.

[ 30 ] You see a bit of what is in the middle; beneath that will be the sculptured group of the Representative of Humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer in the vicinity. Above is the picture of the same.

[ 31 ] When you observe carefully this bit in the small cupola of which only a small portion is shown, you will see that in the forms of this architrave is included—as in a synthesis—everything that is shown in forms on the capitals and the architraves of the small cupola. This is here a comprehensive expression of all that has been expressed in the capitals and architraves of the small cupola. Here is to be found everything repeated again—of course transformed to accord with the place in which it is found. You will find when you compare that which confronts you in the form of the sculptural group showing the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer and Ahriman with all the different curves and forms and surfaces which are found on the capitals and architraves, contains in itself the whole Building in a certain sense. So that this sculptured central group might be conceived of as the synthetic epitome of the whole Building. Just as for example the human head is a repetition of all the rest of the organism, or, if you like it better, the human larynx and its neighbouring organs is an organic repetition of the whole man. Only that everything is put together in its own place out of an inner organic necessity. In the same way this Building must be grasped as a whole for the parts do not exist alone but each must be considered as a part of the whole.

[ 32 ] I want to draw your attention to the way in which this idea with regard to walls is apparent in a still more material way in the glass windows, the reproductions of which I cannot show you here. The glass windows are only works of art when the light of the sun is shining through them. At other times they are only like a musical score. Thus you will see that. these glass windows (about which I shall speak more fully later on but which I cannot show you now) are in themselves an evidence that the building does not stand as a thing by itself but that the light of the sun is imagined as unity with it. And now in the same way everything connected with the form of this Building is imagined as being in unity with the creative powers of the whole universe The Building itself may be likened to a bit of the whole universe.

[ 33 ] The next picture. This gives you the portal of our glass house underneath. You can observe once more how the effect has been made in everything which belongs to the Building to express in every form of truth that I have again and again pointed out. This glass house (and I have called it a glass house because it was originally built in order that the glass windows might be fashioned there) has also two cupolas. It is indeed a metamorphosis of the great cupola of the main Building.

You have to imagine that the two cupolas of equal size are pulled apart, for you could not unite two equally large cupolas in the same way as you can unite a large one and a small one. It would he against the laws of nature. In order to bring the cupolas together as they are brought together in the main building they must be made of different sizes, the one large and the other small. If they are the same size they must be drawn apart and everything else must be adapted in the same way.

You will see in the formation of the steps, how, in every case each individual line in its own place is the outcome of a law of necessity, and how a part is in every case an expression of the whole.

[ 34 ] Now here you,see that which is to many people a monstrosity. It is the. house which is to contain the apparatus for the lighting and heating. If you were to ask me upon what principle this building is designed, I can only say it is fashioned in accordance with the creative principle of nature. It is formed in a way which, as you will see if you look into it, may be compared, for instance, with the way in which the nut shell correspond: to the kernel of the nut. It is true, is it not, that the kernel of the nut has a certain form? The shell of the nut fits itself exactly to the kernel of the nut. The shell cannot be different so long as the kernel has a determinate form which is the effect of quite a different cause. In designing such a building as we have here we have to consider carefully every detail it contains. What purpose does everything serve that is contained herein? For this is a building whose purpose is pure utility. One has to get a conception of what is here contained and of what purpose it serves—that is the nut. Afterwards one has to consider how to build the corresponding shell of this nut. To the “nut” itself belongs the smoke which escapes, this building is only complete when the smoke is rising. It is only a work of art if this chimney really fulfils its purpose. Then only will one see the necessity of these projections. We shall not look at theM as they were leaves of a plane or anything of that sort, but we shall feel ourselves into the shape and then we experience how this shrine is bound by an inner law of necessity to the crake. As the smoke is linked in organic connection with the building and also that which is happening inside the building, so in the same way we shall realise these globes. Imagine what would be there if we had not attempted to create this form. [ 35 ]I will of course admit that we shall be able to carry out these ideas in a more complete way, but a beginning must be made and everything that follows can become more and more perfect. The beginning must be made, first, to demonstrate that a building which is designed for utility must follow some such inner creative principles. Secondly, it must be built with regard to the adaptability of the most modern material: concrete. For every material demands its definite laws of building. When we build in a certain material we have to observe certain quite definite principles, that are bound up with the very nature of the material. The conception of building must give expression to the idea of utility and also to the demands of the particular material.

[ 36 ] You see it is not to be wondered at that these things which are all more or less new are repudiated by many people. Those who are not familiar with these ideas will not easily follow what I mean. But it becomes easier and easier as time goes on. Every idea that has come into the world in this way has experienced at the outset strongest opposition. But we must always take into account that it is exactly with regard to the things that are at present working that we must not sleep. It is also necessary that we make a certain energetic stand for the essential. We shall not succeed for a long time to come with out the energetic stand even if there are only few people who can follow the things with really inner understanding, for you see how things are. We shall take the opportunity tomorrow when we are speaking of the paintings in the cupola, to speak more of many things about, around and in the Building.

I have already said that you can see from all that with which we have been dealing how far this building represents that for which our anthroposophical ideas stand, and how every detail is born out of the way in which we look at the universe. If that could be brought into the world in the same thoroughness, we should have achieved something. For you see my dear friends, it is impossible for us to succeed to-day with these conceptions with which in past years we thought we should be successful.

[ 37 ] I gave you an example a week ago of the unsavoury lying methods which are being used. Why do they use such lying methods? I assure you that this is only the beginning of opposition. There is going to be lying on a much bigger scale. But I can show you how these lies are being systematically spread and the very lies that people are spreading, themselves, they use as further evidence. This systematic campaign will continue. I know there are many people in our Society who will not believe how low is the condition of morality in the world to-day, but it is necessary that we should not blind ourselves to these things. [ 38 ] But we must realise two things. First the intensity of the campaign comes from the fact that people feel, here is reality, they will not let it evolve. If it was a matter of programmes, as has been so much the case in the past, the people would not take so much trouble to slander us. But people will take the trouble to slander what is born of real force. For because they feel that they are face to face with the future they will slander and they will lie. But it is not a matter of convincing liars of the truth; they will not be convinced; they do not want to hear the truth. The thing is to go to the people who are not yet lying and put things before them in the right way. Those who think that they can counter with arguments and proofs that which the Catholic Church is now spreading abroad against us do us very bad service. For to those who are spreading these slanders it is not a question of this or that truth—it is a question of turning minds against us. And if we were confront them with the truth it would be a matter of complete indifference to them, they would only lie the more. But we have to see through it, dear friends, and then adjust ourselves to the position. It is not a question of convincing those who lie but it is a question of showing to the world that is still uncorrupted, in what way these slanders and falsehoods are spread. [ 39 ] I am more and more astonished (and I have to repeat this very often) that:the pernicious tendency shows itself even within our own Society to occupy ourselves with those who slander and lie and to endeavour to meet them directly, while our real task is to explain to the world what kind of human beings these people are. If we are not able to see right through this thing, dear friends, we shall not get very far because it is incumbent upon us, especially those who live here in the vicinity of this building to become objective and to develop interest in the great objective universe, holding ourselves above cliques and personal feelings, and all these commonplace puerilities. If we cannot become objective in relation to this building and what it stands for, then the movement will really not be able to get very far forward. We must subdue the purely personal; we must be able to put ourselves into the big interests of the world. And in everyone of its particular forms this building is a demand upon us that we shall escape from the, narrow personal points of view and rise to the great interests of the world. [ 40 ] For every single form as a matter of fact expresses what is necessary to humanity for the future.

Look at the abuse which is all around in the world. Do you find anything really pertinent to our cause? It is because people cannot find anything against our cause that they become personal. It is for this reason that they try to bring about the destruction of the ideas of this Movement by personal slander. It would be a sad thing if we were not able to look at these things properly and become aware of the things that are going on around us.

[ 41 ] To-morrow we will consider the pictures in the Cupola.

In connection with the Congress held by the “Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society” in Budapest in the year 1909, Dr. Steiner gave a Lecture-Course entitled: “Theosophy and Occultism of the Rosicrucians.” The Mystery of Golgotha is there indicated as the great turning-point between the old, now already fading Mystery-wisdom and the wisdom in its new form of revelation wherein account is taken of the faculty of thought possessed by a maturer humanity and of the advance of culture and civilisation. Theosophia, the Divine Wisdom, could not, as in earlier times, flow as inner illumination into the hardened constitution of man. Intellect, the more recent faculty of the soul, was directed to the world of sense and its phenomena. Theosophy was rejected by the scholars with a shrug of the shoulders and the very word brought a supercilious smile from the monists. Dr. Steiner, however, was trying to restore to this word its whole weight and spiritual significance and to show how the roots of all later knowledge lie in Theosophy, how it unites East and West, how in it all the creeds are integral parts of one great harmony.

This had also been the fundamental conception of the Founder of the Theosophical Society but she understood nothing of the essence of Christianity and disputed its unique significance. Her tendency to place too much reliance upon spiritualistic communications drew her into the net of an oriental stream only too ready to use this instrument for its own ends—to begin with under the cloak of Neo-Buddhism then represented in the person of Charles Leadbeater, a former priest of the Anglican Church. Annie Besant, a pupil of Charles Bradlaugh, a free-thinker and the most brilliant orator of the day in the field of political and social reform, had also been so deeply influenced by spiritualistic communications that on the advice of William Stead she went to Madame Blavatsky towards the end of the latter's life and became her ardent follower. Stead's spiritualistic circle was influential and the Theosophical Society, with its much purer spiritual foundations, had here a dangerous rival.

Dr. Steiner brought light to bear upon all these developments, upon their aims and aberrations, and raised Theosophy to heights far transcending the narrow sphere of the Theosophical Society. Alarmed by this, the Indian inspirers behind the Adyar Society, with their nationalistic aims, took their own measures.—The imminence of a return of Christ was announced and the assertion made that he would incarnate in an Indian boy. A newly founded Order, the “Star in the East,” using the widespread organisation of the Theosophical Society, was expected to achieve the aim that had met with failure in Palestine.

Not very long after the Budapest Congress, these developments began to be felt in the sphere of Dr. Steiner's lecturing activities. Disquieted by the beginnings of the propaganda for the Star in the East, Groups begged Dr. Steiner to speak about these matters. This caused alarm to the organisers of the Genoa Congress, who thought that the scientific as well as the esoteric discussions with Dr. Steiner would be too dangerous a ground, and for extremely threadbare reasons the Congress was cancelled at the last moment. Many of those taking part were already on their way—we too. A number of Groups in Switzerland took advantage of this opportunity to ask Dr. Steiner for lectures. They wanted to understand the meaning and significance of the Michael Impulse which denotes the turning-point in the historic evolution of the Mystery-wisdom. The Intelligence ruled over in the spiritual world by the hierarchy of Michael had now come down to humanity. It was for men to receive this Intelligence consciously into their impulses of will and thenceforward to play their part in shaping a future wherein the human “I” will achieve union with the Divine “I.” For this goal of the future men must be prepared, a transformation wrought in their souls; they must “change their hearts and minds.” To bring this about was the task of Rudolf Steiner. The moment had arrived for treading the path which liberates the Spirit from the grip of the material powers. The first healthy step to be taken along this path by the pupil of spiritual knowledge, is study.

As the theme chosen for Genoa had been “From Buddha to Christ,” it was natural that the lectures now given in Switzerland should shed the light of Spiritual Science not only upon the earlier connections between the Buddha and Christ Jesus but also upon the lasting connections indicated by the Essene wisdom contained in the Gospels. This is the theme which gives these studies their special character—which could only be brought out by outlining the historical development of the Mystery-wisdom. The ancient revelations of the Mysteries had shed light into many forms of culture, but were now spent; symptoms of decay and increasing sterility of thought were everywhere in evidence. Then, from heights of Spirit, the Michael Impulse came down to the Earth—in order gradually to stir and flame through the hearts of men. The intellect was pervaded by spiritual fire, the lower human “I” lifted nearer to the ideal of times to come: union with the Divine “I.” To awaken understanding of these goals, to establish them firmly on the ground of their spiritual origins and to place them in living pictures before the souls of men—such was the task of Rudolf Steiner.

This brought the inevitable counterblow from the opposing powers; into this they knew they must drive their wedge. The development of the human being in freedom, this gift bestowed by Michael, must be checked and the hearts and minds of men incited to resistance. In his Four Mystery Plays, Rudolf Steiner has given us living pictures of this: the human being between Lucifer and Ahriman—now succumbing to their promptings, now overcoming them, but nevertheless bearing them in the soul like a poison that may at any time begin to work. We too shall continue to bear this picture and its substance in our souls.

The full content of the lectures, however, has not been preserved, for we possess no good transcriptions. The fact that no really reliable and expert stenographist was available at the time seems like a counterblow from the opposing powers. Besides the abbreviated reports of the Cassel lectures, we have in some cases only fragments, in others, scattered notes strung together. But the essential threads have been preserved and an attempt at compilation has been made. The attempt does not always succeed from the point of view of convincing style, but the impetus for effort in thought and study will be all the stronger.

The activities of the Star in the East led, finally, to the exclusion of the German section from the Theosophical Society; this, however, had been preceded by the forming of a Union which included people in other countries who opposed this piece of Adyar sectarianism and led to the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. For a time, care was necessary to prevent confusion as between the two Societies and so for the Movement associated with him, Rudolf Steiner chose the name Anthroposophy—the Divine Wisdom finding its fulfilment in man. Theosophy and Anthroposophy are one, provided the soul has cast away its dress. And Rudolf Steiner showed us how this can be done.

The new Indian Messiah soon cast off the shackles of the renown that had been forced upon him and retired to private life in California. Annie Besant was obliged to renounce her cherished dream and died at a very great age. It is rumoured that the question of the dissolution of the Adyar Society was considered but that this proved impossible owing to the extensive material possessions. Jinarajadasa, my good friend from the days of the founding of the Italian Section, succeeded Annie Besant as President. The branch of the Theosophical Society which had seceded at the time of the Judge conflict and to which Madame Blavatsky's niece belonged, had found in Mrs. Catharine Tingley a leader of energy and initiative, but she too had died.

The old conditions have now faded away. Those grotesque edifices of phantasy can no longer be associated with the Anthroposophical, formerly Theosophical, Movement, for they have crumbled to pieces. We can allow the word Theosophy again to come to its own, as did Rudolf Steiner when he was trying to restore to this word its primary and true significance.

Besides laying emphasis on the essential character of Spiritual Science in the post-Christian era, the aim of the lectures given in 1911 and 1912 was to explain karma as the flow of destiny and to point to its intimate workings. The lines of development running through the lectures have survived only as pictures of memory; the transcriptions often failed to catch the threads of the logical sequence and the notes or headings jotted down and collected here and there are really no more than indications. But the direction of the spiritual impulses given by Dr. Steiner has been preserved, and justifies, maybe, the attempt at compilation. Through meditative study these impulses will be able to work in us and deepen our souls.

In this course of lectures I should like to describe the relationship which we, human beings of the present day, may gain to that spiritual power which, as the power of Michael, intervenes in the spiritual and physical events of the earth. It will be necessary to prepare ourselves in today's lecture for this task. We shall need various points of view which will enable human intelligence really to present the various interferences with the just designated power on the background of the symptoms which we may observe in our surroundings. We must keep in mind, if we wish to speak seriously of the spiritual world, that we always may look upon the manifestations of the spiritual powers here in the physical world. We try to penetrate as it were, through the veil of the physical world to that which is active in the spiritual world. What exists in the physical world may be observed by everyone; what is active in the spiritual world serves to solve the riddles posed by the physical world. But we must sense the riddles of physical life in the right way. It is important, in connection with these weighty matters, to comprehend in full seriousness what I have said in recent lectures. {See Rudolf Steiner, Pneumatosophy: The Riddle of the Inner Human Being. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} It is impossible to link personal world views to a real understanding of that which so vitally concerns not only the whole of humanity, but the whole world. We must free ourselves from merely personal interests. Moreover, we will gain an understanding for the purpose and value of personality in the world if we have freed ourselves from the personal element in its narrower sense.

Now you know that our Earth evolution was preceded by another; that we stand within a cosmic evolution. First, you know that this evolution progresses, that it has arrived at a point beyond which it will pass to further, more advanced stages. Secondly, you know that if we consider the world as such, we have to deal not only with the beings which we meet in the earthly sphere, that is, in the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, but that we have to deal with beings belonging to higher realms which we have designated as the beings of the higher hierarchies. If we speak of evolution in its entirety, we have always to consider these beings of the higher hierarchies.

These beings, on their part, also pass through an evolution which we can understand if we find analogies to our own human evolution and to the one which exists in the various kingdoms of the earth. Consider, for example, the following: You know that we human beings have passed through a Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, we may say that we as human beings who experience ourselves in earthly surroundings have arrived at the fourth stage of our evolution.

Let us now consider the beings directly above our human stage whom we call the Angeloi, the Angels. If we merely wish to show an analogy we may say: these beings, although their form is entirely different from the human, and although they are invisible to physical human senses, are at the evolutionary stage of Jupiter.

Let us now turn to the Archangeloi, the Archangels. They are at the evolutionary stage which mankind will have reached upon Venus. And if we turn to the Archai, the time spirits, to the beings who especially influence our earthly evolution, we find that they have already attained the evolution of Vulcan.

Now the significant question arises: If we turn to the beings still higher in rank, to the hierarchy of the so-called Spirits of Form, on what stage do we find them? We must answer: They have already passed beyond the stages which we human beings conceive of as our evolutionary stages of the future. They have already passed beyond the Vulcan evolution. If we consider our own evolution as consisting of seven stages, which suffices for our present considerations, we must say that the Spiritsof Form have reached the eighth stage. We human beings are at the fourth stage of evolution; if we consider the eighth stage we find the Form Spirits.

Now we must not conceive of these successive stages of evolution as existing side by side, but we must conceive of them as interpenetrating one another. Just as the atmosphere surrounds and permeates the earth, so this eighth sphere of evolution to which the Form Spirits belong permeates the sphere in which we human beings live. Let us now carefully consider these two stages of evolution.

Let us repeat: We human beings exist in a sphere which has reached the fourth evolutionary stage. Yet we also exist, if we disregard everything else, in the realm which the Form Spirits, around us and through us, have to regard as theirs. Let us now consider human evolution concretely. We have often distinguished the development of the head from that of the human being. The latter we have again divided into two separate parts, the development of the breast and the development of the limbs. Let us disregard this latter differentiation and consider man as having, on the one hand, that which belongs to the development of the head and, on the other, everything that belongs to the rest of the human being.

Now imagine the following: You have here the surface of the ocean, the human being wading in it, moving forward with only his head rising about the water. In this image—of course it is only an image—you have the position of the present-day human being. Everything in which the head is rooted we would have to consider as belonging to the fourth stage of evolution, and everything in which man moves forward, wading or swimming in it, as it were, we would have to designate as the eighth stage of evolution. For it is a peculiar fact that the human being has, in a certain way, outgrown as far as his head is concerned, the element in which the Spirits of Form unfold their particular being. In regard to his head, man has become emancipated, so to speak, from the sphere which is interpenetrated by the beings of the Spirits of Form.

Only by thoroughly comprehending this can we arrive at a proper conception of the human being; only then can we understand the special position man has in the world; only then will it become clear to us that when the human being senses the Spirits of Form's creative influence upon him, he does not sense this directly through the faculties of his head, but indirectly through the effect of the rest of his body upon the head. You all know that breathing is connected with our blood-circulation, speaking in the sense of external physiology. But the blood is also driven into the head, creating an organic, vital connection of the head with the rest of the organism. The head is nourished and invigorated by the rest of the body.

We must carefully discriminate between two things. The first is the fact that the head is in direct connection with the external world. If you see an object, you perceive it through your eyes; there is a direct connection between the outer world and your head. If you, however, observe the life of your head as it is sustained by the processes of breathing and blood circulation, you will see the blood shooting up from the rest of the organism into the head and you may say there is not a direct, but only an indirect connection between your head and the surrounding world.

Naturally, you must not say, pedantically: well, the breath is inhaled through the mouth, therefore breathing also belongs to the head. I have stated above that we have here only an image. Organically, what is inhaled through the mouth does not actually belong to the head, but to the rest of the organism.

Focus your attention upon these two fundamental concepts which we have just gained; focus your attention upon the idea that we stand within two spheres: the sphere which we entered by passing through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution and being now within the Earth evolution which is the fourth evolutionary stage; then consider the fact that we live within a sphere which belongs to the Form Spirits just as our earth belongs to us, but which, as the eighth sphere, permeates our earth and our organism with the exception of our head and all that is sense activity. If we focus our attention upon these facts we have created a basis for what is to follow.

Yet let me first build a still firmer basis through certain other concepts. If we wish to consider our life under such influences, we must take into account the beings we have often mentioned as cooperating in world events: the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Let us, at the outset, fix our attention upon the most external aspect of these beings. They dwell in the same spheres in which we human beings live. Considering their most external aspect, we may think of all Luciferic beings as possessing those forces which we feel when there arises in us the tendency to become fantastic, when we yield one-sidedly to fancy and over-enthusiasm, when we—if I may express it pictorially—tend to go out with our being beyond our head. If we tend to go out beyond our head, we employ forces which play a certain role in our human organism but which are the universal forces of the beings we call Luciferic. Think of beings formed entirely of those forces within us which strive to pass beyond our head and you have the Luciferic beings which have a certain relation to our human world.

Conversely, think of all that presses us down upon the earth, all that makes us sober philistines, makes us bourgeois, which leads us to develop materialistic attitudes, think of all that exists in us as dry intellect, and you have the Ahrimanic powers.

All that I have described here from the aspect of the soul can also be described from the aspect of the body. One can say, man is always in a midway position between the intentions of his blood and the intentions of his bones. The bones constantly tend to ossify us; in other words, to “ahrimanize” our bodies, to harden us. The blood would like to drive us out beyond ourselves. Expressed in pathological terms, the blood may become feverish. Then the human being is organically driven into phantasms. The bones may spread their nature over the rest of the organism. Then the human being becomes ossified, becomes sclerotic, as nearly everyone does to a certain degree in old age. Then he carries the death-dealing element in his organism, namely, the Ahrimanic element. We may say that everything that lives in the blood tends toward the Luciferic, everything that lives in the bones has the tendency toward the Ahrimanic. The human being is the equilibrium between the two, as he, from the aspect of the soul, has to be the equilibrium between over-enthusiastic and sober philistinism.

Now we may characterize these two kinds of beings from a more profound point of view. Let us observe the Luciferic beings and see what interests they have in cosmic existence. We shall find that their chief interest is to make the world, and above all the human world, desert the spiritual beings whom man must regard as his true creators. The Luciferic beings wish nothing more than to make the world desert the divine beings. Do not misunderstand me: it is not the prime intention of the Luciferic beings to appropriate the world to themselves. From various things I have said about them you can gather that this is not their chief intention; their chief aim is to make the human being forsake his own divine creator-beings, to liberate the world from these beings.

The Ahrimanic beings have a different aim. They have the decided intention to make the kingdom of man and the rest of the earth, subject to their sphere of power, to make mankind dependent upon them, to get control over human beings. While it always has been—and is now—the endeavor of the Luciferic beings to make human beings desert what they can feel as the Divine in themselves, the Ahrimanic beings have the tendency gradually to include mankind and everything connected with it in their sphere of power.

Thus, within our cosmos, into which we human beings are interwoven, there exists a battle between the Luciferic beings, constantly striving for freedom, universal freedom, and the Ahrimanic beings, constantly striving for everlasting power and might. This battle permeates everything in which we live. Please hold this fact in mind as the second idea, important to our further considerations. The world in which we live is permeated by Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings, and there exists this tremendous contrast between the liberating tendency of the Luciferic beings and the power tendency of the Ahrimanic beings.

If you consider this whole matter you will have to say to yourselves: I am only able to understand the world if I conceive of it in connection with the number three, the triad. For we have on the one hand the Luciferic, and on the other the Ahrimanic element, and in the middle the human being who, as the third element, in the state of equilibrium between the two, must feel his divine essence. We shall only arrive at an understanding of the world if we base it on this triad and become clear about the fact that human life is the scale-beam. Here the fulcrum; on the one side the scale pan with the Luciferic element, pulling upward; on the other side the scale pan with the Ahrimanic element, pulling downward. To keep the scales in perfect balance signifies the essential being of man. Those who were initiated into such secrets of the spiritual evolution of mankind have always emphasized the fact that it is only possible to understand cosmic existence into which man is placed if it is conceived of in the sense of the triad; that it cannot be understood if it is considered on the basis of any other number. Thus we may say, employing our own terminology: we have to deal with three main factors in cosmic existence, namely: the Luciferic element, representing the one scale of the balance, the Ahrimanic element, representing the other scale of the balance, and the state of equilibrium which represents the Christ Impulse.

Now you may well imagine that it is entirely in the interest of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers to conceal this secret of the triad. For the proper comprehension of this secret enables mankind to bring about the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers; that means, on the one hand, to use the Luciferic tendency toward freedom for the achievement of a wholesome cosmic aim, and on the other hand, to strive to achieve the same with the Ahrimanic element. The human being's normal spiritual condition consists in relating himself in the proper way to this trinity, this triune structure of the world.

For, the influences upon human spiritual and cultural life do have a strong tendency to confuse man in regard to the significance of the triad. We can observe very clearly in modern culture that the conception of this structure according to the triad is almost completely eclipsed by the conception of a structure according to the duad. If we wish to understand Goethe's Faust, we must realize, as I have often pointed out, that this confusion in regard to the triad influences even this great cosmic poem. If Goethe, in his day, had had a clear view of these matters, he would not have presented the Mephistophelean power as the only opponent of Faust who drags Faust down, but he would have contrasted this Mephistophelean power—of whom we know that it is identical with the Ahrimanic power—with the Luciferic power, and Lucifer and Mephistopheles would appear in Faust as two opposing forces. I have spoken of this here repeatedly. If we study the figure of Goethe's Mephistopheles, we can see clearly that Goethe in his characterization of Mephistopheles constantly confused the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. Goethe's Mephistopheles is a figure mixed as it were, of two elements. There is no uniformity in it. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are intermingled at random. I have dealt with this more explicitly in my brochure, Goethe's Standard of the Soul.

This confusion which thus plays even into Goethe's Faust is based upon the misconception which has arisen in the evolution of modern mankind—in former times it was different—of putting the duad in the place of the triad when considering the structure of the world; that is, one sees the good principle on the one side, the bad principle on the other: God and the Devil.

Thus we must emphasize the fact that if a person wishes to conceive of the structure of the world in a factual manner, he must acknowledge the triad, the two opposing elements of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic and the Divine element which holds the balance between the two. This has to be contrasted with the illusion which has arisen in mankind's spiritual evolution through the erroneous concept of the duad, of God and the Devil, of the divine-spiritual forces above and the diabolical forces below. It is as though we were to force man out of his position of equilibrium if we conceal from him the fact that a sound comprehension of the world can only result from the proper conception of the triad and if one makes him believe that the world structure is in some way determined by the duad. Yet, the highest human endeavors have fallen prey to this error.

If we wish to deal with this question, we must do it without prejudice, we must enter an unbiased sphere of thinking. We must carefully distinguish between object and name. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that by giving a certain name to a being we have at any time experienced and felt this being in the right way.

If we think of those beings which man regards as his own divine beings, we must say: we can feel and sense them in the right way only if we conceive of them as effecting the equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles. We can never feel in the right way what we should feel as the Divine if we do not enter upon this threefold order. Consider from this point of view Milton's Paradise Lost, or Klopstock's Messiah which came into existence under the influence of Paradise Lost. Here you have nothing of a real comprehension of a threefold world structure, you have instead a battle between the supposedly good and the supposedly evil, the battle between heaven and hell. You have the mistaken idea of the duad brought into man's spiritual evolution; you have what is rooted in popular consciousness as the illusory contrast between heaven and hell, introduced into two cosmic poems of modern times.

It is of no avail that Milton and Klopstock call the heavenly entities divine beings. They would only be so for man if they were conceived of on the basis of the threefold structure of world existence. Then it would be possible to say that a battle takes place between the good and the evil principles. But as the matter stands, a duad is assumed, the one member of which has the attributes of the good and receives a name derived from the divine, while the other member represents the diabolical, the anti-divine element. What does this really signify? Nothing less than the removal of the divine from consciousness and the usurping of the divine name by the Luciferic principle; so that in reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes.

You see the far-reaching consequences revealed by such a consideration. While human beings believe they are dealing with the divine and the diabolical elements when contemplating the contrasts described in Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah, they are, in reality, dealing with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. There is no consciousness present of the truly divine element; instead, the Luciferic element is endowed with divine names.

Milton's Paradise Lost and Klopstock's Messiah are spiritual creations which rise out of modern man's consciousness. That which manifests in them lives in the general consciousness of mankind; for the delusion of the duad has entered this modern consciousness, and the truth of the triad has been withheld. The most profound productions of the modern age which are, from a certain point of view, considered among the greatest creations of mankind, and rightly so, are a cultural maya and have sprung from the great delusion of modern mankind. Everything that is active in this illusory conception is the creation of the Ahrimanic influence, of that influence which in the future will concentrate in the incarnation of Ahriman of which I have already spoken. For this illusory conception in which we live today is nothing but the result of the false world view which springs up everywhere in modern civilization when human beings contrast heaven and hell. Heaven is considered to be the divine element, and hell the diabolical element, while, in truth, we have to do with the Luciferic element called heavenly and the Ahrimanic element called infernal.

You must realize what interests rule in modern spiritual history. Even the concept of the threefold nature of the human organism or the human being in its entirety has in a certain respect been abolished for occidental civilization by the eighth Œcumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869. I have often mentioned this. The dogma was then established that the Christian does not have to believe in the threefold human being but only in a twofold human being. The belief in body, soul and spirit was tabooed, and medieval theologians and philosophers who still knew a great deal about the true facts had a hard time to circumvent this truth, for the so-called trichotomy, the “membering” of the human being into body, soul, and spirit had been declared a heresy. They were compelled to teach the duality, namely, that man consists of body and soul, and not of body, soul and spirit. And certain beings, certain men know very well that it is of tremendous significance for human spiritual life if the threefoldness is replaced by twofoldness.

We must consider such profound aspects if we wish to understand correctly why in the August number of Stimmen der Zeit (Voices of the Age) the Jesuit priest Zimmermann draws attention to the fact that one of the recent decrees of the Holy Office in Rome prohibits Roman Catholics from obtaining absolution if they read or possess theosophical writings or participate in anything theosophical. The Jesuit priest Zimmermann interprets this decree in his article in Die Stimmen der Zeit by stating that it applies, above everything else, to my Anthroposophy, and that those who wish to be considered true Roman Catholics must not occupy themselves with anthroposophical literature. He quotes one of the main reasons for this, namely, that Anthroposophy differentiates between body, soul and spirit, and thus teaches a heresy opposed to the orthodox belief that man consists of body and soul.

I have mentioned to you before that modern philosophers have adopted this differentiation of body and soul without being aware of it. They believe that they carry on unbiased, objective science; they believe they practice real observation which leads them to the conviction that man consists of body and soul. In truth, however, they are following in the footsteps of this dogma which has found its way into modern spiritual development. What is considered science today is actually completely dependent on such things as have been put into the world in the course of modern human evolution. Do not believe that you will be able with kind words to convert such people who from these quarters slander Anthroposophy; do not believe that you will prevail upon them and call forth their good will toward Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must make its way in the world through its own force, and not through the protection of any power, be it ever so Christian in appearance. Through inner strength alone can Anthroposophy achieve what it must achieve in the world.

You must realize that the Christ impulse can only be comprehended if one sees in it the impulse of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic principles, if one gives it the right place within the trinity. We may ask: What must one do if one tries to deceive people in regard to the true Christ impulse? One must divert their attention from the true threefold ordering of the world and direct it toward the delusion of the duad which is justified only when we are concerned with the manifest and not when we are concerned with what lies behind the manifest in the sphere of truth.

In such matters we must go beyond mere names. Calling some being or other Christ does not mean that it is the Christ. If one wishes to prevent another human being from acquiring a true concept of Christ, one need only put the duad in the place of the triad; but if one wishes to point to the Christ impulse in its true meaning, it is necessary that the duad be supplanted by the triad. We need not join the group of people who declare others to be heretics; we need not declare Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah to be damnable works of the devil; we may continue to enjoy their beauty and grandeur. But we must realize that such works, in as much as they are the blossoms of popular modern civilization, do not speak of Christ at all but originate from the delusion that everything that is not part of human evolution may be considered as belonging, on the one hand, to the realm of the devil and, on the other, to the realm of the Divine. But in reality, instead of dealing with the realm of the Divine we are dealing with the realm of Lucifer. Paradise Lost describes the expulsion of man from Lucifer's realm into the realm of Ahriman; it describes the longing of man not for the realm of the Divine, but for the paradise that has been lost, that means, the longing for the realm of Lucifer. You may regard Milton's Paradise Lost and Klopstock's Messiah as beautiful descriptions of human longing for the realm of Lucifer; this is what you should consider them to be, for this is what they are.

You see how necessary it is to revise certain conceptions which prevail today. If we are serious in our anthroposophical thinking and feeling we are faced, not with insignificant, but with important decisions. We are faced with the necessity of taking very seriously an expression which Nietzsche has often employed, namely the expression: “the revaluation of values.” We have to take this very seriously. The achievements of modern man are in great need of revaluation.

This does not mean that we ourselves have to become denouncers of heresy. We constantly perform here scenes from Goethe's Faust, and I have, as you know, devoted decades of my life to the study of Goethe. But from my little book, Goethe's Standard of the Soul, you can see that this has not blinded me to the false characterization drawn by Goethe in his Mephistopheles. It would be a philistine standpoint, were we to say: Goethe's Mephistopheles is a false conception; let's get rid of him. We should then be behaving like inquisitors. As modern men we must not place ourselves in such a position. On the other hand, we must not be indolently satisfied with the ideas that have entered, as it were, into the flesh and bones of the great masses of people today. Mankind will have to learn a great deal. It will have to transvalue many values.

All this is connected with the mission of Michael in relation to those beings of the higher hierarchies with whom he is connected. In the subsequent lectures we shall show how we may arrive at an understanding of those impulses which radiate from the Michael being into our earthly human existence.

It is our aim in these lectures to speak of important questions of mankind's evolution, and you have already seen that all sorts of preparatory facts drawn from distant sources are necessary to our purpose. In order that we may have a foundation as broad as possible, I shall remind you today of various things that have been said from one or another standpoint during my present stay here, but which are essential for a right understanding of the two coming lectures.

I have pointed out to you that in that evolutionary course of mankind which can be regarded as first interesting us after the great Atlantean catastrophe, significant changes took place in humanity. I have already some months ago indicated how changes in humanity as a whole differ from changes taking place in a single individual. The individual as the years go on becomes older. In a certain respect one can say that for humanity as such, the reverse is the case. A man is first child, then grows up and attains the age known to us as the average age of life. In so doing the man's physical forces undergo manifold changes and transformations. Now we have already described in what sense I a reverse path is to be attributed to mankind. During the 2,160 years that followed the great Atlantean catastrophe mankind can be said to have been capable of development in a way quite different from what was possible later. This is that ancient time which followed immediately upon the great flooding of the earth—called in geology the Ice Age, in religious tradition, the Flood—from which there actually proceeded a kind of glacial state.

We know that at our present time we are capable of development up to a certain age independently of our own action; we are capable of development through our nature, our physical forces. We have stated that in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of development for a much longer time. He remained so into the fifth decade of his life, and he always knew that the process of growing older was connected with a transformation of the soul and spirit nature. If today we wish to have a development of the soul and spirit nature after our twenties, we must seek for this development by our power of will. We become physically different in our twenties and in this becoming different physically there lives at the same time something that determines our progress of soul and spirit. Then the physical ceases to let us be dependent on it; then, so to speak, our physical nature hands over nothing more, and through our own willpower we must make any further advance. This is how it seems, externally considered—we shall see immediately how matters stand inwardly.

There was in fact a great difference in the first 2,160 years after the great Atlantean catastrophe. Then indeed man was still dependent on his physical element far into old age, but he had also the joy of this dependence. He had the joy of not only progressing during his growth, and increasing, but of experiencing, even in the decline of life-forces, the fruit of these declining life-forces as a kind of blooming of soul qualities, which man can feel no longer. Yes, external physical cosmic conditions of human existence alter in relatively not such a very long time.

Then again came a time in which man no more remained capable of development to such a great age, into the fifties. In the second epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, which again lasted for approximately 2,160 years, and which we call the Old Persian, man remained still capable of development up to the end of his forties. Then in the next epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, he could develop up to the time of his forty-second year. We are now living—since the 15th Century—in the period where man carries his development only into his twenties. This is all something of which external history tells us nothing, which moreover is not believed by external historical science, but with which infinitely many secrets of mankind's evolution are connected. So that one can say: Mankind as a whole drew in, became younger and younger—if we call this change in development a becoming-younger! And we have seen what consequence must be drawn from it. This consequence was not so pressing in the Greco-Latin age; a man then remained capable of development up to his thirty-fifth year through his natural forces. It becomes more and more pressing, and from our time onward quite specially significant. For as regards humanity as a whole we are living, so to say, in the twenty-seventh year, are entering the twenty-sixth and so on. So that men are condemned to carry right through life the development they acquired in early youth through natural forces, if they do nothing of their own freewill to take their further development in hand. And the future of mankind will consist in their receding more and more, receding further, so that I, if no spiritual impulse grips mankind, times can come in which only the views and opinions of youth prevail.

This becoming younger of humanity is shown in external symptoms—and one who regards historical development with more sharpened senses can see it—it is shown by the fact that in Greece, let us say, a man had still to be of a definite age before he could take any part in public affairs. Today we see the claim made by great circles of mankind to reduce this age as much as possible, since people think that they already know in the twenties everything that is to be attained. More and more demands will be made in this direction, and unless an insight arises to paralyse them there will be demands that not only in the beginning of his twenties a man is clever enough to take part in any kind of parliamentary business in the world, but the nineteen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds will believe that they contain in themselves all that a man can compass.

This kind of growing younger is at the same time a challenge to mankind to draw for themselves from the spirit what is no longer given by nature. I called your attention last time to the immense incision in the evolutionary history of mankind which lies in the 15th Century. This is again something of which external history gives no tidings, for external history, as I have often said, is a fable convenue. There must come an entirely new knowledge of the being of man. For only when an entirely new knowledge of man's being is reached, will the impulse really be found which mankind needs if it is to take in hand of its own freewill what nature no longer provides. We dare not believe that, the future of humanity will come through with the thoughts and ideas which the modern age has brought and of which it is so proud. One cannot do enough to make oneself clear how necessary it is to seek for fresh and different impulses for the evolution of humanity. It is of course a triviality to say, as I have often remarked, that our time is a transition age—for in reality each age is a transition. But it is a different thing to know what is changing in a definite age. Every age is assuredly an age of transition, but in each age one should also look about and see what is passing over.

I will link this to a fact—I could take a hundred others—but I will link on to a definite fact and let it serve as an example—one could draw on hundreds from every part of Europe. In the first half of the 19th Century, in 1828 in Vienna, a number of lectures were held by Friedrich Schlegel, one of the two brothers Schlegel, who have deserved so well of Central European culture. Friedrich Schlegel sought in these lectures to show from a lofty historical standpoint what the development of the time required, and how these requirements should be studied if the right direction were to be given to the evolution of the 19th Century and the coming age.

Friedrich Schlegel was influenced at that time by two main historical impressions. On the one hand he looked back at the 18th Century, how it had gradually evolved to atheism, materialism, irreligion. He saw how what had gone on in people's minds during the course of the 18th Century then exploded in the French Revolution. (We wish to make no criticism, merely to bring forward a fact, to consider a human outlook.) Friedrich Schlegel saw a great onesidedness in the French Revolution. To be sure, one might find it today reactionary if such a man as Friedrich Schlegel sees a great onesidedness in the French Revolution, but one would also have to look on such a verdict from other aspects. On the whole it is fairly simple to say to oneself that this or the other was gained for mankind through the French Revolution. It is no doubt very simple; but it is a question whether someone who speaks enthusiastically in this way of the French Revolution is really altogether sincere in his inmost heart. One questions it! There is a crucial test of this sincerity which simply consists in this: one should consider how one would look at such a Movement if it broke out round one at the present day? What would one say to it then? One should really put oneself this question when judging these matters. Only then does one have a kind of crucial test of one's own sincerity, for on the whole it is not so very difficult to be enthusiastic over something that went on so and so many decades ago. The question is whether one could also be enthusiastic if one were directly sharing in it at the present day.

Friedrich Schlegel, as I have said, looked on the Revolution as an explosion of the so-called Enlightenment, the atheistic Enlightenment of the 18th Century. And side by side with this event to which he turned his attention he set another: the appearance of that man who took the place of the Revolution, who contributed so enormously to the later shaping of Europe—Napoleon. Friedrich Schlegel from the lofty standpoint from which he viewed world-history, pointed out that when such a personality enters with such a force into world-evolution he must really be considered from a different standpoint from the one that is generally taken. He makes a very fine observation where he speaks of Napoleon. He says: ‘One should not forget that Napoleon had seven years in which to grow familiar with what he later looked on as his task; for twice seven years the tumult lasted that he carried through Europe, and then for seven years more the life-time lasted that was granted him after his fall. Four times seven years is the career of this man.’ In a very fine way this is pointed out by Friedrich Schlegel.

I have indicated on various occasions what a role is played by this inner law in the case of men who are really representative in the historical evolution of humanity. I have pointed out to you how remarkable it is that Raphael always makes an important painting after a definite number of years. I have pointed out how a flaring-up of Goethe's poetic power always takes place in seven-year periods, whereas between these periods there is a dying down. And one could bring forward many, many such examples. Friedrich Schlegel did not look on Napoleon exactly as an impulse of blessing for European humanity!

Now in these lectures Friedrich Schlegel showed what, in his view, the salvation of Europe demanded after the confusion brought by the Revolution and the Napoleonic age. And he finds that the deeper reason of the disorder lies in the fact that men cannot lift themselves to a more all-embracing standpoint in their world conception, which indeed can only come from an understanding of the spiritual world. Hence, thinks Friedrich Schlegel, instead of a common human world-conception, we have everywhere party-standpoints in which everyone looks on his point of view as something absolute, something which must bring salvation to all. According to Friedrich Schlegel the only salvation of mankind would be for each man to be aware that he takes a certain standpoint and others take others, and an agreement must come about through life itself. No one stand point should gain a footing as the absolute. Now Friedrich Schlegel considers that true Christianity is the one and only thing that can show man how to realize the tolerance that he means—a tolerance not inclining to indifference, but to strong and active life. And therefore he draws the conclusion (I must emphasize it is in 1828) from what he has put before his audience: the whole life of Europe, above all, however, the life of science and life of the State, must be Christianized. And he sees the great evil to be that science has become unchristian, States have become unchristian, and that nowhere has what is meant by the actual Christ-Impulse penetrated in modern times into scientific thought or the life of the State. Now he demands that the Christ-Impulse should once more permeate the scientific and State-life.

Friedrich Schlegel was of course speaking of the science, the political life of his time, 1828. But for certain reasons which will shortly be clearer to us than they are now, one could look at modern science and modern political life as he regarded them in 1828. Try for once to inquire of the sciences which count for the most in public life: physics, chemistry, biology, national-economy, political science too, try to inquire of them whether the Christian impulse is seriously anywhere within them! People do not acknowledge it, but all the sciences are actually atheistic. And the various churches try to get along well with them, as they do not feel strong enough really to permeate science with the principle of Christianity! Hence the cheap and comfortable theory that the religious life makes different demands from those of official science, that science must keep to what can be observed, the religious life to the feelings. Both are to be nicely separate, the one direction is to have no say in the other. One can live together in this way, my dear friends, one can indeed! But it gives rise to the sort of conditions that now exist.

Now what Friedrich Schlegel brought forward at that time was imbued with a deep inner warmth, and his great personal impulse was to serve his age, to demand that religion should not merely be made a Sunday School affair but should be carried into the whole of life, above all the life of science and State. And one can see from the way he spoke at that time in Vienna that he had a hope, a great hope, that out of the disorder produced by the Revolution and Napoleon, a Europe would come forth which would be Christianized in its life of State and Science. The final lecture treated especially of the prevailing spirit of the age and the general revival. And as motto for the lecture, which is truly delivered with great power, he put the Bible text: ‘I come quickly and make all things new.’ And he headed it with this motto because he believed that in the men of the 19th Century, to whom he could speak at that time as young men, there lay the power to receive that which can make all things new.

Anyone who reads through these lectures of Friedrich Schlegel's leaves them with mixed feelings. On the one hand, one says: From what lofty standpoints, from what lucid conceptions men have spoken formerly of science and political life! How one must have longed for such words to kindle a fire in countless souls. And had they kindled this fire what would Europe have become in the course of the 19th Century! I repeat: it is with mixed feelings that one leaves off reading. For in the first place: that is not what came about; what came about are these catastrophic events which now stand so terribly before us. And these catastrophes were preceded by a preparation in which one could have seen exactly that such events had to come. They were preceded by the age of materialistic science—which had become stronger than it was in Friedrich Schlegel's time—preceded by the age of materialistic statesmanship over the whole of Europe. And only with sorrowful feelings can one now behold such a motto: ‘For lo, I come quickly and make all things new.’ Somewhere there must be a mistake. Friedrich Schlegel most certainly spoke from utterly honest conviction. And he was in no slight degree a keen observer of his time; he could judge of the conditions—but yet there must have been something not quite in accord.

For, my dear friends, what did Friedrich Schlegel understand by the Christianizing of Europe? One can admit that he had a feeling for the greatness, the significance of the Christ-Impulse. And hence he also had the feeling that the Christ-Impulse must be grasped in a new way in a new age, that one cannot stop short at the way in which earlier centuries had grasped it. That he knows; a feeling of that is present in him. But, nevertheless, with this feeling he finds support in the already existing Christianity, Christianity as it had developed historically up to his time. He believed that a movement could proceed from Rome of which it could be said ‘I come quickly and make all things new’. He was in fact one of those men of the 19th Century who turned from Protestantism to Catholicism because they believed they could trace more strength in the Catholic life than in the Protestant. But he was a free spirit enough not to become a Catholic zealot.

There is, however, something which Friedrich Schlegel has not said to himself. What he has not told himself is that one of the deepest and most significant truths of Christianity lies in the words: ‘I am with you always even unto the end of the Earth-time.’ Revelation has not ceased; it returns periodically. And whereas Friedrich Schlegel built upon what was already there, he should have seen, have felt, that a real Christianizing of science and the life of the State can only enter if fresh knowledge is drawn out of the spiritual world. This he did not see; he knew nothing of it. And this, my dear friends, shows us, by one of the most significant examples of the 19th Century, that again and again even in the most enlightened minds the illusion crops up that one can link on to something already existing. It is thought that one need not draw something new from the well of rejuvenescence. With these illusions people can no doubt say things and carry out things that are great and brilliant, but it leads to nothing. For Friedrich Schlegel's hope was for a Europe of the 19th Century with its science and political life permeated by Christianity. It must come quickly, he thought, a general renewal of the world, a general re-establishing of the Christ-Impulse. And what came? A materialistic trend in the science of the second half of the 19th Century, compared with which the materialism known by Friedrich Schlegel in 1828 was child's play. And then also came a materializing of political life (one must know history, real history, not the fable convenue which is taught in schools and universities) of which likewise in 1828 he could see nothing around him. Thus he prophesied a Christianizing of Europe and was so bad a prophet that a materializing of Europe came about!

Men live willingly in illusions. And this is connected with the great problem that is now occupying us, the problem that will become clear to us in the coming days: men have forgotten how really to become old, and we must learn again to become old. We must learn in a new way how to become old, and we can only do so through spiritual deepening. But, as I said, this can only become clear in the course of our study. Our time is in general disinclined for it, still disinclined, and it must cease to be disinclined and grow inclined for it.

In any case, my dear friends, the customary thought and feeling of today are not aiming at familiarizing themselves with a certain ease and facility with what, for instance, forms the spiritual challenge of the anthroposophical Spiritual Science. One can see that by various examples: I will bring forward one that lies to hand.

I had a letter the day before yesterday from a man of learning. He writes to me that he has just read a lecture of mine on the task of Spiritual Science,¹ which I gave two years ago, and that he now sees that this Spiritual Science has, after all, something very fruitful for him. There is a thoroughly warm tone in this letter, a thoroughly amiable, kindly tone. One sees that the man is gripped by what he has read in this lecture on the task of Spiritual Science. He is a trained Natural Scientist, standing in the difficult life of today, and he has seen from this lecture that Spiritual Science is not stupid and not unpractical, but can give an impulse to the time. But now let us look at the reverse side of the matter. The same man five years ago sought to attach himself to this Spiritual Science, to join a group where Spiritual Science was studied, begged moreover at that time to have various conversations with me, and these he had. He took part in group meetings five years ago, and five years ago he so reacted that the whole matter became repugnant to him, and he turned away from it so strongly that in the meantime he has become an enthusiastic panegyrist of Herr Freimark, whom you know from his various writings. Now the same man excuses himself by saying that it would perhaps have been better, instead of doing what he did, to have read something of mine, some books of mine, and made himself acquainted with the subject. But he had not done that, he had judged by what others had imparted to him, and then he had got such a forbidding picture of Spiritual Science that he found it was not at all suited to his own path of development. Now after five years he has read a lecture and has found that this is not the case.

I quote this example—and it could be multiplied—of the way in which people stand to what desires in the only possible way—not in the way of Friedrich Schlegel—a Christianizing of all science—a Christianizing of all public life. I quote it as an example of the habits of thought of today, especially of the science of our time. It is therefore no proof that a man has found something antipathetic to him, if he approaches the Anthroposophical Movement, has various talks, takes part in group meetings, grumbles vigorously about the members of these meetings and what they say to him, concludes that he must now abuse Anthroposophy as a whole, and afterwards becomes an enthusiastic panegyrist of Freimark, who has written the vilest articles on Spiritual Science. After five years the same person decides that he will really read something! So it is no proof at all, if so and so many people today are abusive or agree with the abuse, that deep down they might not have a natural tendency to attach themselves to anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If they have as much good will as the man in question, they need five years, many need ten, many fifteen, many fifty, many so long that they can no longer experience it in this incarnation. You see how little people's behaviour is any kind of proof that they are not seeking what is to be found in anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

I bring this example forward because it points to the profoundly important fact I have often mentioned—namely the lack of stability in going into a matter, the holding fast to old traditional prejudices, which people will not let go! And that again is connected with other things. One only needs to transpose oneself in feeling into those ancient times of which I have spoken to you earlier and today. Think of a young man after the Atlantean catastrophe in his connection with other people. He was, let us say—twenty, twenty-five years old; near him he saw someone of forty, fifty, sixty years. He said to himself: What happiness someday to be as old as that, for as one lives one goes on gaining more and more. There was a perfectly obvious, immense veneration for one who had grown old; a looking up to the aged, linked with the consciousness that they had something else to say about life than the young men. Merely to know this theoretically is of no consequence, what matters is to have it in one's whole feeling, and to grow up under this impression. It is of infinite consequence to grow up in such a way as not merely to look back at one's youth and say: Ah, how fine it was when I was a child! This beauty of life will certainly never be taken from men by any kind of spiritual reflection. But it is a one-sided reflection which was supplemented in ancient times by the other: How beautiful it is to become old! For in the same degree as one became weaker in body, one grew into strength of soul, one grew into union with the wisdom of the world. This was at one time an accepted part of training and education.

Now, my dear friends, let us look at still another truth which, to be sure, I have not expressed in the course of these weeks, but which in the course of years I have already mentioned here and there to our friends: We grow older. But only our physical body grows older. For from the spiritual aspect it is not true that we grow older. It is a maya, an external deception. It is certainly a reality in respect of physical life, but it is not true in respect of the full nature of man's life. Yet, we only have the right to say it is not true, if we know that this human being who lives here in the physical world between birth and death is something else than merely his physical body. He consists of the higher members, in the first place of what we have called the etheric body or the body of formative forces, and then the astral body, the ego—if we only speak of these four. But even if we stop short at the etheric body, at the invisible, super-sensible body of formative forces, we see that we bear it within us between birth and death, just as we carry about our physical body of flesh and blood and bones. We carry in us this etheric body of formative forces, but we see there is a difference: the physical body grows ever older, the etheric or body of formative forces is old when we are born; in fact, if we examine its true nature, it is old then and it becomes ever younger and younger. We can say, therefore, that the first spiritual member in us continually becomes more vigorous and younger, in contrast to the physical-corporeal that becomes weak and powerless. And it is true, literally true, that when our face begins to get wrinkled then our etheric body blooms and becomes chubby-cheeked. Yes but, the materialistic thinker could say this is completely contradicted by the fact that one does not perceive it! In ancient times it was perceived. It is only that modern times are such that people pay no attention to the matter and give it no value. In ancient times nature itself brought it in its course, in modern times it is almost an exception. But even so, there are such exceptions. I remember that I once spoke of a similar subject at the end of the eighties with Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the ‘Unconscious’. We came to speak of two men who were both professors at the Berlin University. One was Zeller, a Schwabian, then seventy-two years old, who had just petitioned for his pensioning off, and who thus had the idea ‘I have got so old that I can no longer hold my lectures.’ He was old and fragile with his seventy-two years. And the other was Michelet; he was ninety-three years old. And Michelet had just been with Eduard von Hartmann and said ‘Well, I don't understand Zeller! When I was as old as Zeller I was just a young fellow, and now, only now, do I feel really fitted to say something to people ... As for me, I shall still lecture for many long years!’ But Michelet had something of what can be called a ‘having-grown-young-in-forces’. There is of course no inner necessity that he had grown so old; for instance, a tile from a roof might have killed him when he was fifty years old or earlier. I am not speaking of such things. But after he had grown so old, in his soul he had in fact not grown old, but precisely young. This Michelet, however, in his whole being, was no materialist. Even the Hegel followers have in many ways become materialistic, although they would not assent to that, but Michelet, although he spoke in difficult sentences, was inwardly gripped by the spirit. Only a few, however, can be so inwardly gripped by the spirit. But this is just what is sought for through anthroposophical spiritual science: to give something that can be something to all men, just as religion must be something to all men, that can speak to all men. But this is connected with our whole training and education.

Our whole educational system is constructed on entirely materialistic impulses—and this must be seen in much deeper connections than is generally indicated. People reckon only with man's physical body, never with his becoming-younger. No account is taken of one's growing younger as one grows older! At first glance it is not always immediately evident. But nevertheless, all that in course of time has become the subject of pedagogy and instruction is actually only able to lay hold of men in their youth, unless they happen to become professors or scientific writers. It is not very often that one finds that someone cares to take up in the same way in later life, when he no longer needs it, the material which is absorbed today during one's schooldays. I have known doctors who were leaders in their special subject, that is to say, who had so passed their student years and youth that they had been able to become intellectual leaders. But there was no question at all of their continuing the same methods of acquiring knowledge in later years. I once knew a very famous man—I will not mention his name, he was so renowned—who stood in the front rank in medical science. He made his assistant attend to the later editions of his books, because he himself no longer took part in science; that did not suit his later years.

This is connected however with something else. We are gradually developing a consciousness that what one can absorb through learning is really only of service for one's youth and that one gets beyond it later on. And this is so. One can still force oneself later to turn back to many things, but then one must really force oneself—it does not come naturally as a rule. And yet, unless a man is always taking in something new—not just by allowing it to enter him through the concert hall, the theatre, or, with all due respect, the newspaper or something of that kind—then he grows old in his soul. We must absorb in another way, we must really have the feeling in the soul that one experiences something new, one is being transformed, and that one reacts to what one takes in just as the child reacts. One cannot do this in an artificial way, it can only happen when something is there which one can approach in later life precisely as one approaches the ordinary educational subjects when one is a child.

But now, take our anthroposophical spiritual science. We need not puzzle our heads over what it will be like in later centuries; for them the right form will be found. But in any case, as it is now—to the dislike however, of many—there is no primary necessity to cease absorbing it. No matter how extremely aged one may have become at the present time, one can always find in it something new that grips the soul, that makes the soul young again. And many new things have already been found on spiritual scientific soil—even such new things as let one look into the most important problems of today. But above all the present needs an impulse which directly seizes upon men themselves. Only in that way can this present time come through the calamity into which it has entered, and which works so catastrophically. The impulses in question must approach men direct.

And now if one is not Friedrich Schlegel but a person having insight into what humanity really needs, one can nevertheless keep to several beautiful thoughts that Friedrich Schlegel had and at least rejoice in them. He has spoken of how things must not be treated as absolute from a definite standpoint. He has, in the first place, only seen the parties which always regard their own principle as the only one to make all mankind happy. But in our time much more is treated as absolute! Above all, it is not perceived that an impulse in life can be harmful by itself, but can be beneficial in co-operation with other impulses, because it then becomes something different. Think of three directions that take their course together—I shall make a sketch.

One direction is to symbolize for us the socialism to which modern mankind is striving—not just the current Lenin socialism. The second line is to symbolize what I have often characterized to you as freedom of thought, and the third direction is Spiritual Science. These three things belong to one another; they must work together in life.

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If socialism, in the crude materialistic form in which it appears today, attempts to force itself upon mankind, it will bring the greatest unhappiness upon humanity. It is symbolized for us through the Ahriman at the foot of our Group, in all his forms. If the false freedom of thought, which wants to stop short at every thought and make it valid, seeks to force itself, then harm is again brought to mankind. This is symbolized in our Group through Lucifer. But you can exclude neither Ahriman nor Lucifer from the present day, they must only be balanced through Pneumatology, through Spiritual Science, which is represented by the Representative of mankind who stands in the centre of our Group. It must be repeatedly pointed out that Spiritual Science is not meant to be merely something for people who have cut themselves adrift from ordinary life through some circumstance or other and who want to be stimulated a little through all sorts of things connected with higher matters. Rather is Spiritual Science, anthroposophical Spiritual Science, intended to be something that is connected with the deepest needs of our age. For the nature of our age is such that its forces can only be discovered if one looks into the spiritual. It is connected with the worst evil of our time—that countless men today have no idea that in the social, the moral, the historical life, super-sensible forces are ruling; indeed, just as the air is all around us, so do super-sensible forces hold sway around us. The forces are there, and they demand that we shall receive them consciously, in order to direct them consciously, otherwise they can be led into false paths by the ignorant, or those who have no understanding. In any case the matter must not be made trivial. It must not be thought that one can point to these forces as one often prophesies the future from coffee grounds and so on! But nevertheless in a certain way and sometimes in a very close way the future and the shaping of the future are connected with what can only be recognized if one proceeds from principles of spiritual science.

People will need perhaps longer than five years to see that. But precisely because of these actual events—the signs of the time demand it—there must again and again be emphasized how it is the great demand of our age that people realize the fact that certain things which happen today can only be discovered and, above all, rightly judged, if one proceeds from the standpoint gained through anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

• 1. See: ‘The Mission of Spiritual Science and of its Building at Dornach.’

My dear friends! Most certainly the truths which a person can learn from the Guardian of the Threshold are what we are confronting in these present considerations. And contained within the incessant admonitions, most certainly, is that a person becomes aware, just how he progresses soulfully in spiritual life, as he himself brings to awareness his true relationship to the world.

To bring one’s true relationship to the world to awareness, first you let yourself become acquainted with the world, which is around about yourself in the kingdoms of nature, the kingdoms of nature lying external to your own existence. Focus on your relationship with the animal, the plant, and the mineral kingdoms. Through this relationship you will be afforded the opportunity at first to become acquainted with plants, animals, and minerals. Then you may go on as well to marvel at them, and then to bending them to the unfolding of your will-impulses, and so forth. A person becomes acquainted with this entire world as his external world, and in customary awareness will be but little aware of how he most certainly has grown up and come out of this entire world, and of how there is a deep kinship between himself and this entire world.

Alone, when one allows one’s gaze to sweep around and about over this external world, alone a person simply cannot feel this kinship with the realms of the world. One must stride forward to becoming acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world. And then absolutely, one may not, when one becomes acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world, then absolutely a person may not, my friends, come to a stop there, seeing things in this manner, as they present themselves to an external viewpoint, then a person must return to exactly that which reveals itself between things.

Since the onset of the recent phase of the development of mankind, a person gazes only minimally at what is revealed in the relationship between things. One gazes externally at the entities of the three kingdoms of nature, but my friends, it is well known that at the outset one has to see behind the kingdoms of nature, into what one calls the world of the elementals.

We may say that our feet are planted firmly on the fixed earth. [The word was written on the blackboard.]

earth

And whatever fixed as earth holds our feet up, most certainly also sends forth its substance into animals, plants, minerals, and into our physical human bodies. And when we lift our view up from the floor underneath our feet, observing what affects us at our own level, certainly right at hand is something with the quality not merely of air, but of airy substance permeated with the watery element. Indeed, people's manner of life on the earth has evolved, so that now this watery element is found finely dispersed within the air perceived around about oneself. This must first be concentrated, consolidated for the purposes of one's own organism, although one can also say that a person also lives within this watery element. [Above earth was written the second word.]

water

And also, a person lives in the air-formative element, in which he has to carry out his breathing. [Above earth was written the third word.]

air

In the moment, as we look upon these elements, we may not say, as we must say in regard to the entities of the kingdoms of nature, that we see them before us in sharp contour. We do see the individual, fixed, and sharply contoured bodies, although from the fixed as such, from the earthly, we may not say, that we live within it. We are in relationship with the earth, nevertheless we have become particularly disconnected from it. Whatever belongs to our own selves, we certainly do not separate from anything else. A dish or a stool, standing external to ourselves, we distinguish from ourselves, but whatever is in us, we don't look upon as existing in discrete bordering regions. We don't look upon our lungs or our heart as being self-contained beyond our borders. Only when we approach the matter by way of transforming it into objects, as in anatomy, do we look upon ourselves in this way. In reality, just as we normally are in relationship to our own bodies, this is how we are related in an immensely comprehensive way with what and whatever the elements are. We live in earth, we live in water, we live in air, and we live in warmth. They belong to us. They are too close to us to be understood as sharply contoured objects of the world.

Let us attend once more to what is around about us as the elemental world, and, at the same time, is also within us. We must regard it so, as both the substance of the world and as our own substance. In this sense we have been focusing on substances that we designate as earth, that we designate as water, that we designate as air, that we designate as warmth.[Over the word air, the next word was written.]

warmth

When we go out further, out, out into the thick substances of the etheric beyond warmth, which is also most certainly etheric, in this manner we come to light, [Over the word warmth, the next word was written.]

light

and into the arena that we have always named by the dry, abstract phrase the chemical ether and its processes. We will call it this today, for in this way the orderliness of the world will be called forth, the configuration of the world will be called forth, and we will designate at the same time the great chemism of the cosmos, world configuration, or world forming. It is difficult, concerning this, to find an appropriate designation. [Over the word light, the next word was written.]

world chemism

world life

Now although we have already received the impression here in the previous Class lessons, my friends, that a person, as he actually lives on the earth, certainly does not stand in inner relationship to all of these elements in the same manner, it must be pointed to specifically that a person lives inwardly fully in relationship only with the element of warmth. [The word warmth on the blackboard was cross-marked with red chalk.] It is essential for striding ahead in the spirit to be fully versed in this matter.

So, think for a moment, how without any intermediary agent, how without mediation, but rather how directly one feels and is affected by warmth and cold. You certainly take note of the starkly contrasting natures of warmth and cold. But with what passes before you in the encircling air, for example, you don't make such an immediate, direct connection. Initially the air being good or bad is only noticed through its intermediate effects on one's organism. And just so, it is just so with the effects of light. In this way a person stands not immediate, but very close to air and light. [The words air and light were cross-marked with gold.] He stands extraordinarily close to them.

But already we notice that among the denser elements, a person characteristically is more distant from the watery element, in spite of being related. Yet, the watery element is still quite deeply related with human life. [The word water was cross-marked with blue.] In looking back over an extremely animated but troubling dream, my dear friends, let us attempt to see how such a troubling dream represents one's perspiration, the secretions of one's watery element. Take note of the watery element's important role in sleep, in which the secretions of the watery element play such a remarkable part. A person lives in the watery element. Whatever exists in his vicinity as dispersed fluid is quite significant for him, but has none of the immediate quality of warmth. Whether it is warm or cold, a person feels it as his own person. He might be cold, or he might be hot. What occurs for instance, if we are enveloped in fog, is that the fogbank is just as significant for us, but the effect on our inner human nature is indirect, and is not so starkly evident for normal awareness. For just then, as we are enveloped in fog, then in a certain way our own watery element is enmeshed with the watery element in the external world. And we feel in this very gentle transition of our watery element into the watery element of the external world, which is not felt in the transition of our watery element into dry external air, we feel in this transition that we are somehow one with the entire cosmos. Dry air allows us to remain more inward in feeling our human nature, but air heavy with water allows us to feel our unity with the cosmos. In this day and age, we have no schooling in such things. I have dealt with this in detail previously in the Hague, and it was published (this intimate unity of a person with the elements). It is really there, and it belongs to the esoteric path of life, this becoming aware in practicality of such intimate unity.

Still deeper, may I say, in the subconscious, lies a person's relationship with the earthly element. [The word earth was cross-marked with blue.] What does a person know with certainty of his relationship with the earthly element? He knows that salt is acrid, and that sugar is sweet. This is part of the earthly element. Although what salt and sugar accomplish in his organism in significant metamorphosis, how he is positioned in a unity with the cosmos in the dissolution of sugar, or withdrawn into his organism with salt, how certain forces entering in from the cosmos affect the organism when the sweetness of sugar rolls through our body, is really noticed by a person only in the minimally-connected reflex of salt and sugar on the tongue. There are processes of a deeper nature at work. In a manner of speaking the whole world has opened its doors to certain forces when sugar dissolves on a person's tongue and flows through his organism.

And always, just as the thicker elements affect a person indirectly, the thinner etheric elements world-chemical-ether and world living also have an indirect effect on a person, a concealed effect. [The words world-chemism and world living were cross-marked with blue.]

The most obvious effect on a person comes from the most centrally located element, warmth. Next at hand for customary awareness are the effects of light and air. In the subconscious, however, lie the effects on the one side of water and earth, and on the other side of life and chemical gestalt of the world, chemical gestalt in the cosmos. This being so, then during one's life on earth a person should be aware that he most certainly lives in his human state in these middle elements [air, warmth, light were indicated on the board], and that his awareness draws on his relationship with water and earth, and with world chemism and world living.

Since this was always so, back when the old instinctive awareness had dominion, in which always a bit of clairvoyance was mixed, in the mysteries back then, the students at the proper stage of their development received the following injunction: trust in fire, trust in air, trust also in light, yet become mindful of the underworld of water and earth, become mindful of the over-world of the gestalt of world chemism and world life. For even as relations, as they are so firmly emplaced down in the unconscious, that just so in world living and world chemism the allurement of Lucifer may present itself, and out of earth and water the seduction of Ahriman. [The words Lucifer and Ahriman were written down, and so the schematic was complete.]

And esoteric guidance in the mysteries has always maintained that a person should find the proper relationship with these elements, that in the proper way he should feel his relationship with the elements. When a person ascends to imaginative living, then he feels this relationship with the elements immediately. In customary awareness we look about and get to know as external to us the presentation of animals, plants, and minerals. If we get to know the elements in their relationship with us we really may no longer just look about at the world, but must also feel inwardly, live inwardly in the very things that are in us and in the world at the same time.

For as we ascend to imaginative living, we can feel our kinship with the elements. And so, if we have developed this feeling properly, we formulate for ourselves a strong inner stance. And contained within the self-development of this stance is most certainly progressive, effective, and genuine human self-awareness. One becomes aware at the beginning only that he is human, when after a fashion he is let out into the world with which he is so inwardly interconnected, into this world in which he stands alone, in which the plants, animals, and minerals stand apart from us as strangers. But were one through an imaginative experience to become aware of his kinship with the earth, then one would feel himself no longer to be in his humanity, but he would feel himself in his animality, he would then feel his inner human kinship with the multiplicity of beings of animal nature, of animality.

And if a person feels himself united with the water-existence on earth, then he becomes aware: yes, you are actually related, are akin to plant-nature. It is something in you, something likewise sleeping, likewise dreaming in the world, just as it is in plant-nature.

And if a person were to become aware of his kinship with the air, then he would feel the mineral existence in himself. He would feel as he does when some sort of mineral preparation on his whole skin fills him totally within.

A person feels, as soon as he with his imagination enters the world of the elements, that he is related, is akin to animal, plant, and crystal. And a person feels quite different in regard to these realms of nature, for he feels a self-other unity, a belonging together. He feels the inner kinship which he has with these realms, somewhat in the following manner.

One looks about on the animal realm. One observes the beasts of burden, as they slowly place one foot in front of the other. One observes the vibrant animals, such as the flittering birds. One observes everything in the nature of animals that is in motion, pervading the world with movement out of its own being. Then a person says to himself, that all that rules in the innermost being of the animal nature is evidently the same, manifestly the same, as his own will. And he feels the kinship of his own will with the nature of animals.

At the same time, however, one feels something further. A person becomes afraid of himself. And what would be preferable, soon after entering the esoteric life when a person feels this fear of himself, would be not to immediately be held back by it, but by means of it to acquire a higher craft of soul. But even before, when someone becomes aware that actually this human structure is in this manner in us, even as we stand alone with nature’s realm external to us, even as we are able to observe it externally, then one feels that the earth, in its elemental reality, simply does not yet turn us into human beings, but into animals. There we are animal. By virtue of earth, we are animal. And as the earthen is always there, so ever at hand is the danger that we may sink down into animal nature. If and when one considers this, not just with abstract theoretical knowledge, as the person of today is used to, but rather feels it, then one comes to fear that at any moment he may fall down and under into animal nature. But at the same time this fear bolsters, encourages one henceforth, to wish to raise oneself above this animality, to strike out from a life in the elements, and in spite of the alien world all around, nevertheless to strike out at once into a life of humanity. Recognizing your relation to the world, recognizing it with feeling, that is just the thing that leads into real esotericism.

And furthermore, when a person feels his kinship with the water-world, the water-element, then he becomes aware that on the ways of water we would not be as humans are, for we would be like plants. And our feelings, that have a certain dreamy quality, as I have often delineated to you in other venues, my friends, our feelings forthwith would have the tendency to be of the quality of plants. Now try most intimately to delve into your most gentle feelings, and you will be able to experience the plant-quality of the life of feelings. And then the feeling will come to you, that threatening you is not only the danger of sinking down and under into animality, but also the danger of living in the weakened awareness of a plant, of sleeping, of dreaming. But this feeling of weakness, albeit sitting in the depths of awareness, must be transformed in your feelings, in order for you to awaken into human existence. Fear of animality must be transformed with courage, in order to lift oneself up to the human. The feeling of weakness in plant existence must be transformed with an inner call to awaken, to bring oneself with inner force into the world of the awakened human.

And were someone to become aware of living in the ways of air, then, if he becomes aware of it, then he observes that in effect all thinking, unknown to humanity, that in effect all thinking is none other than rarefied breathing. Thinking is rarefied breathing. The thoughts within which we live are through and through processes of rarefied breathing. Inflowing breathing, mid-breath pausing, and out-breathing are working, I might say, on the one side by groping about in our circulation of blood, although on the other side by the rarefied vibrations of the brain-organ. And as breathing continues on in the brain-organ it becomes thinking in the physical world. Sublimated breathing, breathing becoming sublime, is what thinking is.

Whoever strides ahead into imagination certainly no longer trusts merely to this sort of abstract reasoning, which with much else weak and flimsy lives in the brain. Whoever strides ahead into imagination perceives in-breathing as the broadening out of breath into the brain. He feels how the breath broadens itself out. When the breath spreads itself out, so that in a certain sense it is consummated, then cohesive ideas develop, cohesive conceptions. When the breath is otherwise consummated and wells up within, inwardly-moving conceptualizations arise. It is merely a refined breathing process, moving through us and welling up; we characterize it as conceptualization, as thinking.

At once, however, as one is feeling, "I am breathing in, I draw the breath from around about into the brain, and I let the breath impinge upon my ear," so would he feel, "it presents itself to me as thoughts, these things that I perceive as tones, bells, and whistles. And as I let the breath beat upon my eyes, it presents itself in what I see as color. It is really the inner speech of the breath that takes its effect as concepts. When the breath, totally refined, beats on the organs of sensation, it produces concepts. But if one were to be aware of this, to be aware of himself at once as thinker and as breather, then one would feel this process of thinking, this refined breathing, as an organized mineral substance, as an organized stone or crystal, filling one up.

You know that oxygen transforms itself in humans into carbonic acid. The connection with carbon in the finely-diffused multiply-branched arborization of the breath in human heads really displays itself there as an entrapment of carbonic acid. That is a process of mineralization. And the longer one lingers there, inwardly immersing oneself in carbon's entrapment of oxygen, in such measure may one grasp the mineralization process. One may grasp carbonic substance itself, the element carbon, the carbonic. And the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone. Manifesting inwardly in human beings the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone.

You may glean much from the old instinctive clairvoyants, in how they described the Philosopher's Stone. You will find that all over the world they described the Philosopher's Stone, not known by the common man, yet everywhere to be found. One can discover it everywhere. A person can find it where it lies, waiting to be discovered. It is to be found on the earth. It is very exactly described, how one discovers the carbon substance by burning wood. It can be discovered everywhere, this Philosopher's Stone. Carbonized material is what it is. It is contained in the veins of coal in coal-mining operations. It is also contained in the rarified breathing process. In a person, however, it is a process of nature, this incinerating process of coal, of coal that is living, but still a process of mineralization. … [Here the rapid tempo of speech made stenography somewhat less than reliable.]] A person feels inwardly turned to stone …crystalized, mineralized in his mineral nature through this process in the life of the wafting air, as one feels implanted in his plant-nature through the life of the ways of water, and as one feels animated in his animal nature through this process in the life of the earth.

This is what the Guardian gives to the human being in admonition, that a person should become aware of his relationship with the realms of nature. We have these admonitions from the Guardian of the Threshold for this reason, given to human beings as spoken meditative verse. If and when a person with deep emotion, with earnest sensitivity allows them to work on his heart and mind, then he will become somewhat aware of his kinship with the element of earth, which is related to his will, with the element of water, which is related to his feelings, and with the element of air, which in this manner, as I have just depicted for you, is related to his thinking, to his conceptualization. [Two lines were written on the blackboard.]

You stride into earth being’s helm¹
With deployment of your force of will;

That remains totally unknown for customary awareness. Every time we exercise our will to do something, we actually clamber down into the element of earth. But customary awareness knows nothing of this. The moment this clambering down becomes known, the person is changed from humanity into animality, and appears to himself as some sort of animal, at least in the etheric gestalt, into which he is looking, he appears changed into some sort of animal. One certainly does not feel right away exactly like an elephant or exactly like an ox, but it will be so, to such an extent, for in the element of will, one can bring to expression the world of the ox, the world of the elephant, or the world of the eagle. [Three more lines were written.]

Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;

But such an admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, my friends, is not there for the purpose of being taken up as an idea, as a theory. It is there in order to become experienced by all human beings. If a person looks into what is within the will, he will become aware of his own animality, then he will become consumed with self-fear, but all of this must metamorphose, in courage, in courage of soul. Then one comes a step further. Then he comes into the spiritual world. [The verse was continued on the blackboard.]

The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul. ²

There we have the first clambering down and under, into that realm where the Ahrimanic powers work so strongly and effectively. Our proper attitude is shown to us at once by the appropriate declamation, the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You stride into earth being’s helm
With deployment of your force of will;
Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;
The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul.

As a general rule, to attain what is best for our spiritual progression, is to undergo something that takes us down and under. When we encounter something that takes us down and under, as this fear of one's own animality appears, when we overcome this, when we metamorphose it by an inner action, in courage of the soul, then it will become the impetus to a higher human state of being. We need this fear in order to move up and on in the spirit.

The other clambering down, in the ways of water, we meet in the following admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, for the words which I impart to you are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, whom we meet in the following admonition.

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

The metamorphosis conversely of this sleepy dreamy way of feeling, when we clamber down and under in full awareness, will be for us to emerge as one awake. [The second stanza was now written on the board.]

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

And when a person feels his kinship with the airy being, even in customary awareness, then he feels his kinship truly. He does not have to clamber down so deeply into the unconscious. Nevertheless, there still is the scent of Ahrimanic allurement in this descent. And yes, when we are living in our memories, living in our thoughts of the past, we are inwardly communing with breathing. When we have rarefied customary breathing in thinking about what is in our surroundings, then admittedly there is no danger at hand. When memories arise, however, the breath working from inward out, then once again a danger is at hand, exactly when this danger is most easy to observe. And for this descent through thinking into reflection, into musing, in which we deal primarily with thinking of notions of the past, for this the Guardian of the Threshold gives us the following admonition. [The beginning of the third stanza was written on the board.]

You muse in wafting ways of air
Only in memory's picture-forming;
Enfold willingly airy being,

One can do this, my friends, if with the same degree of inner activity, with energy, one arrays one thought upon another, much as a person does concerning external affairs. A person is used to exerting himself in moving a chair from one place to another. A person is not used to packing off a thought from one spot to another. He wants to think only along normal channels concerning external appearances, as things are given to him. He wants a book to display a succession of thoughts, he wants a newspaper to display a succession of thoughts, and he is satisfied when that is the case. It is just as if you were waiting expectantly, and rather than exerting your own will externally, deploying the force of your will, you were waiting to somehow be activated by an objective power, for example whenever you might want to move your arm to place it on a chair. It would be as if some sort of spirit were standing there and continually placing one of your legs in front of the other, so that you could walk. In one's train of thinking a person is just so, as it were, as if he were counting on one leg being placed in front of the other, in order to walk. [The next lines of the third stanza were written on the board and spoken.]

And your intrinsic soul will threaten you
As cold observing stone;

This is to become mineral-like, and whoever is not familiar with imagination, just does not know how mineral-hard customary thinking is. Customary thinking is hard as stone. One really feels the crusty abrasiveness of this thinking, once one has achieved entry into the spiritual world. Thinking is actually painful when it veers off into abstract forms. Whoever has spiritual life, can in any case still live with whatever emerges in thinking out of human feelings, with whatever emerges in thinking out of human impulses. He can live with himself, when animosities and scornful outbursts emerge externally out of human nature in thoughts, but he feels inwardly wounded by crusty abrasiveness, when the abstract thoughts of present-day civilization penetrate into his organization. What can be inflicted on present-day thoughts is such that even the sentence, "And intrinsic soul will threaten you as cold observing stone," does not make it clear. But when a person knowingly descends into the realm of memories, into the realm of the airy ways, when one’s breath is taken away, in and by the grasp of conceptualization, then it will be as I have depicted. But this inner death in thinking, this icy death, must in turn inflame us to a contrary force, even in thoughts it must call forth spirited vitality by means of inner force. [The stanza was completed on the board.]

Yet your selfhood’s frigid death
Must weaken and yield ³ to spirit fire.

These are the three admonitions concerning the underworld, the world of the lower elements, addressed by the Guardian of the Threshold to whomever comes to the Threshold. Here he portrays the human being’s need to become aware, if he would become a knower, of his inner kinship with the three realms of nature, how he must become aware through his kinship with the earth-beings of his animality and thereby of the nature of the animals in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with water-beings of his own plant-like nature, and thereby the nature of the plants in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with the air-beings of his own innate mineral-crystal-realm, his innate mineral-being, his innate stone-nature, and thereby the essential nature of the mineral realm in his vicinity.

Fear, lassitude, and death, as the negative attributes, must thereby not just develop, but must metamorphose into the positives, into spirituality, leading into attributes of soul courage, awakening, and flaming exhilaration.

This is indeed what the Guardian of the Threshold calls out step by step, first the inner feeling of fear in descending into animality, then the inner feeling of powerlessness in the lassitude of plant-existence, and then finally the yearning in the face of the chilling freezing consciousness of stone-existence, the yearning to develop exhilarating fire.

So sounds forth the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You stride into earth being’s helm
With deployment of your force of will;
Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;
The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul.

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

You muse in wafting ways of air
Only in memory's picture-forming;
Enfold willingly airy being,
And your intrinsic soul will threaten you
As cold observing stone;
Yet your selfhood’s frigid death
Must weaken and yield to spirit fire.

And as we come there [The lower part of the schematic was indicated.] into Ahriman's realm, and by means of the Guardian of the Threshold are admonished and rescued from the seductive art of Ahriman, so we press on to the other side, [The upper part of the schematic was indicated.] in which from where we stand in life on earth we will forge ahead into the esoteric, into light, world chemism, and world living.

We absorb, we gather up the light. Usually, we do not immediately know that the light, when it flows in through the eyes, actually unites with the breath. Warmth of course lies in between. The breath of air unites with the light [The middle part of the schematic was indicated.] The conception evolves from the perception. We live in the light, in that we build thoughts for ourselves, and just so, in accordance with the other side, in accordance with the lower realms, we live in the air, in the breath. We hold thoughts in retention by means of the light. We don't realize it, but thoughts can live in us only if they are illuminated by light, if the breath is illuminated by light.

For those who ascend through imagination, thinking is a gentle inspiration of breath, that, as the light is inwardly taken hold of, is fully illuminated, resplendent, vibrant.

There go the thinned-out waves of breathing. [Waves were drawn.] They start to glow in the light [yellow], for the light in spiritual science bestows significance on all that works primarily through the senses. Not only that which works effectively through the eyes, but also what works effectively in sound is light, and also what works effectively in the sense of taste, insofar as we have taken note of it and so it has come to light. All that we have taken note of through the senses has come to light, is light. But if and when we become aware of how this thinking, this having thoughts, is just rarefied breath, upon which light beats and interweaves, then it is most certainly so, as when a person wishes to observe the surface of the ocean, and on the surface of the ocean sees not just sunlight dancing off the waves [red on the yellow light reflection], but dwells there, catching the scent, feeling the weaving of the waves with the sheen of reflections, it is just so that all this may be taken to heart and mind, insofar as one experiences it inwardly.

And here enters the allurement of Lucifer, for to some extent it is immensely beautiful, and to some extent induces an immense desire and an immense complacency. True inner lustful desire creeps over a person. He easily falls prey to the allurement, the seduction of Lucifer, who wishes to draw a person away from this world, into a world of beauty over which Lucifer himself has dominion. This allurement would wrestle a person away from the earthly elements and heave him up into the angelic, into the spiritual realm, so that after every sleep he would no longer descend into the physical body. In this manner enters the seduction of Lucifer, ever-so-much in contradistinction to the thicker elements, into which the Ahrimanic seduction enters.

But it has been so arranged, that just here we hear the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, and are not drawn into this realm without holding fast to the determination never to forget the many needs, the many woes of earth. Then our bonding with earth existence, that of course we must wander through, will be strongly established. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,
So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

[The first stanza of this mantra was now written on the board.]

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,

For a person will be totally changed through the imagination of the appearance of light, with thoughts no longer held in their abstraction, but rather as light playing over the sweep of breath.

So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

As we ascend further into the etheric element, then the Luciferic allurement becomes still more intense. Coming into consideration now, are not just our thoughts, in which it is comparatively easy for us to find our way, but rather the dim element of feelings. For the only part a person holds of the gestalt of world-forming-design, which is working and weaving cosmically in the chemical ether, the only substantial part he holds fast to is in his feelings. And when he then imaginatively ascends out into the flow of this world chemistry, it is certainly not the way it is in a jovial philistine narrow-minded earth-chemistry laboratory, where the chemist stands by the laboratory table and all is external to him, but in ascending he must, the person must, in all the blending and separating of the stuff coming into himself, he must himself be drawn in. So he becomes himself a cosmic chemist. His own chemical processing is interwoven there, and in this existence, interwoven with the gestalt of world-forming design, he feels the Luciferic allurement in the design as a powerless becoming. For the person is thrown into a sort of willful lustful desire, knowing that he can indeed be spirit. He will no longer return, if he does not recollect the necessary tones of earth. He will be made powerless, in not being able to come again into his humanity. He must take great care in this soul-powerlessness, just as soon as he approaches this world, in regard to the love he has acquired for all that is of value on the earth, for the value of the earth.

You hold of world chemism

so says the Guardian of the Threshold:

Feelings alone fast within;
When world⁴ forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience
Smother⁵ your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

[The second stanza was now written on the board.]

You hold of world chemism
Feelings alone fast within;
When world forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience

that comes at this level from Lucifer

Smother your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

A person can only attain his cosmic intent by becoming angelic at the proper time. During the Jupiter evolution the man of today will certainly ascend to angelic existence. Lucifer's seduction consists of affecting people out of time, trying to make them into angels still in the Earth evolution, into stunted angels. Then would the souls of men be lost, and a stunted angel-soul would emerge. So we should attend to the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

The most intensive seduction is in the last element, in world life, when we ascend into global world life. We hold some of this fast within our will, but it is held as if in sleep, as I have often related to you. If it would be awakened in imagination, if we would be aware, instead of our well-circumscribed life on earth that is enclosed within our skin, of our experiencing world living, then we would be dead in an instant. For to live knowingly in the general earth-life, means undergoing death as an individual being. Universal life kills us, if and when we grasp it. Similar to the insect flying into a flame, entranced by the fire, by the light, and dying the instant it flies too close, in a similar manner individual life dies in the general world living, when it is entered knowingly with one's own spirit. And as the animal, out of an immense lustful desire, flutters into the flame, so does the person as an individual die in his spirit within the general, the cosmic life.

We ought not to suddenly be thinking of ourselves venturing into this element, if we have not first built up in ourselves a god-devoted, a spirit-devoted earthly will, namely, for us to be fully aware, that upon the earth we carry out the intentions of the gods. If we infuse ourselves with this god-devoted will, up to the point of inner sacrificial fervent love, then we will not let ourselves be enticed into becoming degenerate angels. Instead, so long as human existence is essential for the being living in us, we will remain human. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing,
Will allow the god in man to rule.

[The third stanza was now written on the board.]

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing,
Will allow the god in man to rule.

And so, we have here the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold concerning the upper tier [of the schematic], concerning the etheric elements.

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,
So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

You hold of world chemism
Feelings alone fast within;
When world forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience
Smother your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing
Will allow the god in man to rule.

It is the practice of recognition, of inner knowing, that will be brought to you in these lessons, my friends. And the things given to you in this way, you should take in and understand as a simple description of theoretical matters, but rather, in order to experience the heart of the matter, you must put it in its proper perspective. The actual and truthful perspective, is that everything said in these lessons is the specific instruction of the Guardian of the Threshold himself, emerging directly out of what a person can receive, in discussions with the Guardian of the Threshold. For the intention here in these Class lessons, my friends, is not to give theories. The intention is to allow the spiritual world itself to speak. This was spoken about in the very first lesson, about how this school should be seen as having been established by the spiritual world itself.

This has been the nature of all mystery schools. In mystery schools people speak as entrusted by the spiritual guardianship of the world. And this must remain the nature of mystery schools. This is why it has been stipulated so strongly in earnest, that each and every participant in this class should make it come alive, and should enshrine it. Certainly no one can be a real member of this school of spiritual life without this serious demeanor. This is just what I would like to direct your attention to once again, quite seriously. Take up this school as having been constituted immediately out of the will of the spiritual world itself, which the school seeks merely to interpret in a manner proper for our period of time, for the era we have entered into, in which the darkness has passed and a light has once again come forth, a light that at first admittedly externalizes itself imperfectly upon the earth, as human beings still retain the old darkness. It is there however. And only those who understand that the light is there, will enter into the ways and means of this our spirit-school in the true sense.

• 1. Das Heft = the haft, meaning the handle of a tool which you hold in your hand. On a psychological level more properly, it is earth-being’s helm, although realm is probably good enough.
• 2. The fear changes you, and you change yourself in soul-courage. It is not fear that changes to courage.
• 3. weichen: Weichen is an ancient English and German word meaning “to be weak or soft,” but in German it has veered off to include the meaning “to yield,” and in English to include “to weaken in moral strength.” To adequately express this, it should be translated as “Must weaken and yield to spirit fire.”
• 4. Welten is cognate with world. The entire physical-material universe is the cosmos (Kosmos in German). Cosmic rays were initially mysterious, although we now know that they come from supernova and black holes, so cosmic in English acquired the secondary meaning of powerful and mysterious. A third meaning is cosmetic jewelry and makeup. The cosmetic adornment of the world-all is the cosmos. Our entire world, however, is quite a bit more than the cosmos, as it includes inner worlds (such as the world of mathematics, the world of education, and the spiritual world). We must translate various forms of Welt as world and never as cosmos or universe.
• 5. Ersticken: What does one do with a stick? A walking stick doubles as a fight stick, and with the prefix er- it becomes an internal action. You stick someone with emotional barbs, you stick it to someone until the person becomes overwhelmed, stifled, smothered, choked up, and loses his self-possession.

From the whole tendency of these presentations of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science you will see how essential it is to understand that in the various spheres of existence there are different Spiritual beings who have inserted themselves therein, taking part in the work, giving force and direction. It is necessary that humanity in our present age should be permeated with the knowledge that different spheres of existence are guided and directed by different Spiritual beings; for our civilisation has in the course of recent years lost this consciousness of the presence of concrete spirit in life. In general people will willingly talk of the Divine permeating everything, but such talk does not help one to an understanding of the World which can provide a sufficient basis for life. It is, of course, quite true that, in the last resort, everything recognised as spirit must tend towards unity; but if one perceives that unity too soon, one simply loses all real insight into the course of world-happenings; therefore, it is necessary to leave off speaking in general in such an abstract way about the Divine, and learn to know the concrete Spiritual guiding beings in Nature and History, as we have over and over again tried to do. It is from this point of view that I should like to point to-day, to certain really important and significant things at the base of the constitution of our world.

I pointed out in the last lecture that certain Beings find themselves together when it comes to building up and animating man, they find themselves united in opposition in the world. We put the old truth of the opposition coming from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Spiritual forces before our souls in the last lecture from a certain point of view, and now we will try to understand the matter from another aspect.

Just that, in our newest civilisation, which is now involved in such catastrophic events, and manifests in such decadent forces, just that which is so characteristic in our modern civilisation, is the extension of intellectual thinking throughout the whole of humanity. One must really try to acquire an insight into the quite different mood of soul of civilised Europe before the 7th and 8th centuries. It is just that intellectual thought, which to-day is so prevalent everywhere, which permeates the entire soul-life of man and, from a certain aspect, will still continue to permeate it. The point now is, that one must seek to grasp what is externally comprehensible, and try to unite that with a more psychic concept; for it is well if, from the aspect of the spirit, one really seeks to grasp and permeate external and material existence itself.

That which underlies our organism of thought consists in purely mineral processes occurring within us. Please understand me aright, my dear friends; those processes in us which are processes of our own human nature, and which we have in common with the animal and plant-nature, these are connected only indirectly but not directly, with the fact that we have become intellectual thinking human beings according to the modern idea of the development of man. The fact that we have in us a firmly consolidated mineral constitution gives us the capacity for intellectual thought. When we look at all those Kingdoms of Nature which are outside us in cosmic space, and which are also within us, we must say:—Let us first of all contemplate the sphere of warmth, of the Warmth-ether; we carry the effect of this Warmth-ether in our own blood, and the activity of our blood consists essentially in the fact that our blood, as the carrier of warmth guides these warmth-processes through our entire organism. Now our intellectual thinking does not depend on anything of what transpires in the sphere of warmth, it does not depend upon what transpires in us when we inspire and transmute the air in our organism. Thus, when we consider the warmth-processes in the Cosmos, we can say:—These warmth-processes are continued within the skin of our organism; but that which meets us in the Cosmos as warmth-processes, which specially meets one who regards the Cosmos in the condition when it showed itself exclusively in warmth processes, that which meets us in ourselves as warmth-processes, none of that stimulates us to intellectual thinking. Then if we look to the kingdom of the Air, there too we find events taking place; these processes are continued in our organism through our breathing process; everything we find represented thus is within us through air, but that again has nothing directly to do with our intellectual thinking.

As a third sphere we can look to the phenomenon of water; we see outside in the Cosmos the processes in the fluid-sphere. These too are continued in our digestion in so far as it occurs in the fluids. Outside in nature we see the circulation of Fluids and in ourselves we also see a kind of circulation of fluids. All that transpires in us in that way, has again nothing to do with what is our intellectual thinking. But when we look out into the Cosmos and see how water condenses to ice, how certain mineral substances deposited as sediments, form stones and crystals, in short when we consider the processes of the mineral sphere and their corresponding processes in our own organism, we find that what transpires as mineral processes has to do with all that finally culminates in our intellectual thinking. We therefore as human beings, are incorporated into the Cosmos in these various spheres; but if we only incorporated in these different spheres without being envolved to special degree with the mineral kingdom, with those forces which appear in crystallisation, and in the deposits of salts, and which thus meet us in the external world, we should never have become the thinking beings we have become, especially since the middle of the 15th Century. It is an absolute fact—that since the middle of the I5th Century, it is this working of the mineral forces in the human organism which has become predominant. Previous to that, other forces, those of water, of air, and so on, were dominant to a special degree in man. Hence man's intellectual thinking was not then the most significant element in the works of man.

Now, in everything which surrounds us in the various spheres in which we live, the realm of the solid Earth, of flowing water, of air and warmth, (for a moment we will look away from the higher spheres) in all these are working Divine Spiritual Beings. These spheres do not only consist in what we call material world-forces and entities, but all these spheres are permeated by various Spiritual beings. I will therefore make a diagram to represent an important fact in our connection with the Cosmos.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Suppose I draw the sphere of the mineral world (see Diagram) as white; I must then characterise the sphere of the water as red, the sphere of the air as blue, and then finally the warmth-ether above as reddish.

Now this is the remarkable characteristic; all those Spiritual beings which the pre-Christian age and especially the pre-Christian Judaism imagined as standing under the guidance of Jahve or Jehovah, and who were regarded by the Hebrew Initiates as belonging to the Realm of Jahve or Jehovah, extended their dominions over the three first Realms—Warmth, Air, Water. And so if I am to draw that sphere in the Cosmos which was under the rulership of Jehovah, I must say; It is this sphere—(the three upper layers). It was really the case that the Jehovah rulership embraced the spheres of Nature as we have them, with the exception of the physical-mineral sphere. It must be quite clear to you that when in the ancient Jewish writings, reference is made to the Divine, this always refers to the Jehovah sphere of Warmth, Air, and Water. That was a deep Initiation-Truth of the pre-Christian age, and is even Spiritually indicated in the story of Creation. It is clearly expressed there, and one has merely to understand the meaning of the Bible words aright to see how this is brought to expression. Jehovah devoted Himself, so to speak, to the Earth, and formed man out of the dust of the Earth. He took that which was not his own sphere, for the forming of external man. The Bible expresses that fact quite clearly. As I have said, in the pre-Christian Jewish Initiation knowledge, it was known as an Initiation-Truth, that Jehovah did not form external man out of His own sphere of power, but turned to the Earth, and from out of the earthly dust which was foreign to Him, He formed that human vessel which could not come from His own kingdom. Then He breathed that which comes from Him, the animal soul, the breath. That it is which He gave forth from Himself, and it came from the three spheres over which He ruled. It is the case that the superficial Bible investigator really does not for the most part, understand what stands in the Bible at all. If one understands the Bible, one sees that it speaks with extraordinary exactitude, one only has to take those sentences quite exactly: “Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the Earth.”—That means out of the mineral sphere foreign to Him, and then He gave to that form from out of His own sphere, the breath of the soul. And so, that which lives in man as the Jehovah Outflow, is what is indicated when it is said that Jehovah breathed the living breath into man.

And so man developed, and while he developed himself further in the mineral kingdom, he developed an element foreign to Jehovah. That kingdom then, in the recent age, since the 5th Post Atlantean epoch, became especially dominant in man, because it formed the basis for his intellectual civilisation. So that we can say: As long as the intellectual civilisation was not predominant in man, so long could a rulership prevail such as that of Jehovah. Then, however, the mineral nature began to make itself felt, from the founding of Christianity up to the beginning of the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity had then to be helped from another side. Now you can see how necessary it was for humanity at the time when the mineral Nature became essential, that it should receive the Christ Impulse; because the old Jahve Jehovah-impulse was no longer sufficient.

You must connect what I have just told you with certain definite facts. Just consider the fact that man would not think intellectually, with a fully waking consciousness, if he were merely subject to the Jehovah-influence, which has no influence on the mineral nature. And so, if we wish chiefly to consider the activity of Jehovah in man, we must not look to what is in our external intellectual culture, but simply to what expresses itself in our dreams. That which is dreamt, which does not pass into sharply contoured intellectual concepts which can be grasped by our soul but is dreamt,—that is our Jehovah-life. Everything which moves in the fluidic elements of the more fantastic or imaginative side, everything which can be compared externally with the Moon-influence on man, that is the, Jehovah-nature in man. Opposed to the Jehovah-nature is man's acute thinking; but that he owes to the circumstances that there are salt deposits in him; that there is in man, a mineral activity.

Now just consider the fact that, fundamentally, the old Jehovah religion lost its significance with the Mystery of Golgotha. It had lost its significance because the time had come in the evolution of man, when the mineral nature became predominant in him. But when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared there was still sufficient left of the ancient Dream-Wisdom wherewith to understand it. And those persons who had somewhat transcended the ancient Dream-Wisdom, and who through various kinds of Initiations had, like Saul-Paul, already attained some intellectual culture, for them a special influence was necessary, such as Paul received through the Event of Damascus, in order to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha. It is of a great and deep significance, that in the Christian tradition we are told that, in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha it was necessary for Saul-Paul, who had in a certain sense been initiated before the Mystery of Golgotha, into the Hebraic Mysteries, for him it was necessary that he should be snatched into that knowledge which did not work in sharp contours, but which expressed itself in the more flowing element of the dream; and thus Paul experienced the certainty that Christ had been present in Jesus through the Mystery of Golgotha. With the old Dream-Wisdom it was still possible to grasp something of the Event of Golgotha, and if, through a special influence such as was the case with Paul, a man was snatched into that Dream-region, he could then understand the Mystery of Golgotha. But now the old Dream Wisdom decreased ever more and more; it only remained in man's dreams, and even there is found in utter decadence. As the I5th Century approached, the culture in Europe was tending more and more to the purely intellectual element; and, under the influence of this intellectual element, our modern natural Science developed.

Now, consider the following:—The old Jewish religion must not be grasped merely with reference to external worlds, that would only be a materialistic religious understanding; we must grasp it in its inner spirit. As an historical phenomenon—the point that strikes us is, that the Jehovah-god was simply the God of one tribe, and outside the limits of the Jewish race Jehovah was no longer the Jehovah-God. That is the essence of the Jehovah Divinity; he did not embrace the whole of humanity, but only one portion of mankind. Fundamentally this feeling of Divinity has passed over to our own age, and in particular one could see it again during the World-War, when every Nation spoke of how Divine Providence or, as many said, the Christ, was helping them! Each Nation wanted so to say, to go forth under the guidance of Christ, against every other Race. But because one utters the Name of `Christ,' that does not mean that one has met, contacted the Christ; for the Christ is only contacted when in one's whole feeling one turns to that Being Who has the Christ Nature. One may say a thousand times over: “We will fight in the name of Christ;” but as long as one is fighting for one Nation alone, one is giving a false name to that being of whom one speaks, one may call him Christ, but it is a false name. In calling that being Christ, one only means the Jehovah-God. In that War-Catastrophe all the Races fell back into a Jehovah-religion, only, there were a great many Jehovahs; every Race worshipped a God who was honoured quite in the character of a Jehovah; Christ completely disappeared from the consciousness of humanity. One could see in those catastrophic events how utterly Christ had disappeared out of the consciousness of man.

We can also see this in other things. A quite modern scientific civilisation has now grown up. Our modern scientific culture, how far does it extend? Fundamentally, it is limited to what is mineral-physical. Just consider how uncomfortable a modern scientist immediately becomes, if one asks him to speak of anything but what is mineral or physical. As soon as the conversation turns to anything else—for instance, to the principle of life, the modern scientist asserts that one can only explain the mineral and chemical processes in the living. He will not enter into the element of life itself and still less into the element of soul. Thus this modern Science has altogether developed within just that sphere which was not included in the Jehovah religion, in an element foreign to Jehovah,—that of the mineral—physical life. This Science, in order that it might become an element of civilisation, had, as it were, to depend on receiving the Divine Spiritual from quite another side.

In the old Jewish religion when man spoke of any sort of cognition, it was always a Dream-cognition. These prophets who had the very highest knowledge, are described as the Dreamers of prophetic dreams. That is all connected with just this very fact. It was through this Dream-Wisdom that men even comprehended the Mystery of Golgotha itself. But this Dream-Wisdom disappeared. The Mystery of Golgotha was indeed transmitted historically and spoken of in the traditional Church Communities, but a true understanding of it could no longer be found. In place of it, Modern Science grew up into an element which knew not Jehovah, a spiritual-less, God-less element; and, because its understanding could not yet expand to the Christ-element, it developed into that physical mineral element, utterly devoid of spirit.

Now this Science, must to its uttermost particle, again be permeated by a Spiritual element. It is spiritless because it can no longer be Jehovistic. External civilisation has attempted to carry on some sort of religious culture, by means of a religious `false coinage,' as when it gave the name of Christ to Jehovah during the War; but this religious element has been carried on through a sort of religious, `false coinage.' But Science has turned entirely away from the Spiritual; it only gives descriptions of the physical-sensible, because man has not yet been able to press forward to an understanding of the Christ, and at most the old Jehovah understanding still prevails, when men storm against each other as they did in the War; but not when they investigate facts of Nature, for then we have a Spiritless Science, and intellectual Science, devoid of spirit. Thus we are surrounded by a sphere in which the Jehovah element still rules. It permeates us; but we are not aware of it, because it permeates us chiefly through those conditions which are our sleeping-conditions. If, when we withdraw into the element of sleep, we could suddenly wake up outside our bodies, we should clearly perceive around us the spirit-nature under the leadership of Jehovah. Then, as it were, on the waves of a Jehovah-Sea, we should see our dreams coming to us out of this Jehovah element.

Again in our Will, of which I have often told you that we are asleep within it, there again the Jehovah Nature rules. In the whole assimilatory system of man, the Jehovah Nature rules, whereas the feelings arise out of the assimilatory system and permeates the rhythmic system, in like manner do certain feelings emerge, coming out of the Jehovah Sea on the waves like our dreams. But, when we live in that sphere which can become comprehensible to us through our understanding and reason, there Jehovah has no share. When the Moon slowly arises in a dream-like light and pours this dream-light over everything, one might say:—“Man has spread a Jehovah character over the fields of the world.” When however, the Sun arises, shining clearly on every stone, spreading itself outwardly on every object and giving it sharp contours, so that we are able to grasp it with our understanding, then the Sun-nature,—which is not a Jehovah-nature, expresses itself, and we can only permeate that with spirit if we can perceive the Christ-Being, if we so look into this world as to see the Christ-Being in it. Modern Science has had no eye for this Christ-Being, and that which is Not Jehovistic but Sun-illumined, and can be grasped in the sharp contours of the intellect, it has taken up and beheld as devoid of spirit.

Now see, that is the deeper connection. What kind of a sphere is it then, which meets man in the mineral? Now, I told you in the last lecture that on the one side within the sphere of Jehovah, because they have remained at an earthly stage of evolution, Luciferic beings appear when we are present in the Jehovah sphere let us say in sleep, then the Luciferic beings make themselves felt in our feelings and impulses of Will. That sphere which we must dominate with our intellect and which is spread out around us as the mineral spheres, that is a sphere foreign to Jehovah and into that those beings have penetrated, who belong to the Ahrimanic sphere. The Ahrimanic beings however, because Jehovah could not, so to speak, keep them away from Him, have penetrated into that mineral sphere. (lower part of Diagram, blue on white) And so, when we turn our gaze to this sphere, we are every moment in danger of being taken by surprise, to our confusion, because of the Ahrimanic beings. These Ahrimanic beings—I have tried to present an image of this in the wooden group which will stand in our Goetheanum—these Ahrimanic beings can in reality only feel at home in the sphere which surrounds us in the mineral world. These Ahrimanic beings are specially intellectually-gifted beings. That Mephistophelian figure which you see below in our wooden group, that Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic figure is extremely clever, utterly and wholly permeated with intellect. But that which is really Jehovistic, and which lives in the human metabolic system, in so far as it is not affected by the salts or altogether mineral,—with all that is of a fluid-nature, which lives in our breathing in our warmth condition, with all that, these Ahrimanic beings have no direct relationship.

Now, these Ahrimanic beings strive to get into man. Man was created of the dust of the Earth. The mineral element is the true sphere of Ahriman, he can enter that sphere, and feel comfortable there; he feels very comfortable whenever he can permeate us through that which is mineral in us. You secrete salts in your body, and thereby you are able to think; through the deposit of salt, through all the mineral processes valid and operative in you,—you become thinking-beings. Ahriman seeks to enter that sphere, but in reality he has only a part in the mineral. Therefore, he is fighting to get a share also in man's blood, in his breathing, and in his assimilation. He can only do this if he can inject certain characteristics into the soul of man; if for instance, he can inject into the human soul a tendency to a dry, barren understanding which seeks an outlet in materialism, and mocks all truths permeated by feeling. If he can permeate man with intellectual pride, then he can approach man's blood, his breath, his assimilation; then he can, as it were creep out of the salts and mineral in man and creep into his blood breathing and digestion.

That is the conflict being fought from the side of Ahriman in the world, through the very being of man. You see, when Jehovah turned to the Earth and created man out of the Earth in order to evolve him further than he could have done within His own body. He had to create man out of an element foreign to Himself, and only to inoculate, to inspire, his own element into him. In so doing, Jehovah had to take something to His aid, something to which these Ahrimanic beings have access; and Jehovah has thereby become involved, as regards earthly evolution, in this conflict with the Ahrimanic element, which with the help of man, seeks to get the world for itself by means of the mineral processes. As a matter of fact, much has been attained by the Ahrimanic beings in this sphere; because, when man is born into physical existence, or is conceived, he descends, he comes down from the Spiritual psychic worlds and surrounds himself with physical matter. But in the present state of our civilisation and according to the customs of all the traditional Churches, man would like to forget his existence in a Spiritual psychic sphere before Birth. He does not wish to admit it. He would like, in a sense, to wipe out of human life any pre-birthly existence. Pre-Existence is being gradually declared heretical in the traditional Confessions. It is wished to limit man to starting with physical birth or conception, and then to link on to that, what follows after death. If this belief in a mere post-mortem condition, in an after-death condition, were to be finally forced on man, the Ahrimanic powers would then win their conflict; because if man only regards what he experiences between birth and death, and does not look to a pre-existence, to a life before birth, the Ahrimanic element would gradually overpower man from out of his mineral processes. Thereby everything of a Jehovistic nature would be thrown out of earthly evolution, everything which has come over from Saturn, Sun, and Moon, would be wiped away. A new creation would thus begin with the Earth, which would deny everything which had preceded it.

For that reason, the perception which denies pre-existence must be fought with all possible energy. Man must realise that he existed before he was born or conceived into physical life. In all veneration and holiness, he must receive that which was allotted to him from Divine Spiritual worlds before his earthly existence. If he adds to the belief of the after-death condition a knowledge of pre-birthly existence, he can thereby prevent his soul from being devoured by Ahriman. It follows therefore, from what I have said, that (it is necessary that we should gradually take into our speech, a certain word which we have not yet got:—Just as we speak of immortality (Deathlessness) when we think of the end of our physical existence, so we must speak of un-bornness (ungeborenheit) for even as we are immortal, so also we, as human beings, are in reality unborn. But just seek everywhere in civilised language for a practicable word for “Birthlessness.” We have the word Immortal, everywhere, but “unborn” we have not got. We need that word;—it must be just as valid a word as the word immortal to-day. It is just in this that the Ahrimanising of our modern civilisation reveals itself; it is one of the most important symptoms of the Ahrimanising of modern civilisation, that we have no word for this “not-being born.” For, just as we do not fall a prey to death when we `die' as it is called neither do we first come into our so-called `birth.' We must have a word which points clearly to pre-existence. One must not undervalue the significance which lays in the word.

You see, my dear friends, no matter how acutely one thinks, there is something in you, something in man, of an intellectual nature, but the moment the thought is expressed in a word, even the moment the word as such in only thought, as in the words of a meditation, that same moment one word is imprinted into the ether of the Cosmos. Thought, as such, does not imprint itself into the ether of the Cosmos, otherwise we could never become free beings in the sphere of pure thought. We are bound the moment something imprints itself. We are not made free through the word, but through pure thought. You can read now about this in my ^“Philosophy of Freedom.” The word imprints itself into the ether.

Now just consider this. The Science of Initiation knows that it is true that in the whole Ether of the Earth, because in the civilised language there is no word for “Un-bornness” (ungeborenheit), this “Birthlessness,” which is so important for humanity, is not imprinted into the Cosmic ether. Now everything which in such important words is imprinted in the Cosmic ether, signifies for the Ahrimanic beings a terrific fear. The word immortality the Ahrimanic beings can very well bear to find inscribed in the World-ether; they are quite pleased, because immortality means that they can start a new creation, with man, and wander forth with humanity. It does not irritate Ahrimanic beings when they shoot through the Cosmic ether, to play their game with man, and they find that from all pulpits immortality is being spoken of; that does not irritate them, it pleases them. But it is a terrible shock for them if they find the word Un-bornness inscribed in the World ether; it extinguishes the light in which these Ahrimanic being move. Then they can go no further, they lose their direction, they feel as though they were falling into an abyss, a bottomless pit. You can see by this that it is an Ahrimanic deed which restrains humanity from speaking of un-bornness. No matter how paradoxical it may appear to modern humanity that one should speak of these things, modern civilization requires that these things should be spoken of. Just as Meteorology describes the Wind, or Geography the Gulf Stream, so one must describe what is going on around us Spiritually, and how these Ahrimanic beings are permeating our environment; and one must describe how well they feel in everything connected; and with dying, even a negation of death itself is not admitted; and how they are filled with a terrible fear of darkness when one speaks of anything connected with the negation of Birth, with growth and thriving. He must learn to speak scientifically of these things, just as that Jehovah-forsaken mineral-sphere can be spoken of scientifically in our modern Science.

You see, this is in reality, neither more nor less than the conflict with the Ahrimanic powers, which we ourselves must take upon us and finally, whether people like to know it or not, that which is so often brought against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, is at the same time the fight of Ahriman against that which as Spiritual Science, must ever repeat more and more emphatically what is now necessary for modern humanity.

Of course, my dear friends, when one experiences such things as the recent attacks, is it not obvious that these people themselves do not approach Spiritual Science? I have spoken to you recently of the especially ruthless and ugly attack which appeared recently in Germany, in the decent paper, “Frankfurter Zeitung,” in which that paper indeed took up a really disgraceful attitude. It did indeed accept our rejoinder, but only in order to put before it a whole column of its own nonsensical remarks. These things are all part of those which it is either too lazy or not capable of studying.

You see, my dear friends, if you consider such attacks in the light of what I have told you, in connection with these Ahrimanic beings, you will see through them a little. In scientific circles to-day there are a great number of persons who can apparently think quite clearly. And why, my dear friends? Because Ahriman, who permeates the mineral world, permeates them; therefore, you need not be surprised that these people develop a great deal of intellect and power. That is Ahriman within them, it is far more comfortable to allow Ahriman to think in one, than to think for oneself. A man can pass his exams far more easily, he can become a tutor or University Professor with far greater facility if he allows Ahriman to think for him. And because so many people allow Ahriman to think in them, these attacks naturally come from an Ahrimanic side. These things have an inner Spiritual connection, which we must see through. Therefore, people must not be so foolish as to blame us over and over again, if we are forced with sharp words to beat back that which would fain nullify Spiritual Science from its very roots.

We have seen how the study of karma, wherein the destiny of man is contained, leads us from the affairs of the farthest universe—from the worlds of the stars—down to the tenderest experiences of the human heart, inasmuch as the heart is an expression of all that man feels working upon him during life,—of all that happens to him in the whole nexus of earth-existence. When we try to arrive at our judgments through a deeper understanding of the karmic connections, we are driven again and again to look into these two domains of world-existence which lie so far removed from one another. Indeed we must say: Whatever else we may be studying,—be it Nature, or the more natural configuration of human evolution in history or in the life of nations—none of these leads us so high up into cosmic realms as the study of karma. The study of karma makes us altogether aware of the connections between human life here upon earth and that which goes on in the wide universe. We see this human life taking its course on earth, unfolding till about the 70th year of life, when in a certain connection it attains its limit. Whatever lies beyond this is in reality a life given by grace. What lies below this limit stands under karmic influences, and these we shall now have to study.

It is possible, as I have often mentioned from varied points of view, to put the length of human life on earth at about 72 years. Now 72 years, seen in relation to the secrets of the cosmos, is a remarkable number, the true significance of which only begins to dawn upon us when we consider what I may call the cosmic secret of human earthly life. We have already described what the world of the stars is from a spiritual point of view. When we enter on a new earthly life, we return, so to speak, from the world of stars to this life on earth.

At this point once more it is astonishing how the ancient ideas—even if we do not take our start from tradition—simply emerge again of their own accord when we approach these domains of life with the help of modern spiritual science. We have seen how the various planetary stars and fixed stars take part in human life and in all that permeates this human life on earth. If we have before us an earthly life that has taken its full course,—one that does not come to an end all too soon, but that has passed through half at least of the allotted earthly time,—then in the last resort we find this truth once more: The human being, inasmuch as he comes down from cosmic spiritual spaces into an earthly life, comes always from a certain star. We can trace the very direction of it, and it is not unreal—on the contrary, it is most exact, to say:—‘The human being has his star.’ If we take what is experienced beyond all space and time between death and a new birth, and translate this into its spatial image, we can say: Every man has his star, which determines what he has attained between death and a new birth.

He comes from the direction of a certain star. We may indeed receive into our minds this conception. The whole human race inhabiting the earth is to be found on the one hand by looking round about us upon earth, passing through these many continents, finding them peopled by the human beings who are now incarnated. And the others who are not on the earth, where in the universe shall we find them? Whither must we look in the great universe if we would turn our soul's gaze to them,—assuming that a certain time has elapsed since they went through the gate of death? The answer is: We look in the true direction when we look out upon the starry heavens. There are the souls—or at least the directions which will enable us to find the souls—-who are spending their life between death and a new birth. We see and comprehend the entire human race that inhabits the earth, when we look upward and downward.

Those alone who are now on the way thither or returning thence, we find in the planetary region. But we can certainly not speak of the midnight hour of existence between death and a new birth, without thinking of some star which the human being as it were indwells between death and a new birth (albeit we must always bear in mind what I have said about the beings of the stars).

Then, my dear friends, we shall approach the cosmos with this knowledge. Away there are the stars, the cosmic signs from which there shines and lightens down upon us the soul-life of those who are between death and a new birth. And then we become aware that we can look also at the constellations of stars, saying to ourselves: ‘How is all this, that we behold in cosmic spaces, connected with the life of man?’ We look up with a new fulness of heart and mind to the silvery moon, the dazzling blaze of the sun, the twinkling stars at night-time, and we feel ourselves united even humanly with all of these. This is what Anthroposophy is to attain at last for the souls of men: they shall feel themselves united even in a human way with the whole cosmos. It is at this point that certain secrets of cosmic existence first begin to dawn upon us.

The sun rises and sets; the stars rise and set. We can trace how the sun sets, for example in the region where there are certain groups of stars. We can trace what is now called the apparent course of the stars, circling round the earth. We can trace the course of the sun. In 24 hours, the sun circles around the earth—‘apparently’ as we say nowadays,—and the stars too circle around the earth. So we say: but it is not quite correct. For if again and again we attentively observe the course of stars and sun, we perceive at length that the sun does not always rise at the same time in relation to the stars. It grows ever a little later. Day after day it arrives a little later at the place where it was on the previous day in relation to the stars. These spaces of time, by which the sun remains behind the stars in their course, add up till they become an hour, two hours, three hours, and at length a day. Thus at length the time approaches when we can say: The sun has remained behind the star by a whole day.

Now let us assume: Someone was born on the 1st of March in a particular year. And, let us say, he lived till the end of his 72nd year. He always celebrates his birthday on the 1st of March, for the sun says: His birthday is on the 1st of March. And he can celebrate it so, for throughout the 72 years of his life (though it progresses in relation to the stars) the sun shines forth ever and again in the neighbourhood of the star that shone when he came down to earth. But when he has lived for 72 years, a full day has elapsed. He has arrived at an age in life when the sun leaves the star into which it entered when he began his life. At his birthday now he is beyond the 1st of March. The star no longer says the same as the sun; the stars say it is the 2nd of March; the sun says it is the 1st. The human being has lost a cosmic day, for it takes just 72 years for the sun to remain behind a star.

During this time which the sun can spend in the region of his star, a man can live on earth. Then (under normal conditions) when the sun is no longer there to comfort his star for his life on earth, when the sun no longer says to his star: ‘He is down there, and I from myself am giving thee what he—this human being—has to give to thee; and for the time being, as I cover thee, I am doing for him what thou dost for him between death and a new birth,’ when the sun can no longer speak thus to the star, the star summons the man back again.

Thus you perceive the processes in the heavens immediately connected with human existence upon earth. In the mysteries of the heavens we see the age of man's life expressed. Man can live 72 years, because in this time the sun remains a day behind. After that time the sun can no longer comfort the star which it could comfort while it stood before and covered it. The star has become free again for the soul-spiritual work of man within the cosmos.

These things cannot be understood in any other way than with reverence,—with that deep reverence which was called in the ancient Mysteries ‘the reverence for that which is above.’ For this reverence leads us ever and again to see what happens here on earth in connection with what is unfolded in the sublime, majestic writing of the stars. It is indeed a limited life men lead today, compared to what was still existing at the beginning of the 3rd Post-Atlantean epoch. They did not merely base their reckoning, their understanding of man, on that which describes his steps upon the earth; they reckoned with what the stars of the great universe are saying about the life of man.

Once we are attentive to such connections and able to receive them with reverence into our souls, then too we know: ‘Whatever happens here on earth has its corresponding counterpart in the spiritual worlds.’ In the writing of the stars is expressed the kind of connection that exists between what happens here, and what happened (to speak from the earthly point of view) ‘some time ago’ in the spiritual world. In truth our every reflection upon karma should be accompanied by holy reverence and awe before the secrets of the universe.

In such a mood of reverence, let us approach the studies of karma which we are to make here during the near future. To begin with let us take this fact: Here are sitting a number of human beings, a section of what we call the Anthroposophical Society; and though one of us may be united with this Anthroposophical Society by stronger links, and another by less strong, it is in all cases part of a man's destiny—and the destiny that underlies these things is powerful—it is a part of his destiny that he has found his way into the Anthroposophical Society. Moreover, it lies inherent in the spiritualisation which must come over the Anthroposophical Society since the Christmas Foundation Meeting:—We must become ever more conscious of the spiritual, cosmic realities that underlie such a community as this Society. For out of such a consciousness the individual will then be able to take his true stand in the Society. Hence you will understand—along with all the other responsibilities resulting from the Christmas Foundation Meeting—that we must now begin to say something too about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society. It is very complicated, for it is a karma of community,—a karma that arises from the karmic coming-together of many single human beings. Take in its true and deep meaning all that has been said in these lectures and all that results from the many relationships that have been unfolded here; then, my dear friends, you will yourselves perceive that what is taking place here in our midst—where a number of human beings are led by their karma into the Anthroposophical Society—has been preceded by many and important events which happened to these very human beings before they came down into this present earthly life—events moreover which were themselves the after-effects of what had taken place in former lives on earth.

Let your thought dwell for a moment on the great vistas that are opened up by such an idea as this. Then you will realise how this thought may by and by be deepened till there emerges the spiritual history that stands behind the Anthroposophical Society. But this cannot be accomplished all at once. It can only enter our consciousness slowly and gradually; then only will it be possible to build even the conduct and action of the Anthroposophical Society on the foundations which are actually there for anthroposophists.

It is of course Anthroposophy as such which holds the Society together. In one way or another, everyone who finds his way into the Society must be seeking for Anthroposophy. And the preceding causes are to be sought for in the experiences which were undergone, by the souls who now become anthroposophists, before they came down into this earthly life.

At the same time, if we look out into the world with a clear perception of what has happened hitherto, we are also bound to admit: There are many human beings whom we find here or there in the world today, and of whom—looking at their connection with their pre-earthly life—we must say that they were truly pre-destined by their pre-natal life for the Anthroposophical Society; and yet, owing to certain other things, they are unable to find their way into it. There are far more of them than we generally think.

This must bring still nearer to our hearts the question: What is the pre-destination that leads a soul to Anthroposophy?

I will take my start from extreme examples, which are all the more instructive in showing how the karmic forces work. In the Anthroposophical Society the question of karma does indeed arise before the individual in a more intensive way than in other realms of life. I need only say the following: The souls who are incarnated in a human body now,—to begin with we cannot possibly follow them back far enough to assume that they experienced directly in their past earthly lives anything that could lead them, for example, to Eurhythmy (to take this radical instance from within the Anthroposophical Movement). For Eurhythmy did not exist in the times when the souls who now seek for it were incarnated. Thus the burning question arises: How comes it that a soul finds its way into Eurhythmy out of the working of the karmic forces?

But so it is in all the domains of life. Souls are there today, seeking the way to that which Anthroposophy can give them. How do they come to unfold all the pre-dispositions of their karma from past earthly lives, precisely in this direction which leads them to Anthroposophy?

In the first place there are some souls who are driven to Anthroposophy with strong inner intensity. The intensity of these forces is not the same in all. Some souls are driven to Anthroposophy with such inward intensity that it seems as though they were steering straight towards it without any by-ways at all, finding their way directly into one domain or another of the anthroposophical life.

There are a number of souls who steer their cosmic way in this sense for the following reason: In past centuries, when they had their former life on earth, they felt with peculiar intensity that Christianity had reached a definite turning-point. They lived in an age when the main effect of Christianity was to pass over into a more or less instinctive human feeling. It was an age when Christianity was practised in a perfectly natural and simple way but quite instinctively; so that the question did not really occur to the souls of men: Why am I a Christian? Such souls we find especially if we turn our gaze to the 13th, 12th, 11th, 10th, 9th, and 8th centuries after Christ. There we find Christ-permeated souls, who were growing and evolving towards the age of Consciousness (the age of the Spiritual Soul), but who, since this age had not yet begun, were still receiving Christianity into the pure Mind-Soul. On the other hand, with respect to the worldly affairs of life, they already experienced the dawn of what the Spiritual Soul is destined to bring.

Thus their Christianity lived in a way unconsciously. It was in many respects a deeply pious Christianity, but it lived, if I may say so, leaving the head on one side and entering straight into the functions of the organism. Now that which is unconscious in one life becomes a degree more conscious in the next life on earth: and so this Christianity which had not become fully clear or self-conscious, became at length a challenge and a question for these human souls: ‘Why are we Christians?’

The outcome was (I am speaking in an introductory way today, hinting at matters which will be spoken of more fully afterwards) the outcome was that in the life between death and a new birth these souls had a certain connection once more in the spiritual world, especially in the first half of the 19th century. In the first half of the 19th century there were gatherings of souls in the spiritual world,—souls who took the consequences of the Christianity they had experienced on earth, finding it again in the radiance, in the all embracing glory of the spiritual world. Above all in the first half of the 19th century, there were souls in the life between death and a new birth who strove to translate into cosmic Imaginations what they had felt in a preceding Christian life on earth. The very thing that I once described here as a great cult or act of ritual was there enacted in the Supersensible. A large number of souls were gathered in these mutually-woven cosmic Imaginations, in these mighty pictures of a future existence, which they were to seek again in an altered form during their next life on earth.

But in all this was also interwoven all that had taken place between the 7th and 13th or 14th centuries A.D. by way of dire and painful inner conflicts, which were indeed more painful than is generally thought. For the souls to whom I now refer had undergone very much during that time; and all that they had thus undergone, they wove it into the mighty cosmic Imaginations which were woven together by a large number of souls in common, during the first half of the 19th century.

The great cosmic Imaginations that were thus woven were shot through on the one hand by something that I cannot otherwise describe than as a kind of longing and expectant feeling. Working out these mighty Imaginations, the souls experienced within them a concentrated feeling, gathered from manifold experiences, a concentrated feeling within their disembodied souls. It was a feeling which I can describe somewhat as follows: ‘In our last life on earth we inclined towards the living experience of Christianity. Deeply we felt the Mysteries which tradition had preserved for all Christians, telling of the sacred and solemn happenings in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era. But did He really stand before us in all His glory, in His full radiance?’ The question arose out of their hearts. ‘Was it not only after our death that we learned how Christ had descended from cosmic heights, as a Being of the Sun, to the earth? Did we really experience Him as the Being of the Sun? He is here no longer, He is united with the earth. Here we can only find what is like a great cosmic memory of Him. We must find our way back again to the earth, in order to have the Christ before our souls.’

A longing for Christ accompanied these souls from that time forth, when with the Spirit-Beings of the Hierarchies they wove the mighty and sublime cosmic Imaginations. This longing went with them from their pre-earthly life into the present life on earth.

This can be experienced with overwhelming intensity by spiritual vision when it observes what was taking place in mankind, incarnate and discarnate, in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. And as I said, all manner of things were mingled into these impressions. For we must remember that in their Christian experience the souls who are now returning had shared in all that was taking place as between those who were striving for Christianity and those who still stood within the old Pagan consciousness,—which was frequently the case during the centuries to which I just now referred. In these souls therefore, many of those influences are present which make it possible for man to fall a victim to the temptations of Lucifer on the one hand and Ahriman on the other. For in karma, Lucifer and Ahriman are weaving, no less than the good gods: this we have already seen.

All that was thus interwoven, and that works itself out karmically today, must be followed out in detail, if we would really penetrate the spiritual foundations of anthroposophical striving. If the Christmas Foundation Meeting is to be taken in real earnest, the time has now come when we must draw aside the veil from certain things. Only they must be taken with the necessary earnestness.

Let us begin, as I said, with a radical instance; and while we discuss the following, let there hold sway in the background, for the rest of this hour, all that has now been said.

From the pre-earthly into this earthly existence, through their education, through all that they experience on earth, human souls find their way. They seek and find their way into the Anthroposophical Society, and remain in it for a time. But there are isolated cases among them, where, having shown themselves zealous, nay over-zealous members of the Anthroposophical Society for a while, they become the most violent opponents. Let us observe the working of karma in an extreme case of this kind.

A person comes into the Anthroposophical Society. He proves a very zealous member, yet after a time he somehow manages to become not only an opponent but a maligner among opponents. We must admit, it is a very strange karma.

We will consider a single case. There is a soul. We look back into a past life on earth, into a time when old memories from the ages of Paganism still lingered on, enticingly for many people. It was a time when men were finding their way on the one hand into a Christianity that spread out with a certain warmth and fire, and yet, for many of them, with a certain superficiality.

When such things are spoken of, we must always remember that we have to begin somewhere or other, at some particular earthly life. Every such earthly life leads back to earlier ones in turn; therefore there will always be some things that remain unexplained—things to which we simply refer as matters of fact. They are of course the karmic consequences of still earlier events, but we have to begin somewhere.

In the period to which I have just referred we find a certain soul. We find him, indeed, in a way that very nearly concerned myself and other present members of this Society. We find him as a would-be maker of gold, in possession of writings, manuscripts which he is hardly able to understand but interprets in his own way and then makes experiments in accordance with the instructions, though he has no real notion what he is doing. For it is by no means a simple matter to look into the spiritually chemical relationships, if we may call them so. Thus we see him as an experimenter, with a little library containing the most varied instructions and recipes going far back into Moorish and Arabian sources. We see him unfolding this activity in an almost out-of-the-way place, though visited by many inquisitive persons. At length, under the influence of the practices in which he engages without understanding, he gets a strange physical debility,—a disease attacking especially the larynx,—and (this being a masculine incarnation) his voice becomes hoarser and hoarser till it has almost vanished.

Meanwhile the Christian teachings are spread abroad; they are taking hold of men on all hands. This man is filled on the one hand with the greedy longing to make gold, and, with the making of gold, to attain many other things attainable at that time if one had been successful in making gold. On the other hand Christianity comes near to him, in a way that is full of reproaches. There arises in him what I may perhaps describe as a kind of Faustian feeling, though not altogether pure. Strong becomes the feeling in him: ‘Have I not really done an awful wrong?’ By-and-by under the influence of such reflections the conclusion grows upon him, living with scepticism in his soul: ‘Your having lost your voice is the divine punishment, the just punishment, for meddling with unrighteous things.’

In this situation of his inner life, he sought out the advice of human beings who have also become united at this present time with the Anthroposophical Society, and who were able at that time really to play a helpful part in his destiny. For they were able to save his soul from deep and anxious doubt. We can really speak of a certain ‘salvation of the soul’ in this case. But all this took place under such conditions that he experienced it with feelings which remained to some extent external, no matter how intense they were. He was overwhelmed on the one hand with a sense of gratitude toward those who had saved his inner life. But on the other hand—unclear as it all was—an appalling Ahrimanic impulse became mingled with it. After the strong inclination towards unrighteous magic practices, and with his present feeling—which was not quite genuine—of having entered into Christian righteousness, an Ahrimanic trait became mixed up in all these things. For in effect the soul was brought into confusion; things were not really clear, and the result was that he brought an Ahrimanic trait into his gratitude. His thankfulness was transformed into something that found an unworthy expression in his soul, and that appeared to him in this light, during his life between death and new birth. It came before him especially when he had reached that point which I described, in the first half of the 19th century. There he had to live through it again; and he experienced the deep unworthiness of what his soul had evolved in that former life, by way of gratitude which was superficial, external, nay even cringing.

We see this picture of Ahrimanised gratitude mixed up in the cosmic Imaginations of which I spoke. And we see the soul descend from that pre-earthly existence into a new earthly life. We see him descend on the one hand with all those impulses that entered into him from the time when he was seeking to make gold,—the materialistic corruption of a spiritual striving. On the other hand we see evolving in him under the Ahrimanic influence something which is distinctly to be perceived as a sense of shame,—shame at his gratitude improperly expressed and superficial.

These two currents live in his soul as he descends to earth. And they express themselves in this way: The soul of whom I am speaking, having become a person again in earthly life, finds his way to those others who were also with him in the first half of the 19th century.

To begin with, a kind of memory arises in him of what he lived through in the Imaginative picture of the unworthy external gratitude. All these things become unfolded now, almost automatically. Then there awakens what is living there within him,—what I described as a sense of shame at his own attitude which had been unworthy of a man. This takes hold of his soul, but, influenced as it is by Ahriman (through the karma of former epochs too, of course), it finds vent as an appalling hatred against all that he had at first espoused. The sense of shame against himself becomes transformed into a wild and angry opposition. And this again is united with dreadful disappointment that all his old subconscious cravings have been so little satisfied. For they would have been satisfied if anything had arisen now, similar to what was contained in the old, improper art of making gold.

You see, my dear friends, here we have a radical example showing how such things turn inward. We have traced the strange mysterious by-ways of such a thing as this: the connection of a sense of shame with hatred. Such things must also be discovered in the connections of human life if we would understand a present life from its preceding conditions.

When we consider such things as these, a certain measure of understanding is indeed poured out over all that takes place through human beings in the world. Then indeed great difficulties of life begin, when we take the thought of karma in real earnest. But these difficulties are meant to come, for they are founded in the real essence of human life. Such a Movement as the Anthroposophical must indeed be exposed to many things, for only so can it evolve the strong forces which it needs.

I gave you this example first, so that you might see how we must seek—even for negative things—the karmic relationships with the whole stream of destiny which is causing the Anthroposophical Movement to arise out of the preceding incarnations of those who are joined together in this Society.

So, my dear friends, we may hope that there will awaken in us by-and-by an entirely new understanding of the essence of this Anthroposophical Society. We may hope to discover, as it were, the very soul of the Anthroposophical Society with all its many difficulties. For in this case too, we must not remain within the limits of the single human life, but trace it back to what is now being—I cannot say re-incarnated—but re-experienced in life. In this direction I wanted to begin today.

My dear friends,

We have seen the changes which take place in a person who encounters the Guardian of the Threshold. And whether he or she is able to approach and come to an understanding of the spiritual world in any form, depends upon understanding the essence of this Guardian. In particular, we have seen how what constitutes man's inner self - thinking, feeling, willing - undergoes a substantial transformation in the Guardian of the Threshold's domain. Especially in the last lesson here, it became clear to us how in a certain respect thinking, feeling and willing go different ways upon entering the spiritual world, how they enter into different relationships than those which usually prevail for earthly consciousness.

We have seen how through his will man is greatly influenced by earthly conditions. At the moment when the person approaches the spiritual world, in a certain sense thinking, feeling and willing become separated. The will, now living much more independently than previously in the soul, shows itself to be much more related to the forces which attract man to the earth. Feeling shows itself to be related to the forces which hold man in the periphery of the earth through which the light penetrates when it shines upon the earth in the morning, and which disappears from sight on the opposite side in the evening. Thinking, however, is the force which relates upwards to the heavenly. So that in the moment that man stands before the Guardian of the Threshold, this Guardian draws his attention to how he belongs to the whole world: through his will the earth, through his feeling the periphery, through his thinking the higher powers.

But that, my dear friends, is exactly what must be made clear - that upon entering the spiritual world a growing together with the universe occurs. For normal consciousness we stand here in the world while outside of us are the forces which are active in the plant, mineral, animal kingdoms, to which we have access through our senses, but which at first indicate no relationship to human beings. So here we stand, apart, looking inwards at our thinking, feeling and willing, aware that our thinking, feeling and willing are somewhat separated, apart from external nature. And we feel a deep chasm between our human nature and the expansive nature around us.

But this chasm must be bridged. For this chasm, only the exterior aspects of which are perceived by normal consciousness, is the threshold itself. And our being able to perceive the threshold depends on our ceasing to simply accept this unconsciousness, when we look within ourselves, concerning an external nature which we perceive as being foreign to humanity. For this chasm needs to be understood as being not only extremely important for human life, but also for the entire universe.

Well, you see, at the moment when one enters the esoteric, a bridge over this must be built. We must, in a sense, merge with nature. We must stop saying to ourselves: Out there is nature, which has nothing to do with morality. We don't ask the minerals about morality, although it is of prime interest to us, nor do we ask the plants, or the animals - and in this materialistic age we have even ceased asking humans, because only human physicality is taken into consideration.

And also when looking into the inner human we see what for normal consciousness is passive thinking, with which we can indeed visualize the world pictorially, but which is nevertheless powerless. Our thoughts are at first things we own which allow us to recognize the objects in the world. As thoughts they have no power. Our feeling is our inner life. To a certain extent we are separated through it from the world. Our will does communicate external objects to us, but in so doing the external objects take on something foreign to their nature.

Something truly great happens to a person when he becomes aware of the abyss which exists between himself and nature: something great. Something which has been expressed since ancient times with these words, words which must be understood anew in every age: Nature must appear as divine, and the human must be a magical being. What does it mean, that nature must be able to appear as divine?

Nature must be able to appear as divine. The way it appears to the senses, and how reason understands it, it is certainly not divine. One would like to say: divinity is hidden within nature. It only appears to lack divinity. At most in dreams do we see a relationship between nature and the inner life of man. We can become aware of how an irregularity in our breathing process in one direction or the other can cause happy dreams or fearful and anxiety-filled ones. We can be aware of how the purely natural overheating of a room can give a kind of moral content to certain dreams. Dreams pull nature into the psyche.

However, we also know that in dreams our consciousness is submerged, and dreams are not what can directly describe the spiritual to us. Rather than the sleeping consciousness, we must see how the awakened consciousness presents nature.

Now in nature, my dear friends, we have a relationship of the human physical body with what is solid, with what is characteristic of the earthly element. We have a relationship of the human etheric body with what is characteristic of water. However, this relationship of the human physical body with the earthly, and the relationship of the human etheric body with the liquid element lie deep beneath what people experience.

What is closer to man is his breathing process, which is dependent upon the air. So it is from the breathing process upwards where the region begins where man can feel himself- when he is approaching the spiritual - related to nature.

The breathing process contains the air element, in which we exist.

air
[is written on the blackboard]

Above the element of air we have the quality of warmth.

warmth
[is written on the blackboard above “air”]

And above the element of warmth we have the essence of light: warmth-ether, light-ether.

light
[is written above “warmth”]

When we go even higher we come to a region - which we will speak about later - which does not lie so close to humans.

That man lives and moves in the element of air is obvious from a completely exterior point of view. One needs only to look at dreams to see how dependent they are on irregularities, abnormalities in the breathing process. When the breathing process takes place while awake, we don't notice it, because in general we pay little attention to normal life processes.

That the element of warmth is extremely essential to man is obvious to even superficial observation. If we dab our skin with an object that is colder than our body, a cold knitting needle for example, we feel the cold places that have been touched as separate even though they are very close to each other. We are very sensitive to the cold. If we touch our skin with an object that is warmer than our body, we don't feel the difference so clearly. We can hold two cold knitting needles very close to each other and feel the coldness of both. If we hold two warmed needles, the close contacts flow together at one point, and we must hold them quite far apart in order to sense them as separate. In fact we are far more sensitive to cold than to warmth. Why? We endure warmth much better then cold because we are creatures of warmth, because warmth is our own nature and we live and act in it. Cold is foreign to us and we are very sensitive to it.

It is more difficult for normal consciousness to understand light. Today we want to approach these things esoterically. So it may be sufficient that I have indicated what air and warmth means to normal consciousness. But with this consciousness man feels air as something external, natural. He also feels warmth as something that touches him from without, and he also feels that light comes to him from outside himself.

In the moment when a person takes the leap in his life which brings him near to the Guardian of the Threshold, he becomes aware of how intimately he is related to what otherwise seems alien to him.

I have often pointed out how in every moment of our lives, also for normal consciousness, we can become aware of our relationship to the universe through our relation to the air. The air is outside, the same air which is inside me a moment later, then it is again outside, the same air which was within me. But we are not aware of the fact that, in the sense that we are beings of air, that what we hold within us we let out again, then take what was external into us again, so that we become one with the whole life and being of the element of air in which we exist as earthly beings. Whereas we always carry our muscles and bones within us, so we are only conscious of their origination and passing away during the embryonic and dying stages.

At the moment we enter the spiritual region this is no longer the case. We then feel how with every exhalation we fly out on the wings of the exhaled air into the expanse of being into which the exhaled air disperses. And how by inhaling we take into us the spiritual beings who live in the circulating air. The spiritual world flows into us when inhaling; our own being flows out into the environment upon exhaling.

This is not only so in respect to the air, but to an even greater degree in respect to warmth. As we are one with the air environment which encircles the earth, so are we also one with the warmth which encircles and penetrates the earth. [Two white circles are drawn: air, then a red one: warmth.]

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When we approach the spiritual world we truly experience the spirit entering us when inhaling, our own being streaming out into the expanse of space when exhaling, that is, we experience a spiritual interweaving of inhaling and exhaling. And we feel more intensively how with the increase of warmth - in that we are ourselves within the element of warmth - we become more human, and with the lessening of warmth we become less human. Thus warmth ceases to be a merely natural element, for we feel and recognize the spiritual nature of warmth - and we feel it to be closely related to our being human. We feel that the increase of warmth means that the spirits which are active in the element of warmth say: We give you your humanity through the element of warmth; we take it away through the element of cold.

So we come to the light, in which we live and act. But we don't notice it because with normal consciousness we have no idea of the fact that the inner movements of light are contained in our own thinking, that every thought is captured light - both for the physically sighted and for the physically unsighted. Light is objective. Not only the physically sighted receive it, the physically unsighted also receive it ... when they think. Because the thoughts which we hold within us, which we capture, is light present within us.

We can say then, that when we approach the Guardian of the Threshold he admonishes us in the following way:

When you think, O man, your being is not in you, it is in the light. When you feel, your being is not in you, it is in the warmth. When you will, your being is not in you, it is in the air. Keep not within yourself, O man. Think not that your thinking is in your head. Think that your willing is none other than the moving, living, active air element working within.

One must be very conscious of the fact that in the Guardian of the Threshold's presence one is divided into the universal elements, that one can no longer simply hold one's self together in the usual chaotic, dim way of normal consciousness. And that is the grand experience that initiate knowledge gives to the human being, that he ceases to seriously think that he is enclosed within his skin - something which is no more than a mere indication that he exists. For spiritual consciousness what is concentrated within the skin is an illusion; for man is as great as the universe. His thoughts are as wide as the light, his feelings are as wide as the warmth, his will is as wide as the air.

If a being of sufficiently developed consciousness were to descend to the earth from another planet, he would speak to people in quite a different way than how people of the earth address each other. He would say: The light which envelops the earth is differentiated [The cloak of light is drawn around the air and warmth circles: yellow.] Many individually differentiated beings are in the light. One must imagine that in this earth-light, in the light that surrounds the earth, that weaves and waves around it, in this space many beings are present, as many as there are human beings on the earth. They all accommodate themselves within the earth's world of light. And for this visitor from space all human thoughts are in this cloak of light. And all feelings are in the cloak of warmth, and all willing is in the atmosphere, in the cloak of air.

Then this being would say: I have qualitatively differentiated out a being. It is indicated by body a; another, also within the cloak, is designated as b, and so on [within the yellow, two spots, a and b, are drawn]. The real human beings are all together in the light, warmth and air surrounding the earth.

For the person who really stands before the Guardian of the Threshold this is not speculation, but experience. And this is what constitutes spiritual progress, that man integrates with the surrounding world. It is of little use to speak of these things theoretically. It is not particularly profound mystically to say that you are one with the world by merely thinking that you are, if you do not begin to experience the fact that when you are thinking you are living in the entire earth's light, are becoming one with the earth's light, and how by doing so, by becoming one with the light of the earth, you go out of yourself - go out, so to speak, through all the pores of your skin into a divine-spiritual being - you become one with the essence of the earth itself and with the other elements of the earth's being. This is something which must be understood in all seriousness by anyone who strives toward relationship with the spiritual world.

You see, light must, in a sense, have a moral effect. And we must be aware of how we are related to the light and how the light is related to us in the esoteric experience of the world. But then, at the moment when one steps over the threshold, it becomes clear that the light is real and must wage a hard battle with the forces of darkness. Light and darkness become real. And then something occurs to the person which makes him say to himself: If in my thinking I merge completely with the light, I will lose myself in the light. For in the moment when I merge with the light in my thinking, light-beings grasp hold of me and say: You, human, we will not let you out of the light again, we will hold you back in the light. This expresses the light-beings' will. They want to draw man to them through his thinking, make him one with the light, rend him from all the earthly forces and integrate him into the light. The light-beings who are around us are those who at every moment of existence wish to rend human beings from the earth and integrate them with the sunlight which flows over the earth. They live in the periphery of the earth and say: You, human being, should not remain with your soul in your body; with the sun's first light of dawn you yourself should shine down on the earth, you should set with the sun's afterglow, and encircle the earth as light!

These light-beings will be found enticing us ever and again. At the moment of crossing the threshold one becomes aware of these light-beings who want to pull human beings away from the earth and try to convince him that it is not worthy of him to stay chained to the earth by its gravity. They wish to absorb him in the sun's radiance.

Yes, for ordinary consciousness the sun is shining above and we humans stand below and let the sun shine on us; for the more developed consciousness the sun in heaven is the great tempter who wants to unite us with its light and pull us away from the earth - who whispers in our ear: O man, you don't need to stay on the earth, you can exist in the rays of the sun, then you can illuminate the earth and bring it happiness, so you no longer have to be illuminated and made happy on the earth from without.

This is what we encounter when we meet the Guardian of the Threshold: nature, which was previously quietly outside us and made no claim on our normal consciousness, now has the force to speak to us morally. Nature appears in the sun as a tempter. What before was quietly shining sunlight now speaks enticingly, temptingly. And we first realize that there is something spiritual living and moving in this sunlight when the enticing, the tempting beings appear in the light of the sun who want to pull us away from the earth. For these beings are in continuous battle with what constitutes the interior of the earth - darkness.

And if we fall into extremes - which is quite possible because the experiences in meeting the Guardian of the Threshold are most earnest and profound and gripping for the human soul - when we realize how enticing the sunlight is, caused by the light-beings, that is when we want to escape from them, if we remember that we are supposed to be human beings. We may not forget this. If we do, although we continue to live physically on the earth, we are to a certain extent psychically crippled. But when we become aware of how enticing the sunlight is, we turn to the opposite side and seek relief in darkness, against which the light is continually fighting. And by swinging from light to darkness we fall into the opposite extreme. So this self, which wanted to surge out into the bright shining sunlight, is now threatened in darkness by loneliness, by being separated from all other beings. But we human beings can only live in the area of equilibrium between light and darkness.

Such is the great experience before the Guardian of the Threshold: that we face the enticement of light and the dehumanizing force of darkness. Light and darkness become moral forces which have moral power over us. And we humans must realize that it is dangerous to look at the pure light and the pure darkness. And we are reassured when, there at the threshold, we see how the middle gods, the good gods of normal progress dim the light to a luminous yellow, to a luminous red, and when we know that we can no longer be lost to the earth, when we are aware not of the light which enticingly dazzles us, but of the color in spirit, which is subdued light.

And it is equally dangerous to yield to pure darkness. And we will be inwardly liberated if we do not stand before the pure darkness in spirit-land, but when we stand before the illuminated darkness as violet and blue. Yellow and red say to us in spirit-land: Light's enticements will not be able to wrest you away from the earth. Violet and blue say to us: The darkness will not be able to bury you, as soul, in the earth; you will be able to hold yourself above the effects of the earth's gravity.

Those are the experiences where the natural and the moral grow together in one, where light and darkness become realities. And without light and darkness becoming realities, we will not be aware of the true nature of thinking. Therefore we should listen to the words the Guardian of the Threshold speaks when we meet him with our thinking, which has become independent and separated in our soul:

The light does battle with the forces dark
In that realm where your thinking
Would enter into the spirit-being.
You find, striving towards the light,
Your self by spirit taken from you;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose your self.

This means becoming aware of the duality in which one is placed and between which one must find equilibrium, harmony, in thinking.

[The lines are written on the blackboard:]

The light does battle with the forces dark
In that realm where your thinking
Would enter into the spirit-being.
You find, striving towards the light,
Your self by spirit taken from you;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose your self.

The impulses which can derive from such words must be forcefully received by thinking and one must learn to feel when dealing even with normal exterior light, and exterior darkness, how this light can only be tolerated when it is dimmed to color. Then we must do our best to understand, with spiritual visioning, how thinking is placed in the middle of this battle between light and darkness: How, when it comes into contact with light, it is absorbed in a certain sense, interwoven with the light; and when it comes into contact with darkness it is extinguished. If we want to enter into matter, into dark matter, our thinking is extinguished. By understanding this, one gradually enters the spiritual realm.

And, my dear friends, in order to experience this, one must have courage, inner courage. To deny that one needs courage is to be ignorant of the true situation. We may think that courage is needed to let a finger be cut off, but none is needed to allow the severed thinking to stream into the vortex in which it will be seized when it finds itself in the middle of the battle between light and darkness. And it is always there. Knowledge means that we are aware of this.

In every waking moment, with his thinking, man is in danger because there are certain spiritual beings on neighboring heavenly bodies who know that in every century, in every age, it is possible, as far as humanity is concerned, for light to win over darkness or darkness to win over light.

Yes, my dear friends, for people with normal consciousness life seems as little dangerous as it does for a sleepwalker who has not yet been woken up: he doesn't fall down. For someone who observes life, however, a battle ensues, and he cannot say with certainty whether in a hundred years light or darkness will have won, and whether the human race will even have an existence worthy of humanity. And he will know why such a catastrophe has not happened to human evolution until now.

I could use another comparison. When you watch a tightrope walker on his rope you know that he could fall at any moment to the left or to the right. That you could be on such a tightrope psychically - that anyone can plummet psychically to the right or the left - there is no awareness of that in ordinary life, because one does not see the abyss on the left or right. Nevertheless, it is there.

That is the benefit the Guardian of the Threshold bestows on man - that he does not let the abyss be seen until his own warnings alert him to it. That has been the secret of the Mysteries of all times, that the abyss is shown to the adept and he therewith is able to acquire the strength necessary for knowledge of the real world.

As it is with light in regard to thinking, so it is with warmth in regard to feeling. When approaching to Guardian of the Threshold, one is aware of entering a battle between warm and cold: how warmth is always enticing our feeling, for it wishes to suck it in to itself. Just as the light-beings, the Luciferic light-beings would in a certain sense fly away with us from the earth towards the light, so would the Luciferic warmth-beings suck our feeling into the general universal warmth. All human feeling should be lost to humanity and soaked up into the general universal warmth.

And this is enticing because what the initiate-science adept is aware of when he approaches the threshold with his feeling: the warmth-beings appear, who want to give the human being an over-abundance of his own element, of the element in which he lives: warmth. They want all his feelings to be soaked up by warmth. When the human being is aware of this however: when he approaches the threshold, the warmth-beings are there, he gets warm, warm, warm, he becomes warmth, he flows over into the warmth. It is a feeling of pleasure, and a great enticement. It flows through him continuously. One must know all this. For without knowing that this enticement exists within the desire for warmth, it impossible to obtain an unobstructed vision of spirit-land.

And the enemies of these Luciferic warmth-beings are the Ahrimanic coldness-beings. These beings attract those who are still aware of how dangerous it is to bask in the pleasure of warmth. They would like to dip into the healthy cold. That is the opposite extreme: the cold can harden them there. And then, when the cold affects man in this way, infinite pain ensures, which is also physical pain. The physical and the mental, matter and spirit, become one. The human being experiences the cold capturing his whole being, as though tearing him apart in great pain.

That the human being is continually engaged in this battle between warmth and cold is what one must understand as the Guardian of the Threshold's admonition in respect to feeling.

[The second verse is written on the blackboard.]

The warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm where your feeling
Would like to live spiritually.
You find, loving the warmth,
Your Self in spirit-pleasure dispersed;
You can, when coldness hardens you,
Enwrap the Self in suffering.

With his volition man enters a world which seems quite near to us - which in fact it is. It is the world of air, the world which sustains our breathing. One does not suspect how closely related human will is to the air which we breathe, for our will depends upon our breathing. And in the air, dear friends, life and death exists. It contains the vivifying oxygen; it contains the deadly nitrogen. The chemist says with his terrible, untrue abstraction: Air consists of oxygen and nitrogen. Yes, as long as we remain in normal consciousness one says: oxygen and nitrogen. Once we arrive at the Guardian of the Threshold, however, it becomes clear that oxygen is the external manifestation of many spiritual beings - the ones who give humanity life. Nitrogen is the external manifestation of the spiritual beings who give humanity death - also the death which, in every instant of our waking life in which we think and in which we develop our soul-life, is partially putting us to death, is unmaking us.

In the air there is a battle in which the Luciferic oxygen-spirits do battle with the Ahrimanic nitrogen-spirits. As long as one has not arrived at the Threshold, air consists of the chemists' abstraction: oxygen and nitrogen. When we arrive at the Threshold, it consists of Ahriman and Lucifer, and the oxygen is the outer mask for Lucifer, and nitrogen the outer mask for Ahriman. And a battle rages in the air. This battle is hidden from the every-day, illusory consciousness. But one enters it when the Threshold is reached.

Once again: if one wishes to realize what exists in oxygen-spirits, what exists in the life-element when one wishes to unite his will with spiritual creativity, when one is stimulated to inner courageous activity, the danger exists that one's actions are all absorbed by spiritual acts and one ceases to be even human because what one needs as strength of will is taken over by the Luciferic spiritual world.

And if you turn to the opposite side, then the nitrogen forces, the Ahrimanic ones that act as death in the element of air will tempt you. This is not the death which we see in the physical world, but one with which one is not personally related. If you become related to death you begin to consider it as something you wish to unite with, and then are never released from. Whereas in the element of life the spirits want to hold us in order for their deeds to absorb the deeds of men, on the other side - that of the Ahrimanic nitrogen-spirits - we are thrown aside into the nothingness of life. We then want to act in death, act in nothingness. We are cramped instead of being active; the self is cramped.

Man is placed between these two opposing elements of which he must be aware with respect to his will.

[The third verse is written on the blackboard.]

A battle rages between life and death
In that realm where your will
Would like to act in spirit-creation.
You find, grasping life,
Your Self in spirit-forces ending;
You can, if death-forces bind you,
Confine the Self in nothingness.

If, dear friends, we say: I would rather do without such knowledge! Why should I do that to myself, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold, if what is otherwise benevolently hidden from humanity is revealed to me? Can it be beneficial for humanity to be aware of such terrible truths? It is obvious that this objection is due to the human desire for comfort, especially when the question: What should I do with such truths? is asked. If I ask that, it is about something I'd rather not know.

But, my dear friends, the task of contemporary times is that man penetrate in reality, that he does not cowardly shrink back from reality, that he penetrates into reality in order to unite with what is directly related to his being. We could of course stick our heads in the sand during this short earth-life and know nothing about these realities; that we can no longer do however, for we are now entering a new age when man can only thrive after death if he becomes aware of what he will experience after death.

And how will it be after death? When a person passes through the gates of death and his consciousness has still not been erased, he looks back and when this looking back has become conscious, spiritual beings whisper into the process causing a soft undertone to be present. One looks back the few days after death during which the etheric body is dissolving in the cosmic ether, one looks back and sees the pictures of the earth-life just experienced - and certain spirits whisper:

A battle rages between life and death
In that realm where your will
Would like to act in spirit-creation.
You find, grasping life,
Your Self in spirit-forces ending;
You can, if death-forces bind you,
Confine the Self in nothingness.

Now we know the reality: if we do not find the middle way, but wander off either to the right or the left instead, then one of those things can happen.

And also, when one has gone through the sleeping time after death, which does not last long, he enters in consciousness into a time when he experiences his past earthly life backwards, an experience which lasts a third of that of his past earthly lifetime, as we have described in the general anthroposophical lectures. But the admonishing spirits keep appearing during milestones along this journey. And they say to us:

The warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm where your feeling
Would like to live spiritually.
You find, loving the warmth,
Your Self in spirit-pleasure dispersed;
You can, if coldness hardens you,
Enwrap your Self in suffering.

Bearing this in mind, I have often counseled those who have asked me how they should act in respect to the dead who have been close to them to direct thoughts towards them in the sense, for example: “My love goes out to you, so that it might warm your coldness, lessen your warmth,” for during the whole time of reverse experience of the past life warmth and cold play the role described above. But we are also warned that they play that role continually. These things are realities.

And when we then cross over from the life of reverse experience into the experience of being in the free spirit-land, preparing ourselves for the next earth-life, the spirits warning us at the milestones again appear. They call out to us unceasingly:

The light does battle with the forces of darkness
In that realm where your thinking
Would like to engage in spiritual being.
You find, striving towards the light,

- The striving is real; you could go right or to the left -

Your Self taken away by spirit;
You can, when darkness entices you,
In matter lose the Self.

My dear friends, when man still had an instinctive clairvoyance and passed through the gates of death, it was through this instinctive clairvoyance that he could understand the words spoken to him during the three stations of life after death. But in the age which man had to pass through in order to achieve freedom, it became ever more difficult for him to understand what was being called out to him. And now we live in an age when, if human beings are not made aware of the meaning of these words during their life on earth, they will not understand the words called out to them in spirit-language.

But that is what can happen to man if he confronts a future in which he passes through a world where these words are called out to him and he does not understand them and must therefore live through the torments of not understanding. And what do these torments mean? They mean the ever increasing prevalence of anxiety in the soul of losing the connection with the creative spiritual powers and finally not being able to join those spiritual powers to whom we owe our existence, and instead find ourselves with alien powers where the human origin can be lost.

To enter esoteric life, my dear friends, does not imply a mere learning process, nor a mere theory; rather it means to accept a most serious aspect of life. And whoever immerses in esoteric life does not listen to a mere teaching or a theory, but immerses himself in aspects of real life. The life which our senses are aware of is only the outer manifestation; behind it at all times is the spiritual world. We do not enter it if we close our ears to what lies in these words. If we enter deeply, meditatively into such words, then our thinking, our feeling and our willing will be able to understand and to grasp the spirit in which we must penetrate as human beings.

In these days when death is so constantly a source of pain, I want to deal with certain aspects of Spiritual Science in connection with the problem of death. Today I shall give a kind of introduction to these problems; tomorrow I shall go more closely into the subject and on Sunday pass over from these problems to more general questions of the artistic conception of Life. This will then lead us back to matters connected with our Building.

Manifold indeed are the connections within which we are placed in life. Just as the life before birth is a preparation for its reflection in this life, so this reflection between birth and death is a preparation for the spiritual life which comes afterwards, between death and a new birth. The more we are able to carry over from this life into the life between death and a new birth, the richer may be the development in that life; for the actual concepts which must be acquired of that life, the concepts of the truths of existence between death and a new birth must be very different from the concepts we must acquire of earthly Maya if we want to understand this Maya. Some of the necessary concepts will be found in the lecture-course given last year in Vienna. (The Inner Life of Man between Death and a New birth.) You will find there what new concepts must be acquired for understanding the other side of man's life which takes its course between death and a new birth. It is often exceedingly difficult to work out the concepts and ideas that are applicable to this other kind of life, and in reading such a lecture-course you will realise that it has been a question of wrestling for terms which in some way give expression to these totally different conditions.

At this time especially when the deaths of very dear Members are occurring in our anthroposophical life, I want to call attention to the following.—

The part played in the life between death and a new birth by the moment of death is different from the part that is played by the moment of birth in our present life between birth and death. The moment of birth is that point which, in ordinary circumstances, is not remembered by the human being. In Ordinary life, birth is not remembered. But the moment of death is the point which leaves behind it the very deepest impression for the whole of life between death and a new birth; it is the point that is remembered most of all; in a certain sense it is always there, but in a quite different form from that in which it is seen from this side of life. From this side of life, death appears to be a dissolution, something in face of which the human being has a ready fear and dread. From the other side, death appears as the light-filled beginning of experience of the Spirit, as that which spreads a sun-radiance over the whole of the subsequent life between death and a new birth; as that which most of all warms the soul through with joy in the life between death and a new birth. The moment of death is something that is looked back upon with a deep sense of blessing. Described in earthly terms: the moment of death, viewed from the other side, is the most joyful, the most enrapturing point in the life between death and a new birth.

If, out of materialism, we have pictured that the human being loses consciousness with death, if we can form no true idea of the continuation of consciousness—(I emphasize this today because the incentive is community with dear ones who have recently gone away from us through death.) if it is difficult to picture that consciousness exists beyond death, if we believe that consciousness is darkened (as appears to be the case after death)—then we must realise: it simply is not true. The truth is that the consciousness is excessively bright and it is only because the human being is still unaccustomed, during the very first period after death, to live within this excessively clear consciousness, that there sets in, to begin with, immediately after death, something like a kind of sleep.

This state of sleep, however, is the very opposite of the state of sleep through which we pass in ordinary life. In ordinary life we sleep because consciousness is dimmed; after death we are, in a certain sense, unconscious because the consciousness is too strong, too forceful; because we live wholly in consciousness. And what we have to do during the first days is to live over into this condition of excessive consciousness. We have to find our bearings and orientation within this condition of superabundant consciousness. When we succeed in so finding our bearings that, as it were, out of the fullness of the cosmic thoughts, we feel: thou wast that ... the moment when, out of the fullness of the cosmic thoughts, we begin to distinguish our past earth-life within this abundance of consciousness, then the moment is experienced of which we can say: we awaken. It may be that we are awakened by an event that has been particularly significant in our earthly life and is also significant in the happenings after our earthly life.

It is, therefore, a process of getting accustomed to the supersensible consciousness, to the consciousness that does not rest upon the foundation and support of the physical world, but that is working and active in itself. This is what we call the “Awakening” after death. This awakening consists in the will stretching out to find its bearings, the will, which as you know and can realise from the lecture-course already mentioned, may unfold strongly after death. I spoke of will that is coloured by feeling, of feeling that is coloured by will: when this life of feeling that is coloured by will stretches out to find its bearings in the supersensible world, when the first sally is made, then the awakening has come.

If we want to think of the experiences that are connected with the problem of death, we must realise, above all, that the real being, the being who rules and weaves within man, is profoundly unknown to him. This true being is not only unknown in respect of the deeper side of a man's own hidden existence, but it is unknown too, in respect of many things that play very significantly indeed into the experiences of everyday life. We must be absolutely clear that even with the most important instruments of knowledge we possess for the physical world—with the senses—we look almost entirely from outside, and that in this looking from outside, what may be called our skin shuts us off from beholding our real, true being. As soon as we begin to judge of our true being, as soon as we try to form a picture of this true being, we are obliged to apply our intellect, our power of forming mental images. In the course of our development within the physical body, however, both these faculties are strongly influenced from the Ahrimanic as well as from the Luciferic side; and the nature of all these influences that are exercised from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic sides upon our intellect, in so far as it is bound to the brain, is such, that they are able in the highest degree to cloud the judgment we form about our own being.

All self-knowledge is really comparable with the extreme case I quoted in the last lecture, of the university professor who himself tells the story of how, in his youth, he crossed the street and suddenly saw coming towards him a young man with a dreadfully unsympathetic face; he tells of the shock he received when he realised that he was seeing himself through two mirrors that were revealing his own physiognomy, as if it were coming towards him. This shows that he had no inkling of his external appearance, which was exceedingly unsympathetic to him: I have told you how he narrates a second similar instance. But really it is no different with what we call our more intimate self-knowledge. Our Ego and astral body which set out on the journey through the worlds when the date of Death has been passed—these members of our being are removed from our sphere of observation during physical life, for when we wake from sleep the Ego and astral body are not revealed to us. They are not revealed to us in their true form but in such a way that they are mirrored by the pictures of the Ego and astral body that are sketched by the etheric body and physical body. Between sleeping and waking we should be able to see our astral being and our Ego in their true form if we were not in the unconscious condition of sleep. The dreams, too, which occur in ordinary life are only faulty interpreters of our real being, because they are, after all, reflections of what goes on in the astral body around the etheric body, and because it is essential, first, to understand the language of dreams if we are to get at their correct meaning. If we understand the language of dreams, we can, certainly, acquire knowledge about our true being from the processes of dream. But in ordinary life we are accustomed simply to accept the pictures presented by the dream. This, however, is no more sensible than if we were simply to follow the signs of printed letters and not really read at all.

Our true being is withdrawn from us during life between birth and death. We must realise here that in our astral body—and in our Ego too—there lie all those feelings and all those stirrings of will which lead us to our actions, to our deeds, but also to our judgments, to our conceptions of things in the world. There, in the depths of our being, there at the seat of our astral body and our true “I”, we have a whole world of emotions, a whole world of feelings, of impulses of will; but what we form in everyday life as our own view of these emotions, impulses of will and feelings, stand mostly—mostly, I say—in a very distant connection with what we truly are, in our innermost being.

Take the following case—It may happen in life that two people live together for a long time and that through the strange forces playing out of the unknown regions of the astral body and Ego of the one person into the astral body and Ego of the other (these forces remain in the hidden regions), the one has in relation to the other a real desire for torment, a kind of need for cruelty. It may be that the one person who has this desire for torment, this need for cruelty, has no inkling whatever of the existence of these emotions in the astral body and Ego; he may build up about the things he does out of this urge to cruelty, a whole number of ideas which explain the actions on quite other grounds. Such a person may tell us that he has done this or that to the other person for one reason or another; these reasons may be very clever and yet they do not express the truth at all. For in ordinary life, what we all-too-often picture as the motives of our own actions, indeed of our own feelings, frequently stands, as I say, in a very, very distant connection with what is really living and weaving in our inner being. It may be that the Luciferic power is actually preventing the person concerned from realising the nature of this urge for cruelty, of these impulses to do all kinds of things to the other person, and that under the influence of this Luciferic power everything he says about the reasons merely spreads a cover over what is actually present in the soul. The reasons we devise in our consciousness may often be cut out for hiding from us, disguising what is actually living and working in the soul. These reasons are too often of a character which indicates a desire for self-justification, for we should find ourselves just as antipathetic as the professor of philosophy of whom I told you. We should not at all like what is in our soul if we had to acknowledge what kind of instincts and emotions are really holding sway. And because we have to protect ourselves from the sight of our own soul-being, we discover, with the help of these reasons, all kinds of things that guarantee us protection, because they deceive us about what is actually the ruling force in the soul. Just as it is true that the external world becomes a Maya to us because of the peculiar character of our faculty to form mental pictures, it is also true that what we have to say about ourselves in ordinary life is, to a very, very great extent, Maya.

Certain instincts and needs of our innermost being in particular mislead us into constantly deceiving ourselves about our own being. Take the case of a person who is terribly vain, who suffers from a form of megalomania. Such people are by no means few in number. This is admitted. If, however, as described above, a mask were not laid over what really is in the soul, it would be much more generally admitted that vanity and megalomania exist in many souls who have not the very slightest inkling that it is so.

Megalomania gives rise to many wishes ... but when I say ‘wishes’, you must understand what I mean.—the wishes do not become conscious, they remain wholly in the depths. Such a person may wish to exercise a controlling influence upon someone else, but because he would have to admit that this desire for control over the other is born of vanity and megalomania, he will not admit it. He then appeals—unconsciously of course,—to those powers of seduction which Lucifer is able to exercise all the time upon the human soul. And under the unconscious influence of Lucifer, such a person never gets to the point of saying to himself: ‘What I have in me, producing the desire for action, is really vanity, megalomania.’ He never says this, but on the contrary, he will often discover, under the influence of Lucifer, a whole system for explaining the feelings of which he is darkly aware but the true character of which he will not admit. He may have certain feelings for some other person but he cannot acknowledge them, because what he really wants is to control this other person and he is unable to do so because this other person, perhaps, will not allow himself to be controlled. Then, under the influence of Lucifer the soul discovers a system, discovers that the other person is planning something malicious; the first person then proceeds to paint a mental picture of the details that are being planned against him; he finally feels that he is being persecuted. The whole system of judgments and ideas is a mask that is there merely for the purpose of covering with a veil what must be prevented from emerging out of the inner life of soul.—It is a real Maya.

In connection with a series of actions, a man once said to me that he had done them out of an iron sense of duty, out of infinite devotion to the cause he represented. I was bound to say to him in reply: “The opinion you have about the motives of your procedure and of your actions is no criterion whatever. Only reality is the criterion, not the opinion one may have. The reality shows that the impulse, the urge to these actions was to gain influence in a certain direction.” I said to the man quite baldly: “Although you believe that you are acting out of an iron sense of duty, you are really acting under the impulse to acquire influence and you misinterpret this way of acting as being selfless, done purely out of a sense of duty. You are not acting out of this motive but because it pleases you to act so, because it brings you certain pleasure—again, therefore, out of a certain inner impulse.”

Our opinion, our mental picture of ourselves may be extremely complicated; it may not resemble in the very remotest degree what is really dominating and weaving in the soul. It may be extremely complicated. You will admit at once that such things must be known when it is a question of living in a world of truth and not in a world of Maya; you will also admit at once that it is necessary now and then to speak of such things in a radical way! The reasons which as genuine, true reasons, drive us to our actions, can only become clear to us slowly and by degrees, when through Spiritual Science, we really have knowledge of the secret connections existing between the human being and the world.

Let us take a definite case,—You will all know that there are people in the world who are called gossips, chatterboxes. If we ask these chatterboxes why they flock together in their cafes or elsewhere and talk, talk, talk, talk (they often talk a great deal more than they can answer for,) we shall hear many reasons why it is necessary for them to discuss this, that or the other. We can get to know people whom we then meet rushing along the street, hurrying somewhere or other in order to arrive quickly ... and when we find out what they are after, we discover that it is nothing but the most futile, useless, silliest chatter. If such people are asked about their reasons, they will give reasons which often sound exceedingly laudable and fine, whereas the most that can be said is that these reasons are well able to conceal the real facts of the case. And now we will consider these “real facts of the case.”

What is happening when we gossip or chatter? (when we speak, it is, of course, the same.) What is happening? Through our organs of breathing and speech we set the air into movements which correspond with the forms of the words. We generate in ourselves those physical waves—and naturally the corresponding ether-waves too, for when we speak something very significant is happening in the etheric body—we generate these waves in the air and ether which corresponds with our words, which give expression to our words. Picture it quite precisely to yourselves: While you are sitting there—no, pardon me, not you!—while a man is chattering with his cup of coffee before him on the table, he is bringing his whole inner organism into movement, that inner organism which corresponds with the form of expression, with the external physical and etheric form of expression of his words. Something is actually welling up and weaving in him; he generates this in himself, but he also is aware of it, he feels it. He feels this self-movement of the physical and etheric bodies because the astral body and the Ego are continually coming up against it. The astral body is continually coming up against the ether-waves and becoming aware of them; and the Ego is continually coming into contact with the physical waves of the air; so that while we are speaking, astral body and Ego are continually contacting something, touching something. in this contact, in this impact, we become aware of our Ego and of our astral body, and the most agreeable sensation the human being can have is that of self-enjoyment. when the astral body and the Ego contact the etheric body and the physical body in this way, the process is similar to what happens on a small scale when a child licks a sweet—for the pleasurable sensation in licking the sweet consists in the fact that the astral body is coming into contact with what is happening in the physical body, and the human being becomes aware of himself in this way. He becomes aware of himself, has self-enjoyment in this process. Those who sit down at a table in a cafe in order to gossip and chatter for an hour or two, simply hurry there to find self-enjoyment. It is self-enjoyment that is being sought in such cases.

We cannot become aware of these things if we do not know that man's being is fourfold and that all the four members are involved in every activity in the external world.

There are other, different examples. From the example of chattering we have seen how the human being has the urge to self-enjoyment caused by the impact of his astral body and Ego upon the etheric body and the physical body. But he also, frequently feels the need for his astral body merely to contact the etheric body, just the etheric body. In order that the astral body may contact the etheric body, this etheric body must produce movement, it must produce inner activity. These processes go on even more in the subconsciousness than do other processes. There is an impulse in the human being, of which he is not conscious, to make an impact with his astral body upon his etheric body. This impulse lives itself out in very curious ways. We find that certain young men—and in recent times young ladies too—simply cannot rest until what they write is printed. People sometimes find it exceedingly pleasant to see their writings in print, but it is pleasant chiefly because they succumb to the worst possible illusion, namely, to the illusion that what is printed is also read: It is by no means always the case that writings are read when they are printed, but it is at least believed that they are, and this is an exceedingly pleasant sensation. Many young men and, as I say, many young ladies too, simply cannot bear it, they are constantly on edge ... until their writings are printed. What does this mean?

It means this,—When writings are printed and actually read—which happens in the rarest cases today—when writings are printed, our thoughts pass over into other human beings, live on in other human souls. These thoughts live in the etheric bodies of the other human beings. But in us the idea takes root: ‘The thought you yourself had in your etheric body is now living out there in the world.’ We have the feeling that out there in the world our own thoughts are living. If the thoughts are really living in the world, if they are actually present there—in other words, if our printed writings are also read—then this exercises an influence upon our own etheric body and we impact what is living out there in the world. Inasmuch as it is living in our own etheric body, an impact takes place with our own astral body. This is quite a different impact from when we merely impact our own thoughts; the human being is not always strong enough to do this, because these thoughts must be called forth from the inner being by dint of energy. But when the thoughts are living in the world, when we can have the consciousness that our own thoughts are living out there in the world, then our astral body—to the best of our belief at least—comes into contact with a part of ourselves that is living in the outside world. This is the supreme self-enjoyment. But this form of self-enjoyment lies at the basis of all seeking for fame, all seeking for recognition, all seeking for authority in the world. At the root of this impulse for self-enjoyment there lies nothing else than a need to impact with our astral body objective thoughts of our etheric body, and in the impact to become aware of ourselves. You see what a complicated process between astral body and etheric body lies at the root of things that play a certain role in the outer world.

Naturally these things are not said for the purpose of making moral judgments into scarecrow. They are not of this nature at all, for everything that has been mentioned belongs to the category of characteristics that are quite normal in life. When we speak, it is absolutely natural that there should be self-enjoyment—even when speaking does not consist in gossiping. It is quite natural too that when we allow something to be printed, not out of thirst for fame but because we feel it a duty to say something to the world,—that then too we impact the thoughts of our etheric body; in such a case the same process is at work. We must not draw the conclusion that these processes are always to be shunned, always to be regarded as something lacking in morality,—for I simply mean them to be taken in a symbolic sense. If the human being were to flee from everything that presses in upon him from the side of Lucifer and Ahriman, he would have to come out of his skin as soon as he realised it—I mean this symbolically too: Lucifer and Ahriman exercise no other forces upon us than those that are justified, normal forces in human life; only it is the case that Lucifer and Ahriman put them into operation in the wrong place. I have said this in different lecture-courses.

If you think of all these things you will perceive the infinite variety and complexity of those threads in life which play over from human soul to human soul and again outwards from the human soul into the world. How infinitely complicated it all is but at the same time you will realise how little, how very little real knowledge the human being derives from what he perceives and pictures concerning his relations to other human beings and to the world. The picture we have of ourselves is only a tiny fragment drawn from what we experience. And this picture, to begin with, is Maya. Only when we make Spiritual Science into an actual asset of life, not into mere theory, do we really get behind Maya and reach some enlightenment upon what is actually going on within us. But things do not change by our possessing a tiny and mostly untrue fragment of the web in which we are involved in relation to the world; the things are as they are. All these hidden forces, this hidden web from soul to soul, from the human being to the various agents of the world—it is all there, and every minute of sleeping and waking life it is playing into the human soul. You will be able to judge from this how much has to be done in order to reach a true knowledge of the being of man.

Studies of this kind have to do with those shades of feeling which are requisite for a true experience of what belongs, not to earthly incarnation, but to eternity. For by unfolding such shades of feeling we become aware of the basis of the conflicts which appear in life. These conflicts that are brought by life and rightly become subjects for treatment in literature and the other arts, are due to the fact that there is an unknown, hidden ocean of will in which we are swimming in life, and that only a tiny fragment—mostly distorted at that—comes into our consciousness. But we cannot live in accordance with this tiny fragment; we must live with our whole soul in accordance with the great and manifold ramifications which exist in life. And this brings the conflicts. How can the tiny fragment that is also in many cases distorted, how can this tiny fragment come into a true relationship to human life, how can it really understand what is actually going on in human life: Because it is incapable of this, the human being inevitably comes into conflict with life. But where reality is in play, there too is truth. Reality does not direct itself according to the pictures we take of it. And the moment there is opportunity for it reality pitilessly corrects the Maya of our ideas. And this kind of corrective which reality bestows upon the Maya of our ideas, supplies most significant material for treatment in art, in poetry.

In pursuance of the line of thought contained in this lecture, I want now to start from a point that is connected with a work of art; in the lecture tomorrow we shall pass on to a study of the life between death and a new birth, and then on Sunday to a theme dealing with art in connection with our building. I do not want to start from a work of art chosen at random but from something that gives a very concrete picture of what I shall present to you as knowledge of the reality of the spiritual life. The reason for choosing this particular example is that, for once, reality has been hit upon in a certain small, but excellent piece of writing. An occultist alone is able to judge about the reality, but in this small work we see how when the human being as a clairvoyant tries to penetrate into the deeper problems of life, he simply cannot avoid touching the occult sides of life, he cannot avoid touching those depths which send their waves up into the life we often pierce so shallowly with the Maya of our thoughts. What I regard as important from the point of view of art and of occultism really occurs only at the end of a tale of which I want to speak merely as an example. Therefore I shall merely give a brief outline of the tale and read the concluding passage only. It is not a question of speaking merely of a piece of literature but of speaking of this particular work, because here for once a writer has presented something that might actually happen, in absolute accordance with true occult laws.

As the tale was written in the sixties of the 19th century, you will gather from what I say, how what we speak of as Spiritual Science has really always been prepared for and reflected in a certain way in human consciousness. Unconsciously, at least, in many a soul there has been reflected what must enter into the culture of the Earth and become more fully conscious through Spiritual Science. It may be that such a soul actually knew something about this, but the time was not ripe for voicing this knowledge in a form other than the unpretentious form of literature. At the present day people are much more ready to condone the introduction of occult truths in the form of stories or poems ... in the age of materialism they are much more ready to condone this than they will condone somebody who comes out with the direct truth and declares that such things are realities. If people can say to themselves: “Well, after all, this is only romance,” they will often accept it. The tale that was written in the sixties of last century is more or less as follows.—

It is written as if one of the characters were narrating it himself; it is a “first person” story, as we say. This character tells of his acquaintance with Mlle. de Gaussin in Paris (which is the scene of the tale). He tells how at a certain period he paid daily visits to the house of this Mlle. de Gaussin who is a much-feted singer; he gets to know all kinds of people who are admirers of the lady of the house—among them a man who is practically always to be found in Mlle.de Gaussin's salon. The narrator perceives that the feelings of this other man for her are more than mere friendship, and he also realises that these feelings are not reciprocated by the singer. Everything that happens results in a conflict.—There is a man who ardently loves the singer; his love is not returned, but he is not actually rejected; in reality he is brought nearer and nearer to her, but as a result of this he becomes more and more restless and inwardly shaken.

The narrator of the story (it is, as I say a ‘first person’ tale), notices all this. He is friendly with the other, and as he (the narrator) is engaged and is to be married during the next few weeks, it is quite natural, as the other man is also friendly with him, that there is no question of jealousy. One day the narrator has it all out with the other man whose eyes are then opened and he feels bound to have a talk with the singer. The result of this talk is that he goes no more to the house—but, although he has promised not to think about the lady any more, and to forget her, he is incapable of seriously turning his mind to other things, of getting rid of his inner restlessness; the thoughts that were there during his friendship with the lady keep on returning. He leaves the town and lives away for a time. During this period the narrator of the story has married and has been obliged to go on a journey. On this journey he meets the other man in a hotel, in a pitiful state. The other man tells him how he has left Paris and how he tried for a time to live alone; how he went for a ride one day outside his estate and had the ill-luck to come across the lady with her traveling company who were also away from Paris; how all his feelings came to life again and how he now goes about with two revolvers in order one day to put an end to his life.

The narrator still has kindly feelings towards the other man and invites him to his new home, hoping to get him to think of other things. The man accepts the invitation which is just the thing to provide him with a sympathetic milieu as a guest; but he simply cannot get hold of himself, he gets more and more depressed, and finally reaches the point where he has resolved to commit suicide. The two friends have a talk together and the narrator succeeds in getting the other to promise that he will defer his intention. The narrator says that he himself has to go away and because he does not want to say: ‘wait until I come back’—fearing that the other might not wait but might shoot himself in the meantime—he gets the other to make him a solemn promise. He says: “Look after my wife until I get back.”

When the other man has given the promise, the narrator goes off to Paris with the idea of asking the singer to come to the country and do something to make the situation less miserable. He reaches Paris and travels back with the singer to the country. They get to the hedge around the narrator's country estate. At this moment the narrator notices that a man who had been standing at the hedge, has run back. As they approach, there is a shot. The other man had kept his promise, had faithfully looked after the wife, but had sent a peasant to keep watch at the hedge. The peasant signals: ‘Now he is coming’—and then the man shoots himself. The narrator brings the singer into the house—and from this point I will read you the words themselves.¹

“We reached the chateau in the evening. When I got to the park, a peasant who was waiting for us ran with lightning speed towards the house, and hardly had we got half-way up the avenue, than a shot rang out. So set was I upon the success of my project that the meaning of this shot never entered my head. Amazement was not long to be withheld from me; we went on; nobody came out; the driver cracked his whip and I sprang out, Mlle. de Gaussin after me. The first thing we heard was a scream from my wife's maid who came towards us deathly white, with the cry: ‘He has shot himself dead’. We hurried to the Marquess' room which was full of people; I sent them all out, shut the door and stood with Manon de Gaussin beside the young man's body which lay on the ground. She stared at it for some minutes, then gave a scream and sank to the ground on her knees beside the body. She did not faint. She took his hands, laid hers on his forehead (the wound was in the middle of the chest), looked at me, then at him, and suddenly began to sing in a loud voice. This filled me with dread; I thought she had lost her reason.

Meanwhile one of my agents who knew a little about first-aid and was accustomed to render simple medical assistance, had arrived. I shall never forget the fear that came over his face when he saw the dead Marquess and the singer beside him. She was now silent, stood up, looked at me a long time and left the room. I followed to find out what she might want. She said: ‘I must have a room in which I am quite alone.’ I led her to the first good room, sent to fetch her maid and hurried to my wife. I heard to my relief that she had gone for a walk; I went to meet her and told her what had happened. As we had often talked about the Marquess and had anticipated the possibility of an end like this, she was less shocked than troubled. I led her back to the chateau and proceeded to give orders about the Marquess. The body had been placed on the bed and his servant was sitting by it, weeping bitterly. He said: ‘My master told me that he must not shoot himself until you had returned. This reassured me. Then he arranged secretly with the man John that he should wait for the carriage. The man did this and had hardly run back with the news that the carriage had entered the park than my master stood up, made a mark in the book he was reading, put his hand in his pocket, gave John a coin, took the pistol from the table and went into the other room; the moment he had closed the door behind him, he was dead.’

I began to reproach myself. Perhaps I might have been able to save him if I had acted more quickly. If Manon de Gaussin had arrived at the right moment this tragedy might, possibly, have been avoided. And I also thought: Perhaps providence has wished to protect him from something that would have been still worse, if the singer had decided to marry him, as I believe she would have done,—although she told me only afterwards that the disastrous consequences of such a step would have been unendurable and would simply have brought misery.

I went to Manon de Gaussin. She was calm and collected. There was nothing very unusual about her. She talked to me about the Marquess's frame of mind and his natural disposition towards such a sad ending of his life. So calm and collected was she that I felt the inner shock must have been very great, and I feared the reaction. I introduced her to my wife; we dined together and then retired.

The next morning I was struck by the change that had come over her. She said she felt well, but there was something so strained about her appearance, and in herself she seemed so broken, that her statement belied itself. She talked about leaving soon and asked if she might be given a different room for that night. This was arranged; we spent the day quietly and she only went to bed when all arrangements for her departure had been completed.

The next day she did not come down to breakfast. her maid asked me to go to her mistress in her room. She received me with a faint smile and was so pale and hollow-eyed that I could not conceal my amazement.

‘Dear friend,” she said, “You find me looking ill and don't want to say so?’

‘Don't you think that is natural?’

‘Yes, you are always full of feeling, reserved. But no secrecy helps now. I feel death within me.’

‘Dearest friend!’—I cried out in dismay.

‘I feel death; for two nights now I have seen the Marquess—awake—coming here—he is drawing me to him!’

I looked at her attentively. There was no over-strain in her eyes, nothing maniacal in her voice.

She went on: ‘When I saw him lying there in his blood, the feeling that I was the cause of this tragedy became so strong in me that I cried out because I could bear it no longer. It was as though something were shouting with unbelievable strength into my ears: “You are guilty: You have killed him!” In order not to hear this voice I began to sing louder and louder, but yet I did not deafen the voice. I heard it unceasingly. During the night I could not sleep, I lay and looked at the shadows cast by the furniture in the light of the lamp. Then the door sprang open. A narrow, dark streak appeared. Through this streak the Marquess entered, as it were through a thread of cloud as thin as paper; his eyes were closed, he hovered or came slowly towards me, stood beside the bed, as corporeal as you, and with closed eyes. I did not want to look at him but he forced me to do so; I was compelled to turn my eyes towards him. Then he suddenly opened his and looked at me. I could not bear it, and I lost consciousness. Last night it was the same. I can bear it no longer. I feel that he is sucking the life out of me with his eyes.’

I tried with all the arguments of physics, philosophy and religion to get her to dismiss the phenomenon from her mind. She remained resolute ... ‘I am determined to go away,’—she said. ‘Perhaps his shade is fettered only to this house.’ I opposed this. I could not allow her to travel alone and I could not leave my wife who was expecting her confinement. I therefore proposed to Manon de Gaussin that she should move into my agent's house and I promised to watch by her bed the next night. She finally let herself be persuaded into this, got up and walked around the room like a wraith.

In the evening when she had gone to bed, her maid called me to her. I put a table with night-lights near the bed, with a screen around it, and after talking to her for a little, began to read a book. She seemed to be sleeping; the lights burnt badly. I cleaned them, drank some wine and water and looked at the door. Suddenly—it was made of wood and was not firm—it sprang open; the catch may not have been working. I was about to go over softly and shut it noiselessly when, turning to Manon de Gaussin, I saw her sitting upright in bed with staring eyes. She stretched out her arms towards mine and pointed straight in front of her with her finger:

‘There he comes!’

There was absolutely nothing to be seen.

‘Where?’ I said.

I released myself from her and went to the corner.

‘Here?’

‘Come,’ she screamed, ‘he is standing in front of you!’

With one leap I was by her side.

‘Hold my eyes closed, I cannot bear it he is standing there, he is touching your knee!’

I pressed both her hands over her eyes. She breathed with effort, but there was nothing to be seen.

After a while she took her hands away. ‘I must see if he is still there’, she said softly.

‘Dear friend there is nothing here,’ I answered, and released her. She looked around.

‘He has gone away again: O, if he comes once again it will be better for him. We will slip through the doors together.’

This idea made me shudder. She lay back and declared that the next day she would certainly go away into a convent. I tried to talk her out of this.

‘Go to Paris,’ I said—‘You will forget there.’

She interrupted me.—‘I have deserved it; I have also deserved that you should make such a proposal to me. That I shall never forget! Him perhaps I shall forget, if he ceases to torment me, but my guilt—that is fast smelted!’

‘Your guilt amounts to nothing,’ I said. ‘That he loved you was destiny; the fact that you did not love him was not in your power to change. That you were able to believe you had cured him was only too natural in his deranged state.’

‘O’ she cried, ‘can a mother who lets her child fall into the water ever console herself? Do you think that guilt is only constituted by evil intent? If it were so, could one not wash away all regret with the thought of higher necessity? If God makes us guilty, it is also his will that we shall bear the consequences. It has been decreed that I shall hear these chains rattling to all eternity.’

I had soon exhausted my arguments. She left the chateau, and I did not accompany her. The birth of a son tore me away from all dark thoughts. I gave a feast in honour of this joyful event; the christening, and care for my wife took up my time so completely that everyone will understand why I did not make enquires about the unhappy, beautiful creature of whom, however, I thought from time to time. One day I received a packet from Paris. It had been addressed to me in the care of my business manager. It contained a little case and a letter, both sealed. I opened the letter first; there were only a few lines.

Dearest friend:

When you receive this I shall be dead. I knew that the Marquess would call me to him. Although he came no more to disturb my nights, I had some thing in my soul that took the place of him. Tell your wife that I have no pleasanter memory than that of her kindness to me. Guard your son from people like me. Give me a quiet little corner for the photograph enclosed. You need not break the seal. I do not want to destroy it; it must not fall into wrong hands. If you do look at it, think that perchance, even I had a heart

Manon de Gaussin.

I opened the case and the face of the unhappy girl who had announced her death to me in advance streamed out with all the magic she had possessed in the days of her prime. Tears started into my eyes and I thought of all the happy hours I had spent in her house.

Here we have a true description of the etheric body of a dead man appearing to someone else. It is an absolutely true description. Immediately after the death, Manon de Gaussin saw the wandering etheric body of the dead man. I simply wanted to show you how this phenomenon is treated in a story written in the sixties of last century. It is the phenomenon of the appearance of the etheric body of a dead man, and it can teach us about the secret, hidden relationships that may hold sway between human beings. We will pass on tomorrow to further studies. Try to feel how behind what existed in Manon de Gaussin's consciousness as a fragment of Maya, a wide realm was playing, and how out of this wide realm, in the hours she lived through directly after the Marquess' death, a phenomenon appeared to her in the form of a meeting with the etheric body of the dead man.

Truly, the etheric body is more intimately connected with the manifold circumstances in which we are interwoven within the universe than the pictures we bear in our self-knowledge and in our consciousness.

• 1. “Tales” by Herman Grimm: “The Singer.”